This week there was a flurry of activity. The Mother of Cats seemed busier than usual, and we certainly got neglected. There was a lot of commotion and she seemed to leave us alone a lot of the time. She went to the dentist (great checkup, whatever that means), out to lunch with friends, and out to dinner with her son. Did she bring us anything? No!
She put us out in the yard while they took away the oxygen machine. Can you believe it? She has gotten so frisky that the doctor decided that she doesn’t need her oxygen any more. Yellow Boy and I are having trouble sleeping now that it is gone. I’m not sure she really is focused on our needs the way she needs to.
She was so excited about the oxygen leaving that she bought a cake with the inscription “Goodbye Oxygen” on it and took it to her knitting group to share. They must have known that the cake was coming because they had a card waiting to give her…
Why are there no cats on this card? Wait, what type of card is this? Can this be a… Birthday Card?Oh. That explains why these flowers arrived from her sister. I thought that they were for me…Now that I think of it, she did say that this was her birthday yarn…and her daughter-in-law bought her more birthday yarn. Look! It even matches the books that arrived at the library for her on her “special day”.
All this yarn, books and flowers are just crazy. She doesn’t need all of this special stuff. We don’t care that she is now an official senior citizen.
We just care that she loves us.
Happy “You Got Old” Day, Mother of Cats. May you have many more.
Having dyed the most scrumptious yarn ever, I began the hunt for the correct size needles to cast on and knit a cowl to dye for. Little problem, people: I seem to be missing the correct size tips for the project in mind. In fact, there seem to quite a few needles and tips missing… you know what happened next. I went on a UFO hunt.
OK, if you are reading this blog post looking for information on extra-terrestrials, go away. Once I posted an article titled “UFO Hunt” to this blog and generated a lot of activity and even a couple of messages signaling how disappointed people were with the “click-bait” false advertising. Go away right now. I’m not saying that I don’t believe in life out there in the universe, I just want to find the black hole UFO’s that have sucked down those needles!
Oh dear. After about a half hour of tossing the stash and going through baskets, bags, and looking in the car (Hey, you can’t expect me to be caught without something to knit. I always travel with a project!), the following UFO’s were located.
These mitts came out of one of my project bags. The pink mitts just need their thumbs and finishing, and it looks like I hated thumbs so much I cast on another pair of mitts. Don’t ask. There were two pairs of needles here. and out of another bag came this cowl. OK, it was in the car. Under a blanket. Sorry little guy, I’ll finish you up too. Another needle found, but not the size I’m looking for.Wow, I totally forgot about this shawl. This is a Benevolence Shawl that I was knitting in a cotton and alpaca mix yarn for summer. Technically, I still have a week of summer left. Don’t think I’ll make it…More needles! This is the start of the Guernsey Pullover from the latest issue of Vogue Knitting. I started it in a rush of longing for fall color during a rainy afternoon. There were several needles in the bin with the sweater, including the size that I needed. Gee, this is going to be a great sweater. It would be nice to get it done before the snow arrives…I’m still cranking away on the Jujuy Shawl too. I’m just getting to a wedge that will be all pink… I can’t wait to see what that will look like.
Well, no wonder I seem to be missing needles. Here they are, all hard at work supporting fiber art life forms struggling to get born. I need a new queue just to decide which UFO to knit first. I thought about putting the names of the projects on slips of paper in a jar, and then I would just pull out the name of the next project that would get finished. Maybe I should have two jars; one for large projects (sweaters and shawls) and one for small ones (mitts and cowl). Hey, that actually might be a good idea. I could knit small projects on sunny days and large ones on rainy days. It could be a plan. I could even have a jar with the names of projects waiting to be started. Oops. I suddenly had a visual of slips jar hopping from the “waiting” to the “UFO” jars. Might be a problem.
Forget the jars. Don’t you want to know what did I did? I cast on the new alpaca cowl onto those size 6 needles I was hunting for, of course. I have knit for three days like a demon and I’m now coming down the home stretch. Doesn’t it look nice?
