Knitting – Page 11 – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: Hannah takes to Sharon Air

Hi. I’m Hannah.

You’ll never guess what I’ve been up to!

I’ve taken on a huge adventure! I heard last week from Sharon from Security that there has been a huge crisis… the Priceless Golden Bag of Cat Treats has been stolen by Chad the Mongolian Death Worm from the Museum of Gyptian Civilization in Cairo. Sharon from Security needed me to head right over to Cairo to help out with the investigation.

I immediately dusted off my passport and booked a flight to Cairo on Sharon Air so I could join Sharon in the investigation. Sharon made the arrangements for me to fly Cardboard Box Class (instead of Squeakin Mouse Class or Litter Class) which was just fabulous because…

Anyway, my flight left last Friday, and I was off to help the best I could. That Chad is a sneaky one and I think that he probably already slithered (slimed?) his way out of Cairo and before you know it, I will be back in the air heading to a new location.

See, I had a boarding pass and everything!!

Okay, if you haven’t figured it all out yet, I am doing the Sharon Air MKAL with the Mother of Cats and we started with the first clue last Friday. The Mother of Cats worried about the colors of yarns a lot and kept digging around in the yarn stash for a couple of weeks looking for nice yarns to use. She finally settled on these:

I’m not really, really in Cairo, but is sure is fun to pretend that I am. I bet there are great bugs there for me to chase. Did you see that my job on the passport is “Flycatcher”? I am such a great flycatcher that I knocked over a lamp and tore down some curtains this week. The Mother of Cats was pretty cool about all the commotion, but I think that I had better take it easy for a couple of days. There was also a problem with an orchid plant hitting the ground, but the CoalBear did that one… did I mention that there was a fly?

When I haven’t been chasing flies this week, I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats with the knitting.

I’ve been taking my job as knitting helper really seriously and the Mother of Cats only make a few mistakes (Sharon Snax) and hasn’t done any whining or done anything to earn a citation from Sharon. That Sharon, she doesn’t put up with any whining or questions from humans who stupidly failed to read the directions which is absolutely reasonable, right? I love Sharon! Did I mention that the cardboard box on the plane had a little hole in it so I could poke my neighbor? Yay!

Today we finished knitting all of the clues that Sharon gave us for Cairo. Does it look a little like pyramids to you?

Sharon is really busy and won’t have time to send us more clues until Friday so I’m going to just keep myself busy for a couple of days while the Mother of Cats knits on boring stuff like socks and hats and who knows what else. Maybe she will knit me another toy mouse. I hope that she makes me a warm parka because Sharon did drop a clue about having to go to somewhere cold for the next part of the investigation. I don’t like snow very much; nasty stuff, snow. Maybe she can knit pink booties for my feet? Darn it, this investigation stuff is hard work!

I’m going to take it easy tomorrow and eat lots and lots of cookies to get ready for the next part of the adventure.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Sharon loves sushi, but I am going to go hunt up a fly to chase.

Note from the Mother of Cats: Sharon is Casapinka’s employee/security specialist/cat and this MKAL is run by them. You can check out my Ravelry page here if you are interested in knowing more about my yarns.

I guess there was a fly over the fireplace this week, too.

Month’s End Report: July, 2022

July was quite the month! A lot of it was hot, really hot. I felt great for a part of the month due to a drug-induced power surge that carried me through lots of landscaping in the back yard. I read two books that were just exhausting. I went crazy for color and bought more yarn. I cooked, sewed, knitted and planted lots and lots of new plants in my gardens. A great month, July!

Today I drank my morning latte out on the deck and thought about everything that got done last month. There were new birds in the yard (blue jays!) and a small flight of honking geese flew over me as did my watering. Most of the baby bunnies have moved on, and the butterflies of July are gone. The flowering plants are recovering after a short break in the heat last week and I look forward to the late summer blooms. It is now August, but I can sense the looming presence of autumn just over the horizon.

