I snapped this picture last night- they were just too cute!

I got a tattoo today and I LOVE it!!!

Just done a few hours ago- still sore…

And an obligatory Edmund picture….

Or two… what the heck….

Here’s  a shot of the finished hand-drawn design….

That took forever to draw- trust me!  The bottom is fern lace, then the next motif is a victorian design, then birch leaves and then a diamond border.  It’s actually only half the design, since it’s going to be mirrored over a center point.  What you see now as an edge of the triangle will be the middle.  Anyway- any thoughts?

Our new kitty was still hiding lots yesterday, and Joe was getting pretty concerned.  Anyway- Thomas, our original cat, managed to sneak into the room where we had the new cat quarantined last night.  He’s actually ok now, but we weren’t going to put them together until today.  I get up this morning and can’t find Thomas…. I go to check on the new kitty- and out comes Thomas.  The new cat seems fine, so we open up the room.  This afternoon, I was sitting on the bed petting our new guy and Thomas came up and nuzzled him!!  It was so incredibly cute!

Ever since then, it’s almost like Thomas is showing him around the house.  He ran up his cat tree, seeming to show it off.  They’ve been running around downstairs playing together all evening!  It’s just amazing!    Now to agree on a name that fits him well…. Eragon and Jack are in the running right now

I’ve got one design charted and one almost there.  The one that is ready is going to use a significant amount of laceweight yarn on size 1’s I believe (swatching it today) and it’s a triangular shawl with a leaf motif- fairly complex.  Any victims… ahem… willing volunteers… to tackle a big lace project to test it?  I can’t give you anything but the free pattern… this is an attempt at my first ever design that I will sell here on my website…   Any crazy lace knitters out there?

The other is a geometric bottom-up triangular shawl that I’ve almost got charted that could be done in near any weight.  This one will be free once I finish getting it charted.

First of all- kitty update. He got a cold over the weekend and was really really sniffly and having trouble breathing. Got him into the vet—nothing bad, lungs are clear. The vet gave me amoxicillin to give to him three times a day. So I cuddle him, get him purring, and stuff an eyedropper in him before he realizes what’s going on… I feel kinda bad, but I spoil him more after. Hopefully he’ll get better soon. Last night, I got him to come out on his own, without taking him out. He kept doing the “pretty boy” pose in the window between the exercise room and the bedroom (we opened it up but closed the door to the exercise room so he can come and go between the two rooms- for those who don’t know- the exercise room was an add-on and they left the window.) Eventually, I started getting him to stand on the headboard that’s in front of the window. He then finally came down on the bed next to me and even rolled over for a belly rub. It was sooooo cute!!

I started thinking about a summer leaf design shawl since there are so many leafy lace motifs out there. I hand-charted it all (don’t want to think about the TEN pages of 2.5mm graph paper it took…) and now I’m working on getting it into excel so it’s printable. It’s a triangular shawl, but since the motifs are not symmetrical, it’s all going to have to be charted. There may be a few places I could chart the repeats, I’ll have to think on it… I made a photocopy to scribble on. I am thinking that since this pattern took me a while to chart and will take me even longer to test, it’s going to have to be sold for some small amounts. Any thoughts as to a reasonable price for a downloadable shawl pattern? I’m thinking $4, but not really sure… I guess we’ll see how much work it takes to get it charted out before I make a final decision. I’ll try to find someway to do a test swatch to give a hint of what it will look like J

Here’s a picture of our little guy hiding out in a window.  I didn’t want to use a flash, so they aren’t perfect, but you can see his gorgeous face!!