This is the cowl that I was just starting in my last post about crock pot dyeing. Last one started, it will be the first one finished. Typical. Isn’t that why we all have UFOs?
OK, this isn’t a queue, but it is a list of all these poor, neglected UFOs. Here are their project notes on Ravelry:
I was so happy with the yarn and the sample I made from my first crock pot dyeing adventure I was empowered to gather up my courage to dye some more yarn. Two more projects have emerged from the crock pot.
A bit of heaven for the head: A few weeks ago I tied together the leftovers of bulky huacaya alpaca left over from earlier hat and mitts and dyed them a darker indigo using the same infusion and no-stir method I employed the first time around. The yarn was nice, but blotchy, so I overdyed it with a little more indigo to even it out. This week I knitted the yarn into a hat. What do you think?
Here is the hat. Kind of manly, isn’t it? (Okay, that isn’t a shock as this is an adaptation of the Man Hat by Haven Ashley), but I like the feel of it on my head so I started to think about how to infuse a little cute factor…I had this much yarn left. Hmmm…Bam! Knitted rosette is just the solution that I was looking for. I found the pattern for this one in Knitting in the Details by Louisa Harding. I’m debating attaching a bead or button to the middle of the rosette. How about something that looks like a bone button? If you are looking for more details the project is here on Ravelry.
The yummiest cowl ever: that went so well I plugged in the pot and added two skeins of premium sport weight alpaca from Alta Vida Alpacas. I have to be honest here; this is the yummiest fiber I have ever handled and it was a little stressful to wet it down, pour some vinegar over it and add the dye. Still, what could go wrong? Worst case, I decided I would just call up Cari at Alta Vida Alpacas and offer to pay for the yarn. There. What’s to worry about?
What a baby I am. The yarn came out fine.
Look, look! Not as blotchy as the first dye batch, but still pretty darn appealing. I’m keeping notes about the dye amounts and temperatures in the pot to get a handle on this. It’s fun; just like keeping a science notebook again. 🙂Since I’m recording notes about the dye efforts in the notebook I planned out the cowl I want to knit in the same location. I am making a cowl like an earlier one I made in this sport weight alpaca yarn. Here is the swatch that I posted about earlier (link at the top of this post); by laying it over the original cowl I was able to figure out the stitch count to make this one. If you’re interested the original cowl is this one on Ravelry.I cast on Friday using the directions for a Moebius cast on by Cat Bhordi online. Since this is a moebius the knitting started in the middle of the garter section and both edges of the cowl get knitted at the same time. I’m in the blackberry stitch now; at the top of the picture the berries are “up” and at the bottom they are “down”. Fun, huh. This yarn is just yummy; it is developing a little bloom as I work. I’m writing down the pattern as I go so I can get it written up when I’m done. What do you all think of my fun little notebook?
I’ve run out of alpaca to dye, but I found some white handspun last night that is temping me. Time to plug in the crock pot again. Wait. I have an old vegetable steamer. Maybe I should paint the yarn this time and put it into the steamer…
Oh, I am having fun now!
Have a good weekend everyone.
Note: I feel that I should mention that I have two crock pots: one is for cooking, and the other is for dyeing. They are in different colors and left in different places so I don’t get them mixed up. If I use the veggie steamer it will be joining the dye crockpot in the garage and won’t be used for cooking any more. Best to always use an abundance of caution.
Two shawls got finished last week. Check this out:
Shawl #1: Putting on the Dog
My friend Deb had a dog named Jake who was really special. She saved his fur for years when she brushed him, and earlier this year I spun some of the dog down into yarn. I blogged about Jake and the spinning here and this post showed the final yarn.
MacKenzie really liked the finished yarn (which Deb named PuppyPaca)Look! Here is the finished shawl made with the PuppyPaca. Didn’t it turn out great?Here is Deb modeling the finished product. I think that the green really complements the homespun.
Deb has begun her own blog recently where she writes about greyhounds, gardening, and, what else, knitting!! You can visit her site, The Greyt Knitting Frenzy, and see her post about the shawl here.
Shawl #2: Bad Cats
I finished knitting my Random Act of Color shawl late last week and wet blocked it Saturday morning. I really liked how it turn out. Here’s some pics of the final product.
