And the Crap, It Just Don't Stop

Nothing much happening here. I've been mostly attempting to read really god-awful books, then tossing them aside onto the Amazon Marketplace pile to sell. Feh. I should be posting a new Booklist of Horror some time. If I remember.

While I was typing this the Dog-Coughing Woman just walked under my window.

What, I never told you people about the Dog-Coughing Woman? Are you sitting comfortably? Well, one chilly morning, not long after young Severina moved into this enchanted apartment building next door to the accursed music department, she heard what seemed to be an asthmatic dog hacking up a lung. She could never get to her window fast enough in the mornings to spy the afflicted beast, but prayed it would soon recover and her sleep would return to its previously undisturbed state. No such luck. The coughing and hacking went on every morning around 7:30 am, like clockwork, and soon Severina spotted the culprit and discovered much to her horror that it wasn't an ailing canine. No sir. It was a middle-aged woman meandering between the enchanted apartment building and the accursed music department, possibly on her way to some wondrous university office or other. Huh, ponders Severina, I wonder who has cursed this innocent woman so that she now has Dog Lungs? Has she somehow offended an evil witch? Hopefully, she thinks, the afflicted woman will visit the village healer and will be returned to her human state. Noooo. That was at least three years ago and the Dog-Coughing Woman is doomed to make her lonely way between the buildings, for an eternity of endless circling and hacking. The end.

Besides the Dog-Coughing Woman, I'm also being serenaded by a beginning French-horn student. Yay. All I can say is at least it isn't a drum circle. Two years ago a bunch of the neighborhood hippies got an assortment of drums for Xmas that year and proceeded to spend their afternoons, when they weren't in class, pounding the hell out of these things in the little park across the street. This went on until classes ended for the semester in May and they went away. Or perhaps someone helpfully killed them all.

I've been slacking off on my knitting and spinning, partly because I've been fiddling with beads for my Etsy shop, mostly because Grady plays with anything that moves and it's nearly impossible to knit with a cat attached to the other end of your yarn. Actually he pretty much plays with everything, whether it moves or not. What kind of freak cat plays with a clothes-drying rack and a dustpan? A freak cat that eats part of a spinning wheel.

Exhibit A. I discovered a couple of days ago that he appears to have eaten the little 2" long flexible plastic bit that connects the treadle to the wheel so I can't use it until I find a replacement part. I'll either have to contact the wheel's manufacturer or jerry-rig something, preferably made out of part of a cat.


Exhibit B. Rummaging around through my photos I discovered that the little bastard gnawed it off a couple of months ago. I thought I was doing good to take off the drive band so he wouldn't chew that up but the little beast defeated me with his sneakiness. He's probably been laughing at me since June.

Yes, spinning wheel parts made of cat. I should market that very thing. And I should sell patterns for knitting bags made out of the rest of the cat.


Since I don't seem to be making new things, I should be re-doing old things, like these moth-eaten 1950s wool gloves. The fingers were badly darned, apparently by a totally blind lunatic, and the wool on the ends is worn thin enough that you can see my fingers through them. I wouldn't be able to re-darn them myself since I didn't have any matching yarn, and I'd almost have to re-knit the fingers anyhow. So I decided that I really liked the beadwork and figured I could make them into some snappy mitts that I would actually wear, instead of cramming them back into a drawer for the moths to finish up. I did one way back in the spring and I haven't touched them since. My UFO pile will soon topple over and smother me.


I really like this undies set, but I haven't got the pattern. I kinda want to design something with this same idea since it's starting to get chilly here and I really liked the ones I've already made, despite how huge the ass wounded up being in the Weldon's pattern (note to self: try the pattern using size 2 needles instead of 3). Wool 1940s underwear totally rules under skirts. I could probably use one of my knitted French knickers patterns and find the top bit somewhere. The lace design is a bit perplexing, though. I think I've got a few other lace patterns I like a bit better. I had almost decided on making this a one-piece but the buttoned crotch of the Weldon's cami-knickers was a little clunky and weird and I kinda liked the option of not wearing the top part if I had on a big sweater.


Here's a stocking I've started. I've been starting and frogging this same damned stocking for months now, and this is the furthest I've managed to knit so far, and that was last night. They'll be a variation of the gray acrylic Skull Stockings I did a while back. The yarn is some nice black silk/wool blend stuff left over from the snake stockings I did for the AntiCraft book, so it won't be disgustingly itchy like that gray acrylic. I've got an easy lace pattern I want to use so I can finish the damned things before spring thaw.

I've also got some damnable idea in my head of some pink and black Faire-Isle made from a moth-eaten pink top and an ugly black sweater, both thrift-store cashmere. We will see if it pans out.


Sleep well, Grady. You don't know it yet, but you're off to the vet this weekend for a little boy-kitty adjustment. *evil laugh* Snippity-snip-snip.