Colorado Wildfires – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: Has it only been a week?

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you like my trout? It is stuffed with catnip.

Things have been just crazy here at Casa Mother of Cats. Like, it has been the week from hell and I haven’t been getting as many outings (and cookies) as usual. It suddenly got really hot again. There is smoke in the air and the Mother of Cats won’t let us go out in the daytime. It is so hot it is hard to sleep! The Mother of Cats has been making lots of trips out of the house, and when she gets home, she just lays around and refuses to play with us. Sometimes she plays with her knitting machine, but I can tell that her heart isn’t in it. She just reads books, knits, and watches the Olympics. Fabulous. Mateo is driving me crazy because he wants to go outside all of the time, but the Mother of Cats is like… NO!!

We do get to go out in the late afternoon or after dark and then we chase bugs in the dark. The Mother of Cats likes to eat her dinner outside, and it is usually cooler then.

Mateo goes crazy when he finally gets to go out. All those bugs!!! He wants to chase all of them, and I think that maybe he has been watching the Olympics with The Mother of Cats because this happened:

Yeah. That is a pretty high jump that he made. The Mother of Cats measured it, and he made a diagonal 6-foot jump to get up there, and then he jumped straight down 8 feet when the Mother of Cats tried to safely recover him. She thinks that he was trying to get into the tree, which isn’t a very good idea because…

This guy has been hanging out in the tree! The Mother of Cats thinks that this is a Sharp-shinned Hawk.

Anyway, since The Mother of Cats has been watching the Olympics, she thought that this would put everything into perspective about how high Mateo was when he jumped up to the top of the catio supports:

That boy can jump!! He’s not in the run for a medal, but he did pretty well in the dismount, and he did stick his landing!

Today the smoke is better, and it isn’t quite as hot as it was last week. The Mother of Cats worked on finishing up all the hats that she made in the hot indoor days, and here they are all packed away where I can’t mess with them.

This is 23 hats all finished up and ready to go to Frayed Knots. I helped with all of the sewing!! That knitting machine has made the Mother of Cats hugely productive!

Now she is back to knitting chickens again. I love chicken knitting!!

She mailed this chicken away last week to a lady who is having surgery in a couple of days.

So that’s all the news of the last crazy week.

That’s right. It is raining outside. Yay. The house will cool down and we can all go outside now.

Bug Chase Time!!!!!

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

This has been the longest week ever.
I saw my doctors at the end of July, and they ordered a lot of tests and procedures. I’ve had a steroid injection into my bad-boy hip, X-rays and MRIs of my knees, bloodwork done, and tomorrow I go for an echocardiogram. Six trips in all. Every single trip out of the house puts me back into the heat and smoke, which isn’t good because… you know, crappy heart and lungs. There was a lot of smoke last week because Colorado experienced an outbreak of wildfires among the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and all that smoke headed east towards my area of the world.
Late Thursday night (like near midnight) I opened the doors to let cool air into the house. I locked the screen door for safety and THE KEY GOT STUCK!! The front door couldn’t close with the key in the lock of the screen door, the house was filling with smoke for some reason, and there were sirens sounding nearby making me wonder if we had ANOTHER fire. After using lubricant on the lock, consulting YouTube videos, and then finally resorting to a hammer, I got the key out. Exhausted, the cats and I went to bed in a hot smokey house. How hot? 85 degrees Fahrenheit hot.
After that adventure I’m back on oxygen 24/7.
I met a lady getting ready for major surgery on one of my trips; that chicken got shipped off to her. It was another trip out of the house, but totally worth it.
The hats on the knitting machine are the simplest ever: 120 rounds of knitting, and then gather up both ends and secure them together which produces a doubled knitted fabric like a Musselburgh hat.
I bought ANOTHER KNITTING MACHINE that is perfect for knitting wristers with lighter weight yarn. I don’t have a problem. Really, I don’t.
I just found out that I can knit an OCTOPUS with my knitting machines!

