I finished the pink Silk Garden multidirectional scarf yesterday. I added a ruffle like Leslie's, and it came out beautifully! After I asked her how she made hers, that is . . . I meant to take a picture, but didn't think about it last night.
Last night I started an unfelted Kitty Pi--really just a big bag, I guess. I'm not sure what it's going to end up looking like, but Pyewacket, while she loves wool, is ambivalent about the felted bed. I actually made two, and neither one of them get used at all.
But Pyewacket always wants to lie on my knitting, so I'm thinking that maybe it's partially the squishyness of it, which the felted beds just don't have. So I dug out the extra skein of Big Kureyon that I had left over from the earlier beds, and thought I'd make another one and give it to her and see how it goes. If she loves it, great. If not, I might try felting another one and see if I can get one that actually stands up.
I thought for sure that I had some size 11 Brittany doublepoints, but all I could find was a set of Crystal Palace bamboo ones, which I hate. I sucked it up and used them for the first few rounds, then switched off to a short Clover bamboo circular.
I don't like the Crystal Palace ones because of the laquer--they're too slick. I don't really like bamboo doublepoints at all, but I have quite a few sets of them that I bought before I discovered the Brittany ones. I was thinking last night that part of the enjoyment of knitting for me is have tools that I love. It's the whole thing that I love--my beautiful Brittany needles, wonderful yarn, the pewter stitchmarkers that I made, a nice bag that goes along with the project I'm knitting.
When all those things are right, I'm in my knitting zen zone. If they're not, why bother? I mean, really, most of us knit now because of the enjoyment of it, we don't actually knit so our families have clothes, like our ancestors did. And certainly my cat doesn't need a wooly Kureyon bed. But for me, it's the whole process that I find enjoyable, and if I can make her happy in the process, that's a bonus.