Cat Confusion

I have written about Julius before. He’s the model for the cat in Yarn to Go He lives down the street, but more or less claims the whole block as his. I hadn’t seen him in awhile and I was worried. He’s a black cat and while he seems rather street savvy, he walks across the street like he expects car to stop for him. So, I was very happy to see a black cat sitting in the back of our yard the other day. I went outside and called Julius and he looked in my direction. I noticed he wasn’t wearing his collar and name tag, but figured he’d managed to get rid of it.

Except a few minutes later when my son went into the driveway, he noticed a black cat sitting under his car and when he saw the name tag realized it was the real Julius. It was better than the time he thought there was a black cat under his car and tried to coax it out and it turned out to be a skunk.

The real Julius came out from under the car and with a few blinks of his yellow eyes sauntered down the driveway and headed for home.

Meanwhile our two cats were watching from inside.

So, who is Fake Julius? We think it is a she, since the real Julius seemed to be watching her instead of picking a fight. We think she lives in the yard behind us. We’ll have to see if she comes back to visit.

It isn’t the first time we’ve had cat doubles. We used to have a cat named Einstein. I named him that because he was a stray who presented himself at our house, clearly a brilliant choice. He was a beautiful big cat and a golden color.

I thought he was a feral cat at first and was just going to try to catch him and get him fixed. I started feeding him and then on the third day when he finished eating, he started doing figure eights around my ankles, so I picked him up and he started to purr. He lived the rest of his life with us and was a wonderful loving cat. We think somebody got him when the Lion King came out because he looked like Simba and then for whatever reason abandoned him.

I used to leave the kitchen door open for him to go in and out, not that he went far. I think after being abandoned, he was so glad to have a home, he didn’t want to leave the yard. After I closed the door one night I came back into the kitchen and saw a golden cat. I went into the living room and saw another golden cat. Two Einsteins, was I seeing double? The cat in the kitchen came into the living room and the two Einsteins didn’t seem to like each other. By then I’d figured out which one was the real Einstein and went to grab him before a fight broke out. I don’t think Einstein understood and I ended up with the battle scares, but got him into another room and shut the door. By then the Fake Einstein was back in the kitchen, anxious to escape. As soon as I opened the door, he flew out the door and went home which we think might have been the same yard where the Fake Julius lives.

Yikes, cat confusion!

A Winning Yarn

I like to wear something I’ve made when I go to a yarn event or book signing. I notice that I seem to gravitate toward a certain scarf. I always thought it was because I liked the shades of blue so much, but when I wore it to sign Yarn to Go at Stitches Midwest another reason occurred to me.

Everything I make has some kind of story. Where I bought the yarn, where I got the pattern and what it was like to make. I think it is the story connected with the scarf that makes it my first choice.

I bought the yarn on impulse. I was checking out at a Chicago yarn store and saw it in a bin by the door. I tossed it in with my other purchases because I loved the variations on blue and because there was a pattern for what looked like a simple scarf that appeared crocheted.

It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the receipt that I realized that the one skein of yarn cost $50! I had never spent anything close to that on yarn before. And then I noticed the pattern was for a knitted scarf. An uh oh went off in my head.

Even though I barely knew how to knit, the yarn was so pretty and so expensive, I decided to try. By the way, returning it wasn’t an option because the yarn had been in a hank at the store and they’d spun it into a ball for me and it became non returnable.

Along with being pretty, the silk yarn had all kinds of bumps in it which made it very hard to see the knitted stitches and pretty soon I discovered I was somehow adding stitches and the emerging scarf was all crooked. So I ripped it out and started again, and again, and again once more.

And then sitting with a pile of ripped out yarn, I decided to see if I could turn the pattern into crochet. Crochet takes more yarn than knitting and I worried there might not be enough to make a scarf. I gave knitting one more disastrous attempt and went for broke and started to crochet with it.

Crocheting was easier with the yarn, but the stitches were still hard to see, but I persevered and kept going with my fingers crossed that when I ran out of yarn the scarf wouldn’t end up a weird length. Even crochet was a struggle and I was relieved to be finally done. The length could have been longer and I was so tired of fighting with that yarn I thought I would throw the scarf in the closet with some of the other things I’d made that weren’t exactly stellar achievements. But a funny thing happened. I started to wear it and taking it with me on book related trips without ever thinking why.

Only recently did the reason occur to me. It isn’t the lovely color and the ease of wearing it that makes me choose it. That little scarf represents persistence to me. I tried and tried again, never admitting defeat, just taking a change in direction until I found a way that worked.

Isn’t that the way it works in life?