Midnight Knitter

The BioGeek Memoirs: Teasel

Last September my son drove me to a yarn store in Loveland, Colorado to buy the yarn for my Weekender Crew sweater. He took a route that cut through the countryside and small towns, and there along the road were some dried teasels. “I should get you to pull over,” I said in jest. I should have! I have been thinking of teasels ever since then.

I took these pictures years ago because I just loved the way the plant bloomed. Pretty cool, right? Plus… purple! These blooms will eventually produce seeds contained in those in dried structures covered with barbed spikes that are just looking to hook onto something. As it turns out, the teasel heads with their hooked spikes can be useful and have an interesting history.

Years ago, I took a spinning class from Maggie Casey in Boulder, Colorado, and I learned how to card wool to prepare it for spinning.

Behold: my wool carders and a couple of rolags made of carded wool.

Before you can spin wool you need to pull the fibers apart, fluff them up, and get them pretty much aligned in one direction. The wire teeth on my carders do that for me. Maggie told us (I’m pretty sure that Maggie is the one who told me this…) that the word carding came from the Latin word (carduus) for teasels, and that the original carding was done with teasels. I can believe it! The locks of washed (scoured) wool can easily be picked open and fluffed using teasel pods. Every time I see a teasel plant, I hear the word “carduus” in my mind and think of my poor, neglected spinning wheel.

So, being the BioGeek that I am, I looked up the scientific names of teasels: not a carduus in sight. The genus of that teasel is Dipsacus, and the plant that I saw along the road and took pictures of is specifically Dipsacus fullonum. Oh. The crushing disappointment. I hunted for Carduus and discovered that it is a genus of thistle plants.

Okay, this is a bull thistle, but you can kind of see the potential for spikiness. Carduus thistles produce dried seed heads that are spikier, and the ancient Romans used the word carduus to refer to both teasels and thistles. Maggie was right! Centuries later, when scientific names were assigned to life on earth, carduus went to the thistle, and the teasel had to settle for dipsacus.

Still, teasels are pretty darn cool and have been involved in woolen fabric production to improve the warmth of the fabric. Teasels were brushed across the wool fabric to pull up fibers, making the fabric a little fluffy (or brushed) as part of the fulling process. Brushed fabric like this was warmer to wear, as the raised nap trapped air providing more insulation. Check out this teasel loaded cross that was used for this purpose. Imagine drum rollers loaded with teasel seed pods. Remember that my local wild teasel is called D. fullonum? I can’t help but wonder if the root word for “full” is included in the name. Yay, teasel!

While I’m on using teasels to pull up fibers, have you ever teased your hair to fluff it up? Did you wonder where that word came from? Yep. From teasels, of course.

Here in Colorado, these teasels and thistles are on the noxious weed list. Oh, dear. The plants originated in Europe, and that’s where they belong. Here in Colorado, they are invasive species that propagate like wild and choak out native species, interfering with agriculture, and there are management plans designed to control the spread of the plants. I was lucky to see one.

But I have to admit, it made me so happy to see a wild teasel along the side of the road that beautiful afternoon in September as my son drove me north to get me my yarn and to celebrate my birthday. Carduus, I heard in my mind.

My spinning wheel shivers in anticipation.

The Scleroderma Chronicles: Toxic Positivity and American Symphony

I’ve been pondering the concept of toxic positivity for some time now. You know, people who insist that a person with an uncurable, progressive disease (ahem… systemic sclerosis) can get “better” if they just get some sunshine and exercise. People who suggest that the symptoms of a failing heart and lungs are “just old age”, or that debilitating brain fog is something that everyone deals with. People who keep suggesting possible cures of the herbal or holistic medicine variety, or that if I just try hard enough, I will magically go into remission and get well. People who insist that no one knows what will happen when you disclose serious new complications, or people who over-celebrate a small gain. I know that they mean well, but it is isolating and hurtful: it is a denial of my reality.

I lost my temper and snapped off at one particularly obnoxious person at a holiday function who was arguing that I just needed to stay positive and try harder so I could get better… “there is no better, there is only this”, I told her. She was taken aback, and then doubled down and insisted that people do get better if they try. In my defense, I should mention that she had also just told me that her daughter’s diagnosis of a serious illness was awful because her daughter was young, but what was happening to me wasn’t such a big deal because I was old. Yeah. Toxic. My doctor told me that she was lucky that I didn’t hit her. I love my doctors!

Okay, having said that, I am better these days. I seem to have emerged from the worst of the fibromyalgia flare and the horrible dizziness, brain fog, and pain have receded to background levels again. Yay, magnesium!!