My cardiologist wants me to wear compression stockings now. Look at these cuties!!

The Saturday Update: Week 43

Oh, boy. What a week it has been. Election related news is heating up as we come into the homestretch for our presidential election. Covid-19 case numbers are climbing steeply in the state. The fires in our mountains continue and towards the end of the week a couple of new fires erupted and, in high wind conditions that kept aerial firefighting operations on the ground, literally exploded into a monster within hours. People scrambled to get to safety as the newest fire, the East Troublesome fire (really, that is the name…), grew 100,000 acres in one day, crossed the Continental Divide, and now threatens to merge with another fire, the Cameron Peak fire, which is currently the largest wildfire in Colorado’s history. The smoke plume from these fires is amazing as it fills the sky to our north. Both fires are burning in Rocky Mountain National Park and threatening the surrounding communities. It seems like just yesterday that I took this picture in RMNP…

Rocky Mountain National Park — This is the view south from the Visitor’s Center. I don’t know if this forest is still there. If you look closely you can see areas with dead trees in the pictures. One of the problems that we are having here is beetle kill in the forests caused by climate change.

Because of the extreme drought right now the forest is really dry and vulnerable to fire. This is the worst fire season in my memory; the wind has been blowing so strongly the burning embers are starting new fires downwind from the main conflagrations. As I said, it is a mess. Today, however, things took a turn for the better.

It’s really cold outside and snowing! We expect almost a foot down here by my house, and more in the mountains. This won’t be enough to stop the fires, but it certainly is a welcome break for the firefighters as this will certainly slow down the fire activity for them. Yay!!

Still inside avoiding the smoke I have been consumed with crafting and cleaning. I shredded piles of old financial records, sewed more face masks, washed all of the linens and cleaned out cupboards, and… well… I played with yarn and did a little online yarn shopping. Just a little. I needed a little more yarn. Blue yarn.

Seriously, there is a post growing in my mind about all of the blue in my life at the moment. Yarn. Books. Curtains. Toys for the kitten. Oh, yeah. There is also a post incubating about all the convoluted yarn decisions I’ve been making and the angst about color matches. I’ve decided to ignore these growing posts and all my little yarn issues for the moment and jump right into sock yarn.

I have been visiting Hue Loco online and checking out all of the new colors for the fall. I had already bought that blue speckled yarn on the left at my LYS, and it really, really needed some new friends. I ended up buying a skein of each of the new colors at Hue Loco with the thought that I would make socks from each skein and then, once I had a feel for the colors in the skeins, go on to combine them in a larger project like a sweater. Okay, I just wanted to have the yarn.

I started the first pair of socks this week. This color is called Elixir, which is the second skein from the left in the picture above. This is not how I thought this yarn would look, but I am loving it!

If you don’t know Hue Loco already, it is a local Colorado dye studio and I really like the colors. (It is also located right in the smoke plume of those wildfires right now, so I am really happy to support the studio.) New colors appear each two weeks which is a little bit of a problem for me as I discover with each new issue of yarn that it would be absolutely perfect for project that I’m working on. As I make project decisions I also discover that I need a couple more skeins of some yarn (usually blue) to make everything work. Okay, I have a lot of knitting that is getting lined up. So much yarn, so little time…

I need to clear away some projects to open up the slots for my new sweaters-in-waiting. I have a sweater, a shawl, some gloves, and a whole slew of socks that are WIPs, so I’m motivated to knit at the moment. I’ve been working on my new Far Away Dreams (Joji Locatelli) shawl steadily this week, but it isn’t all that nice to show off at the moment as it is basically a big blog of squishy blueness slowly getting some lace added on the edges. See what I mean?

Yep. One big blue blog of squishy yarn. I’ve just gotten started on the lace portion of the edging so there isn’t all that much to show off. Maybe by next week there will be lace worth showing off. I’m making kind of slow progress because…

Since I don’t have really nice knitting photos to show off I thought I should throw in one of the finished Secret Handshake cowl.

