The Mother of Cats finished her scarf on the rigid heddle loom (I helped with the weaving) and then cut the fabric off. This scarf is sooo soft and squishy. I wanted the Mother of Cats to give it to me for my bed, but nope. She kept it for herself. This is what it looked like before she finished twisting all the little fringe strings.
Personally I like the strings in the fringe, but the Mother of Cats twisted them all up to become tidy finished fringe last night.
After the Mother of Cat got the scarf off the rigid heddle loom she sat down and concentrated on finishing all of the weaving on the floor loom. Then she cut it off the loom!!! Oh, that was really, really exciting. I just love the smell of wool, don’t you? I moved right in while the Mother of Cats was trying to get the woven items separated from each other. She was using a rotary cutter, but I am fearless!! Also, very spoiled.
The final woven items were two placemats and three table runners. Once again, PERFECT for my bed, but no! The finished items are put away except for one that is now in the living room. I would sleep on it there, but there is a STUPID PLANT in the middle. Why does the Mother of Cats do these things?
The other woven piece that I think should be mine (hello… it is pink!!) is the table runner woven with silk/bamboo. So shiny. So nice to roll around on. So put away in the closet where I can’t get to it…
This is both sides of the runner. Pretty cool, right. I kind of like both sides so it is hard to decide. The Mother of Cats says that this is a feature of overshot weaving, but I’m like… whatever. Can I have tuna now?
The Mother of Cats was really excited to get the rigid heddle looms warped up again, but she got sick on Sunday, and she is still lying around like a big slug ignoring my needs. It’s just some coughy thing, but she sure does sleep a lot, and there isn’t much of anything getting done around here. Hey, Mother of Cats! We need to get weaving again.
Guess I’ll catch a nap myself. Can you tell that I am dreaming of TUNA!!!
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
I really gained a lot of confidence in my weaving by taking an online overshot class from The Handweaving Academy. There are so many little subtle things that make it challenging when starting out, but I gained so much practical knowledge along with technical skills that I’m thinking of ordering warp yarn in a dark purple color for more placemats. This will be fun!!!
Some of the changes that I made were pretty basic, but also game changers. Like… label your floor treadles! I wrote on scotch tape that can be easily removed. Other helpful techniques included the mechanics of using two shuttles at once. There are floating warp threads at the edges of the woven piece, and I learned how to use them effectively to create a smooth selvedge. Well… for me, that it pretty smooth. I had learned about “tromp as writ” years ago, but now I understand. I understand how to convert my weaving to adjust patterns to my (rising shed) Baby Wolf loom. I can figure out the treadling sequence from a draft, and I know how to convert it from one pattern type to another. I feel like a real weaver again!!!
The blue marl yarn in the scarf is Marla by Manos del Uraguay; it is a DK weight yarn that is very soft and squishy.
The yarn in the table runner is Noro Silk Garden sock yarn, another DK weight yarn.
The orchid is one of my plants that is reblooming from last year.
I’m considering a doubleweave class next! I already bought this book…
It is nice and warm outside almost every day now and I get to head on out to the catio to check on the bunny. He’s still there!!! I would like to stay out all day but the Mother of Cats forces me to COME BACK INSIDE after she makes her breakfast and morning latte (She tells Hannah that she needs to learn how to make a latte, but does she pay attention? No. Hannah just does whatever she wants, and she never gets into trouble like I do…), and then she usually doesn’t let me outside again. Why is she so mean!!! I watch the bunny from the front window, but it isn’t the same…
The Mother of Cats has been spending a lot of her time weaving downstairs on the big loom. This loom is a little bit scary. She stomps on the floor peddles and pulls the big swingy reed thing towards her while throwing yarny shuttles back and forth at the same time that crashy parts are going up and down. Do I hang out with the loom? No. I do not. I do feel like I should show off what she has been making.
After the Mother of Cats had finished the homework weaving she dug around in her yarn stash and made a woven piece from some sock yarn that she bought years and years ago.
Look at that yarn! Years ago she made those socks with the elephant on them, and last week the rest of the yarn was used on the loom to make a table runner. Personally, I like the socks better, but the Mother of Cats likes the new runner too. It is cool, right? The Mother of Cats was so excited by the look of that yarn she headed back to the stash and got MORE yarn.
This yarn, which is called Silk Garden, is thicker than the first yarn. Wouldn’t that yarn make a nice cat toy? Maybe some knitted mice? The Mother of Cats completely ignored my needs and wove another table runner. She likes the way it looks so much she went back to the yarn stash again and got some pink silk yarn. Yep. You Guessed it. ANOTHER table runner is now getting woven on the loom.
Hannah likes this pink shiny weaving more than I do. Pink is kind of her favorite color.
Hannah: Pink looks nice with my fur!!
