Before we get on
to knitting:


This is what my husband wants to eat for breakfast.

Purina Clown Chow.




















Granted, Dave is old enough to know better, and it is his birthday today, so he can eat whatever he wants. But he also eats this when it is not his birthday.

And since it is his birthday, he gets birthday socks, fetchingly modeled by our eldest, Tessie ...



















Among other things, Dave's birthday adventures will include the Traditional Annual Birthday Bookstore Splurge. As a knitter, I feel privileged to be married to a Pisces man who does not fear the judicious use of color. And yes, you have seen socks very much like these on this blog recently. Dave saw mine and wanted a pair of his very own in the exact same colors. Who am I to refuse?

Y'all, it is already spring today, and while I am sure some of you folks in Toronto and Yonkers and maybe even in Patagonia might envy us, it's disturbing for me to have spring arrive before St. Patrick's Day. Not because I don't like spring. But in South Louisiana, winter is short enough already as it is, and the early arrival of spring does not herald an extended season of lovely spring weather. It merely portends the early onset of summer, when sun is the enemy.

Granted, the leaves have not unfurled on the critical trees which officially usher in spring -- not even a blush of green on the cypress and crepe myrtles -- so I can cling to the hope of another cool front or two. But the Japanese plum, redbud trees, red clover and other flowering things are starting to get busy.

Birthday socks for Dave were completed on time, but due to a screw-up on the part of the cable-internet people, I only got Mom's sweater finished up to the joining of armpits and sleeves.

Whoops! Sorry! Moms don't have armpits. Especially Southern moms. I meant to say, "lower armholes."

Mom got an IOU on the nearly done sweater and received other goodies for her birthday. She turned 39 again, by the way (it always amazes me how much younger than me my mother is). I was also tickled that my dear cousin Andrea could join us for Mom's birthday dinner. Andrea was one of the first victims ... er, I mean recipients ... of my knitterly adventures back when we were kids.

I should be able to finish Mom's sweater this weekend, allowing for the vagaries of the weather and the cable-internet people. There just might be one more cold front in store for us, so she may have a chance to wear it once or twice before next winter. We shall see.

"Wait a dadgum minute," you say. "And don't try to distract me with all that drivel about armpits and the weather. How are the cable-internet people responsible for you not finishing Mom's sweater on time? "

Simple. When I went to babysit my new office space and wait for the cable-internet guy to show up, I brought only Dave's unifinished second sock, which had only half a foot and the toe to go. I should have been wise enough to recognize the sort of Bad Cable Installation Karma that I was invoking by not taking Mom's sweater-in-progress along as well, and of course, as we all know, when the cable dude says he'll be there "sometime" between 9am and 6pm, he shows up at 5:15.

And the sock was finished by ten.

If I had brought along Mom's unfinished sweater, that would have allowed me the excuse of several uninterrupted hours of internet-less time at my office, in which I could have knitted the yoke of Mom's sweater, but no. I found myself with finished socks, and unable to run out for Mom's sweater, because if I did, of course, that would be the exact moment the cable guy chose to arrive at my door, and I would have missed him. Thus is the capricious nature of the Cable Internet Goddess as she directs her minions.

So instead of knitting the yoke of Mom's sweater, I found myself doing what work I could manage in a halfway-moved-into office: unpacking file boxes, throwing away outdated materials, that sort of thing.

Since my office has been what's distracted me from my blogly and knitterly duties for the past couple of weeks, I'll bring you up to date. I finally found some affordable office space for the purpose of grant-writing, meeting and planning for a low-cost spay and neuter clinic in our city. Our goal will be to provide at-cost spay and neuter services, caregiver education, and to create a client relationship with the caregiver of a freshly sterilized pet and the veterinarian of their choice, for the pet's ongoing health needs.

I will be going through the 501 (C) 3 process -- for my international readers, that means I will be generating prodigious amounts of paperwork to convince the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that we are indeed operating a humane services clinic and not laundering money for the Mafia, although I could probably afford to spay a whole lot more animals if I were.

I am sub-leasing office space from a nice massage therapist who has an extra space in her suite. We share a waiting room, restroom and break/copier area. Exept for the scary peach-and-teal drapes, it's a pleasant space, centrally located, and convenient for the other people with whom I must meet over the next several months to get this project off the ground. The best part is, the rental is month-to-month, as I hope we will soon be able to move our operations into a proper vet clinic as funding and equipment manifests.

