Cats – Page 4 – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: Has it only been a week?

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you like my trout? It is stuffed with catnip.

Things have been just crazy here at Casa Mother of Cats. Like, it has been the week from hell and I haven’t been getting as many outings (and cookies) as usual. It suddenly got really hot again. There is smoke in the air and the Mother of Cats won’t let us go out in the daytime. It is so hot it is hard to sleep! The Mother of Cats has been making lots of trips out of the house, and when she gets home, she just lays around and refuses to play with us. Sometimes she plays with her knitting machine, but I can tell that her heart isn’t in it. She just reads books, knits, and watches the Olympics. Fabulous. Mateo is driving me crazy because he wants to go outside all of the time, but the Mother of Cats is like… NO!!

We do get to go out in the late afternoon or after dark and then we chase bugs in the dark. The Mother of Cats likes to eat her dinner outside, and it is usually cooler then.

Mateo goes crazy when he finally gets to go out. All those bugs!!! He wants to chase all of them, and I think that maybe he has been watching the Olympics with The Mother of Cats because this happened:

Yeah. That is a pretty high jump that he made. The Mother of Cats measured it, and he made a diagonal 6-foot jump to get up there, and then he jumped straight down 8 feet when the Mother of Cats tried to safely recover him. She thinks that he was trying to get into the tree, which isn’t a very good idea because…

This guy has been hanging out in the tree! The Mother of Cats thinks that this is a Sharp-shinned Hawk.

Anyway, since The Mother of Cats has been watching the Olympics, she thought that this would put everything into perspective about how high Mateo was when he jumped up to the top of the catio supports:

That boy can jump!! He’s not in the run for a medal, but he did pretty well in the dismount, and he did stick his landing!

Today the smoke is better, and it isn’t quite as hot as it was last week. The Mother of Cats worked on finishing up all the hats that she made in the hot indoor days, and here they are all packed away where I can’t mess with them.

This is 23 hats all finished up and ready to go to Frayed Knots. I helped with all of the sewing!! That knitting machine has made the Mother of Cats hugely productive!

Now she is back to knitting chickens again. I love chicken knitting!!

She mailed this chicken away last week to a lady who is having surgery in a couple of days.

So that’s all the news of the last crazy week.

That’s right. It is raining outside. Yay. The house will cool down and we can all go outside now.

Bug Chase Time!!!!!

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

This has been the longest week ever.
I saw my doctors at the end of July, and they ordered a lot of tests and procedures. I’ve had a steroid injection into my bad-boy hip, X-rays and MRIs of my knees, bloodwork done, and tomorrow I go for an echocardiogram. Six trips in all. Every single trip out of the house puts me back into the heat and smoke, which isn’t good because… you know, crappy heart and lungs. There was a lot of smoke last week because Colorado experienced an outbreak of wildfires among the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and all that smoke headed east towards my area of the world.
Late Thursday night (like near midnight) I opened the doors to let cool air into the house. I locked the screen door for safety and THE KEY GOT STUCK!! The front door couldn’t close with the key in the lock of the screen door, the house was filling with smoke for some reason, and there were sirens sounding nearby making me wonder if we had ANOTHER fire. After using lubricant on the lock, consulting YouTube videos, and then finally resorting to a hammer, I got the key out. Exhausted, the cats and I went to bed in a hot smokey house. How hot? 85 degrees Fahrenheit hot.
After that adventure I’m back on oxygen 24/7.
I met a lady getting ready for major surgery on one of my trips; that chicken got shipped off to her. It was another trip out of the house, but totally worth it.
The hats on the knitting machine are the simplest ever: 120 rounds of knitting, and then gather up both ends and secure them together which produces a doubled knitted fabric like a Musselburgh hat.
I bought ANOTHER KNITTING MACHINE that is perfect for knitting wristers with lighter weight yarn. I don’t have a problem. Really, I don’t.
I just found out that I can knit an OCTOPUS with my knitting machines!

My cardiologist wants me to wear compression stockings now. Look at these cuties!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Chickenitis becomes Crankitis

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you see this nice little blanket that the Mother of Cats made for me?

The Mother of Cats was cleaning up the yarn stash and found a little bin with all of these crocheted squares. Here’s the thing: the Mother of Cats had been knitting a chicken out of Noro wool yarn, and I wanted to help her… like a lot!!! I kept climbing into her lap so I could give the yarn a good grooming, and she just WOULDN’T let me help her the way I wanted!!!! I just love, love that wool yarn! The little squares that she found were made with the same type of yarn, so…

She crocheted the squares together one evening to make this blanket!!

The Mother of Cats has been knitting some chickens; she has two finished but not sewn and stuffed yet. Kind of cute colors, right?

These chickens look a little sad, don’t they. Sad, unstuffed chickies.

Why aren’t those chickens stuffed yet? Well… it is because of the knitting machines that the Mother of Cats bought. The new machine is large enough to make a hat.

The Sentro machine is the one that she uses to make the hats. Lots and lots of hats. The machine works when you turn this little crank on the side, and she has been cranking and cranking like crazy during the heat of the day. I hate the heat, so I just sleep on the coffee table next to the machine while she works. Hey, there is a fan blowing on the table! The Mother of Cats just needs to work around me because I am so cute, and I also have claws! Not that I would ever use the claws on the Mother of Cats… Anyway, she is making a couple of these hats every day and they are starting to pile up in the donation boxes. I like the hat machine, even if it gets used on my coffee table, because there is a lot of potential for fun.

It has a string hanging down under it that waggles around while she turns the crank. Yay! Cat toy!!!

This weekend the Mother of Cats pulled out the little knitting machine and spent hours trying to make some wrist warmers. It got a little ugly. She couldn’t get the machine to knit the sock yarn that she wanted to use. She watched lots of YouTube videos. She tried at least four different yarns. She hung weights on the knitted fabric attached to the machine. She forgot to give me my TUNA!!! Finally, today she tried one last yarn and bingo: it worked!!

Success! She needs to sew the stitches from the inside and the outside of the wrister together (she calls it Kitchener Stitch), but she has the lightweight wristers that she was trying to make.

She is pretty sure that she knows how to get the little machine to make more wristers, so the weekend ended up on a high note. That’s a good thing, because there certainly was a lot of cranking… the Mother of Cats has contracted CRANKITIS!!

Well, that’s all for now.

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats

Hannah’s blanket is made from the squares that I made following the pattern for the Square Scramble Sack.
The little knitting machine is an Addi Express Professional machine.
The big machine is a Sentro 48 needle machine. I bought the Sentro after seeing some hats that another Frayed Knots member had made using fingering yarn. Just what I needed! I have so much yarn in the stash that I need to get put to a good use.
The lighter weight yarn that worked in the Addi was Noro Silk Garden sock yarn. It is smooth, one ply yarn that isn’t very elastic. I think that it is about sport weight, but the manufacturer lists it as DK weight.
The Addi machine is more robust than the Sentro, but the Sentro is very easy to work with and quieter than the Addi.
The Addi machine is not knitting the fingering weight yarn yet, but I haven’t given up all hope. The Sentro, however, is knitting the fingering weight yarn with no issues at all. Since the Addi requires a heavier weight yarn, I tried making wristers using (duh) heavier weight yarns. I knitted with a worsted weight yarn, switched to a sportweight silk blend yarn, pulled one end of the tube up through the inside, and then closed the stitches with Kitchener stitch.

Pretty slick, right?

It’s exciting to crank away and get so much yarn that was languishing in the stash put to good use. This is fast, too. I can get a hat done in less than an hour.

Chickens are taking flight…

It has been kind of busy lately at Casa Hannah and the Coalbear. I’ve been meeting people for chicken hand-offs every few days. I built a new coffee table, worked some in the yard, and then there is the heat. Ugh. The heat. We’ve been trapped in a heat dome for days, breaking records day after day, and the cats and I are all suffering a little with it. It is harder to breath in hot air, but my joints are curiously okay with all of this. I stay outside until noon each day letting my joints bask in the heat, but predictably, the cats abandon the deck/catio long before then. I find them stretched out on the cool tile of the kitchen when I come in, waiting for their tuna. The cats are absolutely over this heat!

Hannah: Maybe it is a little cooler in here…

Before I talk about the yard and the heat, let’s talk about the chickens! I’ve been meeting up with people for a chicken handoff all week, and these chickens have all flown away to their new coops. Here are the chickens that left this week:

That’s right. Five emotional support chickens flew out of here, and tomorrow I hand off another teal chicken knitted to match the one in the picture. My favorite ESC in the whole bunch went to my son: it is made with handspun yarns from sheep that he and I met when we worked a shearing day for the Rocky Sheep Company years ago.

