Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: Caturday Report

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do I look like I’m pretty focused on something?

Today the Mother of Cats and I had such a busy day I’m just now getting around to writing my Caturday report. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff we have been doing! The Mother of Cats went crazy last week and ordered all of this stuff, and the boxes started coming a few days ago.

I just love boxes, don’t you? It was really exciting for the CoalBear and me as the Mother of Cats started opening up the boxes today and dragging out the stuff.

She bought and put together a new printer for me to play with in the bedroom. Yay! I can’t tell you how much fun it is to help her print out patterns and stuff!

She also bought a power shovel to use with the snow this winter, but that isn’t so exciting for us. It was fun helping her put it together, but the best thing was she used the two big boxes that the shovel came in to build a cat fort for me and the CoalBear. There are big doors to zoom through. Little holes that we can use to poke each other, and even tiny holes on the top to let in the light. I spent the afternoon sleeping on top of the biggest box in the sunshine because sometimes that is the best part…

After all the useless boxes (those would be the ones that couldn’t be used in the fort…) were cut into pieces and dragged into the garage the Mother of Cats and I moved upstairs to get serious with the knitting. Do you like this hat that we are working on? It is called the Alpine Bloom Hat, and we made a lot of progress on it this afternoon while listening to a fun book about a cat who lives on a space station protecting the Earth.

This book is great! Look at that cat… she looks a little like me!! She pretty much runs the space station, answers alarms and fires weapons to take care of threats towards humans on the (pretty much ruined) planet below. Her name is Lily (not as nice as Hannah, but still a pretty good name), she is immortal, and she is very smart because she has been uplifted and can talk and has battle armor and everything. Okay, not having thumbs is kind of a problem for her, and it was hard to get everything to work right before she figured out machine assisted speech, but still. How cool would it be to have your very own space station equipped with like a death star type laser weapon, a friend named Sparkles who writes you haikus, and a ghost in the station… oh, wait. Lily is kind of freaked out about the ghost part. The Mother of Cats and I need to listen a little more…

You don’t think that a cat could run a battle station in orbit? Have you met THE MONSTER that comes to visit me sometimes with the Mother of Cat’s son?

MONSTER: I could run a battle station in orbit with one paw behind my back!!

Well, that is all for now. I’m going to see if I can talk the Mother of Cats into giving me some tuna for a bedtime snack.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Weekender Crew Touchdown!

What a knitting journey this has been. The minute I saw The Weekender Crew by Andrea Mowry I wanted to make one. It’s a big, comfy sweater with some cute stylish details (pockets on the front) that I thought would be my best friend all winter long. Dropped shoulders. Long sleeves. Split hem. DK weight yarn. Deep ribbing on a perfect crew neckline. I mean, this was an ideal sweater for me. I went on an online hunt for the yarn and my son drove me to a yarn store up north of me for a birthday yarn shopping event.

Isn’t this just the perfect yarn? I’ve knit with this superwash merino before, and I’ve found it to be soft and squishy with almost perfectly matching skeins.

I cast on in late September and immediately ran into trouble with the cast on. Tubular cast on, to be specific. I think that I’m a pretty accomplished knitter, but definitely that new cast on required a learning curve. I blogged about that whole adventure here. The edge created by the cast on looked really nice, so I patted myself on the back for hanging in there and mastering a new technique and enthusiastically knitted on. I should have realized that the cast on was a harbinger of things to come. This perfectly simple weekend sweater was a great vehicle to learn many new things.

Behold: tubular bind off. I’ve done a type of tubular bind off before, but the one in this pattern required set up rows and a rearrangement of the stitches on the needle to create a perfect, sturdy (stunning) edge that matched that cast on that the sweater started with.

So, now I’d learned a new cast on and a new bind off. Cool. I managed knitting the rest of the sweater and arrived at that wonderful moment when the whole thing gets blocked. This sweater had obvious ripples in the fabric at the transitions between ribbing and the stockinette, so it really did need to be blocked.

