It is so hot I’m hanging out on the coffee table under the ceiling fan!
It is seriously, seriously hot! How hot, you ask? Well, check out the bunny out front…
Bunny: Ahh… here’s a cool patch of dirt!
And Mateo can hardly move in the heat of the day!
Seriously, he looks like he is melting!
Mateo and I kind of come back to life in the evenings when we head downstairs to watch the baby bunnies in the back window (it’s bunny o’clock then!) and in the late evenings, when the Mother of Cats moves upstairs to read before bed we move onto the bookshelf, up by the ceiling fan for the night.
Hannah: The Mother of Cats took this picture crooked, but you get the idea. I sleep on a shelf with books, and Mateo the wild boy sleeps up on the top shelf.
Well, guess who fell off the bookshelf at 3am this morning? Yep. That would be the wild boy, of course. I just looked over the side of the shelf to see if Mateo was okay, but the Mother of Cats had to track him down and fuss over him forever like he was still some type of baby or something. Whatever. Since everyone else was up I decided that I might as well get some cookies… then the Mother of Cats needed a glass of juice… then there was lots of tossing and turning that disturbed my sleep…
Now it is the day, and we are asleep again in the cool by the AC unit. All of the squirrels and bunnies are asleep too, and there aren’t even bees moving around outside. It’s only noon but it is already 95 degrees outside and the Mother of Cats is searching the sky in hopes of some thunderstorm clouds for this afternoon. She likes the rain, but the CoalBear doesn’t like the thunder at all!!
Mateo: thunder is bad!!
Isn’t Mateo (AKA the CoalBear) the silliest thing ever? All I care about is staying cool this hot afternoon…
and I am safely asleep by my favorite books waiting for evening to come.
Happy Caturday, everyone!
Note from the Mother of Cats: if you are currently in one of the places on the planet that is experiencing dangerous heat, I hope that you are safe and doing okay. Hugs to everyone under a high heat alert or experiencing wildfires. Stay safe!
Growing up as a little girl in Southern California I never saw many squirrels. They were this cute little animal that you might be able to see if you went up into the mountains. If you were lucky, you might be able to feed part of your lunch to a ground squirrel at a rest stop. They were rare, elusive, cute, and I absolutely, positively wanted to have one as a pet.
Look at the tail on this little guy who has been hanging out in my back yard!!
Then I moved to Colorado. Squirrels rule here!!! If you offer some food to a squirrel at a park you might get mobbed. Seriously, I had to once pick up a child and back away from the descending mob of squirrels after tossing out some scraps of bread. They are so cute, but best to not encourage them too much. They eat all the yummy food growing in gardens (ahem… strawberries and grapes… ), raid the trash, and aren’t above dragging off the dog’s Kong to get the treats inside. Bird feeders are actually squirrel feeders. These guys are so bright that it is almost impossible to keep them out of the feeders. There were some “squirrel proof” feeders at the local bird supply store, but I just laughed and bought a bird house. I love the squirrels, but I am not feeding them, because… previously mobbed by hungry squirrels…
Teenaged squirrels playing this spring on a garden chair.
Here where I live now there are squirrel nests in trees all around, and this last year a nest finally arrived in my front tree. It looks like a huge ball of leaves caught up in the branches; three cute little squirrel youngsters showed up this spring racing around the trunk, over the branches, and across the roof to my back yard where they access the fence which serves as the highway to all the other houses on my block. I call this Squirrel Route One, and the movement of little feet over the roof and the scrabble of squirrels along the fence are my morning entertainment every day while I’m outside on the deck drinking my morning latte. Why look at what has happened: I have pet squirrels after all!
The pictures show squirrels moving on Squirrel Route One: along the fence, then down into the yard to my deck, across the deck, and then a fast climb to the upper supports and a leap onto the roof. These squirrels aren’t above checking me out to see if I have some unsecured snacks. Nope, little guys. Move along!!
I do make sure that there is water for the squirrels, however.
