The weekend was busy and I am running late, but there is so much going on I thought that I should get my update entry out there so that next week’s edition doesn’t grow to completely unmanageable proportions. It’s a plan, anyway.
I had appointments every single day last week, and two on Friday. I ran lots of errands while out of the house and by the time the weekend arrived I needed to do a little recovery. So what all happened? I bought a new refrigerator (!), made the arrangements for new fencing and a gate into my back yard along the side of the house, went to physical therapy, and met with my primary care physician. Whew! The Blue Lipped Zebra needs to write an update, but that’s another post. I also took Hannah in to visit the vet and get caught up on all of her shots.
Hannah was so good at the vet. She took her shots like a champ and purred while they drew blood to test her for FIV. I insisted that I needed to stay with her during the blood draw and we got through it all with the minimum of upset for my girl. Whew! Then the pain and stiffness arrived. She growled if I tried to pick her up and wouldn’t even put weight on her front (vaccinated) paw for two days. Mateo, fully loaded with kitten energy and dying to rough house with his big sister, had to be distracted all weekend as Hannah hid out recovering from her vaccination reactions. Today Hannah is back up and the two cats are again chasing each other. Yay! Mateo goes for his shots next week…
Hannah wasn’t too sore to miss watching her baby bunny every day through the garden window. Mateo hung out with her when he was sleepy and is turning out to be the best little Hannah-companion ever. Except I’m pretty sure that he is going to be a lot bigger then Hannah when he is done growing!
Knitting
I finished Ranunculus!!
This is a pattern that is shockingly easy to modify and the pattern overtly support this. I tried to record what I did in my Ravelry notes as I’m pretty sure that I will be making another one of these. I’m exceptionally happy with the edging that I used on the bottom of the sweater and on the sleeves. I had cast off the sleeves while knitting (following the directions) and then decided that I wanted a better behaved edging that wouldn’t roll up my arm. I considered knitting Icord, but ended up stealing using the edging from a previous sweater, Misurina. I picked up stitches along the bound off sleeve edge and immediately launched into the edging: twisted stitch ribbing and then three rounds of stockinette before binding off to create the neatly rolled edging. The edging on the sleeve is stable and well behaved. I knitted a matching edging along the bottom of the sweater with a few more rows of the ribbing. Pretty awesome little sweater, don’t you think?
Garden
The weather has been exceptionally kind to the garden and the roses are just now starting to bust out with their second blooming of the season. This is kind of early and means that I may get a third blooming before the first hard freeze of the fall. I’m so pleased with the gardens in general. I always plant little bedding flowers hoping that they will reseed to create more plants in the coming years, but it doesn’t always work out for me. Except this year! I had planted miniature snapdragons two years ago that put out a couple of little volunteers last year that I took good care of. This year the garden, soaked every few days with another rainstorm, produced dozens of new snapdragons. Okay, these plants are all over the place and not just in the garden, but I’m going with Mother Nature and taking good care of them because I am now just plain charmed by the abundance of color.
I pruned the roses in front last week and gave the plants a good feeding so there should be new growth coming in the days ahead. The roses in the back, fed a couple of weeks ago, are already blooming again. Stay away from the rose, baby bunny, you hear me?!
Books
I spent a lot of time reading this weekend recovering from the adventures out of the house last week (and protecting poor Hannah from the wild kitten!). I finished The Starless Sea, blazed right through The Last Thing He Told Me, and then jumped into The Ten Thousand Doors of January.
The Starless Sea is a rich, complicated book with multiple story threads that slowly emerge from other related stories. It relies on metaphors and imagination an awful lot, and I would have quit on it more than once expect for… it was so well written that I kept wanting to memorize little phrases to keep them with me always, or maybe rip out some pages to fold into little stars to hang somewhere, or buy some clothes with bees on them, or go dig through the pantry to find some clover honey… Truthfully, the author almost killed the book with her endless creativity, but in the end the story lines pulled together, things almost made sense, and I stayed up way too late to get to the end. I liked the end. Then I went online to look for some bee jewelry, but then I am a sucker for bees and stories.
The Last Thing He Told Me rolled right along in a simple, well-constructed story that kept me completely entertained throughout. The twists and turns in the story’s plot were plausible and not obvious, the connections to the characters were perfect, and I quite frankly loved it. Perfect book to read following the brain-frying twists of The Starless Sea.
