#saoirsethecat

[bethanyactually]

Here's that crocheted hue shift afghan that was being a pain in the butt last year, finally complete. The cats inspected it and approved, so I sent it off to my friend and she loved it. And even though I had to redo three sections before I was done, I'm very happy with how it turned out! 🌈💛

[Image Description:

Three photos of a rainbow-colored crocheted Hue Shift blanket with a thick black border, laid out neatly on a hardwood floor. In the first photo, a gray tuxedo cat is standing on the blanket, reaching out with her front paws to stretch. In the third photo, a larger gray tuxedo cat has joined the first, and they're both standing, one looking up at the camera while the other looks off to the side.

end ID.]

[bethanyactually]

here are my cats

*slams back a bourbon whiskey* listen mate I’ve been here for all kinds of ridiculous tumblr meltdowns I was here when Yahoo took over I was here for dashcon I was here when the notes disappeared I was here back when those superwholock chain posts of fucking up non believers were taken seriously and through every single one I have done fuck all. I have not changed a goddang thing. I waited for the end and the end never came. I do not plan on changing my status quo now. either things will go on as they always have and in six months time I’ll be here watching staff announce that anyone with over 1000 followers are being monitored or I will have been physically deleted from this wonderful stupid fucking website and either way I’m gonna go out posting pictures of my cat

[bethanyactually]

Here are some cute photos of my cats for anyone who might need photos of cute cats today. 💛

[bethanyactually]

We unexpectedly lost our weird, wonderful little stove-sitter Saoirse this morning. She was fine, and then she wasn’t and there was nothing that could be done except make her comfortable and say goodbye. We’re all pretty heartbroken. 💔

Hug your loved ones and give your pets kisses on their little heads, if appropriate. 🩶🩶🩶

[bethanyactually]

Cinna, inspecting the gifts. Saoirse, being a weirdo. Merry happy, despite it all. Here’s to a peaceful, safe 2024 for everyone. 🎄❤️✨

[bethanyactually]

this is Cinna. he is sweet and affectionate and likes being underneath things. he has a Very Important Routine to follow, don’t try to convince him to be spontaneous, it will not work. 

this is Saoirse. she’s tiny but eats twice as much as her huge brother. she doesn’t ask for pets, she demands pets. this is her kaomoji form (ง •̀_•́)ง

it has been a long week and i am very tired

pls show me your cats

[bethanyactually]

I crocheted a cat sofa! I think both the cats like it.

(I bought the pattern here.)

[bethanyactually]

in these trying times, may I offer you some cat photos?💕

[bethanyactually]

6 & 42!

6. If you traveled, where did you go?

Do you realize what you have asked? I don’t know if I even realize. Let’s see, where all did I go this year:

Washington DC, where the stars aligned and I met @pools-of-venetianblue and @lovebeyondmeasure for the first time and it was just as awesome as we knew it would be, and also got the chance to see my dear friends @aspiringpolymath and @geneeste for the first time in a couple years.

Omaha, my hometown, where we enjoyed visiting lots of family and friends for a few weeks this spring. (While we were there, we also hit Lincoln because Annalie wanted to visit the University of Nebraska History Museum for her birthday, and North Bend because family.)

Ramstein-Miesenbach, a couple hours north of where we live. We weren’t doing anything exciting there, just an overnight trip because my husband had work stuff at the air base, and we thought having dinner at P.F. Chang’s sounded good.

Amsterdam, and we actually drove there so we hit Köln and Utrecht and a bunch of other places on the way. When we got there, we met up with @pepperf and @annerbhp, who variously came from the UK and the US, and with Haarlem as our base we spent several delightful days eating and sightseeing our way through the city (and Edam and Marken while we were at it). From there, my husband and kids went back home, and Pepper and Annerbhp and I took the train to…

Bruges, which is a fucking fairyland. No seriously. It was lovely, and I drank so much beer and ate so much delicious food and saw so much art and walked on so many cobbled and picturesque streets. When it was time to leave, we headed to Brussels where we had a mini adventure walking through an open-air market and accidentally wandering into a restaurant that may or may not have been a front for some kind of organized crime gang. Then we took a Eurostar train through the Channel Tunnel (my first time doing that!), headed for…

Oxford, where we saw a few sights and shopped for books and petted lots of cats, but mostly just kind of wound down and enjoyed hanging out. Oh, we also spent a day in London to go see Tom Burke and Hayley Atwell in Rosmersholm, which was very good.

Karlsruhe, which is only about an hour away, but we went to the zoo there for the first time with friends, which was fun.

Heidelberg, also only about an hour away, also kind of a fucking fairyland, but does not get called that in any movies so far as I know, to meet up with friends.

