Opus the Octopus – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: Octopus Days

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I have been helping the Mother of Cats for days and days while she knits on her octopus. It has been a lot of work, and much more fun than you would think. The Mother of Cats is using 5 different strands of yarn at once!!! I love to taste test the yarns from time to time (Yep. They taste great!!!), and if the Mother of Cats doesn’t keep her eye on me I climb into the yarn box to sleep with the growing octopus and all of his yarns. I love the yarn!!!!!

There are three colors here and two different types of yarn. The thin ones are merino lace, and the shiny one is a silk blend. Whatever. They all taste great!

For some crazy reason the Mother of Cats decided to use a combination of 5 of these yarns to make the octopus. This is what it looks like:

Do you see how the Mother of Cats is managing this? Lucky for her, the little yarns like to stick to each other, and because they are doing that the silk behaves itself. (I wish that the CoalBear would behave himself!!!) The Mother of Cats has all of the yarns organized in the plastic yarn box and the strands behave themselves when she pulls out more yarn. Well… they mostly behave themselves. I have to help her every single time they get a little tangled. Why does the Mother of Cats get grumpy so quickly? She is soooo lucky to have me. I needs some tuna…

This is how things have been going with the octopus all week…

Look at that!!! Last night he got some eyes!!! The Mother of Cats is really happy with him, and today she pulled out the yarns to knit his underbelly and the bottoms of his tentacles and wound them up. He is going to look just fabulous!!!!

Can you see that the octopus has purple eyes? Of course he does!!! He is so excited about the new yarns that are going to be his underneath. I’m so excited to taste test that violet colored yarn!!!!

This is Hannah, signing off.

Note from the Mother of Cats:

After a couple of uncharacteristically quiet days I had to rush Mateo to the emergency vet again this week; a lot of the body of the octopus was knitted in the car in the parking lot outside of the emergency facility as I waited to find out if he would need surgery again. The vet carefully prepared me for a possible need to euthanize him if it was too bad. In her opinion, the obstructions are happening due to adhesions from his emergency surgery last summer, and this may not be something that can be managed. Sad octopus knitting time in the afternoon heat…

After a 4 hour wait, he finally got his ultrasound, and in the time while he was waiting for his turn the IV fluids and pain killers made all of the difference: the obstruction was gone!!! The vet had his tummy hair completely shaved off, and most of his fur on his rear end is also now gone. I swapped out all of the litter in the cat boxes to the non-clumping type, and the vet feels that the best bet now is to keeps his fur shaved and to put him into little playsuits to stay warm in the winter. He is already on a special diet, and I am very careful about keeping all strings and whatnot out of his reach (did you notice that my knitting is in a latched plastic box? Yep. Cat-proofing.)

Tonight Mateo is completely back to normal, if a little odd looking with shaved parts.

Little does he know that a shaver is on the way to our doorstep…

No, I don’t let Hannah chomp the yarn, but she does keep trying…

Hannah and the CoalBear: Crafting Chaos Continues….

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you see me waiting for the Mother of Cats to start writing?

The Mother of Cats continues to be completely out of control with all of her knitting, sewing, and other crazy crafts. She just keeps moving from thing to thing all day long, but NOTHING GETS DONE! Really, the CoalBear and I would be having concerns about the Mother of Cats, but she did manage to finish one very important thing this week. She built us a new cat tree!!!!

I hung out with the Mother of Cats the whole time she worked on the new tree, and I managed to keep an eye on the front yard bunnies too. Look at this tree!!! The CoalBear and I are spending all of our spare time hanging out on it. So fun. Now let’s talk about the crazy crafting…

She decided to get started on the octopus. Yep. She just abandoned all of shawls that she was knitting, pulled out the bin of octopus yarns, and cast on. Then she spent all of her spare time working on that for a few days.

She is knitting 5 strands of yarn together while making the octopus. That’s a lot of strings to chase, let me tell you!!!! I was just getting used to the octopus knitting when suddenly the Mother of Cats decided to work on the quilt for a couple of days.

The quilt is now three blocks big, and she says that there is a lot more of the tree to come in the next block, and… are you ready for this??? There is a cat that looks just like me on the next block!!!!! I can’t wait to see it, but did the Mother of Cats start working on block 4. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. She pulled out her new overlock maching, had a friends come over to help her, and then she started sewing a pile of fabric totes for donation. Seriously?!!! The sewing machines are noisy, and I stayed on the new cat tree the whole time she was working.

