Uncategorized – Yarn, Books & Roses

Thoughts on the Night of the Harvest Supermoon

The supermoon has been slowly building over the last few evenings. Enormous and bright, I have been watching it slowly grow in fullness all week. I’ve been looking forward to watching this moon, the Harvest Supermoon of 2025, rise this evening, but of course it is raining and cold. I know, even though I can’t see it, that the moon is there, just out of my sight.

Tonight’s moon pretty much matches my mood this evening. There is this beautiful shining thing, just out of sight, but just knowing it is there, I am buoyed up and happy. I’ve been thinking about recuerdos and glimmers all day as I cleaned out boxes of things connected to my sister and son: bits and pieces of things that they valued and were stored, or sent, to me over the years. Nestled among the junk and ancient clothing there are objects that instantly transport me to another place and time: recuerdos.

Those two big tubs are full of my sister’s fabric stash. And unfinished projects and quilts… things that she loved and had plans for.

My mom was raised in Argentina during her teens and early twenties, and she was bilingual and somewhat multi-cultural in her approach to life. Every important trip or event required a recuerdo to help capture and preserve the memory of the event; she would insist that we select and keep something. Recuerdos are like souvenirs, or memories, but richer and more transformative, returning you to an important experience. That’s what I’ve been finding as I go through the boxes: pictures, trophies, knitted items, old quilts, a college diploma, stuffed animals, and marching shoes. Every single item rich with memories, returning me to the time when I visited a national park with my sister, or watched my son from the bleachers in a fencing tournament at the US Air Force Academy. Like tonight’s supermoon, something great and shining is right there with me, out of sight, but real all the same, and I am happy.

I found three unfinished quilts in the tubs. All the fabrics bundled together, a lot of the cutting already done, everything organized to create the quilts that she dreamed of. I was instantly transported to her favorite fabric store in San Diego, picking out fabrics with her on a beautiful summer afternoon.

Grief is a difficult thing to deal with, but I’ve learned some lessons over the years as the universe kept shoveling bad news in my direction. It helps to write. It is important to acknowledge what has happened, and to allow your support groups to… well… support you! Honor the good in the people (or life) that has been lost. Focus on what you can do, not what is no longer possible. Make sure you are getting enough to eat; remember to rest. Reconnect with your friends, and get out of the house. Create purpose and beauty from the loss whenever possible.

What to do with all of this… stuff… in the crates?

My sister loved autumn colors. Orange, yellow, greens, and browns. I found almost 20 skeins of ORANGE yarn in the crates, and as luck would have it, Halloween and Thanksgiving are right around the corner. All of that yarn is going to be transformed into chemo hats. I’ve been making 2 a day and hope to get them all to an infusion center by the middle of the month. Can you feel the glimmer? I’m looking forward to driving them to a Kaiser infusion center up north next week through the fall foliage; maybe there will still be some sunflowers in the fields. Glimmer.

Then there is the fabric. Oh, boy. There is a lot of fabric there! I’ve been sorting through it and pulling out nice colors to make into zipper pouches (filled with hygiene products) for the DART program at Denver Health.

This week there was an article in the local news about an organization that provides comfort quilts to trauma survivors. They take in donated fabric and unfinished quilts: what a great place for my sister’s unfinished quilts to go!! I’ve been sorting my own fabric along with my sister’s to get the donation ready, and I plan to drive it up to the organization next week. Can’t you just feel the shine of the supermoon just out of sight? It’s like there is a glimmer hiding right behind my shoulder, raising my spirits and centering me again.

So, this is life. I’m pulling myself back together while surrounded by items that my sister gifted me through the years, sorting the fabrics, yarn, and projects that she once had big plans for, reliving our time together, and taking her dreams into the future with me while mindfully watching for the glimmers of peace and joy that are there for us.

Shine on, Harvest Supermoon. Shine on.

P.S.

These are my son’s cats: Jonesy, Gabriel and Liam.

