life with a chronic disease and a really big yarn stash
Author: Midnight Knitter
I weave, knit and read in Aurora, Colorado where my garden lives. I have 2 sons, a knitting daughter-in-law, a grandson and two exceptionally spoiled kittens. In 2014 I was diagnosed with a serious rare autoimmune disease called systemic sclerosis along with Sjogren's Disease and fibromyalgia.
I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats every evening with the knitting.
The Mother of Cats and I have been knitting up a beautiful new sweater for her to wear when she goes out into the snow. It really is nice and light weight knitting; perfect for me to snuggle under while she works. Look at this yarn that she bought.
This yarn goes perfectly with my coat; I especially like the red color. If she would make me a little cat sweater I could go outside with her on the snowy days. Does the Mother of Cats ever think of things like this? No, not so much. Humans can be so self-absorbed…She especially liked the red color and wanted to use it to highlight parts of the sweater. She is such a silly human she had to print pages of the cover picture to color with different ideas until she made her decisions. She should have just asked me! This is what she finally decided to knit. It’s OK, but I would have opted for more red on the upper parts of the sleeves.and this is what the sweater looks like with the first red stripe in it. Nice, huh.Look at how great these yarns are knitted together. The envy of every cat, let me tell you.Now we’re working on the sleeves. Hey, this sweater is exactly the right size to make me a cat bed… That would be even better than a cat sweater!!
We have been knitting this sweater for over two weeks. It’s a little boring if I have to be honest. As soon as she get going nicely she has to switch colors which means twisting the balls around each other. I try to yarn chomp help her with the color changes, but she seems determined to thwart my every need. Still, we are making good progress and it should be done in plenty of time for the next big snow storm.
When she isn’t wearing it I’m pretty sure that I can sneak in some cat naps on it.
I’m such a good boy!
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
This pattern is drijfhout by Isabelle Kraemer. The proect notes of gukineru were especially inspiring and my sweater is basically based on hers. The yarn that I am using is Brooklyn Tweed Loft, which is a woolen spun yarn that creates an exceptionally warm but lightweight fabric, which probably explains why I can’t keep the cats away from it while I’m knitting. As soon as MacKenzie leaves the other cat moves in.
It has been cloudy, snowy, and cold here. I mean, really cold! Freeze your (Raynaud’s) fingers before you know it cold. Knowing this was on the way I bought food and gas a couple of days ago and then settled into the house with cat-magnet blankets with space heater to do some power knitting. This morning Greeley, Colorado, a city an hour’s drive north of me set some sort of record at -32 degrees Fahrenheit (with wind chill it was -47!!). It wasn’t that cold here, but it was still cold.
This afternoon it warmed up to a blistering +12 degrees F. so I sneaked out to take a shot of my newly finished Moebius cowl. This was knitted with Hedgehog Fibres Merino Singles, which is a squishy single ply worsted weight yarn. Really yummy around the neck.
I finished another of the leftover WIPs from last year this week. This one is a Moebius cowl using garter and blackberry stitch in a pattern that I sort of winged as I knit. I like it! Here’s what is crazy about Moebius knitting: the cowl is knitted from the middle out, and the pattern is “up” on one side of the cowl, and “down” on the other.
See what I mean? The tiny jog dead center in the scarf is where I started the round in the knitting, and then on the right side of the middle garter section the blackberry stitch is “up”, and on the left you are looking at the backside of the pattern. I like both sides and I think that the yarn looks good in either stitch variation.
The cowl is just the right length to wrap twice around my neck to stay warm, and it also will drape nicely when just worn as it is.
Because it is a Moebius the cowl has the same pattern facing up at the outside edges of the cowl and on the side that is displayed in the “shawl collar” folded over. Clever, huh. It also folds nicely at the bottom and behaves itself when you wear it. This color is “off” since I took this picture inside. The yarn really is fabulous jewel tones.See.. beautiful jewel tones. This colorway is called Dragonfly.