So, why is toxic optimism a problem? Well… toxic, right? It’s a denial of what is actually happening while throwing up walls that distance and protect you from the painful thing that is happening. It’s ensuring that you won’t get involved. Some of those walls are an insistence that the person will get better, or they aren’t actually all that sick, or that this is “normal”, or even suggesting that somehow the person is actually at fault for their own illness/condition. Not helpful, people. I was already thinking about how to frame this in a post when an article from The Atlantic called Tragic Optimism is the Opposite of Toxic Positivity arrived in my news feed several days ago. Okay, this is close to what I’ve been thinking about, but tragic optimism isn’t exactly what I’m trying to achieve here. No tragic, okay? In my mind the process of flourishing in the face of adversity requires grace and courage: walk into the darkness, face down the monster, deal with it (severely), and then continue to thrive and shine (like a sunflower, goddammit!) from within the heart of the storm.

So, it was kind of amazing when I watched American Symphony last night on Netflix.

This is what I’m talking about. It was hard to fight back the tears as Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad put into words and action the things that I’ve been thinking about, but so much better. Jon Batiste says… “look into the darkness and despair, face it, but don’t let it consume you.” YES!!! This is what I’m talking about, people. “Accept the possibility that you might fail, but absolutely believe that you will succeed,” Jon says in the film. Without any doubt, Jon and Suleika are at turning points in their lives: they have just married, Jon writes and produces a symphony that is to be performed at Carnegie Hall, and Suleika undergoes a second stem cell transplant to treat her relapsed leukemia. I know people who have undergone stem cell transplants (it is used to treat extreme cases of systemic sclerosis too), and it is a lengthy, horrible process of dancing with death while hoping for life at the end of the tunnel. This is a raw and emotional documentary of extremes; for this young couple, they are navigating the highs and lows simultaneously. The stress is crushing, and the emotional toll is heartrending. In spite of this, they cope, they walk into the darkness and face down the monster, they shine from within the heart of their storm, and the documentary ends with the performance of American Symphony at Carnegie Hall with Suleika in attendance.

In my opinion, every significant battle begins with the thought… okay, this is happening. Recognizing your situation is not a sign of weakness, but of strength. The action plans, sense of purpose, and the ability to keep rolling with the punches comes later. There is no place for denial if you are going to battle! Also, as this couple shows in the film, you need some creative outlets if you’re doing battle. Suleika paints and Jon composes. I take yarn along.

Today I started listening to Suleika’s story of her first dance with leukemia and the recovery afterwards.

I’m not sure that these two would embrace tragic optimism, but they sure are shining examples of the opposite of toxic positivity. I think that I’m going to be learning things from Suleika while I listen to her reading her book, knitting away on my new sweater. With my newly blooming orchids. And my cats. Within my own little scleroderma storm, the monster locked safely away in the cupboard. Pipe down, monster. I’m knitting now.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Another Busy Caturday

Hi. I’m Mateo.

We have been doing so much stuff this week. The Mother of Cats has been winterizing the house and we have been helping her out with every single task! She put insulation on all of the windows (it’s some type of funky plastic film that Hannah and I think is just amazing to play with…) and foam stripping around the doors. She fixed the toilet. She took the car to get its oil changed (and she didn’t take us!) and took all of the presents that have been coming in boxes to the house out to be mailed off for Christmas presents. Whew! Just exhausting, right?

The Mother of Cats also cleaned up the sewing room… Hannah helped with that too!

When the Mother of Cats has been sitting down these days she mostly is knitting. Some of the stuff that we made with her got mailed away this week and it is a secret, but here is what we can show you.

Now there are two Alpine Bloom hats. One of the Alpine Blooms got mailed away to a cousin, and the Mother of Cats knitted a new hat that will be for her to wear. They can be twins!! The hat that the Mother of Cats made for herself is a little smaller, and it fits her head better. Hannah still likes to use it as a pillow, but the Mother of Cats said NO and put it away. No fun, that Mother of Cats. She also has been busy knitting on her new sweater, and we have both been sleeping on her legs while she works; I’m hoping to chase some yarn while she isn’t looking, and Hannah is secretly hoping to get in a chomp or two, but so far, we haven’t had that many chances to have close encounters with wool fun.

The sweater is called La Prairie which the Mother of Cats thinks is funny since we live on the edge of the prairie. That’s why we have bunnies, and coyotes, and there is an owl that hoots out back almost every night. We don’t like the owl much… we never get to go out on the catio when the Mother of Cats hears the owl.