The black/grey marled yarn is from a sheep named Petunia, and the jet black is from a sheep named Clint (Black). I used some Malabrigo Rios for the red bands because it is too darn hot to dye yarn right now! Isn’t this a spunky looking chicken?

Yesterday I cleaned up and sorted out all of the yarns again, and I’m ready to launch into more chicken knitting just as soon as I finish the chemo hat for a scleroderma patient participant in a CAR T-cell therapy clinical trial in Seattle: that needs to go out the door this week. Whew. Lots and lots to knit. I feel pretty motived because a thank you note was emailed to Frayed Knots by a cancer patient thanking me for the “wrist warmers” that she received. I think that she must have been given two PICC line covers, but that note made me realize that I need to be even more productive. As if to nail home the lesson, a couple of the people that I met up with this last week mention how much they struggled with cold and painful hands. Yeah. I need to get cracking on wrist warmers.

I bought a cute little knitting machine that is perfect for churning out wrist warmers!! This is the Addi Express Professional Knitting Machine, and it was on sale. Yay!!

Okay, I bought a big knitting machine that will make hats too. I need to have some way to use up all of this yarn that I have stashed away, and now that I am knitting chickens like crazy, I feel bad that I’m not producing hats and stuff for Frayed Knots like I was. Hopefully, these machines will let me step up my game some.

Hannah: Mother of Cats!! Talk about how hot it is and mention all the birds in the yard!!!!

Okay Hannah: back to the heat. For some reason the potted flowers on the deck are doing exceptionally well in the heat, and the yard is full of life. I’ve been making an effort to keep the water trays full, and the bird feeders have become quite popular. Look at what the flowers have been up to:

The single flowering spear in the middle is the Spanish Lavender finally starting to bloom. I’d almost given up on it, but both plants have suddenly sprouted those buds. All of the potted roses are covered with blooms, and the other lavenders have all started a second blooming. There is so much life out in the yard I replaced a window screen so Hannah can spend the early evenings watching for bunnies. (Why did it have to be replaced? One word: Mateo)

In the mornings the cats and I hang out on the catio watching the wildlife. Here’s the view from behind the chicken wire:

I especially like the blue jays that are hanging out in the yard, but there is a constant line-up for the hanging feeders. So fun. Cheap cat entertainment while I’m drinking my morning latte out on the deck/catio.

Hannah: Finally! Today it started to cool off.

As Hannah has pointed out, the heat breaks today, and it will be closer to normal temperatures for the rest of the week with rain possible each day. I’m hoping that this is the Colorado Monsoon arriving at last, certainly my lawn is hoping that there will be rain on the way.

Bye everyone. It’s time to fill the bird feeders again.

Note: Who’s getting these ESCs? My family, of course. Several have gone to systemic sclerosis patients. One went to person who retired earlier than she had hoped to, and another went to a person coping with a serious genetic disease. Two people are struggling with anxiety. One to a cancer survivor whose chemotherapy triggered scleroderma. I still haven’t gotten any chickens knitted for the infusion center…

Must knit faster!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Life Behind the Wire

Hi. I’m the CoalBear.

It has been really, really hot here. The poor Mother of Cats woke up on a Monday and… she couldn’t stand. Like, her knees didn’t want to work. It took her WAY TOO LONG to get downstairs to give us our morning tuna, so it was kind of a hard start to the week for us, too. Here is what she thinks happened:

The air pressure in the Denver area dropped like a dead moth overnight, and for some reason that made her knees misbehave. She was very upset with the weather. Good thing the pressure came up again, but… it was hot. Really hot. Hannah and I do not like hot even a little bit. We slept all day, day after day, and we only went out on the deck in the mornings and evenings to look at what was going on in the yard.

The bunnies are always my favorite, but there have also been lots and lots of birds. The Mother of Cats saw an American goldfinch, and there were chickadees, blue jays, robins (lots and lots of robins!), and even tiny birds called bushtits. The Mother of Cats was so excited that she ordered a birdfeeder for the birds from Amazon and went out and bought some food from a store near me. A BIRD STORE!!!! Why didn’t she take me? I like birds… she never lets me ~~catch and eat~~ play with fun things.