I do have to mention, the Mother of Cats has been kind of crazy with the pink lately. She went out and bought pink plants. Then she bought pink shoes. Then she bought a pink cricket. Seriously, crickets are for playing with!!! Crazy Mother of Cats, she has it with the plants in the indoor garden.
The Mother of Cats says that the pink makes her happy, so I guess I have to put up with all of this pink silliness.
I’m trying to think really hard about what else has been going on around here. There has been some knitting. Boring. She has made some more hats for the infusion centers. Also boring. She went out and left us several times this month for meet-ups with her friends and some doctor visits. Also very, very boring. I guess I can show off the weaving on her rigid heddle loom:
This yarn is very soft, but not as soft as my fur!
I guess that’s all that I want to talk about. It is about time for the Mother of Cats to feed us our special night time tuna, and then I’m going to make her play with me for a while.
Hannah: I just want the tuna!
Bye for now,
Mateo
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
The first color changing yarn that I used on the loom is Noro Silk Garden Sock Solo, a single ply fingering weight yarn. I wasn’t sure how the cotton warp would work with the wool blend yarn, but it looked great.
The second Noro yarn is Silk Garden Sock yarn, a DK weight single ply yarn that is twice as heavy as the first Noro yarn. It wove in great, and I liked the look of the more solid color blocks.
That pink yarn is also a DK weight called Bamboo Silk (silk/bamboo mix) that was hand dyed by a weaving shop north of me. I’ve had this yarn for years: really special, it was hard to find a good use for it. I’m liking it in this woven piece. I plan to put another warp on the loom in the same threading pattern, but this time in a purple colored cotton, and then I can weave another piece with the same pink yarn. I can’t wait to see how that turns out!
Don’t you like the pink cricket? My new rigid heddle loom is a cricket made by the Schacht Spindle Company. Of course it needs a pink cricket to keep it company!
I’ve been reading convoluted mystery books lately. The two that I am reading right now are set in very different situations, but I am loving the many technical details, cultural themes, and foreign settings that are similar in a spooky way.
Imagine living in a time far in the future. You are the pilot attached to an archeological group recovering artifacts from ancient civilizations on distant planets that abruptly disappeared. What happened? Can a lost alien language be decoded in time to understand these ancient beings who have left behind their poetry, religion, and relics before the catastrophic mechanism that killed them returns? It’s an interstellar crime of cosmic proportions, and time is running out. The key to solving much of this is… a printing press.
Or, almost as foreign as the ancient aliens and their lost civilization, is London 1667. It is the year following the Great Fire, and political intrigue is thicker than the smoke of that great conflagration. The city is being rebuilt, but refugee camps remain. There are children afflicted with scrofula, a form of tuberculosis that presents in horrible swollen tumors grown from lymph nodes in the neck. There is murder. There are royal directives, and machinations by important people to secure power. Nothing makes sense, but everything is connected. There is a printing press involved. Of course.
I’m having fun reading both of these at the same time.
The other big event that happened. That would be Rare Disease Day on February 28th.
I decided to not write a whole post about it this year, but I wanted to make a point or two. There I am, looking much better than I deserve to, flashing my zebra shirt. The decal on my car tells the story. Even though I am told often that “I look great!”, and I suspect that some of those people think that I am faking for attention, the reality of scleroderma is that it is… complicated. I take 22 pills a day in an ongoing effort to slow the progression of the damage being caused by my disease, and almost all of my organs are being impacted. I now have serious lung and heart complications, but to be truthful, the impact to my digestive tract is what causes me the most grief. Scleroderma, especially the systemic form, is rare; the complications that it brings are even more rare.
Systemic sclerosis, the type of scleroderma that I have, like many other rare diseases, is invisible, but the struggle is real.
Whenever you can, support the zebras that you find in your life.
I’m in the part of my new sweater (another Weekender Crew) that is just stockinette all the way with a slipped stitch every now and then. I’m alternating skeins so I don’t get too much pooling, but the work is still… kind of mindless. Not mentally challenging. Okay, I am bored. No creativity in sight here, even though I want to get the sweater done… eventually. To make things worse we are experiencing unusually warm weather here in the Denver area and I’m not wearing any of my sweaters. I stuffed the sweater into its bin, parked it on a shelf, and started on some small products.
I decided to start on the mitts to match the grey/dusty purple sweater that I just upcycled. Yay. Let’s do mitts, kitties!!!
I decided to make a mitt that offered some options. It has a ribbed top that should go under the lace on the sleeve okay, and then a little panel of lace to match the ones on the body of the sweater. At the edge by my hand is a picot edge that matches those of the lace on the sweater. Cute, right? Sometimes I want a mitt that comes way down over my hand, almost to my knuckles, so I didn’t sew down the picot edge and knitted a long inner lining that can be pulled out. The final bind off is I-cord, giving a smooth finish to the bottom of the mitt. Yay! I like this mitt a lot. Did I cast on to start the second one right away? Well… no… that would be boring, right?
