Happy start to your fiscal first quarter!

Why do we celebrate accounting deadlines with drink, frenetic dancing and acting out in inappropriate fashion under the guise of inebriation? I mean, I understand that everyone needs to mark time in some way, but this one boggles me. It's an accounting deadline, more than anything else, and not a very logically placed one, either.

I blame the Romans.

Anyway, in the new fiscal quarter I will be using this:

to make a tea cozy for my dedicated, hard-working Brown Betty (a 6 cupper, allegedly, although I usually only get two or three American cups out of her). It's only 45 yards, which should just suffice, and when I bought it, I bought it because I couldn't resist that color and shine. It's gorgeous, and I wish you could see it in real life because it's even prettier there. As soon as I had it at home, I realized it would have to be used to clothe my Betty -- mostly because there's not really enough to do anything else with, but also because I'd been contemplating a tea cozy and it was perfect for the job.

Of course, I'll have to improvise a pattern for my Betty Dress (her curves are so glorious, how could she be anything other than a She?) The only pattern I've seen that calls for 45 yards of bulky yarn for a tea cozy is rather sack-like and dumpy, and Betty deserves so much better than that.

Tea cozy making seems more sensible now, too, because I've actually been using her to hold my excess tea before it gets drunk. I've been using a tea towel as a make-shift cozy, but really. Betty's excellent service and utility demands I give her something more fashionable than a house elf in servitude would wear!

Oh, and did you notice the cream blanket on my photographic chair? Why is it there, you ask? Why because I had a week-long visit from the Poop Fairy. Who is the Poop Fairy?

Oh, she's adorable, I'll admit. Particularly that juicy little nose. See?

But she's taken to...informing us when she is displeased by anything by leaving little turds. IN MY CHAIRS. First, she desecrated my desk chair (which is now, post-cleaning, covered with an old throw blanket), but then she went after my recliner! I won't describe that horror for you, but suffice to say I almost chucked her outdoors to fend for herself after that. Yikes.

Oh, I've spilled stuff on my recliner before -- soup, mostly -- but that's different. And if I thought she had a physical complaint that made it difficult for her to find her litter box, that would be different as well.

These were "I'm angry and you need to know it" poops. We're doing her a favor, letting her stay here while her mommy is out of town, and this is the thanks we get. We fed her (extra -- hey, she was hungry!), we watered her, we issued her meds on time. Just because we confined her to one room at night when she would rather wander free and loose.... Oh, well. Water under the bridge. She went home today, anyway. I've warned my aunt to watch her nub end for a while.

Also, I've made use of my favorite of the holiday bounty already:

That's my new French rolling pin -- the one I got from Nieceling and The Phew. I thought they'd heard me say that I wanted one on Cookie Baking Day -- the Thursday before Christmas -- but now I find they've had it in the closet for weeks.

All of which gives me pause. Just goes to show, you have no idea who knows you best until you get a gift like this. Poor kids, knowing me this well must be a trial. :-)

Anywhoo, it was used to make this:

Sugar cream pie. It's wonderful, isn't it, how the Amish can manage to devise a pie recipe so sublime, so perfect in its simplicity when they haven't got electricity or cars or telephones. Then again, perhaps that's precisely how they do it.

I'm off for pie. May the next tax season bring all joy and happiness to your home!