Do you see how puffy the body of the sweater is above the ribbing on the bottom? Not the look I’m wanting in the final sweater.

Andrea gives good directions in the pattern on how to block using a good soak, sandwiching the sweater between towels, and then walking on it. Who are you??? I wondered. Have you been channeling my mother… she absolutely would block like this, but there was no way I was walking on my beautiful squishy (expensive) yarn. This yarn is superwash; I’m nervous about it stretching during blocking. While thinking of mom, I suddenly remembered her explaining how to steam the gathers out of a pinned sleeve before sewing it when I was a nervous teenaged seamstress. I decided to go with mom on this blocking adventure… I laid the sweater out on the blocking mats, misted it well with a spray bottle, and then gently steam blocked the gathers away with my iron while the yarn bloomed and the ribbing opened up. Yay!! I covered the damp sweater with towels to dry, and Hannah immediately moved in.

Hannah: Don’t you just love the smell of wet wool in the morning?

Here’s the blocked sweater. Hmmm…. pocket sewing isn’t exactly my forte…

Yep. Time to learn a new skill. Andrea linked to a tutorial on pocket sewing that was extremely helpful, and after letting the sweater sit in a corner over-night, I pulled myself together and tackled the task.

I used a lace weight yarn to outline the exact row of knitting that I was going to stitch into while attaching the pockets with mattress stitch. What a good idea, right? I also followed the tutorial directions in attaching the pocket bottoms, which gave me a perfect bottom edge. Wow. An old knitter can learn new tricks!

Ta-daa! I have the perfect oversized, comfy sweater with lots of polished details that I am going to wear all winter long. I kind of wish that I had made a smaller size now that it is done, but I can always make another one, right? Altogether, a great knit and the perfect birthday project.

Hannah: she couldn’t have done it without me!

The BioGeek flirts with Long-Hauling

It’s been over a month since I first developed Covid-like symptoms and began to spend my days in bed. Like, my bed became my little nest with the detritus of a prolonged illness littering the floor and shelves around it. Outside the world moved through the end of summer; my tree lost all of its leaves, and the garden moved into dormancy. The birds disappeared. The squirrels have remained on the crazy side, but the crickets are now silent. The cats are chasing the last few grasshoppers of summer, but they are almost too cold to hop anymore.

Mateo has used my down time well, destroying his cat tree, removing push pins from the wall hangings, and just being an agent of mayhem in general. Hannah is not impressed.

While the symptoms of “whatever the heck that Covid wannabe virus was” are mostly gone, I’m still struggling big time. Everything, and I do mean everything, hurts. Tendons that I didn’t even know I had are now too painful to touch. Random shooting pain and muscle cramps have become routine. Did I mention the chest pain? I can’t concentrate enough to read; brain fog is driving the bus these days. I can’t knit for more than a few rows at a time as my arms get too heavy to hold up. I am kind of weak and shaky. I’m starting to stare down the depression monster for the first time in years. Did I mention that the fatigue is unreal? Ugh.

Hannah has been supporting my knitting efforts. I’m slowly making progress on my Weekender Crew sweater.

So, there hasn’t been much blogging. There has been, however, some medical testing and trips to doctor offices going on.

Yesterday I finally saw my rheumatologist. “This is just awful,” I told her. “This is fibromyalgia!” she replied. In her opinion, what I’m experiencing is a pretty severe episode of fibromyalgia. I’d already been diagnosed a few years ago, but I’ve never experienced symptoms as bad as this. Sigh. Remember the 15% rule in scleroderma? It says that about 15% of patients with systemic sclerosis (the type of scleroderma that I have) will also have a second autoimmune disease called Sjogren’s. Check, got that. Since Sjogren’s symptoms can look like fibromyalgia I always took that diagnosis with a grain of salt. Now it’s pretty clear that it is a separate condition, and my fibromyalgia is running wild. Like a squirrel. Or Mateo.

