Do you see how calm I am? It has been quite the week.
It has been a crazy week. There have been thunderstorms. The Mother of Cats decided to move a bunch of furniture. The Mother of Cats replaced the broken television in the downstairs room with only a LITTLE help from me. Then the washing machine broke during a big thunderstorm. Strange men took it away and installed a new one on Friday while the CoalBear and I hid the whole time (Hello… strange, scary men… hey, we helped with the television, right?) Then the Mother of Cats decided to reorganize all of the yarn in the craft room. Yay!!! We went crazy wild helping her with that!!! She says that it is time for Fall Knitting!
Listen, I am a fan! I loves the yarn!!!
There is a lot of yarn for socks, so the Mother of Cats decided to focus on sock knitting for a while. She is also concentrating on a shawl (while ignoring two other ones), and there is yarn for a new sweater, too. Do I believe her when she says she is going to concentrate on socks? No… not really. But it is cooler now and she is wearing socks again, so I guess it is sock season.
She finished one pair and is making progress on a second pair. She says that the yarn on the purple sock is purple zebra yarn because it has black stripes in it. Whatever. Who cares about zebras? Cats are better right?
After looking at several different pink, grey and purple yarns the Mother of Cats picked this pink to be the lace trim on her new shawl. The Mother of Cats also chose this berry-colored yarn to go with her new Spincycle yarn that she will knit into a sweater.
While the Mother of Cats was deciding on yarn color matches and taking the pictures the CoalBear and I looked for bunnies. No bunnies! No raccoons!! The backyard is getting pretty boring now that the weather is getting colder. Good thing there are still birds and squirrels…
So that was kind of the week. Lots of things moving around and general commotion as the new television went up and the washing machine left for a new home. There was some knitting, and we got to play with yarn. The Mother of Cats moved all of our cardboard boxes around so the CoalBear thinks that they are new toys (not too smart, that boy!) and I mostly helped with the knitting and tried to chomp yarn.
The Mother of Cats is also thinking about working on her new quilt again now that the octopus is done. I love the smell of freshly ironed fabric, don’t you?
The sweater that I am making with the Spincycle yarn is Antipodes by Andrea Mowry. I found that berry-colored yarn in the stash and I’m hoping that it will knit okay with the bouncy Spincycle yarn as it is a slightly lighter gauge. The Spincycle’s name is Dirty Little Secret. 🙂
Those are Frankensocks made from a mish-mash of other patterns and tricks picked up over the years.
I had to take a couple of down days in the middle of the week because of a covid-vaccine triggered flare. This time the shot hit me pretty hard, but the upside of a new covid vaccine should be a couple of weeks feeling pretty good as my autoimmune disease usually calms down: Vaccine Holiday!! Why does this happen? I think that triggering an immune system response with the vaccine disrupts the sad little inflammatory feedback loop that is part of my chronic autoimmune disease (systemic sclerosis). It doesn’t last more than a couple of weeks, but it is nice while it is happening!! For some reason the covid vaccine works the best.
It was so hot this week! Today it is raining and we are under a watch for flash flooding. Bugs have descended on my garden and are munching on my flowers. The grass was in distress and the back yard bunny was no where to be seen in the heat of the day. I went to my cardiologist appointment in triple digit heat and Mateo went on his first trip to the vet for vaccinations and a check up.
Mateo: It was my 4th Month Birthday and all I got was a scary road trip and an ouchy shot in my arm and leg!
Poor Mateo has spent the last two days hanging out on the bookshelf sleeping off the effects of his vaccinations and while he has run around chasing Hannah in the wee hours of the morning (did you notice the time on that clock in the picture on the left? That’s prime kitten run around time!), mostly they have just been trying to stay cool and sleeping all day. At 4 months old Mateo is already half of Hannah’s weight and he looks about half her size too. I’m pretty sure that he is going to be bigger than her when he finishes growing.
Knitting
I’ve been making steady progress on the Rock It Tee that I am knitting, but it is pretty boring to look at right now. Basically, it looks just the same as it did a week ago but a little longer. How about some socks?
