Emotional Support LIttle Chickie – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: Shipwrecked (on Sea Glass Island)

Hi. I’m Hannah,

It has been a long time since I’ve given an update on the Mother of Cats. I know, I know… things have been going on that are hard to explain, and the Mother of Cats hasn’t been fun AT ALL lately. Let’s start with the strange things…

The house got painted! There was complete chaos around our house that went on for days! Do you see my expression when I saw one of the worker men in the window? They put plastic over all of the window, and there were all of these bumps and strange noises, and I totally was exhausted keeping the CoalBear calm through all of it. Whew. Then the painters finally went away, and the next problem became apparent…

THE CATIO WAS GONE!!!!!!

A cat tantrum is an ugly thing. Mateo is just a little cat, but he can be a little heartbreaking too when he doesn’t get his way.

She works really slowly, but the Mother of Cats has been constructing a new Catio for us. I keep urging her to work faster, but does she listen to me? She takes a day off for every day she works, and at the rate that she is making progress, it will be snowing before this gets done. The baby bunnies will be grown up and gone. The baby robins will be grandparents. I will be too old to appreciate my days out in the sun…

Mateo really, really wants to go outside to have a chat with this baby bunny…

With all of the outside work going on the Mother of Cats hasn’t been knitting very much. She did manage to get one pair of socks done, and then she made a new chicken that she took away with her on one of her trips to the doctors. Here’s the chicken.

The chicken and a couple of the babies went to the Pulmonary Function Testing lady to use with her patients. Mateo wanted to keep it for us, and I did mention that it would be kind of nice if she stuffed the little chickee with catnip, but did she listen to me? No. No, she did not! They went out to the car with her, and they stayed with the PFT lady. I sure hope that those silly patients appreciate the chickens, and if they throw the little one around that would be great! I’m pretty sure that they would like catnip, too.

So, that’s what’s been going on. NOT MUCH KNITTING! The Mother of Cats is still unable to cast on her new sweater, and while she spends time moving yarn around into interesting combinations, she hasn’t cast on her sweater. Shipwrecked. She is shipwrecked. When she isn’t fussing around outside (and we’re stuck INSIDE looking at her through a window) she is laying around with a heating pad on her knees and braces on her wrists, dreaming about prednisone, and looking at yarn to buy online. Shipwrecked. She isn’t even using her knitting machines, which at least was a little fun. This is so bad even I’m dreaming of yarn. And tuna.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

Yep. My hands are total crap at the moment. My rheumatologist ordered some x-rays and the word “severe” appeared several times in the report. My wrists are the worst.

My knees aren’t doing very well, either, and my rheumatologist is exploring options with me. MORE DRUGS!!!! I’m a fan right now. Hannah wasn’t kidding when she said I was dreaming of prednisone. Steroids injected into my knee sound really good right now. The good news is that my lungs continue to improve, and the red flags that were raised at the time of the car wreck CT scan in December have resolved in favor of nothing serious. Yay! The changes in my lungs have disappeared, and the growing “mass” in my thyroid turned out to be a cyst. The bad news is that the follow-up CT scan in March showed that my broken ribs and sternum (fractured after all… not a shock) were struggling to heal, and I was told to lay off the knitting (and especially the knitting machine) FOR A FEW MONTHS!!!! Obviously, these medical professionals don’t understand that I need these things for my mental health. Sigh. Mateo isn’t the only one wanting to throw a tantrum lately. I don’t think that my doctors would be happy about the catio construction effort, but it is kind of an emergency!

The emotional support chicken was a huge hit at Kaiser pulmonology, and they will let me know if I need to supply them with more of the little chickees. My pulmonologist mentioned that the kids with asthma who come in for testing would love a little chickee… heal faster ribs!!! The chest pain has stopped even though I have been swinging a hammer this week, so I’m pretty sure that knitting again is right around the corner.

So… I can cast on Sea Glass, right?

<Hannah: send tuna!!>

Hannah and the CoalBear: Trapped Indoors

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do I look unhappy? I’ve been trapped inside ALL DAY LONG!!!

Deep cold has made its way into Colorado. It started Friday with an overnight snowstorm that descended with frigid flakes that piled up in the catio along with dropping temperatures. The stars broke through as the snow ended, gleaming unusually bright in the frigid air, and the temperatures continued to drop. Tonight, a new storm has arrived with more snow, and the falling temperatures and wind will make things truly dangerous in the next couple days for anyone outside without sufficient protection. The Mother of Cats says that applies to cats, too. She is so mean to us!!

Mateo’s winter coat is now in, but the Mother of Cats says that it isn’t up to the new cold that is pushing into the state. Mateo, the CoalBear, has been throwing a cat-tantrum over his restricted access to the catio. It is exhausting. Really exhausting!!

Here’s the warning alerts that arrived today on the Mother of Cats’ phone from the local news station:

Those temperatures are Fahrenheit, by the way. Luckily, the Mother of Cats had lots of time to prepare for this; her windows are wrapped, and she has a blanket over the largest one in the family room. The fridge is full of groceries, she got all the tuna, and she has yarn wound up and ready to go onto the knitting machine. Take that, cold weather! We are going to have days of chasing yarn while the Mother of Cats makes her little hats on the knitting machine.

