The 4 Cs of cat couture

Camouflage........

Counter-camouflage......

Coordinating colours......

Complementary colours....

Hope you had a lovely weekend! 

xxxxxxxxxxxx hawthorn and the house of 'courtured' cats

Thank you

Thank you so so much for your lovely comments re our little Pan.

A quick reply - Lovely Lady - no - Lily has taken a deep and personal dislike to the interloper, she pounces with menace and grumbles most unladylide - where do these dear 'gentle' creatures learn to swear with aplomb using such filthy words!!?! At the moment she has taken on the persona of a fire-breathing dragon.....

Jak - yes she is a quick learner when it comes to knitting and crochet - as soon as she sees yarn she flies over and watches closely -  a bit too closely I have to admit. I will be knitting and get to a rather soggy bit of yarn..... bless!

Angela - I'd forgotten you had a Pan, it was Eldest who chose her name, before we had even let him know that we'd found a kitten, he was found pouring over books and writing down names he fancied. Soon as he saw the little mite - he said - Pan. :)

Jacqueline -  ha ha ha - love the knit one purrrr one :) (Thanks too for your lovely comments about my mitten - still in the singular but for A-Very-Good-Reason for which I-Can-Not-Say *yet*)

Fiona - That box is her best toy - Pan hunts down Lily's toys and rushes off and hides them in the 'kitty-castle' to play-with-them-later  Pan says.

Jane - We are working hard on the cuddling bit (Pan allows us moments before reaching saturation point and scampers off) but each cuddle gets longer and more satisfying. I read the Yarn Harlot's blog and find her very funny or poignant and everything in between but have never tried her books. I read this article written by her and found it very true about being self-employed and based at home - people don't deem you as busy if you are working from home.

busybusybeejay hello and welcome :)  your Ziggy looks gorgeous, rescue cats often pay back with so so much love :) I lived just outside Ruthin for a year while I was at the agricultural college. I used to go quite regularly with my then boyfriend, now Himself, to the craft centre at Ruthin. I would have loved to have seen the Nuno textiles and the pottery.

Thankyous done :)

I have been busy recently, hence lack of any posts recently. I will, show/share soon, but in the meantime I will bob over and see what you've been up to !

Have a lovely evening - don't know about you but it is l-a-s-h-i-n-g it down here still and has been all day - hosepipe ban or not our lawn is now floating!

Before I go - a quick picture of our fire breathing dragon..........

I've been a bit occupied recently with......

...Pan (short for Pandora) a small and tatty sweetheart who has tugged our purr-strings and our hearts. 

She is a timid little soul who has had a terrible start but hopefully will blossom into a lovely part of our family.

Welcome Pan x

Ps - We had a MAJOR accomplishment this morning - Pan sat on my lap and 'helped' with my knitting!

knit-lit (chick - lit so so-oo last year) and knitting books

I love love love reading, not that I get much time to do a lot of it, but when I can snatch a few pages it ticks my happy boxes.

At the moment I am absorbed by 'proper' knitting books with grown up subjects such as patterns for socks or fairisle hats.

 I can be spotted with nose in book, hook or needles in hand and studious look on brow.

My knitting pattern book that inspired me to knit my FIRST MITTEN ON DPNs (yes - mitten as opposed to mittenS - am yet to start the next one....might be a problem here - want to try something else!!) (Kristin Knits - playing with colour)

The Knitting School book - with really good descriptions and instructions - ideal for me coz I still don't know my stockinette from my elbow and other bodily related comparisons.

However, I have a guilty pleasure - sshhhhhhh.


I  r-e-a-d  *said in hushed tones* knit-lit (ooh there I've said it).

My fav-sis-in-law and I year ago or so, bought a book each on a whim and really enjoyed it, now at knit and natter we bring and swap knit-lit with each other - it is definitely a guilty pleasure as the husbands raise their eyebrows and sigh in a sort-of-husbandly sort-of-way when we come out clutching books, hooks, wool and yarn and all have silly happy grins on our faces. 

But we don't mind...we don't care coz we are the knit-chicks!

(Mind you, my dear husband occasionally says knit-wits....)

Easter Break review in photos

Visiting......

...A vintage vehicle rally in Kirby Stephen.

Knitting.......

...my sky scarf and my first mitten on dpn needles

Walking................

....on high wild hills, over farm land, through isolated villages.

We celebrated Easter.....

.....with cheese rolling down a wet and windy hill...

                                   ....eating chocolate for breakfast!

I took inspiration from......

.....lichens on stone walls, carvings from ruined buildings, fungus on rotten trunks, flowers, stones and sky.

We had a lovely time, may be a little wet and a little cold at times, but these small discomforts were far outweighed by the beauty of the wilderness we camped in.

