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.
There it is, the Strawberry Moon. I snapped this shot around midnight last night while the kitties chased moths on the catio.
It’s June. I can hardly believe it. June is Scleroderma Awareness Month. June is the month of thunderstorms and tornado watches. June is the month of the miller moth migration (Mateo’s favorite time of year!) June is the month that Hannah came home to live with me. June is the month, year after year, that my scleroderma begins to improve after a long, cold winter. This year June has been just great! After a very rainy May hot, sunny weather finally arrived this week and the yard began to burst into bloom. First, let me show you the weather…
Crazy weather May!! That is hail on the catio, all of that rain appeared in my pot on the deck (you can see it in the first picture… the pot was partially covered by the table above it…) in just 48 hours, and then there was an exciting outbreak of tornados just east of me. Whew! In the breaks between the storms I managed to give the lawns their first mowing of the year, and I made great progress pulling weeds out of all of my gardens. I kept thinking of a saying someone said to me recently as I worked in the yard and gardens: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you clear a weedy wilderness? One clump of grass at a time.
Look at how great the yard is starting to look! The grass is growing like crazy after the deep soaks, and there is lots of wildlife. I managed to get the catio all finished, and the cats and I are outside every day now enjoying the show and soaking up some sun.
Mateo is enjoying the emergence of a new, tiny baby bunny!
So, here is the crazy thing. I have been struggling big time with my symptoms. I have been unable to knit (or type for that matter) for several months now. I rely on the knitting to help me keep my hands functional, and also for mental health reasons; the loss of knitting has been hard. Even cranking the knitting machine has been too much for my healing ribs and sternum. My other joints are so bad I have spent most of my time moving a heating pad from joint to joint trying to manage the symptoms. My heart has been misbehaving again, and my lungs have been unhappy. It has been a hard winter, and I have to admit, I’ve been concerned that I may be through the tipping point and on the downward slide of my scleroderma journey.
Then June arrived.
Like magic, after every morning in the sunshine drinking my latte, after every afternoon clearing out a small section of the gardens, I have been getting slowly better. My joints are recovering. My heart has stopped having tachycardia events. My oxygen levels have improved. My hands and wrists are much better. I am writing this post. I am better. I am knitting again. I’ve started a simple summer tee in a happy pink yarn, and my wrists are letting me knit for an hour a night. I usually bristle up when people suggest that I can just get better with some sunshine and exercise, but in this case it did help.
Other fun that I’ve been enjoying on the internet is the journey of Sunny and Gizmo, two Bald Eaglets that fledged early in June from their nest by Big Bear lake in the San Bernardino mountains in California. Sisters, the two have remained with each other in various trees and have returned to the nest several times. The other fun was the adventures of Ed as he ran free in Tennessee for a week. Yay Ed!! You know that I had to cheer the zebra running wild!!
I do hope that you saw the strawberry moon. It was a happy, bright object in the sky, lighting up the back yard and the bunnies chasing each other over the lawn. The moths entertained the cats, and I sat in the dark with them on my swinging patio chair last night feeling pretty upbeat. This full moon was the last of the spring; what is coming now is the heat of summer. Usually, I kind of dread the summer heat, but last night I felt absolutely sure that I was up for the days to come. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you knit a sweater? One hour at a time. How do you face down the scleroderma monster? One beautiful day in the yard/catio at a time.
This is scleroderma awareness month. I went to a scleroderma conference in Denver last month, and this Saturday I will go on a fundraising walk with all of my sclero-friends. I plan to rock the teal! Bring it sclero-monster! I am ready for you!!
Friday is Hannah’s gotcha day. She is now 5 years old.
Last night I started reading the latest edition of Scientific American Magazine. The cover article is about new research that shows… wait for it… sunshine can suppress the immune system and make autoimmune diseases improve. Look at that! I’m kind of thinking that happened to me over the last few weeks. Evidently, it is a balancing act: sunshine can also make things worse. Yay! Once again, I get to use myself as an experimental animal as I figure out how much I can tolerate. 🙂
The Mother of Cats has been really busy outside, and after days and days of messing around on the catio WITHOUT LETTING ME OUT!!! she finally put away her little pink tool bag, opened the door, and let us out onto the catio. My long, long period of suffering was over. Bunny, here I come!!!
