Happy Halloween! 

And here is a picture of my beautiful black kitty:

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful,
because frankly I really don't care
what you think."  -- Neko

Beware the Footfalls in the Middle of the Night

You are heavily in sleep, maybe even dreaming about a beautiful place -- a yarn store? a book store? You are suddenly drawn out of that blissful state of sleep by one of the most dreaded sounds for a cat owner. Haack! Haack! Haack! Awwwwwwwk!

You know what happened. It's probably on the carpet -- or in the clean laundry basket -- or the afghan that drifted to the floor in the middle of the night.  The hair ball. You know you should get up and look for it. You are hoping that your spouse heard it too and maybe he'll get up to look for it.  Of course, he is laying there awake as well, hoping you will get up instead.

You want to go back to sleep, but then you realize you have to go to the bathroom. Once you're up, it's over. It becomes your responsibility to locate and clean up the hair ball.  Even if you don't do it now, it becomes your duty in the morning.  He will say, "Why didn't you clean it up when you got up last night." It doesn't work to say, "Ah ha! You were awake!" <<Insert domestic responsibility argument here.>>

So you get out of bed to head to the bathroom when your bare feet steps on something warm and slimy. That's it.  All sense of peace and well-being is gone. Your gross-out factor has been raised to the nth degree and you might just throw up a hairball yourself. You hop to the sink -- which in the dark is quite a feat -- to wash the goop between your toes, gagging the entire time. Still, your spouse sleeps, or pretends to sleep.  I think he might even be laughing.

As you are washing your foot in the cold water (because you can't wait until the hot water comes), a fluffy tail ribs against your other leg.  The soft and gentle meow comes from the black ball reminding you that he is hungry, and after all, you are up, and since he threw up, he now has room in his tummy for more food.

Now I'm wide awake and will never get back to sleep. My foot is cold and wet and there is still a mess on the carpet. My cat is trying to be cute and adorable so I will feed him. My spouse is laughing while pretending he is still asleep. I think the cat is laughing too.

It's a good thing Neko is so cute. My spouse -- not so much.

Another Treat of Living in Roxborough - GOATS

Roxborough is one of those Colorado communities considered the foothills. Because of that, we are always in danger of forest fires. Pike's National Park starts (or ends, depending on your perspective, at the back of our house. It is beautiful but a fire could change everything, and in several mountain and foothills communities, that has happened over the past several years.

A small slice of 400 goats by our deck.

So our neighborhood took the unusual step of protecting itself with goats. Yes, 400 male goats with horns and beards and huge appetites. This week, the goats were moved to the valley below our house and what a treat! They had no interest in the people watching them; they just wanted to munch and munch.  The sound of 400 sets of grinding teeth was amusing, but so was the 'other sounds' goats make when eating lots and lots of fiber.

Moving the goats around Roxborough

And yes, the mountain lion has been in the area and I understand the lion got one of the goats last week. The owners of the goats put up a fence around the area the goats feed in, and during the day, they are protected by dogs. They don't leave the dogs with the goats at night though, because they are too protective. All five dogs would go after the lion and possibly be hurt or killed. The goat owners said they would rather lose one goat to a lion rather than any of their well-trained and valuable dogs.

Neko is not amused with 

all the extra creatures in his valley.

They stayed in our valley for two days before moving to next area.  What was truly amazing was it took only about 15 minutes to move them out of our area. Maybe the goat subscribe to the idiom of the grass is greener.  However, from what I see, most of what they were eating was brown. After all, it is October.

Ken taking picture. I stayed on the deck.

The Revenge of the Double-Pointed Needle

To me, knitting socks has to be done on double-pointed needles. Now, don't go get up in my face about all the other ways to knit socks with circular needles, magic loops or even straight needles. There is no wrong way to knit socks. I learned as a child on double-point needles so it is easy for me to maneuver them. I am sure if I was taught by my mom and grandma to use a different method, that is what I would do. I also learned to knit continental style and that seems to be conducive to double-pointed needles.

However, there is a major problem with knitting with double-pointed needles. Sofas eat them. Needles go through the whole digestive tract of the couch and are dropped out the bottom. (That's all the illustration you need for that.)  It just amazes. I am knitting away in my comfortable blue recliner, watching Peyton Manning throw this ump-teenth pass (yes, I am a big football fan), or the bumbling detective and his brilliant girlfriend solve another murder. My cat Neko is gracing me with his presence in my lap trying to steal all the warmth from my afghan. I finished the stitches on one needle and pause to watch the replay (that was too interference! bad call by the refs), and just as the next beer commercial starts, I look down at my knitting --- and a needle has disappeared! How can that be? I feel around for it and it is gone. I didn't move! I can only figure that the arm of the sofa reached up and took it out of my hand.

And the sofa is not done playing tricks on me yet.

Sometimes -- if I'm lucky -- I find it in the folds of the afghan.  I figure that the needle got caught while being swallowed and was saved.

Sometimes -- if I'm lucky -- I find it stuck behind my ear. I know I didn't put it there.

Sometimes -- if I'm lucky -- I find it between the cushions of the couch. As I grab it from the void, I swear I can hear the couch choke and cough.

But most of the time, it's gone. Success on the part of the sofa. So I have to put my knitting down careful not to lose another needle or stick myself with the three remaining points, kick the foot rest down and disturb my  disturb my precious sleeping cat (who is not that crazy about me anyway), and crawl under the couch to retrieve it. I get my hair caught on the corner and I have stop to pull each strand away individually.  Neko is now sitting on the back of the sofa looking down at me sticking his tongue out. I know he is laughing.

Got it.  Back to the needles.