Yarn, Books & Roses

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.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Trapped Indoors

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do I look unhappy? I’ve been trapped inside ALL DAY LONG!!!

Deep cold has made its way into Colorado. It started Friday with an overnight snowstorm that descended with frigid flakes that piled up in the catio along with dropping temperatures. The stars broke through as the snow ended, gleaming unusually bright in the frigid air, and the temperatures continued to drop. Tonight, a new storm has arrived with more snow, and the falling temperatures and wind will make things truly dangerous in the next couple days for anyone outside without sufficient protection. The Mother of Cats says that applies to cats, too. She is so mean to us!!

Mateo’s winter coat is now in, but the Mother of Cats says that it isn’t up to the new cold that is pushing into the state. Mateo, the CoalBear, has been throwing a cat-tantrum over his restricted access to the catio. It is exhausting. Really exhausting!!

Here’s the warning alerts that arrived today on the Mother of Cats’ phone from the local news station:

Those temperatures are Fahrenheit, by the way. Luckily, the Mother of Cats had lots of time to prepare for this; her windows are wrapped, and she has a blanket over the largest one in the family room. The fridge is full of groceries, she got all the tuna, and she has yarn wound up and ready to go onto the knitting machine. Take that, cold weather! We are going to have days of chasing yarn while the Mother of Cats makes her little hats on the knitting machine.

Speaking of the knitting machine, the Mother of Cats took some action to make it easier to work with it. She loves the Sentro machine, but it wobbles around, and it is a little bit of a battle for her to handle the yarn, the machine, and the cranking all at the same time while a certain little black CoalBear tries to whap the yarn as it races into the machine. Ugh. I told the CoalBear to be a good boy, but he never, ever listens to me!

Anyway, this is what the Mother of Cats did yesterday to the knitting machine. She attached the machine to a small unused shelf that was lurking behind a bookshelf downstairs. She used the sticky strips that come with Command hooks to attach the feet of the machine to the shelf, and then the shelf with the attached machine can be clamped to MY coffee table. Why did she have to put it onto my coffee table right where I like to hang out in front of the space heater. The Mother of Cats never talked to me about this before she did it. So far things are going well with her setup and the worst problem that she is dealing with is a certain cranky, under-stimulated little black cat. I prefer to hang out under the coffee table where I catch the best heat from the space heater. Now that the knitting machine is easier to work with, The Mother of Cats is making a couple of hats a day, and she is also getting some handknitting done too!

Look at these fun knits!! The Mother of Cats got the new DK weight arm warmers done just in time for the cold weather, and she also knitted up some more of the emotional support little chickies. I think that the new chickies make good cat toys, but she put them away to donate to her community knitting organization.

So, that was pretty much the week. The only other thing that has been going on is my new wooly blankie. Look at what the Mother of Cats gave me!!!!!

Okay, it isn’t really a blanket. This is a shawl that she knitted a few years ago. Isn’t this the perfect blanket for me?????

I really love my new blanket. Like, I really, really loves it!!!! I’ve been grooming it all the time and it is gradually getting nice and soft and fluffy. PERFECT!!!! Okay, the Mother of Cats was a tiny bit upset when she first saw what was happening, but she loves me so much she is letting me keep it. Also, Mateo has been pulling out strands of yarn with his teeth, so it is ours now!!

The Mother of Cats says I can keep the blankie as long as I leave her sweaters alone. Hey, it is a deal. Do you see how much I love this blankie!!!

So, that’s it for the week. I’m still trapped indoors with the CoalBear, and he is really causing a lot of commotion as he wants to go out onto the catio really, really badly. I stuck my face outside yesterday, and I do have to say, the Mother of Cats is right about this one. It is too cold for any CoalBears, no matter how fluffy they are. Maybe I should go chase him around again for a few minutes to give the Mother of Cats a break. Then we are going to make another hat. That will cheer Mateo up for sure.

Note from the Mother of Cats

If you are wondering what the pattern for the arm warmers was, I kind of wrote it up in my last post here.

All the New Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My African violets are also starting out the year right.

Goodbye 2024, Goodbye

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello, 2025.

PS: Did you miss pictures of Hannah and Mateo? Here are some of the bests of the year.

The Scleroderma Chronicles: The Surreal Stumpy Adventure

It’s been kind of a tough month. I had a bad flare and couldn’t knit, I suffered through an annoying 30-day heart monitor test, and then there was Thanksgiving. I’ve been slowing clawing my way back from the flare over several weeks, and finally last week I started to feel pretty much like myself again. I even made several hats on my Sentro knitting machine using a power screwdriver to turn the crank for me.

This actually works better than you would think. 🙂

I pruned and fed the plants in the indoor garden. Gosh, they really look a lot nicer. Look at how nicely the lavender plants cleaned up.

