Wednesday, June 11, 2008

A little bit of paint...

With S taking off for parts colder come August (his semester at Notre Dame), we've decided to commit to finishing several house projects, long planned, this summer. This weekend we made some major progress on our bedroom

That lovely, white ceiling -- newly painted. Those crisp Drifting Blue walls -- newly painted.


Those new-to-us old Chinese scrolls -- newly hung.

This work now represents about 4 days work, but well worth it I think. Of course we still have all the trim to paint (yuck! my least favorite part of the job) but I think we are at least 2/3rds of the way done. I need to pull out some different bedding to color coordinate better but we're please with how this came out. We had a really dark teal color in there before, left by the previous owners, which was a nice enough color but was far too dark for this little room. This light blue opens the space up quite a bit for us and I really like how the dark browns contrast with the whites and blues.

On other fronts, I thought I should also introduce you to the newest member of the household, little black kitty.


Now in the technical sense, he's probably most accurately described as a foster child, or maybe even more accurately as someone who just pops over to visit once in awhile.

Little black kitty has lived in the neighborhood since we moved in three years ago. He's always lived a tough life but I always thought he "belonged" to someone. In the last few weeks, he's started looking more and more malnourished... in fact he's just whittled down to bones. We've had several people leave the neighborhood this summer, some because of foreclosure, and I think perhaps this guy, who is absolutely, 100% an outdoor cat, got left behind.

A few weeks ago he walked through our backyard and I was stunned at how thin he was ... in an innate mom-type fashion I felt compelled to start feeding the guy. We've been looking after him for a bit now and he's started to warm up to me. I'm hoping I can fatten him up a bit more and then get him to the kitty doctor to get a check up. I know he needs some serious care. Of course, he is, to the core, a tom cat, and probably not all that friendly to other cats -- he strikes me as an alpha cat -- but I'm hoping with a bit of fat on his bones and a "home" he'll get sweeter. I was suprised at how quickly he warmed up to me ... I think he must have been someone's pet initially, not a true ferral. If not, I'll be primary caretaker of a mean tom cat. =]

But of course you don't really care about painting and cats do you... you're here for the knitting content?. Well, little knitting progress has been made recently between painting and work demands, but Fantine is coming together fairly quickly.


I'm ready to pick up the sleeves -- I'm going for the 3/4 lengths. I may end up ripping back the bottom border and lengthening the body some more, but I'm going to wait and see how things feel after the sleeves are done. So far, so good though. Love the cable-like detail along the edges and talk about a quick knit. Love it! And bonus... doesn't that look like some Air (project spectrum like, you know)?

p.s. Have you seen the new Knitty yet? It's live! I'm over to take a gander.

4 comments:

turtlegirl76 said...

Aww, I hope little black kitty fattens up and gets sweeter for you! I hate hearing of abandoned animals. Outdoor dwellers or not.

Also - Love the color you painted that room!

meg said...

The new paint looks so fresh and...airy!

What a cute kitty, even if he is a tough little guy. When we moved into our house, we agreed to feed and look out for a feral tomcat that our landlady (who lived here before us) had been taking care of. Kitty didn't like the change in caretakers though, and he took off after a few weeks. More than a year later, he showed up on our front porch, fat and fluffy and wearing a collar. I think there's hope for all cats, no matter how wild. They just have to be the one to choose their human, and it looks like this one chose you. :)

Hilary said...

Your bedroom looks gorgeous! Love that blue paint. You have inspired me...

Linda said...

Poor Kitty, I hope he gets fitter soon. Your decorating looks great, its hard work isn't it! We won't get around to ours for a long time.