Yarn, Books & Roses

The Scleroderma Chronicles: Thoughts on the Night of the Blue Moon

Almost three years ago there was a blue supermoon in August; it was on the anniversary of my diagnosis, and I wrote about it then. I was feeling pretty good at the time… my concerning autoimmune pneumonia (SSc-ILD) was under control, I had just acquired my portable oxygen and new shoes, and I was full of plans to knit a new sweater. You can read that post here, if you like.

Tonight things are much the same, but also different in important ways. A concerning lung test result a couple of months ago triggered a round of emergency response drugs with follow-up testing. It now appears that my lung disease, always a concern, is stable. Yay! I, however, am not stable. I continue to deal with some concerning symptoms like dizziness, chest pain, shortness of breath, edema, and low blood oxygen levels. Oops. It is starting to look more and more like my pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is active again, and there needs to be a medical response. My rheumatologist told me a couple of weeks ago that I would be returning to the cath lab to check the pressure levels on the right side of my heart. My cardiologist, who has wanted to start me on an additional PAH drug for a few months now, will no longer be put off, I suspect. Fabulous. These drugs always come with not so nice side effects. Of course they do.

And yet, just like three years ago, under a different blue moon, I am happy. Every day is busy, I’m brimming with plans for my beautiful yarn, there is new life around me, and I am… happy. I have an unusual response to bad news: I immediately spring into action to acquire beautiful plants and yarns. You might equate this with spitting in the eye of the monster. Yep. Thursday, when the latest testing made it clear that my heart was the problem, I headed straight to the local nursery and scored lots of beautiful plants. Take that, monster!!

I brought home large lavender plants (not cheap, but look at that plant!!), snapdragons, dianthus, and a bougainvillea to hang from the edge of the catio. I’m hopeful that bunnies will leave all of these plants alone.

I hung yard decorations on the fence. I tied the roses up onto the trellis. I made the baby bunnies a little entryway to their home under the deck.

Hopefully that brick doorway will calm things down in bunny-land as Mateo waits right above the bunny hole and triggers a panic response/chase across the catio every single time a bunny emerges from under the deck. Mateo is not happy with me right now, let me tell you. So far, I haven’t seen a bunny go in or out, but it is just a matter of time, right? I hope at least the bunnies will be happy!

As I planted and cleaned up this week, I was forced to prune some roses. Did I throw the branches away? No, of course not! I have a rose rooting experiment going right now at two different locations.

Hey, these are roses that I like a lot! The hot pink rose is from a large shrub along my driveway… I could use another one at that location! The lighter pink is an English rose called Princess Alexandria of Kent and just look at it!!! I have five different rooting efforts going, and I do hope to get another rose bush out of this!

Not to be outdone by roses, the one of the orchids in the indoor garden has decided to have… babies! These suddenly appeared on one of the blooming stems after the blooms all dropped off.

There it is, a baby orchid with roots, leaves, and even blooms.

These orchid babies have a Hawaiian name: keikis. I now have three of them appearing on one overachieving plant. How cool is that?

I have made a couple of outrageous yarn stops lately too. You know, when you get concerning news, it is best to load up on the pretty stuff, right? That’s my philosophy, and I am completely unapologetic about it. Look at this haul of superwash merino, silk, and yak yarn:

This yarn was on clearance. It would be criminal to not take advantage, right?

All of that new yarn has found a project. A couple of weeks ago a friend asked me to join in on a shawl MKAL. Ka-bam!! The four skeins of bright raspberry colored yarn had a project. Wool & Pine published a fingering weight version of the Alchemist Sweater: three more skeins found a home. The light grey with flashes of color is already warped onto a loom, and some other yarns not shown in the picture are destined to lives as socks, cowls, and wristers. I put aside a couple of hours every day in yarny project creation, and I’d like to believe that it is helping me manage symptoms.

So, there it is. I’m in a bit of trouble, there are new drugs and a mobility scooter on the horizon, I need to wear oxygen again when I’m out, but I am happy. My support network has already closed in around me, and I’m working out ways to handle my new limitations. My little world around me is teeming with life, my garden fills me with joy, and I spend my days immersed in beautiful fiber crafts.

It has been almost 12 years since my first diagnosis. I am in the 5th year following my dual diagnoses of SSc-ILD and PAH, and I continue to find ways to roll with the punches and to shine. I’ve been doing better than expected for a long time, and I keep thinking that maybe resiliency is related to finding glimmers in your everyday life. Every baby bunny sighting, every robin in the yard, every single new rose, all that beautiful yarn… glimmers and joy.

No matter what, choose to be happy.

Shine on, blue moon, shine on.

I’m on my way outside to check on you because…glimmer!!

