I consider myself lucky that I have found a cat who is not overly interested in yarn. (I know I just said that I wasn't going to bore you with a lot of gushing about the new cat; this post is not about the cat. See title.)
Yarn affinity is not something that's readily predictable in a feline. But Weasley and I have a good standing arrangement going. I sit in my knitting chair for a period of time most nights, and he stretches out on my lap. Provided that I occasionally scratch his ears, he's willing to ignore the piece of yarn bobbing between my needles. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement. The only time he's wavered is when I accidentally sent a ball of mohair bouncing across the living room. I explained to him that mohair comes from goats, which are generally cross and larger than him by a good measure. Descriptive qualities that would also apply to me if I found myself having to unsnarl an entire ball of kid mohair lace-weight. He seemed to catch my drift.
So I hadn't thought myself in any danger when I sat down at my spinning wheel last night, with Weasley stretched out on the floor near me. Not until a ball of romney wool roving dropped off my lap and landed between my feet. Weasley's eyes went solid black, and suddenly he was crouched on the carpet with his tail whipping back and forth.
"Forget it, kitty. Not for you."
I scooped up the romney and replaced it on my lap. Weasley rolled on his back, his head cocked and upside-down and his eyes still trained on the ball of fluff with a paw trailing lazily out in my direction. Non-cat-owners always think a quizzical position like this in a cat is cute. Cat-owners know better. This is how they look when they're wondering what color your intestines might be.
Well, if he's going to attack something and attempt to dismember it, at least it's the romney. I'm fairly certain that the romney can be of no constructive use to anyone.
But this post is about wool. And speaking of such, I escaped this past weekend to a knitting retreat in Tahoe. Lovely good fun. I did some dying. I entitled this batch of hand-dyed roving "Wa-La", to adequately express my level of satifaction with it. Maybe if it spins up into something less hideous, I'll give the resulting yarn some proper spelling.
Until then, Weasley can put it on his hit list.
I carded up the bits of fleece that I acquired in Amador City last month into something far more respectable.
This turned out so stellar, that I've decided to name it "Nebula", and I hope that one day it might spin up into some cosmic string. (I first considered calling it "Wormhole" but that way seemed to invite moths.)
I also nearly finished a sweater vest, but "nearly" doesn't get you into the headless hunt, after all, so we'll talk about that later when the job is really done.
As an aside, it always cracks me up when folks ask, "Hey swingbug, what are you doing this weekend?" and I respond that I'm going on a knitting retreat. Invariably someone will ask, "So what do you do on a knitting retreat?"
Spelunking, of course. And I'd tell you all about it. But this post is about wool.