There were lots of adventures on the flight back from Japan (well, I slept through most of it because… I’m a cat) as Sharon threw a gobshite passenger off the plane (with a parachute, of course), discovered Chad that Golden-Bag-of-Cat-Treats-Thieving Worm hiding in the wheel well of the plane, took a nap in the catnip-scented oxygen of the cabin, and then finally tackled Chad off the plane in a butt-waggling zoom of epic proportions that allowed her to recover the priceless bag of cat treats while Chad fell through the clouds. She did throw Chad a parachute and an inflatable raft, but we kind of don’t care what happened to him because there was sushi and Meow Mix for all of us on the flight. Did I mention that there was catnip-scented oxygen in the cabin?
(Okay, Sharon did post a photo of Chad falling through the skies in his parachute, so he did get it on and hopefully landed safely…)
Anyway, the Mother of Cats finished the shawl, and I got my wings!!
I’m adding these wings to my passport!!
Now the Sharon Air MKAL is over and the Mother of Cats has returned to knitting a sweater that had been hibernating in a bin for the last few weeks. I still have my blueberry box from the flight, and since I returned in Cardboard Class I brought my blanket and all the wonderful yarn that I bought the Mother of Cats in Japan home with me with no problems.
Mateo: I’m helping the Mother of Cats with her sweater!
So now the Mother of Cats is happily knitting away on her new sweater (the Lace & Fade Boxy sweater by Joji Locatelli) with Mateo (the CoalBear) and I’m catching up on my sleep in my blueberry box. The Mother of Cats taped my wings to the box, and I’m still dreaming of all the places that I visited during the MKAL adventure. Cairo. New Zealand. Paris. Istanbul. Japan. So much fun!
Do I look sad? This is just my dreaming of catnip face…
Now it is fall outside and the flies seem to have vanished with the backyard robins but there are crickets and bunnies. Luckily it is cooler so I can play with the CoalBear in the daytime, and I’ve started sleeping on the bed with the Mother of Cats at night again. The Mother of Cats bought me and the CoalBear a lot of new toys, and we are playing chase-chase through piles of crunchy brown shipping paper. I’m returning to my old routines and I’m actually glad that my adventure is over. It is good to be home.
I got into my Blueberry box really early Friday morning while I was waiting for the next clue in the Sharon Air MKAL.
I was so excited while I was waiting for the clue 2 to arrive so I could know where we were heading next to catch Chad the Mongolian Death Worm who had stolen the priceless Golden Bag of CAT TREATS. He had been last seen in Cairo wearing a parka, so I knew that I was catching a flight to somewhere cold, but I never expected that I would he heading to… New Zealand. Oh. It’s winter there. The other thing that I didn’t expect was that I would be flying…
Litter Class!!!
Yeah. Litter Class is like coach in people airplanes. It’s towards the back part of the plane and all of the litter boxes are there at the back of the section. You don’t get a nice chair, or a cardboard box, or a blanket, or anything to sit on.
I really like blankets, but they wouldn’t let me use mine on the plane. I didn’t want to make a scene because it you act like an Eejit on the plane you get a parachute and get escorted to one of the exits… Sharon really doesn’t tolerate any in-flight nonsense!!
You are assigned your own spot on the floor and have to stay there. You need sharp claws because you need to dig in really, really hard during the takeoffs and landings or you’ll slide into some other cat’s territory, and you know how that is going to end up. Personally, I don’t like inter-cat conflict all that much, so I really used my claws! We did get a nice Fancy Feast meal and there was an interesting bird movie, but I was so glad when we landed in Auckland… only, our flight continued on to New Plymouth because we had to go to Mt. Taranaki because that’s where that annoying beyond belief Death Worm (named Chad) slithered off to with the CAT TREATS!! What a beautiful mountain! Why did he take the treats there, and what am I going to do to get my paws warm again!!! I hate cold!
Seriously, I spent the weekend working on the shawl with the Mother of Cats.Here’s Clue 2 all knitted up! The Mother of Cats made almost no mistakes because I gave her lots and lots of support.
The Mother of Cats also took nice breaks to give me kitty cookies (I don’t work for free!! Seriously, what were you thinking of?), and even with the breaks we were done by the end of Monday.
