when cathy came to town

I admit that I've had no life lately. (Really? You hadn't noticed? I would have thought the painfully boring blog posts would have been a good clue. But thanks for not pointing that out...)

This four day weekend I'm on right now sort of opened up the possibility that I could maybe crawl out of the house this weekend and do something non-work and non-chore related.

So naturally I called Cathy.

I think its obvious from this photo why.

We had no grand sweeping plans outside of not thinking about our everyday lives. It worked out well even if it was too short.

We started the day by meeting Mary for breakfast. Which resulted in a massive amount of giggling and staring from strangers but that's fairly normal when the three of us are together.

Here Mary is showing off her latest completed quilt, Indian Summer:


It is very oooohhhh and aaaaahhh worthy. Afterward we trooped off to the local yarn shop just up the road. Yes, I know I have too much yarn but I blame Cathy, its entirely her fault. She brought this with her to knit on:


This is the 1x1 rib scarf made out of Noro Silk Garden. You choose different colorways and manually stripe it to create even more striping then is Noro's habit. Brooklyn Tweed did a fantastic explanation here. (I LOVE his blog. His photography of his knits is stunning.)

I contemplated squirreling this away under a cushion of the sofa while Cathy was in the shower but I decided that I could just make my own. So that's the reason we scooted off to the yarn store, so I could procure some Noro Silk Garden of my own.

I did hit a little speed bump because their color selection was extremely disappointing. They only had two colorways in the Silk Garden and I only liked one. So I grabbed one of the Kureyon, exact same gauge but 100% wool rather then a wool/silk blend. They look pretty good together so far. Here's the start:


This scarf is crack. I read as the Yarn Harlot succumbed to it some time ago but really couldn't understand the appeal. I mean, I love scarves, I love Noro, I love ribbed scarves (they are super squishy) but really, its just a striped scarf, get a grip people...

The thing is, the colors change. A lot. Unfortuantely, in a cruel twist of fate, I hit sections on both skeins that blend really well so the striping isn't super evident yet. But its coming. I can see it. There is green coming up people, there will be orange and blue too. Its all there, it'll be striping like mad soon. Striping, baby, STRIPING!!!

I plan to knit this until I can't see straight anymore. The weather is cool from the rain that we got and Dooley is snoring and I have tomorrow off. Its a good combination for a I'm-not-doin'-nothin'-today-including-showering kind of day.

Cathy, the saint that she is, also did help me rearrange my studio to what I've been wanting to change it up to for a while now:


My work tables used to be pushed in a nice little line up against the wall. They are now perpendicular to it, giving me a good work surface to muck about on.

What's that you say? It still looks like a train wreck?

Au contraie, my loves. This is clean compared to what it looked like before we went in there. Cathy peeked in it when she got here, pursed her lips and muttered quietly, "I'm not afraid." I can't be sure if she was being honest or if she was trying to psyche herself up to enter the pit. Either way, she is saintly for helping me because it was no fun at all and she had a sinus headache from hell. All hail Cathy.

Now I can sort and purge when I feel like it and still actually work in there. Its been a point of twitchy frustration lately that I couldn't even get in there to iron a piece of fabric. Bah.

So today is a quiet day for me. I refuse to work on anything I should, instead I'm going to let my mind rest. I've been wanting to get back to my book too so maybe today will be a good writing day.

Or I could knit the scarf...you know, maybe I'll knit the scarf. Yeah, that's it, me and the scarf, striping all day long, happy striping, stripe, stripe, stripe...