Thursday 24th November - averting catastophes; the slow cooker, the cat and the knitting

 Here's my Plan of Attack - I always include things that I can tick off straight away - doesn't everyone?

Although maybe I shouldn't have ticked off  'BLOG' yet as I am in the process of doing it.

This is an attempt to go paperless - I have used something - an 'app' maybe, called Bamboo, on my tablet as I  tablet to write up the plan. Although there isn't much point in going paperless for this as I have most of a pad of 'plan of attack' post-its left.

The beef goulash was supposed to be for today's lunch, but the pot is fuller than the 2/3rds recommendation so I want to cook it on low for 6-8 hours instead of high for 3-4 hours in the hope that it will not bubble up and over and everywhere. We shall see if this tactic is successful, and in the meantime eat tommorow's lunch (fish) today.

The Catastrophe - you may remember that McCavity (our nearly 20-year-old cat)went through a phase of falling off things a few months ago. She's not to steady on her legs these days. One of the first places she fell from was the back of the settee. This was a favourite perch all through last winter, as there is a radiator behind the settee. So it was a little alarming to discover this when I walked into the sitting room;

(that strange brown thing by her head is a small teddy bear with a magnet in its back.)

We fetched down this ancient rug - I know it is over 50 years old because I took it to boarding school when I started there back in 1971 - boarders all had to bring a travel rug from home to put on their beds. And an eiderdown. I was very glad of both, indeed I used to wear my PE sweater, socks and dressing gown in bed as well. No central heating back in them thar days.

The rug needed going over with the vacuum cleaner to remove a few layers of dust, during which process I discovered that the other side of the rug is mostly holes! However, one folded, it has made a fairly solid pad to fill the gap between the settee and the radiator.

I am engaged in some rather sweaty sweater surgery at the moment; It is  possible to remove the cast on edge of a knittted hem - say a cuff, but entails picking up stitches all around the knitting, and then - oh horrors - CUTTING through stitches between your picked up stitches and the ribbing. I have embarked upon this Awfully Big Adventure in order to reknit the ribbing in such a fashion that it won't curl up the whole time. Fear not, if you were planning to join the Advent Cowl Knit-Along - I am doing all of this so that you won't have to! 

The white blocks are pencil rubbers which I have stuck the ends of the needles into to prevent stitches disappearing while I am wrangling the rest it. I am unravelling the cut piece of yarn and should end up with all the main stitches happily on the needle, ready to be knitted into the new ribbing.