Burg Hohenzollern, a castle about 45 minutes south of where we live, owned by the descendants of the Prussian royal family, where we’d been before and actually went twice this year, with different friends visiting from out of town.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a Bavarian town with a well-preserved medieval walled city, where we visited the Kriminalmuseum and gaped at weapons and various historical punishment and torture devices, and took a Nightwatchman tour.

Oxford and London again when my mom was visiting from the States this past fall. She’s a HUGE fan of many, many British detectives in book and TV form, and had always wanted to visit England, so that was a lot of fun. We hit most of the fangirl sites she wanted to see, with @pepperf graciously playing tour guide for us, and also went to see Hamilton while we were there.

Naples and environs, where we visited a friend over Thanksgiving weekend. We hit the Anfiteatro Flavio in Pozzuoli and spent a day at the Parco Archeologico di Ercolano—aka Herculaneum, one of the cities that was preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. We also spent a day in…

Rome, where we did not have enough time to see everything, so we had to pick and choose. We hit the Vatican City Museums and saw the Sistine Chapel, stood in line for 45 minutes to see Saint Peter’s Basilica including Michaelangelo’s Pietà, walked by the excavation site of the Roman Forum, and ate gelato across the street from the Colosseum before hopping on a train back to Naples.

Whew. I think that’s all the traveling we did this year. 

42. What are you most proud of accomplishing?

I’m definitely proud of the weather blanket I’ve crocheted this year. I started on January 1st and crocheted one stripe per day, with the color based on what the high temperature was in Stuttgart that day. Here’s a photo of what it looked like at the end of November, with bonus cats: 

In December so far, I’ve weaved in all the ends (that took for-freaking-ever) and crocheted about nine days’ worth of stripes, but I ran out of light turquoise and I definitely need more of that color, so I’m currently waiting for a knitpicks order to come in before I can finish.

Thanks, Hannah!

want to send me some end of year asks?

[bethanyactually]

I CAN’T BELIEVE I DIDN’T EVEN ADD A PICTURE OF THE ACTUAL CATS, please excuse this oversight and accept this offering:

(Little cat on top is Saoirse, big cat is Cinna. She’s the fierce one, he’s the laid-back one.)

Hey Annie! I'm Bethany, which is kinda obvious from my URL, I guess. :) My favorite color is sunflower yellow, followed by orange, turquoise, and grass green. Fave ships are Jeff/Annie from Community, Sam/Jack from SG1, Logan/Veronica, Bellamy/Clarke, et al. (Fave spaceships are Moya and the Millennium Falcon.) My favorite ice cream flavor is strawberry. I have two cats, grey tuxedos (a brother and a sister) called Cinna and Saoirse.

Oh, yay! I wasn’t really expecting anyone to respond to that one - such a delightful thing to come home and find you had. :)  

Sunflower yellow is in my top three colors, after green and lavender.  Despite Pepper’s most noble efforts, I didn’t get fannish about Community, but I did quite enjoy Annie and Jeff. (Troy and Abed were by far my faves, though.)  I also adore Sam/Jack but have not watched the other shows. (As far as other ships, I agree on the Millenium Falcon but I only watched a handful of Farscape so I’d have to go with Enterprise.  Actually, no. I’d go with Voyager.)

Strawberry ice cream is yummy.  I love the names you gave your cats.  Any stories behind the naming process?

[bethanyactually]

here, have some pictures of my cats being cute

[bethanyactually]

crocheting update: finished! sort of.

I finished it a couple of evenings ago, well before my self-imposed Halloween deadline, but I actually ran out of black yarn about six inches from the end of the last border round. I finished it in navy blue, and you can’t even really tell unless you look closely (I think in this picture, that bit of the border is on the left side somewhere) but I was so annoyed about running out of black and then not being able to find ANY OTHER BLACK YARN in my house that I just stuffed the blanket back in its bag and ignored it for a little while. :P 

today I ordered one more skein of that black, plus some other yarn I need to finish my next project (it’ll take a week or two to get here so I won’t make my deadline on a technicality, but whatever, it’s close enough). then I took some photos.

this blanket got a stamp of approval from both cats and Elliora, who said, “It’s so pretty! The brightness of the colors against the black and blue makes it look like fireworks!” 

and last night I wanted to crochet but didn’t have another project to work on yet (since I needed to order more yarn for the other blanket I want to finish), so I made a potholder with some cotton yarn:

I think it worked---I can feel that itch to crochet again, for the first time in a long while. I think I’m gonna start a temperature blanket in the new year. :)

[bethanyactually]

crocheting update:

this photo that I took yesterday is already outdated! I’m done with 7 of 9 rows now, and have rewatched two seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender and watched one and a half seasons of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.

[bethanyactually]

@pepperf is in my house, snuggling my cats!

[bethanyactually]

the many faces of Cinna, the mild curiosity of Saoirse

[bethanyactually]

my cats are majestic dorks and I love them.