sweaters – Yarn, Books & Roses

Knitting after the Cath Lab

Hey. I know that I’ve been missing for a while (again). In my last post I wrote about my upcoming trip to the cath lab to get a right heart catherization. This procedure involves having a small sensing device threaded into your heart to check (in my case) the internal blood pressure. Normal pressure in the right side of your heart should be about 14mm Hg; mine had measured 44 mm Hg in an echocardiogram so my cardiologist wanted to get a direct reading.

Here I am, rocking my scleroderma symptoms along with the cath wound. Puffy hands, bluish nose and lips, tons of little red dots on my face… That bandage came off the next day and the entry wound healed right up.

The procedure went well. My pressure measured in the low 20s, which was soooo much better than my cardiologist feared. The number was higher than the last time I had a direct measurement, so my pulmonary hypertension has advanced, especially since I am now on medication to treat my condition, but I’ll take it! It was, once again, a really positive experience and I felt well cared for by all the staff. I was pretty exhausted, hungry, but upbeat on the drive home.

Then I went into a flare… I slept for almost the entire week after the procedure. Seriously, like 12 hours a night and a couple of naps. I had to go back onto daytime oxygen. My hair started falling out again. I was dizzy and exhausted. My joints really hurt. A flare.

This week I’m finally awake again and I pulled out the blanket that I’m knitting. I knitted more hexagons and measured the blanket on the bed. I went out and bought more yarn. I have the hexagons to add another row and the blanket is slowly growing…

I think that I’m going to need more yarn… this is the Nectar Blanket by Ysolde Teague.

I’m really happy with the progress of the blanket, but I have to admit that it is becoming a little boring. I dream of other knitting projects as I sew the hexagons together. I have a serious urge to knit a new sweater in some fabulous colors.

Look at this little topper sweater!! It is called La Prairie (by Joji Locatelli) and I seriously want this sweater. I want to knit in cool colors. Did I mention that I live on the edge of the Great Plains? I long to wind yarn and to cast on and to start knitting those waves and bobbles…

I broke down and bought this kit to knit the sweater online a few weeks ago.

The trouble is, I just have to dream and fuss about colors before I am happy. I’m not sure about the order in the kit yarn. I’m not completely a fan of the middle yarn, and I feel like the lavender should be in the middle. I’ve been digging in the stash and trying to image the finished product with other blends of color…

Here are three more spins on the yarn. I like the one on the left the most, with the yarn fading from dark purple to the light grey at the sleeves and bottom of the sweater, but I’m kind of interested in the middle and right versions. I have to ask myself… which version will have the most flexibility in the wardrobe? Definitely, it would be the first spin on the kit, the version with the light grey at the sleeves.

I also desperately want to buy yarn to knit a Soldatna Crop sweater, and some new arm warmers, and then there are those PICC line covers and hats to get done… Did I mention that I have been looking at more yarn online and dreaming of sweaters with lots of colors in DK weight yarn? I’m totally on a knitting drive, but my wrists are not on board with all this needle action. It could be that I’m not completely done with the flare…

Sigh. Guess I’ll just cast on another hexagon or two…

PS I’m still dealing with shortness of breath and low on oxygen; lung testing happens next month as my doctors continue to sort me out. 🙂

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!!

The Saturday Update: Week 10, 2021

Good grief, there is a blizzard outside! This has been a crazy week with lots of trips out of the house, but it looks like I’m going to spend the next few days dealing with snow. There is already 15 inches on the ground and more is on the way as the storm is expected to last until sometime tomorrow.

Knitting

I have been making progress on my Goldwing!! Check it out…

I finally made it through all of the colorwork and now I’m just racing along in the stockinette body.

I am really happy with how the colorwork looks and now that I’m going down the body I should take the sweater off the needles to try it on for fit and to see what the length is on me. I laughed to see that there is now a Goldwing KAL being launched by Jennifer Steingass in her Knit.Love.Wool Ravelry group as the pattern just turned 1 year old. Talk about bad timing! If I had only waited a couple of months to cast on this sweater! I struggle with the Ravelry format for groups, but maybe I will check out the group and make a better effort to figure out how it all works. It’s okay to join with other patterns from Knit.Love.Wool, and I have two more of her patterns that I plan to knit this year so I could jump in with one of those. I have to add that I am discovering this pattern to be extremely well written with lots of meticulous detail.