I was able to successfully rehome my son’s three cats all together two weeks ago. This week, as I worried about how they were doing, I followed the story of Francine’s loss and the resulting successful rescue operation. Yesterday when I heard that Francine had been returned to her home, a Lowe’s store where she is the resident cat, I heard from the new owner of my son’s cats; they were out, sleeping on her bed, and chomping tuna. Glimmer time!!

Yarrow, Lavender, and Sage

The last day that I watered my garden was the first week of August. The days were hot and dry, and most of the flowers in my gardens were gone, but the yarrow, lavender and sage were shining in the early morning sun. “I should write a blog about the garden,” I thought to myself. Sitting on the swinging chair on my catio, drinking my morning latte, I took a picture of Hannah and a lavender plant to send to my son David.

The picture failed to deliver. The phone told me that he was offline.

I wouldn’t know it for a couple of more days, but my wonderful son, one of the best parts of my life, had died of complications of his type 1 diabetes. His loss has left a gaping hole in all of our lives.

That evening of the day that I found him, I took a bad fall while taking out some bags of trash from his apartment. Yep. I ended up in the emergency room.

Luckily I didn’t break anything, but I certainly was bashed up and I’m still recovering from the injuries. While in the emergency room I also picked up another gift:

There it is, my very first positive test for covid. I can hardly believe it happened. I was pretty sick the first week, and then the virus lingered on for two more weeks before I finally tested negative in the beginning of the fourth week.

Through all of this I have been pretty dysfunctional. I haven’t been able to read, or knit, or work outside in the garden. The grass has died, and the flowers are now all gone. I found myself unable to blog because I didn’t have any idea how I could tell this sad story, but I also realized that I can’t return to blogging without acknowledging what has happened. Today I am doing that.

This week I began to return to life. I picked up the knitting again. I sewed some zipped pouches to donate to my community action group: they will be filled with hygiene products and given to people in need through a program at a local hospital. I started collecting pictures for my son’s online memorial, and eventually I will return to writing my blog again. I’ve been contacted by some people who were worried about me, and I am sorry about that. Hopefully, soon, I will be posting again.

Here she is, the emotional support chicken that I knit for my son out of homespun yarns and red purchased alpaca yarn. I found her in tatters on his living room floor, all of the red yarn eaten by insects. Kind of fitting: broken heart, broken chicken.

I considered calling this post Loss, Grief, and Sorrow.

Forever more, that is how I will remember yarrow, lavender, and sage.

The Scleroderma Chronicles: This is World Scleroderma Day!

A couple of weeks ago I went in for a routine blood draw at my local Kaiser clinic. I gave the phlebotomist my ID card and told her my name and birthdate: for some reason they like to verify these things, right? Anyway, what happened this time was… she exclaimed that didn’t look my age. (Well, yeah. That may be one of the bigger red flags for scleroderma… no wrinkles.) “It’s just my disease doing that,” I assured her. “I really am that old.”

This lady wanted to know what I had done to get rid of the wrinkles. She wanted this magic wrinkle remover too! I carefully told her about scleroderma. “I never heard of that!” she said. Still thinking that I was a lucky person, she drew my blood and I got out of there. I would be happy to have every single wrinkle that I have earned over the years, but no… I have scleroderma. The systemic form with limited skin involvement. Lucky me.

I do have wrinkles around my chin and mouth, but I was wearing a mask during the interaction with the lady at Kaiser. I had to go on oxygen this day (I have lung and heart involvement) and you can see the swollen tendons in my hand and the tight skin over my knuckles.

That’s why there is this thing called World Scleroderma Day. This is a complex autoimmune disease with illusive symptoms (brain fog… trouble swallowing…GERD…swollen fingers…trouble breathing sometimes…fingers that suddenly lose circulation and turn white or blue…) that make the disease difficult to diagnose without specialized testing and evaluation by a scleroderma specialist.