I suspect that my office space is having a bit of an identity crisis, because the landlord, who was the prior occupant of this space, was a prodigious Mary Kay distributor (she even left a pink couch in the waiting area), who recently retired. After so many years of Mary-Kay-coordinated pinkness going on in there, my room is suddenly full of file boxes and folding tables and pet supplies and a motley crew of people scurrying about in humane society T-shirts and scarcely a shred of makeup in sight.

I hope the office doesn't mind too much.

More soon. I have a birthday dinner to get ready.

--Mambocat

Socks That Rock,

My Own Personal Truck Stop,

and Stunt-Blogging

Because I have been in overdrive trying to keep one New Year's resolution (a personal, work-related goal which would be doomed by bad ju-ju if revealed at this moment), I have neglected another resolution (to blog more often) but, as you see, I have returned.

They have arrived: two skeins of Socks That Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts, purchased in a display of moral and financial support while the gals at BMFA fight the bad guys at Nastybank. This purchase involves a Near Occasion of Resolution-Breaking, but sock yarn technically doesn't count as a yarn purchase, in exactly the same way that sampling the apple-smoked bacon, grape tomatoes and cheese chunks at the grocery doesn't count as breaking your diet. Yarn purchases, like grocery-bacon-nibbling, is merely an act of grazing. No guilt.

The colors in my photo are very close to true. The top skein is Fire On the Mountain (me, with more than a touch of grey, buying yarn named after a Grateful Dead tune? Nah.), and the bottom skein is 24 Karat, a luscious skein of variegated golds which is looking at me with big, big eyes and pleading to be made into a Celtic design and, possibly, even kilt hose.

This bundle of color couldn't have arrived on a better day. Here in Louisiana it is chilly, grey and rainy, which ordinarily does not depress me (any weather not involving hurricanes, heat or tornadoes is good weather as far as I'm concerned, and I say this with authority because I have spent time in the deep freeze and all sorts of other weather extremes), but adding the Saints' loss to the messy weather doesn't make for a cheerful week at all.

Cold and wet and misty and muddy calls for knitting, and a pot of chili on the stove, and coffee. Lotsa coffee. For Christmas, the ever-thoughtful Dave provided me with a Hamilton Beach Brew Station Deluxe, so now I have my own personal truck stop in the kitchen:


















And I also have some caffieneilicious Hawaiian coffee to put in it, courtesy of Lisa Louie.

People who know me well understand my odd fascination with truck stops. I love truck stops. I cannot imagine living in a place like Siberia or Kenya or Outer Mongolia where there aren't any truck stops. To me it doesn't matter if the truck stop is large and bright or small, old-fashioned and tidy, as long as I can get coffee, a clean bathroom, diesel for the VW and something to eat, all in the same place. I have spent an inordinate amount of my adult life driving (and driving and driving), and as a result, I know where to find clean bathrooms, digestible eats and decent coffee in a surprising number of states.

One truck stop fixture that I have always coveted is a coffee maker where you just press your cup against a metal lever and hot, strong, heavenly coffee pours out into it from the urn above. No glass pot to fumble with and possibly crack if (when) you (inevitably) bounce it against the counter. Just a big, piping-hot Tower Of Java ready to fill my cup whenever I want.

And now I have one. I am happy. Very happy. Lots and lots of coffee have made this chilly, endlessly rainy January a surprisingly cozy time.

This calls for digging among the bags of UFOs and finishing a few cozy post-holiday items:

Ray Whiting may recognize the metamorphosis of a bag of various Noro Silk Garden leftovers into this casual shawl:

Does this butt make my shawl look big?

This snazzy pose demonstrates why I had to abandon my previous career as a supermodel.

Also, the interminable rain has provided opportunities for sock-finishing:

While it rains, I am also stunt-blogging for Joan Hamer as she recovers from yet another abdominal surgery. This arrangement actually worked out conveniently for both of us. I was thinking of starting a sub-blog for knit-alongs anyway, and Joan needs someone to keep her readers occupied until she feels well enough to blog regularly again, so, in addition to my regular blog here, I will be stunt-blogging and conducting a knit-along for my cozy fingerless mitts on JoanKnits.

And speaking of cozy:

Shamu says, "I love it when the humans have warm ideas like putting a kitty bed on top of the fridge, right under the heat vent. Oh yes, I love it a lot. You can't see it in the picture, but those toes are strategically positioned under the heat vent. Oh yes."

"And, might I add, that chili smells darn tasty."

--Mambocat