A new KAL launched today from Casapika (and Sharon from Security) that has sent me back into the yarn stash to poke around to see what I can put together for a cute little shawlette (Raspberry Cordial) with two contrast colors. This is the Anne of Green Gables KAL that I am talking about, and it is a short little one that will only last two weeks. I need one skein of tonal or speckled yarn with a couple of mini-skeins as accents to the main color. Of course Hannah helped me as I did this…

Hannah: there was a lot of digging in containers of yarn… I helped!!

I finally settled on three different yarn combos for the shawlette:

Now I have three options. The one on the left will have the raspberry colored yarn for the main color and the purple and gold would be the accents. Cute, huh! However this is not something that I would probably end up wearing a lot… I have had the Backyard Chicken combo for years and it would made a shawlette that I will wear, but it is kind of… not exciting. The third combo, plums and grays, will made something that I would wear a lot and is the more safe option. To be honest, I have lots of knitting already and probably won’t cast on right away, but a knit-along is so much fun, and I love being part of the Sharon Show community on Facebook, and how long would it take to make a little shawlette… I’m pretty sure I can find needles in the size that I need…

Garden

Books

I’m hooked. I finished the 5th book in this series last night and the 6th book is already downloaded onto my Kindle. To my joy there are several more books in the series. 🙂

That’s it. The snow is still coming down and my area is currently experiencing white out conditions. It’s hard to be certain but I’m pretty sure I have more than 2 feet of snow outside right now so this is going to be a huge storm. It is a mess and there is lots of shoveling ahead when this finally stops. Good times!!

It’s nice to have something to break up the knitting…

Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.

The Saturday Update: Week 4, 2021

It was a crazy, crazy busy week with lots going on. I had medical testing, an online court appearance to give testimony in a neighbor’s custody case, and a nail in one of my car’s tires. My medical status continues unchanged (blue lips, chest pain, shortness of breath), but the machinery to get to the bottom of things is now in motion. The first couple of rounds of testing have generated a referral to cardiology and hopefully that will happen this week. My neighbor won her custody case, and the car tire is now repaired. Whew! I spent the bottom half of the week relaxing with my knitting because I was completely pooped by all of that running around.

The Kitten Mom left me all alone THREE times this week!!

Knitting

I did make some good progress this week in spite of the trips out of the house.

My Geology socks are done!! I’ve decided to try to make at least one pair of socks each month, so these are January’s pair.

I also buckled down and did the blocking and finishing work on my Secret Life of Cats (and dogz) shawl by Sharon from Security (Casapinka). This is the longer shawl version of the project; there were also options to make a cowl or a scarf. Fun color for gloomy days, huh! I’m actually thinking that I may be giving this one away to someone who loves purple and bright colors and a scarf version made with scrap yarn from the stash may be in my future.

It snowed this week I so gave in to the urge and cast on one of the sweaters that I have been dying to get going on. I have wanted to make Goldwing for a long time, and bought the yarn a couple of weeks ago with my stimulus check. Here it is, finally started:

Look at the absolute quality help that I am getting from Hannah!!

The Scleroderma Chronicles: The Pulmonary Hypertension Edition

I few weeks ago I posted about my systemic sclerosis, Covid-19, and my decision to donate my DNA to the 23andMe Systemic Sclerosis Research Project. My DNA has safely arrived and is in the lab getting sequenced right now. I was motivated to contribute because Covid-19 is creating so many new patients with fibrosis that may benefit from this research in addition to people like myself with autoimmune disease or people with other fibrotic diseases.

