Scrunch Socks – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: All the Glimmers of the Week

Hi. I’m Mateo.

I’m the most handsome boy ever! I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats knit this week.

The Mother of Cats was really busy and happy this week, and she says that all the new things are called glimmers: little moments that bring joy and peace. I think that she needs to maybe take another nap, because I don’t know what she is talking about, but there have been a lot of new things going on. Let me show you the best, most important one first!!!!

We got this new toy!!!! The blue line is moving on the pulleys, and it makes a little mousie race around the room. It changes directions and speeds, and no matter how many times the Mother of Cats makes it run, I need MORE CHASE TIME!!!! I love to chase this!!!!! Even Hannah is playing with it!!!

The Mother of Cats has started knitting again, and look at she managed to do this week.

That’s right. The Mother of Cats got a pair of socks done this week, and she took out her sweater and started knitting on it again. She was SO HAPPY when she tried the sweater on this week and it is going to fit just fine. Well, with me helping her, how could it not? She says that her wrists aren’t hurting all that much lately, so it looks like we will be spending more time knitting. Yay. I love to chase the yarn while she works. Why is the Mother of Cats so mean about sharing her yarn?

Also, she went out and bought this new yarn!!! Can you believe it? She says that she is going to make a sweater, but I think that she may have gotten carried away a little. She should spend the money on tuna and cat toys, right?!

Then there was all of the sewing. Hannah took over and helped the Mother of Cats at the sewing machine because she likes it a lot. They made little zipper pouches and these crazy little things called port pillows that are used by cancer patients who have ports (duh!!) when they ride around in their cars. Why anyone would voluntarily get into a car is completely beyond me, but the Mother of Cats says that there is a big need for these little things, so Hannah and she made a whole bunch of them and delivered them this week to an infusion center. She asked if I wanted to go along for the ride, and I was like…NO!!! That is just CRAZY TALK!!!!

Yesterday the Mother of Cats went to her community knitting group, and while she was there a couple of ladies came in with huge bags of yarn to give away. When they were asked how they had learned about Frayed Knots, the group that the Mother of Cats belongs to, they said that they got the name from the paper insert that they picked up with their new port pillow at the infusion center. The Mother of Cats says that this was a huge glimmer!! The ladies were so happy to get the port pillows and the hats; they wanted to give to other patients too with their yarn. Luckily other people took all of that yarn because WE HAVE LOTS OF YARN HERE ALREADY!!!!! I think that it would have been better if they had brought some more toys for me to chase (or even some little bunnies that want to play chase…), but the Mother of Cats was happy, so I guess I am too.

So that was the week. It was warm and sunny, and the Mother of Cats managed to get the leaves off the lawn with her new leaf blower and vacuum/mulcher. She brought in all of the plants from outside, and now the knitting room is happy and full of flowers.

New clothes came, and you already know about the yarn. She went to her knitting group and had a wonderful time, especially since the lady who took those cats that stayed with us for a few weeks was there, and she said that the cats were happy in their new home, and even gave her a new toy for me.

That little ball with the tail on it races around the house and I chase it the whole time!!!

This is Mateo, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

This is the cat toy that Mateo can chase for hours: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FLV7JB5K?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1
The socks are the Scrunch Sock on Ravelry.
The sweater is Extra Lite Bright knit in just one color. I may make another that is a fade with the new yarn that just came in. That will be fun, right?
What do I want to make with the heavier weight yarn (DK) that just came? I’m thinking that I need an Alchemist Pullover in my life!
That jade plant that I brought in is at least 10 years old. Has it bloomed yet? No, no it has not!
I’ve been steadily losing weight for the last few months (It is a scleroderma thing) and I finally broke down and bought some new clothes. Yay! They fit great and I’m happy with the new colors.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Snowcat Interlude

Hi. I’m Mateo, the CoalBear.

Do you see me giving the Mother of Cats a seriously evil-looking glare??

