It was the day the cat exploded.

One of the best opening lines from any novel comes from The Crow Road written by Scottish author Iain Banks. " It was the day my grandmother exploded."  I'm having one of those.

Not a happy fellow.

 It all began yesterday* when a friend was visiting, I was thanking her for a Christmas gift, a tin of sardines for Magnus, when I happened to look over at the boy in question. He was looking a bit odd,  as if he had converted to vegetarianism and was storing carrots in one cheek hamster-style. Closer inspection found a large swelling and a nasty bite. Looked like an abscess to me.  I made a note to keep an eye on him and to make an appointment with the vet in the morning. The evening was spent fussing at the cat and worriedly examining the swollen part.  Normally this would be foolhardy behaviour because as we all know, the cheekbone is in his case, connected to the tooth bone. The lack of violence when being handled led me to believe that he was feeling rather ill and I decided to keep him inside overnight rather than offering the chilly delights of the back garden in December. I left the boy asleep, snorting gently on his favourite rocking chair.

Dyeing yarn to take to Rotterdam.  Rotterdam? More later.

7am, New Years Eve I was woken by some scratching at the door and the plaintive howling of a cat who wanted me to think he was starving.  I jumped out of bed to save the carpet from a shredding and accompanied Magnus to the kitchen. After wolfing down some catfood, the lad sat on his haunches, flicked a back leg towards his face, extended his claws and exploded the abscess. There is nothing in the world that can prepare you for the smell that exudes from a burst cat abscess. Think of the smelliest recesses of the compost bin mixed with something that has been dead for too long and you're still nowhere near. It went everywhere, on me, on the floor and all over Magnus. For the visually minded, I can tell you that it was the colour of a bad strawberry custard. Pustard.

I cleaned the floor, cleaned the cat, cleaned myself and removed my pajamas in preparation for a boil wash. By then it was 7.15.  New Year's Eve. I left a damp cat in the kitchen and retired to another, less pungent room. So there I was, waiting for the vet to open while the beast glared balefully at me through the frosted glass of the kitchen door. If this is a taste of things to come in 2013 then I'm doomed.

Happy New Year!

Socks. Thankfully pus free and smelling lovely

In other news, there has been some knitting. Made some socks of which I am rather proud. Thanks as usual to Mary Jane Mucklestone for her genius in charting Fair Isle Patterns and counting the number of stitches required so that I don't have to.


*You might have guessed that yesterday is not strictly accurate. After Magnus' recovery the whole household was struck down with colds and this is me catching up with things only two weeks late.

Season's Greetings.

Wishing you all the best over the Festive Season and a peaceful New Year. From all at Mog Towers.

Magnus helps with the wrapping.

A small hopeful rainbow

I have tingle fingers

Frost on plastic.

The weather not unreasonably for December,  has dipped to below freezing. The garden looks amazing, the unweeded bits, the trees we should have pruned in the Autumn, even the scruffy piles of seeds that the birds throw down from their feeders look magical when covered in a chilly coating of frost.  Further afield, the most unromantic of spots, the Park and Ride outside Perth is transformed. Narnia with a Megabus.

Today's chill has kept me by the cooker making Granola and lentil stew in quantities big enough to feed a hungry household. Abundant amounts of food make me happy. I like to feel that there is enough to go round and heaven knows, that feeling is in short supply right now.  Like most people our household is keeping a canny eye on our spending and bargain of the week yesterday was a big packet of chillies, marked down to fifteen pence. My final job in the kitchen was to chop them into little bits and to avoid getting chilli juice in my eyes. They must be strong little fellows. I've washed my hands more often than Lady Macbeth but still they hurt like blazes. The chillies are spread out on greaseproof paper in the freezer waiting to be put into a plastic pot in order to pep up my cooking for many weeks to come. That's enough to forgive the tingle in my fingers.

Chillies. Little did I know the pain in store.

Granola. Far more soothing.

 In other news - Deb Robson is coming to the UK. I can't wait.  Deb is one of the reasons I have a collection of fleeces in varying states of preparation, such is the power of her knowledge and enthusiasm. See her blog here for more details and if anyone has any ideas/inspirations/offers of help please get in touch with Deb, we're very lucky to have her.

Should never have listened to that spider.

The hat frenzy continues. I fear that it may be some knitted form of procrastination, where I pretend that I'm doing something vitally important and crafty when all I'm really doing is using up some odd bits of yarn. Creative? Of course, but what I'm creating is a big pile of hats whose intended heads haven't been discovered yet.  I'm sure some heads will occur to me later on but for now all I seem to be doing is making hats when I should be spinning, or writing or feeding the cat.

This hat has found the correct head..

All the same, hats are handy things to have if you don't want to think too much about a pattern or, if like me you are knitting on the bus, or in a cafe. There are at least two jumpers in the back of my mind that I'd love to cast on but I know that they will take up too much room in a bag  and will definitely take up too much room in my brain to knit in company. Hats it is then.

Hat surgery was required to re-knit a floppy rib.

I was in Glasgow last weekend, hence the need for travel-safe knitting. Friday saw us at the wonderfully named Glad Cafe in Shawlands, watching the Scottish Clarinet Quartet. The SCQ were performing a score by Matt Rodgers which was accompanied by visuals from my chum Matt Hulse. There was a trailer shown for Matt H's latest feature film which oddly enough features me. You can see it here. I'm easy to spot.The rest of the week has been peaceful and often horizontal. I've read and knitted and slept. When that became too much, I wrapped the cat up in brown paper. 

