According to the eye calculator Cody and I have a 33.3% chance of having a child with blue eyes and a 66.6% chance of having a child with green eyes.

Knitting and sick pets! You lucky weblog reader you!

I finally finished the chevron scarf Wednesday night and blocked it yesterday amidst sticking needles between my youngest cat’s shoulderblades and wrapping her in towels while I forced food and pills down her throat. And mopping up the occasional projectile vomit. It was a nice respite to be honest. And I’m so glad this scarf is done. This was for my mother-in-law for mother’s day. Yeah I was running a bit behind.

blocking the scarf
made a huge difference

I did it in Fiesta Yarns’ Rayon Boucle so it was a very fussy knit. I have a slightly masochistic relationship with their rayon boucle. I hate knitting with it. A lot. But I love how it turns out so I keep working with it.

don’t you love my preppie ironing board cover?

In the end I only made it about half the length as the one in the pattern. But it was looooong in that pattern and I was starting to wonder if I would ever finish it, as was my mil. So I just decided to stop. Anyway, it’s light and has a very nice silky drape.

Doesn’t Phunq look sweet?
I love my rugged studly boy kitty who likes spanks and never has an eating disorder. Love him so so much.

I’ve decided to switch my photo uploads to flickr since it can do all the resizing for me. So I have all the chevron scarf photos in their own little set.

My first sock is going well. I’m on the heel flap now and I cast-on and did the first section for clapotis about eight times last night but wasn’t satisfied with any of the attempts. I’m fairly sure I’m doing something or reading the pattern wrong. Doesn’t help that Melon scratched the shit out of my left middle finger.

I did a little graphic design escapism this week to avoid thinking about cleaning for my parents’ visit or sick pets. Made a cute header graphic for Aubree’s website and made these little “Finished Object Friday” buttons in case I start an actual trend. Share and enjoy!

I’ve been trying to keep my posts about knitting and sick pets to a minimum lately but the Melon cat has been doing it again: refusing to eat no matter what I put in front of her.

We’ve been through all kinds of cat food brands and flavors, wet and dry, and plain old tuna, I even gave her some grilled steak I was eating when she seemed interested in it. It’s a bad sign when she throws up within a minute of smelling food though. That means she’s nauseated again. It’s an even worse sign when all that comes out is yellowish stomach acid.

So we went back to the vet this morning to get more liver tests and get a refill on her anti-nausea meds. When they weighed her last month she was seven pounds. She’s five and a half now. Seems she’s dehydrated again as well, despite my trying to give water with an eyedropper. So they did another subcutaneous iv with fluids, added a vitamin shot and some antibiotics, gave me a quick lesson in how to give her a subcutaneous iv at home and sent me on my way with my own iv bag of fluids, needles, liquid and pills for the anti-nausea meds, more science diet prescription a/d food, and some new oral syringes.

And a creepy metaphor about how Melon’s been circling before she goes down the drain. Oh, thanks!

We had a different doctor today, one of those kinds that’s really good at making you feel like a crappy pet parent no matter how much time and money you’ve put into keeping them well. And he looks just slightly too much like Dr. Phil for my personal comfort. (Have I ever mentioned just how much I hate Dr. Phil?) Insinuating things like assuming that the other pets might be eating her food and I’m not noticing. Uh, no.

Melon has her own wet food that I feed her at specific times on the counter and I stand there and watch her eat until she finishes then I cover it and put it back in the fridge. If she’s not interested after a few tries I leave it in the guest room for the other cats and try something else. These days the cats have unfetered access to two completely different brands (Science Diet Senior and F & S Hairball Control F & S Adult Light mixed together) of dry cat food at all times. Phunq and Kurry share two kinds of wet food at least once a day. Usually it’s a fish-flavored Fancy Feast grilled which is the only thing Kurry will eat these days and a Foster and Smith can of wet food that Phunq will eat.

The dog has been on a diet so she gets 1/2 cup of dry dog food (F & S Lamb and Brown Rice F & S Canine Adult Light mixed together), 1/2 can of unsalted green beans for filler, and a tablespoon of mixed dry supplements which include Barley Dog, joint supplement dry mix, and Missing Link Vetrinary formula. She gets that three times a day. She also gets one greenie a day.

