Knitting – Page 11 – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: The Blanket Update.

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I have a new box to sit in! This is my blackberry box.

The Mother of Cats has kind of been all over the map lately. She knits on a project, works on her plants, reads a book, knits on another project, starts listening to a different book, and on and on and on. She just can’t seem to settle down and get things done. The books are getting stacked up next to the bed, and the knitting project bags are all over the house!! It is just crazy! I have been hanging out with her trying to settle her down, and slowly she has gotten several knitting projects done. A hat, a PICC line cover, some socks, and a knitted cat all got done. The empty project bags are piling up and I’ve shoved most of them into places where she can’t see them. The CoalBear dragged one of them behind the plants in the living room and I have one stashed under the bed…

Finally, she is spending most of her time knitting my blanket. Yay!

The blanket is going to be made from these knitted hexagons. Don’t you like that color of pink? I think that it looks good with my fur.

The Mother of Cats knitted a whole bunch of the units and kept them in a box where I couldn’t play with them. What is up with that? Finally, last week we began sewing the little units of the blanket together.

Look at how nice the hexs are going together!

It got really nice and warm this week and the Mother of Cats finally let the CoalBear and me go outside. There are bugs out there! I was a little freaked out by the wind, but mostly it is wonderful to hang out on the catio with her while she sews on my blanket.

Yes, you read that right. The Mother of Cats put up chicken wire around the deck so the CoalBear and I can visit the outside, look at the bunny, and enjoy the breeze while staying safe. This is our catio now, and there is also a swinging garden seat and a nice table out there so the Mother of Cats can hang out with us as she enjoys her lunch and sews on the blanket. I just love spring, don’t you?

So, do you want to see the whole blanket? It’s not done but you can kind of imagine what it will look like someday…

Yesterday the Mother of Cats finished sewing together all of the hexagons that were made and she went back to knitting more hexs. She wants the blanket to be pretty big so there is still a lot of knitting to get done, and she is even talking about buying more yarn. What? When will this blanket ever get done?

That’s okay. I’ll just grap a nap while she’s knitting.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The blanket is being knit from the pattern Nectar Blanket by Ysolda Teague. I got a little carried away sewing together the units and my version is going to be bigger than the largest size in the pattern because, well, isn’t it really nice looking? I want it to cover the bed and I do have to share with the cats…

I’m going to have to get another large cable needle to put the border on this baby!

It has been just beautiful outdoors this week and I put out some potted plants. Yeah. It is going to be really cold again with snow this weekend. Those flowers with the cats on their catio will be heading into the garage tomorrow.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Orchid Cat Caturday

Hi. I’m Hannah.

The Mother of Cats has been ignoring me for days and days while she knits on a… CAT!!

I hardly know what to think. She had this cool yarn in the stash that kind of reminded her of orchids and spring. The orchids started blooming a few weeks ago and that was that… she began to ignore me and the CoalBear and started fussing over the orchids and the yarn.

Okay, it is true that the orchids are kind of cool. I like to climb into the garden where they are growing from time to time to hang out with them. The Mother of Cats gets a little cranky when I do it, however, so I don’t get to do it all the time. I lately have been sleeping right next to the Mother of Cats while she knits on this… cat… Really, it doesn’t look all that much like a cat, but she kept telling me that it was. Here’s what happened.

The cat started out with some crazy knitting that produced this leg. Whatever. I have a cat paw, and it doesn’t look anything like that. The colors kind of are like orchids, however…

As she kept knitting it began to look a little more like a cat, but…

I was really concerned for the Mother of Cats. It seemed like she didn’t really know what a cat is supposed to look like. I can kind of see the chin, but that nose and the EYES were the stuff of ~~knitty~~ kitty nightmares.

Finally, the ears, nose, and eyes were on the cat. Oh, wow. This is starting to look like a kitty (or maybe a pug?) and I can almost hear it asking, “When will I be done?”

Two days ago, she finally finished knitting the cat and I helped her put the whiskers on. Gee. He almost looks like he belongs in the orchids, doesn’t he.

He even looks pretty good in my strawberry box!

But the Mother of Cats says that he actually belongs in the orchid garden. He does look pretty good in there.

Now that the Mother of Cats has finished up the orchid kitty she has gone back to knitting on my blanket. Yay!! She isn’t ignoring me so much because she keeps putting the blanket on me while she sews the pieces together. I can’t wait to get my blanket and we are working on it every evening together while the CoalBear runs wild and chases his toys downstairs.

Mateo the CoalBear: why does Hannah get all of the cool knits?

Hannah: Because I am a little princess, and also because you don’t share the toys!!

This is Hannah, signing off.

Happy Caturday everyone!!

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The pattern that I used is Grey Kitten Calico Cat by Claire Garland.
The yarn is a silk/merino/nylon blend by Noro called Tsubame. It is dk weight and I just knit the colors as they appeared in the ball as I worked. Mostly. I did throw out some green along the way.
My project page on Ravelry is here. Yeah, I was too lazy to write in any notes on the page.
I used the center quill of feathers to make the whiskers.
5 of my 7 orchid plants are now blooming and they definitely deserve a knitted cat to hang out with them!!
Did you want to see the back of the cat? Here he is!

Finally out of hibernation: a new sweater is on the horizon…

I have been struggling somewhat at the start of the year. I am between knitting projects and good books. It has been snowing endlessly (12 storms since the first of December) and after shoveling I’m too tired to knit. I want to knit a sweater, but I’m still thinking that I should continue to destash. I could spend the coming year knitting socks, but somehow this isn’t appealing at the moment. I want to do some stranded colorwork, but I really should remove some of those projects that have been sitting in the corner thinking about where they went wrong and bring them back to life…

I have been knitting away on Hannah’s blanket again and now have 12 hexagons finished. (This pattern is the Nectar Blanket by Ysolde Teague.) I have a couple of other projects that I can work on, but meh…

This week, in a moment of reckless impulsiveness, I pulled a sweater that has been hibernating for over two decades out of the garage and took a good look at it. The fabric of the knitting is really cool, but somehow, I fell out of love with the colors and packed it away long ago. Now I like the colors again, but I’m clueless about what I was doing when I packed it away. There are simple but important questions like, where is the pattern, and what size was I making, and holy smokes, where exactly was I in the pattern when I stopped knitting…

Here’s the knitted fabric. Pretty cool, right? I debated just cutting this up and making a sewn teddy bear or pillow or something for a while…

I finally pulled myself together and took stock of what I had in the bin with the sweater.

I had the chart that I was working from, the color key that I made with the yarns that I was using, and some funky notes written on the chart…

I did more digging around until I located the book that the pattern came from. Oh, this is an Alice Starmore pattern published in 1995 that I bought a kit for some time after I bought the book. I put it away when I was working on my master’s degree, so this sweater has been in hibernation since at least 1998. Wow. This sweater has been in hibernation for so long it is almost fossilized. Anyway, here is the book.

I had this book with all my Alice Starmore books and it didn’t take too long to locate the sweater again.

Once I had the pattern again, I did some counting of stitches and used the chart to figure out where I was in the knitting. Oh my goodness, I was up at the neckline and there are 4 different steeks in this knitted wonder!! The front steek is now on standby, and I just have to worry about the sleeves and the one created to handle the neckline. The notes on the chart I was using actually are the count of the neckline decreases and I had the armhole steeks drawn onto the chart. I’m so glad that I still have the chart and the yarn key! Evidently this was size medium… the directions even began to make sense as I read them over a couple of times. I pulled myself together and knit a few rounds and it all came back to me fairly quickly; I was able to start adding tally marks to the chart to track the neckline decreases just as I had more than two decades ago.