I like the blackberries the most, so I will wear the cowl the way I took this picture, but it is just as easy to wear it with the other stitch pattern (which looks vaguely woven) facing out.
So, this is my own pattern. I really like how it came out, and I have some cool Madelinetosh yarn that is dying be a cowl too, so I’m fighting an urge to immediately cast on to make another one. I wonder how that yarn will look in blackberries? This yarn was worsted weight and the new one is DK. Will it make any difference? It’s like an experiment!! I used a little more than one skein on this cowl; maybe I can come up with some cool fingerless mitts with the rest of the yarn. Lots of knitting ahead of me.
It warms up this weekend, but looks like I’ll still be on the power knitting drive!
Good grief! Where did the time go to? Just a few minutes ago I was trying to remember to write 2016 on things, and now it’s gone? Why is it the days fly faster the older I get? Anyway, it appears that 2016 has gone out the door and I need to pack up the memories… Struggling to cope with this evident reality I flipped through the pages of my notebook, looked at some stats, flipped through the picture gallery, and discovered that actually 2016 was a fairly productive (but politically horrifying) year. Let’s look at what was accomplished:
I completed 28 knitting projects this year!
It was a good year for shawls, mitts, sweaters and cowls. Very few socks were produced. Sorry feet!
55 books were read! Now, you don’t want to see all those books, right? That’s what I thought. My favorite, however, was Babylon’s Ashes. What can I say? I’m a geek.
I wrote 56 posts that received 6,705 views. The post that was most popular this year (sorry MacKenzie) was Farewell Summer, Hello Drachenfels, a post that I wrote towards the end of 2015. Actually, I posted three times about my Drachenfels shawl in 2015 and all three posts continue to draw regular traffic. Hey, this is one yummy piece of shawl wrap-me-in-your-wings heaven. Here’s the completed item.
I’m in love!
I started several sewing projects, bought fabric for more, and finished ONE quilt. Oops. Guess I have some finishing up to do in 2017.
I ended up the year with several knitting WIPs, 83 items in my Ravelry shopping cart, and 20 projects in my Ravelry queue. Must knit faster!!
The year ended with these WIPs. I finished the socks already, but I am still working on a cowl, a small shawl, some more socks (the pink cuties at the top middle) and the second black mitt. Piece of cake, right? Should be done by the end of the week… You can probably tell that I have trouble judging time when knitting.
Last night I cast on my first new project for 2017. Sorry little WIPs. I promise that I’ll get you done in time, but I HAD to start a new sweater. It’s cold outside. I crave new yarn and I must have it.
Here I am tucked into bed, with visions of sugar-mice dancing in my head.
In this season of holidays: the Festival of Lights, the passage of the planet through the longest night, Kwanzaa, and the celebration of the birth of Christ, I wish you all love, peace, safe journeys, good friends, the joy of your families, and lots and lots of cat toys.
Cold weather arrived last week so the Mother of Cats has been hanging out indoors. We cats prefer to sleep in her cozy bed, but she has been disrupting the peace doing Christmas stuff. Crazy! She didn’t even talk to us about it first.
All these lighted things got dragged out of their hiding places and put outside. This is so unfair – we didn’t get to go outside at all because she said subzero temperatures weren’t good for cats. Why don’t we ever get to vote about these things?She dragged in a tree from outside and hung these shiny balls and lights all over it.Best cat toy ever!!
Then she settled down to spend the rest of the week binge watching Gilmore Girls and knitting on the last of the Christmas presents. Lots and lots of knitting! Lots and lots of Gilmore Girls. Hey, that’s another thing. Why don’t cats get to go to Harvard or Yale? I think that I would be a wonderful addition to the Independence Inn. Michel would like me for sure; we have almost identical attitudes!
Did I mention that she ate Christmas cookies while she knitted. Hey, these aren’t cat cookies! What was she thinking of?Finally she got these boot liners finished for her DIL. Did I mention that they are cashmere, silk and merino? Check out the cushy stitches. These are just wonderful to sleep on. Would you believe that she took them away from me and wrapped them in paper? Oh. Wait. Crackly paper. Yellow Boy lives for crackly paper. We both love to climb into the pile of presents to play with the bows. Why does the Mother of Cats get upset with us?
At last all the knitting gifts were done. Did she stop knitting to pay attention to me? Maybe feed me cat cookies? No!! She pulled out more yarn and unfinished knitting projects. Evidently there are more Gilmore Girls episodes to watch. Rory is now in Yale, and who knows what will happen next? I think that it would be nice if Rory got a cat.
Now we’re knitting on some socks for her. I like this color of yarn, don’t you?
It has finally gotten warmer outside and Yellow Boy and I are running through the snow in the backyard during the afternoons. Yellow Boy keeps hoping to find a bug, but so far they seem to be hiding. That sorry squirrel still hangs out in the trees of the yard; annoying creature! He should come down to play in the snow with us. We’ll give him a chase he won’t soon forget…
In a few days Christmas finally arrives. The Mother of Cats will make lasagna and cheesecake and all the kids (and the grandkid) will be over here showering me with attention. I will get to chase ribbons. There will be piles of paper. Yellow Boy will hide the whole time so I’ll be the star of the show. I love Christmas.
I’m all ready for the big day.
I’m such a good boy.
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
The boot liners are the Savannah Boot Liners by Pam Powers. Ravelry notes here.
It has been just crazy hectic here the last two weeks. I have been driving to doctor appointments, cleaning the house, running errands, and staying pretty darn busy getting stuff ready for Christmas. This week I’ve been chipping away on several Christmas makes (with lots of cat help), and while the list of things I’m making seems endless, I finally got several things done all at once in the last couple of days. Finally, some progress! Check it out.
I finished the Jujuy Shawl that I’m making for a cousin. I was told to use bright colors; this should definitely fit the bill. Ravelry notes here.I also got these Akiko mitts done while I was reading a book. These babies are made with Anzula Cricket yarn and the cashmere blend makes them feel really yummy. This is the second pair of these mitts that I’ve made. I wasn’t happy with the thumbs on the first pair so this time I moved them over onto the palm of the mitt. Ravelry notes here. Looking at the tops of the mitts they look misshapen and thumbless, but if you turn them over……there they are, tucked away on the back of the mitt. I moved the gusset over 6 stitches on these; I’m still fussing about these thumbs and may do a third pair with the thumb moved 4 stitches… This is a illness, but I prefer to call it a mitt study. 🙂I also got this table runner pieced and ready to quilt. The pattern, Waffle Time, is really fast and easy to make. I bought the fabric last year and finally got going on the stitching this month. Did I mention that I have another table runner and a quilt to get done too?See how cute these fabrics are?
I just want to say that all this crafting wasn’t easy at all since the weather turned dangerously cold for kitties this week and I couldn’t let them go out for more than a couple of minutes at a time. MacKenzie has been especially crabby about the turn of weather events. This morning when I got up it was -10 degrees F and the ground was covered in snow! Yikes! No way could the cats go out in that!
MacKenzie: Do I look annoyed? Yes! I would like to speak with whoever is in charge of the weather. This is completely unacceptable.MacKenzie: If I can’t go outside I should be able to help with the knitting, right? Yarn chomping time!! I mean, what do you expect a bored cat to do?Yellow Boy: Yarn chomping is so yesterday. I prefer to sit on the pattern and stare at the Mother of Cats until she gets me some chicken to eat. If I can’t chase bugs I should have chicken. Chicken, chicken, chicken!! Did I mention that I can stare for a LONG time?
When they aren’t yarn chomping and staring at me (sitting on the pattern, of course) the cats have insisted on sleeping on top of me. These are big cats! The little one is over 15 pounds, and MacKenzie is a whopping 18 pounds of dead cat weight.
Luckily this new book was published this week so I can read while serving as a cat bed. Oh, my goodness. This is the latest book in my most favorite series ever, The Expanse. I watched the first season of the television show made from the books last week to warm up for the release date, and as soon as the book was available in the early hours of Tuesday morning I downloaded it to my NOOK.