Sigh. Now we have to wait until this Friday for the next clue. I wonder where we are going next? I would love to go to somewhere tropical with lots of fish to watch. Good think I still have one baby bunny in the yard to watch.
Well, that’s all the news.
This is Hannah, signing off.
The Mother of Cats is so bored she is knitting this pair of socks in the airport while we wait for the next clue to drop…
I’ve taken on a huge adventure! I heard last week from Sharon from Security that there has been a huge crisis… the Priceless Golden Bag of Cat Treats has been stolen by Chad the Mongolian Death Worm from the Museum of Gyptian Civilization in Cairo. Sharon from Security needed me to head right over to Cairo to help out with the investigation.
I immediately dusted off my passport and booked a flight to Cairo on Sharon Air so I could join Sharon in the investigation. Sharon made the arrangements for me to fly Cardboard Box Class (instead of Squeakin Mouse Class or Litter Class) which was just fabulous because…
I freakin’ love cardboard boxes!!
Anyway, my flight left last Friday, and I was off to help the best I could. That Chad is a sneaky one and I think that he probably already slithered (slimed?) his way out of Cairo and before you know it, I will be back in the air heading to a new location.
See, I had a boarding pass and everything!!
Okay, if you haven’t figured it all out yet, I am doing the Sharon Air MKAL with the Mother of Cats and we started with the first clue last Friday. The Mother of Cats worried about the colors of yarns a lot and kept digging around in the yarn stash for a couple of weeks looking for nice yarns to use. She finally settled on these:
Pretty cool colors, right?!
I’m not really, really in Cairo, but is sure is fun to pretend that I am. I bet there are great bugs there for me to chase. Did you see that my job on the passport is “Flycatcher”? I am such a great flycatcher that I knocked over a lamp and tore down some curtains this week. The Mother of Cats was pretty cool about all the commotion, but I think that I had better take it easy for a couple of days. There was also a problem with an orchid plant hitting the ground, but the CoalBear did that one… did I mention that there was a fly?
When I haven’t been chasing flies this week, I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats with the knitting.
I’ve been taking my job as knitting helper really seriously and the Mother of Cats only make a few mistakes (Sharon Snax) and hasn’t done any whining or done anything to earn a citation from Sharon. That Sharon, she doesn’t put up with any whining or questions from humans who stupidly failed to read the directions which is absolutely reasonable, right? I love Sharon! Did I mention that the cardboard box on the plane had a little hole in it so I could poke my neighbor? Yay!
Today we finished knitting all of the clues that Sharon gave us for Cairo. Does it look a little like pyramids to you?
Sharon is really busy and won’t have time to send us more clues until Friday so I’m going to just keep myself busy for a couple of days while the Mother of Cats knits on boring stuff like socks and hats and who knows what else. Maybe she will knit me another toy mouse. I hope that she makes me a warm parka because Sharon did drop a clue about having to go to somewhere cold for the next part of the investigation. I don’t like snow very much; nasty stuff, snow. Maybe she can knit pink booties for my feet? Darn it, this investigation stuff is hard work!
I’m going to take it easy tomorrow and eat lots and lots of cookies to get ready for the next part of the adventure.
This is Hannah, signing off.
Sharon loves sushi, but I am going to go hunt up a fly to chase.
Note from the Mother of Cats: Sharon is Casapinka’s employee/security specialist/cat and this MKAL is run by them. You can check out my Ravelry page here if you are interested in knowing more about my yarns.
I guess there was a fly over the fireplace this week, too.
Last week brought us some rain and cold weather. Seriously, it got so cold that I had to bring the potted plants into the garage to protect them from a overnight hard freeze. Most of the leaves on the maple tree are already down, but the tree finally got with the program and produced some bright red leaves.
Now, this is what I’ve been looking forward to!
Sadly, it is now too cold and windy for me to sit outside to admire that color in the yard, but every glance out a window makes me happy.
Knitting
The second Snark-O-Meter is finally off the needles. I still haven’t woven in the ends or blocked it, but look at all the great color interactions and stitch patterns in the shawl!