Monday I had an urgent echocardiogram done and once again an eerie connection between my disease, systemic sclerosis, and Covid-19 appeared. My test was started a little late so I asked the technician if things were busy. He told me that they were very busy because there were so many Covid-19 long haulers who needed testing. After a while, thinking things over, I asked if these patients were getting heart damage. “Well, not their heart muscle, but they were developing pulmonary hypertension,” he said. Oh, oh. That is the very reason I was there getting an echocardiogram; as a systemic sclerosis patient I am high risk for pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary arterial hypertension, and I know that those are serious and life altering/ending conditions. After thinking a little longer I asked him how many Covid-19 long haulers were getting that diagnosis. “It’s in double digits,” he replied…

Double digits. At this one medical center in the heart of Denver. That means that there are potentially hundreds and hundreds of patients getting that diagnosis across my state.

I wished that I had thought to ask him how old those patients were…

The next day my rheumatologist called to let me know that I was being referred to cardiology as my echocardiogram results suggested pulmonary hypertension and that further testing was required. There is also an issue with fluid around my heart… It was what I expected, but not exactly what I was looking forward to. The only problem right now is getting me into cardiology, because, all of those Covid-19 long haulers…

It has been impressed on me that I need to double mask now each time I go out into public. I have a nice N95 level mask, but I’m also putting a medical grade mask on top of it.

Be careful, people!!

Stay safe and wear your masks!!

The Saturday Update: Week 2, 2021

Wow, already half done with the month. The weather has been pretty mild here and I took advantage of it to run errands and get more cleaning done. I turned in my DNA sample to 23andMe for their systemic sclerosis research project and spent a few hours answering their endless data collection surveys. I signed up to get the Covid-19 vaccine (yay!!) only to learn the next day that the government had lied to my state and the vaccine was NOT coming after all. UGH!!!! Hannah and I worked for a few hours on the quilt for my son; this is slow going as she seems to feel like this quilt is a new toy for her. I also really buckled down on The Secret Life of Cats (and dogz) to get that shawl done by the end of the week, and Hannah really outdid herself with feline support on that one, too.

So that was the week. In the background there was a lot of drama in the news this week which helped me get the knitting done while watching the impeachment debates and votes. Okay, we are getting close to pegging the stress dial for many folks; if this was a thriller novel it would be kind of into ridiculous territory about now. We still have an out of control pandemic, there was an attempted coup instigated by president, the president was almost immediately kicked off all media platforms and impeached, more violence is expected in the coming week so there are national guardsmen sleeping on the national capitol floors, there is no national stockpile of the vaccine, and the polar vortex is misbehaving again. AGGHHH!!! There, I don’t know about you, but I feel better. Having yarn and a kitten helps too.

Let’s just spend the rest of this post chatting about knitting, okay?

I cast off The Secret Life of Cats (and dogz) tonight. This baby is really huge, full of texture and lots of color; I almost hate to block it because it will grow even larger then…

The Secret Life is an advent shawl that was designed to be knitted one day/clue at a time starting December 1st and ending on Christmas. It was made to accommodate the advent knitting kits that many Indie Dyers put out, but since I didn’t have one of those I used 4 skeins of yarn from the stash. I like this shawl, but for the last couple of days I have been dreaming of making another one in the greys and plums of my new Christmas yarn. Hannah and I have already been digging around putting together yarn for the new shawl. I can use 4 skeins again, but I also have lots and lots of small amounts of yarn and it is tempting to put together a set of 25 colors. Lots of stash digging will be going on to make that happen…

I also got silly and bought more yarn. It’s not all weakness of character… the government sent me a stimulus check and I decided to stimulate the economy by buying yarn!! That’s why there are online yarn stores, right? I’m such a good Loopy Ewe customer they are now sending me free yarn along with what I’ve purchased. 🙂 I have long been a fan of Jennifer Steingass sweater patterns, but I have never knitted one before. This month I snapped and bought the yarn to make two more sweaters which means I now have three different Jennifer Steingass sweaters lined up. I guess that is my sweater resolution for the year.

I loved the Goldenfern pattern the minute I saw it, and I have been hunting down yarn to make a Goldwing for a couple of months. I also have the yarn wound up to make Solvi (that is the off black yarn and the pink) and I will be casting it on this week… really, really I will. I want all three of the sweaters right now which means it is going to be hard to ignore the ones waiting on the back burner as I knit. Time to knit fast!!

Hannah just loves to help with winding yarn!