The Scleroderma Chronicles: There’s been a little set back…

Okay, I have been gone for awhile. I’m sorry that I caused some concern for people. I’ve been contacted by a couple of people, and one (MR, I’m talking to you) has reminded me that I need to continue to check in from time to time…

Here is what is happening in a nutshell. I caught the flu, I got over the flu, I felt kind of good for a week or so, and then I began to get steadily worse. I was losing weight, sleeping around the clock, my hair was falling out, I hurt all over, and my oxygen was low. I had an appointment with my pulmonologist coming up, so I just hung in there. About a month ago I finally saw him and had my routine lung testing done.

Oh dear. The testing didn’t go well. I had a 20% drop in my ability to move CO2 gas from my lungs into my bloodstream. Not good. A drop like that is considered highly significant and set off some red flags. My lungs are in trouble, but there is a strong possibility that my heart is the underlying cause. I’m a patient with both interstitial lung disease (ILD) and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), and the two, like the lungs and the heart themselves, are interconnected. My pulmonologist shot off emails to the other doctors on my team, prescribed three new drugs to treat the immediate problem (lungs!), and ordered up future testing to see if I make some recovery after completing the prescriptions. There were steroids involved, which is risky for scleroderma patients, but I was kind of out of options. Sigh. It took weeks for me to get this sick, and it will take weeks to see if I’m recovering.

These pictures are of my front ash tree. Three weeks ago there was a hard freeze, and the new leaves and buds on my tree all died. Feeling just awful, panting with chest pain, I keep looking sadly at the dead leaves hanging off the tree wondering if it was alive or dead. I began to call it Schrodinger’s Tree: simultaneously alive/dead, and only time would tell. I kind of identified with the tree as I dragged myself out to the catio for my morning latte. Then, as you can see, over the last 10 days the tree has gradually begun to regrow buds, and now it is covered with leaves. I also have slowly improved: no more chest pain, and the panting is much better. The weight loss has stopped, and my sleep is returning to normal.

Last week I went for a specialized CT scan of my chest to see how I’m doing now that I’ve completed the course of emergency response meds, and in another week, I will repeat the lung function tests. I’ve been warned to expect a trip back to the cath lab to measure the pressures inside the right side of my heart, as there is a good chance my PAH has worsened and is at the heart (see what I did there… ha!) of my struggles.

So… I’m kind of in limbo. In cases like these, I find it is best to knit. I pulled out my Weekender Crew sweater that had been languishing in a box under the bed, and slowly managed to knit enough to get it finished. Look at how cute the knitted fabric is!

I have also been buying yarn. Don’t these look like happy colors?

I have lots of plans for this yarn: a shawl, a sweater, a woven scarf, and then a knitted cowl and wristers set for the scleroderma charity auction. With yarn like this it is impossible to feel sorry for myself. I managed to get more (deep rosy pink) yarn wound for a new sweater, and a couple of nights ago, at about the same time that I became positive that the tree was going to survive, I cast on my new Cloudbreak Tee.

It’s going to be great, right?

So, here I am, knitting away, in a state of flux, waiting to see how all of this will turn out. I’m doing everything that my doctors are telling me to do, and I have gotten alarmed about some parts of the emerging treatment plan (there is some discussion about big alterations and new drugs…), but I am clearly improving, and in the meantime, there is… YARN.

Hannah: Be like a cat. Eat the best tuna you can find and then take a long nap.

As I told my pulmonologist… no one ever got better by worrying. Do the best you can, take your meds, and sleep like a cat.

I also told him that I’m not doing another lung biopsy!! He didn’t think I was funny…

PS: I have been looking for all the glimmers. The white pelicans have returned to Colorado. A litter of baby bunnies have emerged from under the deck. I went to the garden center and bought huge lavender plants. My catio is awash with potted flowers and the yard is full of birdsong. My trees are covered with feathery new leaves. The baby eagles at Big Bear Lake are getting huge…

The Scleroderma Chronicles: Complicated AF

February was a good month for little ol’ scleroderma me. I was getting stuff done around the house, weaving lots of new projects, attending social events, and enjoying a sense of improvement. I’m doing pretty great, I told myself! I sailed through my routine medical appointments, had my usual heart echocardiogram done, and didn’t think about it too much. I had some cardiac symptoms last fall, but they seemed to be resolving okay.

Feeling positive and joyful, I bought a lots of yarn in the gloom of winter. Look at all of that pink!!!!

Then the echocardiogram report came back. Oh, oh. I have had some fluid around my heart for several years now (a pericardial effusion) that my cardiologist has been following. It is rather common in systemic sclerosis patients, with about 25% of us having one at some point in our journey. This time the effusion has grown, completely surrounding my heart, and large enough to cause symptoms and to be a concern. Oh. That’s why I was feeling dizzy and experiencing some chest discomfort last December. My cardiologist ordered up some blood work to see if I have active inflammation and pericarditis.