Isn’t that the cutest cowl ever? I’m wearing it tonight to stay warm as it is about 5 degrees outside and that is definitely cowl weather!!

I’ve written about the Secret Handshake MKAL in the last couple of posts, so I won’t go over all the fun shenanigans online as a member of this knitting group, but I have to mention that the cutest, most perfect retro camping trailer has arrived in Casapinka’s backyard and Sharon is freaking out today as she finally has to come clean about secretly buying it online using the boss’ PayPal account. Did I mention that the next MKAL designed by Sharon is a glamping blanket to use in the camper?

Hannah: Way to go, Sharon!! Could you please send me a PM about how that PayPal thing works?

So that kind of takes care of the knitting of the week. I’ve also been reading away at a new science fiction series and a couple of murder mysteries, but haven’t finished any of them. Think of them as book WIPs. 🙂 My poor garden is buried under the snow at the moment except for three miniature roses that I dragged inside (to Hannah’s joy), but they are a not worth showing off at the moment as they were beat up in a sleet storm a couple of nights ago. I’m debating building them a shelf along the south facing sliding glass door instead of putting them under grow lights this year because…

Hannah has decided that ~~torturing~~ playing with plants is one of the best things ever and I’m a little concerned about having more electricity and glass lights near the plants that she is drawn to.

Have a great week, everyone!!

Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.

The Saturday Update: Weeks 41 and 42

Crazy days continue with no end in sight. Covid-19 cases are escalating here in my state and the county just reinstated restrictions but we aren’t in a full lockdown yet. My neighbors complain about wildlife in their yards: the mountain lion seems to have moved on, but now there has been an outbreak of raccoons. Please, 2020, don’t bring me a raccoon, unless, of course, it is a knitted one! The fires in the mountains west of me exploded into life again this week and another serious fire broke out today just north of Boulder, Colorado, which means there are three fires sending their smoke directly into the Denver Metro area.

This wall of smoke rolled into the Denver Metro area yesterday afternoon. Tonight the smoke plume will be worse as a coming cold front pushes the smoke down over us.

The evacuations and road closures are going on while I write this, and I do hope that people stay safe and that the firefighters are getting all of the support that they need. Needless to say I am holed up inside because of the smoke and neglecting my garden something awful. The knitting has been pretty darn productive, however!! I got two big projects done this week.

I finished both The Secret Handshake MKAL (that’s the cowl on the right that Hannah has been ~~yarn chomping~~ helping me with every evening) and the Age of Gold shawl this week. That’s the way it always seems to work for me and multiple projects: after weeks and weeks of knitting on several projects at once they start to all finished within days of each other. I still have several projects still going, but I’m starting to think that they will be finishing up before the end of the month too.

So, can you see the colors in the shawl? The yarn is Mad Tosh sock yarn dyed in the colorway “Rocky Mountain Colorado” that just pulls together all the colors of our trees changing in the mountains that are now, sadly, smoke shrouded from the wildfires. The colors are just perfect and they just make me happy. Did you pick up on that lace border?

Isn’t that the sweetest lace border ever? It’s the first time I’ve been told to purl 15 strands of yarn together, but after a couple of attempts I had caught on and the final product was so worth the effort. The lace is disappointing until you wet block it with the points pinned; then you understand what was going on with all of the double yarn overs and crazy purling of two stitches together through the back loops… learning new things is good. Warning: this is a project that demands lace point needles!