I really do love these books. I even blogged about them. I like the characters, the political/social situations created as people move onto other planets and into space, the science is good, the pacing of the plots is excellent, and did I mention that it is SPACE OPERA?!! Hello, Science Geek! Here’s the previous posts about these books:
This new book is the 6th in the series. I didn’t feel compelled to blog about the 5th book, but this latest book has really hooked me back into the story. All my favorite characters are back, the story is moving right along, and there has got to be a space battle coming soon.
Thank heavens it is cold out. What a wonderful excuse to stay inside to craft and read. I may get all of my Christmas makes done on time this year. The cats will get more attention. I will get my book finished lickety-split.
Last week after getting some big projects out of the way I pulled out more craft stuff and got going on the Christmas knitting and messed with some other crafts. Now I’m rolling in the WIPs, but hey, who wants to be stuck in just one project? Boring!! Better to have several going at the same time with different features
Detail work: these mitts are tedious with the charted lace pattern, beads and twisted ribs. Great for focused knitting during a football game. (Akiko Mitt, Ravelry page here.)This shawl is all garter and a simple mesh knit. Ahh! My Netflix binge watching buddy! (Jujuy Shawl, Ravelry page here.)and for the sunny mornings, what could be better than a cup of latte and time at the loom. I warped up my little table top 8 shaft loom to play around with some different ideas.Here’s my first effort with some old Christmas yarn for the weft…and this is what the same pattern looks like in a balanced weave with a tencel yarn of the same weight as the warp.
I’m thinking of making a scarf. There are lots of different treadle patterns possible with this warp, so I’m digging in the yarn stash to see what else I can play with. I just found some lace weight grey alpaca, and there is this alpaca/silk yarn too… Gosh, this is fun. 🙂 I might even figure out how to record this on Ravelry. Other people have weaving projects recorded. Must push the boundaries and learn something new!
The only other news around here is that it finally has snowed.Overall the cats are disgusted with the change in weather, but amazingly have become buddies again in the cool air. Ah, the circle of life. Gone are the bug hunting days of summer, and here again are the feline pile-ups of winter. 🙂
Well, here I am at the end of my second year since my diagnosis of systemic sclerosis, a life-threatening form of the autoimmune disease scleroderma. Last year I blogged about my illness: I had come through the worst of the grief and horror at the initial diagnosis, had made my way through some scary incidents that sent me flying across town to emergency centers, and was pretty upbeat about where I was in the progress of the disease. I was sick, but I hadn’t developed any of the most serious, life threatening complications. My heart and lungs were fine. I had just been started on some serious immunosuppressant drugs (the same ones that are given to kidney transplant patients), and while they are risky, I had been told that they could really make a difference in my 10 year survival rate.
Hey, you roll the dice and you take your chances. No sense worrying about the unknown future. I drugged up and slept like a baby at night.
The Kobayashi Maru test, as all Star Trek buffs know, was a no-win scenario; it was meant as a test of character. Systemic sclerosis, an incurable, progressive, disabling and potentially fatal disease, can also be considered such a test.
Ready to hear about my second year? Let me give you a hint: buckle your seat belt, because we are in for a bumpy ride.
November-December: the drugs begin to kick in and as they beat my immune system into submission my skin starts to harden up. I hurt everywhere!! I can hardly bear to comb my hair. The place where my flu shot went in hurt for weeks afterwards.
January: I caught the flu. Talk about insult to injury! Here’s the short version: antibiotics, off the immunosuppressant drugs so my body’s immune system can fight back, and then trouble breathing, chest pain, heart palpitations, and a partridge in a pear tree. What a mess! The month passes in a blur.
February: I’m still pretty sick and struggling to breathe. I get bounced back and forth between doctors as the debate about the root cause of my symptoms rages. I begin to pressure my doctors for answers and there is much testing. Oops. All is not well with my lungs and my heart is accruing damage. I get sent to a pulmonologist and she give me an inhaler to help me breath. She also tells me I am in serious trouble and refers me to palliative care. The doctors increase my immunosuppressant drug dosage.