There are several types of squirrels in Colorado, and these guys seem to be a type of tree squirrel called the fox squirrel. They provide endless entertainment for me and the cats and were great distractions (Squirrel!!!) for me as I recovered from surgery this spring. I used squirrels in my teaching; there was a white squirrel in a Denver park a few years ago, and I used the videotaped newscast about her in my biology classroom. That white squirrel wasn’t an albino as her eyes were dark, and her offspring were all normal in coloration. “What type of genetic mutation is this?” I would ask the class. (It’s recessive.) What would the Punnett square of the offspring look like? If two offspring mated (I know… icky… just go with it!) what would be the chance of another white squirrel? Is this a genetic feature that will be selected for? What if our weather changed and it was snowy all the time? The kids loved the white squirrel lesson. Well, they are so darn cute, what’s not to like?
Adult (not white) squirrel on my ash tree.
I’m not above having fun with squirrels and my neighbors. Squirrels can be enormous pests, and a few years ago they managed to work their way into my next-door neighbor’s attic where they went wild eating the wire insulation. Bad squirrels!! I printed out a recipe for squirrel pot pie and anonymously taped it to their front door. I know, I’m bad. They trapped those squirrels, repaired the roof, and I’m pretty sure that none of the squirrels became dinner. Pretty sure…
They got back by feeding the squirrels that remained lots and lots of peanuts in the shells that the squirrels buried all over my yard and in the gardens.
I gave them a little stuffed toy squirrel wearing baby booties when they had a new baby.
Squirrel wars!
That neighbor eventually moved away and just a couple of weeks ago she called me to catch up on all the neighborhood news. “I now have a squirrel nest!” I told her. They are living in a new housing area without mature trees now and there are no squirrels. They miss them.
Because squirrels are so darn cute!!
And they are favorites of watching cats everywhere!
I guess almost everyone in the world knows by now that the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling last month (June 24th) that overturned the constitutional right for a woman in the United States to seek an abortion at any time during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
This post isn’t really about abortions, okay. This is about the unbelievable unintended consequences of that decision for women who are dealing with unforeseen circumstances. Women who are dealing with medical conditions that they never saw coming, and that they absolutely did not bring upon themselves.
Like autoimmune disease. Like cancer. Like any one of a number of medical conditions that require serious, high-risk medical interventions by the medical professionals who are treating that woman.
My first inkling that there might be a problem with the Supreme Court ruling that was much larger than what was being reported in the press happened the evening of June 29. A woman in one of my autoimmune online support groups posted that she saw a message from a doctor who had a patient reporting that she couldn’t get her methotrexate prescription renewed. I literally couldn’t sleep that night I was so upset. In the days that followed there were more reports, and this is really happening to some women. They are being denied refilling of their methotrexate prescriptions. This drug is a common one used to treat autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and scleroderma. It is a chemo drug, it can harm an unborn child, and it can also be used to induce an abortion. Here is an article on Health.com, another at msn Everyday Health, and this one from Time.com.
My morning pills.
There are some serious drugs there in my hand. The green pills, Myfortic, can harm an unborn child by causing birth defects or a miscarriage. I take 6 of those every day. The white capsule, omeprazole, should only be used “only if the benefit outweighs the risk to the fetus”. I have to take two of those each day. That little pink pill towards the upper left is the really big problem in my hand. That drug, ambrisentan, required a rigorous enrollment process with paperwork from my cardiologist and myself along with two interviews by pharmacists. I had to prove that I could not get pregnant to avoid taking a pregnancy test prior to each month’s supply of the drug being shipped to me. Even with all of that, I am screened each month before the next month’s supply is overnight express shipped to me. This drug poses a serious risk to a fetus. In my support groups for pulmonary hypertension there are women who are reporting that they are getting dropped from the programs that allow them to get the drug.
I’m okay because I’m beyond childbearing age. Many other women who are dealing with autoimmune diseases that require drugs such as these are of childbearing age. Why? Because the people in the population who are at the greatest risk of developing an autoimmune disease are women of childbearing age, that’s why. Because of the recent decision about access to abortion these women are also now at possible risk of being denied treatment for their autoimmune disease, or in the worse-case scenario, access to an abortion in consultation with their medical professionals.
I literally couldn’t sleep when I read the first reports of the problems with access to methotrexate in my online forums. This is absolutely unbelievable. This is unbearable. How could this be happening to a population of desperate woman, through no fault of their own, who are in this horrible situation? Right now, methotrexate is being targeted, but there are all these other drugs that are used for so many patients with so many conditions. Women, absolutely, are at risk of receiving inferior health care in the US.