Systemic sclerosis (the form of scleroderma that I have) is thought to start with some event (still unclear) that triggers the formation of antibodies that target specific molecules the nucleus of cells. These antibodies lead to damage in blood vessels and their linings; the damaged blood vessels release chemical signals that trigger a cascade of events that impact other cells of the body. Some cells are related to inflammation. Other cells are tipped over into forming uncontrolled scar tissue (fibrosis). Here is the problem: the tissue engaged in fibrosis is all of the connective tissue. What is connective tissue, you ask? Think of all the ways a person is held together. Tissue that makes your skin stretchy. Tissue that holds your muscle fibers together. Tissue that makes up your tendons, ligaments, and the structure in your joints. Tissue that holds your intestines, heart, kidney, and lungs together. The cartilage in your ribs. All inflamed, under attack, and forming thicker and thicker layers of scar tissue. Some of this damage causes calcium deposition. Unobservable from the outside, the patient is slowly hardening inside. The most obvious symptoms is the skin thickening and then pulling tight over time.

Scleroderma, and especially systemic sclerosis, has the highest fatality rate of all rheumatic diseases. Did I mention that there is no cure? There are treatments for complications that develop like pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and interstitial lung disease (ILD), but they, like the immunosuppressant drugs that many of us take, mostly stabilize and slow progression. (Dear Kaiser lady… that’s why I was getting a blood draw. The drugs that I take are risky, and my doctors need to make sure my kidneys and liver are tolerating the meds okay.)

So, what is the purpose of World Scleroderma Day? It’s to highlight this condition that impacts more people than it should even though it is rare. It’s to raise awareness of the symptoms and hopefully aid in other people getting an appropriate diagnosis. Maybe shining a spotlight on scleroderma will help in getting funding for research, treatments, and even a cure.

Sunflowers are the international symbol for scleroderma.

Here is where you can learn more about scleroderma, it’s symptoms, and treatment.

PS How was my blood work? Yay, doing okay!! Kidney function is up into normal ranges again!!! How old am I? I was born in 1951. 🙂

The Emotional Support Chicken Story, Continued…

Last year, right about at this time, I blogged about my nephew, my sister, and the Emotional Support chickens that I had knitted for them. You can read that blog post here, if you wish. Here is the very short version of that post: my sister asked for support chickens when she learned that her son was suffering from terminal liver failure. After his death the chicken that I sent her became a lifeline as she slept with it, took it to her son’s memorial services, and then to his interment of ashes. That knitted chicken, a small thing, became an important symbol of love and support in a time of grief.

Here’s the chicken, looking sassy, on the morning that I sent her off to my sister.

The chicken moved on with her when she moved to Cody, Wyoming. It was with her, in her bedroom on Monday, June 16th when she took a bad fall getting out of bed that resulted in a broken leg and a serious cut. The chicken was left behind as she was rushed to the nearest hospital.

Thus began a sad, long list of problems and complications as my sister was stabilized, taken to surgery, moved to the cardiac unit, and then scheduled for more surgery. My cat went down a few days into this downward spiral of medical disasters, and by the time I got him home from the Vet Saturday night it was clear that my sister was in trouble. Sunday, we learned that she was being transported to another medical facility in Montana that was better equipped to treat her. Her daughter in California grabbed the first available flight to join her mother and her sister at the new hospital. Somewhere within this time frame the emotional support chicken caught up with her.

Here she is, ready to go to work, in the waiting room of that Montana hospital.

And that was it, the beginning of the end. My sister was moved to hospice care, and her last days and hours were as peaceful as the staff could make them. To the end, the chicken was with her, hard at work, a surrogate for me at her side.

Do you see the chicken tail sticking up out of the covers? That quilt is one that I sewed her years ago to be a cheerful addition to her hospital bed when she got a hip replacement.

Tuesday morning my sister slipped away, with her daughters by her side: it was exactly one year and one month after the death of her son.

Emotional support chickens are just… cute little knitted chicken shaped pillows to hug. They are also symbols of love and support when you need those things desperately. They are something to cling to in bad times. Sometimes they are all a knitter can do for another person in need, and sometimes they are just what that person needed.

It’s just a little chicken. It can be everything.

Knit on, my friends, knit on!

My snarky, supersmart, indominable sister Selma. Gone too soon, part of me forever.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Bad Days

Hi. I’m Mateo.

