Many little dramas unfold daily between the two cats here; territorial skirmishes, challenges to authority, perceived affronts to dignity, downright taunting and reprisals therefor.

But few things in this household have the power to raise ruffs as does the Sunny Spot. Sometimes it’s that patch of floor in the upstairs hall, sometimes the footstool in the living room, sometimes the tabletop (grrr). But most frequently, it’s the Basket. The Basket in the south window, the Basket with the shearling lining, the Basket with the view of the birds in the bushes and the squirrels on the wires, the Basket that’s just the right size for a kitty to curl up in or even sprawl just a little with a chin resting on the edge.

The following is the pictorial evidence of one epic Battle for the Basket. In which the battle is won, and lost again. Or lost and regained, depending on your perspective/degree of fluffiness. The entire battle featuring not a paw raised, nor hiss uttered. Illustration of the sheer power of intimidation.

Yup, there’s just nothing like a good spot in the sun.

This morning, being somewhat unwillingly awake and not desiring the usual breakfast fare, I decided to make muffins.

First I thought I wanted waffles (thinking of some lovely ones I made for the freezer last weekend), then I thought maybe pancakes, but since we’re out of maple syrup the muffins won out.

Now, a basic muffin recipe is something I don’t actually have in my recipe box, so each time I want to make them I find myself rifling through my cookbooks for a simple recipe to adapt to the ingredients currently residing in my cupboard/fridge, or asking the internet in the hopes of stumbling on a suitable one.

This morning I improvised. I thought to myself “banana bread is pretty much like muffins, and I have a banana bread recipe that I love, so I’ll use that.”

This is that recipe:

I made the following changes:
-substituted about 1 cup of applesauce for the bananas (delicious applesauce my mom made of apples from one of her trees)
-somewhat less sugar (I didn’t actually measure, but I think I used about 1/2 cup)
-added about 1/2 t of baking powder, just because it seemed like the right thing to do (applesauce can sometimes make baked goods a little heavy)
-tossed in about 1/3 or 1/2 cup of chopped dried cherries(leftover from Pie Day) instead of the other options because, well, wouldn’t you?
-reduced the flour (for which I use spelt) by about 1/4 cup and threw in about 1/2 cup of rolled oats, with the intent of keeping a nice grainy chewiness which I like in muffins and can sometimes be reduced by things like applesauce
-at the last minute stuck a banana slice in the top of each one, just because there was half a banana sitting on the counter and I couldn’t resist (it would have been for the irony, but I’m just not that hip)
-baked for 20 minutes as muffins instead of 1 hour as a loaf

And the results?
Delicious.

The texture, sweetness and flavours all just came together in that lucky way that sometimes happens when you really need a good moment to perk up an otherwise lackluster day. The cherries contributed perfect little nuggets of sweet & sour, and the sugars in the applesauce gave an ever-so-slight glaze to the outside, just right for enjoying with a cup of coffee (or in my case a bitter brown roasted barley beverage that is reminiscent of but in no way equal to coffee).

They were so good I had to blog about them. Yup, made my day.

Had an urge.
An urge to make a sweater.
A little wrap sweater.
For wrapping a little baby.
Found a sweater pattern.
Dug some appropriate yarn from the stash (while silently thanking the deity of abandoned holiday gifts).
Looked on Ravelry for caveats regarding pattern and likely-looking mods.
Knit sweater.
Weaved in a whole bunch of ends (grumbling only slightly).
Blocked sweater.

Added ducky and teddy bear buttons (which I may later regret/replace due to fiddly-ness of fastening).

Was nearly overwhelmed by cute.
Had urge to just sit and cuddle sweater for a while.
Resisted that one.

Oh, also had urge for Life Savers, which the OH kindly procured (not as simple a feat as one might think, I guess they’re not that popular anymore).
Consumed entire roll while writing blog post.

Yum.

This would have been done sooner had I not broken my needle knitting it… I guess that’s why it’s important to use an appropriate circular needle length and not try to make a whole Baby Afghan in the round with a hat-length needle.

I used some of the leftover Cascade Ecological Wool from making Mary & Tim’s Wedding Afghan, this time held single and worked in a Quaker Rib pattern.

Of course, having to go get a new needle also gave me the chance to burrow about in the yarn and find just the right stuff for spring socks for Maggie:

Lovin’ the colours. Doncha just wanna stick your finger in those?

There are several FO’s (knitted and sewn) waiting to be photo’d and posted, but meanwhile I can’t resist showing off the behemoth below my ribcage.

This is my favorite of the bunch of pictures we took:

I’ll return to our regularly scheduled craftiness next post.

Item complete: diaper bag.

To whit:

A pocket on each end fits a water or baby bottle.

There’s one biggish pocket and four smaller ones around the main interior space. Inside in this pic are: 2 prefold diapers, one diaper cover, a couple of washcloths, a changing pad cover, a drying cloth, and a burp cloth, with lots of space left for a bottle of wipe formula, lotion and some small toys.

Outside there’s a zippered pocket for mama’s stuff, and I even made a little pouch to go with it.

I’m going to make a couple of wet bags for, well, wet stuff, as well as a travel change mat for all those uncertain public surfaces. There’s a layer of PU coated nylon between the outer and inner fabrics to help keep messes from getting out of control. It hangs off the handles of the stroller nicely and goes easily in the cargo area as well. Of course I won’t know for sure whether it’s really well-designed until I’ve used it a bit, but I think it’ll do at least for a while.

