in which i nearly have a stroke . . .

I was busy in the kitchen today, making some butternut squash soup in honor of Autumn officially starting tomorrow (and it was a lot more labor intensive than I thought; the squash had no interest in being chopped into cubes), and as I poured the final ingredients into the slow cooker, I glanced into the living room and saw this:

Yes, that would be Dory, snuggled up with my Grape Henley. Note the paw stretched out on the fabric. In fact, let's take a closer look:

I'm sure you can understand the panic this induced; I paced around the living room, whimpering and muttering to myself, pondering the best way to remove the cat. Because, as evidenced by her unsheathed claws, it's not as simple as just picking her up. Had I tried that, she would've dug in and held on for dear life. No, I had to figure out how to make her think that getting up off my precious, precious knitting was her choice. I opted for annoyance--not the kind that would make her jump up and dash off quickly, but a more subtle annoyance, which ultimately led her to sit up, reign those claws back in, and twitch her tail in a prissy fashion, making it easier for me to reach around and gently enclose her paws/claws in my hands, lift her up and place her on another, knitting-free section of the sofa. Success! Henley is safe and sound. For now, anyway.

I've been spending much of my knitting time in the last week knitting up a few little items to include in my Falling for Ewe spoilee's package, but I did managed to finish the garter rib for the body of the Tangled Yoke Cardigan:

So far, so good.

I also went ahead and ordered a second set of size 4 needle tips so I can keep working on both of these projects without constantly swapping out the tips. And Knit Picks had some Imagination in stock, finally, so . . . at least I managed to place a relatively small-sized order this time, rather than greedily popping $50 worth of yarn I didn't need into my cart to get the free shipping.