Nope. My inflammation markers are normal. Kind of a bummer, as that means it won’t respond to anti-inflammatory medications, and this is something else. Scleroderma, hard at work. The possibility of broken heart syndrome has been raised. Fabulous. My cardiologist scheduled another echocardiogram for early June. I have kind of a concern that there might be some type of procedure that involves a huge needle that will be required to remove some of that fluid. I just have to be complicated, right?

Then I got sick with some nasty respiratory virus…

I’ve been sick for almost three weeks! This was a respiratory virus, and I’ve been on oxygen for two weeks straight and taking all my drugs while following the directions for home care from my pulmonologist, too dizzy to go to urgent care, but not sick enough to dial 911. Worried friends have been checking up on me, and I’ve been faithfully reporting out my symptoms and oxygen levels every day to them. I started using my respirometer again to get my lung volume back up, I was able to start going off oxygen for a few hours each day towards the end of the 2nd week, and my heart slowly stopped having palpitations. Am I still having tachycardia events? Why yes, yes I am. Stupid crazy heart! In spite of that, I have finally started to feel like myself again this week, and my appetite has come back. The cats, who have been very patient, are overjoyed to have me up and about again, and I’m finally able to make chemo hats and knit again. I even got my little rigid heddle loom warped yesterday!

Doesn’t this all sound ridiculous? Like, why wasn’t I in urgent care sooner? Well… I’m complicated. Going to urgent care is risky as I might be exposed to ANOTHER virus. If I have to call 911 the ambulance will take me to the dreadful hospital that is closest and not in my health care network. The doctors in the urgent care and ERs don’t quite know what to do with a patient like me, and going in usually isn’t productive. Ugh. I instead called in and got advice from my specialist nurses, and they clarified where the red lines were: if I couldn’t keep my O2 numbers up in the 90s, or if I developed significant symptoms of cardiac tamponade, I had to get emergency intervention. In the middle of the second week another scleroderma patient sent me this…

Anyway, that is me. Miss Complicated AF. Everything is just fraught when I get sick. Do I stop my immunosuppressive drugs so I can fight the virus? Nope… those drugs are holding my autoimmune lung disease in check, and as soon as I cut back, I got a lot sicker. Should I use the steroid inhaler? Yep, that helped. Saline nasal rinses? Good lord, what is all this nasal bleeding… Decongestants? Only in the morning. Mucinex? Yes, max dose!!! Finally, over the virus, finally off oxygen, still struggling with some cardiac symptoms, I am dealing with crushing fatigue but still starting to dream of knitted wonders with all of my fabulous yarn. My orchids are blooming again, and the bunnies are dancing in the yard. Last night I saw a great horned owl fly across the street in front of me when I brought in the trash cans from the street. The moon and planets gleamed above me, and the evening was warm with a nice breeze. Glimmers continue to appear around me, and I am feeling the joy again.

Today I cleaned out the yarn stash, and I’m ready to start knitting on some fabulous (pink) sweaters. Some really great patterns hit the Ravelry feed while I was sick, and it is time to cast on some joy.

You hear that crazy heart? Time for some joy. Behave yourself.

PS: Do you wonder what the sweater patterns are?

Cloudbreak Tee by Wool & Pine
Hearthside Pullover by Wool & Pine
Dragonfly Sweater by Elenor Mortensen
Hearthside Cardigan by Wool & Pine

Hannah and the CoalBear: Finished Weaving Projects

Hi. I’m Hannah.

The Mother of Cats finished her scarf on the rigid heddle loom (I helped with the weaving) and then cut the fabric off. This scarf is sooo soft and squishy. I wanted the Mother of Cats to give it to me for my bed, but nope. She kept it for herself. This is what it looked like before she finished twisting all the little fringe strings.

Personally I like the strings in the fringe, but the Mother of Cats twisted them all up to become tidy finished fringe last night.

After the Mother of Cat got the scarf off the rigid heddle loom she sat down and concentrated on finishing all of the weaving on the floor loom. Then she cut it off the loom!!! Oh, that was really, really exciting. I just love the smell of wool, don’t you? I moved right in while the Mother of Cats was trying to get the woven items separated from each other. She was using a rotary cutter, but I am fearless!! Also, very spoiled.

The final woven items were two placemats and three table runners. Once again, PERFECT for my bed, but no! The finished items are put away except for one that is now in the living room. I would sleep on it there, but there is a STUPID PLANT in the middle. Why does the Mother of Cats do these things?

