Yarn, Books & Roses

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…

The Scleroderma Chronicles: Thoughts on the Night of the Strawberry Moon

There it is, the Strawberry Moon. I snapped this shot around midnight last night while the kitties chased moths on the catio.

It’s June. I can hardly believe it. June is Scleroderma Awareness Month. June is the month of thunderstorms and tornado watches. June is the month of the miller moth migration (Mateo’s favorite time of year!) June is the month that Hannah came home to live with me. June is the month, year after year, that my scleroderma begins to improve after a long, cold winter. This year June has been just great! After a very rainy May hot, sunny weather finally arrived this week and the yard began to burst into bloom. First, let me show you the weather…

Crazy weather May!! That is hail on the catio, all of that rain appeared in my pot on the deck (you can see it in the first picture… the pot was partially covered by the table above it…) in just 48 hours, and then there was an exciting outbreak of tornados just east of me. Whew! In the breaks between the storms I managed to give the lawns their first mowing of the year, and I made great progress pulling weeds out of all of my gardens. I kept thinking of a saying someone said to me recently as I worked in the yard and gardens: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you clear a weedy wilderness? One clump of grass at a time.

Look at how great the yard is starting to look! The grass is growing like crazy after the deep soaks, and there is lots of wildlife. I managed to get the catio all finished, and the cats and I are outside every day now enjoying the show and soaking up some sun.

Mateo is enjoying the emergence of a new, tiny baby bunny!

So, here is the crazy thing. I have been struggling big time with my symptoms. I have been unable to knit (or type for that matter) for several months now. I rely on the knitting to help me keep my hands functional, and also for mental health reasons; the loss of knitting has been hard. Even cranking the knitting machine has been too much for my healing ribs and sternum. My other joints are so bad I have spent most of my time moving a heating pad from joint to joint trying to manage the symptoms. My heart has been misbehaving again, and my lungs have been unhappy. It has been a hard winter, and I have to admit, I’ve been concerned that I may be through the tipping point and on the downward slide of my scleroderma journey.

Then June arrived.

Like magic, after every morning in the sunshine drinking my latte, after every afternoon clearing out a small section of the gardens, I have been getting slowly better. My joints are recovering. My heart has stopped having tachycardia events. My oxygen levels have improved. My hands and wrists are much better. I am writing this post. I am better. I am knitting again. I’ve started a simple summer tee in a happy pink yarn, and my wrists are letting me knit for an hour a night. I usually bristle up when people suggest that I can just get better with some sunshine and exercise, but in this case it did help.

Other fun that I’ve been enjoying on the internet is the journey of Sunny and Gizmo, two Bald Eaglets that fledged early in June from their nest by Big Bear lake in the San Bernardino mountains in California. Sisters, the two have remained with each other in various trees and have returned to the nest several times. The other fun was the adventures of Ed as he ran free in Tennessee for a week. Yay Ed!! You know that I had to cheer the zebra running wild!!

I do hope that you saw the strawberry moon. It was a happy, bright object in the sky, lighting up the back yard and the bunnies chasing each other over the lawn. The moths entertained the cats, and I sat in the dark with them on my swinging patio chair last night feeling pretty upbeat. This full moon was the last of the spring; what is coming now is the heat of summer. Usually, I kind of dread the summer heat, but last night I felt absolutely sure that I was up for the days to come. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you knit a sweater? One hour at a time. How do you face down the scleroderma monster? One beautiful day in the yard/catio at a time.

This is scleroderma awareness month. I went to a scleroderma conference in Denver last month, and this Saturday I will go on a fundraising walk with all of my sclero-friends. I plan to rock the teal! Bring it sclero-monster! I am ready for you!!

Friday is Hannah’s gotcha day. She is now 5 years old.

Last night I started reading the latest edition of Scientific American Magazine. The cover article is about new research that shows… wait for it… sunshine can suppress the immune system and make autoimmune diseases improve. Look at that! I’m kind of thinking that happened to me over the last few weeks. Evidently, it is a balancing act: sunshine can also make things worse. Yay! Once again, I get to use myself as an experimental animal as I figure out how much I can tolerate. 🙂

Zebra running wild!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Return to the Catio

Hi. I’m Mateo.

Mateo: Do I look like a bunny murderer to you?