I was trapped in the house for days and days while the Mother of Cats played on her computer, cleaned out some files in her office, and made hats on her knitting machine. Usually I like the knitting machine, but I HAVE NEEDS!!! OUTSIDE!!!! NOW!!! Finally, the Mother of Cats relented and let me out. Yay!!

I have lots of fluffy fur and it is even on the bottoms of my feet. I went out every day this week; Hannah, that wimp, did not go out even once. She is kind of a baby about the cold. Okay, she doesn’t have the fur on the bottoms of her feet like I do, but still, she could try, right?

Hannah: that would be a huge NOPE little black guy… while you were out in the snow, I got double portions of kitty cookies!! Ha!

As the Mother of Cats worked on her hats this week she started to notice dropped stitches in the knitting. It happened a few times, and then it started to happen with every single hat no matter how careful she was. Then she realized that the yarn feeder had been worn down by the yarn and that it couldn’t catch correctly anymore… poor Mother of Cats… she was cranky and sad at the same time… what should she do with herself…

The groove is worn into the feeder inside that marked circle.

Luckily the Mother of Cats found a replacement yarn feeder for her Sentro machine for sale on Amazon and it is already on the way. There is even a YouTube video that shows how to replace it so she won’t even be needing my help. Unfortunately, the part won’t be here until the middle of next week, so in the meantime, she is back to knitting on some arm warmers that she is making to match her Scrunch Socks.

Pretty cool, right? I helped her with these too, but personally I think that the knitting machine is more fun to whap.

So, that was the week. Today the snow has returned, it has gotten really cold outside, and I’m trapped indoors while the Mother of Cats completely ignores my needs. It’s like she doesn’t even remember that I am a SNOW CAT at heart, even if I look like a little CoalBear.

Sigh. Guess I’ll just sleep until it warms up again.

This is the ~~CoalBear~~ SnowCat, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The armwarmers are on 2.25 mm needles (Size 1) and I cast on 72 stitches for the top of the arm and then slowly decreased 16 stitches as I worked towards the wrist. To mimic the rolled knit top of the sock/armwarmer pattern I bound off with 4 stitch I-cord.
I’m seriously fighting the need to buy more yarn for a new sweater. It’s cold, there is this cute-beyond-all-words new sweater by Caitlin Hunter that I want, and I’m pretty sure that I totally deserve it after two weeks of cold and extreme weather changes. I want squishy mail!!!!
My knees basically hate me today after yesterday’s huge air pressure change. Look at what happened!

I think that this is another reason why I deserve that yarn to knit a new sweater!!
What do you guys think about these colors?

These colors are (left to right) Dirty Panther, Elizabeth Taylor, and Elven Dark. I’m kind of set on Dirty Panther (MC) and Elizabeth Taylor (CC) because that resulting sweater will have the most flexibility in my wardrobe, but the Elven Dark is really tempting… All of these yarns are Tosh Vintage worsted weight yarn.

Hannah and the CoalBear: We Have New Beds!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Hey, do you see that little gnome? I bet I can snag it with my claws and then Mateo and I can HAVE SOME FUN!!!

This has been kind of a busy week already. The Mother of Cats cleaned out her yarn stash (I helped, like… a lot!!) and then she cleaned out her quilting projects and put most of them into a big box that she mailed off to a cousin. Bye quilts. She has been doing a lot of cleaning and stuff, which is kind of fun for Mateo and me. We love the chaos!! We love all of the yarn moving around. We love our new cat beds!!!

My favorite bed is the one that looks like a giant TUNA CAN!!! Can you believe it? I can snooze in a cozy little ~~tuna can~~ bed that even has a cover on it while I dream of tuna. How cool it that? Mateo kind of tries to sneak into my bed when I’m not looking, and he even messes with me sometimes while I’m asleep, so the Mother of Cats bought him a second bed that looks like a bowl of ramen. Does he sleep in his bed? Yes!!! Yes, he does. We are two happy cats at the moment since it is cold and windy outside, and we have to stay in because the wind is kind of scary and we don’t like the sounds that it makes. Besides, all of the bunnies are hiding too, so it is kind of boring…

The Mother of Cats also got some knitting done. Here is her first sock!