It has been the worst two weeks ever! I started throwing up early last week, and then the Mother of Cats shoved me into a cat carrier and rushed me to the emergency vet last Thursday. There were lots of tests and x-rays. I was treated badly. I got lot of drugs that were THE WORST and I was in a cage without the Mother of Cats anywhere in sight. I had needles with stuff coming out of them in both arms!!! The vet did more testing during the night, and early in the next morning he called the Mother of Cats to let her know I needed emergency surgery. So last Friday morning, as soon as the morning crew arrived, I was rushed into the operating room for abdominal exploratory surgery to remove a bowel obstruction.

Then I didn’t get better, and I had to have more drugs. I refused to eat and I hated my cone around my head. I WAS SO UPSET!!!! The Mother of Cats came to stay with me for an hour and brought all of my favorite treats and tuna, but I still wouldn’t eat…. so I got a feeding tube.

Last Saturday the Mother of Cats took me home to see if I would eat there. She took off that horrible cone and put me into a surgical recovery suit that she found on Amazon. I look pretty silly, but I was happy to be home: I found the food bowel and started chomping within 10 minutes of getting home.

So now I am stuck in this big DOG crate for ANOTHER WEEK while my stitches heal. Hannah is getting all of the attention, and she even gets to go out on the catio without me! I miss my bunnies…

I do get some breaks from the cage, and the Mother of Cats just wanted me to let you know that we haven’t disappeared completely, but things have been busy for the last two weeks.

This is Mateo, signing off.

>^..^<

Note from the Mother of Cats: it was the most dang expensive hair ball in history. It looks like he ate some hard pieces too that I think must have been the noise maker of one of his toys. He vomited during surgery, but he didn’t develop pneumonia, so that trainwreck was dodged. Since he had abdominal surgery he can’t jump for another week, so that’s why he spends most of his time in the dog kennel. I can’t say enough about how much better the little surgical recovery suit is compared to wearing a cone around his little face.

While all of this happened, we had a major emergency in the family, a crazy hailstorm, my illness flared after repeated nights of interrupted sleep, and my roses bloomed like crazy out in the yard. My favorite is this one:

The name of this rose is “Easy Does It“.

Good to remember. One day at a time, my friends.

How crazy was the hailstorm? This crazy…

Hannah and the CoalBear: Stuck on Sea Glass Island

Hi. I’m Hannah.

The Mother of Cats has been a handful lately. Ever since she finished her last sweater she has been mooning around the house, reading books, and sadly sorting through her yarn stash. Seriously, she has been pulling out all of her yarn, making lots and lots of little piles with different colors, and then she carefully puts them all away (and I want to emphasize, she is really ignoring my needs while this is going on!!!) to only take them out a day later. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS MOTHER OF CATS!!!! Seriously, I think that she may be a little broken right now.

She started out by taking out these yarns that she JUST LOVES and thinking that she could use them to make a Sea Glass sweater.

I have to admit, those are nice colors. The Mother of Cats has lots of yarns that will go nicely with those colors, and she decided to pull them out of the stash and group them together. Then the trouble started: how much pink. Where did all the dark wine-colored yarns go. How much gold should go into the piles? Is this yard dark or light? Should there be purple? How much white is too much…

This is more than a little exhausting. Even Mateo is upset with the constant trips into the yarn stash!

Then she went out and bought some more yarns that go nicely with the inspiration yarns…

Now she has finally made two big piles of yarn that are sorted into piles that are dark and light. Sounds like progress, right? No. This is the illusion of progress, because she is still worried about how to create a balanced sweater from all of those colors, and maybe she should put in some more crazy colors as pops, or… WHERE IS MY TUNA!!!! This is completely out of hand.

You have to admit that there is enough yarn here to make more than one sweater, but is she casting on a sweater? No, she is not…

She has been making little Sea Glass hats to color swatch different color combinations. To be frank, I think that she just likes to knit and knit, and she is having so much fun with the hats that the sweater is now in limbo. Eventually she will get through this (I hope) and move on to the sweater, and I think that she is slowly calming down and getting more confidence in this whole “mixing up lots of different colors from the stash” thing that is required by the sweater.