The Mother of Cats has been really busy outside, and after days and days of messing around on the catio WITHOUT LETTING ME OUT!!! she finally put away her little pink tool bag, opened the door, and let us out onto the catio. My long, long period of suffering was over. Bunny, here I come!!!

Hannah and I took to the table to get a really good view of all the new things.

Wow. She was really busy out here. There are plants, and a new wall of netting that keeps me in the catio (which is also absolutely unnecessary) so I can’t play with my friends out in the yard. Gosh. There sure is a lot to report on!!

The Mother of Cats has been at work cleaning out the gardens and putting new plants everywhere. A lot of the plants from indoors have moved out here, and it really is kind of nice out here now. She bought a new rose bush!! There certainly is a lot of wildlife in the yard by the catio… maybe they like the flowers too.

There is lots and lots of action over by the birdfeeders in the yard. Birds of all different kinds have been visiting the feeder and hang out in the yard. There are robins, and blue jays, and doves, and BLACKBIRDS that make a nice sound, and lots of little finches. Hannah just LOVES watching the birds, and even though she asked the Mother of Cats really nicely to let her out of the catio to GO GET THEM she hasn’t relented. Why does the Mother of Cats do this? I tell you, someone needs to step in to keep all of this wildlife under control. The bunny in particular has become incorrigible.

The bunny sleeps in the Mother of Cats front flower bed and she ATE all of the plants down to the roots. She is harvesting grass from the lawn and comes right up to Hannah at the catio on her way to her little home under the deck. She has been really busy all day today, and the Mother of Cats thinks that means that there are more baby bunnies on the way. That would be kind of nice as there is only one baby now, and he might be a little lonely. I should go out and play with him, right? That would be a nice thing to do…

Doesn’t this baby look like he needs friends?

The Mother of Cats says it looks like the garden needs to be weeded, but she also says that she can only do so much at a time. She left us yesterday and came back with a new lawnmower which seems kind of mean because the bunny likes the grass long, and I DON’T LIKE LAWNMOWERS!!! Like, they are so much worse than vacuums, right? Why would she do such a thing. Forget the lawnmower and weed the garden, Mother of Cats!!

Well, that is everything that is going on here. I spend all of my spare time out on the catio, and the Mother of Cats keeps working out in the yard and reading books. Does the Mother of Cats knit? No, she does not. Hannah kind of misses the yarn, but maybe this is just a phase and the Mother of Cats will be get back to knitting soon. I do have to mention… some new yarn did come in the mail last week… someday soon she will knit again.

Oh, wait a minute… the baby bunny is out in the grass again… kind of busy here… gotta go…

This is Mateo, signing off.

>^..^<

Note from the Mother of Cats:

I have been making fingerless mitts on my Addi knitting machine and tomorrow I am going to a scleroderma conference and will take some to give away to other patients. My wrists are slowly getting better, and I am hopefully buying yarn to make a couple of sweaters… someday…

I did have to use some bunny deterrent to keep Little Miss out of the flower beds. Cinnamon. Cinnamon works great! The rabbit now sits sadly in the grass right next to the garden, watching me with a betrayed look whenever I go out front…

Wait until the lawn mower comes out, bunny!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Shipwrecked (on Sea Glass Island)

Hi. I’m Hannah,

It has been a long time since I’ve given an update on the Mother of Cats. I know, I know… things have been going on that are hard to explain, and the Mother of Cats hasn’t been fun AT ALL lately. Let’s start with the strange things…

The house got painted! There was complete chaos around our house that went on for days! Do you see my expression when I saw one of the worker men in the window? They put plastic over all of the window, and there were all of these bumps and strange noises, and I totally was exhausted keeping the CoalBear calm through all of it. Whew. Then the painters finally went away, and the next problem became apparent…

THE CATIO WAS GONE!!!!!!

A cat tantrum is an ugly thing. Mateo is just a little cat, but he can be a little heartbreaking too when he doesn’t get his way.

She works really slowly, but the Mother of Cats has been constructing a new Catio for us. I keep urging her to work faster, but does she listen to me? She takes a day off for every day she works, and at the rate that she is making progress, it will be snowing before this gets done. The baby bunnies will be grown up and gone. The baby robins will be grandparents. I will be too old to appreciate my days out in the sun…

Mateo really, really wants to go outside to have a chat with this baby bunny…

With all of the outside work going on the Mother of Cats hasn’t been knitting very much. She did manage to get one pair of socks done, and then she made a new chicken that she took away with her on one of her trips to the doctors. Here’s the chicken.

The chicken and a couple of the babies went to the Pulmonary Function Testing lady to use with her patients. Mateo wanted to keep it for us, and I did mention that it would be kind of nice if she stuffed the little chickee with catnip, but did she listen to me? No. No, she did not! They went out to the car with her, and they stayed with the PFT lady. I sure hope that those silly patients appreciate the chickens, and if they throw the little one around that would be great! I’m pretty sure that they would like catnip, too.

So, that’s what’s been going on. NOT MUCH KNITTING! The Mother of Cats is still unable to cast on her new sweater, and while she spends time moving yarn around into interesting combinations, she hasn’t cast on her sweater. Shipwrecked. She is shipwrecked. When she isn’t fussing around outside (and we’re stuck INSIDE looking at her through a window) she is laying around with a heating pad on her knees and braces on her wrists, dreaming about prednisone, and looking at yarn to buy online. Shipwrecked. She isn’t even using her knitting machines, which at least was a little fun. This is so bad even I’m dreaming of yarn. And tuna.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

Yep. My hands are total crap at the moment. My rheumatologist ordered some x-rays and the word “severe” appeared several times in the report. My wrists are the worst.

My knees aren’t doing very well, either, and my rheumatologist is exploring options with me. MORE DRUGS!!!! I’m a fan right now. Hannah wasn’t kidding when she said I was dreaming of prednisone. Steroids injected into my knee sound really good right now. The good news is that my lungs continue to improve, and the red flags that were raised at the time of the car wreck CT scan in December have resolved in favor of nothing serious. Yay! The changes in my lungs have disappeared, and the growing “mass” in my thyroid turned out to be a cyst. The bad news is that the follow-up CT scan in March showed that my broken ribs and sternum (fractured after all… not a shock) were struggling to heal, and I was told to lay off the knitting (and especially the knitting machine) FOR A FEW MONTHS!!!! Obviously, these medical professionals don’t understand that I need these things for my mental health. Sigh. Mateo isn’t the only one wanting to throw a tantrum lately. I don’t think that my doctors would be happy about the catio construction effort, but it is kind of an emergency!

The emotional support chicken was a huge hit at Kaiser pulmonology, and they will let me know if I need to supply them with more of the little chickees. My pulmonologist mentioned that the kids with asthma who come in for testing would love a little chickee… heal faster ribs!!! The chest pain has stopped even though I have been swinging a hammer this week, so I’m pretty sure that knitting again is right around the corner.

So… I can cast on Sea Glass, right?

<Hannah: send tuna!!>

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: Lazy Mother of Cats

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I would like to lodge a complaint against the Mother of Cats!!

The world outside has changed over the last couple of weeks. The sunshine is bright and warm; I love to sleep in the sunshine, don’t you? There are more squirrels than usual chasing each other through the trees out front, and sometimes they even come right up to the windows. The bunnies are spending lots of time in the yard where the CoalBear and I can see them, and there are birds again. Lots of birds!! All of this change is really exciting, and the CoalBear and I just want to spend all of our time playing. So, is the Mother of Cats spending all of her time entertaining us? Giving us tuna? Letting us outside to play in the sunshine and delivering the kitty cookies right on time?

No. She is not!

The Mother of Cats has been sleeping more than usual (and I’m a cat, so believe me, that is a lot!), reading her books, and knitting. Knitting isn’t too bad if we get to play with the yarn, but nope, nope, nope… once again she is not sharing her toys with us like she should.

Mateo the CoalBear is doing his best to play anyway! He loves the needles, I perfer the yarn myself. He is kind of a weird kitty…

The Mother of Cats has been listening to an audiobook during some of her knitting, so I get to listen along with her while she knits and I help with the yarn management.

This is the book that we listened to last week.

Imagine a man who dreams of waves of energy zooming through the air from a spark of electricity to a device that can detect the waves; the device is like magic, letting messages travel from one place to another without wires. He dreams of all the changes that the wireless messages can make in the world, and also about how much money he can make from the business that installs and runs the devices that make this possible. His name is Guglielmo Marconi. Pretty cool, right. (Can I have some tuna now… all this typing is making me hungry…) At the same time in history, there is a man who works creating and selling “cures” for illnesses. He is married to a woman who is very bossy and demanding (CoalBear… I’m looking at you…) and one day he snaps, kills her, and tries to escape with his true love to America on a ship. His name is Hawley Harvey Crippen.

I have to be honest; I played a lot with toys and this fortune paper from a Chinese cookie while the whole book thing was going on…

Are you tired of the story yet? It gets really exciting now. Chief Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland yard finds the reminds of the murdered wife. The hunt for the escaped murdering husband with his girlfriend becomes a big deal in the newspapers, and the captain of the ship realizes that two of his passengers are the people being hunted by Scotland yard. The captain sends a message back to shore using (what else???) his Marconi wireless device. Chief Inspector Dew boards a fast boat and the chase across the Atlantic Ocean is on, with coordination between ships made possible because of … wireless messages using the Marconi system. Marconi messages keep the press updated, and suspense builds as the public hangs onto every new update and intercepted message reported in the news. Whew! My whiskers were just a tingle listening to all of this! Chief Inspecter Dew overtook the ship with the murderer, and he was apprehended before he could land in Canada. Because of the publicity, Marconi’s business was secured. What a story. What a book!! I absolutely need some tuna right this minute!!!!

Look at how much the Mother of Cats got done while she was listening to the book and knitting.

So that has pretty much been the last two weeks. Sleeping, knitting, and listening to really interesting books. I like the yarn and the books, but I do hope that the Mother of Cats will stop being so lazy… Mateo and I have needs, right?

I’m not lazy… I’m a cat. I’m supposed to sleep all day.

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The sweater that I’m knitting is the Winter Albina sweater by Caitlin Hunter. I’m really pleased with how it is working up.
I’ve already started another Eric Larson book: The Demon of Unrest.
I’m in another scleroderma flare, and I did go see my rheumatologist for help. I am now in possession of an emergency pack of steroids and narcotics. Whew. It’s good to have an emergency pack!
I’m doing better lately, but the cats are still kind of disgusted with me.
What was that Chinese cookie fortune that Hannah was playing with?

Friday, February 28th, was Rare Disease Day. I found that I was ~~too lazy~~ unable to write another post for the day, but here are some nice ones that I wrote in previous years.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Winter Albina in the White City

Hi. I’m Hannah.

It has been cold for days and the Mother of Cats has been knitting and knitting on her new sweater called the Winter Albina. I’ve been helping her tremendously with only a little yarn whapping. The CoalBear likes to chase the needles which drives the Mother of Cats a little crazy, but I’ve been a really good girl except maybe when the Mother of Cats gives me a little catnip… anyway, the sweater is starting to look pretty good! Look at how much progress she has made.

The Mother of Cats is now knitting below the armholes. Pretty good, right?

The Mother of Cats has been listening to this book while she knits so I’ve been listening to it too.

I have to tell you that I prefer books with lots of action like… birds, bunnies, mice, TUNA!! and lots of cat chases, but I guess this book was okay. It tells the story of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893: there sure was a lot of stuff going on like… creating this huge city for the exposition with all the buildings painted white, and a man who is even more crazy than the CoalBear who shoots the Mayor of Chicago, and a man named Ferris who dreamt of a huge wheel in the sky, and another man who took advantage of all the new people in the city to build a hotel where he kills lots of young women…

Mateo the CoalBear: those parts of the book were kind of scary!!

So, I guess that was the week. We knitted, we dreamed of life in Chicago, long ago, and Mateo ran around in the snow hoping to see some bunny tracks. A good week, all in all.

Don’t you love winter? Knitting, books, and catnip. What could be better, right?

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats: The Devil in the White City was a book that caused lots of reflection and led to more than one “aha!” moment. Here’s some of the takeaways from the book:

The buildings of the World’s Fair were of neoclassical design and the many architects involved in the construction agreed to uniform standards/guidelines that created a well-planned “city” that was augmented by deliberate landscape design. The effect was astounding for the time.
I kept thinking about the pictures of the “White City” and how they were familiar. I started thinking… they just copied the layout of Washington D.C., and even the downtown Civic Center of Denver looks like this… Buildings like that in a formal layout are really impressive… I remember how awestruck I was sitting on the Lincoln Memorial’s steps in Washington, looking down the long stretch of the reflecting pool towards the Wahington Monument one hot summer, or how impressive the structures of Denver’s civic center are when I walked among them with my children… I had it wrong. The World’s Fair (AKA the World’s Columbian Exposition) was the original.
The Lincoln Memorial was built after the World’s Columbian Exposition, and its neoclassical design was influenced by that World’s Fair.
Denver’s Civic Center was influenced by exhibits at the World’s fair, and it was later designed by planners who were directly connected to the architects who built the fair.
At one point in the book as the layout was being described, I thought to myself… “Oh. This is like Disneyland!” You guessed it, Walt Disney’s father was one of the builders of the World’s Fair.
The Chicago World’s Fair’s answer to the iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris was the Ferris Wheel. Who knew?
The Ferris Wheel was located on the Midway, the strip of engaging attractions located along the route to the fair. Among those attractions was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, a huge hit. To this day, all children in America know that the exciting rides are to be found on the Midway of every fair…
Buffalo Bill‘s real name was William Cody. He is today buried on Lookout Mountain, looking over Denver and the plains beyond. Forever a showman, you can still buy tickets to visit his grave.
William Cody founded the city of Cody, Wyoming. Part of my family now lives there.

The Chicago World’s Fair was quite the event: planned and built over a few years, open for only a few months in 1893; the influence goes on. I really enjoyed the book, and I’m ready to launch into another book by the same author, Thunderstruck.

My grandmother’s souvenir from the fair is still in my family; my cousin has it in her kitchen where it holds toothpicks she uses to check if her bakes are done.

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!!!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Snowcat Interlude

Hi. I’m Mateo, the CoalBear.

Do you see me giving the Mother of Cats a seriously evil-looking glare??

I was trapped in the house for days and days while the Mother of Cats played on her computer, cleaned out some files in her office, and made hats on her knitting machine. Usually I like the knitting machine, but I HAVE NEEDS!!! OUTSIDE!!!! NOW!!! Finally, the Mother of Cats relented and let me out. Yay!!

I have lots of fluffy fur and it is even on the bottoms of my feet. I went out every day this week; Hannah, that wimp, did not go out even once. She is kind of a baby about the cold. Okay, she doesn’t have the fur on the bottoms of her feet like I do, but still, she could try, right?

Hannah: that would be a huge NOPE little black guy… while you were out in the snow, I got double portions of kitty cookies!! Ha!

As the Mother of Cats worked on her hats this week she started to notice dropped stitches in the knitting. It happened a few times, and then it started to happen with every single hat no matter how careful she was. Then she realized that the yarn feeder had been worn down by the yarn and that it couldn’t catch correctly anymore… poor Mother of Cats… she was cranky and sad at the same time… what should she do with herself…

The groove is worn into the feeder inside that marked circle.

Luckily the Mother of Cats found a replacement yarn feeder for her Sentro machine for sale on Amazon and it is already on the way. There is even a YouTube video that shows how to replace it so she won’t even be needing my help. Unfortunately, the part won’t be here until the middle of next week, so in the meantime, she is back to knitting on some arm warmers that she is making to match her Scrunch Socks.

Pretty cool, right? I helped her with these too, but personally I think that the knitting machine is more fun to whap.

So, that was the week. Today the snow has returned, it has gotten really cold outside, and I’m trapped indoors while the Mother of Cats completely ignores my needs. It’s like she doesn’t even remember that I am a SNOW CAT at heart, even if I look like a little CoalBear.

Sigh. Guess I’ll just sleep until it warms up again.

This is the ~~CoalBear~~ SnowCat, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The armwarmers are on 2.25 mm needles (Size 1) and I cast on 72 stitches for the top of the arm and then slowly decreased 16 stitches as I worked towards the wrist. To mimic the rolled knit top of the sock/armwarmer pattern I bound off with 4 stitch I-cord.
I’m seriously fighting the need to buy more yarn for a new sweater. It’s cold, there is this cute-beyond-all-words new sweater by Caitlin Hunter that I want, and I’m pretty sure that I totally deserve it after two weeks of cold and extreme weather changes. I want squishy mail!!!!
My knees basically hate me today after yesterday’s huge air pressure change. Look at what happened!

I think that this is another reason why I deserve that yarn to knit a new sweater!!
What do you guys think about these colors?

These colors are (left to right) Dirty Panther, Elizabeth Taylor, and Elven Dark. I’m kind of set on Dirty Panther (MC) and Elizabeth Taylor (CC) because that resulting sweater will have the most flexibility in my wardrobe, but the Elven Dark is really tempting… All of these yarns are Tosh Vintage worsted weight yarn.