kmkat and her kneedles

Ennui.

You may already have seen this but it is worth a second look. Enjoy!

Babies!

One of my knitting groups (I attend 4 on an irregular basis) met at one of the member's farm today because she wanted to show us her baby lambs -- all 38 of them! 

The newest was only a few hours old and was still with its mama in the barn.

Later I went to the county recycling center for its annual Earth Day event. There were exhibits by vendors of any number of products -- geothermal HVAC systems, flax meal granola, window blankets -- and by the county health department (How to Catch Lyme Disease in Three Easy Steps) and the UW extension agents and the county land & water department (Jeremy the bug guy was there, as was Amy the water gal, both of them very popular with crowds), plus the county renewable energy committee on which I sit. The recycling center invites all the area schools to send their fourth grade classes, and the place is bustling with 9- and10-year-olds from 9 to 3. 

What else did I see? More babies!

These were kids rather than lambs. It is hard to tell their size in the photo, but they were roughly the size of Hannibal The Fluffball of Doom, my cat. And sooo adorable.

Sheep shearing: it's the latest... sport?

 

From the Wall Street Journal.

Bear! Cat!

Photo taken by a friend from his living room... without benefit of zoom. Said friend lives about 5 miles away from me; that's where Matthew and I were on New Year's day. That cat waiting for his turn at the feeder? His name is Pete and he weighs 23 pounds. Hard to say which is more amazing, the bear on the deck or the size of the cat.

Thanks to Kris and Dave for sharing their photo.

Doggies.

First, watch this:

Next, watch Percy watching it:

* * * * *

Later, we returned to home this:

Yes, our new dog chewed the tv remote. At least she didn't eat the battery.

Why, yes, the dogs had a nice New Year's. too.

On Sunday Matthew came up to the lake for the day and brought along Ser Percival. Percy and Lucy and Misha, our new dog (more on her another day) romped through the house and play-tussled and and play-bowed and played tug-o'-war with doggie toys. They were hilarious and entertaining and overful of energy.

At one point we put the three of them outside onto the deck, from whence they could access the little fenced-in area at the foot of the deck stairs. Misha and Percy wiggled through a small opening and went for a nice runaround across the yard and into the woods and over the hill and across the driveway and through the woods on the other side and through the neighbor's yard and eventually back home. Matthew and I were watching out the window. We saw Misha make a l-o-n-g jump over a gully -- I swear her hang time rivaled Michael Jordan's.

Later, after the dogs were tired and resting comfortably on various soft places about the house, he and I went to New Year's Day gathering of some library friends. We had a lovely time.

We came home. Andrew was visiting a friend in Madison for New Year's; Smokey had worked the night before and would work again that night, so he had slept all afternoon. The three dogs puppies were unsupervised.

::cue ominous music::

What greeted us:

Ruh roh...

   

   

I laughed until tears ran down my face. Sometimes that is all you can do. The yarns had been in a basket on a table in the laundry room, safely behind a closed door (I thought). But one of us (his initials = Matthew) has great difficulty remembering to close doors. I gathered up all the yarn and put it safely out of the way until I could start detangling it.

Oops, I left a tiny bit hanging over the edge of the snack table. Guess what almost happened again.

I spent hours on Monday -- hours that could have been spent productively knitting -- detangling. Still, I was sitting comfortably in my recliner with my audiobook playing (A Feast for Crows, thanks for asking) and playing with yarn, so it could have been worse.

The result.

1. The balls I wound on Monday.
2. The unsalvageable bits.
3. The ball I wound Tuesday morning whilst chatting with Andrew and Smokey.
4. The several yards detangled by Smokey but not wound into a ball yet. (His detangling method differs from mine.) 

The pink and brown yarns are much, much harder because they were still skeined. The other yarns had already been wound into balls; that made them much easier to detangle.

Was/is it worth all the work? Who knows, but I got a pretty darned good blog posst out of it ;-)

Behind the scenes with sheep.

Many thanks to Bullwinkle, who linked to this behind-the-scenes video in her comment on Saturday. (If none of this makes sense, welcome to my world take a look at Friday's post.) 

Friday fun, with scarves.

Found via zippiknits.

Murmuration.

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Found via blackbird.

Dogsitting.

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We took care of our grandson* #2 Son's and BGFE's dog for a week while they are in Louisiana for her grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. Ser Percival The Energetic has been entertaining, to say the least.

He was intent on chewing things when he came -- my sock, Smokey's work glove, my down comforter -- so I bought him a dino bone.