The miniature roses had gotten pretty bushy, and I kept seeing some aphids on the new growth. I aggressively pruned the plants back to remove more than half of the growth, sprayed the plants well with Neem oil, and then gave them some fertilizer. They look somewhat sparse now, but the new growth is good and I’m not seeing aphids. I really needed to get the size of the plants under control anyway as they were getting close to the top of the growing space under the grow lights.

There aren’t any new rose buds yet, but I think that this was a good course of action to manage the aphids. Some of my other plants have started to put out blooms, the African violets being the stars of the month.

So, the indoor garden is looking pretty good, and the difficult month was finally coming to an end. My wrists still hurt, but I was definitely on the way back to “normalish”. I decided to head out to buy a fast-food hamburger treat for myself Tuesday evening. I love these little trips out of the house; each one is a little adventure that really perks me up.

This trip was really something, a surreal adventure that is still playing out.

I had just cleaned out my car (Stumpy) a couple of days before, and before I left on my outing, I gave him a fast little vacuum job and brought in the trash cans from the street. Gosh, Stumpy looked good! I took off to the hamburger joint where I scored my favorite burger, some onion rings, and a chocolate shake. This is a lot of fat and salt, and I was going to have it anyway!!! Did I mention that my server looked just like Dylon on The Great British Bake Off? He gave me a coupon for free ice cream if I completed an online review of the food/service. Yay! Free ice cream!! On the way back I sneaked some onion rings from the bag as I drove past the high school where I used to work. It was early evening, and there was a car parked along the street above the sports stadium and field, the driver packing things into the back of his car. Someone finishing up sport practice, I thought to myself as I went by. Still looking at the school, I remembered how much I loved working there, how much I loved the kids, how much I loved the greenhouse attached to my classroom…

I had to stop at the light at the intersection by the school, and I remember that I was very focused on the oncoming cars before I started moving with the green light because… high school intersection… crazy new drivers… must be careful…

The light changed, I slowly started out, and there was a sudden flash of light and movement to my left as I crossed the intersection. I was hit by a car that had run the red light; poor Stumpy was sent careening across the intersection and ended up dropped onto the median of the street I had been crossing, now facing directly at my old classroom and its greenhouse. Kind of ironic, right? The collusion alert system in the car immediately activated and there was a voice checking on me and calling for emergence responders. A witness arrived soon after to help, and a teenaged girl started directing traffic. The witness was a Lacrosse coach, and I wondered if he was the driver packing up his car when I passed him by the sports field. The fire department arrived with paramedics who got me out of the car (taking my car keys out of my hand and leaving them with the car), into an ambulance, and off we went to the nearest hospital with an emergency department: I had some serious chest pain going and my blood pressure was something else. “Don’t worry,” said the paramedics.” We got your food for you out of the car”. Did I mention that this was a little surreal? “Did you know that you were hit by a Humvee?” Yep. Surreal.

So, I had a great little emergency room visit. I had some testing that determined that I wasn’t having a heart attack, but I did have a couple of broken ribs. The interactions with the trauma physician were kind of hilarious as she didn’t quite know what to make of my CT results… “you have a lot of interesting structures in your lungs,” she told me. “You seem kind of dry… you need to drink more water.” Whatever. It must be the diuretic that my doctors prescribed because they are more concerned about some other things going on… like pulmonary edema… and heart failure… somehow, she focused on the wonky kidney results and didn’t notice the rest. Have I mentioned surreal? I had called my son to come get me home because I didn’t have a car or door keys any longer, and he packed me up and got me out of there at that point. Five hours after picking up my fast-food, I finally started home again with my son, a little wobbly, drugged up on pain killers, and still in possession of my hamburger. I ate a couple of the cold onion rings in the car as he drove through the night…

I’m pretty sure that my poor car Stumpy is totaled.

…and the phone rang. The police finally called. They were with Stumpy, and he was now in the parking lot of the high school where I used to work, right outside the door I used every morning next to my old classroom. We turned around and headed back to the police at the accident scene to make my statement and to get the house keys out of the car. The police officer was wonderful; she was still making her way through all the calls and witness reports, but it absolutely looked like I had been hit by a driver who illegally ran the light. She made the arrangements for the car to be towed and stayed with it for me. I ended up hugging that officer and giving her an audible book recommendation. My chocolate milkshake was in the Stumpy’s cupholder, still cold with the straw in it, and I took it back. Of course I did. As we drove away the officer was doing a search for the book I had mentioned to her. Goodbye old classroom. Goodbye Stumpy car that I loved. Thank you both for all the good times.

Surreal.