The Mother of Cats says that this is a scrunch sock.

Doesn’t that sock look warm? The Mother of Cats is slowly knitting away on the second sock and hopes to have the pair done before the end of the week. She is kind of anxious to have it done because she is all motivated to make more socks after cleaning up her yarn stash because… she found some mini skein yarn sets for fun socks!

Here is one of the yarn kits with the new book that she bought along with our fun cat beds.

She says that she is going to make doodle socks. What? Seriously, do socks sound fun to you? She should knit me some doodle mice to play with. Maybe a little doodle sweater to put on MATEO because he will hate it and that will be seriously funny. He deserves to have that happen to him because last night the Mother of Cats glanced over at him just in time to see him ripping the comb off the head of MY CHICKEN that she gave me to groom. What is up with that little idiot cat?!!! He had pulled lots of yarn pieces out and was clearly trying to rip the chicken open. What is wrong with him… does he think that he can actually eat the chicken? Sigh. The Mother of Cats took it away last night and put it on a high shelf where he can’t get it.

Bye chicken. I will miss you so much. Good thing I have a tuna bed to sleep in.

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The socks are Scrunch Socks.
I have three mini-skein sock kits from Moonglow to knit. Yay. Lots of doodling ahead! I’m chomping at the bit to start designing some socks, and I can see some posts ahead.
The cat beds are from Amazon. Here is the link.
I have also been working with the indoor garden and there is another post in there, too. What will I be writing about? Well… pruning geraniums, battling aphids, and an unhappy lavender plant. That’s just the upstairs plants! Who knew indoor gardening was so much work?
Because I have been down with tendon issues I have been clearing some books from my reading list. Oh. Another post.
Are you sensing a theme here? I also am waiting for the results of my heart monitor test and MY KNEES ARE KILLING ME. You already know about the bad boy wrists. I have a scleroderma post slowly brewing too. It is hard for me to type because… bad boy wrists… but I’m getting there. Hopefully there will be some more writing in the near future.

I just love the color of this rose! Oh. Do you see the aphids?

Hannah and the CoalBear: She’s Knitting Again

Hi. I’m Hannah.

What a week, what a week. The Mother of Cats had been sad for days and days because she could not knit. It has been awful. She kind of moped around and didn’t take good care of the CoalBear and me. She forgot our TUNA one night!!! Her hand had been slowly getting better, but her knees suddenly got cranky and she hadn’t been going up and down the stairs so much. She tried to read a book, but she decided it was boring. I finally moved into bed with her and tried to groom her, but she just hid under the covers, so I groomed one of her sweaters to make it fluffy. Why did that make her cranky? What is wrong with this Mother of Cats? Maybe she should eat more tuna…

Look at what the Mother of Cats did!!! She gave me a chicken to groom and sleep with. My very own chicken!!! I love my chicken, yes I do. The week was starting to look a little better when…

The Mother of Cats found a leak under the kitchen sink. No. This is bad! There was a lot of commotion, and then this scary man came and worked on the pipes and replaced the garbage disposal. (Mateo the CoalBear told me: I DID NOT come out of the closet for the whole day!) The Mother of Cats had to do some cleaning and laundry, and I was hoping that things were getting better. Then it started snowing and snowing outside…

There is almost 2 feet of snow there on the catio. Once again, my informant is Mateo, because there was NO WAY I was going out in that stuff.

So, the Mother of Cats had to go out and clear snow. I was a little worried, but she wore her braces and got through it without her wrist getting any worse, and she seemed to be walking a little better. Hey. Maybe the week was starting to turn around?