Hey, these totes are kind of fun to sleep on…

After the tote sewing episode the Mother of Cats got busy knitting… hexagons. I know. I don’t understand it either, but here we are. She is knitting little balls of left over sock yarn together to make these hexagons that she hopes to make into laps blankets to take to the infusion center. She likes the colors, and for some reason she keeps casting on JUST ONE MORE to see what the new yarn combination will look like.

I have to admit, the colors are kind of nice. Will the Mother of Cats let me sleep on the hexagons? No. She. Will. Not.

See how busy things have been. I’m lucky if she remembers to give me my tuna on time. She has been so distracted, and busy with all of the building, sewing and knitting, and I’m not even factoring in the new clue that arrives every Friday from Sharon from Security that she uses to knit her Tabby Road mystery knitting adventure. She is in clue 3 now and the shawl is starting to look kind of cool.

It has been growing, hasn’t it. The Mother of Cats can’t wait to get to the colors that more blue, but it is still pretty cool and she is learning lots of new stitches as she works.

Well, that’s most of it. The Mother of Cats has been checking out kits to knit socks on her computer, and I am seriously concerned that this is spiraling out of control. When will it end? When will something get finished? Why is she getting out more fabric to sew tote bags…

I guess that is all for now. The CoalBear (AKA Mateo) and I have to catch another episode of Bird TV while the Mother of Cats works on even another shawl…

This is Hannah, signing off.

Hannah and the CoalBear: We May Need an Intervention Soon…

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I just love hanging out in the catio every morning!!

The Mother of Cats has been staying home with us every single day lately. Why is this happening? Look at what is going on in the afternoons…

Yep. It is really hot, the air pressure is pretty darn low, and the Mother of Cats doesn’t do very well when the air gets like that. Hey, I’m a cat. I just roll with it and spend the day sleeping, but for some reason the Mother of Cats stays awake all day and does stuff.

To be fair, she does give me lots of attention and cookies, but mostly she crafts ENDLESSLY. There is so much going on, and the CoalBear and I are starting to get a little concerned.

She has been working on her quilt. I like the quilting, and I help her as much as I can. Look at the two quilt blocks that she has been working on over the last two weeks.

The next cat that is featured in the quilt will be a tuxedo like me. Not as cute as me, but still, it is nice that she will have a quilt showing how absolutely superior tuxedo cats are. I think that there is also a squirrel and a tree involved, so that is perfect, right?

Now, let’s get to the knitting. That is where things have really gotten out of control. First there are the shawls…

That’s right: four shawls!!! The first one was really fussy and hard on the Mother of Cats hands, so she ripped it out. (Good job, Mother of Cats) She said that she obviously can’t be expected to knit a shawl that was too complicated to let her listen to an audiobook or watch Netflix

Mateo: I’m terrified of Netflix!!! That huge red N is too much for me to deal with. No one should be subjected to the…TA-DUM!!!!

Hannah: but Mateo rushes into the room EVERY TIME the television gets turned on just in case it is… NETFLIX. CoalBears can be so silly.

Let’s get back to the shawls. The Mother of Cats has a lot of yarn. She isn’t making hats right now because it is hot, and there are too many hats at the infusion centers right now, so she decided to make a shawl or two. Since the first shawl was soooo complicated, she started a simple Age of Gold shawl in pink yarn. Then she started a Sharon Show shawl because she saw one hanging up in the yarn store. Then Tabby Road started, so she had to knit on that, right. This is just kind of insane because at the same time…

The Mother of Cats decided to knit some octopuses… Yep. All of that yarn has now been wound. Hold onto your tuna treats, because I’m not done yet. The Mother of Cats, still upset about not knitting hats, and hugging a huge box of left over yarn balls (why doesn’t she give them to me?), decided to start knitting a BLANKET that will be made of a bunch of different octogons that kind of go together.

She made this holding two little balls of yarn together while she knitted. Did she let me chew the yarn while she worked? No. SHE DID NOT!!!!

Do you see why I am concerned about needing an intervention? She has been crafting nonstop for days in a row. Okay, it has been really, really hot for days in a row, but still. NOTHING is getting finished and she just keeps picking up yarns and starting new projects when she isn’t fusing down little pieces of fabric for the quilts. HELP!!!

I’m pretty sure that I need an intervention here.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

There is a giant octopus that I hope to knit in the blue yarns: Opus

Did you want a few glimmers? Check out this picture of the moon and a baby bunny…

I’ve also been reading a lot while sheltering indoors away from the heat, but that is another post. 🙂