Hannah and I took to the table to get a really good view of all the new things.
Wow. She was really busy out here. There are plants, and a new wall of netting that keeps me in the catio (which is also absolutely unnecessary) so I can’t play with my friends out in the yard. Gosh. There sure is a lot to report on!!
The Mother of Cats has been at work cleaning out the gardens and putting new plants everywhere. A lot of the plants from indoors have moved out here, and it really is kind of nice out here now. She bought a new rose bush!! There certainly is a lot of wildlife in the yard by the catio… maybe they like the flowers too.
There is lots and lots of action over by the birdfeeders in the yard. Birds of all different kinds have been visiting the feeder and hang out in the yard. There are robins, and blue jays, and doves, and BLACKBIRDS that make a nice sound, and lots of little finches. Hannah just LOVES watching the birds, and even though she asked the Mother of Cats really nicely to let her out of the catio to GO GET THEM she hasn’t relented. Why does the Mother of Cats do this? I tell you, someone needs to step in to keep all of this wildlife under control. The bunny in particular has become incorrigible.
The bunny sleeps in the Mother of Cats front flower bed and she ATE all of the plants down to the roots. She is harvesting grass from the lawn and comes right up to Hannah at the catio on her way to her little home under the deck. She has been really busy all day today, and the Mother of Cats thinks that means that there are more baby bunnies on the way. That would be kind of nice as there is only one baby now, and he might be a little lonely. I should go out and play with him, right? That would be a nice thing to do…
Doesn’t this baby look like he needs friends?
The Mother of Cats says it looks like the garden needs to be weeded, but she also says that she can only do so much at a time. She left us yesterday and came back with a new lawnmower which seems kind of mean because the bunny likes the grass long, and I DON’T LIKE LAWNMOWERS!!! Like, they are so much worse than vacuums, right? Why would she do such a thing. Forget the lawnmower and weed the garden, Mother of Cats!!
Well, that is everything that is going on here. I spend all of my spare time out on the catio, and the Mother of Cats keeps working out in the yard and reading books. Does the Mother of Cats knit? No, she does not. Hannah kind of misses the yarn, but maybe this is just a phase and the Mother of Cats will be get back to knitting soon. I do have to mention… some new yarn did come in the mail last week… someday soon she will knit again.
Oh, wait a minute… the baby bunny is out in the grass again… kind of busy here… gotta go…
This is Mateo, signing off.
>^..^<
Note from the Mother of Cats:
I have been making fingerless mitts on my Addi knitting machine and tomorrow I am going to a scleroderma conference and will take some to give away to other patients. My wrists are slowly getting better, and I am hopefully buying yarn to make a couple of sweaters… someday…
I did have to use some bunny deterrent to keep Little Miss out of the flower beds. Cinnamon. Cinnamon works great! The rabbit now sits sadly in the grass right next to the garden, watching me with a betrayed look whenever I go out front…
It’s been a little more than a week now, and so far things are looking up in 2025. Here are the highlights of the week:
It’s an Emotional Support Chickie!!
That’s right. A new pattern came out for Emotional Support Little Chickies that are just the right size to put into your pocket to take with you on the go. Yay!! I bought some cheap multicolored yarn to make a bunch to send off to the organizations that my community knitting non-profit supports. These guys would make the day at one of the cancer infusions centers, or maybe at Ronald McDonald House, or they can even ride along on the ambulances that respond to mental health crisis calls.
Then a present came in the mail from a sister. A Pink. Zebra. Striped. Furblet. It makes noises. It has one little CoalBear pretty darn concerned…
Isn’t that the cutest thing? I burst out laughing when I opened the package and saw what it was. Mateo, however, is not laughing!
Speaking of new things, do you see this new winter coat that Mateo is sporting?
I also have been ignoring the few little knitting projects that were still active at the end of the year. It’s a new year, I need new things!!! I casted on and started a pair of new arm warmers that are coming right along. New is good, right? Look at how bright and happy these colors are.