******************************

Again I have to say thank you for all your wonderful thoughts and kind words. We are really touched by the response - thank you very much xx

Tears

I want to thank you all so much for you kind comments - I hadn't realised that my ramblings about our little catlings touched so many of you - thank you.

All we can surmise is that Holly slipped out through the back of our garden into the neighbours. From there she would have been able to get to the road and as she didn't know that area then got lost. She could have tried to return or was frightened by something and ran off in the wrong direction.

We had searched from about 2 hours when I received a phone call - her body had been found and carefully lifted off the road while her rescuers tried to trace us. We, Himself and I, left our sobbing boys at home and we collected her body.

At home we all cuddled her, Eldest - who was her human held her the longest and cried so hard while Himself dug her a grave in her favourite part of the garden. Youngest collected Lily as we all agreed that she should know her sister had died. He held his cat as I held Holly (Eldest too distraught to watch stood behind and sobbed) and Lily very very gently washed the small speck of blood off Holly's face. She looked as if she was just asleep.

I am crying as I type - sorry - who'd have thought that a small creature who we'd only had for 6 months would reduce us all to such floods tears. The rest of the evening was of self-recriminations of should we have let them play in the garden, should we have searched quicker, sooner, longer but what ever we could have done, we didn't and so the boys and I cuddled up on the settee and took turns to talk and cry while Himself seemed stunned.

Later, much later, once the boys had gone to bed, we talked about her and Himself summed it up in one sentence -
How could something so small and furry leave such a terribly big hole?

Lily seems to know she has gone, she doesn't look for her, but needs more loving and lap time. Yesterday she sat on me every time I had a lap or followed me and sat on my feet. She is sitting next to me now.

I promise my next posting will be a little more cheerful, but for the time being we all feel a little sad and a lot empty.

Holly

RIP

Holly

01.10.11 - 15.04.12

We are heartbroken.

Excerpts from an incarcerated catling's diary

Thursday 5th April
Day One of our incarceration.... we have been abandoned by our people. In short they have L.E.F.T  U.S. A.L.O.N.E. 

It started so well, the human who says she is our mom ( what mom would abandon her catlings?) went off to work and the other three allowed us out into the garden where we were free as the wild beasts we are supposed to be.

Then - for our own safety apparently - we were put in the greenhouse where we had to console ourselves by lying on emerging vegetable seedlings. We watched through pretend-sleepy-eyelids our people load the thing they call the carryvan. Then without a bye or leave we were captured and bundled away into the house and they.....drove.....away........

We have been abandoned.
 Left.
 Alone.

With only a bowl full of munchies and two plates of cat meat for company. How could they?

Later - a very kindly prison guard came to top up our meagre rations - we treated her with contempt as she is an accomplice to the act of abandonment.

Friday 6th April
Day two of our incarceration - so it continues.

Our kindly warden returns, feeds us more prison rations - we can barely get by with the two huge plates of meat and the mountain of munchies - we will starve.

We hunt and kill an eggbox and spill it's cardboard innards across the lounge carpet - this will surely make our people return.

We sulk. My sister decides that now that we are the only surviving creatures in the house - we should claim the big bed. So we go upstairs to steal the blanket - only to find that the humans have taken that with them. We find they have stolen the duvet too - why? Oh why?

Saturday 7th April
Day 3 of our incarceration.
We are still the sole survivors (bar our visiting guard - who we ignore when she bends down to tickle our ears)  Our ploy to get our humans to return by slaughtering the egg box has failed. We need to resort to more drastic measures.
My sister has taken to chewing the edges of all the plants to help calm her nerves - it is not working. So today she has decided to vent her frustrations on that curly long leafed grassy plant thing that our so-called mom loves - and give it a short back and sides.

Sunday 8th April
Day 4 of our incarceration.
We need to cause the purrrrrfect storm to bring our humans home. My sister has beaten me up, left tufts of fur on the floor. She has beaten up all the remaining plants - left shreds of green leaf spitty-bits on the carpet and beaten up the cushions and tossed them onto the floor - good - that will teach them to abandon us. Later we will attack the yarn collection in the hall way - a sure fire way to get noticed - hahaha!

Later - we have done the dirty deed - the yarns have been released from their prisons - unlike us - and we have tossed them along the hall, their pretty colours across the floor have briefly improved our oppressed lives. With the threads tangled into patterns - this surely will get our message across to our people - time to come home.

Monday 8th April
I can barely bring myself to write.... my paws are weak. My heart is broken. Will they ever come back? If they ever return we will never speak to them again.

Later - is that a car I can hear? Is that them?
It Is! It is! at last they have returned ....... prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr prrrrrrrrrr

Oh well, they returned - so all our tricks worked - we must now ensure they never escape again. We shall follow them closely and trip them up at every turn. We will purrrrrrr and purrrrrr until they give up and succumb to our charms.


