I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats for the entire week getting these socks done. It is a lot of hard work; the kinky yarn from the sock blanks is really hard to get a good chomp on! I’m sure she doesn’t appreciate all that I do. In this shot I was warming up her needles and the sock blank by napping on top of it. Isn’t that nice of me?! Why does she get so snippy with me?
These are the socks that she ripped out a few weeks ago and restarted using fluffy white yarn with rabbit fur in it. Wow. This stuff is really yummy! For some reason she is keeping it closed up in a plastic bag so I can’t play with it after I dragged it upstairs to play “roll the ball” under the dining table. Whatever. She is just horrible about sharing her toys!
Here are the finished socks!! Aren’t they totally cool? Much nicer looking than the other attempt with the ugly brown lace yarn. I think that the sparkles are especially catchy.
I really like these socks, and they are just perfect for napping on whenever she leaves they out. So nice and toasty to sleep on. Just the right size to kick and bite when I’m feeling a little frisky. I think that she should keep the in the kitty toy box with my catnip-stuffed squirrel.
I’m such a good boy. She really should give me these socks.
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
These socks are make with handpainted sock blanks by Greenwood Fiberworks. The minute I saw the blanks at a trunk show this fall I knew they had to be these socks. Even the name of the colorway was cool: Paper Roses. The sock pattern is Dave by Rachel Coopey, which is basically a nice vanilla sock. I made the version with afterthought heels to maintain the color sequence down the sock. The fluffy white yarn for the lace cuff is Knit Picks Bare Hare.
Check out this heel! This is really nice fitting on my foot and feels great. I’d never done a heel like this, but I’m glad that I tried it.
I’m really happy with the cuff at the top. I made good notes of what I did and recorded them into the Ravelry project page, but I also got some nice pictures and am thinking of blogging the pattern later in the week.
Have you ever found some yarn that is so alluring, happy and compelling that you find yourself spending way too much time mulling over what to make of it? Searching through the stash to find some yarn that would like to play nice with it? Parking it in the bedroom so you can glance at it from time to time while reading late at night as you consider options in the back of your mind?
Here it is., happiness in a tightly wound package. The yarn is actually brighter and more cheerful in life than in this picture because today is a dark and gloomy day. And cold. Knitting weather!!
The purple yarn was the original purchase a week ago. It’s call “Colorful October” and has a happy orange section bracketed by black and dark brown swimming in the fabulous purple. Since it was a monthly edition of the yarn, I felt like I had to snatch it up right away before it sold out. I mean, look at that purple!!!
Well, I would like socks or maybe arm warmers made out of this yarn. I’m worried about pooling, so I wanted something really peppy to go with it that I could use to break up the color a little for some snappy helix knitting or maybe simple colorwork like the highlights of Jelly Rolls. When I went to my LYS yesterday that skein on the left came home with me. The colorway is “Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast”. How can I walk away from a yarn with a name like that?
I’m just trying to explain why this yarn is sleeping right beside me on my bedside table. I’m pretty sure it will eventually become arm warmers, socks, and maybe even some cat toys. Arm warmers. Maybe with corrugated ribbing and some helix knitting. This is going to be fun!
The other bunny that I’m thinking about is this extremely cute bunny designed by my BKB (Best Knitting Buddy) Deb. Isn’t this the cutest thing?
Photo credit: Deb Baker
This bunny was made with Deb’s daughter Erin in mind. Erin is autistic and loves to shake floppy toys (or her shirt sleeve) for hours; this bunny totally meets that need. I have the cat version of the pattern, and every time I see it perched on my bookshelf it makes me happy; these little guys are designed to sit up perfectly and are really stable. Deb just wrote this pattern up and it is now available for download on Ravelry for FREE while she works with test knitters to work out all the kinks in the pattern. The pattern is called ERIN’s BUNNY; I know that Deb would love to have you test knit or just give her feedback.
Hey, I could make a bunny out of the leftover Chasing Rabbits yarn! After the socks and arm warmers, I mean.
Goodnight everyone.
I’m off to sleep sweet dreams in the bright colors of my new yarn.
My, how the time flies. Not that I’m having a good time here, but it is hard to believe that it has already been three years since my diagnosis of limited systemic sclerosis (AKA scleroderma). I’ve been reflecting on the last year while planning this post, and decided that I should start out with a little info about my disease, share the highlights of my three years, and then give unpack this year a little.
But first, a butterfly picture! Butterflies have hard skin, and they are doing OK. Be like a butterfly, I tell myself. This little lady was part of a massive migration of butterflies that came through our state in the fall. Seriously, there were so many of them that they showed up on the weather radar and the NWS put out a bulletin asking the public to identify the bird species: not birds, but butterflies.
Scleroderma is an autoimmune disease that is chronic (no cure), progressive, disabling and possibly fatal. It is rare, which is why you probably never heard of it. The name itself means “hard skin”, and that is one of the most distinctive features of the condition. The widespread scarring and buildup of collagen protein that causes the hardening of skin also occurs in internal organs in patients with the “systemic” form of the disease like me. Most of the damage is hitting my intestinal tract, but my lungs, kidneys and heart are also sustaining damage. In the background, hard to see, but never to be ignored, is damage occurring in blood vessels that can cause blood pressure to soar and places me at risk for blood clots.
