Kitties were happy to have the windows open

The air has been on in the house for at least a week straight. Within a minute of opening the windows this morning, three of our cats had sorted themselves into small, medium, and large.

Photo of the day

Todd rolling around in the garden dirt this past weekend.

Just checking in

No, I didn't vow to stop blogging in 2009. I just haven't been too bloggy lately. What's there to blog about when you're doing the same thing everyone else around here is doing-trying to cope with the cold, trying to eat just a little more moderately after the holiday indiscretions, trying to get through the 31 long days of January.

These past cold days, I've been challenging myself not to open the doors to go outside any more times than necessary. (novel idea, I know.) Itty Bittiest has made that challenge easier since she caught the cold that the rest of the cats had last week. I made the mistake of letting her back outside into her natural habitat last Saturday afternoon, thinking she'd be back in her bed on the back porch in plenty of time for me to snatch her up and bring her back in the house for the night. Itty Bittiest had other plans, evidently-it became dark and she still wasn't around. This cat has spent every night over the last 6+ months on the back porch-it's not like her to not be around. After several checks throughout the night and one trip around the block Sunday morning, there was no sign of her. After coming back in the house and feeling like something was not right, who comes up to the back porch but Itty Bittiest. Since then, she's been under house arrest, so I haven't had too many reasons to be opening and closing doors and checking on kitties.

Otherwise, I've been crocheting and knitting a few non-holiday items. I knitted a hat with nice-looking cables, but I didn't end up liking the hat very much. Not warm enough, and it felt like it was going to pop off my head. I've been throwing the idea around of starting a mini-mini craft business via etsy, too. I thought I'd start with offering a few knitted cat toys stuffed with organic catnip and see where that gets me. I definitely don't plan to pay the bills with this idea, just maybe cover some of the costs of my craft habit.

Next year's Christmas card

I think we have our photo for next year's Christmas card. Norman likes to "help" the most while wrapping presents.

Happy Belated Birthday, Beth!

"Sophisti-cat" is ready to go home with you! She's come a long way since a week ago when I thought I could put her together in two hours while baking and frosting a cake.

If the dress she's wearing looks different than the one in the "before" photo, it's because it is. I thought I could make the dress out of some regular worsted-weight yarn, but the thicker yarn made it too big for the cat who was crocheted out of sport weight yarn.

Tip

I'm sorry to report that we lost Tip this week. She had been acting a little funny last weekend, and after a couple of trips to the vet, meds, and fetching her out of two different neighbor's gardens, she didn't make it. It breaks my heart, but I have to believe that we did everything we could to help her out. I fear as a stray cat's kitten, she probably had the cards stacked against her from the beginning. We held a small ceremony in the butterfly garden Wednesday night-the mom, Itty Bittiest, attended from afar.

This experience has brought us closer to Itty Bittiest-she has become a much friendlier cat over the past month. She's now been to the vet and had her first set of shots, so I think she'll become our 5th and final cat. She'll be spayed next week.

Tip, we won't forget our 5 weeks together and the spunkiness you brought to our backyard.

Sorry to start the weekend on such a sad note. The past week has been hard to get through, and I'm hoping things will start going a little better on all accounts in the coming weeks.

Here's what I've been up to

Not alot of energy for blogging between weekly trips to Omaha for garage sales and birthday celebrations, or between watching the resident kitten for long periods of time. I have a few photos of Tip from this week-she should now be 5 weeks old.

I found Tip sleeping on top of my shoe! Corrie and I agree that's how we felt when we got home from work today.


Here she is awake, still on the shoes. And to compare size, Tip with mom:


I've been busy picking tomatoes, too, which is good. Here are a few. They're becoming salsa tonight.

More kitten photos and chicken and waffles

Teensy Weensy, or Tip, (she has multiple names right now-look at the tip of her tail and you'll see where Tip came from) is approximately 3 weeks old this week and is getting around a bit.



From what I could tell a couple of days ago, TW/Tip's sight still isn't completely developed. She's also very wobbly. I haven't seen her in a couple of days because Itty Bittiest moved her underneath the porch after bringing a dead bird into the nest pictured above. I expected mom to bring dead animals around to show TW/Tip how to hunt, but I didn't expect it to happen this soon. No one is rushing to remove the dead bird-not me, not Corrie, and not Itty Bittiest. I think it will have to be dealt with today.