I’ve got so much sewing to do! Thankfully I’ve got nearly all my supplies and should have plenty of time over the next month to devote to getting it all made. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel really ready…

A disclaimer first: this post may not be nearly as exciting to other people as it is to me. Reader forgiveness is advised.

Here goes.

After about 6 months of planning to remove the severely under-utilized dishwasher from our kitchen, and replace it with a clothes washing machine, it’s finally happened!

Our pleasant and amenable if not-entirely-prompt landlord finally put in the cold water hookup last weekend. (Not being needed for the dishwasher, it wasn’t there. I don’t know about you, but if I were doing plumbing I think I would put a full rough-in anywhere I was putting any pipes, just in case. But maybe that’s just me…)

I immediately put in the order at venerable-mail-order-department-store.ca and scheduled delivery. Thursday evening the aforementioned landlord removed the unwanted dishwasher, and yesterday the happy little washer arrived!
(Again, this may not be exciting to everyone, but I’ve gone most of my adult existence without an in-home washer, and this is the first one that actually belongs to me. And I’m about to have a baby and use cloth diapers. So it’s exciting.)

There was a slight hiccup during installation, having to do with the drain-pipe, but it was resolved and the little dear fits in just perfectly:

This morning I ran the first load of laundry:

And yes, I know I’ve mixed colours with whites; don’t worry, they didn’t bleed.

And the result; a bunch of little tiny clean clothes that no longer smell like nasty VV detergent.

I know, I’ve been told not to buy any newborn clothes because I’ll receive tons and many of them will be outgrown before being worn, but I couldn’t resist a few items. They’re just so darn cute!

And my washer is so cute too!

I’m sure the novelty will wear off before long, but right now the though of doing laundry actually makes me happy. I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

OK, I’ll spare you the suspense; the vest is done!

But the scary bit was, well, sort of scary. The scary bit was the steeking. If you’re not a knitting geek, or you are but have never been bothered by seaming pieces together, steek is just a funny word that you may have heard but never bothered getting to know. But for those of us who cringe at the thought of seaming, steeking allows knitting the body of a sweater, or a vest, in one tube and then cutting (yes, CUTTING) the front and arm openings. This is achieved by clever crocheting that keeps the whole thing from unraveling into shreds.

It looks like this:

I know, you’re wondering what’s scary about crocheting. Well, that’s not the scary bit. THIS is the scary bit:

Gah! Scissors in knitting!

Oh wait, it’s OK:

See those nice edges, curling away from the front and armholes? And not unravelling? They result in little flaps that are tacked to the body, resulting finally in nice clean edges, ready to pick up stitches for the button band and sleeve trim.

Which you can see here, on the finished garment.

So, you may ask yourself, why go to so much bother (because it really does entail a fair bit of extra work) just to avoid a few side seams? Well, first of all, it’s also very handy when you’re doing colourwork, or using self-striping yarn (so your halves match), or if you’re like me and just don’t want to knit three pieces when you can knit one big one.

So, yeah. That’s steeking in a (very small) nutshell.

I’m fairly happy with how the vest turned out. It’s definitely very soft and warm, and I love the colours (don’t bother telling me about the mistakes in the stripe pattern; I know and don’t care), but I’m a little worried that it won’t actually fit. And since I didn’t slope the shoulders, they have a tendency to kind of wing out like some kind of sci-fi costume. Hopefully that will ease up with wearing.

The moral of the story being that there’s a reason people write and use patterns, and that I should really consider actually following them instead of approaching them like I do recipes and just kind of taking some bits from one and some bits from another and improvising the rest. Then at least if it didn’t fit I could pretend it was someone else’s fault (though it would probably still be mine since most errors are the result of bad following, not a bad pattern). But where’s the adventure, the DIY-ness in that?

Sigh.

But the buttons are cute.

This is one of those days when you think it’s going to be sunny, and then there are some clouds, and then it gets bright again, then a little more cloudy, then a little less…

Naturally I would prefer the sunny to stay, but circumstances did allow for a lovely progression of lighting conditions upon the tulips that the OH so thoughtfully brought home for me recently.

Like so:

My favourite capture is this one:

I just love the warm glow and the sunset-like light quality even though it’s 11:30 am.

Upcoming: the dreaded steeking and picking-up of stitches on the vest.

As usual, you my readers have exhibited impeccable judgement, and suggested precisely the action with regards to the quilt knotting that I had decided to take on my own.

My yarn stash, unfortunately, was not so agreeable. I could probably have found matches for four or five of the six square fabrics, but they would have all been very different yarns, and there would have still been some poor matches.

So I ended up going with two subtly variegated colourways of the same yarn, one for the intersections and the other for the squares. It’s not great, but not bad at all. And since it only took about 1/2 hour to do all the knots, it won’t be a big deal if I decide to change them later.

Here she is, all knotted up, binding attached.

See? Not great, but not bad. I can certainly live with it.

In the end, I just can’t get too fussy about being all matchy-matchy with the yarn when my binding is of the “what I could find in my stash in the right quantity” sort rather than the “well-thought-out and coordinated” sort. Cause that’s just how it is when I really want to finish something and I’m not in a condition to just “pop out” to the not-so-local fabric store to hunt down just the trim material.

Choosing my battles; I figure I might as well get used to it since it’ll be a theme for the next, oh, 25 years or so…