Never a Dull Moment

I recently wrote a detailed account about what was going on with my ferret, Pandora, in another post.  In between all that drama I had other things going on, of course.  Nothing is ever simple around here!  Did I mention that I finally caught my kid's cold over the weekend?  (Frequently going out in the storm washing helping things.)  Blur and Anna both came down with a second cold, too, so we were all miserable.  'Tis the season!  This threw Blur's new schedule all out of whack, and he had been making great progress with his sleep / wake cycle. 

I started knitting a stocking cap for my nephew while I was visiting family in June.  He requested a slouchy black beanie with a symbol from his favorite anime, Fairy Tail, on it.  He has a large head and sock yarn with size 3 needles takes a long time to knit a beanie.  So unfortunately I didn't get it finished while I was there.  I did finish knitting it sometime after I got home, however when I found a model with a similarly sized head I found that the hat fit perfectly... not slouchy.  So I was going to have to frog out the decreases and knit about 3 inches more.  Well I finally got around to doing that last week and finished the hat a second time.

Next came the hard part; duplicate stitching.  I had in my mind that the emblem was going to be fairly