Knitting – Page 8 – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: Kitten Invasion and Finished Socks

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’ve been hanging out on the catio as much as I can these days.

The Mother of Cats has been really busy reading books and knitting lately, and she likes to go out on the catio so that is perfect for us. Mateo loves the grasshoppers, and I am a huge fan of the butterflies. The last couple of weeks have been just perfect until about a week ago when the Mother of Cats went off to her son’s for the night, and then they both came back over here with ALL OF HIS CATS!!!!!

Mateo vanished into the closet. Thanks for the backup, buddy. What a baby, right? We were pretty safe because the Mother of Cats put up a barrier at the top of the stairs to keep us safe, which was a good thing because those invading cats took over the whole house!!

Yep. Those kitties got the entire downstairs and THE CATIO while the Mother of Cats stayed upstairs mostly with us and knitted away on her new socks. It wasn’t all that bad, except for the little Siamese kitten who would run up the stairs and try to whap us through the gate every time he saw us. The Mother of Cats said that he was just trying to play, but it is kind of rude, whapping, don’t you think? Mateo certainly thought so!!

Anyway, lets get back to the knitting. Check out the finished socks.

The Mother of Cats is really happy with how the socks turned out. Let’s look at some of the details:

Do you see how thick and cushy the knitted fabric looks on the inside? This is one comfy sock! Look at how nice the afterthought heel is, and how about how the flowers pop out from the background on the outside of the sock? Seriously, this sock is nice! Even Mateo thinks so. (No, Mateo. You don’t get a knitted bunny made in this pattern…)

Back to the invading cats; look at how they acted on the catio!

Yep, that is one of our toys in the paws of THE MONSTER. The Mother of Cats had to move several of the plants, and the invaders even got to eat some of OUR TUNA!!!! They practically destroyed the downstairs cat tree, and whoo-boy, was there ever commotion going on down there every night! I think that a fly got into the house, and to be frank, that little Siamese kitten can practically fly… Just when I thought that the accumulating outrages would never end, the Mother of Cats left us Thursday night and drove to the airport to get her son back. Whew! As soon as he got back the Monster perked up and the kittens calmed down. Mateo even went through the barrier to play with everyone on the catio, but I stayed safely on my side of the gate. The next day all those furry invaders went home to their own catio and Mateo and I returned to bunnyland.

Today the Mother of Cats is back to knitting on her sweater, and before you know it she will have it done and we’ll be hunting for more yarn to play with. Life is good.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The socks are the Pressed Flower Socks by Amy Cristoffers.
The sweater that I’m working on is Alpine Bloom by Caitlin Hunter. I’m getting really close to finishing up the body of the sweater.
My son was working at a convention for his company. That’s him on the right, talking to a customer/attendee. Oh, you can’t see him? Well, you get the idea: stand for hours and talk to conference attendees in a dimly lit and high tech environment.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Black cats rock and we have a new sock!

Hi. I’m Mateo.

Do you see how beautiful I am? This is how I looked when I was a year old.

This is how I looked in the kitten room when the Mother of Cats first saw me.

Didn’t I turn out nice? I was the sweetest kitten in the room, and I was very brave and friendly when the Mother of Cats first met me. The Mother of Cats absolutely did not want to get ANOTHER black cat on that afternoon (she kind of wanted a buff-colored kitten…), but I was so insistent that she really, really needed me that she finally filled out the paperwork and brought me home.

and before you knew it, Hannah and I were best friends!!

Today is National Black Cat Appreciation Day, and there is a day like this because sometimes people think black cats are unlucky and they get left in the shelter and don’t get a home like they should. That is just crazy, right? Look at how cute I am!! The Mother of Cats keeps telling me how good I am, and I AM! I’m a GOOD BOY, and every day, I get lots of attention and tuna because I absolutely deserve it. Also, I am really good at catching bugs, which makes everyone happy around here.

Okay, onto the sock that we have been helping the Mother of Cats get knitted this week.

The Mother of Cats can be kind of lazy when the weather is hot, so this is the sock without the ends woven in or the hole at the heel closed. Just ignore that stuff… isn’t it cute!! The sock has some extra ends that need to be woven in because Hannah kind of went wild and chomped the yarn into pieces twice, but the Mother of Cats still gave her tuna. I’m pretty sure that I should have gotten all of the tuna, but for some reason the Mother of Cats just lets Hannah get away with EVERYTHING when I have to get my claws trimmed all the time, and Hannah never does.