This is awful. Have a rose. Right now, I need a rose. And a hug.
This is hitting me hard this evening because I have been dealing with autoimmune pneumonia since last December. My doctors are trying to get it under control with high dose immunosuppressants, but I am coming off one of them right now and I am struggling with shortness of breath and chest pain once again. I’m back on daytime oxygen and I’m feeling a little low. The lung biopsy was the first engagement with my interstitial lung disease, this current drug strategy the second battle, and the third battle is looming on the horizon. This isn’t a disease; it is a war. I never asked for this, and yet, here I am trapped in this unforeseen circumstance, engaged with an uncurable foe. Without the drugs in my hand above, I would already be gone. Yay, science!!
I think that there is another CT scan in my near future, and then there is a possibility that my doctors will move to the Plan B (see what I did there) that they have already discussed with me. Cyclophosphamide (a chemo drug) and OFEV (an anti-fibrotic drug) are on deck if my doctors decide to escalate my care. Both of these drugs can harm an unborn child. I will get access to these drugs. If I was in my 30s, as many other members of my support groups are, it might be a different story. What about women in other support groups that I don’t belong to who just got diagnosed with cancer or an equally serious disease who also need medical treatment with high-risk drugs such as these? Women of childbearing age. Women who may already have children who they need to think of and care for in their health care journey.
Being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease like the ones that I have (systemic sclerosis and Sjogren’s disease) is a punch to the gut. Being denied access to treatment because of your childbearing status is an unbearable second blow. Becoming pregnant while on one of these drugs would place a woman in an impossible situation. Nothing, NOTHING, about this situation is good. Where is the privacy for these women? Where are the HIPPA protections that they are entitled to? The decisions that these women face are absolutely heartbreaking, morally complicated, and ethically challenging. They deserve privacy as they make them along with their health care providers, religious advisors, and families.
This post isn’t about abortion, not really. This post is about unforeseen circumstances and unintended consequences.
I feel a lot better for having gotten this out.
Peace be with you all.
Take this rose with you as you go.
But if you decide to share this post, write a congressperson, join a march, or take some other action to ensure that women have equal access to health care, that would be great.
If you have been keeping up with the adventures of Casa Hannah and the CoalBear you know that I have been feeling just freaking wonderful for the last two week and getting more done than at any time in the last two years. I’ve been planting lots of new plants and getting all the gardens into order (for the first time in years because… next door pit bull who has now left the scene… yay… adios, pit bull…), and dragging out lots of things to get working on that have been languishing for years. The garden is starting to produce some color with the perennials now which is awesome as I’m seeing hot pinks and purples. Lavender, bougainvillea, and sage. Perfect!
Um… and then the party came crashing to a halt a few days ago as I started weaning myself off prednisone (marvelous stuff, prednisone!) and I got a little dizzy, and I… fell off the stairs. I literally realized I was going to be airborne at the last second and managed to push off enough to twist around and land on my feet in the living room where I pretty much crashed landed into the couch. Sad outcome. Did you realize that you can actually bruise your lungs? Okay, my lungs are less than pristine, but still… my ribs aren’t too happy, either. There was some talk about my liver… I had to stay indoors over the weekend and go back onto daytime oxygen.
That, however, did not stop me from going down the fiber rabbit hole!!
I finished the first silk/yak roving from Greenwood Fiberworks and am ready to start on the second.
I’ve been considering how to attack the variegated roving. Should I separate the colors? Do pencil rovings down the length of the larger piece? Just take it off in strips and let the colors end up however? Still thinking about this one, but I am tending towards pencil rovings.
I made some really good progress on my Salty Air Tee.
I love, love, love the yarn that I am using for this sweater. Isn’t that the perfect color for summertime knitting? This pattern is racing right along and I’m racing to get it finished because… some new patterns dropped on Ravelry and I am dying to knit one of them.