I need to let you know how much I have enjoyed The Secret Handshake. This cowl was another project designed by Sharon from Security (Casapinka‘s cat and tuna-starved, underpaid employee who also engages in spy activities on the side) that was launched in response to ~~whining protests from~~ popular demand by the groups on Facebook and Ravelry. I belong to the Facebook group (called “The Sharon Show“) and I have never been in such a positive, inclusive, supportive group before. I just love these people!! I also love Sharon (please, Sharon, no citation for me because I was very compliant about weaving in my loose ends…), who has bought a little camper online that will be fixed up to be a total pink kitty wonder that I hope to see someday when it travels to a city (or glamping ground) near me. This second MKAL is now over, but there are people who have just arrived in the group who have just bought the yarn and pattern for the first MKAL and they are all welcomed with open arms and endless encouragement and advice. How cool is that?

A you can see I am slowly becoming more comfortable with the new WordPress editor, but I’m still on a big learning curve. I know that most of you are in the same boat: are we having fun yet? I am still searching to find the way to put in tags and categories… I have lots of ideas for blog posts swirling in my head, so I should be posting more frequently in the coming weeks.. Seriously. I want to write about all the things that annoy me since Karen posted a quiz about that this week. I am going crazy planning out a couple of new sweaters. I am on a yarn buying spree right now; why are all the yarns that I am buying blue? Why did I only buy two skeins of each color? What color socks should I cast on next? And while I am thinking about it, why are all the books that I am reading right now blue?

I’m reading Treachery right now, and completed the other two books over the last two weeks. See, blue books. Two of them are murder mysteries, and the other is a science fiction that is hard to stick into one genre. All three of them have held my attention and I find myself reading long into the wee hours of the morning as… I find myself on a train, traveling down a mountain in a snowstorm on the way to diplomacy, treachery, a kidnapping, and the slow evolution of two species/societies as a new ruler grows into his own. (Divergence) On another early morning I find myself traveling through the streets of Paris, learning history, architecture, and lord knows what else (archives, engineering, financial markets and magnets?!) as Chief Inspector Gamache gets to the bottom of a conspiracy, issues within his family, tragedies, professional betrayals, and murder. (All The Devils Are Here) Right now I am roaming the streets of Plymouth, England in the 16th century getting to the bottom of a series of murders and other matters of intrigue that need to be cleared up before Sir Francis Drake can leave on his next voyage to wreak havoc on the Spanish. Also there is a book that can overturn the entire history of the Christian church… (Treachery).

Great reads, every single one of these. I have two more books lined up waiting for me on the Kindle.

They are also blue…

Have a great week, everyone!!

Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.

Update: Another fire erupted in our foothills today making a total of 5 fires blazing away and sending smoke east while people scramble to evacuate safely, roads are closed, and firefighting measures employed. It is a really tough time in Colorado right now: keep us in your thoughts.

The Saturday Update: Week 34

Here I am again, posting late on Sunday night. This week was not good. Bad week, bad!! Seriously, it was just multi-dimensional in the badness that went on during the week. I have to admit that it can’t all be blamed on the calendar, although I do think that 2020 continues to behave in a completely unacceptable batshit manner. Fire tornadoes?! Really! Two hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time?! There is an asteroid approaching earth? Of course there is! 2020, just stop right now!!

An interesting development of the week was Hannah discovering MacKnitzie on the bookshelf. She’d been up there several times before, but now she thinks that it is fun to drag him down by his tail onto the floor to play with. Such a determined girl, she is undaunted by the crash of falling books…

Incorrigible! I think that MacKnitzie is in for a few adventures…

There was almost no reading this week and very little knitting. Why? Just read on, my friends. 🙂

