Things continue to be busy here at Casa de Mother of Cats, and there has been lots and lots of knitting going on. I loves the knitting because… yarn chomping!!! The Mother of Cats keeps her eye on me, so I don’t get to partake in my favorite yarn related activity often, but you never know… Anyway, before I show off the knitting, I think that I should show you all this quilt that we have been working on.
This is an art quilt that involves fusing lots of fabric pieces of fabric together to make a picture. This week the Mother of Cats and I got the biggest part of it done.
Look at what the quilt is looking like now that all of the pieces are attached. Some of the pieces will be hung on a string that isn’t on the quilt yet, but all of the fabric pieces are in place so you can see them. Look at how cute this is!!!! Do you see me on the quilt? Of course you do, because I am the most special part!!! Here are some of the cute details so far:
The Mother of Cats says we need to use the sewing machine to sew all of these little pieces down next. Yay! I also loves the sewing machine. This is going to be fun.
Now, let’s get to the socks. I’m pretty concerned about all of the yarn that is piling up to make socks.
These will be done in a couple of days.
When the Mother of Cats cleaned out her yarn stash last week, she found lots of fun yarn to make socks. Then she bought some more yarn to go with the sock yarn that she already had. Then she found some more yarn to buy. She is so happy about fall, and loves all the trees changing colors (whatever… I personally like the crickets and the birds that flock in the yard) and has decided to focus on socks for the next few weeks. SHE STILL HAS SOME SHAWLS TO FINISH!!!!! Is the Mother of Cats being reasonable? No, she is not. Look at what she has been up to…
Socks!!!
She loves these colors and wants them to be socks right away!!! She keeps saying stuff like… so cute, so cute…
Mother of Cats, you only have two feet!!! This is kind of crazy…
Is the Mother of Cats listening to me? Not so much. This is MORE socks!!
So, the Mother of Cats is ramping up to do some major sock knitting. There is all of this yarn. Then she thought… I wish that there were more greens and reds in the colors… and she bought more yarn. This is out of control. But… this is also going to be so much fun as I try to get some yarn chomping in. I wonder if she will remember that there is some nice purple in the stash, too.
So that was the week. We got the quilt through the “make all the pictures” stage, and now we will start the sewing stage. The Mother of Cats is getting ready to make ALL THE SOCKS, and the CoalBear and I are just a little concerned.
Do you see how concerned I am?
This is Hannah signing out.
Send tuna!
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
The quilt is Wind in the Whiskers by Pine Needles. I’m debating about whether I want to make the two lower blocks for the quilt. It is already pretty large, and I like the story with the tree as the central character with the cats.
I did finish a shawl!!! Here it is, the Age of Gold done in pinks.
Well, this was a week. It seemed much, much longer, but really, it was only a week. My youngest son alerted me that he was battling some type of infection early in the week and the news stations began alerting me that the weather was going to be just wacko for a few days. The forecast was so crazy we made the national news.
Yep. We broke a record for the heat amid warnings of a serious snow storm on the way. The smoke from wildfires in the mountains west of me kept the sky a dirty white color and the sun a sullen red ball as I brought all of the potted plants into the garage for safety before the expected snow and hard freeze. The temperature dropped over 60°F in 24 hours and I had to start up the furnace. I covered the roses to protect them and my son started a second prescription of antibiotics.
Two days later the weather had warmed up again, the snow was gone, and I had carted all of the potted plants back outside for a few more weeks of sunshine. The fires in the mountains were chugging back to life after a few days of respite during the snowstorm, and a text had came from my son that started with, “Don’t panic…” His doctor had sent him to the ER, he was transported to a second hospital where he had emergency surgery and landed in the ICU on a respirator overnight. This afternoon he is off the respirator and sending me text messages again while I make calls to his nursing team. Because of Covid I’m not with him right now and I JUST HATE 2020!!! I think that we are all due a break.
Knitting
This was a week for garter stitch for sure. I did some work on the new Misurina sweater early in the week, but by the end of the week, aware that my son was not getting better on his antibiotics, I was all garter stitch, all the way.
I’m further down the yoke of the Misurina sweater (by Caitlin Hunter) and am happy with how it is going.
The colorwork sections of the yoke are separated by little cables, can you see them there in the grey? I was catching the floats in those cable stitches but you can see them peaking through because of the loose gauge so I am just making really long floats now. I don’t like to do that in general, and I have an idea of catching them later on with some clever stitching with grey yarn if they are a problem, but for now extra long floats are the plan.
Lured into a sense of autumn by the cold and snow I cast on another garter stitch shawl using some Mad Tosh sock yarn in the colorway “Rocky Mountain Colorado” that looks like all the colors of fall.
The large garter stitch shawl is finished off with a lace border in a nice contrast color that can pick up one of the colors in the garter fabric. I kind of want to use a dusty pink that I have, but I’m also tempted to buy a beautiful saffron colored yarn I saw online. So many decisions in a week gone bad! Right now I’m just going to keep knitting and once I’ve got more yarn into the shawl I’ll have a better idea about which color I want to highlight. The trick is to make the colors sparkle instead of toning down the shawl… Ironically, because of the extreme heat followed by a hard freeze, the fall colors in our mountains won’t be that nice this year. Thanks again, 2020!!
Garden
Right before the rain started I went out into the smoky air and took some pictures while moving plants into the safety of the garage.
The stonecrop was just starting to bloom and covered with bees. Poor guys… hope they got home before the rain started.
While I was taking the picture of the bee there was a flash of movement to my left… a bunny in the back yard again!!
The stonecrop came through the storm just fine under the tubs I covered them with and the bees are back. I haven’t spotted the backyard bunny again, but the squirrels are putting on a show in the front yard for Hannah as they race around the front ash tree. As I took the knitting pictures yesterday I spotted this under my Douglas Fir (the only good Doug is a dead Doug… poor maligned tree): an owl pellet!!
The first time I’ve ever spotted one of these in the wild!
A little calling card from one of the great horned owls reminding me about the circle of life.
By the way, the mountain lion has been seen a couple of more times, but not in my backyard, thank heavens!!
Books
The Pull of the Stars was great! Set in Ireland, it is the story of a nurse working in a small ward with pregnant women stricken by influenza during the Great Influenza pandemic in 1918. The characters are rich, the historical setting and issues ring true, and I chomped my way though the book in just a couple of days. Along with the pandemic there are threads about the great war, shell shocked soldiers, the fight for Irish independence, prejudice against women, and the abuse of the “pipeline” that consumed women and children not protected by the sanctity of marriage in 1918 Catholic Ireland.
The title is a nod to the origin of the word “influenza” which comes from an Italian outbreak in medieval times that was attributed to the influence of the stars.Our heroine nurse records each death and loss as tiny scratches on her watch. A moon for a lost mother. Tiny lines and half moons for stillborns and premature births. Every loss is recorded in time from an illness poorly understood and difficult to control. Kind of haunting, huh.
So I attended the live discussion with the author of this book at Barnes and Noble, and it was great! The author, Emma Donoghue talked about her work and answered questions from viewers that were general ones like “why did you choose this situation” or “how difficult was it to portray medical understandings of a century ago”. It was fine, but I also would have like to just “talk” about the book, the characters, and their actions with the other participants. Nope. No spoilers allowed. There must be a way to have reader chit chat just like the real book club would do. I guess I’ll keep digging and maybe ask B&N if there is a way that can be set up. It would be just another Facebook group, right?
Have a great week, everyone!!
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