The other woven piece that I think should be mine (hello… it is pink!!) is the table runner woven with silk/bamboo. So shiny. So nice to roll around on. So put away in the closet where I can’t get to it…

This is both sides of the runner. Pretty cool, right. I kind of like both sides so it is hard to decide. The Mother of Cats says that this is a feature of overshot weaving, but I’m like… whatever. Can I have tuna now?

The Mother of Cats was really excited to get the rigid heddle looms warped up again, but she got sick on Sunday, and she is still lying around like a big slug ignoring my needs. It’s just some coughy thing, but she sure does sleep a lot, and there isn’t much of anything getting done around here. Hey, Mother of Cats! We need to get weaving again.

Guess I’ll catch a nap myself. Can you tell that I am dreaming of TUNA!!!

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I really gained a lot of confidence in my weaving by taking an online overshot class from The Handweaving Academy. There are so many little subtle things that make it challenging when starting out, but I gained so much practical knowledge along with technical skills that I’m thinking of ordering warp yarn in a dark purple color for more placemats. This will be fun!!!

Some of the changes that I made were pretty basic, but also game changers. Like… label your floor treadles! I wrote on scotch tape that can be easily removed. Other helpful techniques included the mechanics of using two shuttles at once. There are floating warp threads at the edges of the woven piece, and I learned how to use them effectively to create a smooth selvedge. Well… for me, that it pretty smooth. I had learned about “tromp as writ” years ago, but now I understand. I understand how to convert my weaving to adjust patterns to my (rising shed) Baby Wolf loom. I can figure out the treadling sequence from a draft, and I know how to convert it from one pattern type to another. I feel like a real weaver again!!!

The blue marl yarn in the scarf is Marla by Manos del Uraguay; it is a DK weight yarn that is very soft and squishy.

The yarn in the table runner is Noro Silk Garden sock yarn, another DK weight yarn.

The orchid is one of my plants that is reblooming from last year.

I’m considering a doubleweave class next! I already bought this book…

Hannah and the CoalBear: All the Updates

Hi. I’m Mateo.

Don’t you think that my fluff looks nice?

It is nice and warm outside almost every day now and I get to head on out to the catio to check on the bunny. He’s still there!!! I would like to stay out all day but the Mother of Cats forces me to COME BACK INSIDE after she makes her breakfast and morning latte (She tells Hannah that she needs to learn how to make a latte, but does she pay attention? No. Hannah just does whatever she wants, and she never gets into trouble like I do…), and then she usually doesn’t let me outside again. Why is she so mean!!! I watch the bunny from the front window, but it isn’t the same…

The Mother of Cats has been spending a lot of her time weaving downstairs on the big loom. This loom is a little bit scary. She stomps on the floor peddles and pulls the big swingy reed thing towards her while throwing yarny shuttles back and forth at the same time that crashy parts are going up and down. Do I hang out with the loom? No. I do not. I do feel like I should show off what she has been making.

After the Mother of Cats had finished the homework weaving she dug around in her yarn stash and made a woven piece from some sock yarn that she bought years and years ago.

Look at that yarn! Years ago she made those socks with the elephant on them, and last week the rest of the yarn was used on the loom to make a table runner. Personally, I like the socks better, but the Mother of Cats likes the new runner too. It is cool, right? The Mother of Cats was so excited by the look of that yarn she headed back to the stash and got MORE yarn.

This yarn, which is called Silk Garden, is thicker than the first yarn. Wouldn’t that yarn make a nice cat toy? Maybe some knitted mice? The Mother of Cats completely ignored my needs and wove another table runner. She likes the way it looks so much she went back to the yarn stash again and got some pink silk yarn. Yep. You Guessed it. ANOTHER table runner is now getting woven on the loom.

Hannah likes this pink shiny weaving more than I do. Pink is kind of her favorite color.

I do have to mention, the Mother of Cats has been kind of crazy with the pink lately. She went out and bought pink plants. Then she bought pink shoes. Then she bought a pink cricket. Seriously, crickets are for playing with!!! Crazy Mother of Cats, she has it with the plants in the indoor garden.

The Mother of Cats says that the pink makes her happy, so I guess I have to put up with all of this pink silliness.

I’m trying to think really hard about what else has been going on around here. There has been some knitting. Boring. She has made some more hats for the infusion centers. Also boring. She went out and left us several times this month for meet-ups with her friends and some doctor visits. Also very, very boring. I guess I can show off the weaving on her rigid heddle loom:

This yarn is very soft, but not as soft as my fur!

I guess that’s all that I want to talk about. It is about time for the Mother of Cats to feed us our special night time tuna, and then I’m going to make her play with me for a while.