In the yard this morning: a just bathed robin fluffed out and drying on the fence, the very first hydrangea bloom on my shrub, and a woodpecker (!) stabbing for insects in my freshly watered lawn.

So this was the month:

I finished my Salty Air Tee! It used exactly 2 skeins of sock yarn and is just perfect to wear now and will be great for layering later. I am now a fan of I-cord bind offs and used them on the sleeve and at the bottom of the body. The neckline was a little loose, so I picked up stitches along the cast on edge and put an I-cord BO around the neck, too! Perfect fix to a sloppy neck problem!

I finished a pair of socks!! This yarn, from Hue Loco, is in the Blast Off colorway. Perfect for the month!

I sewed a drawstring project bag, and then I spent some time on YouTube watching tutorials and learned how to sew zipper pouches from my “Knitting Goddess” fabric. I still have some of the fabric left over so I just ordered a pattern to make itty, bitty sewn boxes from it. 🙂

I read two books that were a handful. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is confusing, exhausting, and maybe the best book I have read this year. Think about the Lord of the Rings trilogy set in African antiquity, awash with magic and violence, and you would have this book. Hummingbird Salamander is a cliffhanging ecothriller that also chronicles the trainwreck of the main character along with the impending crash of the planet. Another good book, but one that I feel went too far down the climate change rabbit hole. Neither one of these books is uplifting. Nope, not at all. Worthy reads, but not good entertainment on a blistering hot day.

That’s it. In July I used up 4.75 skeins of yarn. I knitted one chemo hat and 5 PICC line covers. I finished a sweater and a pair of socks. You already know about the books.

I have cast on several new projects, and I’m still feeling pretty ambitious and getting things done, but the prednisone party is definitely over. In my new, dialed down state, I’m slowly knitting on a new cat, crocheting squares for a still undefined purpose, and sending my loom some regular side-eye. The spinning wheel has been put back into a corner but I’m hoping to return to it when the weather cools. I’ve pulled out a quilt project and I need to head on over to YouTube again to learn how to paper piece…

Bring it on, August. I’m ready for you!

Down the Fiber Hole and Other Essential Updates.

If you have been keeping up with the adventures of Casa Hannah and the CoalBear you know that I have been feeling just freaking wonderful for the last two week and getting more done than at any time in the last two years. I’ve been planting lots of new plants and getting all the gardens into order (for the first time in years because… next door pit bull who has now left the scene… yay… adios, pit bull…), and dragging out lots of things to get working on that have been languishing for years. The garden is starting to produce some color with the perennials now which is awesome as I’m seeing hot pinks and purples. Lavender, bougainvillea, and sage. Perfect!

Um… and then the party came crashing to a halt a few days ago as I started weaning myself off prednisone (marvelous stuff, prednisone!) and I got a little dizzy, and I… fell off the stairs. I literally realized I was going to be airborne at the last second and managed to push off enough to twist around and land on my feet in the living room where I pretty much crashed landed into the couch. Sad outcome. Did you realize that you can actually bruise your lungs? Okay, my lungs are less than pristine, but still… my ribs aren’t too happy, either. There was some talk about my liver… I had to stay indoors over the weekend and go back onto daytime oxygen.

That, however, did not stop me from going down the fiber rabbit hole!!

I finished the first silk/yak roving from Greenwood Fiberworks and am ready to start on the second.

I’ve been considering how to attack the variegated roving. Should I separate the colors? Do pencil rovings down the length of the larger piece? Just take it off in strips and let the colors end up however? Still thinking about this one, but I am tending towards pencil rovings.

I made some really good progress on my Salty Air Tee.

I love, love, love the yarn that I am using for this sweater. Isn’t that the perfect color for summertime knitting? This pattern is racing right along and I’m racing to get it finished because… some new patterns dropped on Ravelry and I am dying to knit one of them.