He enjoys it, honest.

Advice from a spider?

Scottish children are brought up with the story of Robert the Bruce.  Robert was a disheartened king who was inspired to carry on by the sight of a spider trying and eventually succeeding to make her web. The lesson he learned - if at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again.

Terje Vigen Mitts in handspun Hebridean and Merino ( the blue bit )

I'm in need of some spiderly inspiration myself this week after spending days knitting what I thought would turn out to be a fabulous hat. Instead of a beautiful striped affair all I have to show for my efforts is two skeins of unravelled yarn soaking in a bowl. I had hoped to make this hat and I've got no quarrel with the pattern as I was using handspun yarn and didn't make a gauge swatch. That'll teach me. While I loved knitting the clever shaping and the bright slipped stitches, the end product was too floppy to show them off and the rib had a terrible tendency to slide down over my eyes. To make matters worse, I'd already used this yarn to knit another hat pattern that tuned out too big. I'm beginning to wonder if I've been cursed with a particularly small noggin.

The felt balls before. best use for a pair of tights ever.

If at first you don't succeed - rip the thing back and cast on for another hat. That's what I love about knitting, there are very few mistakes that can't be rectified by ripping back, felting or some other radical act of craftwork. This time I will be re-knitting in a pattern called Joon. I'll make the stripes different and omit the slipped stitches for this one. Who knows, the third attempt might just be the winner.

After - cat waits patiently.

Jabob fleece after combing.

It isn't all bad,  in the last wee while I've knitted two successful projects and have been persevering with my Jacob fleece prep. I'm using some of the leftovers from combing to make felted balls. Magnus thinks that they are cat toys but I really meant to make felted garlands. The cat has won so far. There are wooly spheres rumbling around all over the floor.  There is a lot of fleece to use up so by Christmas there might be enough of them to please me and the beast.

Kaiso pattern from Knitted Socks East and West. Modified to use some Manx Laoghtan handspun.

Happy Halloween.

Our deadly hot chilli crop. Apparently Scotch Bonnets aren't called that because of their suitability to the Scottish climate.

It is nearly Halloween and the horror came early to our house. At least for the cat. When our lovely friend ( and vet ) Jaqui came to visit us with her husband a few months ago she took one look at Magnus and said; " Diabetes. " In other words, that beast is too fat and he is endangering his health. We cut down the cat food and waited for the slimline version to appear. Nothing happened. Not a centimetre of cat was reduced. We suspected that Magnus was dining out.  That was confirmed when the lovely boy jumped onto my lap one day before teatime and promptly burped a cat-food burp in my face. Someone is feeding him and we have to ask them to stop. Or alert them to the fact that there is a great big stripey cat coming into their house and stealing their cat food. I have decided that the best way to do this is by hanging a small label on Magnus. The sign will read. "Do not Feed. Vet's orders."

In order to achieve my aim, first of all I had to fasten a collar onto his neck. Trickier than it sounds as all the collars in the shop had bells on them designed to stop the wearer sneaking up on the unsuspecting bird population. It also prevents the worried cat owner from sneaking up on an overweight cat in order to fit the collar in the first place. After much wrangling and a little bloodshed, the collar has been affixed. I haven't added the label yet, I figured it would be kinder to let him get used to the collar first before adding complications. He hates it. I took this photo a day after he succumbed to the collar - in my mind this is Magnus' subconscious showing just how much he hates it. It has been pointed out that the picture bears a frightening resemblance to the adverts for The Omen. That can't be a coincidence.

Terrifying. Just terrifying.

  In other news, I have been learning how to make Dorset Buttons and so far have managed to make a grand total of one. And that was with help. I am ridiculously pleased with with how my one button turned out. Any suggestions for using it? On a tiny mouse jacket? A hat for a large spider?

And a tranquil button to finish.

A Day Late and a Poem Short.

A Book Spine Poem I made yesterday.

Yesterday was National Poetry Day in the UK, I would have written a post then but I was lost in a tussle with some Jacob Fleece. A lovely friend is teaching me the spinning technique called Long Draw and she insists on me practising every day. This version of  Long Draw is the way that many Scottish spinners would have spun to make the most of our hardy sheep with short stapled fleeces. I need to be proficient in hand carding and the production of good rolags before I have the slightest chance of getting the spinning part right so I am diligently doing my homework. As with many things, it looks simple but is very hard to do well. Most of the time I'm making a dreadful mess of things but once in a while everything goes right and it feels as if I've just learned how to fly.

A gymnastic duck

Hungry Ryeland Sheep

 Last weekend was the Scottish Smallholder and Grower Festival and I spend a wonderful day meeting many types of sheep and the people who care for them. There were other animals too - pigs, cattle, poultry,  including a duck who stood on one leg just in time for me to take a picture, as well as many crafts and foodstuffs to admire. The Show Entries were a poem all to themselves.  Here are some of my favourites.


Thumbstick
Leg Cleek
A Floral Arrangement in a Wellington

Three White Girdle Scones
A Clootie Dumpling
Four squares of Vanilla Tablet

Kid
Goatling
Best Pygmy Goat

Gilts and Boars
Senior Sows
Best Pig Pen

Scots Dumpy
Hard Feather
Cream Crested Legbar

Close Wool
Long Wool
Ram Lamb

Showing a sheep.

Lincoln Longwool ( I think )

Happy Day After National Poetry Day, Day.