scleroderma – Page 11 – Yarn, Books & Roses

The View from Here: One Year of Scleroderma

It’s been a year since I was first diagnosed with scleroderma. Actually, it has been decided that I have the form of scleroderma called limited systemic sclerosis (the disease formerly known as CREST). Sounds kind of fraught, huh. That’s because it is; no matter what I think I know about my condition this week, by next week things will probably change. It has been quite a journey this year and now that all the dust has settled from the latest rounds of medical tests I wanted to share my thoughts.

There is no question that the first months after my diagnosis were filled with waves of horror and grief. At first I was just stunned to discover that I might lose the use of my hands. Then it dawned on me that my ability to live independently might become problematic; I needed to make plans to activate a support system for myself at some time in the future. Eventually I found out about the fatal complications and the high mortality rate. Well, shoot. During this time I became a driven knitter: endless pairs of fingerless mitts rolled off my needles.

CARD — My sister, who has a somewhat warped sense of humor, sent me this card about the time that I learned about my risk for pulmonary hypertension, an often fatal complication of limited systemic sclerosis.

Yet, it has been a year and I am still here. I sailed through the medical tests and none of the frightening medical complications have manifested themselves. My lungs and heart are fine (huge woohoo!!). My GI tract hasn’t gotten worse. My hands are very swollen and the skin is getting hard (one of the hallmarks of scleroderma is hard skin that forms due to lots of collagen deposition and scarring; my arms and legs are getting hard too), but they work just fine and are actually much better than they should be. My rheumatologist has advised me to knit as much as possible; what a hardship! Other symptoms have improved and I have transitioned onto a battery of drugs that have good track records for improving the quality of life and increasing survival rates in patients with my condition.

So, what have I learned this year? Here is my reflective collection of observations as I look back from the one-year viewpoint:

People are more important then things. Period.
..but they just don’t get chronic conditions and they tend to underestimate the seriousness of conditions that they can’t directly observe. In general people on crutches or using oxygen activate concern, but if you have flaming gastritis, the dizzy wobblies, and your muscles are on strike it’s easy for them to adopt a dismissive attitude. <sigh>
Medical personnel can be appallingly insensitive. Last week the technician doing my lung scan mentioned that I had a lot of doctors because my disease was really rare; it was important that the doctors get to learn as much from me as possible. Good lord, I wondered. Maybe she was raised by wolves…
As a corollary of the above observation, I have also discovered that I can’t assume that the medical personnel that I come in contact with actually know about my condition. One nurse thought that “systemic sclerosis” was “multiple sclerosis”. A doctor gave me a pep talk about how other conditions were worse because some of those patients actually can die from their disease. (“Did you want to hit him?” asked my rheumatologist…) One thing I can count on, however, is that they will put me into some scary machine to look for a possible blood clot. What is up with all the blood clot hunts?
I do have some wonderful doctors! Because of crazy interactions with random medical people I have decided that it is best to be proactive: last month I put this tag onto my keys and the little card in my wallet has the business cards of my internist and rheumatologist stapled to it.
There are few things as empowering as discovering that you won’t live forever. Why sweat the small stuff when you are facing down the long odds? My drugs have a small chance of a fatal brain infection? Whatever. Hand them over, Sparky, I am on board! I never worry about money (bad when I’m in a yarn store) or running out of gas, and I am taking more risks than I was comfortable with before. I mean, what is the worst thing that can happen? This week I figured out how to identify all of the electrical circuits of the house and rewired and installed a new doorbell. I didn’t worry (more than once) about getting knocked on my butt by an electrical mishap. Ha! In my younger days I hated to even change light bulbs…
Elizabeth Zimmerman was right. “Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises.” is a motto that I can live with.
No, I won’t be skydiving! I’m not that risk-seeking. 🙂
It is so much easier to be happy than sad. Plant flowers. Read books. Knit like the wind! Chase bees. Go to lunch with friends (and get dessert!). Watch meteor showers and be sure to catch the Super Blood Moon. Talk to strangers in bookstores and coffee shops. Be kind whenever you can. Never miss an opportunity to take a picture of a great sunset (or a cat). It is really, really easy to be happy, even when you’re in a crazy machine that is looking for blood clots. 🙂

I finally went to my first scleroderma support group meeting a couple of months ago. I’d never met another person with scleroderma; it was a little extreme but good. Like me, they all suffer from cold hands. Unlike me, most of them also talked about the struggle to manage pain in their hands, and I could see that several of them had limited use of their hands because the skin was so tight. Remember all of those fingerless mitts I knitted during the sad times? I think that I have found a home for them.