This is the Lace & Fade Boxy by Joji Locatelli, and that first picture is swiped off the Ravelry page and has her copyright. I have four skeins of a dark grey fingering yarn with smoky/woody tones that I am dying to use for this sweater. My first idea is to knit the entire sweater in the main color (lace and all… ignore the fade, we don’t need no stinking fade because I have four skeins of this color…) and then go back and knit I-cord trim at the neck, bottom, and wrists in that really cool multi yarn. That will look awesome, right? On the other hand, if there is enough yarn, I can do the lace in a fade with the pink yarns. I only have just over 100 yards of each color, so that may not work, but it might look pretty cool. I really am tending towards doing the whole sweater in the solid fingering. I have knitted two boxy sweaters in the past (the Vneck version) and I know them to be comfy layering workhorses in cold weather.

Then there is the crocheting. I haven’t crocheted in years because of my dodgy wrists, but I loved this bag (Square Scramble Sack) on Ravelry so much I bought the Noro yarn a week ago. Like I need more yarn, right? I had to order the crochet hooks from Amazon and then I was off to YouTube to learn how to make the puff stitch… that first little square has too many puffs in it, but I felt pretty successful and I’m now making a few squares every day that I don’t fall off the stairs.

There are two more sweaters that I want to knit, but I’ve got them on the back burner at the moment because I’m so far down the fiber hole at the moment I am just focusing on working steadily on each project for a few hours each day. Or maybe every other day so I don’t wear out my hip (spinning) or wrists (crochet). So far I’m making progress and I’m recovering from the fall okay at the same time so all is good. Except… the days of prednisone wonder are coming to an end as I feel the energy and the good times fading away. I start the lowest dose tomorrow and after a week it will be over.

Still, if you look at all those pictures that I put into this post, the days of color continue. Yay! My gardens have been returned to some semblance of order, I am making good progress on a number of projects, and I also got some chores done.

Hannah: I was put into the carrier and then put into the car and then taken to the vet and then I got cat-handled and there were some shots and would you believe that the vet said that I was slightly pudgy…

Hannah: Now I have to eat Indoor Cat food and the Mother of Cats has cut back on my cookies. Ugh.

That was my week. 🙂

You all watch out for those stairs!!!

Six Months Update and Days of Color

Okay, this is an update on my progress on my goals for the year, but it is also a celebration of how well I feel at the moment and my launch into several projects that are rocking the color right now. Seriously, I am so drawn to colors at the moment that I’m pretty much doing some silly impulse shopping. Who cares. I’m having a good time!!

You want to see the silly impulse shopping and/or pink things first?

I could not leave the local garden center without that pink flamingo for my garden! Hello, it glows in the dark with an LED body. 🙂 What do you think about my Knitting Goddess fabric? Yep. That was a late-night Etsy impulse purchase. I’m thinking that it will make a fabulous project bag. What do you think about that Noro yarn? That will become a crocheted tote bag… I also needed to buy some brightly colored hooks to make the bag, and there may have been another big ball of beautiful yarn that fell into the shopping crate before I checked out, but I’ll never talk about it. My feet are hurting because of the spinning I’m doing, so I had to get those wicked compression socks!!! Yep, I am a total sucker for pink. Well, raspberry pink to be specific, but I will settle for hot pink. Finally, Hannah kept trying to drag off my knitted finger protectors, so I made her and Mateo some little tube-like cat thingies to play with. They like them!

Speaking of color, look at my progress on the spinning for Tour de Fleece.

Can you see that I am making progress? The bobbin on the right is where I am today. I’m almost through the crocus-colored roving (50/50 yak/silk from Greenwood Fiberworks), then I get to start on the variegated roving. I’ve been watching episodes of Vera on BritBox while I spin so I’m actually coming to think of this Tour de Fleece as the Tour de Northumbia… I am happy with the spinning as I think that my drafting is getting easier and the thread that I’m spinning is getting smoother. It may also be slightly larger, but I can live with that!

I started reading this book this week because… look at that cover!!!