Note the size of the bone; it is longer than my foot.

Percy loves it. Smokey's toes, not so much when they encounters the bone as he walks through the living room . I trip over it, too, but I am always wearing shoes.

Basket of yarn was quickly moved behind a closed door.

He came to us adorned.

Isn't that special?

As I said, he has been entertaining. He wants to play with Lucy, who is ten years his senior. He does the play bow in front of her and sometimes she responds. Mostly she looks askance at this young hooligan and comes over to Smokey for reassurance. We have been encouraging him to -- occasionally -- be calm. Did you know that when you roll a pit bull onto his back -- no easy feat, that -- and stroke his underside, he goes into a trance? Amazing.

He goes into Crazy Percy mode several times a day: he races from one end of the house to the other, does a 180, rinse and repeat ten times interrupted by the occasional play bow in front of Lucy to see if she wants to join in. Which she does not. She was initially annoyed by all this ruckus; now she watches him with bemusement and wonders when her calm and quiet life will return. We stand back, laugh, and envy his energy.

The cats have been scarce since Ser Percy arrived. En Esch, the skittish one, comes out only when I am reading in bed. He peeks over the edge of the bed, sees Percy, and hides until the next night. Hannibal The Fluffball of Doom is not scared of Percy. (Remember, this is the cat that claimed Lucy as His Dog and who regularly walks all over her and washes her face.) He fluffs himself up to twice normal size -- which is pretty darned big -- hisses, and generally acts like the killer he is. Percy barks and even does a play bow, but HtFoD has no interest in play. The standoff lasts a minute or so and always ends with Percy yelping and both of them running away in opposite directions. The yelp sounds like Hannibal gave him a claw in the nose, but Ser P's nose does not appear to have been touched. So far...

First there was this (please excuse crappy iPod photos):

Followed very shortly by this:

As when our boys were young, Smokey is the major disciplinarian. 

Nothing works quite as well as The Daddy Voice.

Fun things to know and tell about a pit bull**:

• Perhaps like all short-haired dogs, they are hot to the touch. All our other animals have had thick fur coats, thus were well-insulated. Percy is like a hot boulder.
• They are hard-bodied. Like I said, a hot boulder. Snuggling him is... interesting.
• #2 Son said that his research on pit bulls said that they have little body awareness; pain does not register well. I suppose that is why they make such good fighting dogs.
• They have massive heads and equally impressive tongues. When Percy licks me, I know I have been licked. And I need a towel.
• It is nearly impossible to get his attention with physical discipline. Whapping him on the nose when his licking gets overwhelming does no good unless I do it so hard that it hurts me. (See "imperious to pain", above.) The Daddy Voice works, though. 
• It hurts when his tail hits me. And he wags his tail a lot. Now I understand why short-haired, i.e., non-fluffy, dogs usually have their tails cropped. It is self-protection by the owners against bruised legs.

He never smiles. Lucy and Bear smiled a lot, but he never does. He can look serious, intent, or repentant.

And cute.

* Smokey thinks it is funny to refer to Percy as our grandson. I think it is weird. Funny, but weird.

** According to Wikipedia, there are several different breeds that commonly referred to as pit bulls, among them the Staffordshire terrier.

The hidden beauty of pollination.

Happy Wovember, people!

You have probably seen references (I first typed "reverences", which may be appropriate in this case) to Wovember. I cannot decide if this is a British thing or if it is world-wide, but really, who cares? It is a chance to celebrate a wonderful fiber*.

A few facts cheerfully stolen cheerfully lifted gleaned from Wovember.com:

• Unlike nylon, rayon and other man-made fibers, wool is a renewable and natural resource.
   
• There are 1,000,000,000,000 sheep in our world, or approximately 1 sheep for every 6 people.
   
• China and Australia are the top wool-producing countries in the world, tied at 302,000 tons each (that is 604 million pounds!).

One last factoid:

As far as their reputation for stupidity is concerned it turns out that sheep are not half so dumb as we have always assumed. Recent experiments have shown that sheep are really quite bright. They have the ability to recognise their shepherds and each other. Nor do sheep have a short attention span. It was proved that sheep could remember the faces of their shepherds and other sheep amongst whom they had lived for up to two years. Some sheep have also learned to roll across cattle grids on their backs and new measures may have to be taken in order to keep them penned in because it has also been shown that they can teach each other this naughty trick.