Return to Reading: Three Good Books

I am just nuts about books. I have been, and always will be, a voracious reader who hoards and treasures books. I have multiple copies of my very favorite books so that no matter what happens, I will always have them. (My most collected books so far: Great Maria and Floating Worlds, both by Cecelia Holland.) I can’t imagine going through a day without reading. I have books stacked up in a reading queue and more on hold at the library. I am a reader.

Except that suddenly stopped this spring. Around the time my rheumatologist moved me to stronger drugs I realized that I was having a lot of trouble with vocab recall and speech, and I was really struggling to read. Maybe I just needed a better book, I thought, and kept prowling book stores and the library hunting for that illusive great read. It just didn’t matter; no matter what the book was my mind just skittered around and refused to engage in the story. A book that would usually take a few days to read dragged on for a couple of weeks; by the time I finished it I couldn’t remember what it was about. Crazy. Thank you scleroderma!!

Last month I scored a form of CellCept that would play nice with my digestive system and finally settled into a consistent drug regimen. I think that it actually takes weeks (and months) for the full benefit of these immunosuppressant drugs, but this month I have actually finished three (pretty darn good) books, and the last one I raced through in just a few days. OK, the drug is also causing some sleep disruption, but I’m finally reading again!! Woohoo! Here are the books of October:

stuff — MacKenzie is my reading companion. 🙂

The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz

This book is a continuation of the Millennium series by the deceased Stieg Larsson. Oh, my goodness. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist are back. If you aren’t already familiar with these characters, let me just say that Blomkvist is an investigative reporter who is the champion of truth, loyal to his friends, famous for huge exposés, and sometimes hauled into court. Salander is… well, she is different. She’s brilliant, a computer hacker extraordinaire, a survivor, a champion, and probably a sociopath. She is broken, and she if fabulous. This book brings back the flavor of the previous books with the same intricate plotting; a murder, a conspiracy, convoluted electronic trickery, and the pace of a perfect thriller. I don’t think that it was quite as dark as Larsson’s books, but it was still a really good read.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Sometimes a book is more of an experience than a story. OK, did I mention that I’m having vocab recall and brain fog issues? Reading this book just messed with my head but was so amazing that I kept going. The story unpacks in bits and pieces back and forth in time as we learn about the life of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor of the last century. Dorrigo falls in love, goes to war, survives the horrific ordeal of building a railroad in the jungle as a Japanese prisoner of war, becomes a famous war hero, marries, has children, and carries a book of Japanese death poems. It is a magical story of love, guilt, endurance, survival, betrayal, and endless charges ahead in the face of impossible odds. I’m not completely sure that I understand this book, but it haunts me still.

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

The Narrow Road just warmed me up for this one. Once again I was reading a rich and complex novel that centered on the life of one anchoring character, Holly Sykes. The plot is broken into 6 segments that move forward in time (thank you, Mr. Mitchell!) but also loop and reconnect to characters and events in the other sections. Holly is extraordinary in that she hears voices and has accurate premonitions; the plot deals with these supernatural elements but also builds rich characters and situations that kind of left me stunned. It was with this book that I realized that I was once again a reader. I was immersed in the story, drawn to the characters, and caught off guard by twists and turns in the plots. This book had several story threads going at once, and it should have been confusing, but it wasn’t at all. I loved it and even cried at the end.

Three good books in a row! When I logged them into Goodreads today I noticed that two of the books are on a list for the best books of 2015, and the third is on the Nook Best Books List. Yep! They were just great and what I needed to return to reading. The number one book on the 2015 Tournament of Books list is one called Station Eleven. Hey, it is a science fiction! Hmmm… I may have to check that out.

Bolt from the Blue: The Encouraging Thunder Award

A couple weeks ago I woke up to a shock in the email box: That Girl at (Not) Another Lupus Blog nominated me for the Encouraging Thunder award, which is meant to recognize blogs that are inspiring and encouraging to their readers. Say, what? I have to say that of the many blogs and comments out there, one of the best, funniest, and uplifting to me is the one that That Girl writes. She is dealing with serious autoimmune diseases that continually derail her life, and she makes me laugh out loud while she relates the latest adventure/disaster. Check out this post about a particularly bad time waiting for her meds to arrive in the mail and you’ll see what I mean. Her blog empowers me to face down whatever may come my way and to deal with my health adventures with grace and humor. She does inspire me. She makes me laugh. She says nice things about my knitting. If ever there was a person who is encouraging, it is her.

encouraging-thunder-award

I am stunned that she passed the award on to me too. Wow. She is a tough act to follow. It is also kind of weird to think that somehow, typing out into the void about my life with cats, yarn and scleroderma, things that I think about and create connect with other people. Thank you That Girl for thinking of me. It’s an honor to accept and pass the torch (thunderbolt) on to others.