The patterns in the shawl really show off my yarns. I’m so glad that I jumped in and knit a second shawl. Sharon, Sharon, I want a little gold star for this!! (Who’s Sharon? That would be Sharon from Security, Casapinka’s snarky employee who developed this pattern. I’m pretty sure she won’t give me a gold star for finishing my shawl unless I send her some quality sushi first…)
Garden
I’m moving outdoor plants into the house to rebuild the indoor garden for the winter. I really kind of like doing this, but the cats are really happy to see plants come indoors. Mateo is absolutely torturing the large palm plant that was on my porch all summer; wait until he sees the geraniums!! I’m letting the geraniums get a little more outdoor sunshine but some others like the jade plants and the bougainvillea needed to come in now.
The cats are admiring the jade plants from afar…and that goes double for the bougainvillea that is handing high over their heads in the kitchen!
I may have to rethink the bougainvillea as all of those blooms will be dropping off at some point and landing in my sink, but they make me happy so I’m going to see how it goes. Several of the year-round indoor plants are looking really nice right now so I’ve moved them into the kitchen to join the cheerful color of that bougainvillea. The best of the bunch is my oldest African violet.
Isn’t it looking nice?
Next week I will be focusing on getting most of the potted perennials into the ground outside and moving in more of the ones that can over-winter in the house like the geraniums. I suspect that there may be some leaf raking going on, too.
Books
Since I was spending so much time with plants this week I jumped into this book that I got from the library last month.
Years ago I went to a dinner at my boss’ house in Denver in an older part of town. Okay, this was a pretty swanky house compared to my own. There were back staircases for the servants, a library, breakfast and dining rooms, and a kitchen that was almost as big a my whole apartment at the time. Since this was a summer evening they held the affair outside in their gardens.
Gardens. Right. There were four different yards/gardens on this property. Rather than a large plot of grass with some nice trees and maybe a sad attempt at a veggie garden or a gold fish pond, this property was divided into discrete garden rooms with brick walls dividing them. Each area was planted differently to serve a different purpose and held tables and benches for people in each one. Okay, one actually had a pergola in it. It was cool.
That gardening concept is what this book was about. An old formal house with a series of unique connected gardens that are being restored to their original plantings by a talented gardening specialist. The books entwines the stories of three different generations of women with significant involvement in the history of the house and gardens with some clever parallel events to make it all hang together. It was a quick read, I learned a lot of new things about gardening, and I liked it.
That’s it. Have a great week everyone!
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
The days are still warm, dry and sunny, but the nights are finally getting a little cooler. I spend my afternoons in the swinging garden chair on the deck, reading and knitting in the strange silence that has now descended on the garden: no more crickets, cicadas, migrating geese, or even the pit bull next door. All are now gone, and the only sounds I hear are the squirrels racing through the trees and the occasional drifting fall of leaves. The maple tree out back, usually a blaze of red color by now, is slowly turning a golden brown with a few flashes of red. Seriously? This is how you are going to finish up the year? Figures.
This is as good as it is going to get this year I guess.
The ground is covered with dead leaves as these sorry examples of autumn glory drift off the tree. We never had a freeze, and I think that these brown leaves coming down are the result.
The baby bunny of the summer has found a mate.
Over the last weekend I noticed lots of digging in the yard from the bunny, and then one night the flood lights revealed that there were two bunnies in my yard! My little guy was not all alone any more! Now my bunny, all grown up, is gone.
Next week we will finally get colder weather and perhaps some rain. There will be snow in our mountains and all of my leaves will be gone off the tree.
Can you see how I blended the three skeins of yarn from light to dark as I alternated them through the sweater? The lightest is at the top.
I am now down to only one knitting project left, the second Snark-O-Meter that I am rapidly finishing off with lots of cat help.
I finished up clue 4 last night and will start clue 5 today. This baby should be done in just a few more days of knitting.
Yesterday I cleaned out my little project bags, sorted yarn in the stash, and organized myself for a prolonged sweater knitting campaign. I’m tempted to start the Stephen West MKAL (Shawlography), but as I sorted I realized that I had the yarn to make several sweaters all stocked up and waiting to go. It isn’t all that cold yet, but eventually sweater weather will get here and it is time for me to switch over to sweaters and to start working my way through the stash again.
I also, through great serendipity, located a community knitting group last week that makes hats for patients going through chemo at the infusion center where I used to go to my (old, kicked to the curb) rheumatologist’s office. I know that center, located between oncology and rheumatology, as I used to sit in that waiting room every rheumatologist appointment. Why is the infusion center next to rheumatology? Because, little known fact, many rheumatology patients (along with other people struggling with autoimmune disease), receive chemo and infusions of biologic drugs. I know, only too well, what a struggle it is to control Reynaud’s Phenomenon while hooked up to an IV in air conditioning. I’m joining the knitting group and will be knitting as many little fingerless mitts and arm warmers as I can for drop off to the center along with the chemo hats.
There. Knitting plans for the rest of the year all worked out. 🙂
Garden
This is ridiculous, but all of my mental energy is focused on planting all the potted plants into the gardens (Where should I put them? This is a big decision.) and making an indoor home for the jade plants that have been outdoors all summer.
This plant tripled in size over the summer. I moved it to this large pot, but now it is… large.
I recently discovered that jade plants are poisonous for cats. Oh, no. I have had jade plants in the house for years with my cats, and never had an issue, but now that I know I’m worried about a cat/plant interaction. I have an indoor garden shelf system established to keep the plants indoors over the winter, but this pot won’t fit now. I’ve decided to use chicken wire to keep the cats away from the shelf with the smaller jades, but this one plant is going to be challenging. Ugh. I can move shelves to create more space, or I can build a cage to put over the plant, or… these are the days when I miss the greenhouse I had in my biology classroom.
Books
This is an amazing book!!
I loved, loved, loved All the Light We Cannot See, so when I saw this book was coming out I preordered it right away. When it dropped into my Kindle library I forced myself to take a break from The Murderbot Diaries to read this. Holy, Moly! Best decision ever. Cloud Cuckoo Land is a book to read and savor.
So you probably have already guessed that I am really enjoying this book. It is the tale of a ridiculous comedy written by an ancient Greek author that is preserved over time and that connects people separated by centuries who are caught up in the jaws of history. Sounds improbable when I write it down, but this works and it is really good! I don’t want to give out any spoilers, but the story moves right along at a perfect pace, going back and forth between the characters and the Greek tale in a way that links them together and brings meaning to their lives and the Greek comedy in an unforeseen manner that eerily connects to my life also. Owls are a recurring element of the stories in the book: as I read in the night it is to the sound of booming “who-who’s” from the Great Horned owls in my neighborhood. (Bunnies: make good choices tonight!!) I read on in this book that is essentially about the power and of legacy of books as I consider which of my books to leave in one of the community Little Free Libraries next week. The power of books, the legacy of lives, the preservation of who we are: a big message contained in a book that immerses you in a powerful story.
Have a good week, everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
Finally, finally the leaves are starting to turn in earnest and there is a rustling sound when they move in the breeze. The sky is now a gentle blue in the afternoon and there is a subtle change in the quality of sunlight as the sun edges further to the south each day; thunderstorms are a distant memory as the clouds adopt more benign shapes. I’ve taken to sitting outside in evenings to work on the computer listening to crickets while the cats romp in the house. The potted plants continue to show off late blooms but there isn’t much new growth appearing in the gardens. The baby bunny of the summer now looks all grown up, and there are low-flying flocks of geese passing over my house daily.
Fall has finally arrived!
Cats love fall! These two are rolling in personality these days.
Knitting
I’ve been knitting like crazy lately. Sharon from Security (Casapinka) took a week off from the Snark-O-Meter and I was left at loose ends: I cast on a new Rock It Tee and started knitting on that. I was really making great headway until… somewhere halfway down the body… I got bored. All that stockinette. Ugh. I began to day dream about other things that I could knit and somehow I decided that I needed to knit another little kitty to keep my knitted MacKenzie doppelganger company. You remember, my MacKnitzie that was created to look just like my personality (ahem… attitude) loaded cat that died just as Covid-19 appeared on the horizon. I still miss MacKenzie, and while I was waiting for the next clues of the Snark-O-Meter to drop, I couldn’t help looking at MacKnitzie on my shelf and wanting to make him a little friend.
Doesn’t MacKnitzie look like he is smiling?
I knitted up an Itty Bitty Kitty to sit with MacKnitzie on the shelf in my bedroom. I was thinking that the project would only take a day or two, but I had forgotten how fiddly the work could be if you wanted the final knitted cat to look realistic. I also was struggling with my old friend fatigue all last week so only a little got done at a time, but I’m really happy with the final product.
This little kitty is so fun when completed. It is designed to stand up balanced on the tail and two hind feet.