I am carefully monitoring her progress on the hats, and I think that is helping her too.

Last night she mentioned that there is a Sea Glass tee that would work better for warm weather… she thinks that she can use fingering yarn for the tee without using any of her PRECIOUS DK yarn. I don’t understand what the problem is… isn’t one catnip mouse pretty much the same as the others? Whatever. I do have some concerns about how this simultaneously out of control but also stuck on Sea Glass Island, wracked with indecision, phenomenon is progressing. Why can’t the Mother of Cats do anything the simple way? With her everything is so dang complicated!! Eventually there will be a sweater… I hope. And more catnip mice.

Look at what she has done with my boxes!!

Sigh. I’m going to see if I can get the Mother of Cats to give me some kitty cookies. Bye.

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Note from the Mother of Cats: The Winter Albina sweater finally got blocked and I’ve been wearing it every cool day for the last two weeks. This may be my favorite sweater for some time!

I’m off to cast on another Sea Glass hat… this is what happens when you love your yarn stash too much…

Hannah and the CoalBear: Sweater, Storm, Moon.

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’ve been supervising the Mother of Cat’s knitting while she listens to her audiobook. My newest favorite spot is in front of the television!

The Mother of Cats has been knitting like crazy lately while listening to Erik Larson audiobooks. She just finished The Demon of Unrest and is now deep into Isaac’s Storm. She says that the books are interesting, and I guess that they are because she sure listens to them a lot. She should spend more time running around the house and letting us play outside (and giving me TUNA), but nope, she has been knitting. Look at what came off the needles yesterday…

She finished casting off her sweater last night! Look at how nice it looks on the catio carpet.

She really like the sweater, and wanted to write a post about all the little nice features in the construction, but I said that I was more than able to do that for her. I’m not just a pretty face with sharp claws, right? I have skills!! I have spent hours and hours watching her make this sweater, and I know what I’m talking about.

So, hang onto your tuna treats and chirpy toys: here is the grand tour of nice things about this sweater. The first picture (top left) show how the color of the yarn has some subtle changes in intensity that kind of softens the strips. That was a feature for the Mother of Cats, but I personally couldn’t care less because it all looks nice with cat hair on it. The picture in the middle of the top row shows the nice decreases that show off the neckline. (Yawn… the Mother of Cats spends too much time appreciating things that aren’t important, right?) If you thought she was kind of silly with the neckline, then you will love the shoulder seam at the top right. Look at how smooth the seam is!! This is the first time that she has picked up stitches to start the front of the sweater where if looks… perfect. Even more perfect is the fact that there are several short rows in that knitted work that I absolutely can’t see because they are just PERFECT!! While we are talking about perfect, can I mention how much I like catnip? A little catnip right now would just set me up…

I get my catnip served on a pink donut. How do you prefer yours?

Now we are up to the very best parts of the sweater.

The bound off edges of the sweater were all done with hand-stitched tubular bind off. The whole time the Mother of Cats was sewing the edges the yarn was flipping all over the place and I… just… had… to… grab… it a little with my claws from time to time. Just a little bit. Look at how nice the finished edge of that sleeve is!! I’m positive that my contribution really helped make it look that nice. Finally, there is the huge ribbing at the bottom of the sweater. The sides of the ribbing aren’t supposed to sewn together, but the Mother of Cats has decided to stitch the two sides together anyway. Yay. More flipping yarn to chase!!!!

Mateo: Hannah isn’t the only one who helped with the sweater.

The Mother of Cats has been really working steadily on this sweater for over a week. Why you ask? Because there are lots of exciting things on the way for the end of the week and she wanted to be able to wear her new sweater when it gets cold again. Can you believe that there is a Bomb Cyclone on the way??? And a Blood Moon?? At the same time?!! Doesn’t that sound kind of thrilling?

Maybe I’ll get extra tuna in the excitement!!

