Monday, Monday

I had a very nice surprise this weekend when Knitting Linguist picked me amongst the ten bloggers who brighten her day. I was amazed and flattered and at first too embarrassed to post about it, but it's part of the deal that I have to nominate another ten, so here is my list, in alphabetical order to stop fights breaking out.

Anna at Mochimochiland makes me smile with her crazy toys which are the very thing you didn't know you were looking for - today, Stackable Cats!

Another Anna, at My Fashionable Life, who hasn't been posting lately because she's been busy with an FO called Stanley, but who writes beautifully and designs such elegant patterns.

Dear Annie Modesitt, who often cheers us up when she must be feeling far from cheerful herself.

Jean Miles, who should really be first. I found Jean on the Internet and then discovered that we live in the same town and that we had lived around the corner from one another for years.

Jessie of What Housework? who dyes beautiful yarns at A Piece of Vermont, and writes wonderful posts with lots of pictures of the animals she and her husband keep acquiring, from peacocks to pigs, not forgetting Milo.

Kathy of Knitting Weather, who doesn't post often enough but when she does, she posts these beautiful photographs of Alaska which take my breath away - as well as photographs of knitting, of course.

Knitting Linguist herself, of course, who writes long interesting posts and causes me to spend even more money on books than I would anyway.

Kristin Nicholas of Getting Stitched on the Farm, who lives in Massachusetts with even more animals than Jessie and writes about her beautiful colourwork and also about lambing and sunflowers.

Rabbitch, who must be getting sick of being nominated.

Ted at Knitterguy, who doesn't exactly cheer me up every time, but I'm always happy to see that he's posted and I like reading him and seeing his breathtaking lace.

Speaking of Knitting Linguist, she had a post on Saturday about going to the zoo; that and the tiger documentary that I watched while I was ripping Mavis and getting her back on the needles (three times) had me thinking about when I used to go to the zoo with my Dad when I was small. I was always mad about animals, but particularly the cats. Edinburgh Zoo is built on a hill, so we started at the bottom with the sea lions (Californian Sea Lions, according to the label: I wonder what they thought about ending up in chilly Scotland), past the birds and the reptiles and the monkeys and apes, who were beside the ice-cream kiosk.

My Dad knew that one of the chimps smoked so he used to throw him a cigarette and a match; the chimp would strike the match, light the cig, and enjoy a nice contemplative smoke. O tempora, o mores.

Past the bears, including Jim and Queenie the polar bears who never produced a cub, in spite of Edinburgh's very good breeding record. After Jim died and they had a closer look at him, 'he' was discovered to be a girl, which explains it.

Past the penguins, of which there were so many they had to keep giving them away and supplied zoos all over the world. (See, I was an avid reader of labels from an early age.)

Then the cats' enclosures were arranged up the last bit of the hill, arranged from the smallest like civets and things to the largest, the tigers. For a long time there was a wolverine in this stretch which puzzled me endlessly because a wolverine isn't a cat but a sort of very large weasel; I suppose the enclosure was in some way the best for this animal, but to my already very organized way of thinking it was baffling. At that time the tigers were Rajah and Ranee (although I called them Mr and Mrs Tiger, I'm afraid) who had lots of cubs over the years and who used to lie around watching us with a great deal of disdain, puzzling no doubt why so many exhausted human beings struggled up quite a steep hill to stare at them. We would then stroll down the hill, perhaps pick up another ice cream and find ourselves back at the sea lions and my dad would say, 'Is there anything you want to have another look at before we go?' and I would squirm engagingly and say, 'Can we go back and see Mr and Mrs Tiger again?' Amazingly, we sometimes did.

Anyway, back to the knitting. I got Mavis back on the needles and knitted quite a lot more of the chevron bit. I got out a sheet of paper and made lots of notes and calculations. Today I am going to count the stitches and separate the body into a back and a front, and once I've done that I'm going to check the number of stitches. At least twice.

On Sunday night I scored some Boye needles on eBay. It's a vintage collection of different sizes and two lengths and it includes the sizes I need for the Habu scarf, which is nice.

Taz, if you click on the picture of the washcloth, you should be able to see the pattern more clearly.