Oh, never mind about all of that. I was supposed to tell you that the socks are the Pressed Flowers Socks and that they fit really, really well with lots of stretch. Hey, I like that pattern and maybe it can also become a little knitted bunny for me to play with? I always can use a new toy and I just LOVE BUNNIES!! (Note from MoC: Mateo, you love to eat bunnies. No. No knitted bunny!)

Fine. I’ll just (sigh) play with the old toys that I already have.

This is Mateo, AKA the CoalBear, signing off.

Hannah: Don’t forget that tomorrow is Caturday!! Also, I’m kind of a black cat, too, so I should be getting extra tuna for sure!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Trail? What Trail?

Hi. I’m Hannah.

This has been a kind of strange week. The Mother of Cats came home on Monday after spending ANOTHER WEEKEND WITH THOSE KITTENS!!! and then she tried to make it up to us by being really nice all week. She fed us tuna twice a day and played with Mateo with the laser light more than usual. Like that would make up for sneaking off to spend time with these furry little guys instead of US.

Okay, they are kind of cute. Still, they aren’t as cute as Mateo and I were at the same age. Just saying…

Anyway, back to the strange week. The children in the neighborhood all went back to school (whatever that it…) this week and it suddenly is quieter in the backyard. A huge flock of geese flew over the yard yesterday, and today the Mother of Cats noticed that some of the berries on the bushes are turning red. The squirrel is more active than usual, and the moon was out in the daytime. Crazy, right? Here are the pictures.

The Mother of Cats is also excited about something called Pumpkin Spice. Is that a type of tuna?

Anyway, let’s now discuss the Mother of Cats and her COMPLETE ABANDONMENT of the Sharon on the Trail MKAL. She didn’t even bother to open up the emails with the pattern updates. She says that she hates her yarns, and she doesn’t love the pattern, and she just wants to knit the stuff she already has and to make some little knitted kitties to give away. I’d be concerned about her, but she is really happy with the stuff that she is knitting now, and I have to admit that it is looking good.

She put her sweater back onto the needles this week and got several inches of the body knitted. Looking good! She says that the funky looking new stitches are that way because they aren’t blocked yet. Mateo isn’t convinced.

Mateo: I’ll reserve judgement until I see that new knitting blocked. Call me Doubting Mateo.

She really spent some time on the new socks that she is making, and she really likes the way they are coming out. I think that has something to do with how she just UP AND ABANDONED Sharon from Security in her quest to apprehend that villainous Keith…

She likes these socks so much she is already dreaming of which yarns she will use to knit the next pair with. Poor Sharon, I’m pretty sure that the Mother of Cats will never return to the trail. She has her eye on some purple yarns for the next pair of socks…

Well, that is it. I hope that you all had a wonderful Caturday.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The sweater is Alpine Bloom by Caitlin Hunter.
The socks are Pressed Flowers Socks by Amy Cristoffers.
The abandoned MKAL is Sharon on the Trail by Casapinka. I have decided to wait for the finished shawl before I put any more knitting time into it.
The weather has been playing hell with my breathing. A couple of lows tracked right over the state and in the low pressure I don’t do well at all.

Do you see the low? That’s the place where all the wind arrows are swirling together just east of me in the state (I’m located just east of Denver). Fun and games for people with lung/heart conditions!

Behold Hannah and Mateo as kittens… they were pretty cute!

Hannah and the CoalBear: and she’s already fallen off the trail…

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Hannah: I bet you wished that you had a catio…

In my last report I shared how the Mother of Cats left us for the weekend to go play with her son’s kittens. Hello! We’re kittens too, right?! Well, in our hearts we are. The Mother of Cats says that I’m getting chunky and that I’m hard to pick up now… what is up with that?! If she would let me bring grasshoppers into the house so I could chase them without burning my little feet on the hot deck I’m sure I would slim right down, but does she let me have any fun? Nope. Not so much…

Anyway, the Mother of Cats finished up her first clue of the Sharon on the Trail MKAL shawl and then put it away to wait for the next clue.

I gave it a little grooming before she put it away, and we both thought that it was pretty cute. Then the second clue dropped last week and the Mother saw what it looked like knitted up… and immediately decided that she didn’t want to use these yarns anymore. She never took the shawl out again all week and just worked on her new sweater.

Okay, I have to admit that it is looking pretty darn good, right?

She steam blocked the part that was knitted in the sweater (it is called Alpine Bloom) and while it was drying she hunted and hunted for new yarns to knit the Sharon on the Trail again.

What do you guys think of these yarns? She’s still thinking of using gold instead of that mauve color…

I personally don’t care because it is really darn hot here and we spend every afternoon just waiting it out. The Mother of Cats reads books and I just sleep in any coolish spot that I can find. My favorite spot right now is on the paper from the Chewy box in front of a fan.

Do you see where I had a rash on my tummy? I had another bath (YUK!!!) and now the fur is growing back.

Anyway, once the Mother of Cats had located her new yarns for the MKAL you’d think that she would have cast on and gotten busy knitting, right? Nope. You would be wrong. She saw a sock pattern and went crazy casting on to start them. Then she got an email from her community knitting buddies that made her knit some more PICC line covers and start hunting for yarns to knit little toys and hats. SHE IS COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL!!! Like, she is worse than Mateo at the moment.

Here’s the start of the socks. These will be Pressed Flowers Socks after a whole bunch of time the way she is going.

So, I’m just kind of going with the flow and hoping to get some tuna soon while she is ignoring the shawl, pretending that it is TOO HARD to put that blocked sweater back onto the needles, and saying things like… why should she knit socks when it would be more fun to make some toys (hearts and little mice and maybe some tiny kitties…) to go to with the PICC line covers in a couple of weeks when the next Frayed Knots meeting happens.

Sigh. She should make me some knitted mice!

Mateo: don’t forget that tomorrow is Caturday!

That’s all for now. I’m going to go find another cool spot to sleep in…

This is Hannah, sighing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats: I’ve been reading like crazy because several books arrived in my library account all at once. Yay!

I’ve been reading All the Sinners Bleed as an audiobook while driving around in the car. The main character is still dealing with the trauma of his mother’s death from… (wait for it) …scleroderma!! I heard that part of the book while driving back from my rheumatology appointment this week. Crazy. In the book the mother suffered from extreme muscle pain, and I had just finished talking with my doctor about increasing my immunosuppressant dose because of my continuing muscle/tendon pain.
I also raced through Killers of the Flower Moon recently. What a great book!!! It’s about a cluster of abuses and murders linked to conspiracies to steal the oil generated wealth of Osage Nation members in Oklahoma. The center of the Osage territory is located in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, a place I’ve been to since I have family located there. While flipping through all the footnotes in the book an interview with the author, David Grann, came on the television. How crazy is all of this!! He has written a new book called The Wager that I already have a library hold on.
I continue to be stalked by synchronicity, obviously.
The community knitting/crocheting group that I knit for has been expanding. We now are donating to other medical centers that have requested sewn PICC line pads for seatbelts in cars, heavy winter hats for homeless shelters, and now we are partnering with the Denver STAR program that provides emergency (non-police) responses to people in mental health crisis, or who are homeless, or any emergency that is not violent or criminal in nature. They need blankets, amigurumi, health items, and hats. Lots of knitting (and crocheting and sewing) needs to be done!
Do you see why I just fell off the trail? For something like this I might even try to crochet some little amigurumi.
Now I’m reading The Covenant of Water. Holy smokes, this is looking to be another really good book! Do you see why the knitting has stalled?
Hannah: Get off the computer, Mother of Cats, and get me come tuna!!! Also, a knitted mouse would be nice…

Hannah and the CoalBear: I’m Hitting the Trail!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’m hanging out on the catio before it gets too hot.

Did you notice that yesterday was Caturday? I had to stay in the house all day long because the Mother of Cats drove off and left us all alone for the weekend. She has been a little crazy lately, that Mother of Cats… She decided at the last minute to do the Sharon on the Trail MKAL and dug around in her stash to find some yarns. Okay, it was like a yarn explosion, but that is fun, right?

Has she finished her Alpine Bloom sweater yet? No, she has not!!

So she left us and went to her son’s house for the weekend because… he has new kittens!!! How could she leave us? Why did she ever think that she could knit while she was around KITTENS!!! She needs to come home right away!!

She did take out her yarns for a picture showing the order that she wants to knit them, but that is as far as she was able to get because…kittens!

So, the Mother of Cats hasn’t gotten any knitting done at all, which means that she is behind everyone else in the MKAL. Sharon from Security (Casapinka’s employee who needs a raise!) is in France hunting down Keith the Hiker who has (probably) stolen a mysterious paper wrapped object, stuffed it in his backback, and is currently on the trail with Sharon hot on his tail. The Mother of Cats needs to come home today so she can get some knitting down and we can get some COOKIES!!!

You know, I don’t think that the Mother of Cats can do much hiking, so I told Mateo that he is going to have to hit the trails with me if we’re going to help Sharon get that mysterious package back. France. We can do France.

I’m getting some rest so I’m ready to go!!

I hope that you all had a great Caturday, and that you weren’t abandoned and left all alone in a hot house with a crazy Mateo…

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

My son lost his beautiful cat Maya (who controlled the weather) and his remaining cat has been sad since then. Today Jonesy is looking happier than he has in months. Okay, maybe he’s still a little stressed, but that’s life with kittens for you…
The kittens are a Siamese mix and a classic tabby. So cute!
The yarns for the MKAL are from Indie dyers across the US: Texas, Colorado, Montana, and New York. How fun is that?

Now there are 38…

Bright sunny days are upon us, and the yard is filled with the call of blue jays. Okay, these guys are really noisy, and there are a lot more than usual this year, so the robins seem to be keeping a low profile. All of my plants are growing like crazy in the heat and the gardens are starting to look really good.

The cats are spending lots of time out on the catio.

I’ve discovered that the weeds are also growing like… weeds, so I have been spending an hour every day in the cool of the evening working in the gardens trying to keep ahead of the weed invasion.

There is a lot of pink going on in the garden right now. The Princess Alexandra of Kent rose is stilling going strong, the pink yarrow burst into bloom, and the snapdragons that are now blooming again are… just the pink ones! Of course, the angelica has joined in, and I must admit that the pink does make me feel good.

Even my knitting has pink blooms! This is the Alpine Bloom sweater by Caitlin Hunter.

So, I was thinking that maybe I should get some red when I took a trip to my local garden center this week. Woohoo! Roses WERE ON SALE at 30% off!!! It didn’t take long to locate a landscape shrub rose that had beautiful cabbage rose-ish blooms.

This is the Grand Champion Red rose. I bought two of them.

I thought that it would do well with the Ruby Meidiland roses along the back of my house.

The Rubies have been doing really well this year, but the shrubs didn’t fill in along the back of the house the way I thought they would, so there is room to put another rose between plantings.

See, the new rose will fit right in there!

Now I have to do more weeding (duh!), get the new roses into the ground, and then I plan to put a nice organic mulch around everyone.

So now there are 38 roses!

PS: Bea made this comment… “Mateo is wearing his don’t-mess-with-me face. He looks ready to rumble or hop on his Harley and hightail it for Sturgis.”

He kind of does, doesn’t he. I offer in his defense this picture of how he collapsed and fell asleep on the bookshelf last night…

The tough guy photo was taken right after I woke him up. It seems that he wakes up cranky…

The Soldotna Saga Ends

Yesterday was the Independence Day here in the USA. Fireworks are traditional; my neighborhood goes kind of overboard with the celebrating in that regard. Poor Hannah cowered under the bed and Mateo vanished for the three hours that skyrockets boomed directly overhead and showers of sparks glittered in the night. I finished up all the knitting on the Soldatna Crop, closed the gaps under the sleeves, and then wove in all of the ends. Towards midnight there was a huge thunderstorm that outboomed even the loudest of the skyrockets and I gently misted the sweater and steam blocked it into its final shape.

The Hannah savaged spot is just barely visible, but I am over it.

Do you see it now? The biggest damage is that some of the color has been removed in the fibers that were pulled off in the aggressive grooming Hannah incident. If I move fast, no one will ever notice it and I want to get on with the next knitting project because a new pattern appeared that I want to start right now!! It’s another little sweater by the same designer, Caitlin Hunter, called Alpine Bloom. I downloaded the image of the sweater so you can understand my urgent need: isn’t that the cutest ever? (sweater image is copyright of Caitlin Hunter)

I’m planning right now on doing the colorwork in the hot pink and I may slip in some flower details with the purple. I’ve been looking at other projects online and I actually like the ones that only use one color the best, so I may just stick with the hot pink. Check out the lace at the neckline and the sleeves: cute, cute, cute!! I need to get my needles switched over to this new project right this second, so the Soldotna is now declared done.

In other new, I actually saw a BUNNY in the front yard this week! It is an adult, and it came from across the street to hang out by my tree, but it made me really happy to see it. Stay away from the back yard, little guy!

Finally, how about an update on the roses? They are continuing to flourish and the new blooms are appearing daily. I did a count this week, and I actually have 34 plants right now. Obviously, I need to get another few to take it up to 40, right?