I have all the balls of yarn organized again and I am back at the knitting with a purpose. I hope to have the body of the sweater off the needles in another week or so.

Mateo has been a good boy all week and has been hanging out with me while I knit.

Have a good week everyone!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Snow Bunny Caturday

Hi. I’m Mateo.

It’s my favorite day of the week. I get to go out first thing in the morning with the Orange Monster to check out things on the catio. We see birds, and squirrels and lots of fun things while we are out there. We also get our paws cold, but that’s okay, because if you want to play with the Orange Monster, you have to be willing to deal with little stuff like that!

You won’t believe what we saw today…

The backyard bunny was out in the garden! I mean, the bunny was RIGHT THERE at the side of the catio where the Orange Monster and I hang out in the mornings. The Mother of Cats has been feeding the bunny acorn squash (I know, right?! Why would she do something like that… but the bunny does eat it… thank heavens she isn’t giving it our TUNA!)

Personally, I think that acorn squash flavored bunny would be a little weird, but I was certainly willing to try it out. Nope. Darn chicken wire… there needs to be a FREE MATEO protest, right? Can you hear my big cat sigh? The bunny finally left and the Mother of Cats put some more ACORN SQUASH out for it.

Now we are back indoors knitting on the scarf thingy…

while Hannah snoozes…

and we both dream of the backyard bunny.

Happy Caturday, everyone!!

Hasta la ByeBye, 2022: These were the Knits

I can’t believe that this has happened; I had just gotten used to writing 2022 and it is already over. I’ve been reflecting on the year and decided to talk about the yarn, the books, and the roses in separate posts. This one, of course, is about the knitting that went on last year.

First, the goals. I wanted to learn how to double knit: did it. I wanted to knit something using the Cocoknits method: did that too. I wanted to get at least 100 skeins of yarn out of the stash: absolutely did that too. Seriously, it was a pretty good year.

I knitted 6 sweaters. That’s a lot for me.

The top-down sweaters of 2022: these are Goldenfern, Emma, Salty Air Tee, Lace & Fade Boxy, Kevat, and Cushman. There was a lot of grey knitting going on last year so I’ve started out knitting a Simple Thing scarf thingy to wear with the neutral sweaters to give some color. I plan to make some wristers too, and I want to say that I am getting absolutely excellent knitting support from the CoalBear while I’m doing this.

Won’t those colors look nice on the grey sweaters?

Let’s see, what else did I knit… glances at Xcel spreadsheet… this year? I knit a bee. There was a pair of baby booties. I knit a lot of hats (33), even more PICC line covers (52) and 6 pairs of socks. I knit that cat paw sample of double knitting. I also knit one shawl that was a MKAL that sent Hannah on an adventure around the world chasing a worm that had stolen a priceless golden bag of cat treats from a museum in Cairo. Altogether, it was quite the year!

That bee is now hanging in my indoor orchid garden. The hats and PICC line covers all went to the Kaiser infusion centers in the Denver Metro area though an organization called Frayed Knots, and there is Hannah home from her adventures on Sharon Air.

After watching lots of YouTube videos and downloading a chart I found online I created the double-knit sample of… of course it is a cat paw!! I also got those baby booties done for the next-door neighbor who had a new arrival last April right before my surgery in May.

So that’s it. Whew. You didn’t want to see the socks, did you? I mean, they are all the same picture of the same pattern on the same feet knitting in different colors of blue and grey. I was pretty boring this year, so I feel that I should spare you those photos.

Here’s a picture of Hannah instead, because she is the cutest girl ever and that’s that!

I did mention that I got a lot of yarn out of the stash, right? Almost 120 skeins of yarn were culled from the stash and used up in knitted projects or donated to other knitters through Frayed Knots. Yay!

Time to buy more yarn!

Happy New Year, everyone.

