Alpine Bloom Hat – Yarn, Books & Roses

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: The CaterSunday Report

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Chewy brought me more TUNA and this crunchy paper this week. How awesome is that?

The Mother of Cats was busy yesterday shopping and cooking and reading and stuff, so I’m finally getting the news of the week out today. It’s CaturSunday. That works, right?

The Mother of Cats brought a little loom into the craft room and Mateo and I have been checking it out. It’s kind of strange, don’t you think?

Can you see it on the table behind the chair? Mateo has been whapping at the metal heddles on the loom because he likes the sound.

The Mother of Cats wound some yarn out to make the warp, and I helped her with all of that. I’m such a good girl.

Yesterday she cut the warp off of the warping board (that’s the wooden thingy with the pegs) and put it all into a bag to keep it safe from me. Why would she do something like that? How am I going to learn how to weave when she doesn’t share her toys? Anyway… when we finally start weaving I’ll give you another update.

The Mother of Cats also spent some time knitting this week. She made another Alpine Bloom hat in fingering weight yarn to give away to the Kaiser infusion center, but this time it is shorter. Here’s the tall hat next to the shorter one.

Can you see the difference? The Mother of Cats has enough yarn to make another one of these hats, so she just started another one.

The leaves at the bottom of the flower are chopped off in the smaller hat, but the Mother of Cats says that it fits her head better. I think that she should make a really small one for me, don’t you think that would be cute? She would have to something to let my ears out of the hats, though.

This is me on top of the new hat while it was blocking. She put a towel on top of the hat, but I can still smell the wet wool. Don’t you just love the smell of wet wool in the morning?

Finally, I should give you the latest updates on the plant experiments that the Mother of Cats has been conducting around the house. Hold on to your whiskers, here they come!

The rose seeds got moldy. Goodbye, rose seeds.

Luckily there are more rose seeds chilling in the refrigerator and the Mother of Cats plans to try again in a few weeks.

The snapdragon seeds came up and are doing great!!

There was a fig tree in the front room that was growing really tall and thin. It was growing crooked and looked kind of silly. The Mother of Cats wasn’t sure what to do with it, but finally decided to CUT IT OFF to take the top two-thirds of the tree off with the thought that it might bush out some. She took some cuttings off the branches of the ~~killed~~ chopped tree and put them in the orchid garden to see if they would grow some roots.

Do you see the beginning of the little roots on the seedlings? Yay! Next she will try to move two of the rooted cutting to dirt to see if they continue to do well. What will she do with all these trees if they keep growing? Sometimes I worry about the Mother of Cats.

Finally, there is the milkweed seeds. Remember them? Mateo and I check on them every time we are out on the catio, because they are outside in milk cartons hanging out in the cold.

The iris plant has shoots coming up, but so far, the milkweed seeds are still asleep.

Well, that’s all I have to say for today. That was a lot of updates, huh. I’m pretty sure that I need some TUNA to keep my strength up.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Note from the Mother of Cats: I modified the Alpine Bloom pattern to use fingering yarn. You can see my project notes here.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Last Caturday Report for 2023

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you see me in my Christmas tissue paper pile? The best part of Christmas is playing with the boxes and wrapping paper!

The Mother of Cats had a nice Christmas Eve when her son came down to help make the traditional lasagna, watch the traditional Christmas movie (Die Hard) and exchange gifts. Mateo (the CoalBear) loves the Mother of Cats’ son!!! Okay, I think it is because Mateo just loves lots of commotion, but he had a great Christmas running in and out of the house and onto the catio. Basically, he specialized in being underfoot and getting in the way most of the time while they were cooking. I stayed in the closet for most of this, but I did come out once they sat down for dinner.

Mateo: Hey, I need lots of stimulation because I’m a Maine coon cat. We have needs!! The CoalBear variety of Maine coons really, really need a lot of attention. By the way, do you like my winter fur? It is coming really well now.

Anyway, let me show you our Christmas presents!!! We got chirping toys; a little squirrel for me, and little birds for Mateo.

The Mother of Cats is handling all the chirping okay, but she does get a little cranky when Mateo plays with his bird under the bed at 4am… Did I mention that Mateo chirps too? There is a lot of chirping going on right now and I for one am wearing out a little…

So… what else has been going on around this place…there has been some cooking, some sewing, some cleaning, and a whole lot of knitting. Let me show you the knitting that has been going on!

The Mother of Cats finished her Alpine Bloom hat that was done in fingering yarn. She used size 2 and 4 needles for this one and added some I-cord to the bottom to balance the colors a little more.

The Mother of Cats also made some progress on a few other projects, but nothing is done. These projects are (left to right) the La Prairie cardigan, the Pressed Flowers socks (in purple!!) and a pair of lined cuffs called Fluffy. Hey, Fluffy is a good name for the CoalBear. I think that’s what I’ll call him all next year.

So, here we are at the end of the year. Have a nice New Year everyone. I’ll be hiding in the closet because of the firecrackers, but I hope you have fun on New Year’s Eve.

Hannah: why does there have to be firecrackers?

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The Fluffy pattern is free if you would like to make one. I’m filled with ideas about how to modify the pattern to produce an outer layer of knitted lace that shows a colored lining below. I have a lot of lace yarns in the stash…
The Alpine Bloom hat is still too tall and slouchy. There have been lots of comments about this online and ideas about how to modify the pattern. If I make another hat, I’m going to modify the knitted chart to omit the knitted leaves at the bottom, but I may also try out corrugated ribbing or knit the I-cord trim again to keep the color going in the ribbing.
Mateo is a really unique little guy. If you pull his tail, he flips over and bunny kicks. He is terrified of Netflix and cowers next to me every time I launch it; it is the big zooming red “N” that scares him, I think. What makes this especially hysterical is the fact that he runs into the room and jumps right up next to me every time he hears me turn on the television just in case I might be starting Netflix. Then there is the chirping… he only meows in emergencies but makes lots of chirping sounds. He likes to sleep under the covers, and there aren’t enough toys in the universe to keep him busy. It’s like owning a very furry monkey with claws…

Almost Christmas Caturday

Hi. I’m Hannah.

It was the week before Christmas, and the Mother of Cats has been kind of busy. She had presents to finish up, packages to mail, cookies to bake, and some cleaning to get done. She didn’t put up a tree this year because of the Mateo menace, but there are fun lights all over the place. Yay, I kind of like Christmas because of ALL THE PAPERS and the boxes.

The Mother of Cats also spent some time sewing on her placemats, and she managed to get three tops finished. Now she needs to get them quilted and finished, but that is for next week. I helped her with the sewing because I’m such a good girl. The best girl ever. I should have some more tuna, right?

I also helped the Mother of Cats with her knitting. We are trying out a kind of experiment with the Alpine Bloom hat. The pattern is Alpine Bloom, but the Mother of Cats is knitting it with the same stitch count and needles that she uses to knit a Barley Light that fits her pretty well. What do you think of our progress?

This hat is 120 stitches being knit on size 2 (2.75 mm) and 4 (3.5 mm) needles. The yarns are La Bien Aimee Merino Super Sock and Crazy Zauberball by Schoppel-Wolle. The Mother of Cats is hopeful that the hat will fit, but we haven’t checked that yet. It’s like an adventure.

Tonight it has just started snowing outside, and the Mother of Cats is happy that we are going to have a White Christmas. The CoalBear has been outside playing in the white stuff, but I don’t like cold snow on my paws because…

Well, that’s about all for now. The Mother of Cats spent the day cleaning and cooking, and now it is time for her to settle down with a nice book so I can cuddle and hang out with her. Maybe we can snack on a Christmas cookie or two.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Mateo the CoalBear: Merry Christmas, everyone. Have fun with your trees!!

Hannah and the ColeBear: Caturday Soup Saga

Hi. I’m Mateo.

