Sunday Morning Comin' Down

Remember the Kris Kristofferson song?

I've found a new blog I really like, and have added a link to over there on the right. Kathleen Taylor's Dakota Dreams. She's a writer and designer--and spinner and knitter and many other things, it seems--and not only does she have "Friday Freebies"(patterns), but she collects and posts pictures of old paper dolls. I've been skimming, but I can see I'll have quite a lot of good reading to catch up on.

I spent about 10 minutes grooming Timber this morning and upset him so much he threw up. *sigh*

The other night it was windy and actually kind of cold. The swing I sit in to knit while the Ts are playing blocks most of the wind, but my head got cold, so I decided I needed a hat. Went back and looked through the stash in the cat room (I hate to tell you how much yarn is in this place, but it is not all my fault since people keep destashing on me! I come home and find big trash bags full of yarn at my doorstep, like unwanted kittens. Fortunately it's rather less trouble than 3 or 4 little kittens would be), and found a nice brushed heather charcoal I'd completely forgotten I have. It's probably acrylic, and there were about 6 unmarked grapefruit-size balls with the yarn wound as a double strand. So yesterday I made a tam, using 10s. 8s would probably have been better, but I think it looks fine. It's my first tam. Next time I'm going to make the body part longer, so it's a bit floppier on, but it fits fine as is; it will do what I want it to do. It's soft and fuzzy, and I love the color and the swirl pattern on the top.

We also drove out to look at that red house yesterday. Realtors are v-e-r-y tricky. The photo makes it look like it's sitting all by itself, but it is indeed on a cul-de-sac, with a lot of other little ranch-style houses crammed in around it. Crammed. Like one of the less reputable trailer parks around here. Cheek by jowl. A rusty truck up on blocks in the yard of the house next door. Nothing was said about the lot because apparently there is no lot to speak of. A length of one of the few woven wire cattle fences still standing in the county runs about 5 feet from the back of the house. Quite a disappointment.

Driving out was something of a horror. Not the van; it did fine. But I took the back roads. I used to live in the next town west of where this red house is, and knew all the back roads, all the ways to get to and from. It was all so changed I actually got lost a couple of times, and not, to my mind, changed for the better. All the little family farmsteads from the late 19th century are gone. Now there are featureless acres of--well, this year, it's corn; the ethanol craze--and here and there a modest modular or--not exactly a McMansion, but as near as they get around here, with long twisty drives and professional landscaping. They look about as friendly and cozy and welcoming as--I can't think of a good simile--as anything else plastic, professional, prefab, and mass-produced.

Well. I'd always hoped to live in one of those little white old family houses, with some farmer's rolling hayfield/pasture behind me, and a loop of the river nearby, and the old elms and old fruit trees, the big stands of daylilies and old rambling roses, and sweet cold well water.

I know, I'm an idiot.

Annie's lost more weight--there's just nothing there when you pick her up--and suddenly her fur is so thin that I can see the skin over her shoulder blades when she moves. I'm debating having her PTS tomorrow. She ate almost nothing yesterday. But I gave her some raw chicken liver last night at bedtime, and overnight she ate all the liver and all the rest of her food, and this morning she ate nearly an entire can of Fancy Feast. She's terribly fragile, but she doesn't have that haunted, desperate look Rusty got toward the end, and she's enough herself to still be hugely annoyed when one of the dogs runs over her (more or less literally--they run *over* her without actually touching her, as long as she keeps her head enough to not move into their feet). And she purrs and purrs when I pet her. So--I don't know--I guess just take it a day at a time and see how she does.

All right. Stop brooding. I've eaten something. The sun is out. I'll take the Ts out and let them play while I read something, then I'll come in and watch Roy Orbison and friends in Black and White Night, and think about sweaters. I've still got that gorgeous Noro Transitions that I bought last year; I could figure out what I want to do with it. And I've got 3 colors of Cash Iroha--silver, light denim, and dark denim. I don't really have enough of any individual color to make one sweater (my size, anyway), but I was thinking maybe I could do like a panel sweater. For instance, a center front panel of silver with one of those very elaborate, celtic-design cables, flanked by light blue panels, either plain or with simple rope cables. Then something similar in back, but with light blue as the center and dark blue at the sides. Sleeves in silver, maybe either raglan-style or saddle, with a cable running from the neck to the wrist. I wonder how heavy that would be, if it would be too stiff? The recommended needle size is 8. I know, swatch. Maybe I should order a skein of some color I don't like to experiment with; I hate to "waste" any of the "good" yarn.