I don’t want to talk about this book yet because it really is remarkable, and I am changing my opinion about it as I go. It’s like entering a dream world and just experiencing the adventure without worrying too much about what’s going on. In time, I’m sure, I’ll understand what is happening. Maybe. I don’t care. I’m so entranced at the moment I’m reading a couple of hours a day during the heat of the day.

There is color in the garden, too. Look at this:

There is more color in the garden to replace the fading roses. My veronica is finally blooming, and I went back to the garden center to buy more lavender plants. I now have 11 lavenders in the garden… don’t you think that I should get another, so it is an even dozen? The pink yarrow is hard at work. Oh, yeah, there was also a garter snake in the garden today. Not a lot of color, but a ton of fun to see.

So, how much progress has occurred over the last 6 months?

I finished 30 hats and 28 PICC line covers in the first 6 months. I was hoping to get 50 of each done this year, so I am on track.
I have removed 76 skeins of yarn (100g of yarn = a skein) from the stash through knitting and donations. I hope to get 100 skeins out before the end of the year, so I am on track. I did just have a 6-skein slip, but I’m not worried.

The other knitting accomplishments are two sweaters and two pairs of socks.
I finished a quilt and got it hung up on the wall!

I learned how to double knit. Actually, I’m really stoked about how fun it was and I am looking forward to doing some cute projects. (I found that chart online and watched videos to figure out how to do this. Piece of cake, as it turns out!)

I have finished 32 books.

Well, that’s the progress report. My son helped me get my table loom set up for me to use and I’m dreaming of warping the floor loom before the end of the year. (Mateo: that sounds like fun!!) I’m wondering if I can weave something with the yarn that I am spinning now, and I’ve pulled out another quilt kit that has been languishing forever in a cupboard so that I can work on that in my sewing room. I’m entering the last few days on the full dose of prednisone; the dose will be tapered off and stopped over the next two weeks. While I was on prednisone my rheumatologist gradually stepped up my immunosuppressant to a final dose that is double what I was on previously. I feel really good right now and I have huge plans for the rest of the year.

Scleroderma, behave yourself!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Caturday, 6/25/22

Hi. CoalBear here.

I’ve been entertaining the Mother of Cats all day because, frankly, she is in a slump.

Well, now that I think of it, she should be in a slump. The only day this week she was frisky was Tuesday and look at what she did to me!!

People, this was the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me. I got stuffed into the carrying crate and before I knew it, I was in the car. We ended up in a strange building with other people and DOGS and I kept crying, and the Mother of Cats just ignored me and took me to a little room where I had to COME OUT OF THE CRATE!!!!! I got weighed, physically cathandled by a strange lady, and then there were the SHOTS that I absolutely did not deserve because I am the best boy ever. You want to hear the worst thing about all of this…. Hannah exercised her right to refuse and didn’t have to go the vet. I think that she was laughing when we got back home again.

Okay, back to the week. The Mother of Cats is taking lots and lots of new pills now and parts of her don’t feel good because of the side effects (let me tell you about the side effects of those SHOTS!) so I am doing my best to be cute.

She finished her little quilt and hung it up on the wall behind her knitting chair.

The Mother of Cats used clear plastic push pins to secure the tops and corners of the quilt. I have been pulling the pins out of the bottom of the quilt and taking them upstairs to play with. I left both of them on the bathroom floor where she would be sure to find them this morning so she can put them back into the quilt again. Wasn’t that good of me?

I’ve also been trying to help her with her knitting, but she seems to be in a slump. She isn’t knitting much, and the stuff she has going is… boring.

Do you see how boring this knitting is? The pink blob is a sweater… maybe. The blue is going to be a pair of socks someday, and that pastel smish of funny colors will someday be a hat. Where are the cat toys? Hello? How can I be cute and entertaining if I don’t have all the toys in the world…

Although, I think that I am pretty darn cute with the toys I have now!!!

Well, I guess that is all for now. It is almost time for the baby bunny to come out in the back yard. Show time!