I pulled out the cat arm warmers because they are kind of the poster child mitt for NOT BORING, right? Over the last three days I got those little mice knitted in, and then I did the paws. Yikes. The paws required 4 colors of yarn for several rows. NOT BORING!!!! I learned a few things about yarn management while working on these, and in a nutshell, the most important one is to cut the yarn off the ball so you have a length of color that you can easily pull through tangles with the other colors. It is a lot easier to catch floats when you have a manageable length of yarn with no ball of yarn in sight, too. The knitting was really slow and kind of a nightmare until I figured that all out, but the last half of the paws went pretty quickly. Do you like the paws?
They look that way because that is what Hannah’s paws look like! Cutest toe beans ever!!!
Like everyone else on the planet I have been reflecting on the last year (thank heavens it is finally over) and thinking about plans for the next one (goals are good, right?) It’s a lot, and it definitely involves lots of yarn and books. As I planned this post I thought about what has been going on lately in my life and the world around me, and I finally thought about a plant that I brought in from outdoors this fall. It was a beautiful bougainvillea when I brought it in, bushy with lush green foliage and not a bloom in sight. I thought about leaving it outside but I finally dragged it into the dining room in front of a large window. Over the next few weeks every single leaf on the plant fell off. “Are you kidding me,” I asked the plant. “One little shock to your system and you give up the ghost?” Yes, I do talk to my plants.
The plant has replied by putting out new growth and blooms on every single little branch. It is literally covered with the tiny green buds of new growth, and the blooms, just now starting to grow out, are going to be something else. This plant is going to look amazing in just a couple of weeks.
There is a lesson here, somewhere.
May you all have an amazing New Year.
PS: I bought a new loom!!! Also, dysautonomia continues. May I present to you Crazy Heart 2026.
I caught covid for the first time last summer, and I continued to test positive for almost a month. What a mess. As I slowly recovered, I simultaneously felt better symptom-wise than I had in quite a long time while also developing new symptoms that are now creating struggle.
That sounds kind of crazy, and I probably should unpack things a little. Let’s start with the better, okay?
Hannah: I wonder what she is thinking about all the time…
Last October I had a terrible flare of symptoms that caused extreme joint pain, fatigue, brain fog, digestive issues, and… I WAS UNABLE TO KNIT FOR MONTHS!!!! I struggled to read. It was hard to do even basic things. My GI tract was in full revolt. I began to wear knee braces every day, pulled out the walker, and pruned my diet down to a few reliable items that were safe to consume (lactose free yogurt, I’m talking to you!!) I began to lose weight at a steady clip of a pound a week.
The hand under the hot pack was last year, and you can see the damage that was left behind on my current hand on the right. Last year my rheumatologist tested me for lots of things and I don’t have gout, or pseudogout, or rheumatoid arthritis, or any other thing except common osteoarthritis: no signs of inflammatory arthritis. I thought that was crazy talk at the time, but it’s hard to argue with negative test results even though I feel like I am dealing with obvious inflammation (swollen joints too sore to touch, right?). Anyway, after a year of struggling to knit or even type, my symptoms went away as I recovered from covid and I have been knitting up a storm (well, sweaters, actually, but you understand what I mean). It has been great. I can knit all day if I want. I can literally stay in bed all day, knitting happily along, ordering in groceries and enjoying my books… in bed. I am full of creative energy and am making tons of plans that involve my sewing machine and the looms. I’m wanting to buy another loom (that I can use in bed). Really, things are going great. Fabulous. I’ve even restarted my physical therapy routine, and my mobility has improved.
Oh… why am I in bed? Well… in the wake of covid I have developed worst dysautonomia. I struggle to control my body temperature. My blood pressure crashes when I eat. My heart rate goes bonkers without warning. I’m too cold all day long, and then I can’t sleep because I’m too hot. “I’m so sorry,” said one of my doctors. “This is very difficult to treat or control.” Fabulous. I do want to point out that many of my symptoms are greatly improved, my latest lung testing showed even more improvement, and I feel stronger than I have in years. The hope is that I will get better in time, and in the meantime, the cats are happy to hang out with me as I fuss around the house.
I was just sitting and reading when I got very dizzy suddenly and sure enough, my stupid heart decided to go into overdrive. Another adventure in dizziness caused me to check my blood pressure; for me, that is very low pressure. After another 2 hours I was back up to 128/72 and feeling more like myself. My doctor has advised me to just eat little snacks all day and to drink lots of water if I eat an actual meal.