There are three more colors of yarn to be used in this La Prairie, but so far, the Mother of Cats hasn’t taken them out of the bin because of … chomps. Seriously, I just want to roll the balls of yarn around, but she won’t let me do that either.

Hey, the laser light toy just turned on. I have to go chase it… Laters!!

This is the CoalBear, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I knitted the new Alpine Bloom hat with the same yarn but went down a needle size to get a slightly smaller hat. The finished product is about 1-2 inches less in circumference and fits better. The new, more tightly knit fabric didn’t block out quite as nicely, but I’m happy with the hat. I’m planning on trying another one with fingering yarn (because, why not, right?) just to see how it comes out since the stitch count and needle sizes for the hat is the same as another hat that fits me well (Barley Light) and maybe it will work great, right?

Won’t this look nice as an Alpine Bloom hat?

Hannah and the ColeBear: Caturday Soup Saga

Hi. I’m Mateo.

I also go by the name CoalBear. Hannah calls me some other names that I guess I shouldn’t share here. Mostly that happens when I slash her heels…

So, what do you want to hear about first. The Mother of Cat’s knitting, the soup that she made this weekend, or… my fabulous new toy?

The Chewy box came this morning, and that little bird was in it! I knew that something was up because the box was chirping before the Mother of Cats got it cut open. Then she took the toy out… wow… I had to spend some time figuring out if it was going to jump at me, and then I started carrying it all around the house. Seriously, this was so exciting that I wasn’t even able to eat breakfast!!!! Everyone should have a chirpy bird!!!!

Hannah is like… whatever. She is so weird sometimes.

Hannah: Excuse me? I was busy with the TUNA!!!

So, I guess that I should mention the knitting that has been happening this week before we get to the main course, the soup! The Mother of Cats finished her Alpine Bloom hat this week, blocked it, and then tried it on.

Hannah: This is a nice Hannah warmer, don’t you think?

Yeah. The hat is too big for the Mother of Cat’s head. She sent a picture to everyone in her family and this hat will be heading off to New York to keep one of her cousins warm this winter. She has some ideas about how to adjust the pattern to get the hat smaller, but she just parked them at the back of the bus for now and started knitting away on her La Prairie sweater instead.

Mateo: don’t you like how I’ve decorated the knitting with some of my cat hairs? This knitting is kind of stressful, so I’ve been hanging out a lot with her.

Alright, let talk about the soup. This has been a source of commotion for days. It all started when the Mother of Cats brought home this goofy squash and told us that she was going to make soup out of it. Hannah was like… can I have some tuna? I mean, the squash was parked right next to our cat food, but somehow the Mother of Cats didn’t pick up on Hannah’s hints that she needed some more tuna! Or Cookies!!

This squash caused lots of trouble this week. First the Mother of Cats had to buy a new peeler to use with the squash. She ordered it from Amazon, and the package got lost. So, she had to go to the store to get another peeler. She also bought a crock pot while she was there. Then she bought an immersion blender on Amazon. Hannah and I were going crazy playing in the boxes and chasing each other today while the Mother of Cats peeled, chopped, cooked, blended, and made the soup.

Perhaps this is the most expensive Autumn Squash Soup ever made. The Mother of Cats likes it, so I guess that’s good, even if it smells pretty nasty to me. She’s eaten two bowls, and she still has two quarts in the fridge.

Well, that’s all for now. I need to go find my chirpy bird toy.

This is the CoalBear, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I have enough yarn left over to make another Alpine Bloom hat and I plan to go down a needle size to make it a little smaller. I also have in mind trying out knitting the hat in fingering yarn using the smaller sized needles.
The La Prairie pattern is full of new skills to master. The pattern includes instructions on how to knit the tiny cables without a cable needle (Yay!), and how to knit the bobbles in a new way to me. This is not a sweater that you can take to the movies while knitting as it requires focused attention!
Now, the soup. My latest blood tests came in showing that I have developed a type of anemia. A less common type, of course. Never mind, my doctor wants me to try to get more iron into my diet, so I’m trying to add more iron rich food to my diet (like squash), but I also need to try to maximize my ability to digest the food and absorb the nutrients. Hence the new, medium sized crock pot and the much safer for me to handle immersion blender.
Here’s the recipe for the soup that I made today. Copycat Panera Autumn Squash Soup by A Simple Palate. This was really yummy; I added Thai green curry paste to mine.
That squash is a butternut squash in case you didn’t instantly recognize it.
What is this less common type of anemia, you ask? It’s an anemia of chronic disease with red blood cells that don’t have enough hemoglobin in them. As in, I have enough red blood cells, but they are not packing enough hemoglobin to do the job even though I have iron levels that are within normal limits. Squash, as it turns out, is a good source of iron.
The little African violet that my sister sent me for my birthday is still blooming!