Feeling particularly unlucky I drove home thinking about writing an autobiography called Outlier: My life as a singular data point. Seriously, who in their right mind would ever want to be so far off the bell curve? Then the BioGeek emerged, and I thought about Covid long-haulers. I have met some people who have been diagnosed with Long Covid, and I did think at the time that what they were dealing with was an awful lot like one of my flares. Like, an awful lot. Yep. According to this article about a third of Covid long-haulers have “FibroCovid”, a condition that pretty much looks like fibromyalgia. Fabulous. This article suggests that Long Covid is just another name for fibromyalgia. Another article explored the benefits of applying lessons from fibromyalgia research to Long Covid. Thanks, nasty virus that acted like Covid but refused to test positive. Thanks for acting like a nightmare houseguest who leaves a huge mess behind…

This is crazy, right? Covid shares similarities with systemic sclerosis, and long Covid shares similarities with fibromyalgia. The BioGeek in me is interested in all of this, but let’s hope this doesn’t drag on for months.

My rheumatologist has started me on a course of narcotic painkillers as that sometimes pops people out of fibromyalgia flares. I’m taking magnesium as that can also help. My rheumatologist has some more tricks up her sleeve if this doesn’t do it, but I’m relieved to finally have a name for what is happening.

The dedication page on the book I started reading this weekend. I haven’t gotten very far because… brain fog.

Time to kick this thing to the curb (like a zebra!) so I can get back to knitting!!

The BioGeek does Covid

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I know, I know… lazy, lazy, lazy. This time I have a really good excuse.

I caught Covid!

I think that almost everyone who follows my blog knows that I have a type of scleroderma called systemic sclerosis; this is a progressive autoimmune disease that involves damage to blood vessels, lots of inflammation, and then scarring (fibrosis) of organs. In my case, the worst damage is occurring in my GI tract, my heart and my lungs. Because of the lung complications that I have developed I’m pretty high risk for a severe case of Covid-19, so my doctors have encouraged me (strongly) to get updated Covid-19 vaccines as soon as they are available. Because of my interstitial lung disease, I don’t halt my immunosuppressive drug for these boosters anymore.

So, as soon as the new Covid boosters were available I made an appointment, and on October 12th I got my shot. Yay! I was so excited to get it as I usually feel great for a few weeks after the vaccine. Like… my systemic sclerosis symptoms improve, I get more energy, things stop hurting, I can breathe better… you know, better! I know, I know, this doesn’t make any sense, but it is a well observed phenomenon in the systemic sclerosis community. It’s like there is some crazy connection between that vaccine and our autoimmune condition. It does not happen with any other vaccines.

Vaccines always knock me on my butt at first, though, so I wasn’t surprised that I developed muscle/joint pain, chills, fever and fatigue. I headed to bed expecting to feel better in the morning. Nope. I began coughing, got a sore throat, developed a lot of congestion, and GI symptoms arrived. Three days later I began to suspect that maybe this was actually Covid, and that I had unluckily gotten ill on the same day as the booster. I took an at-home Covid test, which was negative.

I wasn’t too sick to order more yarn on the internet. Look at this amazing sock kit that I bought from Moonglow!

A little aside: I’m pretty sure you don’t already know that Covid-19 and systemic sclerosis share a lot of similarities. Like, a lot. Damage to the vascular system, the production of a lot of inflammatory cytokines (messenger molecules that travel between cells), and then all those symptoms that can include heart and lung complications that result in fibrosis to both organs. (Covid is a fast-moving firestorm, and systemic sclerosis is more like the relentless slow burn version.) The pneumonia that develops in Covid-19 patients looks so much like the inflammatory lung disease in systemic sclerosis (SSc-ILD), it can be hard to sort out which disease is in play when systemic sclerosis patients like me first arrive in the ER. Okay, things never go well in the ER anyway, so I tend to avoid them. Zebra, right? I decided that I was just in a bad flare and suffered on instead of going to the ER.