This is the Lace & Fade Boxy by Joji Locatelli, and that first picture is swiped off the Ravelry page and has her copyright. I have four skeins of a dark grey fingering yarn with smoky/woody tones that I am dying to use for this sweater. My first idea is to knit the entire sweater in the main color (lace and all… ignore the fade, we don’t need no stinking fade because I have four skeins of this color…) and then go back and knit I-cord trim at the neck, bottom, and wrists in that really cool multi yarn. That will look awesome, right? On the other hand, if there is enough yarn, I can do the lace in a fade with the pink yarns. I only have just over 100 yards of each color, so that may not work, but it might look pretty cool. I really am tending towards doing the whole sweater in the solid fingering. I have knitted two boxy sweaters in the past (the Vneck version) and I know them to be comfy layering workhorses in cold weather.
Then there is the crocheting. I haven’t crocheted in years because of my dodgy wrists, but I loved this bag (Square Scramble Sack) on Ravelry so much I bought the Noro yarn a week ago. Like I need more yarn, right? I had to order the crochet hooks from Amazon and then I was off to YouTube to learn how to make the puff stitch… that first little square has too many puffs in it, but I felt pretty successful and I’m now making a few squares every day that I don’t fall off the stairs.
There are two more sweaters that I want to knit, but I’ve got them on the back burner at the moment because I’m so far down the fiber hole at the moment I am just focusing on working steadily on each project for a few hours each day. Or maybe every other day so I don’t wear out my hip (spinning) or wrists (crochet). So far I’m making progress and I’m recovering from the fall okay at the same time so all is good. Except… the days of prednisone wonder are coming to an end as I feel the energy and the good times fading away. I start the lowest dose tomorrow and after a week it will be over.
Still, if you look at all those pictures that I put into this post, the days of color continue. Yay! My gardens have been returned to some semblance of order, I am making good progress on a number of projects, and I also got some chores done.
Hannah: I was put into the carrier and then put into the car and then taken to the vet and then I got cat-handled and there were some shots and would you believe that the vet said that I was slightly pudgy…
Seriously, PUDGY!!!
Hannah: Now I have to eat Indoor Cat food and the Mother of Cats has cut back on my cookies. Ugh.
Okay, this is an update on my progress on my goals for the year, but it is also a celebration of how well I feel at the moment and my launch into several projects that are rocking the color right now. Seriously, I am so drawn to colors at the moment that I’m pretty much doing some silly impulse shopping. Who cares. I’m having a good time!!
You want to see the silly impulse shopping and/or pink things first?
I could not leave the local garden center without that pink flamingo for my garden! Hello, it glows in the dark with an LED body. 🙂 What do you think about my Knitting Goddess fabric? Yep. That was a late-night Etsy impulse purchase. I’m thinking that it will make a fabulous project bag. What do you think about that Noro yarn? That will become a crocheted tote bag… I also needed to buy some brightly colored hooks to make the bag, and there may have been another big ball of beautiful yarn that fell into the shopping crate before I checked out, but I’ll never talk about it. My feet are hurting because of the spinning I’m doing, so I had to get those wicked compression socks!!! Yep, I am a total sucker for pink. Well, raspberry pink to be specific, but I will settle for hot pink. Finally, Hannah kept trying to drag off my knitted finger protectors, so I made her and Mateo some little tube-like cat thingies to play with. They like them!
Speaking of color, look at my progress on the spinning for Tour de Fleece.
Can you see that I am making progress? The bobbin on the right is where I am today. I’m almost through the crocus-colored roving (50/50 yak/silk from Greenwood Fiberworks), then I get to start on the variegated roving. I’ve been watching episodes of Vera on BritBox while I spin so I’m actually coming to think of this Tour de Fleece as the Tour de Northumbia… I am happy with the spinning as I think that my drafting is getting easier and the thread that I’m spinning is getting smoother. It may also be slightly larger, but I can live with that!
I started reading this book this week because… look at that cover!!!
I don’t want to talk about this book yet because it really is remarkable, and I am changing my opinion about it as I go. It’s like entering a dream world and just experiencing the adventure without worrying too much about what’s going on. In time, I’m sure, I’ll understand what is happening. Maybe. I don’t care. I’m so entranced at the moment I’m reading a couple of hours a day during the heat of the day.