Scleroderma, this is not funny at all! Oh, well. At least I can now knit and read…
I do want to back up to my bad-boy hands that gave me such a terrible time for most of the year. When I saw my rheumatologist in November she checked my x-rays from last year and then took a long look at my wrists and knees. My wrists are significantly worse than they were a year ago (but causing minimal problems at the moment… go figure) and she decided to order up some specialized testing to take a better look at the joints. Today I drove to downtown Denver to get specialized ultrasound imaging of those wrists. The technician was just wonderful, and she explained what we were seeing on the screen as she stopped to take pictures. There was a lot of obvious damage, fluid in the joints, and calcium deposits in tendons. “You’ve really been going through a lot,” she said. Finally, some validation. It was hard to not feel hopeful as I walked out of the clinic. On the way back home, I stopped at my favorite yarn store for a little yarn therapy action, and that was when the day turned into a “Thoughts on the Night of the Last New Moon” post.
In a nutshell, this is my situation. I feel better, and I am happy, but I am dealing with significant difficulties because my autonomic nervous system is refusing to behave itself. There is no easy fix. My joints are a major ongoing problem with no end in sight, because I can’t do many of the traditional remedies because of my scleroderma. I want answers! I want cookies! I want yarn!!
I walked into the yarn store.
The first thing that I see is a stack of my favorite cookies!!! Yay! I put four boxes into my shopping bag.
Then I saw great yarn that I needed to have. Yep. Into the shopping bag they went with reckless abandon. I want these yarns; my stash has been feeling a little peckish. Obviously, it also needed to be fed. Then my phone toned the sound that told me an incoming text had just arrived, so I sat down on a loveseat right in the middle of the DK weight yarn section and read the message: the radiologist had already read the imaging from my wrist ultrasounds and the results were available.
Active synovitis of the joints in my wrist. Inflammatory arthritis. Ironic, since I’m feeling pretty good at the moment with minimal pain. I wonder what that wrist would have looked like a year ago. It is such a huge relief to finally have a lab result that validates what I have been telling my doctors (and experiencing) for years. There is value in sticking to your guns and asking for more testing. Evidently this type of imaging is new, and it identified the problem that the standard imaging techniques failed to see. I don’t know what can be done to help me, but the relief is immense.
As I drove home, buoyed by the cookie haul, the shiny new skeins of yarn, and a sense of success and validation, I took a different route, passing by a large lake just south of my home. In the sky above me a flock of white pelicans wheeled in the sky, huge white birds with black bands on their wings. My heart soared with them.
More little glimmers:
Through the entire outing my stupid autonomic system behaved itself and I didn’t get dizzy even once!! 🙂
I delivered chemo hats to the infusion center at the facility where I had the ultrasound done. I have a little collapsible wagon that I use to roll the bags of hats to the department were they need to go. People laughed and joked with me as I rolled through the hallways (one lady insisted on pulling the wagon for me on my way in), adding to the overall good feelings of the day.
Remember me mentioning last spring that I was following some bald eagles in Big Bear, California online? Every day I checked the eagle cam to see if the chicks, Sunny and Gizmo, had taken their first flight yet. This week the parent eagles, hard at work preparing the nest for the upcoming chick season, were visited by 2 juvenile bald eagles who in high probability (because of the behavior all the eagles are exhibiting) are their girls from last season: Sunny and Gizmo. It is just wonderful to see them back even though the parents aren’t going to let them come near the nest much longer.
It really is the last new moon of the year tonight.
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is zooming past earth tonight. It has been fascinating to follow over the last few months as its behavior has led to loads of speculation and lots of data collection. Safe travels, little guy.
This isn’t a glimmer, not really. We are in the middle of a high wind event that has forced communities to shut down west of me and the power has been cut to those residents. I feel grateful that there hasn’t been a fire since the risk is enormous at the moment, but I feel bad for everyone impacted by this. Thankfully, we are also experiencing record breaking heat.
I fell and injured my right knee last summer. It still hasn’t healed, and it is getting a MRI next month. Fabulous.
I am planning another post about the yarn and knitting.
Don’t you think that I should treat myself to another simple loom that will be easy on my wrists?
Mateo: Don’t you think that my silver ruff is a glimmer?
The Mother of Cats has been kind of amazed to see my new coat growing in this year. I do have to say, it is looking pretty good! Every year I make some adjustments to my coat, and this year I’m thinking that silver is a nice color. Here, I’ll show you what I’m talking about:
This is my coat in 2021. I was just a little guy, only 8 months old.
I was mostly a black cat, and the Mother of Cats was pretty amazed to see all the long fur growing in as she didn’t expect it. Last winter my coat was kind of brownish-grey, and it was really pretty long.
The picture on the left is how I looked in about April this year. The all black coat is what I looked like in June: big difference, right? Do you like the way my winter fur doesn’t grow across my shoulders? That is what makes the Mother of Cats think that I am partly a Maine coon kitty. Maine coon kitties are usually really large, but I’m really tiny and cute.
Okay, that is enough about me. I really want to show off the sweater that the Mother of Cats is working on. She has been knitting on it for a couple of hours every single day, and it is starting to look like a sweater!! Hannah really is a big help with this, and I sometimes hang out, but mostly I hang in at the front window hoping to see a bunny or two. We even saw a mouse in the back yard this week!!! Knitting is kind of boring when there is wildlife, don’t you think? Anyway, here is the sweater.