Two days later, I retested for Covid. Still negative. Still too sick to consider driving anywhere, too sick to sit up and knit, but not sick enough to call 911. I was kind of stuck in limbo. Maybe some level of hell. Covid hell. Anyway, that booster shot had definitely failed me this time!! I spent my days coughing, sleeping and sadly gazing at my new sock yarn propped up on my bookshelf. I kept taking my immunosuppressive drugs and suffered on.

The cats began to live on the bed with me. Good kitties!

After a week of this nonsense, I had improved enough to consider going to a Kaiser Urgent Care to see if they could sort me out. Oh. The doctor there was of the opinion that I had Covid after all, but now it was too late for anti-virals or an infusion of antibodies. I got a chest x-ray, some nice antibiotics, a new drug for my cough, and headed back home to the cats and my unknitted yarn.

Tonight, 16 days later, I’m better. I can sit up and knit at last. Through all of this my oxygen levels never dropped, and while I was sick, I didn’t develop any really serious complications.

So, what have I learned about systemic sclerosis, the drug that I take to control it, and Covid-19? I mean, this is a total BioGeek moment! My mind full of dancing antibodies, failed Covid tests, and mycophenolate pills, I took to the internet for answers. There are some take home lessons that I’ve decided are so interesting that I’m passing them on.

The similarities between systemic sclerosis and Covid-19 are so significant that the two diseases provide understandings that can help in the treatment of both.
The immunosuppressive drug that I take (mycophenolate) to control my immune system’s attack on my lungs can prevent me from producing an antibody response to the vaccine. Okay, I knew that, but I was too sick to think through the implications… because that means…
Immunosuppressive drugs can lead to false negative at-home Covid tests. ~~Those tests are for Covid-19 antibodies; if you can’t make antibodies, then you may have Covid but test negative.~~ Oops. (Correction! My cousin has set me straight… the home tests are detecting viral proteins (antigens), so that theory is blown out of the water! Double oops! The doctor told me the mycophenolate was the cause of the false positive tests, and he was pretty emphatic that I should stay on it. Now I’m wondering if the false positive tests were because mycophenolate has anti-viral properties, as some sources cited in the Lancet paper below have reported.) (Don’t you just love science?!!! )
The same immunosuppressive drug (mycophenolate) can be an effective treatment for Covid patients reducing their risk of severe outcomes.
Staying on the drug was a good decision on my part. I got lucky! Because I am on this drug, however, it can take longer for Covid to clear my system. It has been 16 days, and it looks like I need to isolate for a few more days.
I never, ever thought that the treatment for my SSc-ILD would help protect me from the severe Covid complications that the same condition places me at high risk for. I’m so grateful that we didn’t go the chemotherapy route last year.

Isn’t all that interesting?

Here’s the links to articles if anyone is interested.

A Little This, A Little That

I haven’t posted for a while, and the stuff that I keep thinking that I should write about are piling up. I have all of these great books that I think I should connect somehow and then write about. My medical adventures continue. I’ve been driving around looking at the ~~weeds~~ plants in the fields hunting for great prospects for a BioGeek post. The weather has been beautiful: crisp, cooler in the evenings, and perfect blue skies. The trees are flashing their fall colors, and the squirrels are going wild. I pulled out the sewing machine and started using it again. I’ve been working on the catio. Oh, yeah. I’ve also been knitting.

Knitting

The arm warmers are done and I’m still knitting away on the sweater. Oh, you can’t see the sweater in the picture? Well, there isn’t much to see at this point… it is just a huge pink blog. Isn’t Hannah cute?

Catio

I also bought a cheap screen door for the catio and my son came down last weekend to help me get it installed. Today I managed to get a coat of paint on it.

Now I have easy access to the back yard that is Mateo proof. I think. Mateo is pretty tricky and has gotten out of the catio a few times now.