So, this is how the award works: I am supposed to talk about why I blog. That Girl used the opportunity in her post to re-examine her purpose in blogging. Here is her wonderful and reflective post. As I read her thoughts it pushed me into some reflection of my own. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since the start of the blog, and I guess as I changed over time I didn’t really think about this too much.

Here’s the deal: I started to blog because I was going through a tough time and I was isolated. My family was in crisis. I had just retired from the best job in the whole world and was in grief over the loss of my biology classroom. The transition was especially hard since I was going from an adrenalin-charged, immensely creative and social day (hello: 150 high school kiddos a day! Did I mention that it was a lab class…) to one at home with yarn and the cats. I was already sick but not yet diagnosed; it was hard to know if the disconnected symptoms, fatigue, and pain were real or me just feeling sorry for myself. I began to pour my creative energies into knitting and writing; I started the blog to put my transition into retirement out into the digital world; maybe there would be some people who shared my interests. Then the diagnosis of systemic sclerosis (and Sjogren’s) came in and I decided to share some of that. What a wonderful idea it was. Now people reach back to me and make me stronger. Thank you to everyone who has read this far down the post. You are the reason why I blog. You make me more creative (and brave) as you share your crafting adventures, your cats/dogs, your gardens, disasters, and medical adventures.

Thank you again That Girl. You made me think about all of this and I think that I’m ready to blog on!

And now it’s time for to pay it forward. Here are some bloggers who given me inspiration and encouraged me to knit on no matter what.

Sharon at Creativity and Family. This woman is the motherlode of creative inspiration. I don’t think that there is a craft she doesn’t take on. She has a button collection!! There are yummy recipes on occasion, and her kids seem amazing. They have monthly presents. Oh, yeah, she also has lupus and some physical limitations but you have to be very alert to pick up on this because she absolutely refuses to let it define her. She is kind of my hero! Check her out.
Phil at The Twisted Yarn. OK, I’m just going to come out and say it: she totally intimidates me. She has such a fun and unique voice. She takes us to all things yarn and on trips through the countryside with the toddler twinage. She creates amazing projects that I never would have thought of like a Mandala and a knitted pigeon. Reading her posts made me think about my “voice”, but in the presence of quirky greatness it is best to not try to compete.
Lisa at Comfortable in Thick Skin. What can I say? She is a scleroderma warrior. She makes me think that I should be more brave and proactive with everything in my life.
Gaye at Confessions of a YarnHo. She just moved the blog into a new home that is a beautiful professional site. She loves yarn, she is full of joy, she will make your day. The end of every post is “Knit on my fiber friends… knit on” How encouraging can you be.

If I nominated you and you choose to accept, here are the fiddly rules:

When you get this award, you can:

Post it and the logo on your blog
Pay it forward by nominating others

You cannot:

Abuse or misuse the logo
Claim the logo is your own

If you receive the award you should:

Give thanks via comments and likes in the blog of the person nominating you
Mention the person who nominated you in your award blog
Discuss your purpose in blogging in your award blog

That’s all folks. If you are reading this That Girl, thanks for the award, and thanks even more for your presence in my blogging life.

The Golden Hour

It’s here! It’s here! The most wonderful time of the autoimmune disease year. Fall colors, cooler (but not cold) temperatures, sunshine levels that won’t make me sick, pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks, and wood smoke. Pumpkins and autumn squash soup. New yarns at the yarn store and patterns for warm sweaters. Ugg boots!! Without fail I have a surge of joy and energy at this time of year. Just like the golden hour in photography, that time in the evening when everything is softened and has a glow of light to it, this is my golden hour of the year.

Sunset — Look at this sunset! I took the picture while sitting at the stoplight. Doesn’t it make you happy? The golden hour is the hour before this as the sun was just dipping down towards the mountains in the west. Here is Colorado it makes the Rocky Mountains look softer and plush; there are sunbeams and everything looks wonderful.