I found this yarn in the stash, and these warmers will be soooo cute with all of my grey sweaters.
I kind of used a pattern to get me started on these arm warmers, but after I had looked at the notes to see what size needles were used and how many stitches were cast on I just took off and did my own thing while checking for the size from time to time. I mean, look at those things: how hard does it have to be? If you crave some of your own, those needles are size 4 (3.5mm), I cast on 48 stitches using DK yarn, and when I got close to my wrist (these are knit from the elbow down towards the wrist) I decreased twice to get the stitch count down to 44 stitches before the wrist ribbing. I put a marker in the decrease rows so that I can make the second arm warmer match. See, easy!! But fun. And new.
The other big new is the new car! I took an Uber down to the Subaru dealership the second day of the new year, and after 5 exhausting hours I drove home my new Subaru Forester. Yay! New car is good!! Exhausted and stressed to the max, I made the last turn towards home in the dark of the early evening, and there ahead of me, enormous in the western sky as it just began to tuck itself behind the Rocky Mountains for the night, was the new moon.
I took this picture the next evening. The moon is a little bigger than the tiny sliver of a moon that I saw when I brought the car home, but you can see how new it still is. That is Venus right next to it. New Moon, new car.
It’s been a pretty good start to the year, don’t you think? I went yesterday to get some medical testing done, and everything is looking pretty good. Yay! 2025, let’s do this!!
My African violets are also starting out the year right.
It’s been kind of a tough month. I had a bad flare and couldn’t knit, I suffered through an annoying 30-day heart monitor test, and then there was Thanksgiving. I’ve been slowing clawing my way back from the flare over several weeks, and finally last week I started to feel pretty much like myself again. I even made several hats on my Sentro knitting machine using a power screwdriver to turn the crank for me.
This actually works better than you would think. 🙂
I pruned and fed the plants in the indoor garden. Gosh, they really look a lot nicer. Look at how nicely the lavender plants cleaned up.
The miniature roses had gotten pretty bushy, and I kept seeing some aphids on the new growth. I aggressively pruned the plants back to remove more than half of the growth, sprayed the plants well with Neem oil, and then gave them some fertilizer. They look somewhat sparse now, but the new growth is good and I’m not seeing aphids. I really needed to get the size of the plants under control anyway as they were getting close to the top of the growing space under the grow lights.
There aren’t any new rose buds yet, but I think that this was a good course of action to manage the aphids. Some of my other plants have started to put out blooms, the African violets being the stars of the month.
So, the indoor garden is looking pretty good, and the difficult month was finally coming to an end. My wrists still hurt, but I was definitely on the way back to “normalish”. I decided to head out to buy a fast-food hamburger treat for myself Tuesday evening. I love these little trips out of the house; each one is a little adventure that really perks me up.
This trip was really something, a surreal adventure that is still playing out.
I had just cleaned out my car (Stumpy) a couple of days before, and before I left on my outing, I gave him a fast little vacuum job and brought in the trash cans from the street. Gosh, Stumpy looked good! I took off to the hamburger joint where I scored my favorite burger, some onion rings, and a chocolate shake. This is a lot of fat and salt, and I was going to have it anyway!!! Did I mention that my server looked just like Dylon on The Great British Bake Off? He gave me a coupon for free ice cream if I completed an online review of the food/service. Yay! Free ice cream!! On the way back I sneaked some onion rings from the bag as I drove past the high school where I used to work. It was early evening, and there was a car parked along the street above the sports stadium and field, the driver packing things into the back of his car. Someone finishing up sport practice, I thought to myself as I went by. Still looking at the school, I remembered how much I loved working there, how much I loved the kids, how much I loved the greenhouse attached to my classroom…
I had to stop at the light at the intersection by the school, and I remember that I was very focused on the oncoming cars before I started moving with the green light because… high school intersection… crazy new drivers… must be careful…
The light changed, I slowly started out, and there was a sudden flash of light and movement to my left as I crossed the intersection. I was hit by a car that had run the red light; poor Stumpy was sent careening across the intersection and ended up dropped onto the median of the street I had been crossing, now facing directly at my old classroom and its greenhouse. Kind of ironic, right? The collusion alert system in the car immediately activated and there was a voice checking on me and calling for emergence responders. A witness arrived soon after to help, and a teenaged girl started directing traffic. The witness was a Lacrosse coach, and I wondered if he was the driver packing up his car when I passed him by the sports field. The fire department arrived with paramedics who got me out of the car (taking my car keys out of my hand and leaving them with the car), into an ambulance, and off we went to the nearest hospital with an emergency department: I had some serious chest pain going and my blood pressure was something else. “Don’t worry,” said the paramedics.” We got your food for you out of the car”. Did I mention that this was a little surreal? “Did you know that you were hit by a Humvee?” Yep. Surreal.