The Wannabe Covid Books

Maybe you have caught on to what is going on with me these days. It’s been almost two months since I first became ill with some crazy virus (?) that had all the symptoms of Covid-19 but tested negative the two times that I checked. The doctor that I dragged myself in to see felt that I indeed had covid and proceeded on that assumption in his treatment recommendations. Ugh. I slowly recovered from the initial illness, but I didn’t get better. Fibromyalgia! declared my rheumatologist. We’re treating that and I am getting better (I can now get up and do stuff around the house for a couple of hours at a time. This is huge!) because I can finally read and write again. And knit! I am finally able to knit several times a week now as long as I give myself a recovery day or two each time because all my tendons hate me, evidently. Never mind, this is progress, people!

Anyway, I’m writing again. I have so many blog post ideas that I’ve been mulling over during my down time… fasten your seatbelt, here comes another!!

Hannah is enjoying her box fort while I’m writing this.

Unable to sit up for more than a half hour, and unable to concentrate enough to read, I spent my down time burrowed under the covers, flanked by neglected cats, binge watching online shows and listening to audiobooks. I listened to some really great books during this time! I’ve been mulling over how to talk about them for the last couple of weeks, and I have to admit that my choices and reactions to these books are influenced by my covid/fibromyalgia state when I listened to them.

Kind of an eclectic mix of books, right? There is a kind of nebulous theme going on, though, if you are willing to cut me a lot of slack. Each of these books is about people in a closed and isolated community making sense of their situation, creating workarounds that let them function in spite of formidable obstacles, and emerging in the end with some type of closure.

Tom Lake: It is the lockdown. It is also apple picking season at the family-owned orchard. All three girls in the family have come home, and the mother tells them all the story of her early life as they struggle to get the crop in with limited help from workers because… lockdown. All the drama of their lives is rehashed and worked out as the mother recounts her early years as an actress, her involvement in a summer theater company at Tom Lake (and her involvement with a budding actor who would go on to fame), and the decisions that she made that led her to this life in an apple orchard. This is a book about isolation, choices, values, and ultimately the power of women.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: Wow. Imagine, if you will, a marginalized community called Chicken Hill that is made of intersecting Jewish and Black families. Imagine, if you will, clever strategies to outmaneuver the powers-that-be in order to flourish in a world where you are considered to be a powerless second-class citizen. Imagine characters who will steal your heart, break your heart, and then heal it right up again. Imagine the good guys winning in the end, and the villain of our story getting his just deserts. Imagine a great book. This is it.

The Running Grave: Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott are at it again. They’ve taken on a client who has worried concerns about a son living in a non-traditional religious community. Unable to contact the client’s son directly, or to understand what is really happening in this closed society, Robin goes undercover and enters the cult while Cormoran works other aspects of the case from the outside. Oh, boy. This is really, really scary and tense, and absolutely unbelievable and believable at the same time. The beliefs of the cult are frankly outrageous, but at the same time you suspect that it might be possible that something like this actually happens. Closed off from the world, living with the cult in a closed compound, Robin spirals down, pulls herself together, manages to get to the bottom of things, almost dies, escapes, and if you want to know the rest you have to read the book. This was a good one.

Crook Manifesto: I just want to say that I am in utter awe of Colson Whitehead’s command of language. Seriously, I just wanted to copy down all the utterly fabulous mental images that he invoked: perfectly captured, but also peppered with dark humor. Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, we are off to early 1970s Harlem to go on adventures with Ray Carney: family man, furniture store owner, former fence, and an upstanding (retired crook) member of his community. The book, like the one before it (Harlem Shuffle), is told in three parts. There’s a story dancing in the background as the reader journeys the three loosely connected parts of the book that involves self-identity, worth, and coming to terms with the past in a way that is meaningful.

Defiance: I’ve been reading this science fiction series for decades now; this is the 22nd book about humans living in a segregated community on an inhabited alien world with one chosen interface/diplomat between the two species, Bren Cameron. This is an intense sociopolitical story that covers a few days in the lives of an isolated group of characters as they attempt to put down a rebellion, ensure the safe resolution of a crisis on a space station overhead, and transition leadership responsibilities during a confusing communications blackout and a concealed agenda by one of the major players. It’s a ride. If you like tricky overthinking about political and social implications with the possibility of violence around every corner, this is the book (and series) for you.

