of cats! Apollo, Bart, Graphite and Streak spent the holidays together this year and everyone got along surprisingly well. You might notice that the top photo has a swat-in-action but there were no serious disagreements. Feeding time was a bit intense though, lots of meowing and jockeying for good position when the bowls hit the floor.

patiently waiting

swarming

chow!

Or, more accurately, the ECCWGS (El Cerrito City Wide Garage Sale). I love the idea of a whole town organizing garage sales on the same day. It makes any particular junk-finding probability so much higher! This year’s find? A crock pot. A fantastic shade of red-orange and free to boot!

the instructions were with in in the box — dated 12/29/1973. There are some “exciting” recipes in the booklet made even more fantastic by the by-lines for the titles and the super cute little illustrated vegetables and meats. They are quite similar to the box of recipe cards we found last year but without the heart stopping photos.

The cat had to check it out also. He even had his head stuck down inside but I was too slow with the camera, so all you get is the feet.

Im slowly getting better… This is one strand of domestic white top and one of something grey– honestly I dont really know. Im just practicing with all the pieces of roving ive got in my bag. I have also been really enjoying spinning some merino roving dyed by Karrie.

This weekend I received a package in the mail (always exciting) with musk ox fiber my friends found in Alaska while doing field work. So exciting! Its got some plant material in it and smells like animal, but its much cleaner than you might expect to find. The cat is pretty interested in the smell and spent a good 10 min sniffing around after I opened the envelop. Im going to need to find myself some cards that can handle it.

I also have for you today an indication that we have made progress on the wedding quilt

and a furrier version

We have actually finished all of the sewing and just need to snip off the tails of thread hanging out and take some photos before we can deliver it. Winter is coming at some point (its even supposed to rain today) and they might need it!

I finished machine quilting and sewing binding to the top of the wedding quilt a few weeks ago. Now we are almost done hand sewing the binding to the back. There has been a distinct lack of photos while Ive been working on it as the hours between 9 and midnight dont have very good lighting (funny how that works)

Ive been spinning again (a little). I picked up some wool after abandoning the silk hankie I had been working on and remembered why I thought spinning was fun.

The mead experiment is going well. My dad added a water trap to the bottle to prevent explosions and we tasted our concoction this weekend. I was very skeptical but it was really, truly, not bad. Im excited to see how it turns out in the end.

And speaking of bees, N and I joined my dad for a look inside the hive using his “bee suits” which are really painters coveralls with mosquito head nets and gloves.

The figs and pears at my parents house are out of control this year.

I recommend baking them and serving over ice cream. mmmm

The kittens are out of control too…

Streak has reached a whopping 4lbs and is twice the size of his sister who is just starting to recover from a really terrible cold. He hardly fits in the scale anymore!

The scenery is always nice up there, but notice the dark color in those clouds. Definitely not a summer look.

Its not a bad view from our apartment either, the cat always seems to find something to stare at

And sometimes I do too.

A stuffed chicken made of tweed from a 4″ weave-it loom. This was my original motivation behind getting one of these looms. It is truly the physical manifestation of the whole TWEED CHICKEN concept and I am quite pleased.

Apollo and the Tweed Chicken are also friends

this weekend really did have too much shopping involved. I may or may not have the energy to talk about it (yes it really was that exhausting) except to say it involved BOTH the Mountain Hardware wharehouse AND the Patagonia outlet and that some items were cheap enough that I had to buy them and Ive already started pawning jackets off on other people… (I have two more – anyone my size?)

I finally finished the Claptois! I think I started it in February so its been a while…. Its made with much heavier yarn than most people are using but I am enjoying wearing it instead of a jacket. I used 6-ply merino in burgundy from handpaintedyarn.com

Apollo seems to really enjoy this one. The chewier the yarn the better as far as he is concerned.

This is what $10 will buy you in rainbow canvas when Ikea finally decides to sell it all off…

And all rolled up: