Remember these yarns that were used to knit my look-alike friend?
Well, I’ve been hanging out with the knitted friend all week while it has been snowing outside. He is almost as good as a blankie!! The Mother of Cats had some trouble naming my knitted buddy… she got lots of suggestions from other bloggers (whatever that is… do they have cookies?) like Matheson, and Ross, and even Fuzzy, but when one of her blogging buddies suggested “MacKnitzie” that was the name!!
Anyway, the Mother of Cats took MacKnitzie with her when she went on a road trip to her son’s place this weekend. She left me all alone!! Why does the Mother of Cats do these things, and why did she have to take MacKnitzie with her? You should see all of the things that MacKnitzie did while I was home all alone without anyone to groom my fur or give me cookies for my afternoon snack. The Mother of Cats needs to have better priorities!!
MacKnitzie got to sleep on a strange cat pillar…And he played with the new kitten that belongs to the Mother of Cats’ son.Okay, I heard from MacKnitzie that the kitten beat him up, bunny kicked him, and chewed on his paw. It was just awful! How could the Mother of Cats let this happen to him. When it was over he rested with the kitten’s toy rat until he recovered.Then he took a nap with the grown up cat that lives there.
Whew. It was really hard to get through the two days without MacKnitzie!! I can’t believe that the Mother of Cats separated us like that! What was she thinking about? Thank goodness she brought him home safe again for me to take naps with last night.
Because MacKnitzie is the best little napping buddy a cat could have!
I’m such a good boy.
Can I have some cookies now?
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
I’m collecting all of the yarns to make two more cats. The first will be the orange kitten, and then I have to figure out how to knit a tuxedo Maine coon cat… lots and lots of fluffy fur going on!!
See what I mean?
I took all of the collected yarns up to my son’s place this weekend along with the knitted cat so he could give me feedback on the yarns that I was thinking of using.
I got such great ideas for names for the knitted cat! My sister called him Fuzzy, which he certainly is. Highlandhuffalump suggested the clan name Matheson, which I really liked, and then Catherine mentioned Ross for a name, which was also pretty darn appealing. When mildlygranola suggested “MacKnitzie” it was over: the knitted cat absolutely decided that it wanted to be named MacKnitzie!! Thank you all for the help.
The knitted cat is the pattern Cat by Claire Garland. MacKnitzie’s project page is here.
I just got the email from the vet’s office last week: Happy Birthday, MacKenzie! Really, we aren’t completely sure how old MacKenzie is as I adopted him as an adult from a PetSmart over 14 years ago. The vet at that time felt he was at least 2 years old, which makes him now over 16. He is an elderly gentleman cat in his golden years.
Things weren’t always good with MacKenzie. He had been surrendered by his previous owner due to bad behavior: he scratched and destroyed everything in his path. Okay, let’s be frank here: MacKenzie was hell on cat feet!! Sneaky and wise to the ways of a spray bottle, he was hard to control as he ripped up curtains, furniture, and even dry wall. He was also extremely needy and demanding; there weren’t enough toys in the world to keep him entertained. Very smart, strong willed, curious, socially inclined, and a cat asshole, he was a mess like no other. I hunted for cat behavior modification tips on the internet, bought cat trees, scratching posts, liquid catnip, and kitty deterrent spray for the furniture. I also bought kitty cookies!!
And I got him a kitten! This is Yellow Boy, his “baby” who really calmed and stabilized him until his death 18 months ago.
It took a few weeks, but with enough toys, his kitten, and lots of positive attention (and scratching posts) his behavior changed and he transformed into the cat I have today. He’s still a handful, but he (mostly) wants to please me.
Today he is my buddy and companion as we both struggle with medical issues.
The last year has been one of difficulty and medical misadventures for MacKenzie and me. Last winter I was struggling with swollen and painful joints, inflamed tendons/ligaments, and had trouble walking. MacKenzie’s right jaw locked and became badly damaged. I had to cut down his kitty cookies. By the end of summer my leg was completely collapsing and dropping me, and MacKenzie blew out the other jaw joint. I could see white bone in the joint before I got it to unlock and rushed him to the vet. Not good, not good, not good. I got him in the door at the vets office in his carrier somehow while managing to walk with one crutch.
The vet drew blood while we were at the office.
