Lady Leadfoot, Painted Wheel, and a Wide Load
Not one, not two, but three police cars pulled me over. You’d think it was a BIG BUST GOING DOWN.
Nope. Just me racing along. Enjoying a nice afternoon. Chatting with Precious Child as we drove toward the house. Did I really look that dangerous?
I really, really wanted to jump out and snap a picture of all the cop cars that had pulled me over, but Precious Child thought I might get shot if I tried. The Husband doesn’t believe I had three law-enforcement vehicles, I ought to have taken the pic anyway.
And I really really wanted to floor it after graciously receiving my ticket, but the trooper drove off the other way. Could have set a record for shortest time between tickets.
It’s not so bad getting caught. I was going a fair clip. What’s bugsome is that I’ve been so parsimonious with fuel lately, creeping along from errand to errand, trying to save fuel which is gone so expensive. I love to drive fast so it was a deal of work to learn to drive more slowly. No. I don’t mind being stopped. But any savings from crawling through my daily business will have to pay the fine for today’s idiocy.
And I’m being told that my attorney should get the thing reduced to something. I don’t get that. I was speeding dammit. I got caught. Now I’m supposed to lie about it so it won’t be as expensive? I still have to pay the attorney so where’s the saving in that? Does one traffic violation make me a felon, un-creditworthy and unhire-able and un-whateverable for the rest of my life? I hardly think so. I’ll just pay it and try to behave in future.
And just for the record, the trooper was respectful and pleasant, not a bit threatening. That made me feel even more stupid. My step-dad used to tell us that the name of the game is not to get caught. I can no longer lord it over The Husband, who receives speeding tickets regularly. I’m guilty. Guilty!
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I finally got some images of the Ashford Traditional. I have yet to put a last coat on it. I’ll do it fresh when the weather warms up again. Meanwhile there’s some serious spinning to finish. I’m plying the Corriedale spun for The Husband’s cardigan on the Sonata, and have started spinning the Shetland on this wheel for a cross-ply. 
The finished yarn will be a simple three-ply, the Shetland being a little darker than the Corriedale which ought to give a tweedy look to the finished cardigan. Both fibers should withstand any punishment The Husband can give, and he’s awful on clothing. I just hate the idea of months and months and months of spinning and plying, followed by weeks and weeks and weeks of knitting, followed by impossibly ruined clothing. So. Strengthy fibers spun into yarn and in colours that ought to camouflage most dirt, hope for the best and threaten mayhem if he doesn’t take some reasonable care. Right now I am admiring how pretty the wheel is. Just don’t look too close. I really am not a painter. I hate painting. But I wanted a pretty wheel and no one volunteered so I had to do it myself. So. Stand back and admire.
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Sometime in the last year I’d bought a few woollen pullovers for projects. One was partially felted so I decided to full it to its limit and make a cat bed. It sat on the garage floor near the basement steps for several months. Then Madeleine was telling me of her cat’s felted stuff frenzies. She’d find and drag off any felt items she found. Sounds like a good candidate for a recycled woollen project to me! So I plunged it into a nuclear-hot wash. It emerged from the wash very small and thick and well fulled. And astonishing fuzzy. I started to shave the excess fuzz with a hand razor then got smart. Plugged in the crappy electric shaver I’d got for Henry’s trims, spread the pullover across the floor, and pinned it in place with my knees as I shaved. Darn that worked well.!
Then it was time to sew the arms into place. Uh. How do I do that? I’d seen a blog post somewhere about this. Naturally I don’t have the site book marked, nor did it come up in various Google searches. So I had to wing it. And hand-stitching too, dang, another thing I hate to do is to sew. But it’s a gift for Maddy’s kitty so must be done. I ended up stitching the arms to the body, put a little bit of quilt stuffing in them, a little more into the body, then rolled the neck in and stitched it shut. It was all droopy and weird looking. So I put some nasty little darts in to give the thing a more cat bed sort of shape. It looked like hell but from a distance was fine.
I’d got part of it done in a day’s breaktimes. It was left on the kitchen table between stitching episodes.
Nearing finished, I walk in to see:
Yeah. Wide load. Tuie had claimed it as his own. Chased him off, stitched up another section, left it to go back to work. Through the rest of the day and that evening, I’d walk in to find one cat or other snuggled into that partially finished, horribly hand-sewn cat bed. I sprinkled some kitty crack into it and put it into the van so I could give it to Madeleine next I saw her.
She loved it. Kitty loves it too. I know because Madeleine showed me a clip she’d got on her mobile phone of Cat with her very own felted object.
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I miss my little Risky cat terribly. I have a great clowder of cats here, and love them each for its own temperament. They’re all such good companions. But Risky was my baby, indeed, the last baby. I won’t bring in a baby again. I’m a little too old to trust my capabilities over a 20 year span. I’ll carry Risky Malarkey O. wherever I go, right here in my heart.
And Miss Splish-Splash is made her own place in my heart. What a sweet girl she is! She likes to stand at the corner of my keyboard as I work, head coyly lowered, doing pudgy eyes at me. It’s so cute it stops me every time for a moment’s snuggles. Here’s pudgy eyes washing her face:
I just love that little girl. Well. She isn’t little in cat terms. She’s even bigger than Aslan. She’s a solid stone and full of piss and vinegar. Just get the feather toy out and she’ll tear after it til there are ruts in the floor and upholstery and the drapery is tattered.
Then it’s time to ooze into a comfy chair, wash up, and await dinner. Or a brushing. She loves a brushing and will sit through several brushings each day. She may be a registered Maine Coon, but she doesn’t care. As far as Splash is concerned, she’s a clownish loveable kitty girl, and that’s all she is.