I also go by the name CoalBear. Hannah calls me some other names that I guess I shouldn’t share here. Mostly that happens when I slash her heels…

So, what do you want to hear about first. The Mother of Cat’s knitting, the soup that she made this weekend, or… my fabulous new toy?

The Chewy box came this morning, and that little bird was in it! I knew that something was up because the box was chirping before the Mother of Cats got it cut open. Then she took the toy out… wow… I had to spend some time figuring out if it was going to jump at me, and then I started carrying it all around the house. Seriously, this was so exciting that I wasn’t even able to eat breakfast!!!! Everyone should have a chirpy bird!!!!

Hannah is like… whatever. She is so weird sometimes.

Hannah: Excuse me? I was busy with the TUNA!!!

So, I guess that I should mention the knitting that has been happening this week before we get to the main course, the soup! The Mother of Cats finished her Alpine Bloom hat this week, blocked it, and then tried it on.

Hannah: This is a nice Hannah warmer, don’t you think?

Yeah. The hat is too big for the Mother of Cat’s head. She sent a picture to everyone in her family and this hat will be heading off to New York to keep one of her cousins warm this winter. She has some ideas about how to adjust the pattern to get the hat smaller, but she just parked them at the back of the bus for now and started knitting away on her La Prairie sweater instead.

Mateo: don’t you like how I’ve decorated the knitting with some of my cat hairs? This knitting is kind of stressful, so I’ve been hanging out a lot with her.

Alright, let talk about the soup. This has been a source of commotion for days. It all started when the Mother of Cats brought home this goofy squash and told us that she was going to make soup out of it. Hannah was like… can I have some tuna? I mean, the squash was parked right next to our cat food, but somehow the Mother of Cats didn’t pick up on Hannah’s hints that she needed some more tuna! Or Cookies!!

This squash caused lots of trouble this week. First the Mother of Cats had to buy a new peeler to use with the squash. She ordered it from Amazon, and the package got lost. So, she had to go to the store to get another peeler. She also bought a crock pot while she was there. Then she bought an immersion blender on Amazon. Hannah and I were going crazy playing in the boxes and chasing each other today while the Mother of Cats peeled, chopped, cooked, blended, and made the soup.

Perhaps this is the most expensive Autumn Squash Soup ever made. The Mother of Cats likes it, so I guess that’s good, even if it smells pretty nasty to me. She’s eaten two bowls, and she still has two quarts in the fridge.

Well, that’s all for now. I need to go find my chirpy bird toy.

This is the CoalBear, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

I have enough yarn left over to make another Alpine Bloom hat and I plan to go down a needle size to make it a little smaller. I also have in mind trying out knitting the hat in fingering yarn using the smaller sized needles.
The La Prairie pattern is full of new skills to master. The pattern includes instructions on how to knit the tiny cables without a cable needle (Yay!), and how to knit the bobbles in a new way to me. This is not a sweater that you can take to the movies while knitting as it requires focused attention!
Now, the soup. My latest blood tests came in showing that I have developed a type of anemia. A less common type, of course. Never mind, my doctor wants me to try to get more iron into my diet, so I’m trying to add more iron rich food to my diet (like squash), but I also need to try to maximize my ability to digest the food and absorb the nutrients. Hence the new, medium sized crock pot and the much safer for me to handle immersion blender.
Here’s the recipe for the soup that I made today. Copycat Panera Autumn Squash Soup by A Simple Palate. This was really yummy; I added Thai green curry paste to mine.
That squash is a butternut squash in case you didn’t instantly recognize it.
What is this less common type of anemia, you ask? It’s an anemia of chronic disease with red blood cells that don’t have enough hemoglobin in them. As in, I have enough red blood cells, but they are not packing enough hemoglobin to do the job even though I have iron levels that are within normal limits. Squash, as it turns out, is a good source of iron.
The little African violet that my sister sent me for my birthday is still blooming!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Caturday Report

Hi. I’m Hannah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is Hannah, signing off.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Knitting Time!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I need this blanket for the cold nights to come!

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

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

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

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

That’s all for now.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

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

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