March: Why, hello, Sjogren’s Syndrome. We forgot all about you! In the concern about my systemic sclerosis, the bad boy of my autoimmune twosome, everyone forgot that I also have Sjogren’s Syndrome, another serious autoimmune disease that causes dry eyes and mouth. As it turns out, it can also cause small airway disease (think never-ending asthma attack) and it has pushed me into chronic respiratory failure. Hello oxygen machine. You are my new best friend.
My new best friend!
April: new lung scans are back, and while I am diagnosed with interstitial lung disease, it appears that it is only mild. Huge sigh of relief!! There is also consensus that my pulmonary hypertension has not advanced. Both of these diagnosis, while still early and mild, are very serious, and the decision is made for palliative care to continue to follow me. Bummer!
May-July: Sunshine! Heat! Burning muscles, aching joints, gastritis, dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, and I notice that my lips are blue. I’m on oxygen 24/7 by the end of July.
August: my internist changes my meds to bring my heart rate up, and suddenly I have enough oxygen. The heart palpitations stop and after more testing I come off the oxygen. The 6 month Sjogren’s-driven asthma attack is finally over.
Summer quilt and socks for my poor hurting feet.
September-October: why does it hurt to walk? What is up with my feet? And this whole barfing in the middle of the night is getting downright annoying… My internist tests me to see if I have an H. pylori infection.
November: Well, doesn’t this beat all. The H. pylori test came back negative and I am diagnosed with gastroparesis. The muscles of my stomach are too damaged by systemic sclerosis to work correctly; the damage is irreversible. I start eating a very limited diet of soft foods and dairy. Ironically, I can now eat jelly donuts, but not fresh baby carrots. I’m losing weight anyway.
The gastroparesis diagnosis hit me hard even though I kind of knew it was coming. I stopped to get a little cheer-me-up on the way home. Check out the little greenhouse I put together for the kitchen window. As always, MacKenzie had to help out with the picture.Here’s the flowers. Aren’t these cute? They were sold at the local nursery to put into “Fairy Gardens”and how could I resist adding the little cat and the mushroom? Those plants are miniature Kalanchoe that should eventually bloom again.
See, a bumpy ride that is still going, but a year that was also rich in gifts. Palliative care forced me to face the future with more courage and to make end-of-life decisions for my family and to start cleaning out my house of junk. I talked to family about my medical power of attorney. I enlisted one of my doctors to manage the medical team and I began to feel more in control of my basically out of control disease. I began to knit gifts for those I love with a purpose: everything now is a piece of me. In my mind the shawls that I am making for everyone I know are the “Good-bye Shawls”. I am on fire to make as many fingerless mitts for other scleroderma patients as I can. At the end of the day, this year was not one of struggle and heartbreak as I dealt with the endless march of a disease that has no pity or remorse. Rather, it was one of care, giving, creative fire, good friends, and the meditative peace of knitting.
Okay, I do get cranky at times, and there has been some crying. I get short with annoying salespeople because it is so hard for me to shop. I told my ex-husband I was tired of hearing about his “stupid-ass” motorcycle. I yelled at the cats. I hate when people say, “Well, you look great!” in a way that suggests that I’m not really all that sick at all. I wish that they were there to hold my hair when I hobble to the bathroom at 2am to throw up that nice meal that I hopefully ate but couldn’t digest. There. I got it off my chest, and I feel much better. Aren’t you relieved to hear that I can be petty and mean from time to time?
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. You know, it is easy to focus on the day: travel, turkey, family and the descent into wild Christmas shopping. Sometimes we forget the history of this national holiday; thanks for a good harvest and the blessing of probable survival through the coming winter. It is also a time to reflect on the bounty of the last year and to be grateful for the gifts it brought.
In spite of all the bumps of the last year, I am grateful for all of the gifts I have received.
