Presenting the Kitten Cam!

Attention:  The kittens are now large enough to escape from their box, so the kitten cam is now offline.  However, if you want to look at adorable pictures of aforementioned kittens, please visit this site.

Recently, my brother adopted a new cat.  Or rather, the neighbours got evicted and left behind a small army of cats as well as a house completely filled with garbage and cat feces (not even joking here....I'm horrified that they had small children living in that kind of an environment).  Anyhow, the humane society carted off most of the felines, but one became friends with my brother and his roommate, so they decided to adopt this friendly little girl.  Not too long after, she surprised them with a litter of kittens.

What is a technologically-minded friend of felines to do, but set up a webcam of course, to have a streaming  live feed of kittens from anywhere on the internet!  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

The Kitten Cam!!!!  (click me!  click me!  I dare you!)

(Note: The Kitten Cam shuts down at night to allow the kittens some sleep, so if you don't see anything, check back in a few hours)

It's so addictive.  I keep it open in the background all day long at work.  The cuteness is liable to cause you to say ridiculous things and giggle at the screen.  Or explode. Much like the following xkcd comic:

 If you live in or around the Ottawa area, two of these adorable little fluffballs still need a home.  You can send any inquiries about adoption to me (sarahluvscats [at] gmail dot com), and I will pass them on to my brother.  

Kitties!

Danger! Danger Will Robinson!

I am in dire peril. Or rather, my finances and my yarn stash are in dire peril - the former at risk of dwindling away to nothing and the latter at risk of multiplying like a pack of Tribbles. This weekend, there are no less than THREE yarn sales in the area. I know, it's horrifying and blissful, all at the same time.

We'll start with the sad news. Our beloved Knitopia is moving away from Langley and back to White Rock. I shall miss you Knitopia! But, moving means a big moving sale which is ongoing from now until the end of September when they move. I already have so much yarn from the LAST Knitopia sale....but it was such a good deal!

Now, the second sale is Three Bags Full's third anniversary sale. They already have their sale list up online. I've got my eye on some of that 50% off lace as well as the malabrigo sock.....

Third, and most exciting (or most dangerous) is a brand new yarn store opening right in my neighbourhood!
There's going to be yarn deals and cake! Wheeee! Oh my poor poor stash. I'm going to need to get a whole nother shelf to house it all after this weekend is done. A yarn addiction is a terrible thing. I'm supposed to be working on my graduating essay this weekend too, so I can actually, y'know, graduate from linguistics. I'm taking a couple days off work to try and get through it since my parents are flying out here for my graduation in November, which means I HAVE to graduate.

Anyhow, if any of you are in vancouver and want to go sale-touring with me, I'm a great yarn enabler :D

Sewing is irresistible to kitties

It's true. Cats have a special internal radar that goes off whenever you get out a brand new bolt of fabric. No matter where they are in the house, nothing will stop them from carrying out their feline duty to walk and roll all over every piece you want to work with. Needless to say, Minou was overjoyed this week when I was overcome by the urge to do some sewing. The sound of the pencil on the fabric and the scissors as they cut put her into pouncing mode, and she was darting in and out, tackling stray fabric folds, and sliding into the pile before running away again. Here's our little sewing helper in action.

I've also started the Wicked sweater, since my last project was making me avoid my knitting. That t-shirt will sit in the hibernation pile until I feel like dealing with it again. The sweater is going much better though. Here's my progress, after using one ball of Cascade 220. I only have two more, so hopefully they'll be enough for the short-sleeved version of the sweater. From here on in it's all boring stockinette, so I'm saving it for working on while I watch anime.

Speaking of anime, one of my most favourite series of all time, is getting a sequel this fall! Very exciting news! If you've never watched Darker Than Black, and you're a fan of sci-fi, you should watch it right now this very moment. It's a show that does what sci-fi does best: it uses a surreal environment to address current issues and ask questions. Star Trek TNG was especially good at this too (although maybe a bit blatant about it at times) where many episodes addressed social justice issues and cultural differences. Darker Than Black is a bit more subtle, and asks what it means to be human. It's an amazing series, and left lots of unanswered questions that I hope we get to explore in the sequel. Check out the trailer on RandomC's blog!

Till next time, dear readers!

Summer fun!

Well, I have finally returned to the blogosphere! Really, I have no good excuses for being away for so long. Perhaps it is that I find blogging a fun form of stress-relief when I'm very busy, so that I forget to do it when I'm unbusy. Anyhow, here's a brief list of what the past couple months have looked like for me:

• visited Ontario for 3 weeks, saw lots of my favourite people, as well as Star Trek on IMAX, opening weekend, with a fellow blogger and good friend (by the way, if you're not hungry, you should see her strawberry shortcake and cinnamon roll pictures this week and I guarantee you'll be starving!)
• Moved into my new house in East Vancouver, complete with fluffy kitty, shaggy dog, and gorgeous view
• Got a library card and read lots of books
• Explored some of the local trails and mountains (I'd say that 2:15 is not bad for a first attempt at the Grouse Grind)
  
• Discovered Wednesday Night Cheap Wings and Music Bingo at the pub near my house
• My guild in Guild Wars had their 3rd Anniversary, and good times were had by all
  
• Spent a lot of time job searching and ended up applying for a second Masters degree, this time at UBC
• Got accepted into the Mechanical Engineering program and started research
• Found a really fantastic local church and began the process of membership there

Yes, I realized that knitting didn't make it onto the condensed list of activities. However, neither did DDR, and I've been putting time into that too! Just not a lot of time. Indeed, knitting has been suffering in neglect lately, and my poor yarn stash is crying out from the closet to be used. I started a knitted t-shirt pattern from a book I borrowed at the library, but the gauge is frustrating me and I've already frogged 3 balls of yarn worth of it. I'm a bit apprehensive because I'm knitting it in cotton, and I've heard that cotton stretches a lot over time. We shall see.

Back when I was in Ontario, I did finish my version of Sartje's Booties. The Presto Change-o however is *cringe* still not finished. At the rate the twins are growing, they may be too big for it by the time I get it finished. But, that just means I'll have an excuse to knit other cute baby clothes in bigger sizes. The twins were absolutely adorable, by the way (although a ridiculous amount of work as well). How adorable? Well, here's a picture of them having a nap with their Mama, as she gets in some long-awaited knitting time.

And the booties:
I also finished the Zelda Toboggan, so here it is modelled by my brother before I mailed it off.



In anime news, I highly recommend you check out Guin Saga, which is airing right now. The premise of a guy with a leopard head might seem kinda weird, but honestly, there are a lot weirder anime premises than that. This series is shaping up to be quite epic, and the highlight for me is that the music is composed by Nobuo Uematsu, who composed most of the music for the Final Fantasy games. A few years back I had the opportunity to attend a concert by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra playing music from Final Fantasy, and it was magnificent.

And now, I shall leave you with some pictures of the cute fluffy creatures at my house.






Plus the 4th of July cupcakes I made with my brother and sister-in-law, and the view from my window :) Till next time, dear readers!