What’s wrong with the rest of the year you ask? Well, let me tell you: winter is a beautiful time of year, but for a person with systemic sclerosis and Raynaud’s disease, it is a miserable battle to keep extremities warm an opportunity to rock the wool socks, shawls and fingerless mitts. This year I plan to roll out some exceptionally warm longish sweaters; I have the yarn all ready to go. I have patterns for fingerless mitts that will go up to my elbows. I bought fleece Cuddle Duds. I am really going to try to handle the cold better this year; last year I rolled out of winter with more severe symptoms than I had in the fall.

Spring is a time of gardening, hope and struggle for me as I try to get the garden’s flowers (and roses!!) going while slowly accepting that new debilitating symptoms that I thought were related to the war against cold, but which remained in the balmy days of April and May, were actually real things. Darn! No wool sock or hand warmer will fix my problems… by the time I make appointments or call for help it is already summer.

Ugh! Summer! I was a teacher, and summer was that wonderful time of renewal and rebuilding that kept me going year after year. Now summers are so fraught that they seem to pass in a blur of lawn watering and visits to Kaiser. Really, I am just a mess all summer long. Here’s the highlights of this year:

Summer started with me just a few weeks into the drug methotrexate (which I got after making a call for help in early May…) I was losing hair and taking it easy two days a week because of the drug’s side effects. Still, by juggling the drug schedule I was able to work a summer camp teaching kids how to spin and felt fiber. So fun. The camp was only 2.5 hours a day so it was perfect.
In July I developed rare bone complications from the drug (well, don’t I feel special!) and ended up at an acute diagnostic facility. That was the end of the methotrexate.
Icky symptoms reappeared with a vengeance. I had to wait a few weeks before I could start the new drug. It’s called purgatory drug holiday .
UTI strikes. Seriously!! Antibiotics, barfing and yogurt happened.
Rheumatology appointment: he starts me on CellCept with some reservations about whether my gut (which basically hates me…) can handle it.
I start the pills. Woohoo! No problems except after two days…
…UTI strikes again. Oops! I stopped the CellCept, gobbled antibiotics and yogurt, and skipped the barfing. Take that you ill-behaved gut!!
Started CellCept again the next week. Hello heartburn, my old friend. Middle of the night vomiting and belly pain? Nope, nope, nope. My gut has definitely vetoed this drug! I didn’t even make it a week before I emailed my rheumatologist to ask for something else from the land of pharmacological wonders.
Well, what do you know. There is another version of the CellCept that is a time release version that I should be able to stomach (see what I did there?). My rheumatologist and I had an email chat and he ordered it up for me.
…and the insurance declined to approve it. What?!! I wanted to send my gut on over to have a chat with them. Two visits to the pharmacy, two phone calls and an invocation of the gastroenterologist did the trick. I scored the pills on the last Friday in September. Yep. That was the end of summer and it is now time for the golden hour.

I started the time-released version of CellCept 10 days ago. You know, I think that I feel better already. My knees have stopped hurting! I seem to have more energy. I think that there is less edema in my arms. I have started cleaning out cupboards and stuff. I am happy.

Maple leaves — Look at these leaves! This is the maple tree in my back yard.

This is my year of systemic sclerosis (scleroderma): cold, pain, hope, struggle, persistence, and wonder. And this, my friends, is the best part of the whole dang year. I am full of joy with every red leaf and pumpkin that I see. I know that the snow is coming, but what the heck.

Today, today I am in the golden hour.

First Week in September: Three Bowls, Three Mitts, and a Reyna Shawl

I am knitting and crafting like crazy. Actually I’m enjoying the balmy weather of summer’s end and I’m a little nuts because I just can’t seem to get everything done. The flowers on my deck are at their best. The crickets are chirping. The temperature outside is just about perfect and I am spending my time clicking knitting needles and feeling a little less than my normal cheerful self (more about that below). Still I am making progress and the setting is just about perfect. This afternoon I decided to set up the laptop on my backyard deck and let you all know what I’ve been up to. Here it is.

My sister’s birthday was the 5th of September. I bought her a card a couple of weeks ago and I sat down and got these bowls done in plenty of time to send to her. Here the are!

Fabric bowls — A set of fabric bowls. Bet she never saw this coming! She does sew a lot and I thought that she might find these useful in her crafting area or maybe on her desk. I found the pattern online at Quilter in Motion.

Fabric Bowl — I just love the fabric! This is a Laurel Burch pattern that I found last year.