MacKenzie will need surgery to completely recover, but in the meantime the vet and I decided to use a course of anti-inflammatory drugs to help him heal. I wasn’t sure I should put him through surgery due to his age and general hatred of vets. The biggest problem was having to move him to soft food and there could be NO MORE KITTY COOKIES!!! MacKenzie hates soft food so I also bought him kitten food with its tiny kibble.
The blood tests showed that MacKenzie had hyperthyroidism so we started him on medication for that. Everything was going great until…
We ended up at the emergency animal service in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve.
We were really in trouble. MacKenzie was taken back for x-rays and an evaluation. Extreme constipation. A swollen spleen. Stones in his bladder. The vet wanted to do a biopsy on the spleen as it is probably cancer. He needed to have special food to dissolve the kidney stones; he will need surgery if they don’t dissolve. He had a loose tooth that needed to come out. I started him on the food and we made plans to have an ultrasound done in another month to check on the spleen and bladder stones.
Meanwhile I was having a spot of trouble myself. I developed extreme exhausion and worse shortness of breath. I had a few bouts with faintness and couldn’t stay on my feet more than a few minutes at a time. I collapsed in the yarn store and just narrowly avoided a 911 call. My face looked blue around my mouth way too much. I had a persistent pain in my side. My doctor ordered blood tests and a CT scan. I was ticking all of the boxes for lymphoma…
The special food for MacKenzie’s bladder stones came as soft food and a dry nugget kibble. The kibble was much larger than the kitten food, but I switched him to it anyway and offered him soft food too. I faithfully kept giving MacKenzie the medicine for his hyperthyroidism as the vet emphasized that this was critical for me to do. I was supposed to give MacKenzie a stool softener every day, but he refused to eat it on his food and would just vomit up the pill if I got it down him. The strong-willed sneakiness that got him dropped off at PetSmart all those years ago was back as he snuck behind furniture to throw up the pill where I wouldn’t find it.
Such a sweet boy… but very strong willed!
I caught the flu when I went in for the CT scan, and while I was sick MacKenzie began vomiting and showing signs of constipation. For 4 days. I battled with him to get his stool softener in. Desperate, I finally smeared Vaseline on his paw hoping he would lick it off and ingest it, and I stopped giving him his hyperthyroid medicine as I’m pretty sure it is the cause of this constipation.
Meanwhile my test results came back: not lymphoma, but that pain in my side is my spleen. My spleen! Me and the cat, rocking our swollen and painful spleens!! My blood work showed that my red blood cell count was way too high, and I had to get tested for a rare blood disorder called polycythemia vera (no results yet), and my doctor ordered a couple of other cancer screening. I also have a small hiatal hernia, a damaged esophagus, and increased fluid around my heart. Oh, scleroderma, why can’t you just behave yourself?! I have a sick cat on my hands!!
Vaseline saved the day and we managed to stay out of the kitty ER. Then MacKenzie’s loose tooth fell out and I broke a molar. “Why are we trapped in this bizarre parallel medical misadventure horror story,” I asked MacKenzie. Too sick with the flu to go anywhere, we both just had to hang tough for another week.
Then, just as MacKenzie got to the 30 day point on his special food, he dislocated his jaw again. Well versed in how to respond at this point I was able to get it to release within seconds, but that was the end of those big kibbles. I switched MacKenzie back to his kitten food. The vet prescribed a sugar solution, our last option, that I’m supposed to give MacKenzie three times a day to control the constipation. Right. I’m supposed to convince this ornery, strong-willed, too-smart-for-his-own-good cat to gulp down sugar water from a syringe every day. How can I do that without getting bit?
Give him KITTY COOKIES, or course. I stay right with him the whole time in case his jaw goes out.
So, here is the crazy end of the story. I’m feeling better after three weeks of bed rest and eventually we will get to the bottom of my new symptoms: I have some invasive testing coming my way and depending on what happens there will be further treatment. I’m pretty sure I’ll be back on oxygen before this is over. My cat is also feeling better and is pretty much back to where he started: eating the food that he wants and getting his kitty cookies again. Here’s the thing: I am in control of what happens to me, and can decline medical treatment, but MacKenzie needs me to do that for him. Last week I made those decisions.
My vet calls each week to check on MacKenzie; she has discussed the importance of maintaining a good quality of life for him as long as possible, but to not go too far. I have stopped all of MacKenzie’s meds except for the sugar water and I have decided to not subject him to any invasive testing, surgery or chemo. I’m going to keep him as comfortable as I can and we will ride this out to the end together.
