Hector, my black boy killer cat, loves textiles, rather he loves to dominate them. Not the sort of cat that chases down balls of wool, he would gnaw on the end of a knitting needles if I used them, my preference being for circulars. Here he is perched on top of a pile of my rugs that had yet to be dispersed to the corners of the house. Stashing balls of wool is one exercise that got me ready for the olympian task of stashing rugs! Hector is also posed beside a purple Buffo shawl. I bought the Italian mohair yarn in 1983 when I was just new to the city, living in an apartment in Parkdale, working part-time at the bank, with no money. This yarn was a splurge of the decade, 10x balls, that I knit into a loose cable sweater, that made me look like a purple buffalo. And I was thin then too! Half finished (that means one sleeve undone), it was trotted out regularly as a work in progress until the mid 1990s when I unravelled it and put it away for some "future" use. A couple of years ago I was into mindless knitting, just interested in colour changes, and teaching people how to knit wash cloths. So the half square/triangle shawl was part of the repertoire of dull knitting. I used the buffo just to touch it, and see the colour play again. I later gave away the finished shawl to a friend of mine who was undergoing chemo, to keep her warm when she sat out in the garden. After a couple of years she gave it back, because she didn't need it anymore. Hurray!!!! And when my cousin got sick with breast cancer, I brought it out to her in Vancouver, holding the secret magical powers I thought it had to myself. She said it kept her warm, that she would sit out on her roof-top deck and watch the mountains and the sea. Two years later, she is still alive and still wrapped in the shawl. She can keep it for as long as she wants. And Hector sits whereever he wants.