The only other knitting that is going on now is that I did cast on a pair of socks to work on late at night while listening to my audiobooks and they are moving right along.

This is a chunk of the leg of the sock showing off the stitches. What, you are having trouble making them out? Note to self: solid colors show off details better then heavily speckled yarns.

I love the socks and I think that when I’m wearing them and the stitches are stretched out the pattern details will show up better. If they don’t, I will have to make another pain in a solid yarn, so there! These are Geology Socks and the Uschitita yarn is called Cloud Atlas.

Oh… I almost forgot! In my family we are a bunch of Star Wars fans, and perhaps the biggest one of all is my exceptionally knitworthy niece. She just loves The Mandalorian. Like a lot. She has a Child softie that gets posed in the best of places. Like at Starbucks. Or by her car…

That yarn is to make her a pair of fingerless mitts featuring Mando and the Child from the show The Mandalorian and they will be cast on as soon as the socks are off the needles. Or maybe sooner. It is the way.

Have a great week, everyone!!

Please stay safe.

Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.

And wear your mask!!

The Saturday Update: Week 46

What a good week I had this week. Okay, the Covid-19 numbers are rocketing up into the stratosphere while people on Facebook still vent about governmental overreach and their refusal to wear a mask (!), but the weather was nice and Hannah and I had a very productive couple of days reading in bed and knitting like banshees. (I bet you didn’t know that banshees knit. Of course they do, and they are very fast while never, ever, dropping a stitch!) I got to the grocery store late one evening and stocked up for a few weeks and cooked up some yummy meals that will last me through the next week. I also went crazy and bought a whole package of creampuffs. It’s my pandemic, and I will eat creampuffs if I want to!!

Knitting

Let’s get right to the knitting, shall we? I finished my Misurina!! Early in the week I took the stitches off the needles and onto a yarn holder to check for fit and things looked good!! Boy, did that get me fired up to knit like crazy! The pattern is for a cropped sweater and advised that you knit 5 inches below the armhole before binding off, but I was like, NOPE!, I will keep knitting until I run out of yarn because cropped isn’t the best look for little short-waisted me. To make sure I had a good feel for the yarn amount I finished the sleeves with my second cake of yarn and then blended the two yarns together as I transitioned from the first cake to the second in the body. I kept picking up speed during the week and finished binding off early this morning. Today I misted the sweater with water and hovered a steam iron over it to block it and the finished sweater is just what I wanted. Look!!

It’s a little tee type sweater that just rocks! Seriously, this is such a comfortable item to wear and I couldn’t be happier. The sweater is knit fairly loosely but is surprisingly warm and a nice layering item. Caitlin Hunter for the win again!! My Ravelry notes are here.

I seem to have spent the rest of the week agonizing over the colors and yarns to use in the next batch of knitting projects. Hannah and I went through the yarn stash over and over as I pulled out yarns and tried to dream up color combinations. I would make a decision only to change my mind the next day and back into the stash we would go. I want to make a Solvi sweater. I bought the pattern for Slipstravaganza but never cast on as I was buried in other knitting projects. Okay, I will be honest… Stephen West is really artistically adventurous and I was a little nervous about committing 5 whole skeins of yarn to a knitting extravaganza if I didn’t know what it was going to look like. I worried about where to put light and dark colors. I love my yarn and didn’t want to waste any… but as this week went on and people in the group began to publish their finished shawls I loved what I was seeing! Now that I know what the final project is I can make good choices about colors and knitting order. I need to make one of these!! I maybe need to make two of them! The pattern required 2 skeins of a main color and three more contrast colors, and after much stash diving Hannah and I came up with two combos of yarn and colors.

I think that the yarns on the left are going to be my first shawl, but I am really torn about the yarns on the right as they might be more useful in the winter. I have two skeins of that navy yarn so it will be the main color; that inky blue sort of screams winter, right? On the other hand, the cheery colors of the yarns on the left might be exactly what I need right now. There is a lot of yarn in these shawls so whichever I pick is going to be my main project for the month along with the sweater. So many decisions. So much yarn that I need to wind…

I am also waiting for The Secret Life of Cats (and dogz), the next knitting adventure designed by Sharon from Security, Casapinka’s snarky, sushi chomping, citation writing, but mostly supportive-to-knitters feline employee. This adventure will be coming in a few more weeks, but I wanted to get started on the yarn selection and came up with these happy and wild colors:

I posted the pictures of the yarn on Facebook to ask if they were too wild for The Secret Life and Sharon says they are A-okay. Yay. More yarn to wind!!