Bye for now,

Mateo

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The first color changing yarn that I used on the loom is Noro Silk Garden Sock Solo, a single ply fingering weight yarn. I wasn’t sure how the cotton warp would work with the wool blend yarn, but it looked great.
The second Noro yarn is Silk Garden Sock yarn, a DK weight single ply yarn that is twice as heavy as the first Noro yarn. It wove in great, and I liked the look of the more solid color blocks.
That pink yarn is also a DK weight called Bamboo Silk (silk/bamboo mix) that was hand dyed by a weaving shop north of me. I’ve had this yarn for years: really special, it was hard to find a good use for it. I’m liking it in this woven piece. I plan to put another warp on the loom in the same threading pattern, but this time in a purple colored cotton, and then I can weave another piece with the same pink yarn. I can’t wait to see how that turns out!
Don’t you like the pink cricket? My new rigid heddle loom is a cricket made by the Schacht Spindle Company. Of course it needs a pink cricket to keep it company!
I’ve been reading convoluted mystery books lately. The two that I am reading right now are set in very different situations, but I am loving the many technical details, cultural themes, and foreign settings that are similar in a spooky way.

Imagine living in a time far in the future. You are the pilot attached to an archeological group recovering artifacts from ancient civilizations on distant planets that abruptly disappeared. What happened? Can a lost alien language be decoded in time to understand these ancient beings who have left behind their poetry, religion, and relics before the catastrophic mechanism that killed them returns? It’s an interstellar crime of cosmic proportions, and time is running out. The key to solving much of this is… a printing press.

Or, almost as foreign as the ancient aliens and their lost civilization, is London 1667. It is the year following the Great Fire, and political intrigue is thicker than the smoke of that great conflagration. The city is being rebuilt, but refugee camps remain. There are children afflicted with scrofula, a form of tuberculosis that presents in horrible swollen tumors grown from lymph nodes in the neck. There is murder. There are royal directives, and machinations by important people to secure power. Nothing makes sense, but everything is connected. There is a printing press involved. Of course.

I’m having fun reading both of these at the same time.

The other big event that happened. That would be Rare Disease Day on February 28th.

I decided to not write a whole post about it this year, but I wanted to make a point or two. There I am, looking much better than I deserve to, flashing my zebra shirt. The decal on my car tells the story. Even though I am told often that “I look great!”, and I suspect that some of those people think that I am faking for attention, the reality of scleroderma is that it is… complicated. I take 22 pills a day in an ongoing effort to slow the progression of the damage being caused by my disease, and almost all of my organs are being impacted. I now have serious lung and heart complications, but to be truthful, the impact to my digestive tract is what causes me the most grief. Scleroderma, especially the systemic form, is rare; the complications that it brings are even more rare.

Systemic sclerosis, the type of scleroderma that I have, like many other rare diseases, is invisible, but the struggle is real.

Whenever you can, support the zebras that you find in your life.

Shuttle Pilot Days

My sister Selma sent me some of my favorite gifts ever. Beautiful plants, cute figurines, rice cookers, and great shirts all arrived on my doorstep sent by my sister. Two years ago, I tried to get back into weaving, but it didn’t go all that well. I used a table loom and even that was too much for my sad little hands. I had to use oxygen. I was feeling pretty down about the whole thing. Selma, forever unwilling to surrender to the hardships sent her way by life, sent me this tee-shirt. I packed it away.

This is a beautiful shirt, very comfortable and in my favorite color. It was a kind of a flop, however, because… scleroderma. I have a great floor loom that hasn’t been used for almost a decade. I can’t remember when I last produced something useful on a loom. I had kind of accepted that my days of weaving were over.

Then Selma died last summer.

Time to channel the indominable Selma, right?!! This Christmas I bought myself a little rigid heddle loom that I thought I might be able to manage while sitting in bed. Good plan, right? I used the practice yarn sent with the loom to learn how to warp and use it, and then I warped it up again with superwash merino sock yarn. Guess what? I can weave like crazy propped up in bed binge watching Netflex. Yay!

I finished the scarf this week and it is great! I am really happy with the feel and the drape. I bought a little fringe maker tool so I can make even twisted fringes with beads. Did I do this propped up in bed? Of course. I’m feeling pretty successful and I have already warped up the little rigid heddle again. Do I have visions of finished scarfs dancing in my head. Yep. Watch out yarn stash, I am coming for you!!

I also, in a moment of determined optimism, signed up for an overshot weaving class that would require me to warp up and use the floor loom. Oh, boy. Getting the loom warped and correctly threaded was… a lot. Just exhausting, actually, both mentally and physically. Eventually the warp was on and I could begin weaving. Yikes. This was a lot of work. There were problems with oxygen levels and sore muscles. I persevered, took a day or two off between weaving sessions, and slowly I became stronger and my breathing improved. I worked my way through the lessons online, clearly behind the rest of the class, and struggled to master the equipment and technical details involved in weaving overshot, a technique that involved weaving two fabrics interlaced with each other at once to create the type of designs in the pictures below.