Mateo: I know that Hannah is in this fort somewhere!!

So, there are my books of wannabe Covid. I’m now functioning better with less brain fog and dizziness, but the extreme fatigue and painful muscles/joints goes on. Tonight my right knee has decided that it wants to just lay around and watch shows all day.

Time to look for another good book. And maybe some chocolate. 🙂

The BioGeek Memoirs: Milkweed

Last summer my son and I made several trips to our favorite cat rescue shelter hunting for the right kitten. His wonderful Maine Coon cat had died and his remaining cat, the MONSTER of Hannah’s nightmares, was sad. Obviously, he needed a kitten!

One Caturday in July, we pulled up to discover that the butterfly garden planted in front of the rescue shelter was in full bloom. The most stunning flowers on display were the milkweed.

Can you see the bee on one of the flowers?

Wow, I thought, milkweed! I almost never see it blooming like this; I’m always late to the party and come across it once it has gone to seed. This was pretty amazing, and there was a lot of it. I stayed outside to take pictures while my son went into the shelter to hunt for a kitten. No kitten this day, but I did get great pictures.

Over the years I’ve been steadily adding flowers to my yard that are good for butterflies.

The butterflies in the pictures above are painted ladies and a swallowtail. Butterflies need flowers that are large enough to support their weight and have nectar conveniently available. Milkweed certainly fits that bill, and it is especially important since it is the major food source for the monarch butterfly. Monarchs are the butterflies of my childhood in Southern California, and they have recently been placed on the endangered list. Why are they struggling? Habitat loss, insecticides, a dwindling food supply…

Food supply! Milkweeds are food for monarch butterflies. I was pretty excited to see some more milkweed growing along the road in a field near my house. (Yes, I look for stuff like that. I am a BioGeek. I’m still on the lookout for some nice teasel, but that is another post…)

The picture on the left is of the remaining pods after the flowers were done blooming, and the one on the right is a few weeks later, the pods burst open and the seeds getting ready to fly on the wind like a dandelion to a new location. Cool, right. With luck some of these seeds will find a great place to live and more milkweed will appear in this field over the next few years.

Do monarch butterflies come through Colorado where I live? Why yes, yes they do!! They migrate right through the state in early fall and evidently you can see them in the Denver area. In my yard? Not so much right now. To the east of where I live, Monarch Watch tags and tracks monarch butterflies through their migration and has implemented programs to provide food for the monarchs along the way. Imagine thousands of plots of planted milkweed and other nectar plants put out just for these butterflies and you get the picture. Eventually this field near my house could be one of the stops along the way for these migrating butterflies.

Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady of the United States, died two weeks ago and her memorial service was last Wednesday. It was hard to keep the tears out of my eyes as the people who knew and loved her shared their memories. Recipes that featured mayonnaise. Twenty-dollar bills included in birthday cards. Her strawberry cake recipe. Her love for monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies!

That’s right. Rosalynn Carter was a driving force for the establishment of butterfly gardens. She made saving the monarch butterfly her personal mission towards the end of her life. There is a Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail, and here is where you can register your own butterfly garden. You should have milkweed in that garden, by the way!

Someday I will perhaps find a monarch butterfly in my own yard, because you know some of those milkweed seeds found their way home with me this fall. I’m planting them in the sun where they can hang out with the yarrow, the coneflowers, and the butterfly bush.

Oh, did you forget about the kittens? My son eventually found the two most perfect kittens in the world and his cat ~~Jonesy~~ MONSTER is a very happy boy again.

Update: Knit One, Spin Too just let me know about a new book about milkweed that came out in September called The Milkweed Lands. Who knew there was so much to milkweeds? I just ordered a copy. 🙂

Hannah and the CoalBear: Caturday Report

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do I look like I’m pretty focused on something?

Today the Mother of Cats and I had such a busy day I’m just now getting around to writing my Caturday report. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff we have been doing! The Mother of Cats went crazy last week and ordered all of this stuff, and the boxes started coming a few days ago.

I just love boxes, don’t you? It was really exciting for the CoalBear and me as the Mother of Cats started opening up the boxes today and dragging out the stuff.

She bought and put together a new printer for me to play with in the bedroom. Yay! I can’t tell you how much fun it is to help her print out patterns and stuff!

