The Knitting Fiend

I know. I didn’t warn you I was going on vacation. I guess that’s bad blog etiquette.

Unfortunately, I’m a bit paranoid about posting that both Jim and I are away on a blog. My in laws stay here to take care of the cats… but still….

Anyway, we drove down. I know I could tell you all about the drive down and the beauty of Siesta Key (and who knows, maybe I will). I could tell you how my Dad is doing. But I’d rather tell you about my knitting: I started another shawl!

Why another shawl? Well, as you know, Mom wanted my white Barbara Shawl, so I gave it to her for Christmas. That meant I didn’t have a neutral white “wear with anything” shawl anymore.

Lucky for me, I did have a 3 year old cone of 2/18 weight JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk which I’d bought back when I knit by machine. In hand knitting terminology this is either lace weight or cobweb weight.

Anyway, since the Barbara shawl was very long, I decided to make this shawl very long. Since I was knitting in the car, I also decided to use a the “double triangle” shape and knit mostly garter stitch– just like my “Jenny Shawl” shown to the right. It’s pretty mindless to work, especially at the beginning.

What could be better for car knitting? I know there are people who can knit complicated lace while hitting bumps on the road, but not me!

Anyway, this is going to look a lot like the Jenny Shawl.

Are there differences? Well, yes. The increases for this one use yarn-overs instead of kfb’s (knit front and back). That makes decorative holes down the center and edge. Also, I’m going to make a deeper “lacy” trim at the bottom, and make this longer in general. I’m also not going to make the edges curl around at the end. This will be a classic double triangle.

How did the knitting go? On the two day trip down, I worked garter stitch. (That’s about 20 hours.) Then, every now and then during vacation, I knit a bit more garter stitch — that would be a total of maybe 6 hours in a week.

Mind you, this yarn is over 1000 yards per inch, so after 26 hours I was still not finished!

So on, the drive back on Sunday, I knit more garter stitch– until about 3 pm when I switched to the “lace” trim. Monday: Worked on trim for 10 hours in the car.

Don’t be deceived by the time this took: this lace trim is easy. The only reason the trim is taking so long compared to the garter stitch portion of the shawl is that you end up with zillions of stitches on the needle when you reach the hem. (I started with 1 stitch. I don’t even know how many are on there now. 500? 1000? The trim is a two stitch repeat, and you can fudge if you are off by one. So, there is no way I’m counting.)

Anyway, as you can see, I’m still not done! But I’ll finish pretty soon. And now, I’ll have Mo at my side to encourage me.

As you can see, he is happy to see me home. He’s been following me around non-stop. If I go upstairs, he comes upstairs. If I carry laundry to the basement, there he is in the basement. When I went out to take photos of plants and knitting, he scritched at the door followed me out there! (Right now, he’s wedge up next to the computer making it difficult for me to type!)

I think he was pretty lonely and is glad Jim and I are back. (Too bad I can’t get him to write my haikus while I’m gone, huh? )

Mo wrote the title of this post.

Ok..he admits the real title of the CBS news article is Pet Food Toxin Said To Be Common In China.

Evidently, the melamine that contaminated cat food in the US and killed some of our beloved pets is added on purpose in China. When used in small doses it doesn’t necessarily kill the pets. What it does do is trick protein measurement devices, making the food appear to have a higher protein level than actually contained in the food. (So, at best, it would appear it’s used to defraud consumers without actually killing their pets or livestock. Oh, that’s just splendid!)

China is now banning the use of melamine and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has blocked wheat and rice gluten from Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. and Binzhou Futian Bio-technology Co. after melamine was found in samples taken from batches used to make pet food. (Melamine is generally used to make furniture and fertilizer.)

Mo tells me he does not approve of Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. or the Binzhou Futian Bio-technology Co.

Cosmo (aka “Mo”), spokes cat for The Knitting Fiend, listens to the news constantly. He wants you to know that the cat food brands are still being recalled from stores.

If you want a higher authority than Mo, or think this is old news, you can visit the FDA’s page, where today they report:

FDA is advising pet owners that recalled pet food may still be on the shelves in some retail establishments. FDA urges retailers across the country to be vigilant in removing all products associated with the pet food recall, which began on March 16, 2007.

To verify the effectiveness of the recall, FDA has conducted approximately 400 checks of retail stores across the country. Based on the checks, FDA believes most companies have removed the recalled product; however, some have not. FDA will continue to monitor retailers’ efforts to remove these items from the shelves.

The current list of individual foods being recalled is kept here. Neither Mo nor Piewacket are eating anything on any of these lists.