What the Deuce?

December/January is always a crazy time in our household. In the space of 3 weeks we have Hanukkah, wedding anniversary, Christmas, New Year's, then my husband's birthday. It gets a little whacky and the hunt for the perfect gifts for the husband in particular can get a little stressful. This year, in that he's unemployed, we decided not to go crazy on the gift exchanges and when contemplating anniversary gifts for each other, we decided that we should add to our family and adopt a kitteh!

Being the prepared parents that we are, we did a trip to Target last weekend and bought food, litter, bowls etc. Then Tuesday on my lunch break, took a trip over to the local shelter where they had lots of little kittens as well as older cats. Husband always claimed to not be much of a cat person (something to do with cats lacking personality....ha!) Having said that, when we walked into the cattery at the shelter, he spotted one in the litter who was later to come home with us. He had an identical twin brother in there with him but his brother was a little too much to handle - lots of tail chasing, hopping around on his hind legs and smacking the other kittens to try and get them to react. Our little guy just sat there looking at him with the contemptuous "what the hell are you doing dude?" look on his face. We tried looking for markings to distinguish them from each other and found none - it was all in the personality with these two. As much as I would have loved to take both, there was also some concern that we'd come home to find the more boisterous one swinging from a ceiling fan or 5 feet up the bedroom drapes.

His name is Deuce in honor of being our second anniversary cat. He's about 3 months old and the sweetest little bundle of joy. Husband picked him up from the vet yesterday and brought him home where he cowered in the corner of his crate for several hours before coming out and cowering behind the toilet (which is where he was when I came home). I can't blame him after what must have been an incredibly traumatizing 24 hours - being separated from the litter, traveling to the vet, losing his manhood, then waking up and not knowing where he (or his balls) are. A little love and cuddles helped though and by later last night he was exploring the staircase and finding new spots to hide in the bookcase.

Husband seems to be adapting well, leaving me a post-it note on the bathroom mirror this morning with instructions on how to heat up his food with his post-op antibiotics into it. I have a feeling his "I'm not really a cat person" days have come to an end after catching him late last night playing with the cat and a balled-up piece of paper. I had a very proud parent moment this morning when I discovered he used the litter tray last night while we were asleep and I caught him cleaning his paws too.The one thing we do need to teach Deuce is how to retract his claws. He's got a tendency to get stuck on clothing/carpeting because he can't figure out how to pull his claws out! He also doesn't know why he can't pick up his toy when he's standing on the other side of it with his back paws. He's a smart one though and I'm quite sure he'll figure it out! ;)

Baby, it's cold outside

The fact is that people in Southern California are total weaklings when it comes to cold weather.

When I lived in England, I would walk from the train station to my school (about a mile) every morning in frosty weather, skidding around on mulchy leaves and potentially getting drenched by a soccer mom's Land Rover after a badly timed puddle splash. All of this in a thin button down shirt and my blazer. More than once I ended up on my ass having slid on black ice somewhere on the paving - one time in particular coming to memory because my walkman fell out of my pocket and busted into about 4 different pieces which flew all over the street.

Now, that obviously still isn't anywhere near as bad as being in Cleveland or somewhere similarly freezing. I had a 2 hour layover in Cleveland during January several years ago and recall everything being covered in at least a foot of snow.

In Los Angeles, people are liable to freak out about the weather when it ducks below 60 degrees but even at 40 degrees outside, it's quite likely you will spot one sorry person wearing flip flops. I will admit that I have somewhat become a person that doesn't know how to handle the cold weather on account of having left all of my big fuzzy sweaters in England after I moved. My limited amounts of cold weather clothing have been leaving me somewhat stumped over the last few days as we've hit temperatures of freezing.

Yesterday, I was standing outside with some co-workers complaining about having a cold neck. It then occurred to me that I am an idiot. I KNIT! Why on earth would I not have anything around to wrap myself in?! It seems that I am extremely good at knitting for others and assuming that living in Los Angeles means that I will never really have a need for big warm wooly accessories to heat up my freezing bones. So, last night I whipped up a rather simplistic cowl to throw around my neck. It's now my mission to make 3 or 4 more in different colors over the next 2 weeks so that I can wear them before the weather warms up again!

Thanksgiving fun

I'm finally getting back into the swing of things post Thanksgiving. We took a little trip out to Las Vegas to visit with the in-laws and got to see my nephew, who is growing ridiculously quickly. He's getting chatty and while a lot of it sounds like a foreign language, the occasional word or phrase makes it through very clearly. I loved it when he was putting away his toys before bed and said "I'm a big boy". All four of us in the room heard it and agreed wholeheartedly!

I wish I could see him more often and the beauty of the holiday season being that I will get to over the next month. :)

Score!

One of my favorite lunch time activities when I'm bored is to go wander around the local thrift shop. I've found some decent deals there - the occasional cone of mystery yarn, a nice sweater to unravel, and of course lots of books! Today, I made the ultimate score though.

