Slumberland

We lost our kitty, Tiger, today. (I posted about her 20th birthday a few months ago.) Tiger came to us almost exactly 10 years ago, when her original owners didn’t want her any more (how this could be, I have no idea). She has been the best cat one could ever imagine. Jason and I miss her so much. (The photo on the left is Tiger looking out the window on Sunday, taken from outside, hence the reflections on the glass.)

(By the way, she was an indoor cat — the outdoor pics were taken this weekend when we let her out in the warm sun as a special treat. It really did seem to make her happy and give her an extra bit of energy for a while.)

More Tiger photos:

Photo by Carolyn

The lovely purple wristwarmers pictured here are by Carolyn, and they were knitted from my Warm Braid Cable Wristwarmers pattern, which can be found in my pattern category. I love the purple color, and the yarn she chose looks really nice!

Also knitting-related, and also pictured here: I just knitted the Airy Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

The scarf was looking kind of ratty while I was knitting it, but once blocked it looks really nice. The yarn is Douceur et Soie, mohair and silk, laceweight. I knitted it on US 10.5 needles (the pattern calls for 10s; I wasn’t too worried about gauge, since it was a scarf, but I knit tight so I usually go up a size automatically. Incidentally, even with the stretching I did while blocking, the final length is one inch shorter than expected, and it’s a bit narrower than the pattern suggests as well.)

One skein makes two scarves, so there may be another Airy Scarf in my future. In the meantime, I am working on the second sock of a pair I started all the way back in December. Yes, I am a slow knitter. No, I am nowhere near that slow. I set the sock aside for a looooooong time while I worked on Clapotis and various other projects.

Speaking of which. I submitted a pattern to Knitty.com. That was a week or so ago, and it was a bit… stressful.

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In great detail, Rolling Stone discusses whether, in fact, George W. Bush is the worst president in history.
Of course, lots of us agree or disagree with that statement, for a variety of reasons. This article goes into a detailed analysis of Bush’s actions, and the result is… holy crap. When you see it all written out in one place like that, it’s kind of overwhelming. An excerpt:

“Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president’s powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious ’signing statements,’ which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. Earlier presidents, including Jackson, raised hackles by offering their own view of the Constitution in order to justify vetoing congressional acts. Bush doesn’t bother with that: He signs the legislation (eliminating any risk that Congress will overturn a veto), and then governs how he pleases — using the signing statements as if they were line-item vetoes. In those instances when Bush’s violations of federal law have come to light, as over domestic surveillance, the White House has devised a novel solution: Stonewall any investigation into the violations and bid a compliant Congress simply to rewrite the laws.”

When you put a can of pop in the freezer to chill it, and you think to yourself “I had better remember to get that out soon so it doesn’t explode,” it would be a good idea to, you know, actually remember.

Unlike me.

At least it’s diet pop, so not a huge sticky mess.

I do love egg creams. But being a Seattleite, it’s possible I’ve never had a really good, authentic egg cream. (The hot dog stand in the Pike Place Market where I first learned to love the egg cream might make them authentically, or not — I don’t know. But they are good.)

Jason Perlow has posted A New York Egg Cream Primer, and I am going to try his instructions ASAP. I notice that he says that real sugar in the chocolate syrup is key — I believe it. Time to go check out the Passover food display at QFC.