I still haven’t mailed them off to my sister. They are now days overdue but I do have an excuse (OK, it’s pathetic, but still… It’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!). My rheumatologist started me on a new medication for my systemic sclerosis (scleroderma) called CellCept, and it just doesn’t like me. Every part of my digestive system hurts!! Boo! Today I got up and decided that I am done with heartburn (not to mention middle of the night barfing) and e-mailed my doc to ask for something else from the land of pharmacological wonders. This morning I didn’t take my pill and this afternoon I plan to make the trip to the post office. Hang on sis! They really are coming…

Now the knitting makes sense, doesn’t it. No matter how upset my digestive system is I still manage to eat (yogurt is my friend) and knit. Lots of knitting has been going on. I dug in this last week and worked like crazy on the mitts that I am designing for Alta Vida Alpacas for Alpaca Farm Days which happens later on this month. They plan to sell kits of yarn with the pattern to visitors to the farm. I’ve been trying to make simple patterns that show off the yarn. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Mitts — This yarn is sportweight, 50% cotton (which gives it some slubs and texture), 25% wool and 25% alpaca (yum!). The yarn knits up great, feels light on your hands but is also soft, comfy and warm. I wanted them to look easy to knit (hello… trying to sell some kits here!!) but appealing. Please lay on the feedback people!

Like those colors? This is Colorado (AKA Broncos Country) and the football season starts this coming week. Yeah Broncos!! The thumb on the stripped mitt is a little different from the usual shape that I favor and I’m still thinking of knitting a stripped version with slower increases. The thumb on the solid mitts is more like what I like to knit and wear. It fits your hand with no pull across the hand and the ribbing on the top of the thumb is loose enough to allow you to wear the mitts over gloves. (Reynaud’s makes you think about things like that!) Be honest here: does that stripped thumb look goofy? Should I change it?

So the knitting continues. I want to make the mate for the beaded mitt before the end of the week, and then will do a pair of stripped mitts with a more gradual thumb increase in blue and off-white. Next I have to write the patterns, but I’ve kept lots (and lots!) of notes while I knitted so I am feeling pretty positive about that next step.

Finally, I’m making some steady progress on the only knitting project that is just for me. Check out the Reyna shawl that is finally getting towards the end of it’s knitting journey.

That’s the week. I’ve been reading a lot too, but I think that should wait for another post. And the flowers that I’ve got blooming on my deck are so fabulous they are crying for a post of their own…

Hope you all had a great week (and no barfing!!).

New Chinese Curse: May You Have An Interesting Disease

It has been two months since I started the drug methotrexate for my systemic sclerosis (scleroderma). I put off starting the drug for a few months as I was concerned about potential side effects (well, for one thing, it increases the chance that I will develop cancer. Since I’m now at high risk for lymphoma that kind of gave me some pause…), but struggling with fatigue and other annoying symptoms I finally made the call to my rheumatologist and started on the drug.

The first month was a little hard; nausea, headache, more fatigue, and what I called the dizzy-wobblies. My hair started falling out. By the second month, however, I began to notice that my muscles had stopped hurting. I had more energy. The edema in extremities was definitely much better. I was out of the house and doing much more. Hey, this is improvement. Go methotrexate! I was ready to make the pom-poms and sign up for the cheer squad.

Then more downsides began to emerge in the second month. I started to notice that my knees really hurt the day after I took the methotrexate pills. As always, I checked the Internet to see if anyone else had noticed this. Yep. It’s a thing. I decided to baby my knees a couple days a week and to keep on with the drug. Then my back started to hurt, I noticed a rash on my arms the same day that my knees hurt, and itching became a thing. My ribs started up with shooting pains. The pain spread to the entire right side of my lower ribs, I struggled to breathe and it was hard to raise my arm. Yikes!! The pain was so widespread it didn’t seem reasonable that it was just a cracked rib…

IV in arm. — Here I am with the IV tapped off so I could make the trip to the CAT Scan machine.

That’s how I ended up at the acute diagnostic center run by Kaiser for we after-hours folk that don’t want to go to the ER. (The ER has sick people. When you are on immuno-suppressants you avoid sick people like the plague!) The nurse was nice. The doctor was great. The words “possible blood clot in your lung” and “we want a CAT scan right away” were said. I would have been more upset if they hadn’t also just said “we’re giving you morphine to get this pain under control”. I would have hugged that nurse if I could lift my arm.