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The sweater is the Winter Albina by Caitlin Hunter; I altered the pattern to make it crew necked. I’m both ecstatic to have it off the needles and morose that the knitting part is over. I’ve spent part of the day hunting for a new sweater to knit, but I do have a blanket that I should get back to first. But… there are so many pretty sweater patterns… and pretty yarn possibilities…

The coming storm is a problem because the air pressure will drop really rapidly when the low comes over. As many of you know, low pressure means painful joints; it also means swelling in my lungs and low oxygen levels. Here’s the projected pressure graph and what happened to me in the last low pressure event.

At almost the exact same time that the pressure starts to drop like a rock the blood moon will arrive. That’s not ominous at all, right? Hopefully all the finishing work on the sweater will be done before then! I do have to mention that it is a little eerie to be listening to an audiobook about a massive hurricane as this thing forms up just due east of me…

Hannah: I forgot the most important thing: it will also be my birthday on the 14th!!! I like to party in style!

Hannah and the CoalBear: We’ve Been Knitting!!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you see this new blankie? The Mother of Cats and I have been working on it all week!!

During the really bad cold weather the Mother of Cats took out a blankie that had been hibernating for months and months and laid it out to see how much was done…

There is kind of a lot of these knitted flowers! The Mother of Cats calls them hexagons, but I call them comfy!! The Mother of Cats has been making one or two of these every day and I keep a close eye on her to make sure she doesn’t make any mistakes. She has to make about 6 more of these and then she gets to sew them all up together. I plan to take lots of naps on the blankie while she is sewing the little units together!! The Mother of Cats ordered some more yarn to use with this blankie as there is even more knitting that has to happen after she is done sewing all the little pieces together, and I can hardly wait for that to happen! Do you know how much fun it is to chase this yarn? It kind of is my favorite!! The Mother of Cats said that the extra yarn is for the border, whatever that is. Maybe it is something that Mateo the CoalBear can chase? He’s getting a little bored while we are working so hard on these hexagons… Poor CoalBear. He wants to go out onto the catio because all of the bunnies have been playing in the yard every evening.

Mateo: That’s a nice looking bunny!!! Don’t you think that this bunny wants to play with me?? Here bunny, bunny…

Mateo still wants to be a SnowCat, and I have to admit, he is still growing winter hair like crazy!!! Does he know something that the bunnies and I don’t know? Is there colder weather on the way? Look at how crazy hairy he has been getting! No wonder the Mother of Cats doesn’t encourage him to sleep on the blankie… besides, it is MY BLANKIE!!!

Enough of Mateo the ~~CoalBear~~ SnowCat. Let’s get back to the knitting. The Mother of Cats also finished up another one of the unfinished projects that had been hanging out for months and months, a hat, and I was with her every single step of the way.

Pretty good job, right? You can hardly see the cat hair on the hat from here…

So, that was the week. The CoalBear and I went out onto the catio every single day this week to watch the bunnies, and then we spent the rest of the time helping the Mother of Cats crank out hats on her little knitting machine in the afternoons, and then we knitted in the evening. That’s a lot of knitting, right? She has 25 hats to donate to Frayed Knots (but NOT THE FANCY HAT!!), she almost has all of her little hexagons knitted up, and before you know it that blankie will be all put together and we will be doing the border. Yay. Maybe then she will make me a little knitted chicken to sleep with on the blankie.

Or maybe I should go chase Mateo around a little… I can hear him crashing around downstairs…

Time for me to get some exercise and then some tuna. Laters!

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I’ve been listening to audiobooks while working on the machine knitted hats and the hexagons. Right now I’m in Chicago getting ready for the World’s Fair, and there is a killer on the loose…

This book is really interesting because my grandmother’s family is from Chicago, and all of this was happening while she was a toddler. I wonder if she was taken to this fair…

That hat is Alpine Bloom by Caitlin Hunter. It fits me perfectly and I am keeping it! The blanket is a huge version of Nectar by Isolde Teague.

I’ve almost cleared out all of the old projects that have been hanging around the house. I still have some little emotional support chickies waiting to be finished up, and then I will be ready to start another big project… like a sweater…like the Winter Albina sweater by Caitlin Hunter…

Look at the squishy mail that came today!!! Winter Albina, here I come!!!