Mateo the CoalBear

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I did get Hannah into the crate at least three times, but she was too strong for me and managed to push her way back out before I could get it zipped closed. She has another appointment next month and I’ll try some new strategies.
I’m in the middle of a big drug push to get my lung disease under control; I am breathing much, much better and I have more energy by far than I did a couple of months ago. The downside is… side effects. My doctors are running frequent blood tests to monitor my progress, adding more drugs to control symptoms that are concerning, and so far, things are going well, but I am pretty much homebound with pain, blurred vision, and dizziness. Two more weeks of the steroid push to go and then I start to get tapered off. Yay! I’m dealing with a lot of tendon pain as my immunosuppressant dose is doubled, but that has happened before and I’m hopeful that there is an end in sight.
What type of side effects, you ask? I gained 12 pounds in two days and my blood sugar soared into the high 100s. Opps.
I am getting out into the garden a little and there is a new rose bush waiting for me to plant it. Someday soon, little guy.

The pictures above are my morning pills, the braces that I now am back in because of tendon pain, and my new, beautiful rose. The name of the rose is… Easy Does It!

Just the rose that I needed for the week.

Hannah and the CoalBear: GoldenFern Report

Hi. I’m Hannah. This has been a really special week. Let’s get to the most important event of the week first:

It was the anniversary of the day I came to live with the Mother of Cats this week!!! It has been two whole years since I arrived here more than a little upset. I mean, I had gone to another home and they didn’t like me and they took me back to the shelter! They said something about crying all night… I wouldn’t let the Mother of Cats out of my sight, slept on her bed plastered right against her so she couldn’t get away from me, followed her everywhere, and the rest is history. Now I am so essential to her life she wouldn’t know what to do without me.

For example, I worked really hard all week helping her with her new sweater. We got the second sleeve done early in the week (I helped her manage all of the loose ends by chasing and chomping on them whenever possible…) and then she had the bright idea of adding an I-cord edging to the bottom of the body of the sweater.

I got a great nap in while she was applying the edging below the ribbing of the sweater’s body.

It took her almost two hours to add the edging to the bottom of the body of the sweater, and then it was time for cookies and some excitement. CoalBear and I chased the laser light for a while, got some more cookies, and watched for moths while she finished off all of the ends, and then, in the middle of the night she tried on the sweater!

It fits!! I think that the Mother of Cats is kind of silly when she gets so excited, but I love her anyway.

The next day we misted and steamed the sweater to block it and left it out to dry.

Here is the sweater blocking in the closet where I can’t sleep on it. Why does the Mother of Cats do these things?

Can you see that the colorwork of the sleeve is a little more tightly knit than the colorwork on the body? That’s because the Mother of Cats used a bigger sized needle on the body so that the gauge would stay the same (Is gauge like tuna? If so, I wonder if I can have some for dinner?), but when she did the sleeve she didn’t go up a needle size so the sleeve snugged in a little and it fits her wrist just right. That was my idea: pretty smart, don’t you think? The I-cord added to the edging of the body gave it a little more weight and makes the sweater hang nicely. The Mother of Cats is really happy with her Goldenfern sweater. See what a great job I’m doing helping her? She never would have had the patience to add that edging to the sweater if I hadn’t been there for purring support!

Right now, the CoalBear and I are hanging out in front of the air conditioner.

I’m so glad that the Mother of Cats brought me home to live with her. Do you see that she gives me all the boxes that I want and a little playmate buddy too!!

See you next week!