Would you believe it is 80 degrees out here in the middle of November? That’s a nice thing since the Mother of Cats has been spending all of her time with some NEVER-ENDING projects instead of spending time with me.
First it was the quilt. She completely ignored our needs and sewed and sewed for days. Then she laid everything out on the floor to make a sandwich of some type with this fluffy stuff called batting (That she would not let me roll in! Hello! Cat bait!!) that involved a lot of pinning and muttering. I even got stuck with a pin. NOT nice, Mother of Cats…
Look at all of those pins. Why did she have to go and ruin a perfectly yummy cat bed?
Then the sewing started. It went on, and on, and on…
Somehow she felt compelled to sew around all of the details in the quilt. All of them. Usually the Mother of Cats is pretty balanced, but this was just ridiculous.I hardly had time to catch a nap between sewing sessions!Finally she finished with the machine and spent a whole day binge watching Longmire on Netflix while she “sewed on the binding”, what ever that means. I really enjoyed hanging out with her while she stitched. It would have been better if she hadn’t moved me around so much. For some reason she just couldn’t settle down and leave the quilt in a comfy position. What is it with her obsession with pins?Whew! It is done. Hey, wait a minute! What is my comfy new quilt doing up on the wall? Thanksgving? Cats don’t care about Thanksgiving. They want cat beds!! Mother of Cats, what are you thinking of?
Then she went shopping for some new toys for us and came back with a big heavy box. Boxes! Yellow Boy and I love boxes! We helped her unpack the whole thing and then she laid out all of these strange wooden pieces. Huh? Strange cat toys…
What a mess.
She got out tools including the POWER DRILL and that was that for me and Yellow Boy. We evacuated to the outside while she spent the afternoon and early evening putting her new mouse trap together. She says it is to hold her working stash and projects in the television room… whatever. We went out to chase squirrels and hunt bugs after dark. Ha! She totally forgot about us until an hour after our usually coming-in time.
And this is what she ended up with. How are we supposed to play with this? And all of the yarn? It’s put away where we can’t get it! Why isn’t she more sensitive about our needs? Cats need constant attention and entertainment. Yarn entertainment is quality time for cats.
Thank heavens there is still yarn out because she is knitting a sweater. She has been knitting this sweater forever. The yarn she is using is the absolute best for chomping, and I love squishing it with my paws. Imagine how I felt when she dumped all the pieces into the sink and then got them WET.
Oh wait, I do like the smell of wet yarn. Don’t you think it’s the best thing since day-old fish?Then the Mother of Cats and I sewed all the pieces together…and suddenly it was done! Look! She wore it to her knitting group meeting yesterday.Check out the back. Don’t those textured stitches look like they belong in a cat bed?
And just like that, after weeks of work, three big projects got done this week. OK, the cabinet was only a day, but it was part of the “get ready for the holidays” effort. For some reason she thinks that the holidays are a big deal. Really, it is a lot of commotion. Cats don’t like commotion.
See what I mean? This is what just a mention of Christmas does to Yellow Boy. He is not a fan of commotion…
Still, the Mother of Cats cast on several new projects last night to start on the Christmas knitted-presents drive. Lots of bits of yarn. Beads! Loose knitting needles and crochet hooks. Hey, I can help! I’m such a good boy. I love to help with all the Christmas fuss.
Can I have some cookies now?
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
The Grand Stand quilt (pattern 328 by Mountainpeek Creations) was bought as a kit from Holly’s Quilt Cabin. While the original fabrics are long gone it is still a cute design.
The sweater is the Guernsey Pullover by Norah Gaughan. This sweater has been going on and on for weeks with lots of help from MacKenzie. The yarn that he loves (as do I) is Malabrigo Rios. You can find my Ravelry notes here.
That cabinet was on sale at Target. Having cut my teeth on IKEA furniture I felt empowered to buy it, have them load it into my car and the rest is history. Take that loose knitting projects!