Look at how great the colors turned out together. I love the lace, the texture, the colors; a great addition to my cool weather wardrobe.The beads and the edging are nice details, don’t you think?
What I’m not showing in the pictures is the fact that one of my bad, bad, cats got a claw stuck in the shawl (it was safe on the table at the time…), dragged it through the house and managed to pull a TEN FOOT snag of yarn out. Really. I’m not exaggerating. I found it in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. The cats were hiding.
Proof of cat badness. This is the yarn that I haven’t been able to work back into the shawl.
The pull goes across almost the entire width of the shawl in the final purple lace section. The yarn didn’t get cut, but I’m not too sure how to repair this. I dreamed last night about cutting off the lower section of the shawl, picking up the stitches at the start of the purple section and then re-knitting the last sections. This morning I work up and thought, “Kitchener stitch!” I’m not quite sure how I’m going to deal with this. There may be a way to gradually work the yarn back into the shawl, but I have to balance time vs. frustration. For now I’ve packed it away (to keep it safe from cats and scissors) and moved on to other knitting projects.
The Mother of Cats and I have been hanging out in the yard every morning reading and eating breakfast. It is my favorite time of day.I love chasing stuff in the garden while she reads. I was hot on the tail of a garter snake when… Wait, what was that?!Dogs! What does it always have to be dogs? I lost the snake, too.
Ugh. The Mother of Cats loves the dogs that live next door, but I’m not a fan. How can she expect me to put up with this? Thankfully it was getting hot and she decided to move inside to knit.
She’s been putting beads on her Random Act of Color shawl. This looks like it could be fun.That does look like fun. She hooks the beads onto the stitches one at a time and then knits them in. Hey, I bet she could use a little help…There. I’ll just massage the shawl a little while she puts those beads on. I’m not in the way at all. Oops. Did those beads just spill……sometimes the Mother of Cats can to be lacking in empathy. Really, it is a flaw in her character, don’t you think? I was just helping. How can she expect me to just exist at the foot of the bed soooo far away from the yarn?
She was so cranky that she shifted knitting operations to the family room where she binge watched this show called Nurse Jackie and knitted the binding onto the shawl. I helped her as much as I could; I must have stopped by at least a dozen times to check on her progress. Hey, yarn chomping is helping, right?
After six hours of beading and knitting she finally finished, only to discover that she had made a spacing error in her bind-off. She went to bed with a bag of Cheetos. Let me tell you, it was not pretty! She finished the whole bag and there were sad little sighs along with the Cheetos crunches…
The next morning she ripped out the binding, watched more Nurse Jackie and put the edging back onto the shawl correctly. I was out with the dogs and snakes so it was over before I knew what had happened. Funny, she was much faster this time.
Finally! It is done and pinned to block. I just love the smell of wet yarn, don’t you?
Note from the Mother of Cats: If I’m lucky MacKenzie won’t throw up on this shawl and I’ll have the final picture next week. Happy knitting weekend everyone!
You know, no matter how your week is going, things will get better if you head on over to visit your local yarn store. I met up with my knitting peeps last Wednesday, and here’s what happened.
You know I wore my new Antarktis Shawl. My friend Deb took a picture of me showing it off.There were sheep cookies!! You know these went home with me.I found some beads to use with the Random Act of Color that I am knitting. I plan on adding these babies to the purple edging at the bottom of the shawl. I’m still knitting like crazy on this shawl, but I don’t think I will get it done before the end of the Olympics tonight.And of course I found some yarn that I had to have. This will be a new cowl someday. 🙂 The yarn is Universal Yarns Bamboo Blooms Handpaint.
There was laughing, knitting, shopping and snacking. Projects were shown off and fellow knitters struck with envy and creative inspiration. Patterns were shared, yarn was bought and ordered. Plans were made to run wild during the upcoming Yarn Along the Rockies yarn crawl, and a good time was had by all.
It is good to have a local yarn store and knitting peeps.