Do you see what happened? The feeder is soooo cute because it has a cat face, but that didn’t stop the squirrel from moving in. He was so mean to the bird feeder (he knocked it down!!!) that the Mother of Cats had to make a move the feeder to a new place on a tree closer to the catio (which is a good idea in my opinion…) and put the food for the squirrel on a little platter for them. The food has special worms in it for the robins, but maybe the squirrel ate them too. Anyway, everything was going great until late one night…

Hannah: Ummm… is there something going on in the back yard????

Hannah and I rush downstairs to the big window down there to look out into the yard, and there was a big, fat raccoon climbing over the fence!!!

Now Hannah and I are really worried about going out onto the catio, and we will only do it if the Mother of Cats goes out with us. That raccoon looked mean! Really, really mean. I’m just a little fluffy cat…

So that’s all the news from around here. The Mother of Cats is still taking it really easy, and we take turns watching over her. She got some more chickens knitted up and they are kind of cute, but she put them into boxes and mailed them away this week. Bye, chickens! Watch out for the raccoons on your travels!!

That’s all for now. Hannah and I are watching the Mother of Cats while she types this, and after she finishes, I think that I will catch a little nap.

This is Mateo, signing off.

>^..^<

Hannah and the CoalBear: Chickenitis Explodes!!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

These big fat bumblebees have been coming to the little garden by the deck every single day this week. I just love them! They are so fat and slow. They are fuzzy and look just like a cat toy, right? They come right up to the wire to climb into the flowers, and I got my paw out and onto one of them this morning; he just bumbled off to another flower. These guys are awesome!!

The Mother of Cats is doing much better and hasn’t worn her wrist braces in days. She finished up the knitting on one of her Emotional Support Chickens (ESC) and then spent a couple of days sewing them up. One chicken was done Saturday morning, so she took it to her Frayed Knots knitting group to show it off to the other knitters.

Isn’t this kind of a sweet little chicken? Her colors look like the colors of the garden where the bumblebee hangs out.

The Mother of Cats wanted to show off the chicken because it has been a big hit with her scleroderma support group and at the Kaiser infusion center last month. Everyone wants a chicken!! Like… four of the members of her support group want one, and she figures that the infusion center should get a least a couple. The Mother of Cats is kind of thinking that lots of people who are having a hard time (like, the families at the Ronald McDonald House, or at other infusion centers) would like a chicken. Yeah. It was a good idea, but she lost control, and things went crazy really quickly… the chicken got passed around and people hugged it. And hugged it. One lady wanted to keep it. The Mother of Cats got requests for FIVE more chickens and was asked to think about teaching a chicken knitting class for some of the ladies. One of the ladies swore that she could get chickens sold at craft shows up north (in Boulder, Colorado) and the money could be used to buy items for the personal care packages that are created by the Frayed Knots volunteers. Another lady asked for the pattern so she could start knitting chickens too…

Yeah. A little out of control. The Mother of Cats now has a spreadsheet going with 17 chicken requests on it.

So, the Mother of Cats got cracking and sewed up two more chickens. Now she has three done and ready to go out the door. There are two more little ones knitted that need to be sewn up, but her wrist voted NO!

Today she wound up a lot of yarn (luckily, she had bought all the yarn earlier in the month…) and she is torn about what color to knit next. Maybe it is time to make a chicken that is knit in all solid colors. Should she use some fluffy alpaca? She still has some beads that can go onto another chicken. Whatever… she needs to just get to work knitting and somehow the chickens will all find a home, right? Obviously, the need for emotional support chickens is real.

Unless there are bumblebees. They are almost as good.

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I woke up to a text this morning: another request for an ESC. A pink one, please.
The pattern is Emotional Support Chicken, and it can be found in knit or crochet versions on Ravelry.
Here are the official portraits of the three chickens. I have to send the pictures out to people so they can pick their chicken.

Hannah and the CoalBear: She bought all the yarn!!!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

The Mother of Cats brought me this wonderful new box this week. I love this box!!!

The Mother of Cats started out the week being really busy. She worked in her gardens, she knitted on her chickens, and she even did some yummy cooking. I know it was yummy because I dragged off some of her steak when she wasn’t looking. I mean, it was a big piece; if she shared more, I wouldn’t be forced to take matters into my own paws like that. After a couple of days of sun and knitting fun, though, everything came to a screeching halt.