All the New Things

It’s been a little more than a week now, and so far things are looking up in 2025. Here are the highlights of the week:

That’s right. A new pattern came out for Emotional Support Little Chickies that are just the right size to put into your pocket to take with you on the go. Yay!! I bought some cheap multicolored yarn to make a bunch to send off to the organizations that my community knitting non-profit supports. These guys would make the day at one of the cancer infusions centers, or maybe at Ronald McDonald House, or they can even ride along on the ambulances that respond to mental health crisis calls.

Then a present came in the mail from a sister. A Pink. Zebra. Striped. Furblet. It makes noises. It has one little CoalBear pretty darn concerned…

Isn’t that the cutest thing? I burst out laughing when I opened the package and saw what it was. Mateo, however, is not laughing!

Speaking of new things, do you see this new winter coat that Mateo is sporting?

I also have been ignoring the few little knitting projects that were still active at the end of the year. It’s a new year, I need new things!!! I casted on and started a pair of new arm warmers that are coming right along. New is good, right? Look at how bright and happy these colors are.

I found this yarn in the stash, and these warmers will be soooo cute with all of my grey sweaters.

I kind of used a pattern to get me started on these arm warmers, but after I had looked at the notes to see what size needles were used and how many stitches were cast on I just took off and did my own thing while checking for the size from time to time. I mean, look at those things: how hard does it have to be? If you crave some of your own, those needles are size 4 (3.5mm), I cast on 48 stitches using DK yarn, and when I got close to my wrist (these are knit from the elbow down towards the wrist) I decreased twice to get the stitch count down to 44 stitches before the wrist ribbing. I put a marker in the decrease rows so that I can make the second arm warmer match. See, easy!! But fun. And new.

The other big new is the new car! I took an Uber down to the Subaru dealership the second day of the new year, and after 5 exhausting hours I drove home my new Subaru Forester. Yay! New car is good!! Exhausted and stressed to the max, I made the last turn towards home in the dark of the early evening, and there ahead of me, enormous in the western sky as it just began to tuck itself behind the Rocky Mountains for the night, was the new moon.

I took this picture the next evening. The moon is a little bigger than the tiny sliver of a moon that I saw when I brought the car home, but you can see how new it still is. That is Venus right next to it. New Moon, new car.

It’s been a pretty good start to the year, don’t you think? I went yesterday to get some medical testing done, and everything is looking pretty good. Yay! 2025, let’s do this!!

My African violets are also starting out the year right.

Goodbye 2024, Goodbye

Maybe it is my age, but this year just went by in a flash. Here are the highlights.

I knit 151 hats that have all been donated to the community knitting non-profit organization that I belong to.
I knit 26 Emotional Support Chickens.
I completed several pairs of socks and one sweater, the La Prairie cardigan.
I learned how to make fingerless mitts on my Addi Pro kitting machine and I made39 pairs that are still waiting to go to Kaiser Rheumatology.
I read 57 books that had a total of 23,218 pages.
Quite a few of the books featured octopuses…

My knitted cat with some of the octopus books,,,

Whew. That was kind of a lot. I also put out a bird feeder this year, enjoyed a lot of wildlife in the yarn, grew plants in pots on the patio, and then successfully moved several of them inside to hang out with me in my craft room. I left all of the wildlife outside to the disgust of one little CoalBear cat.

So, it was a productive year, but there were challenges of course. I started the year in a monster fibromyalgia flare, fought my way out of anemia, developed sudden tachycardia attacks over the summer, and then finished up with a bad scleroderma flare that was exacerbated by injuries from an auto wreck. Nothing absolutely horrible, but it was kind of one thing after another all year long. Sigh.

Somewhere out there is my car, Stumpy. I took this picture the day I signed over the title and accepted the settlement from the insurance company.

Today it is the start of a new year. Today the African violets in my garden are blooming, and I have finally recovered from the injuries I sustained in the car wreck. Today things are finally starting to look up.

Hello, 2025.