The question of use

I chatted briefly with my sister yesterday, and she told me that her kitten seems to be enjoying the felted kitty bed… although not in the manner in which it was meant to be used. She’s been carrying it around in her mouth. According to me sister, she has yet to lay in it, but has layed on it a couple times. *eah* As long as she like it, I guess.

I have to hit the library after work this afternoon to look up newspaper articles from the turn of the century. Ah, the joys of microfilm… *sigh* I’m trying to keep from flipping out over this paper. The professor says she’s looking for 20 pages. I have no idea how I’m going to get there. Let’s hope she counts cover pages, abstracts, and references towards the page count. *ugh* There are questions she is looking for answers to that I haven’t found any answers to, such as “Who used the library? Do you get a sense of who the founders targeted and who the early patrons were? Was this a white, middle-class oriented institution, or did the early library reflect California’s diverse population?” The closest answer to this I’ve gotten is that the library was open to everyone who lived in town. What the demographics looked like in 1905, I have no idea. I can’t make any assumptions because Mountain View was founded through Spanish/Mexican land grants… the majority of town sits on the site of the main ranchero (which had a name that translates to The Pastures of the Ewe Lambs). But I don’t know if there was still any sort of Hispanic population as the town began to grow and finally incorporate. I might have to see about trying to find what the ethnic proportions were. What’s funny is I think the core of my paper is actually going to focus on the town trying to get a public library up and running instead of the library once it was established.

Approaching the weekend

I first would like to apologise for my inability to spell cappuccino in my last post… I was doing a disservice to a fabulous drink.

Cappuccino Socks
The heel was turned without great difficulty, and there was much jubilation.



The sock progressed along nicely, and was actually completed a few hours after these pictures were taken to even more jubilation. Now to get to work on the second, which should be too hard. This was a nice, simple sock to knit, and it went pretty fast.

Felted Kitty Bed

The felted kitty bed that was finished last week was thrown into my parent’s washing machine and felted on Sunday. (I do my felting at their place because it’s a top loader, so I can check progress, and I don’t have to pay for it.)




As soon as I find a box for it, it will be winging its way to Florida for my sister’s new kitty.


Reader’s Comments
Julie asked where I got the pattern for the scarf.

I got the lace pattern from The Dishcloth Boutique… it’s the Garter Stitch Lace facecloth on page 1 of the knitting patterns. I modified it slightly, doing only 4 rows of garter between the lace segments. This facecloth was the first lace pattern I knitted, so I have an unusual fondness for it… of course, being easy to remember while looking complicated is a bonus.

Update
I finally got around to not only snapping a picture of this, but uploading it so I could share. This is what they pulled out of my tire 2 weeks ago. No wonder it went flat in a couple of minutes, eh?


The patch job seems to be holding up nicely, too.

Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday

Okay, I know I said socks… which is why I cast-on a felted kitty bed Monday night. I had the front and back of a sweater that was the second try at getting some Peace Fleece I bought back when I first started knitting a couple years ago into a sweater, but it just wasn’t happening… the front and back have been laying around for several months, and I had no compulsion to knit arms. So, I ripped the back out and started a felted kitty bed for my sister’s new kitten. I think the socks will come next.

This morning I made my way to the post office to send off a RAOK package, a Secret Pal package, and finally my best friend’s birthday and Christmas gifts (his birthday was at the beginnning of Nov., so I’m a little late). This is my first actual RAOK to go out; it was kind of fun to put together. I found a cute stuffed, floppy sheep on sale (sales are great), some candy, and some yarn from my stash that was languishing… all off to a new home. I hope it helps to cheer up the recipent.

I keep thinking about what kind of shawl I want to make out of my Brooks Farm acquisition… I’d love to do something top down, but I’ve only got 1000 yds; I’d hate to run out before I got to the bottom. I could do a basic triangle from the bottom up but I don’t know what sort of design I’d want to use. All of the patterns I’ve found that I like either use lace weight instead of worsted, or call for more yarn than I have. I will have to think on this more…