Damn it, Honu.

This week we've got a guest cat at House O Samurai. He's about twice the size and three times the weight of Honu. Who apparently, along with no people skills, has no cat skills. Or maybe she's just protecting her food source.

Who can tell, with cats?

Anyway, during one of the mutual hate-fests, I heard this weird humming. I thought it was outside, or the AC system, or the dishwasher. No. It was Honu.

When growling, my cat sounds like a bagpipe drone.

No dignity.

None.

Zie Touren du Sheepenfloofder!

(Still fooling with how I get pictures from my phone to the internet. It's slow going. Right now, I'm having to PUBLISH from my phone, then go back and edit to put in words. Sorry if anyone is getting weird shit in their RSS feeds because of it.) 

The Tour de Fleece. I participated this year, after a fashion. I spun about 750 yards of two ply; all the plying and 95% of the singles, all spun during the almost-month of Le Tour. It's all destined to be entered in the county fair. I finally moved to a place where you can enter spinning! And noticed! (I've been to the fair the last two years and I swear to Arachne I never saw any lone yarn running around the textiles building. Knitting, yes. Crochet, yes. Amazing quilting, yes. Yarn, no.) 

My first project was a Teal to Tangerine gradient from Fiber Optic. (Every year FO goes to the Great Lakes Fiber Festival Gathering Thingie in Wooster, Ohio. Now that I'm hooked, I go over there and loot the booth. This spring I bought a giant bag of fiber at Fiber Optic, and a basket. That's it.) 

335 yards, heavy lace weight, sockish. No idea what I'm doing with it once I get it back from the fair. 

Then, one category of the fair is novelty yarn. To my knowledge, that's all they say about it. Novelty. I can spin the hell out of novelty. 

It's "Fruit Punch" pencil roving from Louet, and I added bright pink nylon sparkles to the slubs because why the hell not? I started with half a pound of fiber, so I got 320 yards of the beehive coil stuff, and 80 yards of plain, which will be handy for casting on and off. Bwahahaha. 

Right now I'm knitting an Aeolian, to, yes, enter in the county fair. My usual attention to detail has been turned up to eleven, and, well. 

It's not going so hot. 

That was 25 rows of what the fuckery. So, now it's gone. I've knit it all back up again already, so I may actually finish it by August 18, when it's due. Or I may not, and just wear the damn thing come winter. THE COLOR WILL KEEP ME WARM. 

That's about it, at House O Samurai. Still trying to spin through migraines with varying levels of luck. I started another Fiber Optic gradient, this one Blush to Celery. 

Ohhhhhmmmmm.

Damn it, Honu.

Changes

It's been a long three months. I'm still digging out from under all the baggage from last autumn. As the Goob so succinctly put it it at a family gathering last week, "Mom's side of the family tree is all dead." So. Yeah. Digging.

This is our biggest change. Meet Honu. She's a tortoiseshell cat, so of course in my brain, the name was obvious - Honu is Hawaiian for sea turtle. (This has led to several rather entertaining conversations with the Hawaiian friends. "Why did you name your cat turtle?" "Because she's a tortie." "...of course. Of course she is.")

When Sekhmet died, everyone wanted to know if I was going to get a new cat. I figured the right one would find us, just like when Sekhmet turned up on our back porch. About six weeks ago, I got a call from my MIL. Her bestest friend had found a lovely kitty on her porch, and I was catless, did I want her? And here we are.

 Honu, bless her heart, is a moron. She was a stray her entire life (8ish months) before turning up on our friend's back porch. She has no people skills. None. Sekhmet knew instinctively that when the hoomins were in a dark room, laying down, it was time to be quiet. Honu? She jumps on my back and screeches. At 3AM. The Goob wants to know when I'm gonna "train the cat like Sekhmet". I'M WORKING ON IT, KID!! But Honu is polite - when playing she keeps her claws in and barely nibbles. Sweet kitty. Just dumb.

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 As always in a crisis, I've been trying to keep my hands busy so I don't kill people. I hunched over my spinning wheel and produced a crapload of yarn: ...well, imagine a big pile of yarn here. I'm still trying to figure out how to get my pictures out of my phone, even with the freaking Google ap. Feh.

 In my own half-assed way, I'm doing the Tour de Fleece; I just finished 350 yards of a Fiber Optic gradient that is getting entered in the county fair, and am maybe 1/4 through a half pound of fiber that will be a "novelty yarn" for the county fair.

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 That's about it, kids. Digging out from The Pit of Despair (you gotta make fun of it) and trying to get back on track. Maybe I'll figure out how to post these spinning pictures. :)