Today I have finished weaving two of the major projects associated with the class, and I couldn’t be more pleased. These two placemats look different, but they are actually made from the same threading on the loom. The two looks (the left is called “star” and the right is called “rose” in weaving language) are created by changing the treadling sequence. Cool, right? My next assignment is to create a table runner that combines these two patterns together in a creative way. Yeppers! I am so excited to do that and have already half-way figured out how it will happen on the loom. I have new yarn picked out and everything. I am gaining energy and I can weave much longer at a time, and I’m not experiencing too many joint problems. Am I wearing my shuttle pilot shirt? Why yes, yes I am!

Selma would be so pleased to know that I am once again a shuttle pilot!!

After thoughts:

Selma sent me Swedish gingersnap cookies last year for Christmas. I bought another can and I’m now eating those cookies while I work at the loom.
Grief is a tricky thing. So is stress management. I have discovered that working at the loom, creating something beautiful and useful over time using repetitive movements, helps with both.
I’m thinking of joining the local weavers’ guild.
I have a really lush, healthy looking African violet plant that Selma sent to me one year. Is this plant blooming? Nope. This is kind of on point for my sister. When the time is right, I anticipate that it will produce blooms better than any other plant that I own.

Thoughts on the Night of the Snow Moon: Cruel Romance Personage Year

Some of you who have been following my blog for a while know that I am a huge fan of Murderbot.

Like, I try to channel Murderbot whenever possible. Murderbot struggles with social situations. Murderbot is painfully aware that he is not like other constructs and absolutely knows that he is not a human. He pretty much is unique in most settings. (If he was a human, you might consider him a zebra). Murderbot is a total bad ass; often terrified, roiling with self-doubt and uncertainty, he takes action to protect what is important, and keeps moving forward. There might be some violence and murdering, but he gets the job done. He also watches media entertainment whenever possible. His favorite is a serial called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Do I have a Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon tee shirt? Umm… yeah.

That’s why when I finally recovered from my injuries (car wreck) enough to drive last January (2025), I put on a Murderbot audiobook, opened up the sunroof, and placed my emotional support chicken on the passenger seat next to me. I can do this, I told myself! I did it, channeling Murderbot every single time I stepped into the car again until I had moved past the trauma and was a confident driver again.

I would have taken a cat with me if I could have. Mateo, in his January winter coat, declined.

That was how the year 2025 started. I still listen to one of the audiobooks in The Murderbot Diaries series every single time I go out in the car. The last year was just epic in its awfulness. It was difficult on all fronts, and it felt like I just couldn’t catch a break all year long.

My scleroderma flared with new, significant complications that just kept coming. I had tendonitis for months. I developed bacterial overgrowth in my GI tract (SIBO) that stole my energy as I steadily lost weight for months. My cat almost died. My sister died. My son died. I had a serious fall and caught covid at the emergency room. In the aftermath of my covid infection, I developed dysautonomia and new cardiac symptoms that kept me close to home and on oxygen more days than I wanted to admit to. For a couple of weeks, I mostly stayed in bed and on oxygen as moving around just a little caused dizziness and chest discomfort. Did I read Murderbot while I was bed bound? Of course I did. Finally, as 2025 came to a close, I realized that most of those symptoms were much better and that my heart was settling down.

My son’s fingerprint and a bead that he gave me for Mother’s Day.

There is a media serial mentioned in one of the Murderbot books called Cruel Romance Personage: the title, an approximate translation from an ancient language, puts Murderbot off so much he has never watched it. One day I realized what a correct translation would be. Cruel Romance Personage would be more correctly called… Heartbreaker. That is the perfect description of 2025: Heartbreaker.

While I was struggling, I bought lots of new pillows. Hannah has claimed them.

I finally got into the office to see my cardiologist last Monday. We talked about new treatment options. We talked about quality of life decisions within the context of a fatal health condition (PAH). We talked about resiliency. I asked if he thought that my heart had been damaged by my covid infection. Probably not, in his opinion, since I had recovered. The more likely scenario was that I had sustained heart damage from Broken Heart Syndrome, and I am now well on the way to recovery. I have follow-up testing in a couple of weeks.

Of course. How on point for 2025.

I’m supposed to avoid stress. (Ha. Are you listening, 2026?) What am I doing with my time? I’m knitting, reading, and weaving of course. I’m learning new things, I’m picking up new causes. I’m producing new things. I am moving forward.

I am finally weaving my overshot placemat.

