I mostly use the knitting loom these days. I like the long knitting looms. The pattern is made by the way you wrap the yarn around the posts, so you don't have to keep track of knitting and purling, and once you anchor the last stitch on a row, there's no risk of the other stitches coming off. There are books, and you can also find instructions online. I pretty much taught myself. But with the long loom, you can only make flat panel things like scarves and shawls. For more complicated things, there is a round loom, but I haven't really worked with that yet.

We have a cat, and dogs. I keep the breakable ornaments at the top of the tree, away from sweeping dog tails. My cat does occasionally pull things off the bottom branches. When I had many cats, I used to put the tree in a corner. Then I would tie two strings around the top of the tree. I fastened one around the top door hinge of the door next to the tree, and the other string to the curtain rod bracket, so that if the tree fell, it wouldn't tip too far. They never did knock it over, but my mother's cats knocked over a tree once and played hockey with the ornaments.
Allison

: I am *loving* these posts from you,
: Allison!!

: We have four young cats, and don't
: dare do an Xmas tree or much in
: the way of indoor decorations
: right now, so I've been feeling
: very deprived in the
: Christmas-izing the house area.

: But Christmas soap, I never thought
: of that! And the cats will
: definitely not come into the
: shower with me to mess with it. :)

: I *love* looking at /feeling yarn,
: too, but I never learned to knit.
: Maybe I can take that on over the
: Xmas break this year. I've been
: wanting to have something to do
: with my hands while I sit on long
: conference calls, and I think
: knitting something lovely and soft
: would also be soothing, which
: might be a very good thing!)

: Thanks for all these ideas!!
: Pam