The hedgehog gets a mix of F & S Adult Cat Light dry food, Spike’s Delight premium, Zoo insectivore, and Old Mill sprinkled with Bugs n Berries, Missing Link Cat formula and Peanut Bugger. I usually toss a few roasted mealworms and a calcium gut-packed cricket on top as well. Sometimes I give her a teaspoon of baby food or cat food as a special treat.

Kiss my ass that I don’t take good care of my pets bucko.

No, not fictional books with bad plots and stupid jokes about boobs. I mean actual fiction for younguns.

I ran across a great website dedicated to Louise Fitzhugh, author and illustrator of one of my favorite books as a child, Harriet the Spy. Which of course made me think of other books I loved when I was young. Here are a few. I wish there were such great tribute sites for all these authors.

Higgelty Piggelty Pop or there must be something more to life - One of the lesser-known books by Maurice Sendak (more famous for Where the Wild Things Are) Jenny the terrier is spoiled and bored so she takes off to find something more fun to do. One of my favorite adventures is when she gets a job as a nurse for an angry little baby who shouts “No eat! No grow! SHOUT!”

No Flying in the House - Another book with a little white terrier - except this one is really little, like three inches tall. And the little girl she takes care of, who happens to be the exiled child of a fairy princess and her mortal husband. The bad guy is a cat which is typical but it’s an adorable little angry cat. That can turn into a gold wind-up toy!

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler - a girl and her brother run away to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She then tries to prove that a beautiful angel sculpture was made by Michelangelo.

The Trumpet of the Swan - by E.B. White (who also wrote Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little). A swan that can’t talk learns to play the trumpet THEN to write!

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi - by Rudyard Kipling. About a rescued mongoose living in a garden in India. Lyrical language.

The Story about Ping - a young duck gets left behind on the Yangtze River and meets all kinds of new friends.

Certainly not all of my favorites but a few you might not have heard about before.

So CheekyProf was writing about doing some Monday dogblogging this summer. I’m planning to make it more of a general petblogging thing but thought I’d post a few puppy photos of Winter to get things started. So here she is in her black and white adorableness.

three weeks old on 9-14-2001

three weeks old in Cody’s lap

approx nine weeks old, just brought home

around eleven weeks old. growing fast

six months old

I’ve probably posted them before but they got lost during the great photo journal fileloss mystery.

In other news I went to the Dropped Stitch Knitter’s Guild meeting today. I’d met a few members at the Fiber Fiesta and went ahead and joined when I found out they meet just down the mesa from my house. It was a fun group of very nice women who really know what they’re doing with this knitting stuff but were very encouraging in their praise of my work so far. I’m the youngest in the group by at least ten years but that didn’t matter at all it was all about the knitting. I’m sure they’ll be very sweet when I bring in my little punk knitter projects, they LOVED my felted lopi tote bag. I did make the mistake of mentioning that I used to design websites so I’ve been volunteered as the new webmistress. It’s ok it keeps me off the streets right? The great part is they meet Wednesday nights so now I’ll get to hit them on the weeks I can’t go to the Tuesday knit night group!

In non-dog, non-knitting news I wanted to pimp two sites I enjoyed today…

-this has got to be the most personally apt review I’ve read of Mr. Lucas’ latest. Particularly the parts about Padme looking like she’s just slightly bloated rather than pregnant with twins and the complete lack of strange cravings or the ever-present morning sickness. I wonder if Get up Grrl has seen it (wish she’d publish an rss feed dammit).

-ok this is sort of dog-related but I’ve really been enjoying hatamaran’s paintings. No, they’re not “high art” but they are adorable, expressive, and she’s clearly having a good time making them. Which is just as (if not more) important as backing your shit up with all kinds of high-minded art theory. Believe me, this I know.

via Jess

I am going to create a character in City of Heroes and name it that RIGHT NOW and I don’t care what Mr. Man has to say about it breaking immersion. He’s such a name snob. But to be fair I’m a ye olde snobbe when it comes to fantasy faux medieval stuff, particularly when I have to speak olde English speake.

Not surprisignly it includes a lot of the same movies as the National Society of Film Critics Essential 100 but I feel like doing it anyway.

