The Bluestocking Women’s Pub - Where Everybody Knows Your Username

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome to the Bluestocking Arms, the home of good company, excellent drinks and delicious cakes which magically have no irksome contents like gluten or sugar or calories or the kind of alcohol that causes problems - but you wouldn't know

Food and drink are served by a keen staff of gerbils, and other animals such as capybaras, quokkas, etc., also fulfil vital roles, while looking cute AF.

New Bluestockingers always welcome.

I had a boy cat many years ago from a kitten.

We wanted to have an indoor car, but he would sit by the door yowling. I'd ask him where he was going and he'd look at me and say "Out". And I'd ask, and when will you be back, and he'd say "when I'm back". And I'd say, you'll come running when I bang a fork against your bowl. And he'd look at me as if I was just a boring old fart (I was 25).

And then he'd come running when I banged a fork against his bowl.

I can't work out if I'm bored, desperate or ingenious.

I have bamboo skewers in the kitchen so I can start relearning how to knit!

I warn you, it may be am abject failure.

I thought my first cat was a picky eater, until my lovely elderly neighbour told me how well she & my cat got on: she'd got the cat her own little mat to sleep on, & my neighbour would cook a bit of fish or chicken breast just for the cat.🙄No wonder a packet of cat food didn't cut the mustard, when the cat came home.

Pure genius! You might want to flatten the tips a tiny bit, to avoid skewering your fingers?

I once went to this arty thing where you were supposed to contribute to the piece. I wound up knitting video tape with a pair of biros. @MyrtleLion using skewers for practice is a brilliant idea.

If the skewers prove too slender/pointy, maybe chopsticks would work - the Japanese sort ideally.

Brilliant!

Chopsticks also work, esp if they are the enamelled coloured ones!

Doh, just seen Errol has already suggested it!

Speaking of cats, someone I know had an enthusiastic feline hunter. One day he lugged home a hare that he had stunned, but not killed. The hare, once dropped on the kitchen doormat for the Mistress to admire, promptly revived and then played Wall of Death around the kitchen units, scattering bins and brooms behind it, until someone managed to open the outside door and it found its way back into the countryside.

I trust the cat was suitably contrite for the required 0.000005 of a second?

I bet the cat was just pissed off. They do that much better than contrition.

I assumed not, Boiled - I didn't even bother to ask.

After all, ours never bothered to apologise for the live rat she dumped in the kitchen. (This was the cat prior to the window-whacker. She did hunt.)

I had one who liked to catch frogs. Not to eat, but to set them down, watch them hop around for a bit, pick them up again, rinse and repeat. He thought everyone else found this as amusing as he did.

It was much funnier when he found a hedgehog and turned round with a pure expression of "what the hell is this thing?"

Mine always managed to look contrite, but by the time he'd blinked and the rat was under the cooker a more 'nothing to do with me' look would have descended.

Yeah, I'm not being sold the idea of getting another cat. I'll stick to Brains and Batshit.

I have learned the long tail cast on!

This was my third twelvety billionth go. A bit uneven, but mostly fine. I think.

Loving the cat related chat. I had a Bengal called Poppy but as runt of the litter she was very small. However she was a voracious hunter often tackling larger birds such as pigeons and she was very very chatty. What she lacked in size was made up for by the noise! She lived to be 23 which is a great age for the breed. Lots of memories of a hugely characterful cat.❤

I've been looking at wool and now I'm fretting. I'll likely just do a plain square, I only know how to change colours if I'm knitting stripes. I'll try to do something more interesting than stocking stitch though. How many balls of wool will it take to do a square? Does anyone know? The website I've looked at does a lovely shade of blue called 'storm blue', which seems appropriate...but is it!? 🆘️

The only time I've ever seen a cat look impressed by a human achievement was decades ago, when Penelope walked in on my mother preparing a sack of ca 30 wood pigeons for the freezer (donated by a farmer neighbour who had shot them, rather than stalked them and pounced).

@lcakethereforeIam - I find I can get 2 plain stocking stitch squares plus the petals for a flower or two out of a 50g ball of the Drops merino yarn.

You could do a seed stitch square - with an even number of stitches.

Row 1 K1, P1, repeat to end.

Row 2 P1, K1, repeat to end.

Repeat rows 1 & 2 until you have 6” of knitting, and cast off.

Rice stitch - again, an even number of stitches:

Rows 1&2 K1, P1, repeat to end.
Rows 3&4 P1, K1, repeat to end

Repeat rows 1-4 u til you have 6”, then cast off.

A storm blue shade sounds perfect.

I crochet and can usually get two squares out of a ball of Drops Merino, with a little bit left over.

Thank you all for the welcome yesterday, what a lovely corner of Mumsnet this is.

Please don’t fret, @lcakethereforeIam - every square is just as valuable, I promise.

I neglected to greet both you and @steppemum - I was out all evening.

I'm pretty sure that my WoolWarehouse order includes a ball of Storm Blue - it was such a lovely colour that I couldn't resist it. It should arrive tomorrow, so I can crack on over the weekend.

Hello stepmum, i identify as a hedgehog here, because i want to be included (on AI)

And i am, well weird.

Yes there is a hole.
Yes the tension is all over the place.
Yes it's wonky.

But it's knitting!
And I'm getting the hang of it!