Goodbye, 2025. You were a Heartbreaker.

And I am still here. Bring it, 2026! Let’s go!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Weaving and Zebra Adventures

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’m hanging out with the Mother of Cats while she works away on her loom downstairs. The Mother of Cats has been fussing around with this thing for days now, and I don’t see the point, but she seems to be happy playing with all of these strings that she WON’T SHARE WITH THE ME!!! I’m lucky that there is this nice bed to hang out on because I’m now allowed anywhere near the loom. Why does the Mother of Cats do these things?

The Mother of Cats took two evenings getting the heddles of the loom threaded and then did some test weaving to check to make sure that she hadn’t made any mistakes. It all looked great to me, but she suddenly burst out with…

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!

… it seems that there was a mistake or two in the threading of the loom…

If you look inside of the pink circle (hey, don’t judge my circle drawing skills… I’m a cat… paws…) you will see a couple of spots where two threads (AKA strings… or if you are Mateo… CAT TOYS!!) are hanging out side by side as they move up the weaving. Oops. That’s a problem I guess. The Mother of Cats spent hours fixing that mistake and a couple of others absolutely forgetting my evening tuna snack. Why is the Mother of Cats like this?

She had to cut out and remove the weft threads on one side of the weaving, and then she pulled out threads to fix some other problems. All of this had something to do with threading heddles correctly so that the pattern would be perfect. Perfect is overrated, right? What do I know… I’m a cat and I have to settle for less than perfect a lot. Have you seen Mateo? What an absolute goofball!! Anyway, as she worked, she found even more problems!!! There was some sighing. She kept ignoring me. WHERE IS MY TUNA!!! Finally, after some not nice words were said, she had everything fixed and was ready to do the next lesson in her online weaving class. She actually paid for all of this misery. I don’t understand humans very well.

In the daytime the Mother of Cats worked on knitting a little outfit for her knitted zebra. This is another bit of silliness that I don’t really understand, but it is nice to hang out with her while she knits. The outfit got done this week and I do have to admit that it looks pretty darn sweet on him.

Well, that is all for now. I’m going to see if I can get my evening tuna snack a little early to make up for yesterday.

I’m going to hang right over her while she types until I get the TUNA!!!

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I really am learning a lot in the online weaving course. I have also figured out at least a half dozen new ways to fix threading mistakes while dressing the loom. I’m pretty sure that the next time I do this things will go much faster because I have learned about almost every single mistake that can happen.
Next project on the loom: I have to weave a band of the pattern and then cut it off the loom (!!!) so that it can be washed and measured. Oh boy. This is going to be an adventure for sure. I will also get to see if the cotton yarn I have chosen is color fast during washing.
I finished reading The Emperor of Gladness and I’m not sure what I think about it, but I am certainly thinking about it a lot. It isn’t a happy book, but it is a book so well written and crafted it feels like being in a dream. Imagine a group of people living on the fringes, coping with their lives in a number of ways through lies, imaginary realities, drugs, and tightly knit grouping of found family. People who really care about each other, and people rendered down to the essentials by trauma and life. People who feel consumed by the system. People who are vulnerable. People whose lives matter all the same. I’m glad that I read this.
I’m already thinking about how to create a scleroderma warrior edition of the zebra to enter into the annual fundraiser auction for my chapter of the Scleroderma Foundation.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Busy Winter Days

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Look at what the Mother of Cats got done!!

I just love the Hannah mitt that the Mother of Cats made me. So far, there is only one done. She was really happy with the first one, and then she packed it up and… started working on weaving.

The Mother of Cats pulled out her new rigid heddle loom and warped on some really nice pink sock yarn. I think that this color looks really nice with my coat, don’t you? She spent a couple of days weaving on it, and was really happy, but had this urge to knit something, so… she started on a zebra.

I know. I don’t understand why this happens either.

He is a pretty cute zebra, isn’t he? I was just exhausted helping the Mother of Cats with all of this, especially with the sewing and stuffing parts. The zebra still needs his little playsuit to be knitted for him, but the Mother of Cats has the attention span of a mouse because she just jumped off and spent the whole afternoon on the computer watching the first lesson for her online weaving class. Whew. That lady talked, and talked, and talked, and Mateo started to throw a tantrum because he really, really needed someone to play with him. I was getting a little peckish myself and thought that the Mother of Cats should give me some COOKIES, so she had to multi-task attending to our needs while walking around listening to her weaving lecture on her phone. Listen, the Mother of Cats needs to get her priorities straight, right?

