This morning, I was woken up by a gentle kiss on the brow bestowed on me by my dear husband, while he whispered sweet nothings in my ear.

Well, not quite. Rather, what he whispered was: "the cat's been sick in the kitchen - it's all over the counter and the floor. Bye then, see you tonight!"

Romantic, huh? ;-)

When I staggered downstairs shortly afterwards to get my morning cup of tea I could see that indeed, one of the cats had been sick during the night and indeed, had managed to be sick over the floor AND the counter. What fun I had, cleaning all that up before I even had breakfast.

Oh, the joy!

Now, obviously the culprit could have been either of our cats, but I am fairly convinced that it was Kipper, our black cat. See, I gave them some different cat food yesterday evening and, as with everything that is different, Kipper was immediately all over it. His brother didn't even get a look in while he was wolfing down the food. When he came into my office later on, I thought he was moving rather slowly and cautiously and he looked a bit peaky all evening. Upon checking the bowl, I saw that he had managed to eat the whole lot.

Somebody told me once that cats, unlike dogs, don't overeat and know exactly how much food they need. On the whole, I tend to agree - we leave dry food out for our cats all the time, and they just help themselves when they feel hungry but don't tend to eat very much of it. They eat some canned food as well, which they get in the morning and the evening, but they pace themselves. Neither of them is overweight. When there is different food to be had, however, Kipper at least tends to forget himself a bit. As he as a kitten had a quite unfortunate and dangerous accident involving a tub of diesel oil (we still don't know HOW this happened but dealt with the consequences at the time) and has since that episode had a rather delicate stomach, he tends to get sick when he does that, which is gross. What is amusing, though, is his continued enthusiasm for new food and his apparently complete inability to learn from past suffering. If there was different food ever day you could imagine his internal monologue as something like this:

"Oooh, new food! Got to eat it all, quickly!"

"Bleagh, don't feel so good"

**barf**

"That's better... My stomach feels rather empty now, though."

"Oooh, new food! Got to eat it all, ...."

Lather, rinse, repeat.


I'm sure there is some kind of lesson to be learned from this - something about not biting off more than you can chew maybe, or something about learning from past mistakes, which I could stretch to apply to my life and my knitting plans until xmas but ... let's not elaborate, shall we? And as I don't seem to have any clear idea where I am going with this post, let's move on to some knitting content.

I have finished the Hourglass sweater. It isn't blocked yet, but I had to show it off anyway:


Is it not pretty? Here is another picture:


Stats:
Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Yarn: Lang Yarns - Fantomas Superwash. Aprox. 6 or 7 balls (can't remember)
Needles: 4mm circulars
Time: started at the end of August 05, finished on 13th October 05.

The only gripe I have with it is that the neckline is a bit too wide; the sweater almost slips off the shoulders at times. If I knit another one, I'd make sure to change the neckline a little to make it a bit deeper and a little less wide. Also, currently the sleeves are a bit short, but the blocking might still change that so I'm reserving judgement.

This means that I was able to start on the Greek Pullover (IK, Fall 05):


I'm only half-way through the increase section, but I can already say that I LOVE Rowan Kid Classic. It's soft and lovely to knit with and the knitted fabric has a pretty haze to it.