Am I rhapsodizing if I say that the lighting looks Scandinavian?

This wasn't as confrontational as it appears.

The Och enjoying her morning constitutional.
The little paw prints in the snow are the best.

Troublemaker.


Even more diabolical for his cute little mug.

our sort of coup

I realise that this isn't going to be as significant if you don't live in my home and know these two as intimately as M and I do.

But anytime these two are caught snuggling is a rare-ish event (admittedly less so these days in their first experience of a New England winter). And this is only the second time maybe that I've ever seen them in the basket together. The basket is sometimes a coveted, fought after spot.

Case in point (photo circa two years ago):

the battlecats

But the significance of today's photo is that Pekoe (the orange tabby) was already in the basket. And the Och (chubby white tabby) is the one who approached him and squeezed her ample rump in beside him. Unheard of! I don't think the Och ever got over being usurped as the only cat. She never took too kindly to the arrival of the smaller younger kitten who eats her food and tries to play with her at any ole time of day. It just lacks dignity, I tell you.

I think she's pissed that she has to get body heat from him, of all people. Er, cats.

first snow in Stamford, for reals

It snowed here in Stamford over the weekend!

I can't help but get excited. I thought it was beautiful. Here's what it looked like out our living room window.

Compare to what it looked like a few months ago:


I'd heard we'd just be getting a few inches, but at the end it turned out to be closer to 6. Maybe even a foot??



The och didn't seem to notice. Or I couldn't tell if she noticed a difference. She's got quite the poker face. She must notice how different her world looks.

Another comparison shot from a few months back:

Who knows what goes on in the mind of this one?


M and I went for a walk in the falling snow around our neighborhood. We live across the street from a park and it was cool to walk around it deserted for once. It was just a mite too windy so that there were flurries in your face when we walked into the wind. But it felt refreshing.

And totally unrelated: a beautiful sunset from last night.

poor pekoe

snicker, snicker...

the cosiest

I think I am safe in revealing this on my blog because none of the concerned parties will see this. I wanted to share the Christmas gift I made for my mum-in-law. When m and I were visiting this summer, we were having dessert after dinner one night and she pulled out her big metal teapot that she got from Ireland (M has a smaller version of it. When we were dating I discovered it in his cupboards one day because I wanted a pot of tea and I'd never seen the guy drink so much as a teacup of tea. And I thought to myself: man, if we ever split up I am so going to make off with this teapot. I know, I'm shameless.).

She pulled a tea cosy over her teapot and someone asked about it and she lamented how she could never find any cute tea cosies. (Auntie) Bonnie has tons of cute tea cosies, but my mum-in-law could never find any. So of course that got me thinking.

A quick search on ravelry revealed a plethora of tea cosy patterns. So I made this striped one:


And this silly one with tu-tu ruffles:


They're sort of ill-fitting on the teapots here. I made sure to measure my mum-in-law's teapots and hers are much taller than the ones at my office. But the lighting at my office is so much better for photography than what I get at home so I had to make do with what I had.

And while I was working on the green tea cosy of course I had to have a little try-on with the kitties. Doesn't the Och look lovely? Really goes with her eyes, right?

I can't imagine any practical purpose for a kitty to wear a capelet (heh heh) but for my amusement. I can't wait to get a shot of Pekoe wearing the cosy. HAHAHAHA!!!

f-you overpriced pieces of cardboard!

My cats seemed to enjoy those cardboard scratching pads that they sell at Trader Joe's. I got two and placed them side by side because they enjoy laying on them and lolling around in the sunshine. Problem is the scratchers got shabby and I don't shop at Trader Joe's anymore (too crowded, rude patrons, unreliability of items being stocked when I want them...sigh). I was surprised to see how much the scratchers go for at other big box stores. Sheesh! So I took an exacto knife to a couple of boxes and with some glue and a straight edge made one of my own.

Not bad.

Never mind how uninterested she looks, she really does seem to enjoy the pad. She scratches it and lounges on it every day.


Blurry photo-bad photographer.


Blurry photo-moving subject.

I must train our cats to tolerate and eventually love this

Holy crap!!

Now if I could figure out a way to attach the furminator to the end of the hose. Also, I'm thinking these folks must have a clean place indeed.

now that we're rested...

Wow. That was a pretty vulgar amount of loafing back there at the end of 2008. I'm ready to get back to work and try and get some sort of regularity to my day. I took a bunch of photos of my goings-on, but man they are pretty crappy. Poladroid to the rescue! Now they look edgy and artsy and vintage-y.

During the holidays, I knit (even after I was done with the Christmas gifts). I finished this scarf for M that I started about a year ago (Better photo to come, this one is of the scarf mid-progress). Pekoe is enjoying the fruits of my labor.

