What a week this has been. I have a new kitten, we broke a heat record this week, and then there were a couple of days of cold and rain. The garden came through all of it in good shape. The kitten has already wrapped me around her little paw. The Covid-19 pandemic is calming down in my state, but the states around us are experiencing skyrocketing numbers, making me feel like we are in the eye of the storm. This is the evening of the summer solstice; the shortest night of the year. Momentous days continue.
Knitting
During the cold days last week I struggled to stay warm, especially my arms. I cleaned out the yarn room and kept looking at the left over yarn from the Sweet & Tartan socks that I made. Gee, I really liked those yarns while knitting the socks. You know that I had to make arm warmers…
The pattern for these arm warmers is Armelitas by knitcats Designs. I have to be honest: I didn’t hunt up the pattern this time but just went with the general memory of the pattern and kept making adjustments as I went. I tried to write what I did into the notes on my Ravelry page.
Do you see the knitted Maya cat that I’m holding in my arms? She was there for the picture because I’ve been working on her adding fluffy fur to her the last couple of days while listening to my audiobook.
Garden
Things are exploding into bloom all over my garden!! A couple of years ago I bought a few 6-packs of some bedding plants to put into the front flower bed along the walk up to the front door. They bloomed, and were okay, but amazingly they survived the winter and came back looking bigger and better last summer. This year they are back again looking just stupendous!! Ladies and gentlemen, let me present this year’s Dianthus and Dusty Miller combo.
My roses are looking pretty good, too. I’m so happy that they are making such a good come back after the late hard freeze and high wind events of this spring.
The front roses are also blooming like champs, but how many roses can go into one post? I have to save some for next week. 🙂
Books
I am back to reading The Mirror & The Light. I’m not done yet, but I am entranced by the language and the building story. It is finally dawning on me that this book is about a great transition and upheaval in the power and social structures of England through the machinations of King Henry VIII and his right hand man, Thomas Cromwell.
I am finally at the heart of the story: Henry is the Mirror and the Light above all other princes, and Cromwell draws some power by existing in the reflected light. The corrupt practices of the medieval church are being overturned and the bible is being translated into English. The new churches will provide registries of all births, marriages, and deaths so that common people will have a recorded history. The roads will be improved as jobs are given to the needy. A comprehensive plan for the defense of England is being set in place. There is a big, over-reaching plan in motion here, and Cromwell is very aware of his limits. He feels the history of his time all around him, is burdened by ghosts everywhere he goes, and he is deliberately building the infrastructure, human and physical, that will need to be in place after his passing. The past, present and future are continually coming together as Cromwell reflects and acts in the service of his and Henry’s vision for the nation. This is bigger, much bigger, than I expected. I’ve been avoiding the end of the book because, well, things don’t end well for Cromwell, but now I’m kind of thinking that maybe they do…
Hannah is turning into the easiest kitten ever to raise. She wants to be with me as much as she can, and just now is starting to play with toys in another room as long as she knows where I’m at. She sleeps through the night. She already has a favorite toy and rockets around the house with it in her mouth or tosses it around while she’s playing. She calls for me if she doesn’t know where I am. She is a huge chowhound and I have to be very careful when opening the refrigerator because she wants to climb in. So far she hasn’t caused much destruction, but I have discovered that she can sever yarn with one chomp of her little kitten teeth, so knitting is happening really carefully. Luckily she naps a lot!
Have a great week, everyone!!
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
Yarn, Books & Roses 
Maya really is getting fluffy! Hannah looks really settled already which is great. It makes me want a kitten but I think Ylva would eat it! When I had kittens they used to climb up the textured wallpaper to see out of the window and climb up the blinds and rip them so it’s great she’s better behaved. Your garden really switches to summer mode so quickly, my roses are still not open yet and they’ve had buds for weeks and weeks.