By Thursday she was wearing a compression wrist brace and started knitting a little sock. So cute, right? Now after knitting for three days, it is starting to look cute, and I’m thinking that it could use a little grooming. Nope. The Mother of Cats keeps it zipped up in a project bag where I can’t get ahold of it. Don’t you think that the sock would look better if it was a little fluffy? As I’ve discussed before, the Mother of Cats is not good at sharing her things…

Do you see how I am sharing my chicken with Mateo? He’d better not groom it, though!!

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Note from the Mother of Cats:

The beautiful sock yarn is from Spun Right Round and the color is called Ugly in the Morning. The name kind of fits the week. The background yarn is a black and white zebra twist yarn dyed in the colorway. Perfect, right? A zebra with lots of colors shining through. I’m making a pair of Scrunch Socks in this fun yarn, and every day I am able to knit a little more as my wrists recover and my flexibility returns. Yay for resiliency.

Talk about resiliency: My indoor roses are blooming!

Soldotna Saga: Knit by Night, Tink by Day…

The weather has been just crazy here. In the mornings the air is cool, the sky is bright blue, bees rule in the garden, and birdsong echoes through the backyard. The cats and I head outside to the catio where I enjoy my current book and morning latte while the cats chase the occasional miller moth and stalk bunnies from their side of the wire. When my latte is finished, I get a little gardening done while the flowerbeds are in the shade and the cats doze on the deck.

See how cool it is out in the yard? That huge mushroom just appeared under one of my trees. Several plantings are now starting to bloom, and the roses are covered with buds. Mornings outdoors are really cool!! By noon clouds are gathering, gloom begins to gather in the house, and ominous rumbles start to sound to the west. The afternoon thunderstorms are piling up and moving east; sometime soon there will be rain, lightening, thunder, hail and hopefully no tornado alert…

This week’s hailstorm… seriously, the weather has been something this year. I don’t know when I’ve seen so much rain before.

Trapped indoors, I spend the gloomy afternoons tinking back on my current knitting project, the Soldotna Crop.

What is going on? Well, there have been an endless run of knitting misadventures with the sweater. First of all, I started knitting this sweater while wearing braces on both wrists. Yeah. The tension was a little funky. I frogged the sweater after a couple of days and started over. I transitioned to compression wrist braces and managed to get a couple of inches into the sweater. Um… the short row turns left holes in the fabric of the sweater, so I frogged back and reknitted that evening using German short rows. Great. I finally got to the colors and started knitting the chart.

I started knitting using this order of yarns, starting with the dusty orchid and moving right.

Yeah. I didn’t like the way the third color, the turquoise multi, looked. I wanted the gold next to the dark plum. I tinked back and dug around in the yarn stash.

I decided to knit the color chart in these colors, the alternative selection.

I really liked the gold yarn in the #3 slot, but the light silver was too light, literally. The weight of the yarn made it seem flimsy in the knitting, so… I tinked it back out. Back to the stash.

That darker grey is a heavier yarn that played well with the others. Yay! I made a lot of progress, but after taking the knitting outside I decided that the new grey was a bad decision. I knitted a swatch with the original turquoise multi and laid it on the sweater.

There was more tinking. I don’t want to talk about it. Two days ago, I knit back with the newest color order and this what I got.

I think that I’m done tinking for now; the plan is to just keep knitting and let the color chips fall where they may. My hands are feeling so much better that I can knit pain-free again, but I am still wearing the compression wrist braces for now. I’m almost halfway through the color chart and my gauge is spot on. I’m feeling pretty good about the knitting and there is only one last concern hanging over me… I sure hope that this thing fits!!

Have you wondered how the Scrunch socks that I started while struggling with tendonitis are doing?

I’m hoping to get the socks done over the weekend. 🙂

So, that was the week. Beautiful mornings, lots of rain, and adventures in knitting every afternoon and evening.

Have a great weekend, everyone!