And then if there are garter snakes in heaven MacKenzie and Yellow Boy will be chasing them together.
Heaven had also better lay in a stock of kitty cookies!!
Spring was challenging this year. It was colder and wetter than usual, with lots of windy, stormy days. I wasn’t able to get out to work with the roses as I usually did in past years, but I did manage to pull up the worst of the weeds and dumped some Miracle Gro on the front flowers one day. Really, there was some rose neglect going on, for sure.
I guess the Miracle Go, cool days, and all that moisture was what the front flower bed needed. The miniature snapdragons came back from last year and I’m pretty sure that there are more plants than I put into the ground, so some are seedlings. The roses look better than I’ve ever seen before!Hot Cocoa roses.
When I went shopping for the front roses I looked to see what was available and then checked the list of recommended roses for Colorado published by Colorado State University on the nice little pdf in the above link that gave hints for successful planting. These roses, picked to go with my house, are called Hot Cocoa. They are floribundas, so there should be more blooms following these beauties.
The roses in the back garden were finally rescued from the overgrowth of weeds one afternoon a couple of weeks ago, and look what emerged!
The Princess Alexandra of Kent rose is producing the largest blooms that I’ve ever seen on this plant!
This rose bush, Princess Alexandra of Kent, has never looked this good before. The blooms are so big the plant is having trouble supporting them, and this rose bush never got fertilizer. It has to be the cool, wet spring.
MacKenzie and I have been working diligently in 30 minute increments to get weeds out of gardens, and the most astounding discovery has been what happened to a virtually unloved rose along the back fence. Seriously, this is a rose that “went wild” when the original grafted rose died and the roots took over. I kept cutting back the runners, pulling it out of the ground, whacking it back into a reasonable rose size, and basically losing the battle with this rose that is determined to live.
Please allow me to present the “One Rose to Rule Them All” that has taken over the back garden.
That is all one rose plant that has grown immensely in the prime rose growth conditions of the last couple of months. I have now surrendered to fate, pulled the rose all back and attached the canes to two trellises and the top of my garden swing. Clearly, this rose will be growing down the fence in the years to come.
Did you notice the rotting seat to the swinging garden chair? Ugh. It is all nasty and sagging these days and clearly needed to be replaced. This week I cut the seat off and went to work to replace it with something that will allow me to return to my garden where I can read and knit in the presence of the One Rose to Rule Them All and the other flowers that are flourishing this year.
I warped up the seat of the chair with 20 lb clothesline that was advertised as “sag-resistant” and “easy to knot” after detaching the frame of the seat from the swing.I cut lengths of line to do the weaving and knotted each line to the frame after weaving it through the weft.
I made sure that the seat was really taut so that it wouldn’t sag when I sat in the swinging chair. I reattached the seat to the frame and then lashed on another clothesline as “warp” across the seat back and then called it quits. If I need to weave in more pieces of line I can do it later, but I’m thinking that just the warp across the back will be enough to make the swinging chair function the way I want it to.
Ta-daa! It is done, the seat is absolutely perfect (not even a little sag!), and I am back into my garden.
Did you notice the weeds? Sigh. It is endless, truly it is. I’m resolved to not overdo things and will continue to work my way through the gardens, little by little, 30 minutes at a time, and day by day my yard and the gardens are looking better.
Between weeding sessions I will be hanging out in my garden swing, knitting away, with my beautiful roses. My cat MacKenzie will be sleeping in his garden, and hopefully the dog next door will be behaving herself.
This week the heat finally arrived and we hit the 90’s. My scleroderma joints are happy with the warmer weather, I continue to flourish with the new drug changes, and I can finally knit outside again. Yippee! The lavender plants and yarrow are covered with buds, and I have lots of perennials that need to be freed from the weeds.
Do you see how closely I worked with the Mother of Cats this time?
I am happy to announce the arrival of our bouncing baby Nordiska after weeks of effort. I really supervised the Mother of Cats closely this time and kept my paw on the knitting at almost all times, and I do say that my efforts have really paid off.
Looking good, huh! Now that the weather is nice again the Mother of Cats and I are starting to hang out in the yard again.
The Mother of Cats totally freaked out within hours of finishing this sweater and pulled out boxes of yarn to wind for new projects. So emotional, the Mother of Cats. She simply can’t function without me and at least 4 different projects to work on at once. I helped her with all of the yarn winding and we’re hard at work getting new shawls and mitts done now. Next time I write I’ll show them all off!