There is also a pattern for a Siamese cat wearing a little Fair Isle sweater that is going to be published by Claire Garland next week. I need that too. I think that some other members of my family are going to want one of them also… the cat doesn’t absolutely need to be a Siamese, as other cats probably also wear darling Fair Isle sweaters… So much knitting, so little time…

Books

Did you notice that I jumped right over the gardening? No gardening going on here lately. Most of my plants are still alive, but how interesting can pictures of jade plants and orchids be when there aren’t any blooms. Hey, do jade plants bloom? Why haven’t I seen any blooms? I may have to look into this…

I’m still immersed in the adventures of Giordano Bruno, philosopher, spy and crime investigator in the 16th century.

I finished Conspiracy last week (Bruno solved the murder mystery, got his lost knife back, and even connected with that woman he was hoping to find in Paris) and started Execution right away. Hey, Bruno has abandoned Paris and King Henri and we are back in London again. Bruno is once again involved in high intrigue uncovering a plot that threatens the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and wouldn’t you know, there has been a murder. Of course. Bruno must insert himself into the conspiracy to execute Elizabeth to make way for Mary Stuart (and the supremacy of the Catholic church in England), derail the plot, solve the murder, keep his knife safely at his side, and maybe, maybe convince the woman of his dreams to marry him. It’s a lot. I’m reading my way steadily through this latest chapter in Bruno’s adventures. I think that this is the last book in the series for now so I’m going to have to divert to another genre again after this. I do have a nice science fiction waiting for me…

Well, that’s it.

Have a great week, everyone!!

Please stay safe.

Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.

And wear your mask!!

The Saturday Update: Week 37

Well, this was a week. It seemed much, much longer, but really, it was only a week. My youngest son alerted me that he was battling some type of infection early in the week and the news stations began alerting me that the weather was going to be just wacko for a few days. The forecast was so crazy we made the national news.

Yep. We broke a record for the heat amid warnings of a serious snow storm on the way. The smoke from wildfires in the mountains west of me kept the sky a dirty white color and the sun a sullen red ball as I brought all of the potted plants into the garage for safety before the expected snow and hard freeze. The temperature dropped over 60°F in 24 hours and I had to start up the furnace. I covered the roses to protect them and my son started a second prescription of antibiotics.

Two days later the weather had warmed up again, the snow was gone, and I had carted all of the potted plants back outside for a few more weeks of sunshine. The fires in the mountains were chugging back to life after a few days of respite during the snowstorm, and a text had came from my son that started with, “Don’t panic…” His doctor had sent him to the ER, he was transported to a second hospital where he had emergency surgery and landed in the ICU on a respirator overnight. This afternoon he is off the respirator and sending me text messages again while I make calls to his nursing team. Because of Covid I’m not with him right now and I JUST HATE 2020!!! I think that we are all due a break.

Knitting

This was a week for garter stitch for sure. I did some work on the new Misurina sweater early in the week, but by the end of the week, aware that my son was not getting better on his antibiotics, I was all garter stitch, all the way.

I’m further down the yoke of the Misurina sweater (by Caitlin Hunter) and am happy with how it is going.

The colorwork sections of the yoke are separated by little cables, can you see them there in the grey? I was catching the floats in those cable stitches but you can see them peaking through because of the loose gauge so I am just making really long floats now. I don’t like to do that in general, and I have an idea of catching them later on with some clever stitching with grey yarn if they are a problem, but for now extra long floats are the plan.

Lured into a sense of autumn by the cold and snow I cast on another garter stitch shawl using some Mad Tosh sock yarn in the colorway “Rocky Mountain Colorado” that looks like all the colors of fall.

This is the Age of Gold shawl by Joji Locatelli.

