I finally started spring planting last week. We had several nights when the cats were reluctant to come in, so I planted spinach, peas, beets, turnips, lettuce and Swiss chard. The frosty nights returned afterwards, but they're clearly weakening. It's time to start setting the cabbage and broccoli seedlings on the terrace during the day to harden them for transplanting.

The birds and squirrels have been probing the newly planted rows, looking for seeds to eat. The cats haven't been as diligent at chasing these intruders as in the past, preferring to watch them from a comfortable spot. Old age is gently slowing them down, making beds and food bowls more appealing than outdoor life.

They still manage to get into trouble indoors, though. I caught Mischief playing with my knitting and yelled at him. He had been chewing on the yarn and promptly leapt from the bed at a full run. Unfortunately, the yarn was caught around his muzzle and reeled out of the skein while he fled like a fish on the hook.

I grabbed for the knitting first to keep him from pulling the stitches loose, then grabbed the skein to stop the yarn. The yarn popped loose, leaving about forty feet doubled in his wake. I reeled it in quickly before he could return to chase it back down the hall. He was not the least bit ashamed of himself, but he did at least go outside for a while.

He is very fond of kneading the skeins with his paws before lying down on them and any knitting long enough to add to his comfort. That is standard cat training for their humans, to lie down on anything that is taking our attention away from the cat. It didn't help that I made them some knitted cat toys when they were kittens. As long as I played with them using the toys, they would seize the toys and carry them around. Once they discovered that I wasn't really playing with the toys for myself, they lost interest in the toys and transferred their attention to the crafting in progress.

I've got the sweater box packed and ready to go. I started another sweater in a size 10 because I had lots of that color of yarn, so it will likely take a while to finish. I'm being tempted by yet another knit-along project, but I'm two projects behind for that forum as it is. Still, it is an especially pretty scarf and I'm sorely tempted to get some fancy yarn and try it. It's unfortunate that fabric.com discontinued the yarn section, so I can't use that as an excuse to drool over those pages with a bit of this and that ending up in the shopping cart. There is a fancy yarn sale at a local craft store, though . . .

Well, I really shouldn't succumb to that. I've been signing up for some email tutorials on computer programming and crafting to improve my skills, and I'm behind on them as well. There's so much good stuff one can learn about available online, and I'd love to go through lots of it. The online libraries are steadily increasing their collections, too. I'm still going to the public library occasionally for books, but the selection of online materials is appreciable.

I can get into quite a bit of trouble indoors myself as long as the computer is online. A crafting project here, an online craft store there, and before you know it I've got more boxes to add to the piles in my room. It looks so easy with the pictures and videos to illustrate each step, the beautiful crafting materials shown in glorious detail.

Unfortunately, they don't sell spare time to go with the free craft patterns and reasonably priced craft materials. Even the computer programming lessons which sometimes call for fancy new equipment to put them to use don't include time to use them. Priorities, priorities, cry the time management books. You can't do it all, so choose what most advances your goals.

That's not very useful for someone who tends to use her organizer the way some people treat their checkbooks -- if there are more checks in there, I ought to be able to write more. The organizer has so much memory that I can arrange all sorts of schedules and todo's in it. It is a cheap one, too. I shudder to think what I'd manage to list if I had one of those fancy organizers.