As I walked over to the section where they tend to put bags of assorted things, I spotted yarn...then I got closer...and then I realized that there were about 8 or 9 huge bags of yarn. I must have looked like a crazy person because I started pulling down all the bags and looking at each bag to figure out what kinds of yarn were in there and in what colors. Some had rug yarn, not great for my uses, but I narrowed it down to 5 bags that I just HAD to have (so much for destashing). Usually I expect to score some vintage looking acrylic at the thrift store but these bags had yarn marked as 100% wool, 100% cotton, and one has yarn that's 80/20 wool/nylon already wound into balls. Did somebody say socks? Lots of them? There's also a ton of hanks in natural colors - white, cream, grey and light beige - that are perfect for dyeing. :)

I estimate that I ended up with probably 100 balls or yarn in some form or another, for the ridiculously bargain price of $30! I cannot wait to get them out of my car and sort through them. In the meantime, I took some fuzzy pics with my camera phone because I was too excited to actually wait until I had my camera in my possession! Here are the bags taking up the majority of the back seat in my car. I really hope my husband doesn't kill me for this one!
What was your greatest thrift store find?

Hybernating projects

When it comes to knitting and crochet (ok, maybe just crafts in general), I have a certain attention deficit problem. So called WIPs (works in progress) tend to become strewn about the house. Then there's the things that I've already made that I tuck away in need of photography to sell, donation, craftster.org swapping etc. that I forget about. That is exactly what happened to some freeform crochet collar/scarflet things that I made last year. So, while I'm rummaging around in my craft room yesterday, I came upon some of these and actually did something about photographing and posting in the appropriate places.

For sale in my Etsy shop - Victorian Rose Collar.
A green and cream crochet collar with scallop detail and 2 different kinds of yarn for texture.
There's other things hidden in that room, I know it! More pictures to come as I find them I'm sure. :)

A little weekend home decor fun

This past weekend, husband and I finally had some time to play around with the house. We went on a field trip Saturday to downtown L.A. where you can buy just about anything on the cheap. We're talking $1/yard fabric stores, discount apparel, shoes, bedding, and...the reason for our visit...rugs! We have been getting tired of the relentless collection of dust under the dining room table and decided that a new rug was totally the way to go.

The trip was very successful, but also very entertaining. Firstly we found a $5 parking structure where we handed the attendant a fresh $20 from the ATM. Turns out, as we were paying for the rug a little later on, he had actually handed us back 2 $5 bills and 10 $1 bills as change. Free parking? OK. Taking a walk through to find a rug shop, husband kept giving me a "no, we cannot stop for (socks/tank tops/shoes/buttons/trims/fabric)" look and hustled my easily distracted self onward. We get to a rug shop and find 4 or 5 designs that we like and want to pick between. The prices were already fantastic, but then husband starts with the "ok, we're going to check another shop and come back" game, where the guy promptly gives us an additional 20% discount. We got a 5"x8" rug for $80 out the door - although husband now had to carry the rug 3 blocks BACK through the melee of shops while trying to keep me from wandering off in an "ooh, shiny" kind of way.

So, new rug in place, we also got started with putting up some artwork around the house. I know we've been there for a year already and have very little hung on the walls, but we've also been very particular about putting things in the "perfect" place given that we're going to be living here for a while (it's a renting not owning thing I guess). The advantages of being a photographer I suppose is the never-ending supply of prints to put up around the place...the disadvantages being choosing which ones to frame and hang. A couple of the larger wedding photo prints are now hanging in the corridor just outside our bedroom, a fantastic photo of the Santa Barbara courthouse in our bedroom, and a set of 4 abstract foliage prints in the downstairs bathroom.

It's amazing how happy these few additions make me as they've given a little more personality to those areas and makes me realize that the simple things are the best.

Halloween costume recap

While it's somewhat unbelievable that Halloween has already come and gone, I will say it was a fun one. We had a couple of different parties to attend and outside of attempting to navigate crazy traffic through Hollyweird Hollywood, it was smooth sailing!

I was determined to get the husband into a costume again this year, especially after last year's success dressing him up as a moose. Really, the secret is to make him wear something as comfortable and close to his every day clothing as posssible - so that rules out silly hats, masks, anything that may cause overheating or involves facepaint. You get the idea. While we were trying a new and rather yummy pizza place (thank you yelp.com!) a week ago, we had jokingly suggested that swine flu would be a rather appropriate costume and went about our plans to be "team pig".
Saturday daytime, I had assigned husband the task of coming up with our team names while I disappeared off to get iron-on supplies for the letters I had been cutting out of felt. In the meantime, he dutifully turned down an offer from his friend to watch college football so he could stay home and help me prepare the costumes. I was somewhat in shock - was he actually getting into this?! A few hours of cutting and ironing later though, we were all ready to go, dubbed "Porkchop" (me) and "Wilbur" (him). Our pig emblems even had googly eyes...which I think should be a requirement for team emblems in general (I mean, imagine your favorite sports team with them on display!).All in all, the costume was a big hit and we even got a chuckle from a passing cop on a bicycle. Who knows what we'll come up with next year but I can't be happier that I've converted my non-costume-wearing husband and he's not going to be getting out of it again!

P.S. If you have been affected by swine flu, my heart truly does go out to you and no offense was meant by this costume. I hope our googly eyed pigs could bring a smile to your face.