So, I had a great little emergency room visit. I had some testing that determined that I wasn’t having a heart attack, but I did have a couple of broken ribs. The interactions with the trauma physician were kind of hilarious as she didn’t quite know what to make of my CT results… “you have a lot of interesting structures in your lungs,” she told me. “You seem kind of dry… you need to drink more water.” Whatever. It must be the diuretic that my doctors prescribed because they are more concerned about some other things going on… like pulmonary edema… and heart failure… somehow, she focused on the wonky kidney results and didn’t notice the rest. Have I mentioned surreal? I had called my son to come get me home because I didn’t have a car or door keys any longer, and he packed me up and got me out of there at that point. Five hours after picking up my fast-food, I finally started home again with my son, a little wobbly, drugged up on pain killers, and still in possession of my hamburger. I ate a couple of the cold onion rings in the car as he drove through the night…
I’m pretty sure that my poor car Stumpy is totaled.
…and the phone rang. The police finally called. They were with Stumpy, and he was now in the parking lot of the high school where I used to work, right outside the door I used every morning next to my old classroom. We turned around and headed back to the police at the accident scene to make my statement and to get the house keys out of the car. The police officer was wonderful; she was still making her way through all the calls and witness reports, but it absolutely looked like I had been hit by a driver who illegally ran the light. She made the arrangements for the car to be towed and stayed with it for me. I ended up hugging that officer and giving her an audible book recommendation. My chocolate milkshake was in the Stumpy’s cupholder, still cold with the straw in it, and I took it back. Of course I did. As we drove away the officer was doing a search for the book I had mentioned to her. Goodbye old classroom. Goodbye Stumpy car that I loved. Thank you both for all the good times.
Surreal.
Aftermath: My wonderful insurance has stepped up and is handling everything. My neighbors are telling me not to worry about the rental car yet: they will drive me anywhere I want to go. The CT scan at the ER picked up on a couple of issues that I need to follow up on, and I already have new appointments with my doctors to do that: the atelectasis in my lungs is back, and something is going on with my thyroid. Who knows, this all might have been a blessing in disguise.
My wrists are strangely better, and I finished knitting my socks.
Slouch socks!!
My hamburger, when I warmed it up and ate it the next evening, was still delicious!
I found the coupon for the free ice cream when I finally cleaned out Stumpy in the tow lot Friday. I plan to leave a great review…
Stumpy was a 2018 Subaru Forester, and I can’t praise his safety features enough.
I’m basking in the lights of the new plant shelves!
The days out on the catio are getting a little cooler now, and there are leaves falling off the trees. Mateo really likes to chase the leaves! And the bugs. Okay… he chases everything that moves, basically… The squirrels are waaay more busy than usual, and I haven’t seen a baby bunny for weeks and weeks. There are lots of birds at the feeder that are kind of new, and sometimes there are tons of birds in the trees. The Mother of Cats says that the birds are flocking, and that there are changes coming.
Do you see the box that I am standing on? It was pretty long and a little heavy.
The Mother of Cats pushed that long box up the stairs and then she got out some tools. Yay! I love to help out with projects!!!
Look at all of the stuff that was in the box!
It took her a little while, but the Mother of Cats put all of those pieces together to make some shelves with lights. Oh. That’s kind of cool. I really like sleeping under lights like this, and shelves are always fun!