Then she blew it. As she stuck me with the needle to start the IV she said, “I once worked with someone who had scleroderma so I’ve heard of it before. Such an interesting disease. She did develop heart problems though, which was sad since she was so young.” Great. This is sort of like a Chinese curse: May you have an interesting disease. I grumped about her comment to my son who was there with me. “Well, you have to admit, it is kind of interesting,” he said.

Aside: It is an interesting disease. One of the great ironies of my life is that I have a degree in molecular biology and once worked in a rheumatology research lab on a scleroderma project. My boss Dr. Angeline Douvas and I at that time used the auto-antibodies from scleroderma patients to capture and identify the protein SCL-70 (topoisomerase). We spent a lot of time speculating about what was going on in these patient’s genes and why that was manifesting itself the way it was in their clinical symptoms. We were suspicious that it might be triggered by a virus. Here’s the paper: I’m the second author. Angie would find my diagnosis to be so interesting but she passed away in 2000 before I became sick. Yep, it is all so interesting. Anti-centromere antibodies! What the heck is going on here?! This is an important disease that should be researched not just for a cure to help people who have it, but to also gain essential understandings about cells and genes that can be used in the treatment of many other diseases. As it turns out there is a bill in congress right now concerning scleroderma and fibrosis research and you can contact your congressperson using this link.

Still, I found the nurse’s interested detachment from my personal situation to be somewhat appalling. Still in pain I was wheeled off for the CAT scan, and then waited for my chat with the doctor. NOT a blood clot. NOT my liver. They could see old breaks in my ribs (thank you osteopenia) but NOT a current one. It turned out that it was inflammation of the cartilage in my ribcage, a condition called costochondritis. It’s a scleroderma thing, just another bump in the road when you are dealing with a complex medical condition. Fabulous. The Internet tells me that it usually resolves within a year. OMG! A year??!!! That’s a lot of pain killers! Oh wait; that’s a lot of knitting! Best to look on the bright side.

The next morning my rheumatologist’s office called to let me know I should stop taking the methotrexate. Farewell, methotrexate. It was nice getting to know you but you didn’t play nice with my cartilage. I now have an appointment with my rheumatologist on the 20^th and he will discuss my new drug options with me then. I’m sad to let methotrexate go, but so glad that there are other drugs out there waiting for me to try them out.

Just another day in the life of an interesting disease.

FO Tee, a Garden Swing, and an Excited Spinning Wheel.

I know that I have been a little whiny lately. I started methotrexate a little over a month ago and the adjustment to the new medication has been challenging to say the least. This week was better. Much better. So sorry for the whining. I ~~promise~~ hope that I won’t be doing that again for a long time. Check out all the things that were accomplished this week.

Knitted Tee — I got the Clove HItch Tee finished! Here are the project notes on Ravelry.

Tee Sleeve. — Look at how cute the lace detail is on the sleeve. This yarn is a linen blend and will be cool to wear even though it is a worsted weight knit.

The whole time I was knitting this tee I worried about how big the neck opening was. As soon as it was cast off the needles I tried it on, and yep, too big. I ran a drawstring around the neckline on the inside to draw it up a little and to prevent more stretching. Neckline problem totally fixed: it fits great! The top is loose and a comfy layering piece. I’m thinking that I would like to make a second one with long sleeves using a winter yarn that will be lighter in weight. Maybe in navy blue. I plan to keep that garter stitch band on the sleeve and will continue the sleeves in stockinette below the band.

Crocheted lawn seat. — I have now crocheted the entire back of the lawn swing and am continuing on to make the seat. I draped this over the back of the swing; it’s longer than it looks in the picture.

The lawn seat is coming right along. The fabric will stretch when I sew it into place so it will be more open looking when it is done. I haven’t completely decided how to attach it to the side pieces of the frame. I’m afraid that the attachment solution won’t be very elegant, but hopefully it will be functional.

Wednesday I went out to visit a friend’s alpaca ranch (she has sheep too!!). I am consumed with jealousy. Such cool animals wearing fabulously cool fiber; she has a whole dyeing and processing operation going. I didn’t take any pictures because next week there will be a summer camp there and I get to teach kids how to spin! Ha! Stay tuned for the summer camp report. 🙂

Today I took the car to get its oil changed and battery replaced. I know that this sounds like a small thing, but I am rocking my good week and getting a lot of things done. After I got home I cleaned out the garage and packed my spinning wheel into the car because tomorrow we go to a class to learn how to spin camelid fibers.

Spinning Wheel — Look! The wheel is already strapped into the car and ready to go. It is so excited! This is its first trip out in almost a year; no more sulking in the corner for this little guy.