She also bought a power shovel to use with the snow this winter, but that isn’t so exciting for us. It was fun helping her put it together, but the best thing was she used the two big boxes that the shovel came in to build a cat fort for me and the CoalBear. There are big doors to zoom through. Little holes that we can use to poke each other, and even tiny holes on the top to let in the light. I spent the afternoon sleeping on top of the biggest box in the sunshine because sometimes that is the best part…

After all the useless boxes (those would be the ones that couldn’t be used in the fort…) were cut into pieces and dragged into the garage the Mother of Cats and I moved upstairs to get serious with the knitting. Do you like this hat that we are working on? It is called the Alpine Bloom Hat, and we made a lot of progress on it this afternoon while listening to a fun book about a cat who lives on a space station protecting the Earth.

This book is great! Look at that cat… she looks a little like me!! She pretty much runs the space station, answers alarms and fires weapons to take care of threats towards humans on the (pretty much ruined) planet below. Her name is Lily (not as nice as Hannah, but still a pretty good name), she is immortal, and she is very smart because she has been uplifted and can talk and has battle armor and everything. Okay, not having thumbs is kind of a problem for her, and it was hard to get everything to work right before she figured out machine assisted speech, but still. How cool would it be to have your very own space station equipped with like a death star type laser weapon, a friend named Sparkles who writes you haikus, and a ghost in the station… oh, wait. Lily is kind of freaked out about the ghost part. The Mother of Cats and I need to listen a little more…

You don’t think that a cat could run a battle station in orbit? Have you met THE MONSTER that comes to visit me sometimes with the Mother of Cat’s son?

MONSTER: I could run a battle station in orbit with one paw behind my back!!

Well, that is all for now. I’m going to see if I can talk the Mother of Cats into giving me some tuna for a bedtime snack.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Weekender Crew Touchdown!

What a knitting journey this has been. The minute I saw The Weekender Crew by Andrea Mowry I wanted to make one. It’s a big, comfy sweater with some cute stylish details (pockets on the front) that I thought would be my best friend all winter long. Dropped shoulders. Long sleeves. Split hem. DK weight yarn. Deep ribbing on a perfect crew neckline. I mean, this was an ideal sweater for me. I went on an online hunt for the yarn and my son drove me to a yarn store up north of me for a birthday yarn shopping event.

Isn’t this just the perfect yarn? I’ve knit with this superwash merino before, and I’ve found it to be soft and squishy with almost perfectly matching skeins.

I cast on in late September and immediately ran into trouble with the cast on. Tubular cast on, to be specific. I think that I’m a pretty accomplished knitter, but definitely that new cast on required a learning curve. I blogged about that whole adventure here. The edge created by the cast on looked really nice, so I patted myself on the back for hanging in there and mastering a new technique and enthusiastically knitted on. I should have realized that the cast on was a harbinger of things to come. This perfectly simple weekend sweater was a great vehicle to learn many new things.

Behold: tubular bind off. I’ve done a type of tubular bind off before, but the one in this pattern required set up rows and a rearrangement of the stitches on the needle to create a perfect, sturdy (stunning) edge that matched that cast on that the sweater started with.

So, now I’d learned a new cast on and a new bind off. Cool. I managed knitting the rest of the sweater and arrived at that wonderful moment when the whole thing gets blocked. This sweater had obvious ripples in the fabric at the transitions between ribbing and the stockinette, so it really did need to be blocked.

Do you see how puffy the body of the sweater is above the ribbing on the bottom? Not the look I’m wanting in the final sweater.

Andrea gives good directions in the pattern on how to block using a good soak, sandwiching the sweater between towels, and then walking on it. Who are you??? I wondered. Have you been channeling my mother… she absolutely would block like this, but there was no way I was walking on my beautiful squishy (expensive) yarn. This yarn is superwash; I’m nervous about it stretching during blocking. While thinking of mom, I suddenly remembered her explaining how to steam the gathers out of a pinned sleeve before sewing it when I was a nervous teenaged seamstress. I decided to go with mom on this blocking adventure… I laid the sweater out on the blocking mats, misted it well with a spray bottle, and then gently steam blocked the gathers away with my iron while the yarn bloomed and the ribbing opened up. Yay!! I covered the damp sweater with towels to dry, and Hannah immediately moved in.

Hannah: Don’t you just love the smell of wet wool in the morning?

Here’s the blocked sweater. Hmmm…. pocket sewing isn’t exactly my forte…

Yep. Time to learn a new skill. Andrea linked to a tutorial on pocket sewing that was extremely helpful, and after letting the sweater sit in a corner over-night, I pulled myself together and tackled the task.

I used a lace weight yarn to outline the exact row of knitting that I was going to stitch into while attaching the pockets with mattress stitch. What a good idea, right? I also followed the tutorial directions in attaching the pocket bottoms, which gave me a perfect bottom edge. Wow. An old knitter can learn new tricks!

