The chase to apprehend Chad took a wicked left turn last week on the Sharon Air MKAL!
There I was, all cozied up in my cardboard blueberry box, flying to Morocco, finishing off my inflight drink of warm milk with whiskey when the news came in… Chad had gotten on a flight to Tokyo! WHAT?!!! How did that happen?! We were really looking forward to Morocco!! The Mother of Cats had just made her favorite quinoa dish (Quinoa and Pistachio Salad with Moroccan Pesto) and had settled down to chomp some while getting all her knitting supplies organized for the next clue drop of the Sharon Air MKAL, and … no Casablanca? Nope. The plane made a sharp left turn and pointed its nose towards Tokyo.
Oh. We are kind of excited about Tokyo! The Mother of Cats has been there before and she used to live in Yokohama, Japan. We weren’t in Tokyo long as we had to grab the bullet train heading south to Fukuoka, Japan. Sharon ate 4 bento boxes on the way, but mostly we knitted and drank tea on the trip as we had stuffed ourselves on katsudon (which the Mother of Cats just loves!) before we got on the train and the Mother of Cats was sort of regretting the decision… hey, I told her to not order a second bowl, but does she listen to me? Anyway, Sharon ended up recovering from the chase in a hot spring, and that Fungus Boi Worm was there too, but he got away somehow, and we were left in southern Japan to knit, relax, and have fun with Chad’s AMEX card.
This shawl is getting long enough to cuddle up against!Here’s the shawl after finishing Clue 5. This thing is getting too big to fit in the picture, but if you use your imagination, you can pretend that you can see the points on the ends towards the bottom of the picture.
Here’s a closeup of the new section of knitting.
Look at the cool textures and use of color in this side of the shawl.
So that is what’s going on with the Sharon Air MKAL. I’m so happy that I had cardboard class for that long flight, but I’m a little concerned about what is going to happen to my blanket if we need to fly out tomorrow in another class. Please, Sharon, no litter class for me and my blanket, okay?!
This is Hannah, signing off.
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
One of the hugely serendipitous events of my life was being sent to live in Yokohama as a young bride in the early 1970s by the US Navy. Why? More than 50 years before my own grandmother had arrived there as a young bride herself. My mom was born in Yokohama, and her first language was Japanese. How crazy was that?
My mom, by the way, was Swedish-American, and her mother could speak Swedish.
I still miss the Katsudon that I ate there.
Many members of the MKAL posted pictures of fabulous bento boxes that could be eaten on the bullet train. I’ve eaten bento boxes, but never came to love them, because… katsudon!!
I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats knit lots and lots of chemo hats.
This was a great week! The weather has been nice and sunny and the Mother of Cats has been sitting out on her deck listening to her audiobook while she knits. Hannah and I have been watching all the stuff in the yard through the windows.
There is a squirrel with the world’s fluffiest tail that hangs out in the back yard. We love the squirrel!!But the best watching ever is out the back window…Because there is a baby bunny hanging out in the back yard for us to watch!!and it is the cutest little bunny ever!!
Happy Caturday, everyone!
I have to get back to helping the Mother of Cats knit these hats!!
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
I’ve been reading the best book ever while knitting outside and watching the wildlife in the back yard. One of the main characters is an octopus, and I just fell in love with him right away. I seriously, seriously recommend this book!
This was a perfect book to listen to as an audiobook. Engaging characters, well told story, happy ending.
Years ago, another biology teacher told me about an octopus that would break out of his tank to go snack on crayfish from another tank in the lab. Yep. They gave been known to do this. Very smart, able to squish through very small openings, octopuses are kind of the stuff of legend. In this book, the octopus is also a wanderer with an incredible memory who becomes a pivotal character in the lives of the people who know him. I wanted the book to go on and now I am on the hunt for another easy to listen to books to keep me company while knitting outside with the wildlife.
We have been hanging out for hours at a time with the Mother of Cats while she knits and knits and knits on her new sweater. Sigh. She isn’t very frisky at all and she should get up and play with me more… instead she just reads and knits all day. Hannah is cool with that because she like to snuggle with the Mother of Cats, but I am still a kitten and I need to play!!!
You can see that she has made some good progress with our help. Yesterday she knitted all day trying to get to the end of the body of the sweater, and around midnight she finally cast off the sweater.
My sister and I were watching out the window when she finished. There is some great wildlife in our yard around midnight!!
Overnight Hannah and I knocked over a container of kitty treats, got the lid off and polished off all of the cookies. I thought that the Mother of Cats would be grumpy with us, but since we let her sleep in until late in the morning she kind of forgave us. Kind of. I did notice that she put all the rest of the kitty treats into a cupboard. Hannah knows how to open cupboards…
This morning she tried on the sweater, and it fit perfect! Well, of course it did. We aren’t exactly amateurs in knit support, after all. This afternoon she headed outside to take pictures of her sweater and I gave Hannah’s ears a washing.
Hannah: the CoalBear is the best little buddy ever.
Now it is almost night again and I’m pretty sure that the Mother of cats is going to make some supper and we will get some more kitty cookies. Yay!!
Hannah: Happy Caturday, everyone!!
Notes from the Mother of Cats: The sweater is Goldenfern by Jennifer Steingass. My Ravelry notes are here.
What have I been reading this week? Here it is (please observe that the cover matches my knitting :-)). I would talk about the book, but I really can’t without giving out spoilers. Just let me say that I enjoyed this book and it was the perfect one for a surgery-recovering BioGeek.
Halloween. It is cold and raining outside and all of the leaves are now off my trees. The plants in my gardens are bedded down under mulch to stay safe in the overnight freezes that are on the way and the bunnies of summer are no where to be seen. The children of the neighborhood have also gone somewhere else this evening as there isn’t a “trick-or-treater” in sight; the cats and I laid in some candy but no one has come.
Mateo: We got Halloween toys!!
Knitting
I’m seriously struggling this week as I adapt to a new medication, but that is a whole other post. I did manage to get my new Snark-O-Meter shawl finished and blocked in spite of tremendous cat help. Hannah loves the blocking mats and it was a battle to convince her to let me use them for, you know, blocking purposes. The kitten, faster then seems catly possible, was the master of flashing claws and nipping chompers as I tried to pin the shawl into place; he did leave the field of battle once I began spraying water on the shawl. Yay for the sprayed water blocking method! He is a brave boy, however, and was immediately back once I started to layer towels on top of the wet shawl to protect it from cats. Not to be outdone, Hannah decided that she should burrow into the towels. Luckily I had more blocking combs.
Do you understand how all this could be exhausting?
Anyway, the shawl survived blocking and looks fabulous!!
I just love how this shawl came out! All of this yarn was from the stash, and two of the colors (the gold and the orchid) had been languishing for years as I never found the right project for them. The gold especially was a problem as it is 100% silk yarn and I felt that it needed the right vehicle to show it off. The lace of this shawl with the rich colors and varied textures is absolutely perfect! You can’t see it in these pictures but the gold yarn glows in the lace and background sections.
I absolutely have to mention that Sharon from Security, the designer of this shawl (with some help from Casapinka) was banned from Facebook this week for threatening Finn, the newest (and somewhat shady) employee in the Casapinka world. Too much snark, it seems. There are some negotiations underway because both of these individuals are… cats. Hopefully Sharon will be back next week. If that isn’t the most 2021 thing that has happened this year, I’d like to hear of any others that beat it. 🙂
Books
I finally scored a copy of The Madness of Crowds from the local library. I’m early in the book and struggling a little with it as it is about the danger of ideas, misinformation, catchy messaging, and mob action. Umm… kind of the situation right now in the US. I’ll give it a little more time and then if it doesn’t perk up I’ll be going back to another science fiction novel with a strong female character who can cope with absolutely anything that the universe cares to send her way.
I’ll close with a shot of the kitten’s tail.
This is the crate that holds my blocking towels. There’s only room for one cat in the crate. The cats ruthlessly grab it when empty shutting the other one out. Kind of silly kitties, right?!
The tail is almost as big as the kitten! Do you see how much fur is on it? Maintaining that tail is almost like feeding another cat. No wonder the kitten is always hungry.
That’s it. Have a great week everyone!
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
Do you see how big my kitten has gotten? He’s hard to share a platform on the cat tree with now because of that… tail! His tail is absolutely out of control.
The kitten and I have been helping the Mother of Cats knit her latest shawl for weeks now. It has been lots of hard work, especially since the kitten forgets to behave himself and starts carrying off the balls of yarn. I have talked to him about this, but he is just too crazy wild to really settle down. The proper etiquette is to sit on top of the knitting, purr like crazy, and to snag any moving yarn in your claws when you can… If the Mother of Cats accidently leaves the knitting downstairs you can drag it up the stairs to return to her, but not the balls of yarn. Especially if you forget what you are doing and leave the yarn balls in some strange place. Sigh. It is so hard to raise a kitten.
Umm… that’s because I’m a little CoalBear.
Anyway, the shawl is called the Snark-O-Meter and it is designed by another cat!!! This cat, Sharon from Security, is the employee of Casapinka and seems to be a little tiny bit hard to work with. She is always complaining and dealing with the misbehavior of her fellow employees and never has enough sushi. Also she keeps losing her squad car… and her subordinate Finn (who has a shady background and multiple passports) is also gone. You wouldn’t believe how she talks to the knitters, too! Talk about snark!!
Oh. I guess that is why it is called the Snark-O-Meter.
The Mother of Cats finished the Snark-O-Meter this week and left me alone with the kitten to go buy some blocking mats and more pins to use. Oh, my goodness, the blocking mats are the most fun ever!! The kitten and I were so excited to see them. The kitten chewed as many corners as he could get his little chompers onto while I rolled around and did a little cat yoga.
Aren’t these the best cat yoga mats ever?
Then the Mother of Cats and we got serious and worked on blocking the shawl. She had made a little test sample to make sure the colors wouldn’t run when wet and tried to lay it out on the mat.
Tried. Yep. The minute the kitten saw the loose strings of that sample he began swapping at them. Then I grabbed the sample to groom it a little… did I mention that I just love wet yarn? Besides, it needs to get smoothed down and dried a little… The Mother of Cats tried to pin it and the kitten pulled out the pins to drag off and play with. The Mother of Cats decided that the yarns weren’t going to run (this is true… I never saw them move at all) and put the sample away in a cupboard. That was okay, because then she started putting the shawl out on the cat yoga mats.
Helping with the shawl. I’m such a good girl!! I only groomed the shawl a little bit while the Mother of Cats was laying it out.
The Mother of Cats didn’t like how saggy the yarns in the sample were when wet so she decided to spray the shawl really well with water and then lightly steam it. This was not funny!!! She put in some pins, sprayed water everywhere, and then put in even more pins all around the shawl. Then she hovered the steam iron all around the shawl to make the lace look nice.
I moved to a safe place and the kitten played with his toys on the floor while all this was going on!Doesn’t it look nice now?
Then the Mother of Cats layered towels on top of the wet shawl and sprinkled some yoga mats on top of that so we wouldn’t sleep on top of the shawl. I slept on top of everything anyway. Did I mention that I love the smell of wet wool?
The next day the Mother of Cats took all the mats and towels off the shawl and the kitten and I helped her take all of the pins off and the mats apart. You would not believe how fast the kitten can pull out the pins to take away as toys. Sigh. I’m going to have a little talk with him again. I do have to say that the little corners of the mats are fun to chew on, though. The kitten is a lot of work, but he is fun too and sometimes has some really good ideas.
Last night the Mother of Cats took the shawl over to her son’s for a visit and the kitten and I got to chase each other around like crazy all night. The shawl looked really nice as she packed it up to take to the car. Of course. This was a cat written and cat produced knitted item of beauty.
My work here is done. Except for the kitten. He’s still work…
Note from the Mother of Cats:
The kitten Mateo is growing at an alarming clip and is now filling out and growing a longer coat than I expected. He is a really good natured little guy and makes little chirping noises as he runs around the house, and of course he is a great playmate for Hannah. He is now 6 months old and will certainly be a bigger cat than Hannah.
Don’t you think he looks a little like a bear?
Here is the finished shawl modeled by one of my son’s cats.
Jonesy and the Snark-O-Meter.
I have another one of these shawls to finish up. The cats can’t wait for me to pull it out and get going again because blocking the last one was so much fun!!!
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 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.
It was a lovely week last week; hot and sunny with cooling afternoon thundershowers. Perfect. I rested up the entire week recovering from the exceptionally busy week I had the week before that and got lots done outdoors.
The new kitten, Mateo, continues to grow at an accelerated rate and is eating like a bottomless pit. He is now 3 months, 3 weeks old and is much less clumsy but still unable to jump up onto counters. Whew. No rush there. By the way, do those front paws look kind of big to you?
Hannah has recovered from her visit to the vet and all the vaccinations and is returning to her playful self. There is a little problem here, though… she wants to play with the kitten all the time and me or her toys… not so much. I’ve been giving her more attention during the kitten’s naps and she is slowly rebounding to her previous endearing interactions with me and her toys. This has been a big month for her, after all, and she is coming through it like a trooper.
Garden
The garden continues to flourish in the good weather but I have some concerns for it as there is another heat dome building and this time it will be much closer to Colorado. I took pictures of the flowers this afternoon as I’m not too sure what they will look like in another week…
There is a lot of blooming going on with the roses and for some reason the insects haven’t been munching on them as much as usual. Look at how happy and fresh these blooms look! This is the second blooming of the season and I am feeding the roses again this week in the hopes that I can get a third blooming next month.
The garden is full of volunteer plants that are popping up from things I put in the garden in years past. The big winners are snapdragons… they are everywhere! I put in a picture showing all the new buds that are emerging on the plants (2nd from left) and one with dried seed pods that already dropping seeds on the same plants (3rd from left). I am moving some of the seeds to gardens in the back flower beds as I work clearing out weeds and I’m hoping that there will be a new crop of snapdragons back there next year. I’m also seeing cute little Johnny-Jump-Ups appearing in the gardens like the little purple flower in the last picture. It’s becoming kind of a Darwinian garden in this flower bed over time as the plants that are more successful are taking over my flower bed and other places in the yards.
Knitting
I haven’t said too much about it, but I’ve been battling tendonitis in my right shoulder that was putting a huge crimp in my knitting activities for the last six weeks… the pain radiated down my arm and I lost all feeling in my fingers and some function. The concern, of course, was that my knitting days were coming to an end due to joint and nerve damage from my systemic sclerosis. My rheumatologist started me on a new drug and sent me to physical therapy and I am finally, finally, recovering the use of my arm and can knit more than a half hour at a time again. Whew! People, I am back!! Am I buying any more yarn right now… no. Sadly, no.
I got busy on a new sweater and made some good progress this week. I am making the Rock It Tee using some great speckled yarn from the stash and I am so pleased with how it is working out.
The tee is constructed from the top down and you knit back and forth while shaping the raglan sleeves and the V neck in the front. In the picture on the left you can see that I have just joined the knitting below the V neck to allow me to knit in the round (so much easier on my hand) and the picture on the left shows the raglan sleeve shaping. I am almost at the point where the sleeves will be taken off and placed on holders and then it will be simple knitting in the round to the bottom of the sweater. Yay! My next ball of yarn looks a little darker so I am going to start blending it into the current fabric as soon as I’m below the sleeves.
Books
I finished this in just a few days!
The Ten Thousand Books of January was great! I had just finished a book about books, doors, keys, and some crazy-ass magic associated with them, so I was a little worried about this one too. Nope. This was a straight forward book within a book that told a great story. I really enjoyed it and loved every minute of the books, doors, keys, words, and crazy-ass magic.
Have a great week everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
I’m not going to share much this week because… this happened.
This little bundle of charcoal fluffy cuteness came home with me this week!
He still doesn’t have a name and has spent the last two days stuffed under a couch hiding from the world in the spare bedroom.
Hannah was totally, like… YOU DID WHAT?!!
There was some hissing and growling that came out of the little Hannah princess. I thought that things would go better, but evidently not. I scrambled to get the spare bedroom kitten proofed and all of the plants in the indoor garden moved to the outdoors or some other suitable location away from kittens. The kitten meanwhile vanished and I spent a few hours hunting for him in the house since I couldn’t find him in his room. Hannah shadowed me all though the search as I started to get more and more concerned about the vanished kitten.
He was in the spare bedroom all along crammed underneath a cabinet through a gap in the back of the paneling.
Finally after midnight all was settled down and the kitten was exploring his new room.
Hannah wasn’t taking any chances and slept high on the bookshelf in my room.
Hannah: Best to be safe… he can’t get me up here!
The downside of the bookshelf is that she leaps from the shelf to my bed to get down… and then she slept on top of me when she wasn’t on the shelf.
This is going to be a rough couple of days…
Have a great week everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
PS: the Mando mitts that I knit for my niece safely arrived in California.
This is the picture that my niece sent me. So knitworthy, my niece!!
June continues to misbehave: we had three days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this week and several severe thunderstorms with tornados! My arm is still swollen and painful but the numbness is starting to improve; as if in solidarity one of my knees started to complain just today. Sigh. Knock it off, you guys! My new refrigerator came today and I am so happy to have dependable food storage again. Besides, it is just beautiful and shiney! The flowers in the garden are starting to bloom and the roses in particular are looking mighty fine. I have started to knit again every night and I also found some interesting books to read. I bought new glasses and ordered a bunch of fun stuff from Amazon. (Do I need purple and gold washi tape for my journal? Why yes, yes I do. I also got pink and gold replacement bands for my Fitbit and a pair of pink/grey comfy pants.) I went to the yarn store and bought more yarn… that may have not been wise, but I want to believe that I will return to full knitting capacity soon. 🙂 Okay, June isn’t being all bad… it was Hannah’s one year adoption anniversary this week.
Hannah on the 15th (her adoption anniversary date) and little kitten Hannah on the day I brought her home last year. I tried to recreate the picture from her first day home but she wasn’t all that interested and I was lucky to get the shot that I did. To celebrate her anniversary she got crispy pink paper to play in (that is always a big hit with her) and some bows to drag around. Last night I applied to adopt a kitten companion for her from the Cat Care Society and today they called me to approve the request and put us on the list for kitten alerts. Hannah was adopted from this shelter and they consider it a priority to get her a little friend. Yay!
I’ve requested a male, orange tabby kitten. We’ll see what happens. Hannah can’t wait.
Knitting
I’m working steadily on the mitts for my knitworthy niece who is a huge fan of all things Mandalorian. I am now up to the fingers of the second mitt.
Aren’t these the cutest things ever?
I need to do some duplicate stitch detail work and then there are all of the ends to weave in, but the end is definitely in sight now. I’m almost tempted to make a second pair but I have soooo many sweaters and other projects that I need to get done. This pattern is Mando (Natela Astakhova).
Garden
The roses are blooming! The roses are blooming! The roses are blooming!
From left to right, these roses are Hot Cocoa, Princess Alexandra of Kent, Cinco de Mayo, and Home Run. We had lots of rain this spring and I have been watering every day since then; this is the best crop of roses I’ve had in quite a while. I really was responsible this time with the roses as I covered them with frost clothes if there was even a chance of a hard freeze and I fertilized them early in the spring. This week they got more fertilizer and they are all looking good with lots of buds on the plants still waiting to bloom. Yay, garden!!
Books
I have two books going right now; one is text and the other is an audiobook. They both are really holding my interest and curiously they even look similar.
How crazy is it to be reading icy blue books when trapped in an heat wave. I’m only half way through The Doors of Eden and even less with The Cold Millions, but both books are thought provoking and really interesting.
And that’s all I’m going to say about them right now. 🙂
Have a great week everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
Scleroderma Update: My rheumatologist had my hands x-rayed this week and I have severe arthritis in both of them, but especially the one that is now acting up. I was kind of surprised and I’m hoping that they can do something to help with the swelling and numbness. My echocardiogram results also came back and I do have a hole in my heart, but an email came from my pulmonologist yesterday saying that it isn’t big enough to account for the whole panting/blue lips thing and he wants to do some more testing. Fun. We have an appointment next week.
Yarn, Books & Roses 