While the cat's away, the mice will play!

Hello! No, don't worry, nothing's happened to Flo and we're not infested with rodents! Mr JK and I carried out a little investigation this week. We were curious as to what Florence was getting up to during the day. She is very attached to her toys - Santa in particular, and we keep finding him hidden up. Santa was one of Flo's Christmas presents last year and she does love him!

So we set up a little camera in the corner of the room and went off to work. The camera detects movement and then records 15 seconds of footage. This was one of the first 'scenes' shot. To start with, Florence is looking out of the cat flap. You can see her tail twitching on the right hand side.

Cut to a few minutes later and Flo has spotted the camera........

I just wonder what she has got to hide! That paw on the camera was making a point! She definitely didn't want to be filmed. It did give Mr JK and me a good chuckle when we watched it.

My knitting has progressed very slowly this week and I have loads of the Motheye stole still to knit before the wedding, which is looming fast! I really hope that I'll manage to get it done in time. The trouble is, my spinning wheel has been luring me, and I wanted to get the Polwarth fibre finished. If you remember, it came from Picperfic's luxury fibre club, and this month we had 3 different combinations of Polwarth, alpaca and silk.

I finished spinning up the 3rd braid this week and of course I was desperate to ply them together. I split the fibre into lots of narrow strips, so narrow in fact that no pre-drafting was required. I spun the singles fairly thin too in an attempt to get something like a reasonable yardage. Here you can see the three separate bobbins along with the spun sample that Marianne sends each month.

It took ages to ply, so that made me feel optimistic about my yardage! I ran out of the Polwarth/alpaca blend first, so ended my 3ply yarn at that point. I then made a 2ply yarn using the other two singles, and when the Polwarth ran out, I simply N-plied the remaining Polwarth/silk mix. I am thrilled with the yarn, it's one of my most consistently plied to date, and I've managed to get about 440 metres of 3ply, plus around 40 metres of 2ply and 10 metres of N-ply. I've always liked the Citron shawl pattern, and I think I ought to have enough to knit one!!

Mr JK was a bit of a domestic god yesterday and after watching the Hairy Bikers touring the Low Countries, he made their version of Dutch apple cake. We ate a piece warm and it was yummy! I'm just not going to think about the amount of butter that went into it! So I shall leave you now with a slice of cake. Enjoy! xxx