Aftermath: My wonderful insurance has stepped up and is handling everything. My neighbors are telling me not to worry about the rental car yet: they will drive me anywhere I want to go. The CT scan at the ER picked up on a couple of issues that I need to follow up on, and I already have new appointments with my doctors to do that: the atelectasis in my lungs is back, and something is going on with my thyroid. Who knows, this all might have been a blessing in disguise.

My wrists are strangely better, and I finished knitting my socks.

My hamburger, when I warmed it up and ate it the next evening, was still delicious!

I found the coupon for the free ice cream when I finally cleaned out Stumpy in the tow lot Friday. I plan to leave a great review…

Stumpy was a 2018 Subaru Forester, and I can’t praise his safety features enough.

The Scleroderma Chronicles: and today’s new words are…Paroxysmal Atrial Tachycardia

So, finally the heart results have come back. If you haven’t been keeping up with all of my latest and greatest developments in the slow-moving train wreck that is called systemic sclerosis, let me quickly catch you up.

Over the summer I started to notice that my Fitbit was alarming frequently because my heartbeat was high. My heartrate was jumping suddenly from a moderate mid-70s bpm to over 140 bpm: cue the panting! I’d have to stop whatever I was doing to lean over while I caught my breath, and then it would be over. Sometimes my chest hurt, and I was pretty sure that this was contributing to my fatigue.

All of this craziness happened while I was trying to make hats on my Sentro knitting machine.

This is what I described to my cardiologist as my adventure on the stairs: I had watered the lawn, came indoors, walked up the stairs and was then suddenly profoundly out of breath.

I do have a long history of shortness of breath, and I’ve been diagnosed with several heart and lung issues that explained my symptoms: pulmonary hypertension, cardiac fibrosis, fluid around my heart, lung disease, and… yeah. I’ve been short of breath like this for a long time and I’ve just been dealing with it as my new normal. Still, the Fitbit was new data, so I sent an email to my cardiologist, and he ordered up a 30-day heart monitor test.

Tuesday afternoon the results were in, and my cardiologist contacted me with the results. It’s kind of a good news/good news/bad news diagnosis. I have a type of supraventricular tachycardia called paroxysmal atrial tachycardia (called PAT for short). I had to do some google searches to understand those crazy terms. The commonsense translation would be: sudden onset rapid beating of my heart’s upper chamber (the atrium). In even more simple terms, my heart rhythm slips out of control suddenly and the upper chamber is beating waaay too fast. Here’s the good news: this is a pretty benign heart rhythm issue (no blood clots, heart attacks or strokes here!!), and it can be treated (probably). The bad news is… I’m stuck with it, and it is pretty unpredictable. The other bad news is that I should go on oxygen more often in the daytime as PAT episodes seem to be triggered when my oxygen levels drop. That’s why it hits when I’m folding laundry, or right after coming up the stairs, or when I rush to the door to answer the doorbell…

Hannah: Listen, the doorbell is enough to give anyone a heart attack!!!

Why wait on a new drug? Well… I’m just now recovering from a pretty bad flare that hit my tendons, wrists and knees with paroxysmal fury. Paroxysmal is a great word, don’t you think? What is really crazy, my heart symptoms improved while I was down with the flare, making me wonder if the two are somehow connected. I want to wait to start a new medication until after my rheumatologist has a chance to sort out what is happening with my poor wrists and knees. I am suspicious about calcium being involved somehow, and the treatment for PAT involves calcium channel blockers. There may be no connection if there are different pathways involved, but still… calcium is the multi-headed monster of the moment with new calcium deposits appearing on my arms and legs, osteoporosis, and a previously floated notion that I might have pseudogout (which is caused by calcium pyrophosphate crystals in joints… wrists and knees being hit the worst… and my knee x-rays showed that I had calcium deposits in the tissue around my knee…). My cardiologist is okay with a delay in treatment with the understanding that I need to contact him if things get worse.

I just love my doctors!

So, here is the lesson from this adventure. Data really changes a conversation. Having that picture of my Fitbit made a huge difference; after months of explaining that I had sudden shortness of breath things changed with the one email and attached photo. The results of the heart monitor test have now returned a data-driven diagnosis that helps me understand what is happening and makes treatment possible. It is helpful to email your doctors (instead of making phone calls…) as you have a clear record of your interaction. Google with abandon!! Rely on the advice of your doctors; they went to medical school after all, but try to be an active partner in your treatment plan.

Dang. There is another diagnosis on that growing list… no one will believe me so we should just keep this quiet. Paroxysmal Atrial Tachycardia.

In the meantime, the cats are keeping their eyes on me!

Postscript: I forgot to mention, that of the three types of supraventricular tachycardia, PAT is the one that is the least common. Figures. Once a zebra, always a zebra!!