Ta-daa! I have the perfect oversized, comfy sweater with lots of polished details that I am going to wear all winter long. I kind of wish that I had made a smaller size now that it is done, but I can always make another one, right? Altogether, a great knit and the perfect birthday project.

Hannah: she couldn’t have done it without me!

The BioGeek flirts with Long-Hauling

It’s been over a month since I first developed Covid-like symptoms and began to spend my days in bed. Like, my bed became my little nest with the detritus of a prolonged illness littering the floor and shelves around it. Outside the world moved through the end of summer; my tree lost all of its leaves, and the garden moved into dormancy. The birds disappeared. The squirrels have remained on the crazy side, but the crickets are now silent. The cats are chasing the last few grasshoppers of summer, but they are almost too cold to hop anymore.

Mateo has used my down time well, destroying his cat tree, removing push pins from the wall hangings, and just being an agent of mayhem in general. Hannah is not impressed.

While the symptoms of “whatever the heck that Covid wannabe virus was” are mostly gone, I’m still struggling big time. Everything, and I do mean everything, hurts. Tendons that I didn’t even know I had are now too painful to touch. Random shooting pain and muscle cramps have become routine. Did I mention the chest pain? I can’t concentrate enough to read; brain fog is driving the bus these days. I can’t knit for more than a few rows at a time as my arms get too heavy to hold up. I am kind of weak and shaky. I’m starting to stare down the depression monster for the first time in years. Did I mention that the fatigue is unreal? Ugh.

Hannah has been supporting my knitting efforts. I’m slowly making progress on my Weekender Crew sweater.

So, there hasn’t been much blogging. There has been, however, some medical testing and trips to doctor offices going on.

Yesterday I finally saw my rheumatologist. “This is just awful,” I told her. “This is fibromyalgia!” she replied. In her opinion, what I’m experiencing is a pretty severe episode of fibromyalgia. I’d already been diagnosed a few years ago, but I’ve never experienced symptoms as bad as this. Sigh. Remember the 15% rule in scleroderma? It says that about 15% of patients with systemic sclerosis (the type of scleroderma that I have) will also have a second autoimmune disease called Sjogren’s. Check, got that. Since Sjogren’s symptoms can look like fibromyalgia I always took that diagnosis with a grain of salt. Now it’s pretty clear that it is a separate condition, and my fibromyalgia is running wild. Like a squirrel. Or Mateo.

Feeling particularly unlucky I drove home thinking about writing an autobiography called Outlier: My life as a singular data point. Seriously, who in their right mind would ever want to be so far off the bell curve? Then the BioGeek emerged, and I thought about Covid long-haulers. I have met some people who have been diagnosed with Long Covid, and I did think at the time that what they were dealing with was an awful lot like one of my flares. Like, an awful lot. Yep. According to this article about a third of Covid long-haulers have “FibroCovid”, a condition that pretty much looks like fibromyalgia. Fabulous. This article suggests that Long Covid is just another name for fibromyalgia. Another article explored the benefits of applying lessons from fibromyalgia research to Long Covid. Thanks, nasty virus that acted like Covid but refused to test positive. Thanks for acting like a nightmare houseguest who leaves a huge mess behind…

This is crazy, right? Covid shares similarities with systemic sclerosis, and long Covid shares similarities with fibromyalgia. The BioGeek in me is interested in all of this, but let’s hope this doesn’t drag on for months.

My rheumatologist has started me on a course of narcotic painkillers as that sometimes pops people out of fibromyalgia flares. I’m taking magnesium as that can also help. My rheumatologist has some more tricks up her sleeve if this doesn’t do it, but I’m relieved to finally have a name for what is happening.

The dedication page on the book I started reading this weekend. I haven’t gotten very far because… brain fog.

Time to kick this thing to the curb (like a zebra!) so I can get back to knitting!!

The BioGeek does Covid

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I know, I know… lazy, lazy, lazy. This time I have a really good excuse.

I caught Covid!

I think that almost everyone who follows my blog knows that I have a type of scleroderma called systemic sclerosis; this is a progressive autoimmune disease that involves damage to blood vessels, lots of inflammation, and then scarring (fibrosis) of organs. In my case, the worst damage is occurring in my GI tract, my heart and my lungs. Because of the lung complications that I have developed I’m pretty high risk for a severe case of Covid-19, so my doctors have encouraged me (strongly) to get updated Covid-19 vaccines as soon as they are available. Because of my interstitial lung disease, I don’t halt my immunosuppressive drug for these boosters anymore.