Then the Mother of Cats brought in all of the plants from the deck to come live under the lights in the indoor garden and on these new shelves. Look at what happened!!! There is no more room for me on the shelves! What was the Mother of Cats thinking of?
She brought in some of the plants from the deck and put them on my shelves!!!
After she brought in the first plants, she started messing around in the indoor garden so that she could make even more room for plants. Then the really big lavender plants came inside along with all the rest of the rose plants.
Now almost all of the plants that were living on the deck are now in the knitting room with the Mother of Cats and me. I love the plants!! Some of them are starting to put out new buds, more roses and lavender blooms are on the way, and the room smells kind of nice. Pretty cool, right? The new shelves even have a bar to hang plants from, there is a timer for the lights, and there is a shelf to put all of the knitting project boxes on the top. We are ready for winter now!!!
This week the Mother of Cats and I sat by the lights, smelled the lavender, and sewed up all of the chickens that she had knitted in September. So much fun… I like to chase the yarn while the Mother of Cats is sewing. This is what the finished chickens look like:
Didn’t I do a good job helping out? All of these chickens will go to their new homes this week. Bye chickens! It was nice to know you!!
Time for me to catch another nap.
This is Hannah, signing off.
>^..^<
Note from the Mother of Cats: the lavender plants aren’t hardy enough to survive a Colorado winter, so indoors they came! Yay, lighted shelving!! These came from Amazon.
This morning, I dragged myself outside to the catio and just sat there for a while warming my joints and charging up for the day. Sometimes I wake in stunned astonishment at how bad I feel; this was one of those days. The cats, confused by the change in routine, finally stopped begging for tuna and came out to check out the wildlife. Things were certainly busy in the yard this morning!
The bird feeder was open for business with a steady line of little birds waiting for their turn at the feeder parked in the low branches of the tree. Higher up in the upper branches a blue jay was calling back and forth with the other jays in the neighborhood. A bunny napped shamelessly in the middle of a patch of dirt at the upper end of my yard (why do I have a batch of dirt? Bunnies!!! They dig and roll in this dirt. I love the bunnies more than I love the lawn…), and a pair of doves napped nearby in plants escaping my garden. There were grasshoppers in the catio to Mateo’s delight. Squirrels ran along the fence as I baked and recovered; there was a slight breeze and the day was cooler. Time to water the flowers and go in.
Japanese beetles in my roses! The HORROR!!!!
There were Japanese beetles in my roses!! Very cute, and very not wanted. I drowned those guys in a bottle of soapy water. Bad beetles, bad. No matter how well things are going, there is always something to deal with, right? I was completely recovered and ready-to-go by the time I went in to deal with the tuna-starved cats and my latte machine.
Not a bad start for the day, right? Bake in the sun when you need it, enjoy all the pleasant things happening around you, and take immediate action to deal with stuff that is unacceptable.
It has been another tough week. Having gotten through a huge round of doctors’ appointments and testing, you would think I could just rest up for a few days and recover. Not so much. It is stressful waiting for test results, especially since my cardiologist was openly concerned when I saw him at the end of July. I felt dizzy and struggled with vague symptoms like a sore throat and stiff neck for a few days, and then finally began to face the reality that something more than scleroderma might be going on.
What pushed me into action? Well… the very last medical test was MRIs of my bad boy knees, and the technician who worked with me was concerned that the pupils of my eyes were dilatated more than they should be. There was concern and lots of questions about my medications. “No,” I insisted. “I’m not taking any drugs that weren’t prescribed.” I finally got out of there and immediately forgot about the incident because I had just spent an hour in an MRI machine that looked like a giant sandworm from Dune and made some of the same noises, too!
Then the next day, I fell over sideways while combing my hair. I tried to put on my shoes, and I fell over again to the same side. Huh. That is kind of unusual. I checked my eyes in the mirror, and yep… those pupils looked pretty dilatated. I called in to my health provider, and I was sent to Urgent Care. The words “this might be a brain bleed” got my attention, so I filled up the cat food and water dishes, put a phone charger into my purse, and off I went.