The Scleroderma Chronicles: So, there was this flare…

Wow. It has been some time since I last posted. Ironically, the last post was about the Mother of Cats being broken. I felt really good, and I was casting on a plethora of projects and was all over the place with my knitting, reading, projects, you name it. Hannah was complaining in that post that I was broken, and that I wasn’t devoting myself to making her a blanket.

Then scleroderma lowered the boom on me. I went into a flare of epic proportions. I hurt all over, I struggled to do just simple tasks, I started sleeping 10-12 hours a day, and I had to go back onto daytime oxygen. I kept heat packs on my sore joints, but I really needed a total body heat pack to cope with what was going on: every single tendon in my body was under attack!! I couldn’t regulate my body temperature and took multiple naps a day because I was too cold to stay awake. I developed chest pain. My brain fog became so bad I wasn’t safe to drive anymore… Yep. Broken.

Okay, I also accidently drank some Miracle Gro fertilizer that I had stored in a Snapple bottle. That is some serious brain fog, people!! (Yes, I did have to call poison control, I did eat burnt toast and I did drink a lot of water, and I don’t want to talk about this anymore…) Yep. Broken.

I managed to get some knitting done in spite of my ill-behaved health. I got some wristers made as Christmas presents and sewed zippered pouches for my sister and cousin.

Wristers and a zippered project pouch.

Sewing was a riot as I had to get the sewing room organized so I didn’t have to stand up very much as I cut, sewed, and pressed fabric to make the bags, but with some creative thinking and furniture arrangements I pulled it off.

I also finished my Emma sweater. I made a hat. I made some socks. I made some slippers. Everything was on big needles and used heavy weight yarn as I got too tired to knit more than a few minutes at a time.

This sweater was knit using the CocoKnits method and I learned some new methods of shaping and finishing. The yarn was chunky weight and is warm and comfy. I got it done early in the flare and it was just perfect for the days to come. The yarn that was left over was used to make a hat and a pair of slippers.

I did read some nice books, but mostly I slept and waited this miserable thing out. In the weeks while I was mostly bedbound my orchids started to grew stems for future blossoms, the first snows arrived, and my son moved in with his cats.

This is handsome Jonesy. Hannah does not like Jonesy, so there is now a chicken wire barricade at the top of the stairs to keep the two groups of cats separated. My son also has a long-haired tuxedo cat who just doesn’t care about my cats. Hannah, however, has a complete meltdown if Jonesy comes near her, so… barricade.

Mateo: I love Jonesy and I go through the barricade every day to rough house with my new best bud while Hannah hangs out with the Mother of Cats. Jonesy is the wild playmate of my dreams!

So, I think that I am out of the flare now as the multiple naps a day have stopped, and my appetite is back. Yesterday we made lasagna for Christmas and here is the present that I got from my son:

Perfect, right?

Can you see my blue lips? The bad news is that the Blue-Lipped Zebra is back in full force. I finally emailed my cardiologist to let him know that I am once again panting for air and feeling light-headed from doing simple tasks like… lifting a pan out of the cupboard or grating cheese. Ugh. I’m pretty sure that I am heading back into the cath lab for another look at my pulmonary pressures, but right now I am glad to be back on my feet and out of the flare. My son is still here (he works from home, so he just moved his operation over to my house) and things are going well in the combined household.

Hannah: as long as Jonesy stays on his side of the barricade!! Also, maybe the Mother of Cats will now settle down and get my new blanket done!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: The Mother of Cats may be Broken…

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Don’t I look like I’m a take-charge kind of girl?

I’ve been really busy supervising the Mother of Cats for the last couple of weeks as she has been knitting a multitude of projects with not even a little bit of discipline. I mean, she is all over the place and I never know what she is going to pull out of her knitting bag next. Let me show you what I’m talking about…

First, she started knitting all of these little hexagon units that will get turned into a blanket someday. Like, maybe when I’m too old to make the jump to the top of the bookshelf anymore she will get this done. She stopped after knitting the four units in the picture and then started knitting all of these…

PICC line covers!