- Alan Butler, Sheep: the remarkable story of the humble animal that built the modern world

Do go to Wovember.com and look around. They have lots more information about wool and sheep, plus an abundance of sheepie photos.

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* A fiber that, tragically, I have some trouble wearing. Unless it is very nice merino, it itches. And unless the indoor temperature is somewhere south of 66˚ F, one that is too warm for this post-menepausal woman. But I persevere in my knitting of it...

When the going gets tough cold, the tough cold... is everywhere.

I woke up this morning to... this.

Not only did it snow last night, but it is cold and very windy out there. 

Crap.

Summer/autumn = gone. Winter = now. (Of course, it is mid-November in n.w. Wisconsin, so what did I expect -- sunshine and palms?)

On the bright side, that means that this little thing OTN:

will be very welcome. It is a dog sweater for Ser Percival The Energetic, who has a very, very short coat and a naked pink underside. Poor baby needs a sweater.

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P.S.

Anything still green in the woods in November (except conifers) is an exotic. This is a Tartarian honeysuckle that was here when we bought the place and that I have intended to remove for... a long time.

Friday fun.

Just like Kym, I got a fund new pair of shoes. (Note the hand-knit socks peeking out.)

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Alex and Matthew came to visit last Sunday. Percy The Enthusiastic came along, and I showed Alex how to sew on a button. (She lamented the poor quality of her high school home ec class.)

An engineer's guide to cat flatulence.

We have never been bothered by feline flatulence. If they could re-rig this for a dog, however...

Penguin sweaters.

#2 Son sent me the link to this MSNBC story. You have probably seen it before, but it's worth another look. MSNBC just picked up the story yesterday.

Mouse (continued).

Guess who does not like flies?

Lucy The Wonder Dog didn't mind the mousie in the van; she would have chased it for hours if she could. But the late-summer bloom of flies bugged her (heh, I crack myself up) until she found a den in which to hide.

She crawled under the bed. Here you see her looking slightly annoyed that we opened the back door and revealed her hiding spot -- what if a fly gets in?

* * * * *

We used to go camping with a camping trailer, but it has been sitting unused for a couple years. Smokey and Matthew opened it up last weekend to get some stuff out of it.

What is Matthew photographing with his phone?

It was kind of sad; those baby mice are never going to achieve self-actualization. But Mrs. Mother Mouse and her friends had chewed several holes in the canvas sides of the trailer, leading Smokey to decide he would not even try to sell the thing. 

Free to good home: one camping trailer. Needs some repair.

Percy.

Matthew and Alex got a dog. Percy is a sweet and gentle pit bull, 11 months old, from the Hennepin County Humane Society.

Matthew brought him along when he came up to the lake last weekend.

 

Mouse.

We had an unexpected pet that came along with us on our camping trip to the North Shore last month. A mouse had taken up residence within the back door of the mini-mini-motorhome.

Smokey first met Mr. Mouse (or Miss or Ms. or Mrs.; we never knew) the first afternoon we were at the campground. He (Smokey) was lying on the bed in the back of the mini-mini-motorhome playing Solitaire on his netbook -- yes, we are THAT exciting -- when he saw this cute little mousie face peeking out at him from an opening in the inner panel of the back door.

Let me explain: Smokey likes mice. He sees them as cute and furry little critters that could be a fun pets, never mind hantavirus or any other nastiness they might carry. Happily, he does not care to share his bed or his kitchen with them. He may be easy, but he is not crazy.

We saw Mr. Mouse a number of times in the van. Once he even ran across Smokey's leg while he was napping. Eventually, however, Mr. Mouse appeared in the right place at the right time -- when a door was open -- and he was evicted. We wished him well, figuring that he could easily adapt to his new MN, as opposed to WI, woodsy home.

The next day I picked up Lucy The Wonder Dog's water dish from the ground by the picnic table to give her fresh water. Guess who was hiding next to it? Apparently Mr. Mouse felt the need to stay close to something that smelled, even vaguely, like home.

I saw him again a couple times in that same part of the campsite, but he never made it back into the van. I hope he enjoys his new home on the North Shore. Lots of people would give their left arm to live there, and he even got a free ride.

Sunday evening, the golden hour.

Our sky was slightly overcast today but it was a beautiful day nevertheless -- perfect temp, light breeze. Heavenly, especially after the heat and humidity we suffered for several weeks.

I knit on the deck for a good while this afternoon, then came in to take care of a few things. Later I was at the computer and chanced to look out the window... and grabbed my camera.

The light was stunning.

Of course, I had help.