Hannah

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I put a lot of thought into this sweater. Here is some of my thought process:

The designer used a single ply yarn in her original design so I felt empowered to do the same. I found yarns for the contrast colors in my stash, and all of them are also single ply.
The lifted increases in the body are almost impossible to find! I could not be happier with the way they came out.
The designer suggested going up two needle sizes for the colorwork portions to maintain gauge; since my yarns were thin I settle with going up one needle size for the body.
I went back to the MC for the ribbing at the bottom of the sweater which gave the ferns a “floating” look.
I stayed with the needle size used for the sleeve when I got to the colorwork on the cuffs as I wanted a snugger fit.
I like the look of I-cord bind off at my wrists so I did a three stitch I-cord (instead of 2 stitch) in the MC to make them it stand out.
I then picked up stitches along the bound off ribbing at the bottom of the body and did a 3 stitch I-cord bind off along the bottom of the sweater. This I-cord doesn’t really stand out, but rather blends right in with the ribbing and provides a clean edge that has a little more weight.
My Ravelry notes are here.

Hannah and the CoalBear: It’s Caturday Again

Hi. I’m the CoalBear (AKA Mateo)

It is sooooo hot today. It is almost 100 degrees outside, and Hannah and I are staying cool in the house. The Mother of Cats has all the windows closed and we’re too hot to look out the windows anyway. Do you notice that the Mother of Cats has been brushing out all of my downy fur? I used to have a huge ruff around my neck, and now it is almost all gone. I look a whole size smaller now. I don’t like getting brushed, but today I guess I am glad that she did it. She also cuts my nails off and I will never get used to that!!

The Mother of Cats has been knitting away on her sweater this week and look at how far she’s gotten! She is done with the first sleeve and halfway down the second one already! She has also been sewing on the quilt with Hannah.

The quilt is coming right along and should be done in just a few more days. The Mother of Cats can’t wait to get it done. Hannah kind of hopes that she is going to get to keep it for her new bed, but I think that the Mother of Cats is planning to hang it up on the wall behind her knitting chair. I ripped the old quilt down a couple of days ago (Hey! There was a moth!) and she didn’t even bother to hang it back up again. Okay, the old quilt was a Christmas themed one, so maybe she’s ready to put it away now anyway. I’m such a good boy; see how I did her a big favor?

The Mother of Cats now has oxygen-to-go!

A scary man came this week and messed around with the Mother of Cat’s oxygen machine. When he left there was new stuff left behind including this new green bottle with a snazzy carrying bag. Now the Mother of Cats has oxygen she can take with her when she goes out on errands, but mostly she stays home with us because we are so cute! She has been working on her gardens this week and they are starting to look pretty good. The first rose bloomed this week which made her really happy.

It’s her first English rose of the year!

Well, that all I have. It’s still stinking hot outside and all of the animals are asleep, so I am going to take a little nap too.

See you next week!

>^..^> CoalBear

Notes from the Mother of Cats

The sweater is GoldenFern by Jennifer Steingass. Hopefully I will have it done in another week or so. I’m really anxious to start another sweater but so far I’m sticking to getting this one done first.
I know that isn’t a good shot of the quilt, but hopefully I will have a nice picture of the completed quilt to show off next week. Hanging on the wall, where I hope it remains as long as no moths land on it. 🙂

I’m listening to this audiobook while I quilt and I just am loving it!!

Not only did I get oxygen-to-go this week, but I also got my injections of Evusheld, which is a combination of two monoclonal antibodies that will give me protection from Covid for at least 6 months. This is huge piece of mind for me since my doctors are dialing up my immunosuppression drug dose this month and have started me on a new immunosuppressant drug at the same time. Yay, Evusheld! With the higher dose of drugs, I won’t be able to make many antibodies of my own, so I’m glad to have the Evusheld antibodies.
That rose is Princess Alexandra of Kent, and it is pretty much my favorite rose in the garden right now.
Hannah and Mateo don’t know it but they are heading to the vet for their vaccinations and checkups next week. Sad cat day is on the way…

Month’s End Report: May 2022

This month passed in a hurry. I spent most of a week in the hospital, and then the rest of the month recovering from the surgery. I haven’t been exactly frisky for the whole month, but I have been making some progress on several projects.

Hannah: The Mother of Cats has been spending lots of quality time with us!