Ever since I went to LA but didn't have time to make it to Roscoe's, Corrie has been on a fried chicken and waffle kick. (who are we kidding, he was on that kick before the trip ever since Alton Brown talked about it on Feasting on Asphalt. He seemed heartbroken that I didn't get there, but I told him I thought that was an experience we'd need to share together someday. The fact it's 2-0 Erica in the authentic philly cheese steak category is already bad enough.) So we (by that I mean Corrie) made our own:


Corrie used boneless/skinless chicken breasts for Paula Deen's fried chicken recipe. The waffles came from his trusty Alton Brown recipe. Then you pour syrup over all of it. Syrup on chicken is tasty! Luther agreed-I shared my chicken with him.

first tomato (sort of) and first kitten photo

Here's our first tomato of the season-one from the better boy variety. It has a little blossom end rot to it, I'm afraid, but I think the rest is still edible. (I call this "sort of" our first tomato because I already picked a smaller early girl that had more rot to it than tomato. I'm not going to panic because it seems like our first tomatoes each season have this, then the rest are fine. I realize I should take more steps to prevent this in the first place.)


Also, the first photo of our outdoor kitten! Mom and kitten have moved out of their hole onto the rooftop of their hole. Look closely-the kitten is batting Itty Bittiest in the face.

A Week of Kitten Discovery and Near Sporting Triumphs

It's hard to believe I was part of two near sporting triumphs in the same week, but that's what happened. Last Sunday, I ran the annual Lincoln Mile, and even though I was the lead female in the 30-39 yr. old heat for exactly 1/4 of a mile, I couldn't sustain that pace and ended up coming in 4th in my age group with a slower than usual time. Had I just trained a little bit instead of only deciding to do the race the week before, or just ran as fast as last year, I would've easily placed. I've decided this is the last year I come in 4th, I'm winning a Lincoln Running company gift certificate next year.

Last night, our coed softball team played our second summer tournament game in the hopes of making it to the final game where a win guaranteed us a free t-shirt. (Quite the spoils!) Our game was very close, we just needed to find a way to score a couple more runs; we lost 6-5. The good news was we got to go to the bar earlier, and we also didn't have to sit around in the 90 degree heat for an hour waiting for the championship game. Ah well, the fall season will be here before we know it.

In between the sporty heartbreaks, I finally figured out where our outdoor friend, Itty Bittiest, had been the past week. After she didn't show up for breakfast a couple of days in a row, I started to worry that something had happened to her. Then on Monday, she appeared on the porch, had her meal, then scampered around the corner of the house and burrowed into a hole next to the back porch. I thought that was an odd place to go to, then I heard the tell-tale sound of a baby kitty! Itty Bittiest had had kittens!


All week, Itty Bittiest has come out for meals, water, and some petting and stretching, then heads back to her hole. From what we can tell, there's only one kitten who looks like a tortoise-shell like mom. No pictures of mom and kitten yet, but we are on kitten watch now. Tuesday night was very dicey-a strong storm rolled through around 10 o'clock, and water was pouring down the roof by the kitten hole and seemed like it would eventually flood the hole. I stood out in the rain swapping out flower pots to catch the drips (what else is a cat lady supposed to do? I would've stayed out there all night, too), then Corrie came out and crafted a little fort out of a landscape block and the old barbecue grill cover. The rain could then run off onto the patio. Sure enough, Itty Bittiest and baby stayed dry all night. I still wish they'd move to a better home, like on the back porch.

photo of the day

Hell's Angels has a new leader. His name is Todd.

Homespun Fun

Corrie's matching pillow and afghan set is officially complete, unless I decide to go back and sew a little around the button holes, because I suspect that the buttons are going to slip out some.


I think I will make myself a pillow as well (as I bought an extra one that was too small for Corrie's cover, and I was too lazy to return it), perhaps in purple, however I have had my fill of working with Lion Brand's homespun yarn. I like that it's so soft, but I get tired of struggling with it fraying, and I left one mistake in the pillow because I was afraid if I backtracked, I'd lose a stitch and with the bumpiness of this yarn, I'd never find the stitch again.