A scarf-in-progress for a nap-in-progress.

I cooked a fancy Christmas dinner for the two of us to gorge out on.

My first time cooking a rack of lamb - crown or otherwise. I watched a lot of Food Network shows while I was knitting (M started to complain that he was kinda getting sick of t.v. I knew then that hell had definitely (if briefly) frozen over). Alton Brown made cooking a lamb crown roast look easy. So I gave it a go. It was so tasty. Tender, juicy, mmmm... For sides, I cooked smothered cabbage with sausage (I had a craving) and cornbread stuffing that I made up on the fly. There might have been a salad too. I can't remember. It rained hard that night. It was cozy. Our neighbors across the way were having a party with singing and dancing and occasional shouts of "Opa!" Even though it wasn't our party, that was sort of cozy too.

The weekend after Christmas we had a special guest appearance by our friend Nathan! N was in town for a friend's wedding and he drove up to see us and stay over a night. He came bearing gifts.

Homemade peach and blueberry preserves (!) and a generous bag of cookies that he calls rocks (!!). The recipe for the rocks came with his great grandmother from Germany over a hundred years ago. That rocks (yuk, yuk). They say that the rocks only get better as they age and harden. I am sad to report that I have not been able to confirm this as all the rocks are gone. I had the last two just now with a cup of joe while I was noodling around with my computer. Damn they were good.

Sadly this is probably the best photo of Nathan that I took while he was here. Maybe one more of his face on my flickr. Poladroided. But blurry. I mean artsy.

Naturally he wears cool socks.

New year's eve was quiet as well. I got sick after Nathan left. I've been blaming it on him as I've not been around anyone else except him and M. M just thinks I need to get out more.

New year's day we had a nice breakast with the preserves from N and some baking powder biscuits. I made a batch to go with a southern chicken dinner one night and decided to freeze most of the unbaked biscuits instead of having a a few dozen laying around the house that you feel compelled to eat so they don't go bad and hey, what a waste of fresh homemade biscuits. I am happy to report that they hold up well to a freezing. I just popped them into the oven right out of the freezer at 350 for about 20 minutes and they were wonderful. 'Specially with some homemade fruit preserves to enjoy them with.

I'm really going to try and do a post of some of the sewing I've done lately. It's mostly stuff that I've been experimenting on and I haven't moved forward with the work. Hopefully putting it up here for public consumption will prod me into moving forward. We'll see.

Happy new year, everyone!

How I love to torture my cats

It amuses me no end..

I think Pekoe looks great in girls' accessories. See how sassy he looks.


In all honestly, the Och almost always looks like she's searching out an escape route.

my exceptional friend Pekoe

I know most folks think their cats are to the left of weird, but I really do think my pal Pekoe is quite exceptional.

For example, he really likes climbing into pants. Usually when you're in the middle of taking them off so they are hanging around your calves. It makes this little cave that he thinks is perfect for exploring. So as you're sitting on your bed with your pants down at your calves, he'll jump in and refuse to get out. So you'll have to gently extricate your feet one at a time because you don't want to disturb kitty (I mean what kind of a monster are you?) and once done, he'll stay put.

And if oblige him with a little rearranging of the legs, he'll scoot around on his belly sort of commando style until he ends up completely encased in the leg. Sort of like being in a sleeping bag.

Of course I find this hilarious.

He was particularly fond of these lycra yoga pants that I was trying to take off the other night. So enamored that when I picked up the sleek little package of him inside the pants, he stayed put long enough to be carried over to the couch. He normally doesn't like to be picked up. But he does love M.

And there the two stayed for the rest of the night.

I'm not sure what this weird look in his eyes are about. Maybe he's watching me to make sure I don't make any moves to take back my pants.

ninja cat

pretty close to the truth

like a size 10 gal squeezing into a size 6 dress

Who hasn't been there?

my sidekick

She just likes to be at my side.

summer nights

When we cleaned up around the house a few weekends ago, we cleared out our deck and found that there was a lot of space (previously cluttered over with our crap) for us to hang out in.

Thank goodness we did this as it's the only area in our home where we can go to escape the heat. That was a nice way to spend our Friday night.
urban. feet.

The cats love when we hang out on the deck. They join us and loll around.
the two headed beast plots his next move

turning on his invisibility cloak

trying to put M under his power.

Suffice it to say, I used this as an opportunity to practice some shots with long shutter exposures (did I say that right?). Look! I can even get a decent photo of the moon with my little apparatus.
goodnight moon

she wants to help me brainstorm

my muse as I sketch and brainstorm