Now that I am done with the kitty for MacKnitzie I’ve gone back to knitting on the Snark-O-Meter shawl and I’m really anxious to get it done. Look at how well those classic colors go with the cats! (snark, people!!) Seriously, the cats are all over me while I’m knitting these days. Maybe they think that I should be making them cat toys or little itty bitty versions of them? Hmm… maybe I should be making little itty versions of Hannah and Mateo… or maybe a knitted mouse.
I’m now in clue 5, and since clue 6 dropped this morning I should be finishing up in just a few days. I can’t wait to show this finished project off as it just keeps getting better and better as I knit along.
Books
I am seriously reading lots of science fiction these days.
Through the fatigue of the last week I have just holed up and read lots of space opera. Today, while watering the lawns, I started to reflect on why I’m so immersed in space opera of all things.
I was in a book group that read lots of books that were suspenseful, gothic creations about women trapped in situations that were not of their own making, menaced by outside forces and individuals, and abandoned or betrayed by the individuals and/or agencies that should have protected them. Sometimes the women manage to escape their menacing entrapment, but just as often they come to a bad end. It’s a whole genre, and these books can be really popular, but I suddenly had an epiphany; these are not good books for a person struggling with a chronic, progressive disease. Okay, I’m not sure that these books are good for anyone, but they certainly weren’t good for me as I was struggling to get a diagnosis and help with my whole blue-lipped, panting for air, trying to not faint deal that I had going on. Doctors just kept reassuring me that I was fine; I was being dismissed, subjected to gaslighting, and unable to control my own situation just like some of the women in these books.
Oops. Time for a change in reading matter, I decided. I quit the reading group.
This month I am somewhere in the process of having my heart issues defined and a plan of action created. Things aren’t clear: I definitely have a pretty significant cardiac shunt, but they haven’t found it yet. They have a really good understanding of the direction of disruptive blood flow while I’m at rest, but they are trying to determine exactly what is happening while I’m up and active. I did a walk test last week (um… not sure I passed that with flying colors…) and will need to do a exercise/stress/echocardiogram test next week. This is all big stakes for me as it will determine my treatment plan going down the road…
Which brings me back to space opera. These books are all about desperate times and a scrappy group of individuals led by a strong and determined woman who is going to figure out what is happening and will eventually put things right!! The crews deal with every single emergency with creative, reality-based responses (well, using science fiction reality, that is) and refuse to ever, ever give up. They lose space ships, battles, body parts, and sometimes the future that they had envisioned, but they always, always make it through to the end with grit, determination, the support of their team, and the innovative use of technology. They are action-oriented and fearless. What ever is coming their way, they face it down, make decisions, and get to work with what they have. They are pretty much my heroes these days.
Be like Murderbot, I tell myself. If it gets bad, don’t forget to bring your blaster to the appointment. In this case, my blaster is a good understanding of my past test results and the diagnosis that they are considering, but you get the idea.
Space opera. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking resiliency in the face of an oncoming challenge of epic proportion.
Have a good week, everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
The heat is hanging on and the cats and I are totally over it at this point. Yesterday we set a new heat record in my state: 99 degrees Fahrenheit. The sun is a sullen red ball in the sky and the sky is slate white with smoke from the west. The heat is unrelenting, there has been almost no rain, and fire season is still going on, and on, and on… Should summer be ending soon?
“Not yet!”, say the plants and wildlife in the yard. The cats have been busy chasing late season houseflies and the trees are abuzz with pulsing cicada sounds. There seems to be wildlife everywhere all of a sudden as the lawn and garden recover from the intense sun (but not the heat) of July and August. I even had to chase a little garter snake out of my garage yesterday! Summer is being especially tenacious, but I am seeing some hints of fall as flocks of geese fly over my house and the first leaves on the trees are turning.
The baby bunny is now hanging out in the front yard entertaining the cats as they watch from the front door. Do you see all of that debris on the sidewalk and street in the picture of the bunny? That is the mess being left by the squirrels as they harvest the Russian olives off of my neighbor’s tree. There is a really cute squirrel with an exceptionally fluffy tail digging holes under my trees to stash food for later… not nice, little squirrel!! Speaking of fluffy tails, look at what is happening to Mateo’s tail!! This kitten is getting a lot fluffier than I thought he would…
Garden
Everything that is pink is just flourishing at the moment.
