The mouse is mightier than the sock

I never told you guys how the socks I knit to and from the Soo turned out.  Pretty sure you were on the edge of your seat wondering whether I got them finished in a week as I'd hoped to - so, in a word: nope!

They did come up to the cottage with me, but once I got working on them the colours started to say 'lake swimming'.  Probably I've been up at the cottage too much lately but see for yourself: there is blue for the water, then brown with green above it for trees, then another blue for the sky, and two sunny shades above that.  Totally lake swimming.

And under the circumstances - having knit them while full of emotions and so on - they felt like they should be a gift.  A perfect gift, in fact, for somebody who likes lake swimming as much as I do.  No brainer, except for the part where the lake swimmer in question has bigger feet than I do, so I had to knit longer than usual and while I was doing that:

MOUSE!

I don't have pictures of the mouse, sorry - couldn't get to my camera in time  You'll just have to picture a tiny grey (brown?) blur racing across the floor of the cottage living room from the sliding glass door to the deck, in the general direction of the cosy wood-burning stove.  Where it paused against the wall beside said stove, facing out and exposing its little white fluffy tummy, and cleaned its paws.

Okay, I know mice are vermin and frankly, after a whole summer of finding mouse poo in various places you do not want to find mouse poo, assuming there is anyplace one does want to find mouse poo, I also consider them outlaws.  Didn't this batch get the message that they only have cottage privileges in the winter??

But... omigosh, CUTEST MOUSE EVER.

Pete was all set to pick it up by its tail and escort it back outside but we couldn't run as fast as it did, so eventually we gave up and pretended it wasn't inside at all.  And maybe it wasn't by then, because there was no new poo lying around in the morning.  You know what there was instead? A ton of steel wool poked into any possible access point around the sliding glass door to the deck.  Oh yeah.  It hasn't kept any more mice out, but at least I showed those furry monsters what I think about them.

You can probably agree that it's difficult to deal with a mouse and knit at the same time, so I am not beating myself up for taking longer than planned to finish the second sock.  After all, you can't wear wool socks to swim in a lake, and it's not cold enough to wear them for anything else yet either, so it's not like they're urgent. 

Still: once they are done they'll be a great winter reminder of the summertime swimming to come, don't you think?

And off I go: have a great Monday, and I'll see you tomorrow!