I've moved on to the next project: an overdue replacement for the kitty couch. I crocheted this purple one at least ten years ago, and it has seen plenty of kitty gnawing and kitty naps.


Don't think I came up with this pattern idea myself-someone else did and hopefully made some money off of it. (Does the cat model receive royalties?)


I've done the lower two side panels so far. Luther seems to approve. I'm using Red Heart TLC Essentials-Sedona. I think I was swayed a little to use it when I saw the kitty on the label, but now that I've gotten into it, I'm afraid it's going to look like a couch from the 70s. Oh well.

v bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb v (Todd says "hello!")

Happy Earth Day!

Following closely behind my love of red tulips is my love of yellow tulips. Here are the most recent blooms in my yard.


We also have some pink hyacinths blooming-I planted 5 bulbs last year, it appears only 4 made the cut.


Jana pointed out that my yarn crafts aren't coming up much in my blog. (Their time will come, probably around mid-November all the way into December when I start cranking out the Christmas decorations and gifts. My goal this year is not to be finishing my Christmas crafts in the car on the way to Omaha for Christmas. That was cutting it a little close.) So here's a nod to Jana-I was trying to finish Corrie's pillow tonight when my orange helpers got in the way.


That's ok, I still need to buy buttons for the pillow, so it wasn't going to get done tonight anyway.

Naptime

Almost everyone in the house is napping this afternoon, even I took a short nap, and Corrie is also still napping, but I doubt he wants his photo on my blog. Scabbers and Norman:

Todd:


Even the strays, Itty Bittiest and Oreo, are sleeping in Corrie's old truck that's still full of yard waste for a trip to the dump. Yard waste makes for nice cat beds, I guess.


In other news, Corrie is making good progress on installing the tile on the bathroom walls. We're still not sure what to do for floor tile. Almost everything we see is too similar to what we used on the walls. I'm ok with a lighter color that we found the other night, but Corrie said he doesn't like it. All I really care about is no light-colored grout. It's impossible to keep that stuff clean unless you use chemicals that will burn your hands off.


In seedling news, the only thing coming up so far are my red marigolds. I'm hoping everything else will soon follow. Here's the full seed starter contraption that Corrie built a few years ago on a snow day. I have the ability to move the fluorescent bulbs up as the plants get taller, and I can also move more plants up to the higher shelf and install my other lights. There's an ominous glow in this photo.

The Blanket is done, now the baby can come

Amy and Jeff's baby blanket (not for Jeff but for the baby, sorry Jeff! I can put you on my to do list if you'd like a full-size blanket) arrived safely in Colorado last week, so now I can talk about it without ruining the surprise.

It was a really fun pattern to do, but it turned out bigger than I expected. I think I had to make two extra trips to the yarn stores to buy additional skeins. I really wish they made yarn that repelled cat hair because I spent a good amount of time and a good amount of my lint brush removing the stuff, even though I was very careful while crocheting to keep the cats away and only expose as little yarn as possible between the bag it was in and the piece itself. (and yes, Scabbers, the cat of cat sweater fame, is in the upper part of this photo, but he was not allowed on the blanket.)

My new project is a knitted pillow to match Corrie's striped blanket. I'm only using one of the colors from the blanket (thank you, Jana, for the yarn freebies) and the pattern incorporates a striped motif. It's hard to tell it's a pillow from this photo, but it will make sense later on. I have a long ways to go-the main part of the pillow pattern is supposed to be at least 32" (you fold it in half to make the pillow shape) and I think I've only knitted about 10" of that right now.


In other news, the tulip report this week is not good, as anyone who lives here could guess. I'm sure they'll be fine-they got an extra layer of insulation, thanks to Thursday night/Friday morning's snow. I realize now looking at this photo that I didn't get the same tulips we were monitoring before, but it was too cold out to go back and find the right ones. I didn't even bother looking for the crocus.

Does anyone recognize this kitty?

This cat has been showing up for the B&B option on our back porch the past couple of weeks. He's dark grey and white and appears to be neutered. He's very friendly. I don't see any lost cat reports on Lincoln's Department of Animal Control website that match him, so I thought I'd at least give him the benefit of a blog post.


Besides, I think I've had this blog going for over a week, and I don't think I've written about cats yet!