Hi. I’m Mateo.
It has been a pretty darn boring week for me. It has been snowing and cold, and the Mother of Cats has NOT been letting me out as much as I would like. I can see the bunnies and those horrid squirrels all running around outside, but do I get to spend time on the deck, belly flat against the wood, slowly creeping up towards the wire, digging in my back claws, dreaming of the rush towards that big fat bunny in the garden… NO. I hardly got any time out at all. The Mother of Cats was full of so many excuses that involved snow, wind, cold… whatever. If the bunny can manage, I’m sure that I’d be fine. To be fair, I guess I should admit that things have been a little extreme lately weather-wise. Check out today’s weather and what the City and County of Denver had to say about it.
The Mother of Cats has been home and staying busy reading and knitting this week. She cleaned up the yarn stash early in the week and I have to admit, there is a lot of yarn. This is what the stash looked like when she was done.
The Mother of Cats has been making decisions for the new year (she calls them resolutions, but that’s a crazy word. The better phrase would be The Wishful Thinking List, because that’s what it really is), but she seems almost perked up now that she has organized herself for the coming year. She wants to read 50 books, knit 50 hats, plant milkweed in her garden, and maybe convince the jade plant to bloom. That’s it. She has decided that she will only knit and work with yarn from the stash this year.
The Mother of Cats still has some projects that she needs to get finished up with, so she is also working on them for a couple of days each week between the hat knitting. This week she focused on some socks that were started last year, and this evening she got them finished.
She has also been cranking out the hats and PICC line covers since the start of the year. This is what she has managed so far:
So, that is all that has been going on around here. (yawn) Maybe I can get Hannah to get up and chase me for a while. Maybe the laser light will come on pretty soon. Maybe I can find one of my chirpy toys. I think that they are all under the bed… what?… don’t you keep your important stuff under the bed?
Or maybe I’ll just take a nap…
This is Mateo, the CoalBear, signing off.
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
There are some other projects lurking in the wings, but I don’t want to commit to them. I bought another quilt pattern, and I pulled out my little tabletop loom too. Those are just side projects and I really plan to commit to producing hats for the community group that I knit for. Last year there were more than 900 hats donated, and somehow, we have acquired even more requests in the last few months.
All of a sudden, everything that I’m reading and watching has Asian (and publishing or Chinese triads) elements. It was a compete accident: I had put holds on the books in my library months ago, and they arrived in my inbox withing a couple of days of each other. While I was reading Yellowface, The Brothers Sun appeared on Netflix. Synchronicity, right?
These are two really great books, and I really, really enjoyed The Brothers Sun. Thanks to synchronicity, I kind of understood common references (snakeheads, the one-child policy of China, auctions in publishing…) as they popped up in each book or episode of The Brothers Sun. Whew. There were common themes too, such as the relationships between children and their mothers, the struggle to find your own way, racism, the debt we owe to each other and our family, plagiarism, bullying, deaths, you name it, these media sources had it.
Now I’m reading The Maid. Would you believe that there is some bullying and a death already? Of course there is!
I also have to share this picture that was posted on Facebook today of an old newspaper picture of my high school gymnastics team. How fun to see my younger self now that I’m old and walking with a cane. 🙂
Yarn, Books & Roses 
50 hats! You can do it! What a great, chunky goal for the year.
I’m already on my 5th hat so I think that it is a reasonable goal, and I’m having so much fun pulling out yarn from the stash that I’m dreaming of what the next hat will look like as I knit each one. It is kind of a relief to get some yarn used for a good purpose.
Love those socks. I’m thinking about taking a class on the Pressed Flower Shawl. Stay warm!
Take the class. The pattern is really easy as it is mosaic knitting, so there isn’t a lot of stranding going on and the finished fabric is thick, warm and stretchy. The chart is a little different, so there is a learning curve (not that steep at all!) and then you will be up and running. I just love all the pressed flower patterns.
Oh goodness. We also watched and loved The Brothers Sun. I ran out of time on my audiobook of The Maid but I’m on the wait list again. I was enjoying it. I’ve put off watching Everything Everywhere just to take a little break from all things Asian. Good luck on your milkweed. I’ve now got a lot of it now but I don’t mind. Only saw one butterfly last year. 😦
I kept laughing at the churro cart, and him watching the Great British Baking Show in the background. I’m more than half way through The Maid now and it continues to deliver a fun, quirky story that is a great break, as you said, from all things Asian-American.
