Tag: Charlotte Caplet

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.

Do you see what a good helper I am?

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.