We really like doing the sleeves, Hannah and I, because the sweater can get draped over us as we sleep on the Mother of Cats legs.
Well, that’s about all that is going on here. The Mother of cats has been sewing (yawn) and going out for some errands (nap time!), and that has been the whole week. I sure hope something interesting happens out front soon…
Why does the Mother of Cats call me silly?
This is Mateo, signing off.
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
The sweater is the Alchemist Pullover. There is going to be ribbing added later around the neckline, and I am already worrying about yarn chicken…
I am wondering if the silver fur growing out now is related to Mateo’s medical misadventures over the summer. Poor Mateo did have a tough time there for a few days.
I saw a jade plant at the nursery with a few little flowers on it, and then I saw I jade plant bonsai tree. I have a huge jade plant that I have been growing for years, and now I’m thinking about taking some cutting at the next pruning so I can start a little bonsai tree of my own. It will be an adventure! Also, has my plant bloomed yet? No. No it has not!
This plant goes outside every summer, and some of the leaves on this plant have hail damage.
Why grow a bonsai from cutting off this plant?
That big boy is almost 3 feet tall and is getting heavier every year. Suddenly a bonsai seems really… cute. Besides, it isn’t blooming now, so maybe a bonsai will decide to bloom.
The bright moon that I watched rise through the trees to the east almost two weeks ago is now just a shining sliver in the western sky, invoking a glimmer of joy before it dips behind the Rocky Mountains. Goodbye, Beaver supermoon. You were really special.
I blogged about the Beaver supermoon here, and in that post I wrote about beavers, my burst of energy and surge of creativity as I worked through a pause and found new projects and books to read. I mentioned at the end about my community work making chemo hats. port pillows, and zipper pouches, and hopefully wrote: “Like the beaver, I hope that my work will ripple out and bring change in my community around me, supporting lots of new life.”
In the two weeks following that post there have been returning ripples and glimmers that were so intense that they were more like flashes of light akin to a lightning strike. Feedback that left me stunned and in tears. There’s a whole backstory here, so it will take a little to explain it all to you. Maybe you should grab a cup of tea and find some cookies. Ready? Here we go.
In 2014, after years of medical gaslighting, I was diagnosed with systemic sclerosis (a form of scleroderma) and Sjogren’s Disease. I was started on some medications, lots of tests were ordered, and just like that, my view of my future changed forever. I learned that there was a 50% fatality rate for my disease. I failed the first two drugs used to try to slow disease progression. Follow-up testing after a year showed that I had declined 27% in my lung function, and I was referred to palliative care. I was in grief. I began to compulsively knit. Overwhelmed, unable to cope with actually creating a garment that would fit, I made shawls. Lots of shawls.
I was moved to new drugs. I started a third immunosuppressive drug, one that was off-label and required a fight with the insurance company, and I began to slowly improve. Palliative care discharged me. I found more beautiful yarns to love, and more shawls to knit. The shawls began to pile up along with the number of diagnosed complicating conditions that were linked to my underlying autoimmune diseases, but I was okay; I had essentially knitted (and blogged) my way through grief, and I was now ready to take things on. I found new doctors who became collaborative partners in my care and faced down the monsters of new complications. Today I am much, much better than expected; my latest lung testing shows that my lungs have regained more function, and my PAH is under control. My cardiologist rarely mentions heart failure when he talks to me, and I am off oxygen.
As I got better, I began to knit sweaters. Lots of sweaters. I began to look for a home for the shawls. Last spring a friend mentioned the needs of patients at a rehab center in Estes Park, Colorado that she worked with. People often arrived there precipitously with little more than the clothes on their backs, and they needed warm clothes. She was thinking hats, mittens, and scarves, but I sent about 10 shawls.
I thought maybe someone would be able to use them.
Saturday, I asked her what had happened to the shawls. The rehab center has the shawls all displayed on quilt hangers that they installed, and patients take them to wrap up in when they go to meetings or whenever they need the comfort of yarny goodness. Instead of going to just a few patients, they are there for all, part of their recovery journey. Evidently, they are popular, and the center could use more. I was stunned, struck by a glimmer so intense that it was a bolt. I started crying. Those shawls, those things that brought me through a really bad time, are now doing the same for others. I had hoped that my work would ripple out a little, but this was so, so much more than I expected.
I have bundled up all of my remaining shawls, keeping only three back for myself, and I plan to send the rest up to the rehab center before the end of the year.
Shine on, Beaver Supermoon, shine on.
Footnotes:
Another glimmer: my son’s three cats were rehomed together to a wonderful lady who had lost a beloved cat. All three kitties are now happy in their new home, piling on and cuddling with her while she crochets in the evenings.
Look! Tachycardia!! I was reading a book when this happened.