The Mother of Cats hands got all puffy and she had to put on her braces. I hate the braces because it feels funny when she pets me. She also gets crabby when she is wearing the braces because she says everything hurts. Poor Mother of Cats.

I bet if she ate some tuna with avocado, she would feel better…

Anyway, after spending a whole day reading books and doing laundry, the Mother of Cats bounced back and headed out to the yarn store. I think it was a little crazy of her, but we couldn’t stop her. The yarn store had put some videos showing off the yarns on Facebook, and she pretty much lost all control.

Look at this yarn!!! She had to get teal colored yarn because it is scleroderma month, and the store chose teal as the color of the month (!). As she explained it to Mateo, when the universe puts teal yarn out on sale, you just do what the universe wants. She also got the pink/plum yarns because she loves them the most. I tried to sleep on the yarns, but she got a little cranky about that. Silly Mother of Cats. When is she going to learn to share? Anyway, she says that the yarn is for MORE CHICKENS!!!!! She is going to share this yarn with some people, so why not me too?

I do have to admit, I love my chicken. She is really nice to sleep with.

Just when I thought we had reached the height of ridiculousness, more yarn arrived in the mail. This yarn, evidently, just had to be bought because it is… ZEBRA yarn.

Behold the zebra yarn. It gets that name because the undyed yarn is white with black stripes.

So, I can truthfully say, the Mother of Cats seems to have bought all the yarn. It seems a little crazy for her to lose all control like this when SHE CAN’T EVEN KNIT right now, but that’s the Mother of Cats for you. She believes that the world needs more chickens, and she is going to get them knitted after a few more days of rest. In the meantime, she gets to read her books, play with us, and take pictures of her roses. More of her rose plants started blooming this week and they are looking pretty good.

Well, that’s about all that is going around here except for the really big news if you are a cat. IT IS MOTH SEASON!!!! That’s right those crazy miller moths are back, migrating through our back yard, and Mateo has been steadily catching them and bringing them into the house to play with. Then it is fun, fun, fun all night long!

The moths like to hide in the umbrella shade, and when the Mother of Cats opens it up, he grabs them. Then, when it is about time to go to bed… bazinga!!! There’s a moth for me to chase up on the ceiling. This is so much fun. The Mother of Cats isn’t completely on board with all of the moth fun, but I’m sure that if she ate more tuna (with avocado!) she’d be a better fan of moth-o-mania.

That’s all for now. I’m going to take a little cat bath and then it is time for a nap. Later on, around 2am, it will be Miller Moth Time!!!

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I’ve had swelling and tendonitis like this before, and the only thing to do is to rest the tendons and wait it out.
The chicken pattern is the Emotional Support Chicken.
I have 4 more chickens knitted that I need to sew up.
My scleroderma support group met today and 4 people asked me for a chicken. Well, I did offer. There are days when you really, really need a chicken to hug.
My latest blood results are in, and I am finally back in the normal ranges for iron levels, and my anemia symptoms are better. I’m at the dead bottom, but I will take it! Still eating steak, tuna, peanut butter, and taking iron supplements. Did you know that there is iron in avocado?
The miller moths migrate west every year across the plains to the Rocky Mountains for the summer. My yard is on the flight path.
Almost all of that yarn came from Spun Right Round. I love the quality of the yarn, and you can see how wonderful the colors are!
I tried to knit while wearing the braces. Nope. Not happening.
The beautiful apricot rose is Easy Does It, and this is its second year in my yard. The pink rose is a mostly wild rose that I bought a looooong time ago at the hardware store, and the chicken is with the Princess Alexandra of Kent rose.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Chickenitis Continues…

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’ve really been keeping a close eye on the Mother of Cats.

The Mother of Cats has been completely out of control for a few weeks now. She spends all her time working outside and hunting for lavender plants to put in the garden. I mean, there is a lot of lavender now, and it kind of smells funny. What is up with that?

See. Lavender. She now has five different types of lavender growing in pots on the deck along with the baby roses that get way too much attention. Why does the Mother of Cats play with plants when I need her to play with the CoalBear so he doesn’t bother me?

The only good thing about the gardening is this wagon that the Mother of Cats bought for us to play in. Then she took it outside. Why does she do these things?

When she isn’t outside working in her gardens or hunting for more lavender, she is knitting CHICKENS. Lots and lots of chickens. I really don’t mind that she is knitting, because I really like to hang out with her while she is working, but this is getting ridiculous. The chickens are starting to take over all of the room on the back of the loveseat where I like to sleep.

