I must be hallucinating....

First, the weather: We got some more snow today, but less than an inch, and it didn't really stick. The snow is piled up very high on the sides of the road, though, as the front loader was working all Monday night to widen the roads (the plow only got them to one lane in our area).



The mountains are pleasantly snowcapped, which is a view that I can enjoy from afar:


In more exciting and colorful news, I finished my flying pink elephant mobile (Rav link)! Everyone who's seen it so far loves it, and so do I!




I also made several different-colored flying elephants, which I'll show in a later post.

Snow Update

Saturday afternoon, and it finally stopped snowing. Thursday evening, the snow turned into rain, which was good: it washed away a bit of the snow, and bad: our roof started leaking in a few places, and rain + snow = slush, slush + cold = ice. Here are some pictures from Friday:
The snow on the birdfeeder turned into a solid layer of ice:


My poor car, covered:


And some pictures from today:
View of the driveway from the street. There's at least three feet of snow walled up from the plow, and you can see the lump of snow that's covering my poor car at the bottom of the driveway:


The snow doesn't look as deep as it actually is, because there's at least a foot that's hardened up enough to walk on, and then another foot or so of soft snow on top of that:


At least the trees are pretty, if a bit overburdened:


Icicles!


The cats were a bit confused by all the white stuff:
Luke: "Mom? What's this white stuff that kinda smells like water?"


Han: "This stuff is weird!"


Han then decided that he'd just hang out for a while:


Pictures of my pink flying elephant mobile, as well as non-mobiled flying elephants (some of which aren't even pink!) to come soon!

Let it snow... no more!

Flagstaff is at the beginning of the third snowstorm this week, and this is the big one. From the first two, we got a combined 8-12 inches. So far, this storm has dropped at least a foot, and it's supposed to keep snowing nonstop through early Sunday morning. Here are some illustrations of how much snow we've gotten so far. This is my car, which I just cleaned off yesterday:


Our driveway, as seen from the front window:


The neighbor's house, he cleaned his roof off yesterday:


The window birdfeeder. The cats love watching the birds at the window, but I don't think any birds will be coming until I can get out there and clean it off.


Speaking of cats, they continue to be absolutely adorable.
Luke: "Mom? Why is Han sitting on me?"


Han loves burrowing under the blankets; he can nap there for hours:


Luke: *nom nom nom*


And in yarncraft news, here's a couple pictures of my slippers, which I finally finished so that I can wear them! They're felted wool, beautifully warm. The yarn is Cascade 220, and I used the pattern Big Snugs (Ravelry link).

Holy Pink Elephants, Batman!

I finished the pink elephant mobile yesterday, but was working today so I wasn't home in the light to take pictures. That will probably have to wait until Monday or Tuesday, as I'm also working tomorrow, and then Elijah and I are going to see Avatar (and then he gets to write a paper on it for a class, yay!).

I made another loaf of bread this morning, with decreased sugar, light crust, and the same amount of salt and yeast as the second loaf. It came out basically the same as the second loaf. I'm thinking that I might try a different recipe next time (the one I've been using is for French Countryside Bread), maybe the Italian Herb Bread.

I'm continuing to toilet train the cats. Today I caught Han on the seat with three paws up, all on his own! And then he let me put his last paw up. Otherwise, both boys continue to consistently put up both front paws on their own, and I can usually get their back paws up as well.

The cats were wrestling today, in between licking each other. Silly boys!

Nyahhh!

The kittens were spooning on the suitcase, but of course as soon as I reach for the camera, they want to move to see what I'm doing. I got a few pictures, including one in which Luke was making a silly face:




So, naturally, I had to make an animation of it:

Bread, Loaf Two

Here's the second breadmaker loaf. Although it is still a little sunken, it came out a LOT better than the first loaf.


I used the timer on this loaf- set it up last night, and it was done and ready to eat by the time I got up. I'll still need to tweak it a little to yield a nice loaf, but this one's better than the last. I think that next time, I'll use the "light" crust setting instead of the "medium" that I've been using, as the crust comes out too hard. I'll also use a little less sugar.

There is nothing like a slab of fresh, homemade bread. Delicious!

Yum!

Yesterday, I made a restaurant-perfect omelette, it was in that perfect half-circle shape and everything. I was so proud of it that I just had to take a picture:

Actually, I had been planning to make scrambled eggs, but something told me to make an omelette instead, and this is what came out, so I'm happy with the results. And yes, the smiley face was intentional.

My first loaf of bread in my new breadmaker, on the other hand...