My medical adventures continue, but after conferencing with my doctors following the latest round of testing, we have all decided to delay starting a third medication to treat my PAH (that’s pulmonary arterial hypertension if you are new to this blog…). That is kind of huge. I have SSc-ILD (interstitial lung disease associated with systemic sclerosis… do you see why they use acronyms?…), but I am not putting down scar tissue (fibrosis), and that is even more huge: it is rare to have one without the other. Do you see the glimmer? My prognosis for this condition, the leading cause of death for patients with systemic sclerosis, is stabilizing into the “she’s doing really well” column, and that is why we can afford to delay this drug.
My wrists and knee (the one that was injured in a fall this summer) concerned my rheumatologist, and she has ordered specialized testing, but all things considered, I am doing really well.
The Mother of Cats is living in CrazyLand these days. She is knitting like there is no tomorrow, and she found some more patterns that she absolutely, positively needs to knit this winter. She is full of ambition. She is making even more yarn kits for knitting projects. She is happy. SHE BOUGHT MORE YARN!!!! Like I said, CrazyLand!!!
It all happened with some new pictures and patterns that appeared on her Facebook feed and led her to Ravelry. Oh, my goodness. She found a sweater that she thinks would be perfect for her tubs of collected yarn. She has been sorting and sorting yarn, and dreaming the dreams, and look at what she has put together for a Hearthside Cardigan:
The Mother of Cats is pretty sure that these yarns can be combined to create that marled cardigan. Goodbye Sea Glass sweaters. The Mother of Cats (that fickle creature) has switched all of her affections and attachment to this new sweater. She is on fire to get started!!!!
That means that she is knitting away at her Alchemist Pullover every night and she is almost to the point where she can start the ribbig.
Then the Mother of Cats found a picture of socks knitted with the Cat Doodle patterns. Oh, oh. More craziness in the yarn stash happened right away…
But I think that she really should make some socks with tuxedo cats on them right away!!!
I thought that things were kind of settling down and we hadn’t dug around in the yarn for a few days when the Mother of Cats went to her favorite yarn shop to buy some cookies. Yeah. I thought that the story was a little fishy myself (hey… I think that it is almost time for my nightly TUNA snack. I’m hoping that the Mother of Cats puts a tuna onto the socks…), and sure enough, the Mother of Cats came home with more yarn for another sweater.
She said that the store had just restocked this color and that if she didn’t buy it RIGHT NOW she wouldn’t get the chance to get it later. She plans to make another Weekender Crew out of it.
I’m pretty sure that the Mother of Cats is out of control, but I’m supporting her the best I can.
So that has been the week. The Mother of Cats has snapped out of her inability to start a new project to this new (CrazyLand) version where she is lining up the projects up faster than they can be knitted. She is happy, knitting away on the sweater that is on her needles at the moment, and dreams of the new sweaters-in-waiting while she waits for the first snows to come.
Speaking of snows… Look at Mateo!! He is starting to grow out his winter coat and his ruff is looking like a ridiculous halo at the moment.
This year his new undercoat is coming in silver colored, which makes him look a little more elegant, but I have to say… he is still a silly boy!!
Guess that is all for now. This is Hannah, signing off.
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
Here is the link for the sweater that I am kniting on like crazy right now, the Alchemist Pullover.
I haven’t forgotten about the Colorica cardigan and the Renaissance sweaters. They are also dancing in the yarn stash trying to get my attention. My hands are doing pretty well with the size needles that I’m using right now, so I’m sticking with them for the moment, and the Weekender and Hearthside patterns use the same (size 7) needles.
I’ve made some good effort with the books that I’m reading over the last two weeks. I finished The Wedding People, stalled onBuckeye, read Nightshade by Michael Connelly, and I’m now listening to The Black Wolf while knitting.
The Wedding People is engaging, and a little hard to explain, but I do recommend it. In a nutshell: people are a little crazy around weddings, and there is perhaps too much focus on the wedding, and not enough on the marriage. At the heart of all relationships, people need to learn to identify and respect who they are, and to build authentic lives and goals based on that.
Nightshade is a police procedural thriller, and it is set on Catalina Island off Southern California. I know that part of the world fairly well, and the setting of the book was like visiting an old friend. The story was okay… there is a mutilated buffalo… a dead body is found… the investigator is at odds with the system… some rules are circumvented… our hero solves the murder in spite of the system and animosity of coworkers… there isn’t a wedding in sight.
The Black Wolf returns me to the world of Three Pines, somewhere in Quebec, Canada, and to Inspector Gamache. Another thriller of a sort, but gentle, introspective, and socially conscious with a huge cast of memorable characters. I’m enjoying the journey so far.
Hey, I want to say that I really did buy those cookies!!!
I’m the most handsome boy ever! I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats knit this week.