This is my favorite time of the year. What’s not to like? The trees are strutting their stuff, the heat is finally letting up, and it is time to fire up the crock pot for some long overdue comfort food. Oh, yeah. The first snowfall is right around the corner. Knitting weather for sure!!
It has been just stinking hot even though we are past the middle of October, but the trees are right on track. Check out the maple leaves in my back yard.
The leaves are all off the tree now, but I did get a great shot of the color last week before they dropped.
I’ve been just longing for fall. As soon as the pumpkin farms opened I went with my grandson and DIL for some pumpkin fun. We went on rides, chased each other on tricycles, fed goats, watched pumpkins getting fired from a cannon (!!), and of course took a wagon ride out into the fields to get our pumpkins.
Aiden and I at the pumpkin patch. There are about 30 different types of pumpkins planted in the fields; we had 15 minutes to run around to pick and drag out the ones that we wanted. Good thing there was a time limit… there were an awful lot of cute pumpkins!!The pumpkins are now hanging out in my living room adding some fall color. Don’t you love the warty one? I’m told it will make good pie, but I don’t have the heart to cook it yet.Doesn’t this just scream fall?
The pumpkins and leaves are making me feel so happy and longing for the cooler weather. I pulled out the yarn and patterns to start a couple of quick little projects in fall colors. I knitted like crazy all last week, and here they are:
I liked this yarn so much that I actually bought this fig colored sweater to go with it. This pattern is the Riverbed Shawlette by Grace Akhren. The shawl is knit by making a large garter stitch triangle with the lace edge along one side. I was getting a little worried about running out of yarn when the knitting suddenly turns the point at the bottom of the shawl and then the other side of lace was added to the live stitches as you worked up the other side. Plenty of yarn! The ruffle is knit last by picking up stitches on the other edge of the lace trim. I love the different directions of the color in the final shawl. Ravelry notes here.I started these Akiko MItts by Sivia Harding on the same day that I cast on the shawl. I couldn’t resist; Akiko is a Japanese word that stands for “Autumn” according to the pattern notes. Besides, everyone needs more than one project going at a time, right? The shawl was easy knitting to take with me, and these charted and beaded mitts were for at home knitting time. Check out the detail in these mitts! They fit just perfect and while following the chart was a little tedious, the twisted stitches were really pretty easy to do as the pattern included directions on how to knit them without using a cable needle. I’m making two more pairs of these for Christmas presents. Ravelry notes are here.
Suddenly I finished the little projects within a day of each other. Ugh. Knitting lapses are downright depressing. Resisting the urge to cast on several more little projects I pulled out the sweater I had started a few weeks ago that had been languishing during the heat (OK, it’s only in the 80’s, but that is hot for October!). Surely eventually it will be cold enough to wear this baby. I believe! I started knitting on it in earnest over the weekend.
This is the Guernsey Pullover by Norah Gaughan that was in the last Vogue Knitting Magazine. The construction is pretty unusual; decreases in the middle of the front form the shaping for raglan sleeves. I think that the variation in the yarn is adding interest to the knitting, but at one point I was knitting from two skeins to keep the colors from pooling too badly. Ravelry notes here.You know who moved in to help during the photo shoot…and the usual yarn war with MacKenzie began. I won. Barely. He was pretty determined to have some fun this time, and he has those sharp pointy bits on his paws…
How does he know I’m out taking pictures of knitted items? He was upstairs asleep. It’s a mystery.
It’s snowing in the mountains of Colorado today, but was quite warm again today. I knit on the sweater all afternoon anyway. Someday soon the snow will come down here and I’ll be glad for the sweater.
This pattern is drijfhout by Isabelle Kraemer. The proect notes of gukineru were especially inspiring and my sweater is basically based on hers. The yarn that I am using is Brooklyn Tweed Loft, which is a woolen spun yarn that creates an exceptionally warm but lightweight fabric, which probably explains why I can’t keep the cats away from it while I’m knitting. As soon as MacKenzie leaves the other cat moves in.
Yarn, Books & Roses 