Yep. PICC line cover after PICC line cover started to happen as she kept pulling out new colors of yarn from the stash. I thought that she was settled down and would stay with them for some time, but no, you would be wrong if you thought that! Did she go back to the hexagon units for the blanket? Nope.

She found some nice wildly dyed zebra yarn in the stash and started knitting some socks and then switched over to wristers because she was cold that afternoon. Do you see what I am dealing with here? NO DISCIPLICE AT ALL!!!

I gave up and took a nap after that. When I woke up that evening, I discovered that she had gone back into the stash to find some charcoal grey yarn that she wanted to make into a sweater. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS MOTHER OF CATS!! I am concerned that this model might be broken, but I have put so much work into training her just right I hate to quit and start over with another one…

She evidently had seen the weather report and dug out this book to use in making the new sweater. The yarn and needles are really big, so she is making fast progress, but seriously, what about the blanket that we started a few weeks ago? I could use a new blanket more than she needs a new sweater!

She finished up the wristers last night and seems to be devoted to finishing the sweater. Sigh. What about the blanket? I kind of give up, but she is pretty good at keeping Mateo and me supplied with kitty cookies, so I guess I’d better keep her.

But I am a little concerned that she might need a little tune up to help her with her focus issues. I do kind of want that blanket, you know. Who knows what she will decide to knit the next time she visits the stash?

This is Hannah, signing off.

Happy Caturday, Everyone!

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The hexagons are for the Nectar Blanket by Ysolda Teague.
I’m learning the Coco Knits method of knitting by following along with the book and knitting an Emma sweater, version B with bulky yarn and long sleeves. I have the colored stitch markers to go with the worksheet and everything! I was a little intimidated, but now that I’m below the yoke I am so impressed with what is appearing in the knitted object. I’m going to get this one done fast!
That sock yarn is from a trunk show at my local yarn store and I just had to knit it right now!!! I’m sure you understand.
I think that I’m going to get that blanket done next, but there are so many PICC line covers to get done before the end of the year…

The Sweater Hack

I’ve been knitting away on my Lace & Fade Boxy sweater in the evenings and debating my choices and decisions. I had 4 skeins of a special edition yarn that was a collaboration between Madelinetosh and Shibui in the colorway Ironwood. I really liked this yarn because it was a great neutral that would go with everything… kind of a smoky brownish/black with tiny hints of violet. I fell in love with the Lace & Fade Boxy pattern by Joji Locatelli and debated different strategies to knit it. Should I use another color for the lace insets? Should I buy the matching Shibui lace yarn for the lace insets? Um… I’m in a destash and I want to get rid of yarn! Besides, how rugged will this sweater be with that thin lace yarn? Knit the whole sweater in the neutral yarn and use some snazzy color in a I-cord bind off on the edges? So many possibilities…

In the end I knitted the whole sweater in the one yarn and color.

Here it is, late at night in my bathroom, just off the needles. The sleeves still need to be done, and there is also the neckline finishing to do.

I was pretty sure that the sweater would grow significantly after blocking, but it is also pretty darn saggy up there around the neck. I decided to block this puppy and finish up the neckline before making any more decisions.

The neckline is now finished, and the sweater is blocked; it is absolutely too short. I need to do something to add length.

I knit Swoon a few years ago from this book. I love the lace. This lace is knit on size 5 (3.75 mm) needles and the yarn is laceweight.

That lace was knitted and then sewn to the bottom of the knitted piece. The picot hemmed edge was a pain to knit, and I kind of felt that the edging would be too much to carry off at the bottom of this boxy sweater. I wanted functional and hard-wearing, not cute frippery, for this sweater. Obviously, this lace wasn’t quite right, but it would add the length that I wanted. I did like the garter in the lace and felt that it could be a nice flat panel for the bottom of the sweater. Knit from the bottom up, this original lace has peaks along the bottom. I decided that if I knitted it from the top down, which would reverse the decreases, it would create a straight bottom and the puffiness would block out. I worked out the stitch count that I would need, picked up stitches, and the sweater hack was on!

