althea_valara: A picture of knitting needles, laying on top of many skeins of colorful yarn. (knitting)
Althea Valara ([personal profile] althea_valara) wrote2025-12-09 09:53 am

Crafting Update, November 2025 + 20 Minute Kitty!

Boy am I late with this...

I did a LOT of knitting in a very short timeframe in November, and TBH it pooped me out and I think I'm still recovering. BUT! I successfully knitted a pair of legwarmers to wear to the A New World concert! Here they are:

A pair of cabled legwarmers. Yes, one's bigger than the other.
[Image Description: A pair of knitted legwarmers. They are Aran colored (think natural undyed yarn) and feature a folded ribbed cuff at top, with lazy cables on the body and an intricate cable at the back. One is larger than the other.]

So yeah, this pattern comes in small and large sizes. Small wouldn't fit me, but large was TOO big. I altered the pattern some for my first one, taking some stitches out to make it smaller. Well, I finished it and tried it on and nope, too big. So for the second I took even MORE stitches out of the pattern. This one felt like it fit well, but as soon as I started walking, it drooped.

I didn't have time to reknit them, so I made do with them as is, and used elastic headbands under the cuff to keep them up. That worked well! Also, I shortened the pattern because in the pattern pic, the lower edge was dragging on the ground and I didn't like that. Unfortunately, I shortened it TOO much. I might unpick the bind off and knit them a bit longer, but for now, they work. And no, I am likely not going to reknit the too big one. TOO MUCH WORK.

I also made progress on a hoodie!
Central Park Hoodie November 2025 Progress
[Image Description: a sleeve in progress for a knitted hoodie. It's mostly gray in color and features deep ribbing at the cuff. A center cable panel runs up the middle, in teal.]

At the beginning of the month, I had one cable cross done. Now I have two. So not much progress, but hey, progress is progress.

I also did some work on the Versailles Scarf, a small true lace knitted scarf. I wanted to finish this for the concert as well, but decided the legwarmers were more important. It'd be nice to get this done for Christmas, but with the lack of crafting I've been doing so far this month, it's not gonna happen.




FOLKS! I had a cat for 20 minutes!
A photo of a calico kitty who visited our house for about 20 minutes.
[Image Description: A photo of a calico kitty visited our house for a bit.]

She came up to our patio door before the snow hit, when it was still decent out, and we decided to let her in for a bit, once we closed the bedroom doors. I, of course, was enamored. Mom less so. Being a cat, she did cat things, like scratching at an area rug (mom yelled at her, poor thing, but I can't really fault mom for that) and jumping on the kitchen table to try to get to our Christmas cactus. I kept a close eye on her the entire time she was in the house, so when I saw you going for the plant, I gently picked her up and deposited her back on the floor, because well, I don't know if those plants are safe for cats.

She was inquisitive and explored a lot, and liked to rub against legs. At one point, she was in our living room and started trotting towards the kitchen, so I called out to mom to let her know she was headed mom's way. Unfortunately mom was distracted and didn't hear me, and the cat, being friendly, came up behind her and rubbed her legs and mom almost tripped on her. :(

We considered calling an animal shelter, but due to her friendliness, decided to just let her back outside. Not before she jumped on the table AGAIN, though. I tried to grab her to deposit her back on the floor, but she jumped on the back of one of our chairs, and well, the chair tipped over.

Which means mom has declared NO CATS. :( I had really hoped she'd come around and we could, like, adopt a senior kitty, and my older sister made noise about us doing just that at Thanksgiving, but I don't think mom would be happy with a cat. Alas. But at least I had one for 20 minutes.
pshaw_raven: (Default)
P'shaw (she/they) ([personal profile] pshaw_raven) wrote2025-12-05 04:03 pm

(no subject)

I picked up some kind of sore throat or cold or whatever while we were gone. I feel terrible. Slept most of today and plan to go back to bed once dinner is done not that I feel like eating. Everything hurts - skin, large muscles, head, guts, throat
pshaw_raven: (Northern Lights)
P'shaw (she/they) ([personal profile] pshaw_raven) wrote2025-12-04 01:53 pm

(no subject)

We're back home from our trip, and a great time was had by all! Except Crowley, who would like to let everyone know that his humans abandoned him and there has never been a cat so neglected or unloved. I will make a post about everything soon, and catch up on reading, but for now I'm simply tired. I need to go grocery shopping tomorrow, but once I do that I'm going to be at home for a while, and will happily not be budging.