So, as soon as the new Covid boosters were available I made an appointment, and on October 12th I got my shot. Yay! I was so excited to get it as I usually feel great for a few weeks after the vaccine. Like… my systemic sclerosis symptoms improve, I get more energy, things stop hurting, I can breathe better… you know, better! I know, I know, this doesn’t make any sense, but it is a well observed phenomenon in the systemic sclerosis community. It’s like there is some crazy connection between that vaccine and our autoimmune condition. It does not happen with any other vaccines.

Vaccines always knock me on my butt at first, though, so I wasn’t surprised that I developed muscle/joint pain, chills, fever and fatigue. I headed to bed expecting to feel better in the morning. Nope. I began coughing, got a sore throat, developed a lot of congestion, and GI symptoms arrived. Three days later I began to suspect that maybe this was actually Covid, and that I had unluckily gotten ill on the same day as the booster. I took an at-home Covid test, which was negative.

I wasn’t too sick to order more yarn on the internet. Look at this amazing sock kit that I bought from Moonglow!

A little aside: I’m pretty sure you don’t already know that Covid-19 and systemic sclerosis share a lot of similarities. Like, a lot. Damage to the vascular system, the production of a lot of inflammatory cytokines (messenger molecules that travel between cells), and then all those symptoms that can include heart and lung complications that result in fibrosis to both organs. (Covid is a fast-moving firestorm, and systemic sclerosis is more like the relentless slow burn version.) The pneumonia that develops in Covid-19 patients looks so much like the inflammatory lung disease in systemic sclerosis (SSc-ILD), it can be hard to sort out which disease is in play when systemic sclerosis patients like me first arrive in the ER. Okay, things never go well in the ER anyway, so I tend to avoid them. Zebra, right? I decided that I was just in a bad flare and suffered on instead of going to the ER.

Two days later, I retested for Covid. Still negative. Still too sick to consider driving anywhere, too sick to sit up and knit, but not sick enough to call 911. I was kind of stuck in limbo. Maybe some level of hell. Covid hell. Anyway, that booster shot had definitely failed me this time!! I spent my days coughing, sleeping and sadly gazing at my new sock yarn propped up on my bookshelf. I kept taking my immunosuppressive drugs and suffered on.

The cats began to live on the bed with me. Good kitties!

After a week of this nonsense, I had improved enough to consider going to a Kaiser Urgent Care to see if they could sort me out. Oh. The doctor there was of the opinion that I had Covid after all, but now it was too late for anti-virals or an infusion of antibodies. I got a chest x-ray, some nice antibiotics, a new drug for my cough, and headed back home to the cats and my unknitted yarn.

Tonight, 16 days later, I’m better. I can sit up and knit at last. Through all of this my oxygen levels never dropped, and while I was sick, I didn’t develop any really serious complications.

So, what have I learned about systemic sclerosis, the drug that I take to control it, and Covid-19? I mean, this is a total BioGeek moment! My mind full of dancing antibodies, failed Covid tests, and mycophenolate pills, I took to the internet for answers. There are some take home lessons that I’ve decided are so interesting that I’m passing them on.

The similarities between systemic sclerosis and Covid-19 are so significant that the two diseases provide understandings that can help in the treatment of both.
The immunosuppressive drug that I take (mycophenolate) to control my immune system’s attack on my lungs can prevent me from producing an antibody response to the vaccine. Okay, I knew that, but I was too sick to think through the implications… because that means…
Immunosuppressive drugs can lead to false negative at-home Covid tests. ~~Those tests are for Covid-19 antibodies; if you can’t make antibodies, then you may have Covid but test negative.~~ Oops. (Correction! My cousin has set me straight… the home tests are detecting viral proteins (antigens), so that theory is blown out of the water! Double oops! The doctor told me the mycophenolate was the cause of the false positive tests, and he was pretty emphatic that I should stay on it. Now I’m wondering if the false positive tests were because mycophenolate has anti-viral properties, as some sources cited in the Lancet paper below have reported.) (Don’t you just love science?!!! )
The same immunosuppressive drug (mycophenolate) can be an effective treatment for Covid patients reducing their risk of severe outcomes.
Staying on the drug was a good decision on my part. I got lucky! Because I am on this drug, however, it can take longer for Covid to clear my system. It has been 16 days, and it looks like I need to isolate for a few more days.
I never, ever thought that the treatment for my SSc-ILD would help protect me from the severe Covid complications that the same condition places me at high risk for. I’m so grateful that we didn’t go the chemotherapy route last year.

Isn’t all that interesting?

Here’s the links to articles if anyone is interested.