[id. A twitter post by @/Bennieeexyz
Jury duty letter came addressed to my cat.
Not a mistake. "Felix Martinez" - that's his full name according to his vet records.
My last name. His first name. Somehow he's a registered voter now.
Called the county clerk.
Me: My cat got summoned for jury duty.
Clerk: Is the name correct on the summons?
Me: Yes, but he's a cat.
Clerk: Is Felix Martinez a legal resident of this county?
Me: He's a legal cat.
Clerk: Sir, if the name matches our records, he needs to appear or file an exemption.
Me: He can't file anything. He has paws.
Clerk: You can file on his behalf.
Me: Under what exemption? There's no box for "is a cat."
Clerk: (pause) Check "unable to serve due to medical reasons."
Me: What's the medical reason?
Clerk: He's a cat.
Me: That's not a medical condition.
Clerk: It is if it prevents him from serving.
Sent in the form. Got rejected two weeks later.
"Insufficient documentation. Please provide medical professional's statement."
Took the letter to my vet.
Me: I need you to write that my cat can't do jury duty.
Vet: Why is your cat summoned for jury duty?
Me: Excellent question. No good answer.
Vet: This is the weirdest request I've gotten.
Me: Can you just write that he's medically unfit to serve?
Vet: On what grounds?
Me: He's a cat.
Vet: (started typing) "Patient is unable to serve due to species-related limitations including inability to speak, read, or comprehend legal proceedings."
Me: Perfect.
Sent it in. Got another rejection.
"Summons is mandatory. Failure to appear will result in contempt of court."
My roommate thought this was hilarious.
Roommate: Felix is going to jail.
Me: This is serious.
Roommate: Bring him to court. See what happens.
Decided that was actually the only option left.
Day of jury duty, put Felix in his carrier. Brought the entire paper trail of rejection letters.
Checked in at the courthouse.
Clerk: Name?
Me: Felix Martinez.
Clerk: (looked at the cat carrier) Is that Felix?
Me: Yes.
Clerk: (long stare) He's a cat.
Me: I've been saying that for six weeks.
Clerk: Why didn't you file an exemption?
Me: I filed three. All rejected.
Showed her the letters. She read through them, expression shifting from confusion to disbelief.
Clerk: Someone rejected the veterinary documentation?
Me: Twice.
Clerk: (called her supervisor over) You need to see this.
Supervisor read everything. Looked at Felix. Looked at me.
Supervisor: How did a cat get registered to vote?
Me: You tell me.
Supervisor: This is a data error.
Me: Took you six weeks to figure that out.
They dismissed Felix immediately. Apologized for the inconvenience.
Supervisor: We'll remove him from the voter registry.
Me: Appreciate it.
Supervisor: (pause) Out of curiosity, how would he have voted?
Me: Probably whatever party supports universal treats.
Got a formal apology letter a week later and a voter registration card.
For me this time. Apparently I wasn't registered, but my cat was.
Roommate: Felix committed voter fraud.
Me: Felix committed nothing. He's innocent.
Roommate: That's what they all say.
Felix is sleeping on the jury summons now.
Fitting end to his legal career.
end id]
there’s sixteen Colorado counties that their most searched was “wolf furry”, plus thirty-odd counties (not counting either Arapahoe or any of the ones marked here as “Insufficient Data”) which may well have had plenty of searches for “wolf furry”, just fewer than for whatever they’re labeled here
and “skunk furry” searches in Arapahoe County outnumbered “wolf furry” searches in the entire state of Colorado
Knitting finished as of last night! Still need to weave in a few ends, wash, and block.
Was aiming for 48” x 60”, came out 39” x 60” so far, but I’m hoping to be able to block it to a little wider and I’m ok losing a few inches of length for that
Thank you so much for all the nice things everyone has said about this blanket! Unfortunately, I do not have a pattern, so much as I have several patterns and some back-of-the-napkin style math notes that won’t make sense to anyone but me - but I do have a picture of this planning piece (since frogged to reuse the yarn in the blanket itself.)