Listen, going to urgent care or the ER is kind of risky if you have a rare disease or two. Either the doctor has never had a patient like you before and just refers you on to a specialist, or the doctor is kind of excited to get his/her hands on you because when will another patient like this come along? They want to do something!! Sign me up coach! I’m just trying to represent here!! You can literally see it on their face and in the sparks in their eyes.
The urgent care doctor was the second type of doctor.
Sitting in the exam room I could hear the zebra laughing…
My eyes were fine when he checked them, and we concluded that what was happening was probably a transitory effect caused by one of my meds. It seemed reasonable, so I was okay with that. Great. I’m out of here, no brain bleed for me! Nope. Nope, nope, nope! He had a real, live zebra here, and he wasn’t letting it slip away!! He felt that while I was there, I should have a lot of tests run to rule out a hypothetical infection that was pushing me over the edge and causing all my fatigue, dizziness, headaches, etc. The stiff neck was concerning. No one should fall over while combing their hair… Sigh. It is hard to argue against such reasonable observations… I didn’t even mention that it hurt to breathe, but there was that, too…
I approved some testing, declined others, and off to the x-ray machine and lab I went. Everything was negative, but he decided that I should go though a course of wide-spectrum antibiotics anyway since I was immunosuppressed, and something clearly was not right. Fine. I’ll do that. My whole life is “not right” and antibiotics make my unhappy gut even more unhappy, but he was so earnest about helping me: I took the plunge and started the pills.
I just want to note that it is hard to score antibiotics if you feel sick with vague symptoms, but being a zebra got me special treatment. I’m still processing that because most of the time my symptoms are dismissed. My knees have been hurting for years and doctor after doctor has just blown me off because the joints seem fine. They are swollen, but my inflammation markers are normal, so nothing is done… My knee x-rays were normal, so this time I requested MRI imaging, which is how I ended up visiting that Dune machine, meeting a nurse upset about my eyes, and now, landing me in urgent care. There is some type of zebra paradox here: specialists who disregard symptoms that set off actions in mainstream health professionals, and special treatment that normal people don’t get because… zebra.
Anyway, I took the antibiotic. It was a strong one that I had never taken before… and two days later I was better! Even my gut has improved. The headaches have stopped, and my dizziness is fading into the background. My chest pain is gone. Yay antibiotics. Yay earnest young doctor in the urgent care facility. He’s written me two notes following up on the test results, and I’ve let him know that I am, indeed, much better.
The last of the test results that my scleroderma care team ordered have come in, and it looks like there may be some adjustments to my care in the future. My pulmonary hypertension is under control, but my heart failure has gotten worse. The steroid injection in my hip has made a huge difference, and I am walking better, but my knees hurt more. There is, indeed, something wrong with my knees; I don’t know if they can do anything about it. The words on the report are
Grade II, both knees.
Which is commonly known as “runner’s knee”, and is an overuse injury in most cases. Not in my case, obviously, since I can hardly walk! I have edema in the bone, and in the cartilage, and there is calcium being deposited in the soft tissue which is a response to… you guessed it… inflammation.
That dang zebra is rolling on the floor laughing!!!
It has been quite a week. I pushed for more testing, paid expensive copays to get it, and have gotten validation on the bad-boy knees. I understand a little better why the cardiologist was concerned, but the news isn’t as bad as he anticipated, so the outcome (Class 3 HF) isn’t as bleak as it could be. I learned a lesson about not ignoring symptoms, and the zebra outing to urgent care worked out much better than I expected. I turned in 43 hats and 7 chickens this week to my community knitting group, and yesterday I bought a bushel of roasted green chiles. A tough week in some ways, but also a good week. A week of crazy zebra-related events, knitting, and even green chiles.
All My Chickens
Tonight is the blue supermoon, a rare event, and kind of special. Knitting in the light of the blue supermoon is the best way to end a day that started baking in the sun.
And if you have a crown, tonight is the night to wear it!
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)
Hannah: Where are my bunnies?
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…
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 bumblebees love these flowers!!
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 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.
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.
Yarn, Books & Roses 