Here are some of the photos showing the entire knitting process:
The yarns!The cable detail along the raglan sleeves.Close-up of the Fair Isle colorwork. I used a slightly darker gray at the bottom of the sweater and you can see the slight difference in the gray in the colorwork.
I posted the picture of MacKenzie sleeping in the knitting to a Facebook knitting group and he already has almost 550 likes. No wonder he has an outsized kitty ego…
This really snuck up on me fast; one day I’m kicking myself for planting cold weather pansies that immediately died in a September heat wave, and the next I’m bringing in all of the outdoor potted plants to protect them from an overnight frost. Here in Colorado there weren’t many transition days and the heat pretty much kept up until the first snowflake arrived. Last week the dreaded word SNOW first appeared in the nightly weather forecast and I immediately dragged out a couple of projects that had been languishing over the summer.
Little handwarmers made from a yak blend yarn.
These fingerless mitts were made for an old student who was badly injured last month in a accident on her way to work. She is still on crutches, the cold weather is on the way, and I simply didn’t quite know what to do for her other than contributing to her Go Fund Me campaign. Oh yeah. I knit! I was able to produce some soft comfy mitts from some Yakity Yak yarn (Greenwood Fiberworks) in the stash. The mitts are now hers, and I hope so much that she continues to make an amazing recovery. The project notes can be found here, and I wrote up the pattern that I used for these simple mitts in an earlier project’s notes that you can access if you want to make some of these too.
I really love mitts, but sometimes I just need more: arm warmers!! I’ve been adapting the Ärmelitas pattern from knitcats Design and for the latest version I decided to try tubular cast on. Oh, my. It can be a little confusing, but with some great help from the great tutorial on Purl Soho‘s site I was up and running fairly quickly. Look at all these tutorials that Purl Soho has posted! Knitting gold!! I bookmarked this right away, and maybe you will want to also.
The tubular cast on was so nice and tidy I decided to look for tubular bind off. Back to YouTube I went and the one that worked for me was this tidy sewn version that I found at New Stitch A Day. I was befuddled at the start, but after 3 or 4 repeats of the steps I was up and running. Here are the finished arm warmers. See how nice the edges are? Tubular, totally tubular.
I wanted to warmers to be a little loose on my arm (comfy and warm) and long enough to stay put on my upper forearm. Check. Theses guys work.And these arm warmers are cat approved. There, what more would a knitter want?
I’m really happy with these arm warmers, but I’m thinking that I want to make the ribbing a little longer at the top of the warmer to help it stay in place at the top of my arm. I wrote my pattern adjustments and you can find them on my project notes here.
Sunday the forecast is for SNOW, and this time it will probably be more than a few flakes. I am knitting like crazy on my latest sweater and I wound more yarn for another set of arm warmers. I’m starting to like tubular cast on. Someday I may be able to do it without staring at a computer screen while I work.
Have a good weekend everyone and don’t forget to knit!
p.s. I’m knitting a Zweig sweater from these yarns. I absolutely can’t wait to show it off!!
See, won’t this look great? I love how these colors go together.
I’ve been just cranking on my What the Fade?! shawl for the last week or so since I last wrote about it. Once I had bid the brioche section at the top of the shawl goodbye it was garter time… lots of garter. This is really easy knitting even with the fun of the fading, and MacKenzie and I have just settled in to binge watch Netflix and crank out the rows of changing colors.
The shawl is now so big that I can’t get it open for a picture, but you can still get an idea of how it looks. I just finished fading in that light blue speckle, and there are two more colors to go before I’m done. My project notes on Ravelry are here.
Here’s the thing… I’m doing a lot of dreaming about yarn colors and projects while I’m knitting. It makes things worse that I still have the fabulous Western Sky Knits yarns that I bought at the Interweave Yarn Fest last month still out on display to encourage my dreaming. I already blogged about this yarn: check this out if you want to see my fabulous dream-inducing colors! I’ve been reorganizing the yarn stash and going through my patterns between bouts of knitting, and then I kind of slip into a garter stitch, color-induced waking dream state where I match color/yarn ideas with patterns to decide on projects.