When the Mother of Cats is done with her online class she will have woven these projects and will, possible, actually understand what she is doing. This evening, she wound all the warp for the big floor loom, and this week the plan is for Mateo and me to help her get all the strings in the right places on the loom. Mateo is so excited!!! All that string!!! The Mother of Cats says it is yarn, but we know string when we see it!! This sounds like the best cat toy in the world!! Anyway, that is why the Mother of Cats had to listen to the lecture for so long and I was starved of attention and cookies.

What else is going on at Casa de Kitties? The Mother of Cats went shopping and came home with another stuffed octopus. Then the Mother of Cat’s cousin sent her a cute little octopus quilted wall hanging for Christmas. Sorry, Mother of Cats. This is the best little Hannah bed ever!!!!! This evening, she put it up on the wall where it is cute, but I can’t sleep on it anymore. Why does the Mother of Cats do these things???!!!!!! I want my octopus bed!!!

Hey, I forgot to mention that the Mother of Cats is reading every single morning while she drinks her latte. I am her constant companion when that is happening. Hey, if she doesn’t guard her morning toast, I get to snack on that too!!!

Right now we are reading *The Ashes of London* and *The Emperor of Gladness*. The Mother of Cats says everyone reads more than one book at a time!

That’s it for the night.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The online weaving class is located at The Handweaving Academy and is called Overshot Unlocked. I’m really learning a lot of cool things.
I went to the yarn store again and loaded up on lots of fun colors and more parts for my new loom. This may be the year of weaving.
The Ashes of London is really keeping my interest! It’s a political thriller and a murder mystery all wrapped up in 1666 with the Great Fire of London serving as a major player in the story.
The Emperor of Gladness is one of the best books I have read in a while. I’m reading it in bits at a time so I can savor the language, imagery, the people, the story…
Where did the zebra pattern come from? I found it in this book. You can see the little playsuit that I still need to knit in the cover photo.

Updates from the Knitting Front: Mitt Cycle

I’m in the part of my new sweater (another Weekender Crew) that is just stockinette all the way with a slipped stitch every now and then. I’m alternating skeins so I don’t get too much pooling, but the work is still… kind of mindless. Not mentally challenging. Okay, I am bored. No creativity in sight here, even though I want to get the sweater done… eventually. To make things worse we are experiencing unusually warm weather here in the Denver area and I’m not wearing any of my sweaters. I stuffed the sweater into its bin, parked it on a shelf, and started on some small products.

I decided to start on the mitts to match the grey/dusty purple sweater that I just upcycled. Yay. Let’s do mitts, kitties!!!

I decided to make a mitt that offered some options. It has a ribbed top that should go under the lace on the sleeve okay, and then a little panel of lace to match the ones on the body of the sweater. At the edge by my hand is a picot edge that matches those of the lace on the sweater. Cute, right? Sometimes I want a mitt that comes way down over my hand, almost to my knuckles, so I didn’t sew down the picot edge and knitted a long inner lining that can be pulled out. The final bind off is I-cord, giving a smooth finish to the bottom of the mitt. Yay! I like this mitt a lot. Did I cast on to start the second one right away? Well… no… that would be boring, right?

I pulled out the cat arm warmers because they are kind of the poster child mitt for NOT BORING, right? Over the last three days I got those little mice knitted in, and then I did the paws. Yikes. The paws required 4 colors of yarn for several rows. NOT BORING!!!! I learned a few things about yarn management while working on these, and in a nutshell, the most important one is to cut the yarn off the ball so you have a length of color that you can easily pull through tangles with the other colors. It is a lot easier to catch floats when you have a manageable length of yarn with no ball of yarn in sight, too. The knitting was really slow and kind of a nightmare until I figured that all out, but the last half of the paws went pretty quickly. Do you like the paws?

They look that way because that is what Hannah’s paws look like! Cutest toe beans ever!!!

Like everyone else on the planet I have been reflecting on the last year (thank heavens it is finally over) and thinking about plans for the next one (goals are good, right?) It’s a lot, and it definitely involves lots of yarn and books. As I planned this post I thought about what has been going on lately in my life and the world around me, and I finally thought about a plant that I brought in from outdoors this fall. It was a beautiful bougainvillea when I brought it in, bushy with lush green foliage and not a bloom in sight. I thought about leaving it outside but I finally dragged it into the dining room in front of a large window. Over the next few weeks every single leaf on the plant fell off. “Are you kidding me,” I asked the plant. “One little shock to your system and you give up the ghost?” Yes, I do talk to my plants.

The plant has replied by putting out new growth and blooms on every single little branch. It is literally covered with the tiny green buds of new growth, and the blooms, just now starting to grow out, are going to be something else. This plant is going to look amazing in just a couple of weeks.

There is a lesson here, somewhere.

May you all have an amazing New Year.

PS: I bought a new loom!!! Also, dysautonomia continues. May I present to you Crazy Heart 2026.