Cat with Umbrella

First she was scared of it, and then she sniffed it, then she sat under it as it dried on the deck.

Our little loony kitty.

Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog

This new blogger interface has me a little confused.  I started writing a review of the second book in Connie Willis' series about the time-travelling Oxfordians as soon as I finished the book a few months ago, but had a few tweaks to make before I could post.  So it sat in 'draft' purgatory until a few minutes ago.  Imagine my surprise when I hit Publish, and it didn't appear on my blog.  I finally found it, under the date when I started writing it.  I hope this was some kind of glitch, because I'm not at all interested in posting into the past!

Anyway, here's the link to the review because I don't want to repeat myself.

Also, I'm half way through A Study In Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes book, and have had Connie Willis' Blackout sitting on my bedside table since before Christmas.  So I've decided to read Sherlock on the bus and Blackout at home.  Wish me luck in reading two books at once - it's something I've not done in years!

PS:  Yes I am avoiding writing about New Year's Eve, not because it wasn't fantastic, but because in all the fuss and time management issues... somebody forgot to take photos.  Yes, somebody is me.  I'm sorry.  There are a few, but none of my delicious cheesecake, so, poor us, I'll have to make it again soon so I can put up photos!  The things I do for this blog :-P  To make up for it, here's a photo of Christmas Cat* (ie Kashka):

 

*Every year Kashka really gets behind Christmas, I don't know if it's because it's also her birthday month or what, but she loves it.  So I'm going to make taking a photo of her enjoying Christmas every year.

Next Project

You may recall my mentioning (well, I believe I mentioned it...) that I was working on a gift for a friend who was leaving (and has now left) for Africa for four months and would be celebrating her 30th birthday over there.  Well, Thursday night was her going-away/birthday dinner (which was fabulous by the way, but I'll come back to that) and I had aimed to finish the project by then, however, as is usual for me, I was overly ambitious, and had to text her on Wednesday to ask for an extra day.  So I finished yesterday.  This is why I haven't been around much (now I know I have mentioned this project, in the same breath as 'sorry for not posting!'), and I will post about that tomorrow.

But for now, I thought I would post about my next project.  I know I shouldn't be taking on yet another project when I still have my scarf to finish (ie sew in the ends), Mum's scarf to finish (that I haven't mentioned yet, but will post about shortly), a canvas for myself (finally), and one that Mum's going to attempt to sew (that I will doubtless have to help her with - read 'help' more as 'force to work on and not put off' [do as I say not as I do]).  However, I have cold hands.  So I am looking around on the internet for a free crochet pattern for fingerless gloves.  Gloves with fingers don't allow for ease of typing/sewing/etc, and mittens freak me out (don't ask), so fingerless gloves are the way to go.  And, as we all know, I can't finish a knitting project to save my life.

To make a short story long, I just can't seem to find any patterns for what I want.  There are so many lovely fingerless mittens/mittens/glove patterns in crochet out there, but until I found these it looked like I was out of luck.  I don't like the button or the gap on top of the hand (that is, the dorsal aspect), but I'm hoping to combine it with this pattern (or something like it) to get the hand and lower arm right.

I blame the fact that I'm still tired, or re-tired, from the sewing, and the fact that I've been listening to story podcasts end-to-end all week while I've been sewing, for my being overly verbose about a very simple semi-complaint that has no pictures...  Perhaps this should mark bed time?

To make up for it, here's a cute, be it very grainy, picture of Kashka, demon Russian (but not really) kitten (cat):