Mini Waffle Mania

I bought a little waffle maker during Amazon Prime Days last summer. It is really cute, makes the waffles in just a couple of minutes each, and I have been making a batch at a time and freezing the extras.

What can I say. These little waffles are really nice (and cute!). I shared the fun and wonderfulness of mini waffles with my family, and my niece bought a mini waffle iron. Then she sent one to my sister. As of this evening, we are now officially the Mini Waffle Mafia. Don’t ever question the power of waffles!

Pig Gone Wild

Yep. This happened this week, too. The governor of the state finally sent us the update that we had all been waiting for: Fred had been run to ground and captured in a parking lot by my Kaiser Clinic. Isn’t he cute? I wonder how he feels about catios?

Indigo Sunflowers

I have this wonderful batik fabric that was designed for Colorado: sunflowers, grain, aspen leaves, and a sky full of stars.

I have been sewing in the early afternoons and so far I’ve produced a couple of hot pads and a place mat.

I’m not sure if I love that place mat… I may make one more to match the one that I have, and then I can change the borders on the next two. It is nice to be sewing again, and Hannah is thrilled to have the machine out. Seriously, she must remember it and is displaying a lot of the kitten behaviors that she had when I last sewed in this room like… standing on the machine and pulling the wall hanging off the walls. Trilling and rolling around under the table. Carrying off the pin cushion. Knocking the scissors off the table. It is so nice to see her perked up like this… (yes, this is snark!)

Well, that is enough catching up for now, don’t you think?

I’m off to make some more waffles.

Laters!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Caturday Updates

Hi. I’m Mateo.

I’m all grown up now. I should be trusted outdoors on my own, right?

This has been a busy week at Casa Mother-of-Cats. The shower broke and she had to get a plumber to fix it. Hannah practically teleported into the closet for that! Then the Mother of Cats had to go get some blood work done for her crazy scleroderma and she has been dragging sadly around the house waiting for the doctor to call. Finally, the Mother of Cats pulled herself together and went to the garden center to buy roasted green chiles: Yeow! Those chiles are stinky!! Hannah refused to go into the kitchen while the Mother of Cats was packing them up for freezing. Late in the week the Mother of Cats got some knitting done and early this evening the doctor messaged her, and she has finally perked up.

Through the whole week she took a lot of pictures, so here they come:

There is a bunny hanging out in the front yard that makes the Mother of Cats happy every time she sees it.

These mums came home from the garden center with the green chiles.

The leaves are starting to change on the trees.

I managed to escape from the catio last night and ran wild through the yard under that supermoon for a couple of hours before the Mother of Cats came looking for me. So. Much. Fun. I looked everywhere for that bunny, but I couldn’t find it. There was a garter snake in the yard last week too, and that sounds like a lot of fun, but I couldn’t find it either. Unable to have really outstanding fun ~~or a bunny snack~~, I just ate a bunch of bugs and threw them up on the bed after I came back in… why does the Mother of Cats get worked up so easily?

Hannah: I was a good girl and stayed on the catio.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. There was a lot of knitting that went on this week, too.

This heap of pink mess is the beginning of the new Weekender Crew sweater. I’m sure that it will actually look like a sweater some day.

The sweater is being knit inside-out, so the Mother of Cats tried to pull the knitted tube open so you could see the part of the sweater that will be on the outside. It is totally a mystery to me, but hopefully you will kind of get the idea. The color is nice, right?

The Mother of Cats really made progress on the new arm warmers. The first one is done, and she has started on the second one; they are so long they go up above her elbow. The next time she had a medical adventure they should help keep her nice and warm!

Well, that’s all for now. I’m going to carry on downstairs for awhile to see if I can get Hannah to come chase me.

Hannah: that would be a big NOPE!! CoalBear. It is bedtime for me…

Happy Caturday, everyone!