Those socks look so warm, and even more so for being purple. (Everybody knows it’s the warmest color.) Heavens, you are so organized with all those storage bins. Not in my entire life have I been that organized with anything.
The socks are warm, and I am rocking them today!! Purple is the best, don’t you think! I am also rocking a purple cane these days.
It’s not a yarn stash, it is a carefully curated yarn collection that must be protected from wool moths at all times!! Actually, I learned to use bins when I was in the classroom and was doing the same labs every year with the students. The labs required ALL THESE SUPPLIES like solutions in little labeled bottles, petri dishes filled with little papers from the hole puncher, strips of colored papers, packs of dried peas, etc. So much work to put together each one. I finally realized that I should pack up the stuff for each lab into a labeled bin that I could just pull out the next year and cut my prep time down to a fraction of what it usually was. The bins came home with me when I retired and… yarn went into them as I became a crazed knitter in retirement!!
MARIAN ? I have been addressing you by the wrong name for all this time ?
But I know that I had to worm your name out of you years ago, and I can scarcely believe I simply misspelled it from the time you rather reluctantly supplied it ..
I am bloody mortified ..
No, you had it right. They totally mangled my name in the newspaper which is what you get when you have a goofy name and the reporter is getting the info over the phone.
Oh thank all the gods !! PHEW !!! 😀
And your knitting remains exceptional, Marilyn ..
Thanks. The name that everyone called me in high school was Mare and I’m surprised that wasn’t what was in the caption. It kind of explains how the person giving the information about my name mangled it. My last name is unusual, so it was a given that it would be mangled into something else.
People can be REALLY ANNOYING about names. My frequent rage is caused when I tell someone “I have a double first name, with a hyphen in the middle, and I use both: it’s Margaret-Rose.” To which the reply is almost always “Oh, OK, Margaret.” Grrrrrrrrrrrr ..
I hear you. I think that it is so disrespectful to not call people with the name that they prefer to have used. I had a CAT with a double name and there was a problem with the vet because they wouldn’t use it. His name was BobMorgan, but I called him Morgan most of the time. The vet just called him Bob. He was so upset (they called him psychocat) while with them for surgery, and I’m pretty sure that not using his name was part of the problem. See, the rage problem also happens with cats. 🙂
I had a lot of immigrant students my last few years and I was furious on their behalf that other teachers were using Americanized versions of their names instead of the correct name. I used the name that the student asked me to, always.
You are a woman after my own heart !! 🙂
How fun to see the newspaper article. I don’t go by my school name either these days…except at the doctors. I’m impressed at the organisation of your yarns and definitely looks like a good place for you to ‘shop’ for yarn for projects this year. Mateo is such a handsome cat.
It just made my day when the picture popped up on Facebook. There is a Facebook group that is posting all these old newspaper pictures from the town newspaper. My name in the caption is completely mangled (first and last name) but that was typical for an unusual name and info that was passed over the phone. I’m pretty sure that I can get by with shopping the stash this year, and I really do need to get the amount of yarn cut down. A lot of the yarn is leftovers from other projects that will be great in hats and PICC covers. I really did get lucky with both of my cats as they were rescues as kittens and you can never be sure what you’re getting when you bring the kitten home. I never suspected that I would get this tiny, packed with personality, gorgeous Maine coon cat when I adopted Mateo.
I always feel super productive after a good stash reorganization and looks like you do too! You’ve already made a nice dent in the hat plans! Hope you’re staying warm – snuggle a cat or two if you need.
I think that was it; I feel reenergized and have lots of creative ideas about what I’m going to get done. Now that it is all organized again, it will be easy to go “shopping”, too. The cats and I are totally over the cold; there is one more night of extreme cold and then the worst of it will move out. Yay!
Wow – great picture! You have some great goals for this year. I love when synchronicity just sort of happens in your books and viewing! e
Coalbear, you are such a handsome boy, and MoC really is looking out for you by keeping you in. It’s cold out there! Just ask Jack Nicholson 😉
It is just crazy when synchronicity happens, isn’t it. Now I’m reading a book with dragons and maybe I will have a run of dragon topics… Poor Mateo is still frustrated with not going out, but I’m pretty sure that his little paws will suffer from the exposure. Adding to their frustration are the covers that have gone over the windows to help keep things warmer indoors. The sewing room now has an extra layer of warmth from a batting curtain!
Yay for insulated curtains! He doesn’t understand, but he would definitely not appreciate the cold right now!