That’s right. I still have a bag of paco-vicuna that I am nervous about spinning. The spinning class is taught by Chris Switzer who has quite a reputation as a master spinner of these fibers in this part of the world. I am taking the paco-vicuna bag and a chunk of my alpaca fleece with me to the class to get feedback on spinning techniques for the yarn that I dream of creating. Not that I’m intimidated, but the class registration says to bring some things that I’ve made from my homespun yarn with me. I have spent an hour finding things that I’ve made; I’ve decided to only take ~~two~~ three things. Maybe three is too many? If I take two substandard items she might think it’s a fluke. If I have three, it’s pretty sure that’s the type of spinner I am. Whatever. It’s best to not overthink this. I’ll take three that I like and that will be that. I’m taking the class with a friend who likes to spin crazy lace weight yarn and it is going to be wonderful!!

I finished reading all of the bee books this week too. I feel another post coming on. Some of the books were a little bit of a chore to finish, others were just amazing. Hmmm….

Knitting in Aurora

Without a doubt, I am in a mood. I have been feeling poorly for a couple of days now (I took my methotrexate on Monday, and this week it made me sicker than last. Hope this gets better as I continue…), but I needed to pick up prescriptions from the pharmacy and to run some essential errands (the cats expect to be fed on a regular basis; obviously they are out of control!!), so I dragged myself out of bed and feeling a little dizzy and wobbly I headed out.

Here’s the deal. The Kaiser facility where I pick up my prescriptions is right across the street from the Century 16 theater where a gunman (who will remain unnamed in this post) opened fire in a packed theater of moviegoers watching a popular movie on opening night. It was almost 3 years ago today when I woke up to discover that once again Colorado was in the news for a mass shooting, and once again it was happening in my home town. (Sadly I was a resident of Littleton, Colorado at the time of the Columbine shooting). This time the theater is in the heart of my shopping district, and today as I made my rounds to pick up a library book, buy cat food and made a quick stop at the book store to check (what else) the knitting magazines I was almost always in sight of the theater.

It is pretty heart-rending if you think about it. The police drove up the lawn and over landscaping behind the theater that night to transport victims to local hospitals. They drove on the street that I used to go to Kaiser in patrol cars carrying as many wounded as they could fit into their cars. It’s hard to not think of this as the shooter’s trial is now wrapping up after 45 days, and it’s impossible to avoid the day-to-day details of the events in the courtroom. As I entered the Barnes and Noble bookstore in the shopping center I wondered if that man had come here to also check magazines.

Knitting Magazines — Here’s the knitting magazines on an upper shelf mixed in with other fiber-arts crafting magazines. I counted 12 knitting magazines.

So, I am in a mood. I don’t feel well. I spend a lot of time knitting to cope with my altered future due to some serious illnesses. I don’t want to start a debate about gun control, Second Amendment rights, mental illness, the death penalty, the available of military grade armaments through the internet, or the value of explosive rounds. I don’t want to hear that we need more guns to stay safe and that teachers should be packing in their classrooms. Don’t do it!!

I’m just wondering if the world wouldn’t be a better place if bookstores carried a dozen hard to find gun magazines on their shelves, and there were 30 knitting magazines located at the level of children for them to look through. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all felt safe and dreamed of creating nice cushy scarfs, sweaters and mittens that would be beautiful and useful. That knitting was seen as an important meditative activity as wonderful as yoga, jogging, or any of the other stress-busters out there. That the economic power of knitting and other crafting venues drove a huge industry of creative pursuits valued by a large part of the population.

What does this say about us as a people that this isn’t the case?

Return to the Garden: Hello Slugs, I’m Back!!

Summer heat has arrived, I’m feeling better, and it is definitely past time to attend to the needs of the garden. Yesterday I weeded out front in the shade of the morning and then mowed that lawn in the evening (well, I actually mowed only half of the lawn. A neighbor then arrived and took the mower away from me to finish things up. I love my neighbors!!) Look at what has been happening out front while I was engaged in an indoor scleroderma-induced slug-fest.

Rose Bush. — My new roses (Hot Cocoa) that I planted a couple of months ago burst into bloom!

Roses — This is what the blooms look like as they open. I bought these roses as they are recommended for my location (Colorado, USA) even though I wasn’t completely sure about the color. I’m really pleased with the dusty orange color now.. Look how healthy those leaves look! Let’s hope the grasshoppers don’t notice…

Ice Plant in Bloom. — The ice plant that I planted along the front walk has also gone into overdrive. The color made me so happy I didn’t even mind pulling the weeds!