The large garter stitch shawl is finished off with a lace border in a nice contrast color that can pick up one of the colors in the garter fabric. I kind of want to use a dusty pink that I have, but I’m also tempted to buy a beautiful saffron colored yarn I saw online. So many decisions in a week gone bad! Right now I’m just going to keep knitting and once I’ve got more yarn into the shawl I’ll have a better idea about which color I want to highlight. The trick is to make the colors sparkle instead of toning down the shawl… Ironically, because of the extreme heat followed by a hard freeze, the fall colors in our mountains won’t be that nice this year. Thanks again, 2020!!

Garden

Right before the rain started I went out into the smoky air and took some pictures while moving plants into the safety of the garage.

The stonecrop was just starting to bloom and covered with bees. Poor guys… hope they got home before the rain started.

While I was taking the picture of the bee there was a flash of movement to my left… a bunny in the back yard again!!

The stonecrop came through the storm just fine under the tubs I covered them with and the bees are back. I haven’t spotted the backyard bunny again, but the squirrels are putting on a show in the front yard for Hannah as they race around the front ash tree. As I took the knitting pictures yesterday I spotted this under my Douglas Fir (the only good Doug is a dead Doug… poor maligned tree): an owl pellet!!

The first time I’ve ever spotted one of these in the wild!

A little calling card from one of the great horned owls reminding me about the circle of life.

By the way, the mountain lion has been seen a couple of more times, but not in my backyard, thank heavens!!

Books

The Pull of the Stars was great! Set in Ireland, it is the story of a nurse working in a small ward with pregnant women stricken by influenza during the Great Influenza pandemic in 1918. The characters are rich, the historical setting and issues ring true, and I chomped my way though the book in just a couple of days. Along with the pandemic there are threads about the great war, shell shocked soldiers, the fight for Irish independence, prejudice against women, and the abuse of the “pipeline” that consumed women and children not protected by the sanctity of marriage in 1918 Catholic Ireland.

The title is a nod to the origin of the word “influenza” which comes from an Italian outbreak in medieval times that was attributed to the influence of the stars.Our heroine nurse records each death and loss as tiny scratches on her watch. A moon for a lost mother. Tiny lines and half moons for stillborns and premature births. Every loss is recorded in time from an illness poorly understood and difficult to control. Kind of haunting, huh.

So I attended the live discussion with the author of this book at Barnes and Noble, and it was great! The author, Emma Donoghue talked about her work and answered questions from viewers that were general ones like “why did you choose this situation” or “how difficult was it to portray medical understandings of a century ago”. It was fine, but I also would have like to just “talk” about the book, the characters, and their actions with the other participants. Nope. No spoilers allowed. There must be a way to have reader chit chat just like the real book club would do. I guess I’ll keep digging and maybe ask B&N if there is a way that can be set up. It would be just another Facebook group, right?

Have a great week, everyone!!

Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.

Be kind to each other and stay safe.

It’s time for me to call the hospital again.

The Saturday Update: Week 36

I think that I am just about done with 2020. Never, ever has there been a year so ill behaved in my own memory. Today we hit a record high of 100° F where I live, and on Tuesday it is expected to snow. We had another case of bubonic plague in the state. A geyser in Yellowstone National Park, long dormant, has suddenly returned to life. Covid-19 cases are spiking in the states that surround my own. The nightly news continues to be a horror show, and some of it is just downright triggering. There can be no longer be doubt that the current administration is taking action to accelerate the Covid-19 infection rate in the US; stay tuned, folks: our fatality numbers are going to be astounding. Every day brings more tweeted lies and misinformation meant to contribute to racial tensions and general chaos, and the words “civil war” are popping up more often in my social media timeline. The president was reported to disparage war dead as “suckers” and “losers” this week, and also encouraged his supporter to vote twice. This is just plain historic, but also very painful. I’m totally over living in interesting times.

Some days it is hard to stay cheerful.

But Hannah and I are doing our best. 🙂 Also, I’ve told Hannah that she can’t play with the squirrels because… plague!

Hannah: There’s a squirrel, Kitten Mom!! Let me out, let me out, let me out…

Shameless hussy squirrel chomping down my flowers, oblivious to the intensely focused kitten at the screen door.