Do you see this? One more chicken and I won’t be able to fit on up here. Why is she doing this????

To make things worse, she saw some photos of LITTLE chickens on Facebook that made her go crazy in the yarn stash pulling out yarn for chicken construction. Then she had some people ask for chickens. Then the people who got the chickens had friends who DESPERATELY needed a chicken for themselves. I think that the Mother of Cats should charge people for the chickens (TUNA FUND!!) but so far, she gives the money to her community knitting group, Frayed Knots. Why is she doing this? Now I’m getting pushed all around by the chickens, and I’m not getting any tuna out of the deal, either.

Here all of the finished big chickens to date. She has a couple of other chickens that still need their stuffing.

The three chickens in the individual chicken photos (did you notice the big lavender plant behind the chickens?) were mailed out this week. The blue one with the little shawl went to a lady whose husband is battling cancer, and the other two flew to members of the Mother of Cat’s family. Good riddance!!!

Sigh. Is the chickenitis getting better now that some are gone? No. No, it is not. She’s determined to make even more for some people she met on Facebook. Then she went away in the car for an afternoon a week ago and returned with EVEN MORE YARN for more chickens. She says the place where she went for the afternoon needs the chickens.

She says that chickens need to go here. I hope that they take flight soon!

I guess they asked for the chickens. She showed them pictures, and they got really excited when they saw how cute they were. I’d be happy to send them Mateo to keep patients entertained, but they weren’t interested in a cat. Just chickens.

So, that’s all I have to report for the last three weeks. Gardening, knitting, and chickens.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Happy Caturday, everyone!

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The chickens are knitted from the Emotional Support Chicken pattern on Ravelry. I’ve lately joined a KAL group on Facebook, which is feeding me lots of ideas for more combinations. Today people started posting little hats and shawls that can go on the chickens…
I visited the Kaiser Infusion Center last week to get Reclast to treat my osteoporosis. This is the infusion center that I knit PICC line covers for, and when I told them I was one of their knitters a whole party broke out! There was cheering and general excitement all around, and when I mentioned emotional support chickens, they insisted on seeing the pictures. Yep. They want chickens.
One of my Facebook friends with systemic sclerosis has been accepted into a CAR T-cell therapy clinical trial. She will be receiving chemo and I’m going to send her a chemo hat and, (wait for it), a chicken!
What is CAR T-cell therapy, you ask? It is new technology that is now being adapted to address some autoimmune conditions, including systemic sclerosis. The video in the link above explains how it is used with cancer.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Baby Bunny, Robins, and Chickens!! Oh, My!!

Hi. I’m Mateo the CoalBear.

Do you see that I’m being a good helper?

This has been kind of a busy week in Mother of Cats Land. We’ve been outside most mornings checking on how things are going in the yard. The plants in the pots on the catio all look good. The bugs have been hopping around and they are SO MUCH FUN to chase. There were a couple of huge developments in the yard that I want to report to you:

The adult bunnies that used to live in our backyard are now gone. We were little worried about them, and wondered if there would be any baby bunnies this year when a single tiny bunny suddenly appeared in the garden by the deck. So cute. Hannah and I spend as much time as we can watching this little guy, and we are happy to report that he is growing like a weed and cavorting around the yard like a big boy. He isn’t even a little afraid of me and I get to get right up within inches of him,,, if it wasn’t for the chicken wire we would be having a great time.

Hannah: knock it off, CoalBear. We all know that you want to eat the bunny…

Shut up, Hannah. I’m telling the story today! The other thing that happened this week is all the leaves popped out on the trees. The Mother of Cats says it is called budburst, and it means that it really is spring now. I think that the robins know this too, because they have been singing like crazy all day and night. Literally, all night. They go crazy at 3am for some reason. I try to get the Mother of Cats up to let me out, but for some reason she won’t get out of bed. Lazy, lazy, Mother of Cats! Be like a robin! Get up and let me outside to see my baby bunny!!! This is what the robins sound like!

Hannah: CoalBear! Get on with talking about all the knitting and the chickens!!!

All right, Hannah. Why are you being so mean to me? You should go convince the Mother of Cats to give you some tuna and then maybe you can take a nice little nap. Outside where you won’t bother me!!