This morning I moved into the back yard with the cats to see what I could accomplish in a couple hours of coolness and shade before the afternoon heats up. Oh dear, it is somewhat of a jungle, and the cats have been running wild.

Cat in Grass. — Guess I need to mow this lawn too. See how intently MacKenzie is looking upward? He’s watching the squirrel the cats had treed earlier this morning after chasing it all over the yard.

Cat nesting in plants. — Yellow Boy has been busy building nests in several locations in the yard and the garden.

Cat in Yarrow. — The yarrow he’s nesting in is all over the garden and I need to rip most of it out. He was so cute I just let him have it today. Wait a minute… I think yarrow can be used to dye wool. Maybe I shouldn’t rip this out yet…

Pincushion flower — My pincushion plants have spread like crazy and the blooms are looking good! Please ignore the grass in the photo. That’s what I did and I feel much better for it. 🙂

Napping Cat — MacKenzie has also staked out a nice shady location to nap in near the cat mint. He is my good boy: he’s sleeping on dirt and not in the middle of a plant. 🙂

Things are looking much better than I thought they would. I weeded like crazy, filled up two garbage sacks, and then planted some new flower seeds in one garden where a rose died over the winter. By then the day was heating up and I was starting to feel a little dizzy again. Time to head back into the house to rest up for afternoon knitting and lawn mowing later.

The best part of the morning? I didn’t see a single slug!!

Knitting Updates: Slug Time

Gosh. Life has really been clobbering me lately. My systemic sclerosis (a type of scleroderma) has become more active this month, and as a result I have been laying around like a slug thinking about the slugs in my garden and posts that I should be writing. (As a special type of irony this is Scleroderma Awareness Month. I’m encouraged to take a pledge to explain about scleroderma to at least one other person. Fabulous. When I feel better I will do that! Post to follow in the near future, or at least before the end of the month.) Predictably I haven’t done anything about the slugs, but I have been collecting pictures and notes for posts. As soon as I start to feel better I will be posting like crazy. 🙂

I am not, however, feeling too poorly to knit. I mean, let’s be serious here! Knitting is Life!! Since I have been carefully rationing my energy expenditures the last couple of weeks I devoted some time to shopping the yarn stash and getting going on some great projects. Say hello to my new companions while binge watching Netflix (how is it possible that I never watched Orange is the New Black before? If I was incarcerated would they still let me knit? If I sent Piper some cute fingerless mitts would she wear them while fixing electrical equipment? See where my mind goes while I’m living the life of a slug? OK, enough of this. Back to the topic at hand…)

June sock — I got started on the June 2015 sock (Petal Socks by Rachel Coopey). Here are the project notes on Ravelry if you would like more details.

Finished sock. — I finished the first June Sock last night. This is the right sock; the left will have the lace details on the instep reversed so that the finished socks mirror each other.

What can I say about this sock? It was pretty easy to knit. The lace for the legs divided evenly on three needles and the chart had a 6 row repeat, so the pattern was easy to manage. When I got the heel turned I switched to two cable needles which worked really well and kept the lace on the instep (which has more stitches at this point) easy to manage. This sock fits my foot well and is nice and high on my leg which will be welcome warmth this winter. 🙂 The lace pattern doesn’t show well with this yarn, but it is so cute I’m over it.

Joker and Thief Yarn — Yarn to knit the second The Joker and the Thief shawl.

When I originally put together the yarns to knit The Joker and the Thief shawl by Melanie Berg I struggled to make up my mind. I ended up packaging together two sets of yarn. I already finished the first shawl a few weeks ago and am really happy with it. This week I also cast on and started the second Joker so I could see how the colors look together. What do you guys think?

Some of my knitting friends are turning out summer tops like crazy. Every time I go to knitting group on Wednesdays at my favorite yarn shop there is a new top being shown off. I am inspired! I am motivated! I am drowning in knitting projects, but since when did that ever stop me? I found a cute tee in the current Interweave Knits Magazine, located 10 skeins of Linen Jeans yarn by Borroco in my stash, and cast on.

Knitted top. — This is the start of the Clove Hitch Tee by Courtney Cedarholm.

I may not have enough yardage for the sweater as shown, but since it is knit from the top down I figure I can knit until I run out and then cast off. Hey, it’s a plan.

Time to go lay down again. Have a good week knitting everyone.