* means I’ve seen it
- means I own it on video, dvd, or both

Aguirre: the Wrath of God (1972)
The Apu Trilogy (1955, 1956, 1959)
*The Awful Truth (1937)
Baby Face (1933)
Bande à part (1964)
*Barry Lyndon (1975)
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)
-*Blade Runner (1982)
*Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
-*Brazil (1985)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
*Camille (1936)
*Casablanca (1942)
-*Charade (1963)
Children of Paradise (1945)
-*Chinatown (1974)
Chungking Express (1994)
*Citizen Kane (1941)
City Lights (1931)
City of God (2002)
Closely Watched Trains (1966)
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936)
The Crowd (1928)
Day for Night (1973)
The Decalogue (1989)
Detour (1945)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Dodsworth (1936)
*Double Indemnity (1944)
-*Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Drunken Master II (1994)
*E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
*8 1/2 (1963)
*The 400 Blows (1959)
Farewell My Concubine (1993)
*Finding Nemo (2003)
*The Fly (1986)
-*The Godfather, Parts I and II (1972, 1974)
*The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
-*Goodfellas (1990)
*A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
*His Girl Friday (1940)
Ikiru (1952)
In A Lonely Place (1950)
*Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
It’s A Gift (1934)
*It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
Kandahar (2001)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
King Kong (1933)
*The Lady Eve (1941)
The Last Command (1928)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Léolo (1992)
The Lord of the Rings (2001-03)
The Man With a Camera (1929)
*The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
*Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
*Metropolis (1927)
Miller’s Crossing (1990)
Mon oncle d’Amérique (1980)
Mouchette (1967)
Nayakan (1987)
Ninotchka (1939)
*Notorious (1946)
Olympia, Parts 1 and 2 (1938)
*On the Waterfront (1954)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Out of the Past (1947)
*Persona (1966)
*Pinocchio (1940)
-*Psycho (1960)
-*Pulp Fiction (1994)
-*The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Pyaasa (1957)
*Raging Bull (1980)
Schindler’s List (1993)
*The Searchers (1956)
Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
*The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
*Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
The Singing Detective (1986)
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
*Some Like It Hot (1959)
-*Star Wars (1977)
*A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Sunrise (1927)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Swing Time (1936)
Talk to Her (2002)
-*Taxi Driver (1976)
Tokyo Story (1953)
A Touch of Zen (1971)
Ugetsu (1953)
Ulysses’ Gaze (1995)
Umberto D (1952)
Unforgiven (1992)
White Heat (1949)
Wings of Desire (1987)
Yojimbo (1961)

43%

I think it helps that I went to a college with a working film department and had a semester or two of weekly cross-departmental forums and lectures (My favorites were the lectures where I got to meet George Romero and Robert Wise). Cable with TCM and AMC (when it was good) don’t hurt either

snagged from Jim in Tonic and Psychobabble.

You’re sweet, but not naive — though you like to be babied like a child at times. You prefer to have a bad boy by your side, but sometimes have problems understanding why he has to run off to take care of business. You want to settle down, yet deep down inside, you are excited by the surprises life throws your way. Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz.

Curiosity compelled me to see which male character I’d be too.

You talk fast, you think fast, you act fast. Stop. Calm Down. Drink some decaf and go back to hitting up liquor stores. Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz.

I totally snagged this from Ms. Babble.

No it’s not a cake.

It’s a little cotton bucket hat. This pattern but resized to fit a six month old. Or, at least, what my online source tells me would fit a six month old’s head. Who am I to argue?

Just in case it’s too big for my tiny niece’s head I crocheted little ties and made pompoms for the ends. Perfect beachwear for the little San Diego baby. I wonder if they take her to the beach. No idea. I’m not exactly close to my husband’s brother and his wife.

But I’ll knit something fun for their kids. It’s not the kids’ fault their parents are assholes. And someday I’ll get to watch them rebel. That’ll be super fun.

Not very much of a finished object, I know. But I finished it and that’s what counts. The socks, on the other hand, are very slow-going. Mostly because of this.

And household chores like bathing hedgehogs.

trimming their nails

dealing with the sleepy post-bath pout

and cleaning their nasty, nasty cages and poopy running wheels.

(I’ll spare you those images)

Techniques learned: never crocheted anything before (that I can remember), made much better-looking pom poms this time, how to resize a pattern, trimming a hedgehog’s nails is much easier using a counter.