This is Mateo the CoalBear, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The last few weeks have seen the emergence of new symptoms: my hair is falling out, I have more edema, bruises are popping up everywhere, and I get sudden muscle cramps. Itching has become a problem, and cuts are slow to heal. Fatigue is back in a big way. I finally contacted my doctor, and she ordered some testing to make sure I wasn’t going into kidney failure.

Kidney failure!! Cue the panic sirens!!!!

Seriously, one of the things that I fear most is kidney failure. Last year, when my lung disease was so bad, letting my kidneys go to save my lungs was an actual topic of discussion; I was a hard no on that treatment option. Ironically, a low kidney function test was one of the first clues that led to my scleroderma diagnosis, but my kidneys have improved over the last couple of years to a comfortable stage 3 level of disease. Discussion of kidney failure again seemed like a huge blow, and I have been sad this week. I cast on the arm warmers during the afternoons when I’m stuck indoors on oxygen during the heat.

The message from my doctor today was reassuring. My kidney function has maintained, but I am very low on protein levels in my blood. This is kind of a scleroderma thing too, as digested food doesn’t get absorbed well through fibrotic intestinal tissue, but I’m so immunosuppressed, it might be because I can’t make antibodies. More testing is on the horizon, but I’m not losing any sleep over this. I am, however, going to be much more careful about wearing my mask!

I’m making good progress on those arm warmers… if I hurry, I can cast on another project like maybe those pressed flowers socks early next week. 🙂

Have a good Caturday!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Knitting Time!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

The Mother of Cats gas been busy organizing all of her knitting for the rest of the year.

First of all, let’s show off the knitting that she just got done: 16 PICC line covers and 9 hats for Frayed Knots.

She even turned in the unbelievably cute hat on the bear.

Now that the Mother of Cats has made her donation for the month she has shifted her focus to organizing her projects for the rest of the year. Oh, boy. She has a lot of projects in mind. Like, a crazy amount of knitting is in the future. Yay. I like to help with the knitting.

First, she wants to get going on her new Weekender Crew, so we wound all of that yarn, and then she cast on. Then she ripped it out and cast on again. Another rip. Another cast on… Finally, she managed to get a few rows done, but she dropped a stitch, so she had to rip it all out and cast on AGAIN. Luckily, we had lots of cookies in the house while this was going on because she made three different trips to the kitchen to get them, and I talked her out of more tuna and even some kitty treats while she was down there. Finally, finally, she managed to get the sweater off to a good start.

The problem was the type of cast on. This is called a tubular cast on, and the Mother of Cats now loves it, but the learning curve was worse than learning to catch a fly in midair.

We also winded up all of the yarn for the new La Prairie sweater last week. I helped with that, too.

Did the Mother of Cats stop with these two projects? No, she did not. She also got out the yarns and organized for several other projects.

Here are all of the yarns that she has organized for her projects. The purple yarns at the top left are for another pair of Pressed Flowers Socks. The pink yarn on top of the magazine is to make a fancy lace capelet. Then there are the yarns laid out next to a striped arm warmer on the top right: those yarns are to knit a new pair of arm warmers exactly like the one laying right next to the yarn. The important detail here is… only one arm warmer! Those arm warmers are the Mother of Cats lucky pair and she has worn them to every hospital stay, ambulance ride, and scary trip into the cath lab. One of them GOT LOST and she absolutely, absolutely needs to make herself another pair right away. Or, at least, before the next serious cold snap. She is thinking of doing a tubular cast on for these mitts and will have to learn how to do the cast off too so the ends match. Learning curve: get the cookies ready!!!

Okay, now let’s talk about the bottom row of pictures. Those two yarns on the left are going to become an Alpine Bloom hat, and there on the bottom right is a reminder that the Mother of Cats needs to FINISH MY BLANKET!!! You know this blanket. We were making really good progress on it when the Mother of Cats stopped knitting because she was concerned about me getting sores all over my tummy. I’m doing much better, and the fur is growing back on my tummy, so the Mother of Cats thinks that maybe we can restart the blanket and we’ll see how I do. Yay! I like that blanket!