PS - apparently they had a brilliant time away in the carryvan - without a care or a thought about us....think I will stomp on them at 3am when they are fast asleep - aha revenge is mine!!

PPs - my human mom will report on their time away in the next post - she is still trying to catch with with the washing and work - and she wants us to feel sorry for her?!?

Snow? Dpn dilemma.......

Yes snow. Nuf said - just want that sunshine back. Humph.

My hat is growing! (although, as everything in my life there is a story attached to that....) But photos's first!

Excited?  Pleased? Proud as Punch? Moi?

or

just amazed that' I-did-that'??

Yeah - that one

(and the others if I am truthful!)

And the story? Well, the pattern said that I needed to start with a 4mm x 40cm circular needle then when the diameter of the hat starts to decrease to change down to 4 x 4mm dpns.

Well in my meagre beginner's kit I have the 4mm circular needle but it is 60 cm long (being a novice - I thought nothing of that 10cm length difference) and no dpns. No worries.

I set off (no - I cast on!) *note to self - must use correct terminology*

I cast on and carefully got on with doing the ribbing then with increasing confidence went onto the stockinette rows, then joy of rather nervous joys - started the basic fairisle - so far so good. The only issue - but not insurmountable - was the excess nylon line on the circular needles getting in the way.

Then I started the decreasing, loving the line being created, the diameter of the knitting getting smaller and the loop of the circular needles appearing to get larger.... hmmm.

I battled on, enjoying the challenge and loving the knitting but the circular needles by now were definitely far far too long. Then quite late in the evening,I TAPped a friend (Texted A Friend) to see if she had any 4mm dpns and she almost instantly appeared at my door with her whole collection (without a single dpn in sight never mind a 4mm one [or two,three preferably 4])

Never mind I thought, I rattled around my collection and found an old pair of 4mm and removed the ends, a crochet hook - size 4mm and with the circular needles, got stuck in!

I was like Edward Scissorhands meets Yarn Harlot - the horror movie verson.

Umm...I finished my hat.... stared at it. Himself looked at it. We looked at each other....I ripped it back down several rows.

My beloved sister in law is lending my some 4mm dpns. I will prevail (sigh).

Tuesday torture

I have just come back from rehab physio - a rather grand term for a half an hour of torture. The physiotherapist - far too cheerful and young at 8.15am for me to stomach - had us bending and stretching until it HURT!

My poor knee, is in major sulk mode at the moment.

Any hoo, a stint on the trampet (mini-trampoline)....Come on says Mr Cheerful... knees up knees up - that's it!

A stretch on the mat - right - lift your hips....lift your left leg...put all your weight on your bad leg (oooowwwwweee)

A 'ride' on the static bike ....lets increase the resistance he says, turning the screw - in more ways than one!

Sit ups... the sort where you sit on a chair...then sit up - Easy you think, however, my knee was quite cross when it had to work.

What else torture did Mr Cheerful make me do? Oh yes - step ups, step downs, treadmill,  a cruel one where I had to lean against a huge ball and bend down doing squats against the wall...and the worst? Well I've saved that one for last - I had to stand (with my bad leg) on a squashy ball and balance - ha! Go in with a knee for physio come out with a sprained ankle in one easy lesson.


Well done, see you next week says Mr Cheerful, grinning happily, grinning encouragingly - just grinning as we variously shaped and sized torture victims shuffle out, limping and creaking, as quickly as humanly possible.

Oooef my aching knee!!

Fresh air and tired feet a little bit of fair-isle

What a glorious day!
After a bit of a discussion how to make the most of the sunshine - we tied on our boots, grabbed our haversacks, camera and some nibbles and set off.

We are so lucky that we can fall out of our garden onto a foot path that heads immediately onto the hills. All that glorious countryside with in a few strides from home.

We crossed over the hills that rise between us and Wycoller and dropped down into the valley to briefly walk through the village. It was heaving with dogs barking, kids pond dipping, ice-cream eating, horse riding day trippers and along with a farmer in his tractor, we wove our way through them all.

A stone bench inviting you to 'sit thi deawn tek a rest', 

ponds full of tiny fish and tadpoles, 

willow weaving and a willow tunnel

We crossed back over hills, along the moor road, only sheep and curlews for company.

And once home - what better way to recover our lovely walk, tea and fresh scones in the greenhouse - bliss.

Hope your weekend was as good as ours and you had sunshine where ever you are!

Oh - and before I forget (This one is for Jane) my knitting is growing!! Ohh I am getting 'grown up' I am attempting beginners fair-isle - look!

Very basic stuff going on but it certainly makes my heart skip with happy thoughts!