The Mother of Cats was really busy and happy this week, and she says that all the new things are called glimmers: little moments that bring joy and peace. I think that she needs to maybe take another nap, because I don’t know what she is talking about, but there have been a lot of new things going on. Let me show you the best, most important one first!!!!
We got this new toy!!!! The blue line is moving on the pulleys, and it makes a little mousie race around the room. It changes directions and speeds, and no matter how many times the Mother of Cats makes it run, I need MORE CHASE TIME!!!! I love to chase this!!!!! Even Hannah is playing with it!!!
The Mother of Cats has started knitting again, and look at she managed to do this week.
That’s right. The Mother of Cats got a pair of socks done this week, and she took out her sweater and started knitting on it again. She was SO HAPPY when she tried the sweater on this week and it is going to fit just fine. Well, with me helping her, how could it not? She says that her wrists aren’t hurting all that much lately, so it looks like we will be spending more time knitting. Yay. I love to chase the yarn while she works. Why is the Mother of Cats so mean about sharing her yarn?
Also, she went out and bought this new yarn!!! Can you believe it? She says that she is going to make a sweater, but I think that she may have gotten carried away a little. She should spend the money on tuna and cat toys, right?!
Then there was all of the sewing. Hannah took over and helped the Mother of Cats at the sewing machine because she likes it a lot. They made little zipper pouches and these crazy little things called port pillows that are used by cancer patients who have ports (duh!!) when they ride around in their cars. Why anyone would voluntarily get into a car is completely beyond me, but the Mother of Cats says that there is a big need for these little things, so Hannah and she made a whole bunch of them and delivered them this week to an infusion center. She asked if I wanted to go along for the ride, and I was like…NO!!! That is just CRAZY TALK!!!!
Hannah: See how much help I am?
Yesterday the Mother of Cats went to her community knitting group, and while she was there a couple of ladies came in with huge bags of yarn to give away. When they were asked how they had learned about Frayed Knots, the group that the Mother of Cats belongs to, they said that they got the name from the paper insert that they picked up with their new port pillow at the infusion center. The Mother of Cats says that this was a huge glimmer!! The ladies were so happy to get the port pillows and the hats; they wanted to give to other patients too with their yarn. Luckily other people took all of that yarn because WE HAVE LOTS OF YARN HERE ALREADY!!!!! I think that it would have been better if they had brought some more toys for me to chase (or even some little bunnies that want to play chase…), but the Mother of Cats was happy, so I guess I am too.
So that was the week. It was warm and sunny, and the Mother of Cats managed to get the leaves off the lawn with her new leaf blower and vacuum/mulcher. She brought in all of the plants from outside, and now the knitting room is happy and full of flowers.
New clothes came, and you already know about the yarn. She went to her knitting group and had a wonderful time, especially since the lady who took those cats that stayed with us for a few weeks was there, and she said that the cats were happy in their new home, and even gave her a new toy for me.
That little ball with the tail on it races around the house and I chase it the whole time!!!
The sweater is Extra Lite Bright knit in just one color. I may make another that is a fade with the new yarn that just came in. That will be fun, right?
What do I want to make with the heavier weight yarn (DK) that just came? I’m thinking that I need an Alchemist Pullover in my life!
That jade plant that I brought in is at least 10 years old. Has it bloomed yet? No, no it has not!
I’ve been steadily losing weight for the last few months (It is a scleroderma thing) and I finally broke down and bought some new clothes. Yay! They fit great and I’m happy with the new colors.
The supermoon has been slowly building over the last few evenings. Enormous and bright, I have been watching it slowly grow in fullness all week. I’ve been looking forward to watching this moon, the Harvest Supermoon of 2025, rise this evening, but of course it is raining and cold. I know, even though I can’t see it, that the moon is there, just out of my sight.
Tonight’s moon pretty much matches my mood this evening. There is this beautiful shining thing, just out of sight, but just knowing it is there, I am buoyed up and happy. I’ve been thinking about recuerdos and glimmers all day as I cleaned out boxes of things connected to my sister and son: bits and pieces of things that they valued and were stored, or sent, to me over the years. Nestled among the junk and ancient clothing there are objects that instantly transport me to another place and time: recuerdos.
Those two big tubs are full of my sister’s fabric stash. And unfinished projects and quilts… things that she loved and had plans for.
My mom was raised in Argentina during her teens and early twenties, and she was bilingual and somewhat multi-cultural in her approach to life. Every important trip or event required a recuerdo to help capture and preserve the memory of the event; she would insist that we select and keep something. Recuerdos are like souvenirs, or memories, but richer and more transformative, returning you to an important experience. That’s what I’ve been finding as I go through the boxes: pictures, trophies, knitted items, old quilts, a college diploma, stuffed animals, and marching shoes. Every single item rich with memories, returning me to the time when I visited a national park with my sister, or watched my son from the bleachers in a fencing tournament at the US Air Force Academy. Like tonight’s supermoon, something great and shining is right there with me, out of sight, but real all the same, and I am happy.