I need this blanket for the cold nights to come!

So, that is all the knitting news for now. Let’s go back out on the deck where the Mother of Cats has been waging a war on wasps after Mateo got stung by one of these ugly suckers.

Mateo: Hey! No one told me that those wasps were dangerous! I was just practicing my fly catching skills. You know, catching flies in midair…

Hannah: Whatever, Mateo. Because you are such a dimwit the Mother of Cats had to hang up that goofy wasp trap on our catio. Good thing it appears to be working!

We’re planning on knitting as much as possible out on the catio this fall because it is really, really nice out there. Yay, fall! Did I mention that there are a lot of bugs lately? The crickets are the best!!

That’s all for now.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

Poor Hannah’s tummy sores have been a problem for some time, but I think that we have turned the corner at last. I’m pretty sure that she was allergic to her kitty treats, so I switched to all natural treats, but I also did every practical thing that I could think of. I put towels down on the carpet in the closet where she likes to sleep in case there was something in the carpet; I wash the towels every couple of weeks to keep them clean. I installed a calming diffuser which seems to be just helping the two cats in general as they play and chase each other more than before and some of Hannah’s kitten behaviors have come back. I switched to sensitive skin food. Hannah has gotten a couple of baths. Her fur is growing back, and the rash seems to be gone.

Yes, I did notice that almost everything is pink or purple.

Heading into a Pink Autumn

Autumn is right around the corner now. I love this time of year! The light has softened, the plants are recovering from the heat of summer, and wildlife is on the move again. A flight of geese flew over me last night, barely clearing the treetops, and this morning a hawk supervised my watering out front. Butterflies are everywhere, and I am suddenly seeing a fresh rush of life in my garden. The squirrels are standouts in this: they are going crazy digging up my planters and the flower beds as they create caches of peanuts and other goodies for the coming winter.

Mateo caught that leafbug (katydid) as soon as I let him out onto the catio after returning home from a weekend away. Poor thing! He definitely did the bug some damage (part of a leg is now missing…) but I put it into a nearby bush hoping that it would survive. The next morning, he caught another one. I’ve never seen a leafbug at my house before, but it is part of the resurgence of life that I’m seeing after our very wet spring this year. Look at what is happening in the garden:

Okay, Hannah isn’t exactly in the garden, but she kind of fits into the theme of the day, don’t you think? Everything is in shades of pink at the moment. The standout star is the stonecrop (upper left photo) that has been blooming like a champ for a couple of weeks now to the delight of every dang bee in the vicinity.

It was my birthday this weekend and I spent it up at my son’s place. He drove me up to The Loopy Ewe so I could find some yarn for a new sweater, and the drive took us up north through the countryside past fields of corn and sugar beets. Hawks sat on light poles, and the ditches were filled with flowering plants and some pretty interesting weeds that I wanted to get some cutting of (I know, I know… this sounds strange but… biogeek!) I had my portable oxygen machine with me and it served me well as I searched for the yarn to knit a Weekender Crew this fall.

I had to get that dellaQ bag to go with the yarn. Perfect, right? The color of the yarn isn’t quite as bright as it appears in the picture, but it is a nice happy color called Wilted Roses. Just what I need for fall, don’t you think?

I’m kind of stuggling with getting started on the new sweater. I have been knitting PICC line covers and (pink) hats like crazy the last couple of weeks, and I’m finishing out the week with a set of large sized PICC line covers that I plan to turn over to Frayed Knots on Saturday. Then I can knit sweaters!! I am going to wind the yarn for my La Prairie cardigan and the Weekender at the same time, and I’ll be knitting away on them both I think. If it snows, the Weekender. If it is warm, La Prairie. If I feel like purple, La Prairie. If I feel like pink… well, you get the idea. Knitting options. They are really important. There are also some socks, hats, and scarfs calling my name. So many projects, so much (pink) yarn, so little time. It’s like I’m making caches of knitting projects for the coming winter. Did I mention that several of the projects involve pink?