So, with no further ado, let me introduce you to the line-up of May and June projects:
The blue tonal Posh Fingering yarn from the Uncommon Thread has been hanging out in my stash for about a year waiting for the right project. I just love this golden brown from WSK, and it also is 10% cashmere. Perfect match! I’m going to make a Zweig sweater from them, and the golden brown will be the lace yoke in the sweater. I can’t wait to get going on this, and every time I think of how cool this sweater will be the garter stitch pace in my Fade shawl picks up.I absolutely love this skein of painted cashmere blend yarn from WSK. Don’t you think that it will look great with the Zweig sweater? I love the look of this little shawl, and I’m thinking that I should transform some of the handpainted Christmas yarn in my stash into scarfs like these for gifts. But not now. Now I have to knit all of this fabulous yarn that is calling to me.These two yarns are my absolute favorites. I want to make a shawl that shows the two off really well, but not too crazy in the pattern. I’m not completely committed to it yet, but I’m pretty sure that I’m going to make Albuquerque Sunset by Casapinka with this yarn. Did I mention that I just bought a light pink summer top? Perfect!Last but not least, how about a simple summer tee that will use up some of the cotton yarn in the stash and show off the colors of the shawls? Yep! I’m hoping that these Throwback Tees will just fly off of my needles, because I’m going to need them to go with these shawls!
See why I’m knitting so fast? Look at these fabulous yarns and great patterns! Actually there is a lot more where this came from. I just checked, and I have 25 items in my knitting Queue on Raverly, 1,122 patterns in my library, another 159 patterns in my Ravelry shopping basket, and a world class yarn stash. This is all kind of overwhelming if you think about it too much, which is why it is hard to finalize decisions. The last couple of days things just fell into place and I made a list of knitting decisions and kitted up the yarn with the appropriate pattern.
Then I went back to knitting my fade and dreaming of what to do with the colors I have left over. Dreaming of yarn and the beautiful, useful objects that I can make from them.
What can be better than that?
In case you’re wondering… I am still in the middle of testing to clarify the cause of my worsening scleroderma-related symptoms. This week I head in to see another doctor and will get my echocardiogram done; after my heart is sorted out I can get the pulmonary testing that I need. Right now the discussion is mostly about my heart, but they are still gathering data so no definitive diagnosis yet. Through all of this I’m just rocking my knitting and refusing to worry about what I can’t change. Tomorrow I’m planting more flowers in my garden! Peace on, everyone!
My, how the time flies. Not that I’m having a good time here, but it is hard to believe that it has already been three years since my diagnosis of limited systemic sclerosis (AKA scleroderma). I’ve been reflecting on the last year while planning this post, and decided that I should start out with a little info about my disease, share the highlights of my three years, and then give unpack this year a little.
But first, a butterfly picture! Butterflies have hard skin, and they are doing OK. Be like a butterfly, I tell myself. This little lady was part of a massive migration of butterflies that came through our state in the fall. Seriously, there were so many of them that they showed up on the weather radar and the NWS put out a bulletin asking the public to identify the bird species: not birds, but butterflies.
Scleroderma is an autoimmune disease that is chronic (no cure), progressive, disabling and possibly fatal. It is rare, which is why you probably never heard of it. The name itself means “hard skin”, and that is one of the most distinctive features of the condition. The widespread scarring and buildup of collagen protein that causes the hardening of skin also occurs in internal organs in patients with the “systemic” form of the disease like me. Most of the damage is hitting my intestinal tract, but my lungs, kidneys and heart are also sustaining damage. In the background, hard to see, but never to be ignored, is damage occurring in blood vessels that can cause blood pressure to soar and places me at risk for blood clots.
I have collected several doctors over the last three years as damage continues to slowly accrue in my lungs, kidneys and intestinal tract.
Here are the highlights of my first three years:
My first year was one of shock and horror. I was so worried about tightening skin and the use of my hands that I didn’t ever think about the bigger picture. I was started on drugs, stabilized, and felt much better by the end of the year.
The bottom fell out my second year. I was using my hands okay, but I developed breathing problems, had to be placed on oxygen, and my heart started to misbehave. Adjustments were made to my medications to compensate for my lowering lung volume and to slow the rate of lung damage. At the lowest point I was sent to palliative care and told to make final decisions.
This year, the third, has been one of highs and lows. The new medications kicked in, I came off oxygen and my chest pain stopped. I was discharged from palliative care. I developed gastroparesis and had to move to a very stomach-friendly diet. I stabilized and sailed through the first rounds of appointments in the spring only to develop kidney problems in the summer along with higher pressure in the artery that goes from my heart to my lungs. This blood pressure, which is called pulmonary arterial hypertension, is extremely damaging to the heart and will need to be addressed if it gets any higher. Fabulous. Another doctor.
