Cat Bath

So my mom was here last weekend and we had a really nice time. I took some days off work and just slept in and knitted and went to a yarn show and the Ferry building and ate some yummy Korean food and stuff like that. In a break in the miserable weather we weeded the yard to get ready for me planting some veggies. And Chris's sister was in town so we met up with her... and I got the oil changed in the car... boy, I know how to show my mom a good time, huh? I had a really nice time though. I like not doing too much.

The title of this post comes from an incident last night that I haven't decided if it was more hilarious or nasty. I heard Marie howling from the other room, which usually means that Isaac has jumped on her. I came out to investigate and grabbed him and stuffed him in another room so he wouldn't bother her for awhile. I sat down at the computer again and realized my hands smelled really gross... so I went to check on which cat might be having a problem and discovered it was poor Marie. I won't get into details, but it seems likely that Isaac tackled her while she was in the litter box. Anyway, she clearly needed a major bath, so I threw her in the tub, shouted for Chris to come help on the double and started showering. Now, this is a cat that the vet tech refused to wash alone because she said Marie was too difficult. Yet somehow Chris and I managed to get her clean but we were all wet by the end. As testament to Marie's fundamental sweetness, I was the only thing standing between her and escape from the bath, but I came out of the event without a scratch or a bite. That poor kitty though. She just howled. Chris said he's never heard a cat make a noise like that before. (I have. I'm the one who usually bathes the cats. I don't think Chris has the same tolerance I do for inflicting misery... I swear I only did it because it was absolutely necessary and for the better of all...)

Anyway, I can't wait for the weekend. I'm hiking and gardening and having bookclub and dinners out... yay!

Finished objects!

I've been promising photos of finished knitting for ages, so here it is! First, some socks I made as a present for my sister-in-law because I knew she'd like them and I felt bad about the last pair of socks I gave her being wool when she's allergic (oops). I finished the knitting on these in 2007 actually, but was too lazy to get around to the finishing steps until recently, so they're a 2008 FO. Now Jen, all you have to do is convince me to mail them to you. I'm a lazy one, post office wise.

Next, the project I've been working on since like August. The telemark ski sweater!

I know this photo is goofy but it's better than some of the others Chris took where I look manic. It's got a double layer of wool as a side effect of how you make the two color pattern. This makes it both warm and also, uh, de-slenderizing. I'm looking forward to skiing in it though! There's other photos of this one if you click through.

Finally, a representative hat. I bought a bunch of yarn on sale before Christmas for hat-making - 8 skeins exactly and it's wonderful stuff! Alpaca, merino, and silk. These hats are so great - they each take less than 4 hours, so I've just been churning them out and giving them to friends who have been thus far deprived of my knitterly love.

Anyway, so now I'm still making hats as fast as I can and then I'm not sure what I'll move on to. More lace? A sweater project I have all the yarn for in my stash? Socks out the wazoo? My mom is coming to visit this weekend and we're going to a yarn show, so I'm sure I'll have many more projects in mind after that. Oh, I found a sweater I want to make for Chris, and another friend asked for a fair isle hat... so many options! I love this part, where I'm thinking about what I'm going to do next.

My last weekend was great. Chris and I worked on cleaning up the house for my mom's visit (so she doesn't report back to my sister on what a bad housekeeper I am). I also babysat Amelia and went geocaching with Eva and Neal. I hadn't been out geocaching in ages but a few caches came up that I know would have great hikes to get to them so I decided to give it a go. It was a beautiful day for a hike too and Eva and Neal are good hiking buddies - just the right pace and Neal really keeps the conversation going so the hills seem less steep.

Anne's Bachelorette party

View the album...

So, as I mentioned, last Saturday a few of the girls surprised Anne by having a bachelorette party for her. We weren't quite as dramatic as the boys, who pulled up in the front lawn in a van, jumped out in their ski masks, grabbed him, ran away, and didn't get back until the next day. We thought Anne might enjoy something more mellow - we played mini-golf, arcade games, ate In-n-out (after a failed attempt at cheesesteaks), played Quiddler and ate chocolate fondue. We stayed out until 2am also, so I think it was a success! Anyway, enjoy the photos above.

Also this weekend I went to the work holiday party where I won a movie kit (gift card to Blockbuster, tons of candy and soda) as a door prize. I also did some weeding (I filled our whole huge bin with nasty thistles!) and babysat for Amelia. We went to the playground and then watched some of finding Nemo. I don't think Amelia usually watches movies because she was totally mesmerized. It made watching her easy.

I've also done tons of knitting recently. Big needles + hats = tons of finished objects. After spending so long making that sweater it's nice to be cranking out tons of projects one after the other. I have so many knitting pictures I need to take... I swear I'll get to that soon...

I feel this way about grad school too...

Jessica Hagy is brilliant, in case you didn't already know.

Pictures from Tahoe

Enjoy the photos from Tahoe that Craig and Kelly took.

News and photos from this weekend to follow.

Jumping off the balcony

This past weekend I rented a cabin in Tahoe and filled it with anyone I could find who was interested in skiing. We skied at Squaw on Saturday in some lovely horizontal snow. The tops of the lifts (and in some cases the bottoms) were getting this great snow as sand blaster effect and it was almost a whiteout. And the hill was packed. But the snow was great and I enjoyed myself a lot in the parts where I was warm.

Then Saturday evening the snow really picked up and we got two feet overnight! Our cabin was in a neighborhood that didn't get plowed very early so skiing was out of the question. Josh and a couple of his friends were bored so they started shoveling the road (and trying to figure out how to siphon gas to get the neighbor's snow blower working). The rest of us took turns jumping off the deck and second floor balcony (!) into the snowbanks. It was awesome. It was so soft that you could just throw yourself onto the snow. One crazy friend of a friend of Neal's even jumped off the roof peak! And this was a high peak because it was an A-frame house. Kelly took photos so hopefully I'll have those to post pretty soon.

Once we got shoveled out on Saturday we started to drive home, but unfortunately it took forever. There was one point when we parked on I-80. Just turned off all our engines and got out and ran around. Crazy. But eventually we got home and I went right to bed. Today I finally feel 95%+ after being sick all last week. Chris is still a little puny but I think we're all on the mend. I spent yesterday evening doing laundry and cleaning and finishing the last of my alumni schools interviews. Hopefully tonight I can finally finish that ski sweater and post photos of that too.

Boring life?

So, I haven't been blogging much, but not much has been happening. After my soul searching of last week I speculated that maybe I was just bored and so I scheduled a bunch of activities for myself. Then I got sick and had to cancel or postpone them all. On the other hand, I haven't been worried much about my purpose in life this week - more about how I'm going to get enough sleep and whether or not I should stay home from work and/or cancel whatever exciting evening thing I had planned.

While at home this week I did manage to finish a book club book, cut the steeks in my sweater, freak out about if I did the steeks wrong, realize it didn't matter and sew the arms on anyway. So my sweater is almost done and I'll post photos of it as soon as it's totally finished.

The good news is I'm feeling much better now, and we're headed to Tahoe for a ski weekend. Unfortunately Chris has been sick too and his work doesn't give him any sick days (! That's so lame. He has to take his sick days as vacation!) so he's been going to work anyway and is pretty beat. Poor guy. I hope he infected them all.