I'm happy to be back in my own space, even though the camper is technically my own space. But I have my shower, my normal bed, and my kitty, so it's all good.
althea_valara: Photo of my cat sniffing a vase of roses  (Default)
Althea Valara ([personal profile] althea_valara) wrote2025-11-29 09:21 am
Entry tags:

it's that time again!

holiday love meme 2025
my thread here


If you're not familiar with this: you comment on the post with your username(s), and then people ANONYMOUSLY leave comments on why they like you.
pshaw_raven: (Perched Raven)
P'shaw (she/they) ([personal profile] pshaw_raven) wrote2025-11-28 07:46 am

The Friday Five - The Past is Never Far

1. What were some of the smells and tastes of your childhood? This is a difficult one, because I feel like my sense of taste and smell was pretty underdeveloped until I was an adult. I have also always been far more visual than anything, so I remember images and scenes rather than taste or smell.

2. What did you have as a child that you do not think children today have? Unstructured time.

3. What elementary grade was your favorite? UGH none of them. School was an unrelenting hell.

4. What summer do you remember the best as a child? In a lot of ways, time in my childhood is not linear. I feel like I don't remember that much, and what I do is sort of lumped together. I spent a lot of time outside, though. I'd take a book outside and read under a tree, or just hang out in our fairly big backyard.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to your younger self, and at what age? Stop trying to get people to like you. They aren't going to, and you're wasting your energy. Just do your own thing, it'll get better later.
pshaw_raven: (Flying Raven)
P'shaw (she/they) ([personal profile] pshaw_raven) wrote2025-11-27 07:37 am

A Day Off

We'll be firing up the smoker today and smoking a pork loin, along with a few pounds of chicken legs. The pork is a gift for Fox's parents, and the chicken will feed us while camping. Obviously we're going to have a little tonight, but I also need to spend today and tomorrow getting us packed to go.

I'm relieved to no longer need to spend the day in the kitchen. For a while it was fun to show off with some of my most elaborate recipes, but it gets tiring after a while, especially when you can't rely on anyone to help with either prep or cleanup. Fox and I typically do something a little special, but no blockbuster dinners. The main thing we both like about the holiday is dressing, so I'm probably going to make us a pan of sausage dressing when we get back home. Being able to just chill on the back deck with a THC drink and watch the smoker is a nice change from spending three days prepping a meal that will get eaten in half an hour.

Our only real problem is that we were out yesterday and the truck threw a code. We suddenly lost most of our engine power and it went into "limp mode," which we found meant that a throttle sensor was (most likely) not functioning. It took the rest of the afternoon, but we got a replacement throttle body, and tried to get a replacement accelerator pedal but the part wasn't right, so we had to just do without. Fox is going to do the work today and we'll see how that goes. We can clear the code by just shutting the truck off, but as you can imagine, it's a problem if you're trying to haul a camper. And of course it happened right on the day when we can no longer cancel or modify our reservations without a fee. We were out last night until almost seven getting the parts in a panic before everything shut down.

But we got to do some trash picking, and got the north half of our mile of highway cleaned. We'll do the south half after we get home. I didn't see anything of particular interest, but I picked up my first vape cartridge within five minutes of starting. Actually that was the only one I found - there were a bunch of White Claw cans and several Jim Beam bottles. A mower had gone through, so I had a lot of little pieces of styrofoam.

The temps are dropping right now. It's going to get cold tonight. YAY :D