Friday, August 8, 2008

Kittens, Acrylic and Catghans

Abandon all hope, Yarn Snobbes who enter here. But there will be talk of kittens. And maybe a picture.

Hey, guys. It's 5:53 AM and I can't sleep (whoo-hoo headaches). Much like drunk dialing, I am of the firm belief that nothing good comes out of early-morning blogging, especially when you haven't been to bed, but it's 5:53 AM and I can't sleep. Hence, I blog.

Well, and craft. I worked on the Comfort Shawl with a bit more dedication last night, and finally finished the first skein (minus the part at the end that unraveled when I moved the bunched-up yarn down the line. Hello fringe.). I know a lot of people hate Homespun, but I like it. Sure, it's a little annoying to work with if you want mindless crafting, but I don't mind looking down every once in a while. Keeps the neck active.

But I promised there would be kittens, and I guess I'll deliver, because I'm so nice like that. To make a long story short, my boyfriend sucks at surprises and caves and tells me because usually I guess it and he has no poker face or ability to lie to me. I'm getting a kitten in a few weeks. We've already got two cats, and I have another two that I grew up with living with my family, and I suppose I can count the one my mother adopted last year even though I've seen her maybe twice, because she has pounced on my face while I'm sleeping and if that's not a sign of cat ownership, I don't really know what is. If you're good at math, you've been counting and you'll see that in a few weeks, I will have somewhere between 5 and 6 cats. (My mother's cat is like the Schrödinger's cat of ... well, cat ownership.) That's a lotta cats!

Having not had a kitten in a while -- the sole boy kitty of this lot was four months when we adopted him -- I thought it might be nice to make it a little bed out of a cardboard box and a blanket. I was going to ask my boyfriend for a small spare blanket to use when I realized duh, I knit and crochet. And have a ton of acrylic. Stash-busting away!

This is important, so I am going to say it in all caps: I LIKE ACRYLIC YARN. Seriously. I have voluntarily bought acrylic yarn on many occasions, and used it. Now, don't get me wrong. I have also bought and been given other yarns that were not acrylic, and liked them and used them. But sometimes I'm scared to. I'm a knitter who doesn't know how to do a yarn-over, for Pete's sake. I have to frog sometimes and I don't want the yarn to look less pretty when I do.

Let's face it, shall we? Acrylic is cheap and forgiving. Some of it is really nice and soft! It can be washed and dried with little fuss. My cats can puke on it or chew on it and I wouldn't feel terrible about throwing it out. I also love variegated yarn -- have I totally alienated all of you with this, by the way? Since my nearest good yarn store is half an hour away, I can get cheap variegated acrylic in town. And I have done this, repeatedly. Right now I have four full skeins of Red Heart Super Saver and partial balls that I inherited from a friend that are likely the same.

But I haven't been using it. While a lot of me is going "Yay cheap! Yay, I can make a really awesome bright pink blanket! Or a rainbow coaster!" another part of me is going "But it's going to look like a Care Bear threw up on it. It's not all that soft. People will look at it and run screaming away or lie and tell me they like it even as they're suppressing the gag reflex."

But ... so what? Apparently it takes a 5:00 AM realization of "Why the heck should I care?" If somebody really wants to come up to me and criticize my choice of yarn, I will smile, show them the nearest exit, and throw scrap yarn at them. My cats don't care about the color or type of yarn I use to make them blankets. If a thing has a useful function, it doesn't matter how it looks or what people think of it. Clearly, a genius breakthrough, and enough to get me to break out a Super Saver skein (variegated, of course) and a crochet hook and get crackin'. I have three catghans to make, after all.

(By the way, I would like to think that I am clever enough to have invented the word "catghan", but I know I am not. But let's pretend, because I'm tired and cranky and have acrylic I can throw at you if you disagree.)

Of the cats that do or will be living with me, one is a boy, one is a girl, and one is a who knows? Well, we have an idea, but in case it's wrong I won't sweat it. Because I feel like it, I'm being gender stereotypical and making them in "girl"/"boy" colors. One will be pink. One will be camouflage. And one will probably be rainbow. Not like the cats will actually pay attention to which is their assigned catghan, but I like color and would get bored working them all the same.

Because you've been such a good reader, I shall now introduce you to Baby Kitty. Please notice the barcode on the top of the head, as I have been told this means that it is Satan. Duh, it's a cat. Satan is a collective feline middle name.

Photobucket
"I can has gender time now pleez?" "No, you are two weeks old and we can't tell if those are testicles or not."

A la the Yarn Harlot, I will now shamelessly ask people to guess its gender. This may all be a ploy to make people comment and see if anyone is actually reading. Screw it, it's totally a ploy. The colors of the catghans will not help you! Name, gender, and catghan will all be revealed when we get it and know for sure.

Thrilling, I know. And potentially more humiliating than drunk dialing, because all of this is written down and you can read it whenever you want. My acrylic may squeak with shame, but I do not.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

boy?!

String Bean said...

I think it's a boy kitten, but I can't say for sure since you took a picture of the wrong end.

nitzie said...

I don't know about you, but I don't feel comfy flashing newborn kitty private parts on the web. :) Besides, my camera's kinda fuzzy.