I do have room in the garden because not a single one of the really cute lavender plants that I put out last year came back. A couple of the well established English ones made it, but that was all. I did a little sleuthing on the internet to try to figure out what happened and quickly discovered that the Spanish lavender that I thought was so cute didn’t have a chance.

Yeah, if this plant struggles with temperatures below 10 degrees F, then the -24 degrees F that happened last year absolutely was too cold for it. Actually, it was a problem for most of the garden as I lost the part of the rose plants that were above the ground, but thankfully they all grew back from the roots okay in the spring and it really did help that we had a lot of rain.

Lesson learned.

More roses!!

The Soldotna Saga Continues…

It has been kind of a tough week. The weather shifted and suddenly became hot; I struggled with the sudden heat and couldn’t sleep well. I had adventures with online ordering that created a duplicate of an expensive item that finally got returned for me by my son. Mateo caught a baby bunny somehow that he brought into the house; it took two hours to catch it. My ankles/feet have decided that they hate my guts with as much swelling and tendon pain as my wrists did last month. Then the absolute worst: my next-door neighbor poisoned the bunnies and every single baby bunny died along with most of the adults that I have seen. I suddenly understood why bunnies suddenly disappeared last year.

I put the bodies into her trash. Every single one of them, including the rescued baby that I had carefully returned to the yard two days earlier.

Okay, enough of that. You should see what has been happening with the Soldotna Crop sweater:

I’ve been taking the knitting off the needles and steam blocking it to check for length, and I’m so pleased with how the sweater fits and looks now. I finished the ribbing late last night, steam blocked the whole body this morning, and took it out for this picture. Looking good, huh!!

I put the sweater onto blocking mats to finish drying indoors, and then I headed out to take some pictures of the roses. Let me tell you, these roses are really happy with the water earlier this year, and now that it is hot, they are blooming like crazy!

These are the front roses, and they are really looking good this year! Do you see all of those buds? They have never been this lush and prolific before. These roses are called Hot Cocoa.

My Princess Alexandra of Kent roses are enormous!

That rose is over 4 inches across, and for once the plant is sturdy enough to hold all of the blooms upright.

These roses are the little ones that you buy in the grocery store. I planted them outside and they really are blooming their little hearts out now!

Do you see what is going on with this plant? I had to put supportive rings around it like you do with peonies because of the weight, and the buds haven’t even opened yet!!

So, the roses are looking pretty darn good. I went back into the house with the pictures and discovered that Hannah had ~~savaged~~ overly-loved the Soldotna while I was out of the house.

She has done this to other items. I think that she is grooming the sweater, but I was not happy…

I pulled the worst of the fluff to the inside of the sweater with a little crochet hook, and then I shaved the remaining fluff off. It isn’t perfect, but it isn’t horrible. I’ve decided to finish the sleeves and will then decide if I should rip back to above the damage and then reknit the bottom of the sweater. I don’t want to reuse the blocked yarn, and it all depends on how much of the dusty pink is left over. I’m pretty sure that I will rip and then reknit. This sweater must be cursed…

Hannah: I couldn’t help myself. I love the sweater soooo much… besides, it was WET WOOL!!!

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Mateo: Don’t forget about Caturday tomorrow!!!

Soldotna Saga Update

I have to admit, I’ve been way too emotionally involved in this little sweater, the Soldotna Crop by Caitlin Hunter. I shopped and shopped the stash for some yarn. I dithered about whether to knit this little charmer in the DK weight that the pattern was written for, or to go rogue and to try it out in fingering weight. Needle size became an issue. I decided to go up a pattern size, because… fingering… even though my gauge was close. Then there were the colors… I was pretty torn about how to handle the four colors as they are displayed in the final sweater. I wanted a speckled or variegated yarn to break up the pattern a little, but that creates its own issues… Finally, finally I arrived at a final decision and got through more than half of the colorwork chart. Here’s the post about all the false starts, tinking and whatnot that went on…

This is the final color order (left to right) that I settled on for my Soldotna Crop.

I’m happy to report that things are now working out! I knitted steadily last week and got past the split between the arms and the body of the sweater last Friday. By late afternoon yesterday I was a couple of inches below the split and becoming a little concerned about how this baby would fit. I took the work off the needles, did some fast steam blocking, and then tried it on for fit.

This is a huge, huge relief! I took it outside for some fast pics and this afternoon I’m putting it back onto the needles and will continue on. Yay!

Full view: I’m really liking how the colors are showing in the body; that’s why I wanted to use a variegated yarn so that there would be subtle differences.

