Schrodinger's Kittie

Barking ordinance

§ 3-2-2 NOISY ANIMALS.
An owner or handler may not keep an animal that makes frequent or long, continued noise that is disturbing to a person of normal sensibilities.
Source: 1992 Code Section 3-3-6; Ord. 031009-9; Ord. 031211-11.

South Austin Contacts:

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Police Department: Officer Anthony Valderas 974-4508. Tell him the situation and he will make arrangements with his officers to monitor the situation better.

Animal Control Supervisor: Chris Robles 972-6024. He might go out and talk to the owners and explain the situation and regulations. They may want to know about the lack of interaction, though there are no regulations about interaction, other than food, water and proper medical care. Let them know that the dogs are in my yard pretty regularly and have no indication of vaccinations. Also let them know that the dogs jump the back fence (ie. are not securely contained).

For those of you who are not a part of my daily life – I’m having serious issues with lack of sleep lately, and not due to a return of my insomnia. My neighbors got some puppies a few months back and spend literally no time with them. The dogs are never allowed in the house, get no play time with their owners. The smaller one has figured out how to climb/jump the back fence and the fence into my yard so is inadequately contained. And…the icing on the cake is that around 10:30pm like clockwork, they start barking…and continue barking on and off all night long.

My bedroom window is about 15 feet from their yard. The windows are thin (not up to date triple pane or anything – these are like 1980′s windows at best) and I might as well be laying out in the yard listening to them bark…all…night…long. My dogs are snoring logs and I’m tossing and turning. I’ve tried white noise. What didn’t keep me awake, didn’t block the dogs’ barking or distract me from their barking. I’m exhausted by the time the weekend comes and wind up sleeping the entire day Saturday and feeling completed wiped Sunday. By the time I get my energy back, the week has started again and it’s more of the same. I’m too old to be able to survive on around 4 hours of interrupted sleep a night.

I received the Palette Sampler from Knit Picks last night, along with the rest of the Fleece Arist for Kate’s socks, Bare for my socks and Alpaca with a Twist “Fino” in a lovely grey colour for Gloria’s shawl (making her an Icarus Shawl). I really like how the Fleece Artist colourways of Raspberry and Periwinkle are working together. (I’ll update this post with photos later, when I get home to where the photos are ).

I got started on Kate’s socks last night. One will be Raspberry toe, heel and cuff and the main portion Periwinkle. The other one will be exactly the opposite. It’s got a figure 8 toe and will have a shortrow heel (maybe an afterthought, we’ll see when I get there) and will be a lace pattern leg. Most likely feather and fan with an extra stitch on each side of the pattern repeat per needle since it’s worked over 18 stitches and I have 20 per needle (80 around). I’m hoping 80 around will be large enough. I may have to go up to 84 around, though it seemed to be ok when I did the preliminary check this morning. I do have to say, I really like Fleece Artist, though not quite as much as I like Socks that Rock.

I have a gal pal who totally doesn’t knit, but loves what I do and has recently asked me to make her a pair of socks (waiting on the yarn at this point).

About a year ago, I was sipping on some wine while knitting a baby blanket. The following morning I had proof that I was rather intoxicated even though I hadn’t thought so. Kate was highly amused at the proof of the saying I had told her the night before while laughing…”Friends don’t let friends knit drunk.”

I had a conversation with her tonight that made me laugh:

Me: got to figure out how I want to do this sock
Kate: yay socks
Me: LOL
Me: wrote out the pattern. Now, to see if it will work
Kate: You should start a friday night knitters club
Kate: I was going to say, “You could all drink!” but then I remembered drinking & knitting do not mix

The pattern I’m referring to is a modified Lover’s Vine. I’m going cuff down this time, and will be doing arch shaping (if it works right)…this could be a really nice sock…if it turns out. *laughs*

In reading the Yarn Harlot’s blog today, I was stunned by a couple of things:

a) the photo of her shawl with the morning glories…I can so see this being my computer background for a while.

b) The idea of 300 knitters. In one place. Amazing. Makes me thinke we need a shirt made up like the old magazines used to do for the kids…where they’d hide images inside others….have knitters hidden inside various elements of an every day scene, where you really have to look to see them…have them /everywhere/ and have the caption say “We are everywhere”

c) I am completely loving the geurnsey she’s making. I can’t wait to see it completed! Putting me of the mind to actually finish spinning this 7 pounds of BFL and make one with it. I haven’t spun in way too long. *hangs head in shame* I even have some ideas for patterning. Who knows, I might actually plan this pattern out before I begin instead of doing it on the fly. What’s the world coming to. But, when the guy I’d be making it for is 6’2″ and roughly 270 pounds…I really don’t want to make it only to have to rip it all out and start over!

d) Socks have kinda been holding me hostage…they do have a bit more advantage in the pointy bits over your standard circular/straight knitting. Makes one pay a wee bit more attention when they get aggressive like this, you understand.

Speaking of which, I had to rip out the Lover’s Vine socks. **sobs** I turned the heel poorly, which should have been indicative of the fact that this was not meant to be in the fashion in which I was attempting to force it to be. The pattern started shifting and wiggling and basically giving me the sock version of “the finger“. Alas, I caved in to the inevitable and sent the sock to the frog pond. Now, to decide if I’m going to go back with this particular yarn to make the pattern, or if I am going to use the only two skeins of Lover’s Leap that I have and make a shawl…I think I can make the Flower Basket shawl with the (almost) 800 yards of Socks That Rock.

Thoughts?