Friday Fragments

This is the first time I have written a Friday fragments post on a Friday! I've had Monday editions, and maybe a few other days' editions too; I'm not sure, but the concept was created by Mrs. 4444 over at Half Past Kissin' Time. It's a place for all those partial post ideas that never turned into whole posts. Check her out!

First Fragment:

I big puffy heart my Knit Night knitters! (Hi!) Last night I took in instructions for a new project I’m working on. The book is from England and I just didn’t understand this wording for shaping the sleeves, both of which are knit identically:

Dec 1 st at each end of next 9 rows (ok), then on every foll alt row until 33 sts rem (huh?), then on foll 4 rows (ok), ending with WS facing for next row. 25 st.

The way I understood this, even after reading it over and over, and even aloud once, was that one side of the sleeve would be different from the other. And both sleeves would be identical, so I couldn’t even interpret the directions to mean that I was knitting a right sleeve and a left sleeve.

But I read it aloud to my knitting group, and within just seconds, they understood the directions. The at each end wording applies to all of the decrease rows, not just the first 9 and the last 4. OK!

Maybe my problem is that I’m an English teacher by training, and I parse every word to near-death, or, more likely, I’m just slow when it comes to interpreting instructions…

Second fragment:

Dh has been out of town all week. Yesterday I heard shrieking in the basement, and thought, RATS! My cat has brought in another bird. It sounded like a bluejay. So I closed the door at the top of the basement stairs, opened the door from the basement to the outdoors, and warned dh to check for a bird when he got home. (He usually works in his basement office.)

When this cat adopted us twelve years ago, we put a cat door in the basement door to the back yard. A friend warned us that we would have every creature in the neighborhood in our basement, and I laughed at the idea. Really, would chipmunks, squirrels, and birds learn to use a cat door???

Well, no they wouldn't. What she meant, and what we soon learned all too well, was that the CAT would bring every creature he caught in the neighborhood into our basement. Oh…..

Anyway, dh arrived home when I was at knitting and went into the basement to discover the head – only.the.head – of a rabbit. (Rabbits can shriek; don't ask how I already knew this.)

Oh, yuck. And I’m sorry to share this story with you, but I’m hoping that doing so will take the thought of it out of my head and put it someplace else. Sorry if it’s in yours now…..

Third fragment:

My family makes fun of me for throwing just about everything out, or taking it to charity, when I determine that I have no use for it. A couple of weeks ago I found this shoe belonging to my younger daughter. She just checked her apartment in LA and doesn’t have the mate. So she has chastised ME, saying See what happens when you throw things away.

Well, I have the shoe. She doesn’t have the mate, so just who threw what away, I’d like to know. Huh? Huh?

Fourth Fragment:

The leaves here are starting to turn red. Yay! A pretty fall is ahead.

Oh Rats! Oh Rats! Oh Rats!

My cat just killed, well almost killed, but close enough for horseshoes and hand-grenades, a beautiful male goldfinch. He brought it to the back door, where it is lying, breathing its last breaths.

Maybe the cat meant it as an apology for all the out-of-the-litterbox peeing he has been doing lately, but I would just prefer he use the litterbox, thank you very much. No nearly-dead birds!

I know that this is what cats do, but I hate, hate, hate that they do this.

D*mn.