I’m really happy with how things are going now. This sweater sure had a rough start, but I’m rocking along now.

Hannah: we’re heading outside to knit now!

Here’s the link to my Ravelry notes.

Basketball Synchronicity

Like just about every other kid in American, I have spent some time on the basketball court. I’m a wicked guard, not a great shot, and let’s not talk about my free throw statistics. There’s a lot of running around involved; I’m not a fan of running. Basketball never took for me, and as I got older, I was more drawn to softball, gymnastics, and volleyball. Basketball… meh. I don’t follow it, never watch it, and yeah… not really a fan.

But this year basketball has been all around me.

Last winter, fighting a flare, pumping myself up for a trip to the cath lab to check the pressures in the right side of my heart, I started reading The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama. Michelle really made an impact on me; she knits, she understands chronic illness, and she struggled with her height as a kid growing up in Chicago. The tallest girl by far in her class, she was always singled out, at the back in pictures, the anchor when kids lined up, you know… different. There was so much in her book to identify with; I suspect we all have something that made us apart and different as a child, and we all know how hard the middle school years are. She found her way, as we all know, and shines with self-confidence and purpose these days. The book was great, I learned a lot, and I recommend it.

Michelle is 5’11” tall, much taller than me!

Michelle wrote about her older brother Craig in the book, who also attended Princeton University, and out of curiosity I googled him. Oh. Craig Robinson has his own Wikipedia page. He’s a force in the world of basketball and is currently the Executive Director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. Suddenly the height in the family made sense, and I remembered that President Obama also played basketball. Kind of interesting, huh. Basketball.

I loved *Dear Edward*, so I bought this book as soon as it came out.

Then I started my next audiobook, Hello Beautiful, while knitting along on the Hannah blanket. This is a book that will stick with you a long time, and I’ve really been unpacking the layers as I think about it even now. Imagine a dysfunctional family that loses a child just as a new baby comes home. Somehow the grief and loss from the death of their little girl is projected onto the little boy (William) growing up, and he is alone, unwanted, at a loss, searching for a family, and quite tall for his age. He finds a family and sense of purpose in basketball. He marries into a family with 4 girls, and just when you think all will be well, the bottom falls out. He is unable to play basketball any longer because of an injury, but he is lost without it. He tried to be the man his wife wants and goes to graduate school where he begins a thesis on the History of Basketball, but he also struggles to understand who he is and what should his life be. There are births, deaths, loss, grief, abandonment, and yearning for family throughout the book… and basketball. William ends up working for the Chicago Bulls basketball organization. Another great book, I learned a lot, and I recommend it.

By the start of this week I was knitting again without my wrist braces (yay!) and I watched a couple of movies online while I stitched along. I’d heard about this new movie called Air that is the story of the development of Nike’s Air Jordan shoes, so I watched that Sunday night while stitching on the Soldotna Crop sweater.

Look at all the progress that I’ve made! I’m coming up on the point where I separate the arms from the body of the sweater.

I thought that this would be a movie about a scrappy little company creating a new shoe. Oh, it is that, but it is soooo much more. It is a story about purpose, finding your way, and basketball. It is about maintaining balance, recognizing your worth, demanding the best, and knowing that a shoe is just a shoe until a person who will be a force for change and a model of excellence, Michael Jordan, puts their foot into it. It is about risking it all in order to make a change. What a good movie! I seriously wanted to have a pair of Air Jordans for myself by the end of the movie, and it was even better because the basketball team involved is the Chicago Bulls in Chicago. William from Hello Beautiful‘s team!

There’s kind of a pattern here, huh? A president and first lady from Chicago. William finding himself again in Chicago at the Chicago Bulls. Nike putting all their marbles into one basket with a new shoe on the foot of a player that they think will be the future of basketball, a player for the Chicago Bulls. Synchronicity. Obviously, I need to watch some basketball…

While I was totally not paying attention, the Denver Nuggets, the NBA team in my area, advanced in the championship series. As it turns out, the game that could win them the championship was last Monday.

So, knitting like crazy, I watched my first basketball game in a couple of decades last Monday. The Denver Nuggets won! The first championship for the franchise ever. Fireworks were going off behind my house as I finished the last round of knitting before separating the arms from the body of the sweater; you know this sweater… it had been ripped and tinked for weeks as I struggled with it. Today I’m knitting away on the body, my wrists are pain free, and I seem to have popped out of the flare.

Basketball. Knitting. Perseverance.

Who knew basketball was so awesome?

I already knew about the knitting!