Doesn’t Hannah look pleased with her box? The house is pretty much full of boxes at the moment as I have been making use of all the shopping services that cropped up during the height of the pandemic. I’m getting everything that I need with little effort and Hannah and Mateo are having the best time ever. From their prospective it has been a really great month!

Knitting

I worked on a sweater and community knitting this month. I really pushed and got the body of my Goldenfern sweater done early in the month and then immediately lost it on sleeve island. Poor sweater. It languished for the rest of the month in its knitting tub while I knitted chemo hat after chemo hat with a few PICC line covers thrown in for variety.

I have lots of brightly colored yarn so that’s what’s getting knitted right now!

I know that this is the end of month report for May, but I want to acknowledge that now that we are in a new month, I have pulled myself together and taken that sweater off of sleeve island. I made some good progress over the last couple of days, and I finally got to the colorwork section of the sleeve today.

I’m knitting the ferns onto the bottom of the first sleeve now.

I also made a couple of more passes through the yarn stash culling out yarn that I will never use and throwing out scraps. (So hard to do; I deserve a gold star!!) Altogether, I knit 6 chemo hats this month (Barley Light by Tin Can Knits), 5 PICC line covers, and used up or removed 38 skeins of yarn from the stash. I think that I deserve more than one gold star for the destash efforts this month… I am kind of thinking that I will get more than 100 skeins out of the stash, and to be truthful, things are looking a lot more tidy in the stash room.

Garden

Everything is growing like crazy now. The roses all made it through the late season snowstorm and there are buds everywhere but very few blooms. The snapdragons, however, are blooming their little flower hearts out.

All of these snapdragons are volunteers growing from last year’s plants. Look at all of those colors; they are the descendants of pink snapdragons that were originally planted a couple of years ago. Also, those flowers are NOT in a flowerbed where they belong!

This plant is my favorite in the bunch. It is growing with reckless abandon in the rocks along the driveway.

With absolutely no effort on my part these snapdragons have spread through the front gardens (and rocked landscaping…) and have brought lots of early color in reds, oranges, pinks and yellows. There is a BioGeek story here, but I will save it for another day. 🙂

Books

I managed to read 5 books in May. Not great, considering that I was a slug for most of the month, but I’m still on track to make my Goodreads challenge goal of 50 books this year.

I’m reading the most amazing book right now.

I read A Visit from the Goon Squad, so I had some idea of what I was getting into with this book. The book is organized like a series of short stories about people who are connected to each other. There are a lot of names flying past, and there are also embedded themes within the stories, so there is a lot to keep track of. I am creating a flow chart showing the linkages and themes as I read which is helping me immensely. How I long for a book group!

So, here’s the simple backbone of the book: what if there was an electronic, open forum vehicle that let you store all of your memories? Think of this like Facebook on steroids where it is open to the world and people can access and search other people and memories. What would such a thing do to us; what would we lose, and what would we gain?

The people and themes that I am meeting as I read the book are engaging and I’m really enjoying myself. Also, I am going to need some really big chart paper to map out all of the interconnections the way things are going as I read.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Happy Caturday

Hi. I’m Matao.

I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats knit lots and lots of chemo hats.

This was a great week! The weather has been nice and sunny and the Mother of Cats has been sitting out on her deck listening to her audiobook while she knits. Hannah and I have been watching all the stuff in the yard through the windows.

There is a squirrel with the world’s fluffiest tail that hangs out in the back yard. We love the squirrel!!

But the best watching ever is out the back window…

Because there is a baby bunny hanging out in the back yard for us to watch!!

and it is the cutest little bunny ever!!

Happy Caturday, everyone!

I have to get back to helping the Mother of Cats knit these hats!!

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I’ve been reading the best book ever while knitting outside and watching the wildlife in the back yard. One of the main characters is an octopus, and I just fell in love with him right away. I seriously, seriously recommend this book!

This was a perfect book to listen to as an audiobook. Engaging characters, well told story, happy ending.