I am fighting an infection, which is always a situation where I first respond with an “oh, oh” and then with a shortly followed word that won’t be shared here. I went onto antibiotics and off my immunosuppressant drugs: race time!! As my immune system revs up and attacks the infection I am also going into a flare of my disease. SO NOT GOOD!! The plan is that the antibiotics will tip the scales to favor defeating the infection before I’m too sick. Ugh. As I got sicker and sicker from my autoimmune buddies I started sleeping through most of the day.
We waltzed around with triple digit heat all week. That slight wailing you hear is my crispy garden plants crying in the heat. The louder wailing you hear is me…
There are horrible wildfires going on in my state and California that are sending smoke my way. A lot of smoke. The sun is a dull red ball in the sky, ash is falling, and things don’t look to improve soon. My distress needle is firmly pegged in the red. My lungs think this isn’t optimal. The smoke is affecting my eyes so I can’t read and I’m staying on oxygen 24/7 while this is going on. I know that this is nothing compared to the people fighting the fires and evacuated from their (possible destroyed) homes. The latest news is that Australia is sending California fire fighting resources, and our governor just activated the National Guard. There is another tough week ahead.
The nightly news over the last week was also enough to make anyone go back to bed. In the midst of an uncontrolled pandemic that has me trapped in isolation with my adventure-seeking kitten, completely dependent on delivery services, evidence surfaced this last week that the postal service has been sabotaged. No wonder my prescriptions have been wandering around and arriving late and why hasn’t my printer ink come yet!! I’m taking this really personally since now, instead of just messing with the world supply of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that I need to control my Sjogren’s and scleroderma, the agency I need to bring it to my door is also under attack. Instead of knitting I directed energy to writing my congressmen.
It is the 6th anniversary this week of my scleroderma diagnosis. Normally this date wouldn’t lay me low, but this week I couldn’t walk, breath, eat anything without a negative consequence, and… you get the idea. Sad anniversary, scleroderma.

Whew! The flaming hot hard lump in my leg is much better today and I went back onto my immunosuppressant drugs. This evening, as I type this, my dizziness has faded away and I feel almost peppy walking on legs that don’t hurt. Yay! Hopefully the antibiotics will manage on their own from now on.

Bring it, 2020! I’m ready for you again!

Knitting

I did manage to get some knitting done through the week. I am now working away on the lace outer edge of my Far Away Dreams Shawl. Look!

My goal for the week was to get the lace edging done, and truthfully I worked into the wee hours of the morning last night to get there, but nope, not yet. It is starting to look really nice (all bunched up on the needles…) and I’m liking that dark color for the lace more and more.

I’m also still working on The Sharon Show. The third clue dropped Friday but I am doggedly knitting along on Far Away Dreams since I am so close to the end and I should be able to catch up with Sharon later on in the week. I did download the pattern and discovered that this third clue had lace sections. WOOHOO!! I love lace. This MKAL shawl is going to fantastic. The knitting goals for the week are now set: finish Far Away and then Clue 3 of the Sharon Show.

Also, I dug around in the yarn stash to find some yarn to make another Sharon Show. This shawl is fun!

Garden

I can’t really go outside too much, but by wearing a mask I’m managing to make short trips out to water plants and pick up mail. I wanted to buy some more bedding plants for the fall to replace ones that expired in the heat, but the way things are going right now I decided to take down the hanging pots and put them on top of the dead planters in the front yard. What do you think?

The heat hasn’t been kind to the plants so I babied them for a week on the deck before moving them out front. There is more shade in the front and I hope that they will continue to recover and bloom.

Books: don’t make me laugh. Smoke in my eyes and all that…

Have a great week, everyone!!

Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.

Hannah’s World: All the Best Toys!!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I love hanging out in front of the window fan in the mornings.

The Kitten Mom and I have been hanging out indoors all day long because it is really hot and smoky outside. A brand new box of toys came from Chewy this week and I was so excited to help the Kitten Mom unpack it. There was kitten food (!), kitty litter (ugh) and some toys. The best thing in the box, however, was the packing paper!!!!

I love the packing paper! I sleep in it, play with my toys in it, and drag it all around the house.

I go crazy running through the paper with my toys and every single time the Kitten Mom walks by I flop over in the papers, meow, and make the Kitten Mom pet me for a few minutes. She has been remarkably easy to train, the Kitten Mom.