As a few people in the notes pointed out, the dragon pattern is Tahesha the Dragoness by Ina Wendrock
Skill level: Advanced cable knit / Zopfmuster für Fortgeschrittene
But it's on a plain reverse stockinette background, and I wanted this as part of a complex cable afghan. It's going to be a wedding gift for two friends in my DnD group, so I knew I wanted it big enough that two people could reasonably share it while watching TV together on a couch, and for a dragon to still be visible when folded and draped over the back of a couch or chair, in case that's how they store it. So I knew I was committing myself to knitting 5 dragons (one in the center and one in each of the four corners), and figuring out myself how to plop the dragon in to a larger cable blanket pattern.
Back in November, I bought the dragon pattern and knit a test version of it so I could see how it worked and measure the dimensions. (You can see from the curled up edges that I did this before I found the part in the pattern notes where Ina Wendrock helpfully informs us that the dragon is knit over 45 initial stitches, to help us add it to our own projects, but ah well.) Then I started trying to figure out the other cables.
I knew I wanted some traditional cables so that it had an heirloom look to it (but with dragons), but I thought that the dragons would look too out of place if everything else looked copy-pasted from a classic fisherman’s sweater. Fortunately, there are a number of knitting designers right now doing cool things with trying to make cables that resemble Celtic knot motifs, so I went to the public library and borrowed a bunch of cable knitting books and started bookmarking what I liked. My favorite patterns were all coming from this book:
Mention the phrase ?cable knitting,? and most people?knitters and non-knitters alike?envision textured ropes, twists, and braids winding up
Which looks like it's out of print now, but wasn't in December and I was able to ask for and receive it for Christmas. (Designer Melissa Leapman's ravelry store is here in case anyone wants to check it out):
I narrowed my bookmarked cables down to patterns that had 1) an odd number of stitches; 2) a central "crossover" cable in multiple parts of the pattern so that I could "open" it up to create the medallions that the dragons would sit in; and 3) a stitchcount of less than 45, by enough that I'd have room to drop a traditional cable on either side. My favorite two would then be the center cables for the central dragon panel and the left & right dragon panels (when I wasn't doing the dragons), and then I decided on a very simple c4b twist between the panels and a tight 5-rib cable braid on the edges. I loved the first two patterns from the book that I tested and didn't have to try any of my runner-up bookmarks - but if you zoom in on the picture, you can see that for the traditional cables around the Melissa Leapman cable for the center panel, I tried and discarded a honeycomb cable and an Xs and Os variant before deciding on the one that I'm not actually sure of the name of that made it into the final pattern. For the side panels, I had thought it might be nice to incorporate a hearts cable since it was for a wedding blanket. I'm not sure how traditional these heart cables are, but I've seen them unattributed in more than one published pattern from different sources, and they're published in a number of cable pattern guides online. They worked next to the Melissa Leapman cable I wanted for the side panels, so they went in the pattern without me trying anything else.
While practicing the dragon cable, I had noticed that many of the cables started with an increase, so on the back of one of my chart print-outs, I graphed a rough plan for what I had decided to put where in terms of the traditional and Leapman cables that would go around the dragons, and numbered out the stitches if I worked the first cables in each pattern as increases instead of cables to mimic the start of the dragons. Then I added up the total number of stitches and cast on, and it worked surprisingly well! After completing one repeat of the side-panel central cables, I started "opening" up the circles where the dragon would be through improvisation (the left and right panels that were parallel always matched each other because I was doing the same thing in each row - other than that, I wound up doing it slightly differently every time, and that was ok. They look the same enough.)
I had planned to either leave it un-bordered or add the full mitered border that Ina Wendrock (who designed the dragon pattern) has on her store depending on how it worked up, but after I'd knit enough to see what it looked like, I decided that the mitered border was overkill, but it did need something, so when I finally got to the end I did an I-chord bind-off and then went back and picked up stitches along the cast-on to do an I-chord bind-off there too. If I had it to do over again, I might have done a folded hem on each side instead, but we'll see how the I-chord blocks.
So, that's how you make the dragon blanket. Either get the patterns I mentioned and try to duplicate, or just buy the dragon and add your favorite cables for the rest!
[Sorry I'm not more help, but I cannot stress enough - I did not write any of this down as I went.]
[[For the patterns that were from the Continuous Cables book, I used panel 10 from page 136 for the center and panel 27 from page 146 for the sides]]
i must not get takeout. takeout is the wallet-killer. takeout is the little-death that brings total obliteration. i will face the kitchen, fridge, and pantry. i will make choices about what to cook and then execute them. when hunger is gone there will be nothing. only i will remain.
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