Then I picked up The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Hey, can you see how beautiful that cover is? It has hanging keys and doors: these are big elements of The Starless Sea. I’m only a few chapters in, but already I’m captured by the story…
Have a great week everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
Yarn, Books & Roses 
Glad to hear you are getting out and about somewhat and getting in some visits with the doctors. So good to see Hannah and Mateo – they are so adorable! Your sweater turned out so well – no wonder you are thinking about making a second one!
Thank you, it is nice to get out and about some. I’m trying to get things done before the next Covid wave hits. 😦 This week the air in Denver is so bad I need to stay home again so it all worked out… except for Hannah, I think. She would prefer that I didn’t take her out on adventures.
The best thing about that sweater is that it wasn’t even two skeins of yarn! I used a heavy fingering so it is knitted loose, but it isn’t see through. Perfect!
I am so pleased you managed all that, especially knitting shadows into the sweater 🙂 Poor Hannah’s expression says it all – it is good that it didn’t last.
The shadows are the best part! Hannah is back up to full speed again but gets another shot in two more weeks and I’m hoping that she doesn’t have such a severe reaction next time as the kitten is getting bigger every day and all he wants to do is play..
🙂
A lovely update! You accomplished a lot this week. The photo of Hannah and Mateo sleeping face to face is precious. That didn’t take long at all. I love your sweater and your ability to make adjustments to get it just so. Great pic of the bunny, your snapdragons and even your current reading is pictured artfully.
Thank you for saying all of those lovely things! I always have my phone with me these days and it helps capture the right picture (like Hannah with the bunny) when it comes along.
I’m just getting lucky with the sweaters. I’ve developed an attitude of focusing on the knitting and not the finished project which helps me be more adventurous and willing to take risks. It also helps to have previous projects to learn from!! I look at other projects on Ravelry and get lots of ideas from other knitters genius adaptations which is also super empowering!
It’s a great idea keeping your phone handy. I miss so many opportunities to capture birds, squirrels and bees with my camera. Did you ever dream you would have a high quality camera, a computer and a photo album all on one device. It’s hard to imagine that this technology is less than twenty years old.
I know! I bought the new phone recently just so I could get the camera. That phone is the one thing that I worry about losing! I got stuck in Denver a few weeks ago, downloaded the Uber app, and was in a car on the way home 10 minutes later. We take stuff like that for granted now, but it is all so new and so many new features that are connected to the phone emerged over just the last year. I use the phone app to pick up my Target order, and Kaiser now lets me handle check in by phone. We get used to it really quickly, but it is really all so new. Oh. I just remembered! Google Maps! Who could have imagined that our phones would give us directions to placing we are going over speakers in our car?!
All true! We were just talking about Thomas Guides/maps and how we relied on them for so many things, including house-hunting many years ago. Target is actually delivering my RX after I confirm using my phone. I use it as a magnifier, a camera, a calendar, my address “book”, and yes, that beloved camera. It’s extraordinary what it can do.
Your Ranunculus looks amazing! 😍 Can’t wait to see your Rock It Tee. I am glad Hannah is feeling better and back at it. The kitties look so happy together. I also read, well listened, to The Last Thing He Told Me. It was a good story and it sucked me in so I finished it quickly, too. Your garden looks so beautiful. ❤ Have a great week!
I cast on the Rock It Tee last night and the knitted fabric is just perfect! The yarn is a speckled one and I don’t think that I really appreciated how that would look in the knitted fabric. The colorway is “Deep End” and this does kind of look like a pool or pond. I’ll have to put up a pick next week.
I finally understand why Ranunculus is on the first page of the Ravelry feed! This is a great design with lots of versatility. The support in the pattern is very nice and there are links to support different adaptations. I’m considering what a long sleeve version of the sweater would look like…
That was a good story, wasn’t it! I listened to part of the book (text to talk) and wished that I had gotten it as an audiobook. Perfect knitting accompaniment.
OK, now I want to just go home and cast on for the Ranunculus. I have been admiring it for so long. Your version is stunning. Can’t wait to see it on you.
And it wasn’t even 2 skeins of yarn!!
So glad they are now snuggling up for snoozes, really makes me miss Boo and Dice who did you same. Your ranunculus looks gorgeous.
Right now it is hot so the snuggling is pretty limited, but they are definitely a matched pair and I’m so glad that I got the kitten. I keep seeing pictures of MacKenzie on my Amazon Echo and I miss him all the time. It is so hard to lose kitties and other companions.
I saw another Ranunculus on Facebook and it had the 6 inches of ribbing around the bottom that the pattern called for… I’m so glad that I went with the looser shaping. Easier to wear and layer, not to mention it looks better on me. 🙂