Okay, this is a rant. This rant is so long and complicated, with so many connections to other topics, that I have considered that I should perhaps launch another blog just to deal with it. Or maybe create an online course for people with complex autoimmune diseases. Something. Because I finally have snapped for sure.
It happened while I was attending my monthly Scleroderma Support group in July. I go to these meetings because I need to talk to people about my illness, become educated about treatments and coping strategies, and to get, you know, support! I want to flock with my peeps!! Usually in these meetings there are introductions, a little sharing, nice snacks, and a presentation by a guest speaker.
This is the problem. The speakers who have been coming are often involved in alternative treatment strategies. As in alternative medicine. As in flat out pseudoscience masquerading as legitimate methods of treatment for our complex health conditions. These speakers have been trained in their “method” and faithfully parrot back what they were told in their training. They have little actual knowledge of human physiology, biology, disease, or science. They are connected to a product or system that they want to sell to us to help us “stay healthy”. They especially tell us that they can help us have “healthy” immune systems and/or take away our pain. Since I am in pain because my immune system is misbehaving it’s hard to not find their messages appealing.
Except… I was a biology teacher. I used to work in a research lab. I know science as a logical process with rules, and this information is so outrageous it causes me to wiggle around in my chair, bite my tongue, and often whip out my cell phone to fact check.
Me: Google, please tell me if Leaky Gut is a real thing?
Google: Are you crazy? Of course not.
Me: That’s what I thought…
But evidently I absolutely, positively need to take this essential oil to protect me from leaky gut. Or the toxins will leak out though the holes in my intestines. This is the cause of many complex illnesses. Research? We don’t need no stinking research. We have testimonials!!
This pressure point chart was so outrageous I needed to put down the knitting to take a picture!
How about the day I learned that I need to massage my hands and feet at specific pressure points to clean the toxins out of my liver, pancreas and other parts of my body? Really. I was informed that the problem is that the cells of my body get dehydrated, will form tough protective barriers, and the fascia then can’t move fluids throughout the body. This was such a garbled version of reality it was practically science salad.
Me: Google, please tell me exactly what fascia is.
Google: Sure. Fascia is the thin, tough barrier around muscles and organs. It is part of your connective system and made of collagen.
Me: Google, just to be sure, it doesn’t have anything to do with fluid transport?
Google. No, dumb ass. That would be the lymph system.
Me: Google, that’s what I thought. No need to cop an attitude with me, you wouldn’t believe what I’m dealing with here.
As if all this fact checking wasn’t exhausting enough, there is also a hint of “anti-science” in the room. Several other patients have become convinced that we need to stop taking our meds as they have unacceptable side effects. It is better, they argue, to control our disease with diet, essential oils and supplements. OMG! It isn’t possible to google fast enough to keep up with this stuff!
Me: Google, what is this alkaline diet all about?
Me: Google, is dairy inflammatory?
Me: Google, do I need to take massive doses of probiotics every day, or can I just eat yogurt? This speaker is telling me I have to buy their product since I can’t eat dairy anymore…
Me: Google, how quickly do bacteria divide? Every 20 minutes? So I don’t need a massive dose?
Me: Google, is there any research showing a positive benefit of essential oils in systemic sclerosis?
Yep. This is my lunch. See the dairy? That yogurt has 8 live cultures in it and I am not giving it up!!
While loading up on gluten free snacks at the break I finally snapped and asked the group facilitator if she thought it would be appropriate to let people advocate going off their meds and using essential oils to treat their conditions if this was a cancer support group?
“Well, no…”, she replied. “But that’s cancer.”
I just looked back at her until I saw something click in her brain, and then I left. I’m done.
Since then I have been fussing around about why this is happening. I understand that this is a tough disease (in more than one way), but how awful it is that there is so much misinformation out there that people don’t know what is accurate, and what isn’t. Desperate people will clutch at anything that gives them hope. Sometimes these things are based in sound logic, reason and science (stem cell transplants), and sometimes they are not (amber beads for pain relief). Obviously people need to know more about the nature of science, basic physiology, immunology, cell biology, and how the medications prescribed by their doctors work. They need to know their Star Trek!!