This lace isn’t as open as the one knitted on the larger needles with laceweight yarn, but it works in this application. I fussed around with different bind offs until I found one that created the smooth edge and fit the lace: 2 stitch I-cord bind off. There was puffiness at the top of the lace, but after the steam blocking it settled right down and is playing nice.

I debated about how to handle the sleeves and finally decided to just duplicate the bottom of the sweater. I picked up the sleeve stitches, knit 7 rounds and then 8 rounds of the ribbing, did a slight decrease to get my stitch count, and I loosely bound off. (I know… I didn’t want the ribbing to stretch, and I had that puffiness of the lace to control, so I did it.) I picked up the stitches for the lace panel and knit it exactly like I did the bottom of the sweater. Look… I have 3/4 sleeves that work with my sweater.

So, there it is. My hacked sweater, made by modifying the Lace & Fade Boxy design and incorporating a lace idea from Swoon. I made the decisions late at night, gazing at what I had so far in the bathroom mirror, based on what I had on hand and what I envisioned for the final sweater. I wanted a sweater that would be warm, comfy, easy to layer, and hard wearing with some lace.

Nailed it!

I have just enough yarn left over to make wristers for cold days.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Caturday Catch-up

Hi. I’m Mateo (AKA the CoalBear).

I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats with her knitting this week.

Hannah has been getting all of the attention for weeks and weeks while she was flying around on Sharon Air, so the Mother of Cats has been spending lots of time with me since Hannah came home from her adventures. She has been knitting and knitting on a smoky brown blob of yarny *something* and I have been extremely vigilant about attacking any stray ends that try to get away from her. I mean, I have sat by her side for hours watching intently… this is just exhausting! Finally, the Mother of cats got all of the stitches off the needles this afternoon and I could take a little nap while she tried it on.

Whew! She is pretty happy with how it is going, but she says that she needs to block it to see how long it will be. Whatever. All I care about is how long I get to nap before she puts this sweater monster back onto her needles. Oh, yeah. This sweater is called Lace & Fade by Joji Locatelli.

The Mother of Cats has also been busy sewing this week. Hannah decided to help her with this, which was totally okay with me because I think that the sewing machine is a little bit scary. Hannah kind of likes it and always spends all of her time in the sewing room when the mother of cats is busy in there.

Anyway, I hope that you can understand what this sewn stuff is. I think that it would be good if Hannah adds some notes here, so here she goes:

Hannah: Okay, here are my notes on the sewing we did.

The first picture is of the bedside caddy that the Mother of Cats and I sewed a few weeks ago. It is sewn to a towel that goes under the mattress (MY IDEA!!) and those nice pouches hold lots of things for the Mother of Cats.
Last week the Mother of Cats sewed the little caddy (middle picture) that is designed to hang from Command hooks on her bedside table. Isn’t it nice? The little pouches hold her glasses and phone, and the back pouch is exactly right for her Kindle tablet. It works great, but she is still thinking of how to improve it.
The last caddy is much larger, has two larger pouches at the bottom, and is kind of a mix-up of both bedside caddies. The Mother of Cats sent if off to her sister this week. The sister plans to do some trickery with grommets and stuff to hang it onto her bedside table.

Mateo: Hannah is asleep, so I’m taking over again.

The only other stuff that is going on around here is that trip the Mother of Cats took to the local garden and farm store. She came back with some crazy stinky roasted green chiles and also a funky pumpkin. Hannah and I stayed completely away from the kitchen while the chiles were roasting away in their boxes, but we did check out the pumpkin.

This is one ugly, scary pumpkin!!! Hannah and I don’t understand why this came home to stay with us. The Mother of Cats put it on the table with some other pumpkins and stuff. The Mother of Cats says that this is all about Halloween, but we just want our table back! Hannah likes to take naps up there, and now there is this stoopid, lumpy-ass pumpkin in the way…

It’s okay. I’d rather nap on the bed anyway. Also, soon there will be more knitting, too!

