Wisp hits a snag

I write about my cats here more than I might actually like. I don't WANT to be crazy cat knitting lady, you know. It feels as if that title automatically ages me thirty years and I should hit the local furniture shop for a rocking chair. But sometimes, they make it very difficult to NOT talk about them. Behold exhibit A:

Kidsilk Haze, as it looked when I first opened the package. The colourway is Liqueur, and it is gorgeous.

I was in London for a few days for a conference, and brought the yarn along with me, hoping to knit on the train (a highly unsuccessful effort, by the way -- lurching trains + laceweight yarn = brand new levels of knitting frustration). When I returned home at the end of the last day, exhausted from a long week of seminars and trains (and, let's be honest, a fair bit of wine, as well), I dropped the bag by the front door. This was my first mistake. The second mistake was not noticing that I'd left the side pocket, the one holding the yarn, unzipped.

Now, you have to understand one thing about my house. It is quite large. Much larger than a single person actually needs, and far too big to ever keep clean. This does not mean I am minted, sadly; the house is terribly run down, with electrics constantly exploding and enough peeling paint to ensure that I will contract lead poisoning one of these days. It was actually the cheapest house I could find when I was looking, which was its primary appeal. However, it IS a big house, and that is the important part to this story.

About an hour after returning home, I noticed that a skein of Kidsilk Haze was by the foot of my bed. On the third floor. For one moment, I dared to hope that it was the second skein, the one I did not bring to London, but I knew that one was tucked safely away in a drawer. This was the skein in my bag. And, sadly, it was not the entire skein, as the yarn clearly was heading out the door. I picked it up, and began following the trail: out the bedroom, down the stairs, to the landing, down more stairs, on to the second floor, around the corner, across the next landing, down a second flight of stairs, across the dining room, through the doorway, and back across the front room of the house, all the way to where I first dropped my bag. Ava had managed to carry the skein through the entire house, missing only the kitchen in her travels, and leaving a mohair trail in her wake.

The result:

The pattern for Wisp says you can get by with one skein. I'm hoping that one and a half will do the trick.

Of course, even as I try to knit, Ava keeps grabbing the yarn in her mouth and attempting to run off with it. It is, apparently, hers. I have defended the knitting enough to produce the first inch of the wrap:

So far, I like the project a lot. Sadly, today I must clean in preparation for going out of town tomorrow, so its progress will wait another week.

But I am locking it in an impenetrable safe to protect it from the feline menace.