WIP Progress, Rattie Gardening, and Taste Tests

Ah, Wednesday. Hump Day. I Get A Day Off Between Craft Groups Day. <grin>

I don't report frequently about specific WIPs here. I have so many (12 at last count), and they all get into the rotation regularly, so there's usually no point in showing a picture that has an inch more knit than last time. Rest assured, though, I am knitting every single day.

Last night, I felt like I made significant progress on Gryphon's Burgundy Sweater Vest, though. On my third session knitting it, the back is now at about 11 inches - just 2 1/2 inches short of the armhole shaping. Hooray for me!

WIP - Burgundy Sweater Vest

Otherwise, I've continued to put in time on preemie hats (1 more completed, another on the needles), household items (a mitered-square felted hotpad is about 4/5 knit, and I have plans to make crochet-top kitchen towels), and more. Pictures when they're worth photographing, I promise!

Perhaps the most satisfying knitting right now, though, is what I'm working on for the Rattie Sisters, Sable and Star. I'm using Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn and basic garter-stitch dishcloth variations to knit "rugs" for the top floor of their condo, and hammocks to pin up in the corner. I want to have enough of each that we can change them out for cleaning daily for at least a week or ten days.

As you can see, they lurv their hammock.

Sable & Star Say, "We Just Adore a Penthouse View!"

The angle is looking straight up at them as they lay side-by-side in the hammock, heads hanging over the edge. The grid you see is the roof of the cage.

The pieces of paper that appear to be crumpled all over the cage are part of the Ongoing Rat Amusement, Thinking, and Stimulating project - or O-RATS for short. Rats are intelligent creatures, and can easily become bored. They also A) like to keep their cages tidily arranged (at least to their own taste), B) like to shred paper, like tissues and paper towels), and C) are fascinated by anything new around their cage.

We try to come up a different way to do something around their cage to interest them at least once a week. This week's plan was to take tissues and poke them through the roof of the cage. Even as I was poking, Sable and Star were all over the place, climbing upside down, reaching up from the hammock and the top floor, trying to grab the tissues and pull them through.

After a short session of this, they seem to have decided - for the moment, anyway - to live with the current arrangement on the top. It is, shall we say, festive. Sort of like a rooftop garden.

Rattie Gardening

I have no doubt that at some point, they're going to decide that this particular layout is "Oh So Yesterday". At which time they'll likely return to shredding the bits they can reach and pulling them through the grid into the cage, to be arranged artfully in a pile in the hammock or strewn about the entire condo.

What Star Learned This Week:

"Hey, Dad's finger tastes almost as good as Mom's!"

Technorati : WIP, dishcloth, hammock, knitting, pet rat, pet rats, rats, sweater vest, works in progress