You can't really tell from the picture, but the center of the loaf is sunken in several inches. I'm at a very high altitude here in Flagstaff (7,000 feet), so I knew that I'd have to adapt the recipes for high altitude baking, but as it's mostly trial and error, this is just how the very first loaf came out. I'm making another one for tomorrow, using the timer so it'll be ready for breakfast. I added more salt and less yeast, so we'll see how that does. My cousin sent me a link to this article about high-altitude breadmaker baking, which explains that due to less air pressure than at sea level, the dough can rise too quickly and then collapse (which is what happened to me), leaving you with a sunken-in loaf. More salt and less yeast help correct for that, so hopefully tomorrow's loaf will have some more loft.

In other news, the kittens continue to be cute:

"Hi, Mommy! You are going to leave this comfy suitcase here for us to keep sleeping on, right?" (Han on left, Luke on right)

Luke: snorepurr, snorepurr....

And to compare, a picture of the kittens when we first got them and they were only five months old (they're eight and a half months now):

That's Luke checking out that handsome cat in the mirror, and Han on the right, investigating everything new (that's the top of a thing of Frosted Flakes).

Have a lovely day!

ROAR!

says Han.

I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll...

list a new finger puppet set on Etsy! It's the three little pigs and the big bad wolf, and boy are they cute:



I'm pleased with them. I want to make more fairy tale/children's story finger puppet sets. I'm thinking Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and the Three Little Kittens and Mama Cat. I'm still brainstorming other ideas- I like to have four or five puppets in a set. I'll also probably do some animal sets- barnyard, pets, etc.

Speaking of pets (see that segway?), I gave the cats a new toy today, a fuzzy mouse. They both loved it so much that they were fighting over who got to play with it!

When they got tired out, I put it away in their toybox (we rotate toys so that they don't get bored of them), and they took naps. When Luke regained some energy, he played soccer with a crinkly ball for half an hour at least! Sometimes he would pick it up in his mouth to carry it to another place, and the panting through the foil pieces sounded like squeaky wheezing. Now if only it sounded a little Darth Vaderish.... Poor boy's all tuckered out now.


Have a lovely day!

Gift yarncraft

This year, for the first time, I did a lot of gift knitting and crocheting. Of course, I forgot to take pictures of the finished objects before I gave them! I do have a picture of what I made my little cousin last year, though, a set of fairy tale finger puppets and a castle box to keep them in (click to embiggen):


I made my mom the Strands of Pearls Pullover (Ravelry link) for her birthday, which is a few days after Christmas. I thought it was perfect, according to the measurements she gave me, but she tried it on and thought that the sleeves are too short, so I packed it up and took it home to lengthen the cuff. So much for making the cuff and hem exactly the same length! Still deciding how I'm going to do that, since the sleeves are done cuff-up. I'm thinking that removing the current cuff, picking up the stitches and knitting down would probably be the easiest way at this point.

Work on the new website, aside from adding new content, is basically done. I'm having a slight issue with some of my buttons, as they're supposed to look different on mouseover. Since the code there is copied exactly from the old website, which works, I'm not sure what the issue is, but I'll look into it when I get time.

Have a lovely day!

Website news

I've been working on setting up my new website, Kethrim.com. Since I do all my coding in Notepad, using HTML, it's taking a little while to change things over from the way they were on my old website, to make sure that they work on the new website. Once I get all the old content (some of which is getting a redesign) up, I'll work on adding new content. There are some areas of the site which have a lot of content sitting and waiting for me to edit it and code it up, and I hope to get more work done on that, especially on the Jedi Training Archive.

I'm also working on some fun crochet projects, one of which involved pink elephants. I've joined the Harry Potter Knitting & Crochet House Cup on Ravelry, and that project and I few others that I have planned are for that. I'll post pictures as work progresses.

The cats are very lovey. We were away for Christmas and New Years, and they've been very glad that we came home to them. I'm working on toilet training them, but it's slow since I can't do anything when I'm at work. Right now they're using a metal bowl with litter that's placed in the toilet, under the seat. The trick now is to teach them to squat on the seat, instead of standing in the bowl, then slowly reducing the litter level, and putting water in the bowl instead, until they are ready for me to remove the bowl completely and continue to just use the toilet. Luke gets that it's easier to have his front paws out, but still has his back paws in the bowl. Han just gives me a look of "What? I'm in the litter box, just like I've always done it!" Progress is slow, but progressing. When I catch them using the toilet, I adjust their feet to the proper position, and if they leave their feet where I put them, they get a treat. Once they really connect foot placement to treats, I think that they'll get it a lot faster.

Signing off for now, going to work on the new website some more before bed.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. I'm setting it up in conjunction with my Etsy site, Kethrim's Crochetland, and with my new website, Kethrim.com. I plan to spotlight products from my Etsy shop, give sneak peeks on new projects I'm working on, talk about the other knitting and crocheting I do, tell stories about my cats (two black brother kittens, Han and Luke), and write about anything else I think of. I hope you enjoy the blog!