2.18 Second up on the wips smackdown

The next item on the WIPs list is a cat favorite*. They've loved it since it first came in the house as a part of a fleece:

A Corriedale fleece split between three of us, purchased from Whitefish Bay Farm, I wound up with about 2.5 pounds. It was one of the fleeces that shaded from white through grey to a very dark grey. Using the dog comb shown above, I opened the tips of the locks before washing. It made a nice spring project, sitting out on the deck in the back of our rental house in between trips looking for a permanent one when we moved to Rochester in 2004.

Once flicked, I washed it.

After combing the locks again with the dog comb, I spun from the opened up lock, grabbing locks at random to get a nice mix of color:

Once it was all spun up, the spinning project was over, and there the skeins sat. I was in th middle of knitting other things and not ready for a new knitting project. It marinated for quite a while and I couldn't decide what I wanted to knit in a variegated grey. In May of 2006, I gave up on grey and decided maybe a trip into the dyepot would be useful:

It is at this point that one can see the deep interest the cats have taken in the project - skeins covered in cat hair.

Having dyed the skeins, it didn't take too long to decide on a project (only until February, eight months later, ): Wool Peddler's Shawl from Folk Shawls. I've never cared for the flat red the project is shown in, but a variegated red seemed to me to be a possibility. I knit it up and once again it sat. And sat. I was not in the mood for the zillion ends that the small chain plied skeins left me.

When I started looking for WIPs needing finishing, this one leapt to hand. I took it out of the drawer and set it on the counter, where the cats immediately discovered it:

I persevered (this time) and we finally have a completely finished object:

*Actually, it was Bitsy and Snowball, rather than Snowball and Tiger, since this fleece is older than our junior cat, but he moved right into loving this project too. They climb up on it, immediately get that giddy look and start in with the purring and kneading before they fall over and snooze for a while.