I feel a little bit like those hyperactive squirrels in my yard.

The Autumnal Equinox is this Saturday. Happy Autumn everyone!

Embrace the pink this fall.

I’m having a little trouble letting this hat go because it is so darn cute! I’m struggling with an urge to get more yarn to knit booties for the bear too.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Babes Hats!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do I look annoyed? Yes, I am! That dang Mateo is whapping my tail!

Excuse me while I take a moment to put that young man into his proper place. The CoalBear has been a handful all week long. He chased the bees on the catio and there were some close calls. He catches grasshoppers and brings them into the house to play with. The Mother of Cats especially didn’t like that! He runs wild with his toys at 3am. He has been attacking the Mother of Cats’ knitting.

There has been no end to his mischief all week long!

The Mother of Cats has been knitting hats lately. It all started when she bought a box of yarn at her favorite yarn shop that were dyed in Barbie world colors.

The Mother of Cats thinks that these are happy, happy, happy colors. She is using all of the yarn to make hats for her community knitting group called Frayed Knots; the hats need to be done in the next two weeks before the next meeting, so she has been knitting a lot.

I’ve been lots of help with the whole knitting effort as she cranked out the hats. Today she finished the 4th hat, and there are two more to go. Look at how nice they look!

Today has been cold and rainy all day so we didn’t even get to go out on the patio. Mateo is just beside himself and causing trouble endlessly. He knocked over an orchid plant. He pulled the tablecloth off the table. He dragged off one of the knitted hats.

Seriously, I’m almost ready to rent him a kitten!

Well, that’s all the news. Time to go help the Mother of Cats with her next hat.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

That box of really cute yarn came from Spun Right Round. The yarn is Squish DK, and it really is wonderful to knit with. Don’t you love the Barbie-esque colors?
The hats will be given to patients at either the Kaiser infusion centers in the Denver area or to the patients at a cancer treatment center that Frayed Knots also donates to.
The hat pattern is Barley by Tin Can Knits.

Hannah and the CoalBear: The Alpine Bloom Sweater is Done.

Hi. I’m Mateo.

I’m also known as the CoalBear. Don’t you think that I’m really handsome in my summer coat?

I’ve had a busy couple of days. The Mother of Cats has been knitting and knitting and knitting on her new sweater. Okay, the knitting part was pretty boring. I don’t get to go outside as much as I like, and she doesn’t let me play with the yarn. I tried to hang out on her lap, and that didn’t work, either. To make up for things I got extra tuna and she let me chase the laser light at least three times a day!!!

Mostly I slept in my box while the Mother of Cats was knitting.

When I did get to go outside, it was really exciting. THERE ARE A COUPLE OF ADULT RABBITS HANGING OUT IN THE YARD!!!! They aren’t even a little afraid of me, and they run all around the yard kicking their feet up into the air and chasing each other. Hey, I wanted to run around in the yard chasing them, too, but the Mother of Cats was like…. no, Mateo. She says that I don’t play nice with the bunnies. Hey, there was just that one bunny that I caught and snacked on, and now I can’t ever, ever play with them again? How is that a reasonable policy? I want to lodge a protest.

Here, bunny, bunny. I want to ~~eat~~ play with you!

Then there were the bugs that got into the house this week. Yep, exciting!!!

Okay, back to the sweater. This is what the journey looked like:

This is the finished sweater. Didn’t we do a good job?

Now that the sweater is done the Mother of Cats is talking about winding some more yarn or maybe warping the loom. Wow. That sounds like a lot of fun!!!! Winding yarn is one of my favorite things to do.

Bye now.

I hope that you had a great weekend, and if you are in the US where I live, have a great holiday tomorrow.

This is the CoalBear, signing off.