There is color in the garden, too. Look at this:
There is more color in the garden to replace the fading roses. My veronica is finally blooming, and I went back to the garden center to buy more lavender plants. I now have 11 lavenders in the garden… don’t you think that I should get another, so it is an even dozen? The pink yarrow is hard at work. Oh, yeah, there was also a garter snake in the garden today. Not a lot of color, but a ton of fun to see.
So, how much progress has occurred over the last 6 months?
I finished 30 hats and 28 PICC line covers in the first 6 months. I was hoping to get 50 of each done this year, so I am on track.
I have removed 76 skeins of yarn (100g of yarn = a skein) from the stash through knitting and donations. I hope to get 100 skeins out before the end of the year, so I am on track. I did just have a 6-skein slip, but I’m not worried.
The other knitting accomplishments are two sweaters and two pairs of socks.
I finished a quilt and got it hung up on the wall!
I learned how to double knit. Actually, I’m really stoked about how fun it was and I am looking forward to doing some cute projects. (I found that chart online and watched videos to figure out how to do this. Piece of cake, as it turns out!)
I have finished 32 books.
Well, that’s the progress report. My son helped me get my table loom set up for me to use and I’m dreaming of warping the floor loom before the end of the year. (Mateo: that sounds like fun!!) I’m wondering if I can weave something with the yarn that I am spinning now, and I’ve pulled out another quilt kit that has been languishing forever in a cupboard so that I can work on that in my sewing room. I’m entering the last few days on the full dose of prednisone; the dose will be tapered off and stopped over the next two weeks. While I was on prednisone my rheumatologist gradually stepped up my immunosuppressant to a final dose that is double what I was on previously. I feel really good right now and I have huge plans for the rest of the year.
The Tour de Fleece, that is. I’ve never joined the tour before, but this year I am feeling pretty good due to my current 6-week course of steroids (prednisone… if you’ve ever been on this drug, you know what I’m talking about… I feel great and have tons of energy) and my hip is feeling so much better I’m walking without my crutch and almost no limp.
If I was ever going to try to do some meaningful spinning, this is the time to do it!! The Tour de Fleece this year is from July 1st until July 24th. The idea is to watch the Tour de France while spinning along… kind of a fusion of spinning wheels, you know. I’ve joined Team Rookie since this is my first year on the Tour and it has been quite a while since I’ve done any serious spinning. This will be fun!
Here are my goals:
Goal One: spin the yak! I have two 4-ounce rovings from Greenwood Fiberworks that are 50/50 silk/yak. I started on the crocus colored roving about a year ago, and it has just been in limbo since then. The poor wheel has become dusty while it was sitting around with the little bit of spinning that I had accomplished last year parked on a spindle. I’ve decided to try to get both of these rovings spun up and then plied together… maybe. I can also go for 3 ply with some Navajo plying. I’m going to spin fine with an eye on a fingering weight final yarn.
I have been seriously intimidated by this fiber!
Goal Two: spin the paco-vicuna! The silk/yak is the warm-up for the main event. I have had this paco-vicuna (from an animal named Gulliver) for over 10 years, and because of the cost and the fine fiber I have been afraid to commit to spinning it. Well, I’m over it. If this will ever be spun, now is the time. My goal is for a two-ply fingering yarn for a lacy cowl or shawlette. I’m also thinking that a hat and mitts would be really nice.
Rose gold alpaca. Do you see how clean this fleece is?!
Goal Three: spin the alpaca! The fleece from an alpaca named Antonia, to be exact. I bought this rose grey alpaca fleece at the Estes Park Wool Market a few years ago. It’s a nice fleece. It didn’t win a ribbon, but when I found it in a vendor’s booth, I liked the color and texture so much I impulse bought it. It doesn’t have very much veggie matter in it, but the stable is a tiny bit on the short side so… no ribbon. Still, it should make a really nice yarn. I’m thinking that this should be a 2-ply sport to DK weight yarn. I’m not completely committed to working on this fleece, but if the spinning on the other two projects goes fairly quickly then I should have time to do some carding and spinning with this yummy alpaca.
I spun for 2 hours tonight, and my hip is still behaving itself. That’s a good sign. I also signed up with the team out of my local yarn store and I hope to go spin with them every Sunday morning while the tour is going on. This will be fun.
Yarn, Books & Roses 