Then she used the Chewy box to make me a playground of connected boxes. I have half of my toys in there already!! There are doors that connect all of the boxes so that no matter where the Kitten Mom is walking I can rush out and attack her. This is so much fun!!!

Then there are the toys that I find by carefully exploring the house. I got the best ribbon in the world off of the new orchid plant, and after dragging around a plastic bag with spinning fiber the Kitten Mom gave me a skein of yarn in a plastic bag secured with a hair tie. That yarn is the best kick toy ever!!

I play a lot in the bathroom in the mornings. I pull up the drain plug in the bathtub, chase through the shower curtains, and put my toys under the rugs. I sleep on the wet towels after the Kitten Mom’s showers and help her water floss her teeth at night. The bathroom is a whole kitten playground!! My favorite, by far, is the toilet!! Oh, my goodness! This is so cool!

I do have to mention that there are some things that the Kitten Mom seems to feel are NOT toys. I tore a piece of the fern off and she was very disappointed with me. Oh. That plant is not a toy, I guess. She actually said NO! to me. I dragged the Teflon sheet that she uses while working on the quilt downstairs and she took that away from me too. Hey, I only tore it up a little bit… those holes aren’t that big. It was okay because that is when she gave me the bag of yarn to kick and bite on. Finally, there is the issue with yarn. I like to bite the yarns in half. The Kitten Mom is always a little sad when I do it, so I am stopping that too.

But yarn is really nice to take a nap on!

Notes from the Kitten Mom:

There are several serious fires burning in Colorado this week. The I-70 freeway through the Rocky Mountains is closed right now because of a fire and there is a really large one on the western slope too. The weather continues to be hot, dry, and windy which isn’t helping the fire fighters. I’m indoors for now avoiding the smoke.
Hannah is the easiest kitten to raise ever!!

MacKenzie Speaks: So Much Knitting!

Hi. I’m MacKenzie.

The Mother of Cats has been staying inside for days and never lets me sit by an open window. When she does open the window smoke comes in from outside. It’s because there are lots of fires burning in Colorado right now. I don’t like smoke all that much, either, but it is so boring when the window is shut.

Hot cat. — Do you see how hot and bored I am?

It is also hot. Really hot. You would think that the Mother of Cats would devote all of her time to helping me stay cool, but she has spent the last week sitting downstairs, watching Netflix, and getting lots of knitting done. Today she went outside WITHOUT ME and took all the pictures of what she has been making.

Socks — She finished both of her new socks.

Close to You Shawl. — a little shawl to go on the sweater…

During all of this knitting did the Mother of Cats remember to feed me cookies and to play with me EVERY hour on the hour? No, she did not!

This afternoon the Mother of Cats is getting ready to start another pair of socks and we are all sitting downstairs watching the weather radar on television because there is a big thunderstorm right over us. Rain! Thunder! Hail! What is next? This is completely unacceptable. Maybe she will open a window once the rain is over.

I’m such a good boy.

Can I have my cookies now?

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The wildfires in Colorado have been just stunning in their intensity and unpredictable behavior. We need rain very badly; today it arrived in such intensity that we are now under a flash flood watch, and the new weather brought a tornado to one of the fire zones. Truly, we need a break here in the western part of the United States. This picture arrived in my Facebook feed last night showing a fire in the southern part of Colorado. Just heartbreaking. I hope that the rain coming down now helps them.

The socks are another one of the vanilla pattern Dave by Rachel Coopey. I measured the little ball of bright pink contrast yarn and I think that I will have enough to do the band at the top of the sock too. Casting on another pair this evening…
The sweater is the Throwback Tee by Wanda Eichler. My project notes are here.
Both of the shawls are Close to You by Justyna Lorkowska, a free pattern on Ravelry.
I am really, really bad at finishing items once I get them off my needles. Last night I finally sat down and took care of all the loose ends to finish a small stack of items and this afternoon I got the pictures before the rain arrived. Now it is raining hard outside: knitting time!