Cheshire Cat Socks

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't care much where -----" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you walk," said the Cat.

"----so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. "What sort of people live about here?"

"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter; and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

-Lewis Carroll

Here is the Shetland lace pattern that I modified to make 5 holes so it looks like a cat's paw print. It starts at the toe and creeps up the foot and leg and around the ankle.

Picot bind off on the cuff because "it looks pretty" and it looks like a crown on the top. 

So I finally finished up these socks! I am pleased with the design and the colors, but I kept putting them off because I wasn't pleased with the yarn. It was too splitty and took lots of tension-correction, and feels like really dry cotton. I'm going to find someone to do a custom "Cheshire Cat" colorway for me so I can knit up some more in some yummy yarn. And I will be making an adult pair! These are being worn by my 4 year old right now. Pattern will be available soon. I plan on doing some toddler/kids sizes and then adult. It's very simple and knits up very fast. 

Perhaps after this next project, I will do some more from Alice in Wonderland. Queen of Hearts socks, White Rabbit, etc. Hmmm. 

First Snow

This is my cat, September....looking longingly at the birds that adorned our feeders all day long. She kept vigil from around 7am until 4pm.

I spent my first night alone - completely alone, in I think, forever. I honestly cannot rememer any time where I didn't have either Jim or the kids at home with me. My parents did their Christmastime Nana & Papa stayover last night. They had all four of our kids, as well as all four of my brothers kids stay the night and they baked cookies, and hung out. To make the stayover even more fun, it snowed today and they got to play in the snow after homemade pancakes and come inside afterwards to hot cocoa.

Our youngest little guy, little Gabriel, at just 2 1/2 decided on staying over as well. He was very content with the prospect, and so Jim and I left and headed out to finish up some xmas shopping, and wrapping of secret presents before Jim headed to bed to sleep for two hours before heading into work at 1am to beat the snow. I slept in a house by myself, and woke up once during the night to the sounds of crunchy paper noises. I woke up fairly quickly once I remembered that NO ONE was in the house but me. Then I found our cat Phoebe curled up happily on the freshly wrapped gifts under the tree. She smiled (I swear she does this) and MEOWED loudly as she does to tell me how happy she was that I placed such nice little beds for her to rest on, by her new favorite water bowl (we also call this water bowl the tree stand). I headed back to bed, to wake up around 5am which is normal Gabe wake-up-time for a drink or to nurse, checked for the snow that should've been there, found none, and went back to sleep.



Then I woke up again around 7:30am to find that it was beginning to snow, and here is our other feeder, which was pleasing the finches immensely. I checked the computer, made myself some coffee, and picked up that darn knitted puppy that I've been putting off knitting all week - since my Baudelaires have been consuming my knitting time this past week. Which btw, I'm at the ankle on my first sock and it's coming along nicely.

So, I had my coffee, turned on the celtic radio, and would have finished that pesky little pink and purple puppy if I hadn't run out of the purple Mission Falls I was using. Drat. I don't like that yarn enough to really want to buy more - but I have a few more rounds on the head, and the end of the tail too. If it was just the tail, I'd skip buying more and just knit the tail all in the pink - but...the head needs it. I don't know if the yarn stores will be open tomorrow. All the school's are closed tomorrow since it's going to be about 5 degrees tonight and they're expecting a freeze. 5 degrees sounds a tad bit better than the -1 it'll be Tuesday night. A tad.



Here is our street in the morning around 8am-ish. I love how the sky looks with the
white, and the skeleton trees.












And here are the birds hovering in the air while chittering and chattering, and arguing over who gets to sit at this feeder. I feel bad that they are going so wonky over seed with the frozen ground. Jim also said the store was out of the seed I asked him to pick up yesterday.


So, no one has school tomorrow - Jim's off work - and we all get to stay home and relax. Jim had to take the transit home this morning as he couldn't get his truck out of the parking lot from work and was just spinning and going nowhere. I took a slow route to my parents to pick up the kiddos and got them all home safely, and picked up Jim at the transit center and then we settled in for the afternoon. Hopefully we can pick up Jim's truck and get it back home tomorrow.

I'm really not sure what Mother Nature has in store for us...so close to the Winter Solstice. I'm very happy this is the last week of school and then Winter break starts. I'm looking forward to all those snuggly days where we don't *have* to do anything. It's all working up towards the last month before the new baby arrives. Boy, I better finish up those Baudelaires so I can focus on baby knits.