Happy Caturday, everyone!

This is Mateo, the CoalBear, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

It is green chile season!!! Every year I get a bushel of chiles roasted and then I freeze them to use all during the winter. This year I bought two different types of green chile peppers and made two trips that netted me a total of a bushel and a half of peppers in the freezer.

If you’ve never done this, the process is really simple. The chile peppers are grouped by how hot they are… I buy chiles that are mild and avoid ones that have names like Ghost or Dynamite. This year I got a bushel of Ancho chile (the meaty green ones) and a half bushel of Marconi chile peppers. The peppers are washed, then dumped into a rotating drum that is turned over a flame until all of the skin is blackened and the peppers are roasted. They are then poured into a heavy plastic bag and packed into a box that is taken home to continue roasting for the next few hours. When they are finally cool enough to handle, I put 6-8 peppers into a freezer bag and then these are moved to the freezer when cooled. This year I froze 24 bags of chili pepper. I sure hope that’s enough to get through the winter. 🙂

When I use the peppers later on that blackened skin will just wash off, but the smoky flavor will linger. Green chile is good stuff; versatile, anti-inflammatory, and extremely addictive. I’ve already eaten two of my cached bags of chile this fall…

Green chile is also serious business in this part of the country. There is a rivalry between the governor of my state (Colorado) and New Mexico’s governor over who has the best chile crop. We do, of course. Pueblo chile forever!!

That pumpkin is called a Warty Goblin pumpkin. I think that they are so ugly they are cute!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Hannah Earns Her Wings!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

There were lots of adventures on the flight back from Japan (well, I slept through most of it because… I’m a cat) as Sharon threw a gobshite passenger off the plane (with a parachute, of course), discovered Chad that Golden-Bag-of-Cat-Treats-Thieving Worm hiding in the wheel well of the plane, took a nap in the catnip-scented oxygen of the cabin, and then finally tackled Chad off the plane in a butt-waggling zoom of epic proportions that allowed her to recover the priceless bag of cat treats while Chad fell through the clouds. She did throw Chad a parachute and an inflatable raft, but we kind of don’t care what happened to him because there was sushi and Meow Mix for all of us on the flight. Did I mention that there was catnip-scented oxygen in the cabin?

(Okay, Sharon did post a photo of Chad falling through the skies in his parachute, so he did get it on and hopefully landed safely…)

Anyway, the Mother of Cats finished the shawl, and I got my wings!!

Now the Sharon Air MKAL is over and the Mother of Cats has returned to knitting a sweater that had been hibernating in a bin for the last few weeks. I still have my blueberry box from the flight, and since I returned in Cardboard Class I brought my blanket and all the wonderful yarn that I bought the Mother of Cats in Japan home with me with no problems.

Mateo: I’m helping the Mother of Cats with her sweater!

So now the Mother of Cats is happily knitting away on her new sweater (the Lace & Fade Boxy sweater by Joji Locatelli) with Mateo (the CoalBear) and I’m catching up on my sleep in my blueberry box. The Mother of Cats taped my wings to the box, and I’m still dreaming of all the places that I visited during the MKAL adventure. Cairo. New Zealand. Paris. Istanbul. Japan. So much fun!

Do I look sad? This is just my dreaming of catnip face…

Now it is fall outside and the flies seem to have vanished with the backyard robins but there are crickets and bunnies. Luckily it is cooler so I can play with the CoalBear in the daytime, and I’ve started sleeping on the bed with the Mother of Cats at night again. The Mother of Cats bought me and the CoalBear a lot of new toys, and we are playing chase-chase through piles of crunchy brown shipping paper. I’m returning to my old routines and I’m actually glad that my adventure is over. It is good to be home.

This is Hannah, signing off.