More on Christmas stockings . . . and the household I live in.

My household consists of me, my husband, our son, four cats, and a dog.

My husband’s stash is musical instruments – at one point there were 42 guitars in the house – acoustic and electric – plus six or eight banjos, several mandolins, at least one, if not two fiddles, mountain dulcimer, ukuleles (banjo ukes, banjo mandolins, ) etc. So his “stash” takes up more room than my yarn. (I think the guitars are down to under 30 currently).

My yarn stash is mostly in nice plastic boxes with handles – over 60 of those (I just did a rough count), plus three bigger ones, and the stuff I haven’t looked at in years in the attic. First foray into cleaning out the attic has resulted in two very large bags of yarn for charity.

And now, cats. I’m delighted to say, in the thirty-five years I’ve lived with various cats, they usually loose interest in the yarn and knitting after about six months living with me. When ensconced in my favorite knitting place, I almost always have feline company – the colder the weather, the closer to me (and the space heater) they are. On cold evenings I usually have a revolving door of cats on my lap, as I knit.

My current feline companions are:
Agatha, a thirteen-year-old basic grey short-haired cat. She looks like she could be a Russian blue, but she’s a rescue. She’s got arthritis poor thing, but still has the most wonderful purr, and wants lots of interaction with her humans. She was named after Agatha Christie.

Snowball – she’s five, and little, only weighing 8.5 pounds. She has almost no tail, and given that, her size, and the way her legs are shaped, we’re pretty sure she’s a Manx. Being pure white, with blue eyes (and great hearing – it’s the males that are more often deaf) her name was a no brainer when my son found her in a pet adoption day at a Petsmart. She’s a real cuddle bunny – which is one of her many nicknames.


And then, there’s our babies. We had, a year ago, four cats, but two of those died early in’06 – one of cancer after two years of treatment and dealing with it, at 16. The other, my son’s official cat, quite unexpectedly of cancer at barely 6!

So when we got down to just two, we were sad, and decided, since we had really enjoyed my son’s cat Maine Coon, that we would make a point of getting another Maine Coon.

Somehow, we ended up getting TWO. A brother and sister. They are now, as of today, nine months old, and weigh in at 16 pounds for Barnum and 13 and a half for Bailey.

Meanwhile I’m off to my knit group – and then Christmas shopping at the mall, which is open until 11 pm tonight. I’m hoping to finish the name cuff on Nathaniel’s stocking at the knit group tonight – if not tonight, then tomorrow. I sent word to his mom that they’d have it by Thursday. All the others are already up at his house! No photos of Agatha in the computer, when I take photos of the finished stocking, I'll take a few of her and upload them too!