Now that I’ve put Hannah in her place, let me get back to telling you about the week. The Mother of Cats totally snapped, put her La Prairie sweater into time out on Sleeve Island, parked her dragon book back on the bookshelf, started a different book, and cast on a new Emotional Support Chicken. She has been completely out of control!!!! While she has been knitting the new chicken, she has dreaming about more chickens made in different colors; she keeps dragging yarn out of the stash and winding it up into little kits for MORE CHICKENS!!!! This is so out of control. What should I do? I’m just a little cat and it looks like we are having a huge outbreak of Chickenitis. Help! Who should I report this to? Hannah is no help at all. The only phone number she knows is 1-800-SND-TUNA.

Mateo: I have to admit that I have been helping with the knitting. Maybe that will help her get through this crisis… actually, I just like to chase yarn.

This is the chicken that she is working on now, but there is a dusty rose chicken on the way right after this one… and a sparkly blue chicken, and a rainbow striped chicken, and a chicken in fall colors…

It’s another handspun, handknit chicken to go on the couch downstairs.

The new chicken is kind of cute, right? Anyway, that was the week.

This is Mateo the CoalBear, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

So, I spun out of control with the reading and knitting this week in response to sudden challenges. I had borrowed an e-book from the library that had to be returned in a couple of days. Oops. Emergency reading time! I have a couple of friends who are struggling with medical nightmares at the moment: obviously, they need chickens!! My cousin contacted me asking to buy a chicken to give a friend whose husband was just diagnosed with a serious illness. My phone blew up Thursday with the news that a member of my family was back in the hospital. The sweater was immediately parked (I was struggling with all the purling on the sleeves anyway…) and I launched the beginning of a flock of new chickens.

What was the book I was on fire to read before it was snatched off my Kindle device by the library?

This is a book that I kind of feel should be required reading for everyone, but on the other hand, it is so brutal and reality-altering I feel that it will be banned in as many school districts as the distraught (and completely misguided) ~~Karens on Steroids~~ Moms for Liberty can get to. If Charlotte’s Web, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games are too much for these people, this book will make their heads explode. I hope that they read it anyway.

So, this is the book: Chain-Gang All-Stars really made an impact on me. Imagine a system where convicted felons facing life in prison, or who received the death penalty can “volunteer” to join a system that is a reality show where the felons are on teams that compete against other teams and engage in gladiator to-the-death matches in arenas full of viewers. The teams, and individual players, are wildly popular; lots of merch is sold. Any player who survives three years will be freed, but it goes without saying that almost everyone will die. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the members of these teams are more likely to be minority citizens or people who lived in poverty: that is the current prison population.

Everything about this book is crushing in its believability. I am crushed by the possibility. I can see that this could happen in a world where incarcerated people are seen as less than full citizens and without rights. Think of the wildly popular Survivor reality shows. Think of American football, where evidence of concussive brain injury in players was covered up for years. Think of the laws that strip felons of some of their citizenship rights like voting. Think of the wildly misbehaving attendees at some of our political rallies. Think of the horrendous deaths of minority population members (sometimes in public with citizens begging the police to stop) at the hands of law enforcement. Think of for-profit prisons that work their inmates as almost-slaves. Think.

I highly recommend this book.

I’ve returned to A Day of Fallen Night again and I’m quickly finishing it. It has dragons, after all.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Snowy April Caturday

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’ve been keeping my eye on the Mother of Cats all week long.

It is really cold and snowy outside. I mean, the really wet sticky snow that gets on your paws and squishes up between your toe beans and is just the kind that all cats everywhere hate. Mateo went out a couple of times today and that boy was back inside within 60 seconds flat. Anyway, the lavender and other cute flowers are all safely in the garage, Mateo is safely indoors, and the Mother of Cats and I have been really productive.

Right now, the weaving is a long, long scarf that has some fringe on it. The Mother of Cats washed it last night and it is done for now. Mateo likes to sleep on it, and since the fabric is a little scratchy the Mother of Cats is totally okay with that. She has been talking about cutting it up and sewing little stuffed cats from it, or maybe a sewn bunny, and frankly I don’t care as long as there is catnip involved. A pillow would be kind of nice…

She also has made a lot of progress on her La Prairie sweater. Now she is working on one of the sleeves and is pretty happy with how it is looking.

Looking good, right? This what happens when you get quality cat assistance!