I have collected several doctors over the last three years as damage continues to slowly accrue in my lungs, kidneys and intestinal tract.
Here are the highlights of my first three years:
My first year was one of shock and horror. I was so worried about tightening skin and the use of my hands that I didn’t ever think about the bigger picture. I was started on drugs, stabilized, and felt much better by the end of the year.
The bottom fell out my second year. I was using my hands okay, but I developed breathing problems, had to be placed on oxygen, and my heart started to misbehave. Adjustments were made to my medications to compensate for my lowering lung volume and to slow the rate of lung damage. At the lowest point I was sent to palliative care and told to make final decisions.
This year, the third, has been one of highs and lows. The new medications kicked in, I came off oxygen and my chest pain stopped. I was discharged from palliative care. I developed gastroparesis and had to move to a very stomach-friendly diet. I stabilized and sailed through the first rounds of appointments in the spring only to develop kidney problems in the summer along with higher pressure in the artery that goes from my heart to my lungs. This blood pressure, which is called pulmonary arterial hypertension, is extremely damaging to the heart and will need to be addressed if it gets any higher. Fabulous. Another doctor.
My summer this year was really hard. I got very dizzy, developed joint pain and sore muscles, and eventually got so brain fogged that I was afraid to drive. My knees were swollen and developed sharp, shooting pains; I will need to buy a new car if this keeps up as I can’t manage the clutch much longer. I struggled on the stairs and my face turned blue on a regular basis. My neighbors stepped in and took over the yard work for me, and my knitting buddies began to drive me to all fiber related adventures as I wasn’t sure I should be trusted on the road. See, highs and lows. My illness is kicking my butt, and the people around me are stepping in to make sure I’m OK.
Early this month I met with my new internist to see if there wasn’t something that I could take to beat some of these symptoms back. OK, I’m going to be honest here. I cried. We agreed that I would start the tart cherry extract again, but at a much lower dose than I took previously in the spring. (Tart cherry has anti-inflammatory properties and is easier on my stomach than NSAIDs. Unfortunately, my kidneys were damaged the first time I tried to take it.) I’m going to have my kidney function checked every month, but I’m already so much better (brain fog, goodbye!) that I’m really hoping that I can tolerate it OK. In the meantime I’m getting lots of chores done in this golden period while I feel so much better. I’ve moved furniture, completed some projects, and have driven to many, many stores that were ignored last summer.
And I made a crocheted had for my niece to wear this Halloween. Really, I’ve been a bundle of energy the last couple of weeks.
So, this is the end of the third year. I feel pretty good, I’m getting things done and making plans, and I am making hay while the (tart cherry) sun shines. Next week I get my blood drawn for the kidney function test and after that I see the rheumatologist.
I’ve been thinking about butterflies again. The day after I took that picture of the butterfly it snowed. A lot. It took a couple of days for it to melt as the temperatures climbed back up into the 60’s and 70’s. I wondered if the butterflies would make it. As I walked out of the office building after seeing my internist (and still recovering from my crying fit in her office…) I found butterflies swarming around one of the shrubs by the parking lot.
Those butterflies. You can kick them, but they come back. Be like a butterfly, I tell myself.
I know, I know. You have been wondering whatever happened to me. I have been knitting and knitting on the Marled Magic Sweater (by Stephen West), and it just seemed that it would be boring to put up even more pictures of my cat MacKenzie sleeping on ANOTHER chunk of knitted fabric (even if it was mohair fabulousness…).
But this cat isn’t MacKenzie, and besides, he is awake. This is my extremely elusive cat BobMorgan, who I call Yellow Boy in MacKenzie’s posts because, well, he is somewhat lacking in courage. My DIL only knows what he looks like because I sent her a picture. He wails if anything strange (like my sister and I replacing a window screen) happens. He is afraid of the camera, so a shot like this is rare. He is also the source of most of the cat hair in the pictures that I take.
I eventually stopped posting to the blog and just kept on knitting. And knitting. Then I finished the knitting and I was so exhausted by the whole experience that I didn’t get the ends woven in for another week.
I think what did me in was the i-cord bind off, which seemed to go on forever. It did make a really nice finished edge, however, so it was worth the time.
Thursday I took the sweater back out and finished it. It is done. It is beautiful. It is very, very warm. Did I mention that the temperature is in the 80’s outside? I sadly packed the Magic away to wait for colder days and some snow.
Don’t you want to see it?
Blocking was an issue. I didn’t want to stretch the sweater, which would make it longer, so I finally just laid it out on a towel, misted it with a spray bottle, and patted it into shape.Here it is! This sweater is lofty because of all the mohair I used, and is the perfect sweater to wrap up in for cold weather knitting and outings. Oh, did you notice the loose ends? They are all woven in and behaving themselves now.Check out the brioche on the arm (wine colored) the other stitches in this masterpiece were seed stitch, garter, and a simple lace.The black and grey panels in the back happened to be the yarns with cashmere in them too. Oh, my goodness. Wearing this baby feels wonderful!
Not the best pictures, but pretty good for selfies, don’t you think?
I used so many yarns to make this I finally just listed them the best I could in the notes part of my Ravelry entry. If you are interested, here is the link to my project page.
I just checked the weather report… it is going to snow next Thursday! I know what I’ll be wearing while I’m knitting that day!
Yarn, Books & Roses 