My Autumn Joy Stonecrop is just covered with bees and other plants in containers on the deck have decided that they want to bloom too. Even the roses by my driveway have decided to get a last bloom in. For some crazy reason it is all of the pink plants… even the hydrangea is putting out some new blooms with pink edges. It makes me happy to see all that color coming back even if it will be drowned out by all the fall colors in the trees and shrubs in a week or two.
Knitting
I had several quiet days following my right heart catherization procedure last week (okay, I also slept a couple of days afterwards) and I ripped right through the next clue on the Snark-O-Meter. If you haven’t been keeping up with all of the snark, the Snark-O-Meter is the latest MKAL shawl by Sharon from Security (Casapinka) and I am having a blast this time.
It is getting too big to show off the fun stitches in this project in one picture so I settled for shots of each clue. The top left is clues 1 and 2, the bottom left shows clue 3, and the picture on the right is clue 4. Look at all of those great and interesting stitches and use of color!! I’m going to get a ton of use out of this shawl.
Since I finished the shawl in just a couple of days after the clue was released, and because Sharon is taking a week off to let people catch up on their knitting, and since I was admiring all things pink in the garden, I pulled out my new Rock It Tee that is being knit in a pinky/rusty colorway called Cinnasizzle. The actual yarn isn’t quite as hot pink as it appears in the pictures, but it is full of clay, pink, and rust colors that are just too fun to ignore. I’ve been binge watching Billions on Amazon Prime and knitting like crazy this last week with a nebulous thought that if I really apply myself I can get this sweater done before Sharon releases the next Snark-O-Meter clue in another week. Ha! This is clearly impossible, but that never stopped me before! To try is all. I’m below the armholes now and it is just knitting in the round for the next 15 inches or so…
Mateo is now 5 and a half months old. Isn’t he getting handsome?
I’m still waiting for my cardiologist to contact me with the next steps in the ongoing Blue-Lipped Zebra project. Things are really slammed right now in the health field as there are lots of Covid-19 patients and Covid long-haulers who need help, and my cardiologist is pretty overwhelmed with the case load at the moment. (How do I know? My pulmonologist, who is also slammed, told me. I feel so bad for them.) It is a little hard to be patient and to wait my turn, especially since some of those people who are bumping me back in the health-care line are the unvaccinated.
Last week I was mocked in public by someone for wearing a mask. Umm… retired high school teacher here. I called him out on it and he immediately stopped.
But still, it’s a little shocking that it even happened.
This is the 20th anniversary of 9/11. What a sad, horrible day that led to unpredictable outcomes that were far beyond my imagination at that time. How sad it is to reflect on all that has happened, and continues to happen, in America.
I plan to knit my way though the reflection, waiting, and sadness this week. You all be safe out there!
Have a great week everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
The end of August, and things are still hot here. The lawn struggles in the heat and the cats go to ground in the coolest parts of the house during the day. The smoke is gone, however, and I’ve been going out in the evenings to water and do some yard work almost every day. Someday, soon, autumn will come, but so far it doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry…
The kitten is 5 months old today!! He and Hannah are pretty inseparable now.Except in the worst heat of the day. Then it is every cat for themselves around here.
Covid-19 has exploded in the US over the last few weeks, mostly the Delta strain of the virus. I have always been careful since there was some concern that the vaccine wouldn’t give me good protection because of one of the drugs that I take to control my systemic sclerosis; now I rarely leave the house and when I do walk into a store I am double masked. Since I am hanging out at home I’ve been on a “one little thing” cleaning campaign that is really rewarding in small ways. Each day I target one little project: wash the upstairs windows, clean out a drawer, weed out a flower bed, or sort and dispose of old stuff in the garage. I still have bins of teaching materials from my days in the classroom stored away… well, I used to. It was hard, but most of that is now gone. Every week my trash cans are stuffed full and things are nicer in the house. The Covid situation is bad outside my little home, but I am soothed by the gradual improvements that are happening in all of my drawers and rooms as the clutter and dirt disappears.
Every cloud has a silver lining, people!
Garden
My baby bunny is gone. Here he is in his last picture before he moved on the the larger world outside my back yard eating a dandelion leaf.