I found three unfinished quilts in the tubs. All the fabrics bundled together, a lot of the cutting already done, everything organized to create the quilts that she dreamed of. I was instantly transported to her favorite fabric store in San Diego, picking out fabrics with her on a beautiful summer afternoon.
Grief is a difficult thing to deal with, but I’ve learned some lessons over the years as the universe kept shoveling bad news in my direction. It helps to write. It is important to acknowledge what has happened, and to allow your support groups to… well… support you! Honor the good in the people (or life) that has been lost. Focus on what you can do, not what is no longer possible. Make sure you are getting enough to eat; remember to rest. Reconnect with your friends, and get out of the house. Create purpose and beauty from the loss whenever possible.
What to do with all of this… stuff… in the crates?
My sister loved autumn colors. Orange, yellow, greens, and browns. I found almost 20 skeins of ORANGE yarn in the crates, and as luck would have it, Halloween and Thanksgiving are right around the corner. All of that yarn is going to be transformed into chemo hats. I’ve been making 2 a day and hope to get them all to an infusion center by the middle of the month. Can you feel the glimmer? I’m looking forward to driving them to a Kaiser infusion center up north next week through the fall foliage; maybe there will still be some sunflowers in the fields. Glimmer.
Then there is the fabric. Oh, boy. There is a lot of fabric there! I’ve been sorting through it and pulling out nice colors to make into zipper pouches (filled with hygiene products) for the DART program at Denver Health.
Wouldn’t you like a pouch like this?
This week there was an article in the local news about an organization that provides comfort quilts to trauma survivors. They take in donated fabric and unfinished quilts: what a great place for my sister’s unfinished quilts to go!! I’ve been sorting my own fabric along with my sister’s to get the donation ready, and I plan to drive it up to the organization next week. Can’t you just feel the shine of the supermoon just out of sight? It’s like there is a glimmer hiding right behind my shoulder, raising my spirits and centering me again.
So, this is life. I’m pulling myself back together while surrounded by items that my sister gifted me through the years, sorting the fabrics, yarn, and projects that she once had big plans for, reliving our time together, and taking her dreams into the future with me while mindfully watching for the glimmers of peace and joy that are there for us.
Shine on, Harvest Supermoon. Shine on.
P.S.
These are my son’s cats: Jonesy, Gabriel and Liam.
I was able to successfully rehome my son’s three cats all together two weeks ago. This week, as I worried about how they were doing, I followed the story of Francine’s loss and the resulting successful rescue operation. Yesterday when I heard that Francine had been returned to her home, a Lowe’s store where she is the resident cat, I heard from the new owner of my son’s cats; they were out, sleeping on her bed, and chomping tuna. Glimmer time!!
Don’t I look handsome? I’m keeping a close eye on a dragonfly…There he is looking all sparkly.
I actually had my jaws and chompers on that bug, but the Mother of Cats chased me around the catio until it got away. Then she sat outside with us to make sure it stayed safe until it was time to come in for our nightly tuna treat. WHY does the Mother of Cats do this? She has gone to huge lengths to keep me from having any fun.
Look at what she did to the downstairs window that was my secret escape route to the great outdoors. Now there is a new cat-proof screen and a safety gate across the window. Sometimes I get a little frustrated with the Mother of Cats.
We have been spending lots of time out on the catio because the Mother of Cats like to drink her morning coffee out there while she reads her books. She keeps the birdfeeder stocked and there is lots of fun wildlife in the yard. Do I get to play with the animals? No, I do not.
Obviously the animals miss me because you won’t believe what happened this week… When the Mother of Cats let me out in the morning there WAS A BUNNY IN THE CATIO!!!! I got to chase him all around, the Mother of Cats was making some crazy noises while she chased me, and the bunny ran like you wouldn’t believe. Did I get to catch the bunny? No. I did not. I ran back into the safety of the house (the Mother of Cats was really making some concerning sounds) and the bunny was released back into the yard.
The Mother of Cats is calling this bunny “Death Wish Bunny”.
Anyway, that’s all that is going on around here. The Mother of Cats has been working on some little projects (mending the catio net and sealing the gap was one of them…) and I’ve been chasing Hannah around the house when not out on the catio.
Guess that is all for now. Would you like to see my scar?
Bye for now.
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
My tendonitis is back in full swing and I’m in braces again. It is really cramping my knitting style.
I have been cranking out fingerless mitts using my little Addi knitting machine, so I’m still getting some knitting done. I’ve also been reading books, and I’m slowly getting a series of posts put together.
Am I a little frustrated to have wildlife appear inside the catio after going to heroic lengths to keep all cats and wildlife safe. Yes, yes I am. I am sure that swinging a hammer and replacing window screen is contributing to my tendonitis.
Did I just buy pet insurance for both of my cats? Why yes, I most certainly did!!!
Yarn, Books & Roses 