Speaking of the knitting machine, the Mother of Cats took some action to make it easier to work with it. She loves the Sentro machine, but it wobbles around, and it is a little bit of a battle for her to handle the yarn, the machine, and the cranking all at the same time while a certain little black CoalBear tries to whap the yarn as it races into the machine. Ugh. I told the CoalBear to be a good boy, but he never, ever listens to me!

Anyway, this is what the Mother of Cats did yesterday to the knitting machine. She attached the machine to a small unused shelf that was lurking behind a bookshelf downstairs. She used the sticky strips that come with Command hooks to attach the feet of the machine to the shelf, and then the shelf with the attached machine can be clamped to MY coffee table. Why did she have to put it onto my coffee table right where I like to hang out in front of the space heater. The Mother of Cats never talked to me about this before she did it. So far things are going well with her setup and the worst problem that she is dealing with is a certain cranky, under-stimulated little black cat. I prefer to hang out under the coffee table where I catch the best heat from the space heater. Now that the knitting machine is easier to work with, The Mother of Cats is making a couple of hats a day, and she is also getting some handknitting done too!

Look at these fun knits!! The Mother of Cats got the new DK weight arm warmers done just in time for the cold weather, and she also knitted up some more of the emotional support little chickies. I think that the new chickies make good cat toys, but she put them away to donate to her community knitting organization.

So, that was pretty much the week. The only other thing that has been going on is my new wooly blankie. Look at what the Mother of Cats gave me!!!!!

Okay, it isn’t really a blanket. This is a shawl that she knitted a few years ago. Isn’t this the perfect blanket for me?????

I really love my new blanket. Like, I really, really loves it!!!! I’ve been grooming it all the time and it is gradually getting nice and soft and fluffy. PERFECT!!!! Okay, the Mother of Cats was a tiny bit upset when she first saw what was happening, but she loves me so much she is letting me keep it. Also, Mateo has been pulling out strands of yarn with his teeth, so it is ours now!!

The Mother of Cats says I can keep the blankie as long as I leave her sweaters alone. Hey, it is a deal. Do you see how much I love this blankie!!!

So, that’s it for the week. I’m still trapped indoors with the CoalBear, and he is really causing a lot of commotion as he wants to go out onto the catio really, really badly. I stuck my face outside yesterday, and I do have to say, the Mother of Cats is right about this one. It is too cold for any CoalBears, no matter how fluffy they are. Maybe I should go chase him around again for a few minutes to give the Mother of Cats a break. Then we are going to make another hat. That will cheer Mateo up for sure.

Note from the Mother of Cats

If you are wondering what the pattern for the arm warmers was, I kind of wrote it up in my last post here.

All the New Things

It’s been a little more than a week now, and so far things are looking up in 2025. Here are the highlights of the week:

That’s right. A new pattern came out for Emotional Support Little Chickies that are just the right size to put into your pocket to take with you on the go. Yay!! I bought some cheap multicolored yarn to make a bunch to send off to the organizations that my community knitting non-profit supports. These guys would make the day at one of the cancer infusions centers, or maybe at Ronald McDonald House, or they can even ride along on the ambulances that respond to mental health crisis calls.

Then a present came in the mail from a sister. A Pink. Zebra. Striped. Furblet. It makes noises. It has one little CoalBear pretty darn concerned…

Isn’t that the cutest thing? I burst out laughing when I opened the package and saw what it was. Mateo, however, is not laughing!

Speaking of new things, do you see this new winter coat that Mateo is sporting?

I also have been ignoring the few little knitting projects that were still active at the end of the year. It’s a new year, I need new things!!! I casted on and started a pair of new arm warmers that are coming right along. New is good, right? Look at how bright and happy these colors are.

I found this yarn in the stash, and these warmers will be soooo cute with all of my grey sweaters.

I kind of used a pattern to get me started on these arm warmers, but after I had looked at the notes to see what size needles were used and how many stitches were cast on I just took off and did my own thing while checking for the size from time to time. I mean, look at those things: how hard does it have to be? If you crave some of your own, those needles are size 4 (3.5mm), I cast on 48 stitches using DK yarn, and when I got close to my wrist (these are knit from the elbow down towards the wrist) I decreased twice to get the stitch count down to 44 stitches before the wrist ribbing. I put a marker in the decrease rows so that I can make the second arm warmer match. See, easy!! But fun. And new.

The other big new is the new car! I took an Uber down to the Subaru dealership the second day of the new year, and after 5 exhausting hours I drove home my new Subaru Forester. Yay! New car is good!! Exhausted and stressed to the max, I made the last turn towards home in the dark of the early evening, and there ahead of me, enormous in the western sky as it just began to tuck itself behind the Rocky Mountains for the night, was the new moon.

I took this picture the next evening. The moon is a little bigger than the tiny sliver of a moon that I saw when I brought the car home, but you can see how new it still is. That is Venus right next to it. New Moon, new car.

It’s been a pretty good start to the year, don’t you think? I went yesterday to get some medical testing done, and everything is looking pretty good. Yay! 2025, let’s do this!!