When the new fence was installed I was pretty sure that the bunny would find his way out of the yard as there were a couple of new gaps under the gates. I can see a new bunny-shaped gap under the new boards that sure looks like there has been some squeeze under the fence action; happy days little guy. The cats will miss you but it is good to move on to greener pastures (and not eating my lawn!!) as you grow up.
Knitting
I am deep in the world of the Sharon from Security (Casapinka) MKAL Snark-O-Meter. I knitted like crazy for several days to get my shawl through the first two clues.
I am through the first two clues (clue number 3 arrived this morning) and I am really happy with how things are going. My problem is that once I finished the clues I had some free time on my hands, so…
I cast on and started another shawl. I messed up the color sequence on this second one, so it has some major Sharon Snax going, but I love it anyway. Now my dilemma is whether to continue with shawl number 2 until I have caught up with the first one, or to charge ahead on the black and red version so I can see what the colors will look like. There is a change in needle size involved so I may keep going on #2 until I get to the lace section at the top that I can switch the needles between the two shawls.
I also feel like I need to knit a little cat, too. I’m cleaning a lot of shelves and I want some more knitted critters to fill in the gaps. 🙂
Quilting
It has been a long time coming, but now that I’m cleaning things up I decided to finish up a small quilting project that has been ignored for years. This quilt has been on the wall by my indoor garden but I was lazy and didn’t hand quilt the lettering in the blocks.
I hate hand quilting, but these little sections of lettering will look so much better when I am done!
There are several blocks on this quilt with different gardening themed images; each has a cute phrase that needs to be quilted to make it stand out right. Then maybe I will add some more quilting to the outer panels of the quilt. Ugh. I am doing a little bit every day as an extension of the “one little thing” campaign. Hopefully it will be done and back up on the wall before the cold weather arrives and I bring in the plants from outside for their winter indoors.
Have a great week everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
Life has been rushed. I created a lot of internal deadlines for myself and I have been rushing along every day trying to meet them. After weeks of waiting I finally got the installation date for my new fences; that meant that I needed to do some major yardwork to prepare for all that construction and hauling away of stuff. Whew. I handled it. My flower beds are cleaned up, plants are pruned, and my new fence and gate look great!
The bunny survived the invasion of fence-related chaos and is back to entertaining the cats every evening and morning.
Sharon from Security (Casapinka’s very snarky cat) released her latest pattern last Saturday. I decided that I need to get my current knitting project finished before the first clue dropped.
I started a new series of books that I needed to finish up quickly so that I could get other books, checked out electronically from my library and getting ready to vanish into the ether in two weeks, read on time.
I’m doing major cleaning and dragging bags of stuff out to the trash every week. That trash pick-up day is another deadline every week as I clean out drawers and closets and let old belongings, not used in at least a decade, head off to a new home or the land fill…
Whew. Busy times!
Garden
The gardens are kind of bare of blooms right now, but the potted flowers are flourishing.My bougainvillea is blooming like crazy!! By the way, can you see the pretty new fence in the background?
I am putting my energies now into moving and installing some new bricks and then planting several of the potted shrubs (like the mini-roses and my hydrangea) into the ground before winter. Next year they can bloom in the cleared garden in the background!
Knitting
It was quite the drive, but I did get my new sweater finished with a few hours to spare before the Snark-O-Meter from Sharon from Security (Casapinka) dropped.
This is my second little layering piece that is knit loose enough for summer wear (well, cooler summer wear) and then will serve as layering pieces in the fall and winter. This loose little V-neck top, The Rock It is just perfect!!
Well, let’s talk about Snark-O-Meter. I have been dreaming about colors and digging in the stash for weeks. I would decide on a combo, but then the next morning I would remember a different skein of yarn in the stash and the amended quartet of yarn would suddenly become my new favorite. I finally settled on a color combo that I know will go with almost everything that I wear.
I know, I know… it is conservative, but very wearable. Can you see that there are little flecks of black in the red yarn? The gray has a slight sheen from silk which makes the drape really nice and shines around the other colors. Snark-O-Meter is a mystery knit-along (MKAL) and the other knitters are already showing off their beautiful color combinations on Facebook. People are worried about being too slow, and others are asking for help from other knitters. Encouragement is everywhere, Sharon is shoveling out the snark while hunting for her stolen squad car (again?! Sharon, you need to take better care of your things…) and threatening to busticate knitters who don’t read the directions. I love this group!!!