Maya is getting so fluffy that I worry about running out of yarn. I have to admit that I put off getting a kitten for so long because I was concerned about all of those behavior… MacKenzie was a nightmare for years. He destroyed my plants, shredded furniture, climbed onto all high places and caused destruction, terrorized the bird, well, you get it! Hannah has been pretty easy to train so far, but to be fair I have tons of cat furniture and stuff to help me this time around. I ordered her more toys from Chewy last week and the box came yesterday. You never saw such a happy kitten… of course, it was the packing paper that was the big hit!
It really warmed up quickly here which helped the roses, and I think that we are at a lower lattitude than you are (I live right below the 40th parallel) which also makes a difference, I think. Anyway, in July it gets so hot here that the poor roses will pretty much go into stasis, so I’m glad that they are blooming now.
We are just north of Sitka Alaska where I am so you are way way way down in comparison. We are 57.5⁰N here. The gulf stream stops us getting Alaska winters. I just checked and you are in line with the south of Spain and Italy so that makes sense it heating up so fast.
Oh, yeah, you are way up there compared to me! No wonder my roses are moving along faster than yours. I used to live in California just above the Mexican border and coming to Colorado was just a shock because of the winters. I mean, we used to grow bananas in the back yard! It is amazing how much difference it makes as you move up the planet towards the pole.
Hannah and the garden are both doing well. I hope you keep warm
I am. After the two cold days we set another heat record. Crazy!
Oh, your garden, Marilyn ! – how it sustains you ! 🙂 – and vice versa, of course.
As for Hannah, I know exactly what she’s like because Boodie was the same. Let me know if she grows to full size; I do not believe Boodie ever will, and I love his little body.
Every time I read one of your diary posts I am filled with jealous rage. 😉 I have decided it’s high time you visited my blogsite: you never know, you might find something of interest therein. I chop it off at six months: not interested in whatever I wrote before that, and no-one else is, either. So every month I delete the earliest month’s posts, with tags and gallery items. Neat but not gaudy – an erstwhile family utterance.
So: http://margaretrosestringer.com will bring you. I shall be pleased to welcome you ..
No rages please! I’m living in a maelstrom and if one more bad thing happens it will just push me right over the edge, you hear…
I checked the feed and somehow I had not clicked the button to follow your blog, but now I am so I will see your posts in my newsfeed. I’m so sorry, and I do apologize!
I’ve had a string of large cats so it will be a nice change if Hannah is just normal sized. I am grateful that she is turning out to be such a companionable kitten; the only downside is that she wants me to be her playmate and attacks me while I’m walking sometimes. Very cute, but I’m not the most steady person on my feet these days.
I’m off to your blog.
Obviously Hannah ended up where she belongs:) She’s thriving!
Maya looks great! I love your arm warmers:) Stripes are always pleasing and the pink is just perfect!
Your flowers are fantastic!!
Our state is moving forward and opening inside dining. The information on new cases of coronavirus is hard to find so we may not know here if we are still going down in cases or up. Stay well:)
It was a good week for the knitting and the garden, wasn’t it. I’m thinking of a pair of tipless gloves with the rest of that left over yarn. I may need to add in purple, and I think that the stripes should continue, don’t you? I’m on the hunt for a nice pattern although I bet I could adapt my fingerless mitt pattern. I did find a finger down glove version that seems a little funky… you knit the fingers first… how crazy is that? Maybe I will turn the pattern around and knit it the other direction with stripes!
My state has a web site that published all the data by county and includes more graphs and charts than I want to deal with (it also lists the locations of outbreaks in nursing homes and grocery stores) and I find that helpful. We opene up the dining a couple of weeks ago and we are still going down. I do wish, however, that the governor would require (instead of encouraging) face masks everywhere! Here’s the site I go to for state-by-state numbers: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ If you keep a record of each days count you will be able to see for yourself if things are getting better or worse.
I’ve been getting more vocal on facebook when people say something like, “if you are afraid, just stay home” in regards to masks. My reply is: my behavior does not constitute a public heath risk, and yours does. You should stay home if you can’t or won’t wear a mask! I refuse to let this devolve into a debate about personal freedom when it is a matter of public health.