A no-win scenario, the Kobayashi Maru test was designed to be a test of character.
That’s right. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn is what I needed to put this into perspective. So many movie quotes, so many posts.
So, I feel a lot better after finishing up my rant, but I still think that I may need to launch a mini-series of posts relating to this. I mean, there are all those pseudoscience cures to debunk. All that biology to share. All those Star Trek quotes.
Stay tuned. If I start the new blog, I’ll let you all know where it is. Otherwise, a lot of my knitting friends are going to be exposed to some biology. Feel free to let me know how you feel about that.J
Oh, I am totally locked into Olympic viewing with knitting on the side. Last week was swimming, beach volleyball, woman’s gymnastics, and my fabulous tropical colored Antarktis shawl. I cast off Friday night and here she is:
You know, it is challenging to knit with so much cat help. Once MacKenzie joins the party my knitting speed goes way down. Actually it is a reverse relationship with the amount of yarn chomping; MacKenzie loves to chomp yarn. But in spite of cat help it is finished. Check this out!! My Ravlery notes are here.
Well, as soon as I was done with this shawl I cast on and started the next. I had put 7 new shawls into my Ravelry queue a couple of weeks ago, so I headed on over to check out the list. I fussed around with Rainbow Warrior for a while, but decided that the two colors that I had selected really didn’t go together as well as I thought they did. Fine. Back to the stash!! In the meantime, I did have the perfect colors to start a Random Act of Color, so that is what happened.
I’m making this shawl in the colors that are linked to my autoimmune conditions: bright teal (scleroderma) and purple (Sjogren’s Syndrome). How lucky that those two colors go well together. 🙂
So, I am still binge watching and knitting like crazy. The cats stayed out most of the day so there was a lot of progress. Hey, I might be able to knock this one off too before Rio ends on me.
It is still hot here and things are really slowing down. Most of the plants in the garden have stopped blooming and the cats are on strike under the largest bushes in the yard trying to stay cool. Smoke from western USA wildfires have made the air quality where I live less than optimal so I’ve been staying indoors as much as possible; this is easy because… Olympics! Prime knitting weather!! Today I’m watching volleyball (Serbia vs. USA. Go USA!!) and cranking away on the Antarktis shawl. Okay, that’s enough detail. Here are the pictures. 🙂
I’m loving the colors of my Antarktis shawlHere’s a shot that better shows my progress. I’m now at about the halfway point.I’m about half way through the Hawkshaw cowl too. I love, love, love this yarn from Spincycle Yarns.My butterfly bush has finally started to bloom, about the only color in the entire yard. Not that any butterflies are bothering to come see the bush in the heat. Even the grass has stopped growing. Mostly it is managing to stay alive. Mostly.The cats are too hot to chase any butterflies, anyway. Yellow Boy sleeps spread out on the damp ground under a shady bush.Yellow Boy: I can haz matted fur…
That right. This cat grows new balls of matted fur daily. I’ve been shaving him when they get really bad, but he can get a little scary while this is going on (growling makes me nervous, and then there are those teeth!) so we do what we can. Last night I got almost everything off except some lumps of fur on his chest. This should be an Olympic event! I wonder who would get scored… me or the cat? We could call it single-handed cat clipping. Points are deducted if you resort to using a foot or sustain a scratch.
MacKenzie: I have superior fur: no fur mats for me!
Last week I went to see my primary care physician and she ordered me the oxygen-to-go equipment and changed my blood pressure meds. Now my heart rate is up, my blood pressure is down, and my oxygen levels are better. I feel pretty good and have stopped the daytime oxygen. OK, I take the support tank with me when I leave the house, but things are still better. It’s a win!!
So that’s the cat days of summer. Olympics, heat, matted cat fur, oxygen level checks, and knitting marathons.
I’m on the home stretch of the Antarktis shawl. Time to decide which shawl to knit next.
Last night was the start of the Olympics in Rio, and I cast on the start of my first in a set of seven happy shawls. Think I can get this done before the end of the Olympics? Let the race begin!
Yarn, Books & Roses 