Years ago, another biology teacher told me about an octopus that would break out of his tank to go snack on crayfish from another tank in the lab. Yep. They gave been known to do this. Very smart, able to squish through very small openings, octopuses are kind of the stuff of legend. In this book, the octopus is also a wanderer with an incredible memory who becomes a pivotal character in the lives of the people who know him. I wanted the book to go on and now I am on the hunt for another easy to listen to books to keep me company while knitting outside with the wildlife.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Sad Caturday

Hi. I’m Hannah.

The week started out fine. The weather was really warm and nice, and the nice days made the Mother of Cats feel pretty good with her breathing and joints and stuff. She went outside and worked in the gardens almost every single day and got lots of dead leaves and weeds moved away. All of her flowers and bushes that she planted last fall are green and growing again and she was really happy. She was even happy about the seeds on the weeds!

And guess what? There are tiny baby bunnies in the backyard!! The Mother of Cats has been putting pulled dandelion leaves near the opening under the deck where the babies live, and they are eating them! We even see the babies sometimes as they race past the back window, but we never see our bunny anymore… The Mother of Cats is a little concerned because one of the neighbors has been trapping bunnies and releasing them out in the wilderness, and one bunny got a broken leg somehow from the trap. The neighbor has a huge backyard garden (AKA the bunny smorgasbord), and the Mother of Cats does understand, but she is sad at the thought of our bunny being lost in the wilderness, and chased by coyotes, and… it is just sad.

The Mother of Cats is depressed about the whole thing, so we have been spending extra time entertaining her because… it is MOTH SEASON!!! The moths get into the house where they are the best toys ever!!! and we spend hours hunting them until, finally, the CoalBear manages to catch them. The Mother of Cats helps us hunt the moths (well, we do call her constantly for help), and would you believe that if she gets them, she puts them back outside? Like, WHY???? Luckily the CoalBear (AKA Mateo) is able to practically fly up and down walls chasing the moths and he usually gets them before she can. See, entertainment! I get to play with the moths every time the CoalBear brings them down onto the floor and this is the best, best cat toy in the world.

Then this new distraction arrived…

Yep. There is a winter storm and a hard freeze on the way.

All of a sudden, the Mother of Cats was worried about the plants and the tree outside and didn’t care about bunnies and moths anymore. She spend part of the day yesterday covering up every single shrub and rose in the gardens but couldn’t do too much to protect the tree out front.

So today we are kind of having a sad Caturday. The moths are gone (They don’t like snow? What light weights they are!), there isn’t a bunny in sight, and we are both hiding in the closet because some really scary people came to make lots of noises taking the tree’s broken parts away. Why did this have to happen on Caturday?!!!

The Mother of Cats is knitting happy colored hats today because it is too soon to take all the covers off the plants.

Well, that’s it. It’s time to come out of the closet and remind the Mother of Cats that on a day like this we require cookies! Extra cookies!! And lots of pets and attention and maybe even a new toy since the moths have disappeared.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

Poor tree. The branches on the top of the tree came down too, but the tree service cleaned everything up and assures me that the tree will make it. The days before the snowstorm were very warm and windy, setting off fire weather alerts. Now we get a week of cold and rain. Colorado.

The hat is for the Kaiser infusion centers and the yarn is from Hue Loco (colorway is Big Yikes). The pattern is Barley Light by Tin Can Knits.

It’s the bunny circle of life. My backyard bunny was a single baby stranded in my yard when the next-door neighbor had the bunnies in her yard removed. Now the offspring are with me, munching on my dandelions, and hopefully will safely remain to entertain my kitties and warm my heart in the months to come.

Miller moths are the guys getting into the house. They cling onto the outside of doors, and when an unsuspecting homeowner opens the door, they just zoom into the house where they cause endless hours of cat entertainment. Night, however, is when they really shine as they are attracted to the lights and almost always end up in my bedroom late at night where the cats zoom across me, the furniture, through the air, and basically put on an entire circus act of astonishing aerial contortions pursuing the moths. I worry about a cat hitting the ceiling fan…