Monday, April 14, 2008

Healthy/Happy!

Rambouillet had a vet visit on Saturday. Nervous, trembling, mewing in terror, we arrived. I'm referring there to me, not to Rambouillet. She was perfectly calm, purred and snuggled the vet and her tech the whole time. She couldn't even be bothered to stop purring while having her blood drawn, and they actually had to try to get her to stop purring so they could check her heart - the vet couldn't hear it over all the rattling! I was a complete wreck, however - things have been less than stellar at Travis' job lately, so we really couldn't afford for her to have so much as a scraped paw that needed antiseptic - we still haven't even finished payment on Bitty's pre-Christmas surgery, so Saturday's office visit and routine check was challenging enough. Fortunately, all checked out, and she's healthy and very well. She's not even a year old - not yet out of kittendom herself, and already pregnant, poor girl! - and Travis was just a hair off in his estimation of due date: she'll be birthing in a week or two!

They did an x-ray, too, in order to see how far along she was and if they could determine how many to expect in the litter, and it looks like we're expecting twins! (Thank God I don't have to find homes for a litter of nine.) I had names for up to five kittens, so narrowing it down is going to be tough. We'll see what they think when they're born.

We also noticed something absolutely precious about Rams last night - her whiskers are black on one side of her face, and white on the other. Cutest. Thing. Ever.

By tonight I should have a completed pullover sweater, so I'll hope for FO photos tomorrow - the brief cold front should last until roughly Wednesday, so I think I'll wear it tomorrow. Nothing like a heavy worsted weight merino/alpaca/silk sweater over a blouse on a frigid 60 degree day. *snort* But I have to get at least one good wear out of it before next fall! (I could have made it with short sleeves, I suppose, but as heavy as the yarn is, it might look sort of strange. Plus, I've not yet knit a long-sleeved sweater for me, and I'm really short on sweaters that I can wear when it IS cool outside - most of the warmer outerwear I have isn't particularly feminine - boxy ski sweaters and things like that - so my wardrobe has a bit of a hole in it on chilly days.)

I did get something done on Saturday, after tripping just about every breaker in the house until we found the right combination of pots and kettles and burners to extension cords. Here's a little teaser:

Red Hues

All told, I have a total of 20 skeins of sportweight (most not shown). Everything should be dry by, ohhh say, three weeks from Tuesday (I love the Florida humidity) by which time I should have some fingering weight yarn to dye up as well. Whee! Travis is currently attempting to electrocute himself designing and building me an electric reskeiner with strange-looking electric devices he scrapped together from God knows where - wherever men go to procure these contraptions. We'll see how that goes - I may be married to my niddy noddy for a while.

Casting About: I really need someone with mad graphic design skillz - I am in need of a logo, a banner, and an ad or two. Nothing super fancy - I do have some thoughts on logos, and some are more complicated than others. If you have these sorts of abilities and would be interested in bartering for yarn/fiber/money or any combination of the three, please let me know - I'm sort of at a loss in the fancy designin' department.