The body of the sweater is a little longer than it should be, but she is happy about that. The sleeves are kind of a problem because she doesn’t want them to be soooo long, so after doing some funky math and checking out what other knitters did, she has shortened up the blocks of solid knitting and now we’ll see how it all works out. She does seem to still be a little stressed about the whole thing. She keeps muttering… I hope I have enough yarn… I hope this won’t be too long… thank heavens there aren’t so many bobbles on the sleeves… I don’t care. I’m a cat. As long as the tuna keeps coming, I’m happy to support any knitting that is going on.

So, that’s it. It has been a pretty good week. The weaving is done, the sweater is moving along, and the Mother of Cats is also halfway through her book about dragons. Someday soon the snow will stop falling, the Mother of Cats will put our lavender back outside, and we will visit the bunnies again in the mornings.

This is my favorite pose after watching Dune: Part Two with the Mother of Cats this week.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Notes from the Mother of Cats: the book Hannah mentioned is A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon.

I’m chomping at the bit to get all these lengthy projects finished up so I can knit more Emotional Support Chickens!! Also, I have books lined up from the library that I need to get read before next weekend…

Hannah and the CoalBear: We have Lavender!

Hi. I’m Mateo.

Do you see how grown up I look? I turned THREE YEARS OLD last week.

The days here have been nice, and the Mother of Cats has been letting us outside on the catio every single day for a couple of hours. It has been just great. She bought some new plants and put them out for us. The backyard bunny comes out every evening to visit with us. We had a crazy eclipse that made all the birds go to sleep, and then when it was over they woke up again and we were so excited!!!! It was just like two sunrises in one day! Oh, I almost forgot to mention… there are GRASSHOPPERS flying around. Look at how happy we look in the great outside. Isn’t my new lavender plant nice?

Everything was going great until the Mother of Cats discovered that I had been testing the catio wire for weak places. Hey, there is a bunny right out there that absolutely wants to play with me. Well, actually, it is more a matter of me wanting to play with it, but you understand, don’t you? I wasn’t actually going to hurt ~~eat~~ the bunny…

Mateo: when the Mother of Cats found this, I lost my independent catio privileges…

It was kind of hard for her to miss a hole in the fence this big, especially when it is a perfect Mateo-sized gap. Sigh. She’s pretty sure that I was actually outside of the wire trolling for bunnies in the yard, but we’ll never tell. Hannah and I are in total agreement about keeping our mouths shut. I have to give her a few days of my tuna, but it’s totally worth it. We’ve reconciled ourselves to just spending time with the lavender plants in the indoor garden instead of being outside with the new lavender, the grasshoppers, and the birds. And MY BUNNY!!!!

The truth is, Hannah and I kind of fight over the spot right by the lavender plants and seedlings in the indoor garden. It’s a really nice spot, don’t you think? The turtle is nice company, and we still have our lavender so that’s good. Anyway, where I’m going with this is that we are pretty much on HOUSE ARREST and can’t go out unless the Mother of Cats goes with us. She has been weaving, and knitting, and reading, and planting more plants all week, and she hasn’t managed to get anything finished yet. Not one thing. It is kind of embarrassing. We do try to hurry her along so we can go out in the afternoons, but she gets busy with her little hobbies and forgets about how much we need to be outside. To make it worse, did I mention, she still doesn’t have anything done!!!!!

This is what I’m talking about. The Mother of Cats is far enough into the book now that there are dragons. She likes dragons. Has she finished the book yet? No. She isn’t even halfway through yet. She should spend more time out on the deck reading, don’t you think? Then there is the sweater. Do you see how long it is now???? She still isn’t down to the bottom of the body yet, and she is starting to seriously worry about running out of yarn. The weaving is almost done, but is it off the loom yet? No. No, it is not. She’s now considering knitting some lace to attach to the ends of the woven strip (scarf thingy) to make it spiffy. That means that it won’t be done for even longer.

Sigh. Somehow, she needs to get this endless crafting under control…

Still, the Mother of Cats did get us more lavender this week. Lavender is nice. Now we have 4 different kinds growing in the garden and on the deck. I’d really like to check on the progress of the lavender in the gardens, but the stuff on the deck is enough. I guess.

Have a good week, everyone.

Notes from the Mother of Cats: The endless cardigan that I’m knitting is called La Prairie by Joji Locatelli. I’m very close to the bottom of the body. I’m considering leaving it short sleeved…