I still have those other sets of yarn waiting to become something. I may cast on a second shawl in some crazy colors that I will also be able to wear. Also, they are colors that I just simply love!!
The last couple of years have been hard, to say the least. Some of the knitters in the Sharon Show group on Facebook have been giving away their extra sets of yarn to other knitters who are struggling right now. I look at my unused sets and wonder how many I can put together for the next MKAL. I’m going to bag the yarn and as soon as Sharon/Casapinka put together their next project I think that I should offer them up. Seriously, who better deserves my extra yarn then these supportive, cheerful, cat loving knitters. I wish I had thought of it sooner. I’m trying to clean out a lot of stuff… this is one way to do it.
Quilts
I really focused and worked steadily on a quilt that has been languishing for the last several months.
It is done! There was some help from the cats…
It is a huge relief to finally have this done. I cleaned up the sewing room and put everything away this weekend, and noticed that I have a really cute quilt kit just waiting for me to start it in the cupboard…
By the way, this quilt is an art quilt by Pine Needles called “Calling Me Home“. I used about half of the blocks in the entire quilt to make my wall hanging.
Books
I just raced through this series. The setting is hundreds of years in the future in England. There has been a terrible war, all the life has mutated dramatically in a race for survival and all the world is dangerous. People survive in small enclaves, their history and old skills lost, and the remaining technology is like magic to them. Because contact between surviving groups of people is restricted by the extreme hostile environment mankind is slowly fading away.
Koli is a young man who breaks the rules and gets banned from his small village. He begins a long journey with a thought of saving humanity; his companions are few, and not all of them are still alive. They face danger, fight battles, make choices, and in the end, reach their goals. It’s hard to convey, but the voices of the characters, their insight into the human condition, made this series extremely engaging. These people are primitive, but they are not unsophisticated. I love the books and raced right through them. 🙂
Have a great week everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
I’m going to be honest here: June has been really challenging so far. My entire right arm is numb and in pain and there isn’t much knitting going on. My appointment book is completely filled up with medical appointments and the bruises are collecting at an alarming rate; did I mention that June is Scleroderma Awareness Month? Yep. I’m aware. Scleroderma has gone into overdrive this month. Gee, if it wanted more attention it should have just asked!
In solidarity with scleroderma there have been other disasters this month. The car that was bringing me home from GI testing this week developed engine trouble (I ended up in an Uber, hopped up on drugs, leaking fluids from an unmentionable part of my nether region… best ride across town ever!) My refrigerator started shrieking in the night as one of the fans failed putting my stash of cheese at risk (yes, I have seriously cornered the market in… cheese). Oh, did I mention that I also had a scary close encounter with my neighbor’s pit bull? Seriously, it has been challenging to do anything except deal with all of this stuff. On the other hand, I have handled things; a new refrigerator is coming (I must save the cheese!), my neighbor has implemented more safeguards to contain her dog, and I have learned how to use Uber!! I’ve completed physical therapy and am walking much better. The car that broke down was repaired at little cost. My arm is in a brace but I am rocking voice-to-text on my phone. I’m knitting again… slowly.
Still, I am warning you, June, knock it off!! I have knitting and stuff to do.
Hannah: June would be a great time to get me a little kitten companion!!
Knitting
I finished my Noncho (Sharon from Security and Casapinka) this week. What a nice, versatile addition to my wardrobe this will be. I also made some progress on a sock but really the big accomplishment this week has been the Noncho. My project notes on Ravelry are here.
Garden
It’s gotten hot and the garden has taken off. I’ve been weeding steadily and it is really exciting to find flourishing plants and emerging flower buds. Look at what is going on right now:
Seriously, the garden is starting to explode with color. My rose plants are covered with buds and the main show is going to start in just a few more days. We had so much rain earlier this year the rose bushes grew really well and things are looking good. Okay, June is picking up a little.
Books
I’m enjoying The Cold Millions while I work on my second sock. So far it is pretty good and applicable to economic issues that we are dealing with today in the US.
Have a great week everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
PS: The gastroenterologist told me that I can’t eat cheese any more. Or chocolate. Or caffeine. Or carbonated drinks. Alcohol is absolutely forbidden.
I’m pretending that I didn’t hear that part about the cheese.
Yarn, Books & Roses 