I was poking around on Ravelry, and as I’m wont to do once in a while, I started clicking through friends’ friends and their friends and I somehow ran into this:

“Ooo la la! Your cat will be très sophistiqué sporting this chic beret. The swirling decrease and tiny nubbin atop this hat sets this cat beret apart from the rest.

“Don’t be surprised when your cat dons the beret and demands a cigarette and coffee for breakfast.” (spindlesandspices.blogspot.com)

Awesome. That, of course, led me to what might be the greatest, most impractical, and guaranteed to piss off your pet creation ever.

Click the picture!

I love Ravelry.

I make New Year’s resolutions every year. And then I forget about them. Last year, I made some and wrote them all down and hung them up. I took them down to move, and then I spilled a glass of water on the list. And quite frankly, I have not given them another thought since. Even though my fiber-y, fabric-y resolutions have been sitting here the whole time (for the record, while I made some progress on 3 and 5, number 4 is the only one I completed; let’s not even talk about 1 and 2).

Anyway, it’s a little early for New Year’s resolutions, so I’m going to call this my Thanksgiving resolution. I was walking to the library earlier today, carrying a book that was insanely overdue (the clerk at the counter gasped and said $4 when I asked how much my fine was). And it occurred to me that for someone whose professional aspirations are centered around a library, I’ve read shockingly few books this year. I didn’t even finish the overdue one I took back.

So my resolution is to read 25 books before Thanksgiving 2010. That’s 25 grown-up length books. Much as I like kids’ picture books, I’m not going to count them. It’s not a crazy lot of reading – only about 2 books a month – but it’s a lot more than I’ve done recently.

If you have any favorites you think I should read, shout them out here or lend me a copy. I’ll give just about anything a try. In fact, maybe this will be the year I finally read Harry Potter.

And so I don’t forget about it or spill water on it, there’s a new page for the books I read this year right here.

Last Saturday, the group I knit with organized a trip to Lorna’s Laces (thank you!) – big groups can arrange to go in on a Saturday to wander around the dye studio and purchase mill ends. And purchase I did. I only went $10 over my allotted budget, and exercised what I consider an impressive level of restraint by putting a few skeins back on the tables. So I only came home with this:

The colors are off; that orange-ish one is actually a camel color. A new camera is definitely on my want list for when I'm working again.

I think all but the dark purple and the camel color are going to be knitted into something similar to this sweater (Ravelry link). I’m not decided on the fate of the other two skeins.

This is all part of a behavior I’ve been having a harder and harder time suppressing. As my unemployment benefits get closer to expiring, I feel an urgent need to hoard yarn. As if the year’s supply I have laid away will not be enough to sustain me, and one day Dan will find me huddled in the corner of the closet surreptitiously unraveling his sweaters, hissing and swatting at him like a cat when he tries to intervene.

I buy yarn to keep Dan and his sweaters safe. Yeah. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I am, I believe, one of the last holdouts. One of the last to take a stand. One of the last to say “NO! I don’t need to commit my time to anything else!”

I am, of course, speaking of Facebook. Everybody has a Facebook page. I once wasn’t invited to a party because I wasn’t on Facebook. Some people won’t share their email addresses – instead, I’m told “Facebook me!”

Now my improv friends want to start a fan page on Facebook. Le sigh.

Tell me, Facebook people: do I really need to have a Facebook page? I joined MySpace when all my friends insisted I should be on MySpace and now everyone has abandoned their MySpace pages and is insisting I join Facebook. My professional association insists I need Facebook and Twitter to survive and be relevant. In fact, I once paid $35 to attend a dinner and listen to someone tell me that for an hour.

Can I continue to dodge the beast?

Nah, I’m pretty sure it’s not swine flu, but I feel like poo. Methinks I got myself a case of strep. I’m doubtful that I’ll be working on my coat this week, but I did get the fleece cut out over the weekend.

And I started on my sweater for NaKniSweMo (a knitting take on NaNoWriMo) – garter stitch is great for tv watching (and, I have discovered, for fevers). It’s a good thing I chose Everybody Knows. I’ve already finished half the body. And I still had time to drink a pot of tea and nap.

I’m plugging away on my coat still, and in the meantime I’ve been virtually thumbing through my Google Reader. Three things I have been loving:

1. Craftster has been profiling some really cool Halloween costume that members have been making. A personal favorite: an entire collection of Where the Wild Things Are costumes.

2. Sew, Mama, Sew! has devoted the month of October to ’scrap busting’ – tons of ideas and tutorials for using even the tiniest scraps leftover from sewing projects.

3. I’ve been reading Megan Nielsen’s blog for a while; love her designs and she’s got some fun, easy tutorials – I set aside one of my stash fabrics for a grandpa cardigan (doesn’t that look so comfy?). Anyway, she’s giving away a dress. Yes, a dress! A beautiful dress that just happens to be about my size … how interesting …