Thanks for the link! Here they have let the individual cities and towns decide on masks and businesses are free to do more. Almost everywhere requires a mask.
People can’t seem to separate politics from this pandemic. I see them as totally separate. A consistent message is needed regardless of who the messenger is.
That’s kind of the policy here too, although our governor has pushed masks and is really open with the data. Tonight they announced that we have had 3 days of increased Covid cases this week but hospitalizations are steady, so they are watching it. This is so exhausting.
I thought you were really holding a cat at first, and had to go back and look at the picture again. You are doing a great job with it. I love your armwarmers.
I have her laying on the kitchen table right now, and each time I see her I’m startled by thinking there is a cat there. As she fluffs out she looks more and more like the real cat.
I will never forget dear old MacKenzie and all his quirks. He was such a trick and I am a terrible animal tragic. However I think Hannah is very engaging and seems to have a constant look of wonderment on her sweet little face. I love the photo of her on your bookshelf. Your red rose is particularly beautiful and I can almost smell the dianthus. My only bloom is a cheerful orange daisy at present. Can’t wait for the spring bulbs and roses. Your knitting is so pretty and Maya is really looking convincing. Any reaction from the kitten to her? Keep well
MacKenzie was truly one of a kind and it was so fun to make his voice public in his posts. He really was that bossy and self-entitled in real life, but I loved him like no other. Hannah, as a kitten, is still finding her voice, but I’m pretty sure that she won’t be as demanding and impatient with me as MacKenzie was. Gosh, I still miss him so much!
Hannah did beat up knitted Maya one night! I may need to keep her safely put up with I’m not working on her…
In a couple weeks my garden will go dormant in the high heat and yours will be shining with blooms. I look forward to seeing your roses! 🙂
I thought you were holding Hannah, not knitted Maya! She’s getting even more realistic.
Your arm warmers are fab, especially the wee pop of pink.
Hannah is such a cutie! I couldn’t help but notice you have a book edited by E.O. Wilson. He is important in my state to those of us who are environmentally-minded.
Oh, yeah! He’s a pretty influential biologist. I know of him because of his work with insects and the development of sociobiology. In my classroom I named the student tables (4 students to each lab table grouping) after scientists, and Wilson was one of them. I’m also environmentally minded: I worked as a environmental activities facilitator for years for my state through Project Wild and Project Learning Tree.
So wonderful that you did that important work! We try to save whatever wild lands we can here . . . Wilson is from my state. I missed seeing this book before, but I’ve read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. An online friend in Wisconsin recommended it.
I finished The Mirror and the Light yesterday. The Tudor Travel Guide has a new podcast episode on Cromwell if you are interested!
I am! I am also watching The Tudors on Netflix which kind of helps me too. I should finish the book today, and then I have another Henry VIII book to start called Tombland by C. J. Sansom.
Cute photos of Hannah, especially on the book shelf. So glad to hear that she’s doing well. You’re so lucky that she sleeps at night. I’ve never had a cat do that.
I know, right! I think it’s because she is a little older: 3 months. She hasn’t learned the word “no” yet, but it is really easy to redirect her to more acceptable activities. Maybe I shouldn’t have typed so fast… I just looked up and she is trying to dig her way into a plastic bag of yarn right now…
Kitten? Kitten? they are all the joy and none of the work
Your garden and flowers are lovely! They are doing so well!
Knitted Maya and your arm warmers are both beautiful – you are doing great work!
Hannah is just so adorable 🙂
Thank you!
I love the combination of pink and gray; it is one of my favorite. Your arm warmers are terrific!
I love pink and gray too! It’s like they’re the perfect colors along with wine and plum. 🙂
Hannah is so cute! Does she kick your armwarmers? Chloe used to follow me everywhere. Maggie, her kitten, not so much. Love your roses!
She does kick the armwarmers so o had to find her some substitute toys. She also chases my shoelaces…
Haha! Chloe used to do that. She especially liked my snowboots with faux fur. I would be sitting down to lace them up, and suddenly she would be there, kicking my feet and tossing her head back.