My summer this year was really hard. I got very dizzy, developed joint pain and sore muscles, and eventually got so brain fogged that I was afraid to drive. My knees were swollen and developed sharp, shooting pains; I will need to buy a new car if this keeps up as I can’t manage the clutch much longer. I struggled on the stairs and my face turned blue on a regular basis. My neighbors stepped in and took over the yard work for me, and my knitting buddies began to drive me to all fiber related adventures as I wasn’t sure I should be trusted on the road. See, highs and lows. My illness is kicking my butt, and the people around me are stepping in to make sure I’m OK.
Early this month I met with my new internist to see if there wasn’t something that I could take to beat some of these symptoms back. OK, I’m going to be honest here. I cried. We agreed that I would start the tart cherry extract again, but at a much lower dose than I took previously in the spring. (Tart cherry has anti-inflammatory properties and is easier on my stomach than NSAIDs. Unfortunately, my kidneys were damaged the first time I tried to take it.) I’m going to have my kidney function checked every month, but I’m already so much better (brain fog, goodbye!) that I’m really hoping that I can tolerate it OK. In the meantime I’m getting lots of chores done in this golden period while I feel so much better. I’ve moved furniture, completed some projects, and have driven to many, many stores that were ignored last summer.
And I made a crocheted had for my niece to wear this Halloween. Really, I’ve been a bundle of energy the last couple of weeks.
So, this is the end of the third year. I feel pretty good, I’m getting things done and making plans, and I am making hay while the (tart cherry) sun shines. Next week I get my blood drawn for the kidney function test and after that I see the rheumatologist.
I’ve been thinking about butterflies again. The day after I took that picture of the butterfly it snowed. A lot. It took a couple of days for it to melt as the temperatures climbed back up into the 60’s and 70’s. I wondered if the butterflies would make it. As I walked out of the office building after seeing my internist (and still recovering from my crying fit in her office…) I found butterflies swarming around one of the shrubs by the parking lot.
Those butterflies. You can kick them, but they come back. Be like a butterfly, I tell myself.
Today was Rare Disease Day. Rather than write a new post I decided to repost this one from last year. Please read on if you would like to know more about this day created to raise awareness about rare diseases and what it is like to live with them.
2/28/16: I woke up with notes in my email box reminding me that this was the big day. Oh, yeah. I guess I should say something about it on the blog, but what? I mean, I do have a…
A couple of weeks ago the bottom fell out from under the Midnight Knitter family: health emergencies, rushes to the emergency room, surgery, a life altering diagnosis of colon cancer for my older son, and the death of a beloved dog. A terrible 10 days.
A week after returning home from the hospital my older son developed complications and once again ended up in the emergency room. Blood clots! Holy smokes, this is not something that I would wish on anyone! Once again we took turns at the hospital and knitted through the wee hours of the morning. It was days before he could go home again.
I finished knitting the drijfhout sweater before I got sick. What do you think of these buttons? I still haven’t attached them or done the finishing work. Soon. Very soon. Then there will be a picture for sure. Project notes are here.
Then the next shoe dropped: even before my older son was out of the hospital again I came down with the plague. Seriously, it had to be plague. It couldn’t have been flu, since I had that shot earlier this year. <snark> Whatever, I got sick. Really sick. Too sick to knit. Ugh. It was bound to happen since I was burning the candle at both ends for days on end and taking chances walking into hospitals with a seriously drugged up immune system, but still … I think that we are due a break here!! After a week in bed I dragged myself up to my younger son’s place and have been recovering with him since then. Now it’s a whole week later and I’m still struggling to get around with a dizzy head and shaky legs, but I am definitely starting to feel more like myself, and I am back to knitting every evening.
I’m knitting like crazy on my Find Your Fade shawl. Look!! I’m four colors in and have three to go. I’m still obsessing about making some color changes…. My project notes on Ravelry are here
Tomorrow I will head on home again. Poor MacKenzie! He and Yellow Boy were pretty much abandoned this whole week with only a couple of checks to make sure they had food and water. I know I will be getting an earful from them once I’m back.
MacKenzie: What? An earful you say? Just because you ABANDONED us for an ENTIRE week?
Tomorrow my oldest son starts chemo.
I think of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s quote from Knitting Without Tears a lot in times like these. “Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crisis.”
Yarn, Books & Roses 