I finished my assigned pooling socks using some Chasing Rabbits yarn from the stash with hot pink yarn for the toes and heels. I just purled the yarn when I came to the rainbow sections and threw in some random texture stitches (PSS) that I learned how to do while I was knitting The Sharon Show shawl last year. The section of the shawl where the stitches appeared was #21, the Catnip Garden, so obviously these are the Rainbow Catnip Garden socks. I just found some more Chasing Rabbit sock yarn that will work for assigned pooling. Yay! I’m down to only one knitting project at the moment so it is time to cast on more socks.
Except… there is another Sharon from Security MKAL coming up in a couple of weeks and I just bought the pattern and have been diving into the stash to find possible yarns to use (I’ve have recently learned that shopping the stash is actually to be referred to as “stash surfing” in Sharon land. I love this community of snarky, supportive, cat loving knitters. This new MKAL is the Snark-O-Meter and I can’t wait to get the first clue. I need 4 skeins of yarn to make this thing and here are the possible candidates right now:
I just love all of these! Should I go with the wild and crazy colors (far right) or play it more safe and knit the blue, gold and rust combination in the middle? Then there is the pink and purple combo… I love pink and purple!! In a perfect world I would be able to knit all of these, but I have a lot of sweater projects also lined up. So much yarn, so little time…
Garden
My grass in the back lawn is struggling in the heat but the backyard bunny is finding plenty to snack on. My roses made it through the heat better than the grass did: look at the pink bloom that appeared today! Some of the flowers in my front planters also died to I visited a garden center this week to pick up some on-sale annuals to spruce things up. I got the pink snapdragons cheap and they are a nice color to go with all of the volunteer snapdragons that are already appearing in my front gardens. All of a sudden snapdragons are a big fave with me.
Books
I was all over the place with my reading this week as I started two different audible books and continued reading a couple of science fiction books. Nothing is done and I’m sure not wanting to talk about them at the moment. Somehow these books actually go together, but I haven’t figured it all out yet.
Have a great week everyone.
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
Late again, late again. I feel like a character from Alice in Wonderland. This time my excuse is the horrific anxiety associated with 2020 in general, and the presidential election in specific. I’ve been struggling with my scleroderma all week: blue-lipped and short of breath, struggling to walk, fatigued and in pain. Not a good week at all! I stayed in bed this weekend with Hannah and my knitting and I am finally coming out of it tonight. It hasn’t been helping me that the Covid numbers in my state are just skyrocketing to new heights and near by municipalities are clamping down with curfews and other restrictions. Sigh. Thank heavens there is a state-wide mask mandate that applies to stores or I wouldn’t be able to go out at all. I’m now in my 8th month of stay-at-home, and the end is nowhere in sight.
Is it safe to go out now? Nope. Not yet, Hannah!
In other 2020 news I now have email arriving in my inbox in Italian. I don’t read Italian… Who had this on their 2020 Bingo card?
It is snowing like crazy in the mountains this evening and we are finally coming to the end of our wildfires. Yay!!
Knitting
So, while resting up and avoiding the never-ending, anxiety-inducing election results I did get a lot of knitting done. Hannah was an exceptional help as I steadily worked on my shawl for most of a week, and then supervised the blocking for me as I worked with pins and blocking wires. Let me present to you my finished Far Away Dreams shawl (Joji Locatelli).
I am so pleased with how this turned out. Soft and very squishy from the garter stitch, it is perfect to wear on a cold evening or while reading in bed. I am coming to appreciate rectangular shawls as they are shorter in the back so they stay free when you are sitting down and are fairly easy to bunch up around your neck as a scarf under a coat. I ran out of the blue yarn so after some stash diving I decided to use the black MCN yarn for the outer trim, which totally worked as the lace yarn had black and blue flecks in it. So happy with the final result!
Once the shawl was blocking I dived back into my bag of unfinished projects and pulled out a hibernating sweater and those socks that I cast on with Hue Loco yarn a couple of weeks ago. I’ve focused on the sweater this week and the sock is seeing a little action too. Check it out!!
This is Misurina by Caitlin Hunter, a short sleeved cropped sweater knit with fingering yarn on rather large gauge of 20 stitches per inch. I am knitting this on size 6 needles to make this yarn work, and I am so happy with the fabric coming off the needles. I just separated the sleeves from the body of the sweater so things are going to go much faster now. I’m kind of wondering about knitting another one using DK yarn from the stash; I have enough yarn to make one with long sleeves. Hmmm…
I’m also working a little on the socks being knit with Hue Loco yarn (remember… I sort of lost control and went on a spending spree a few weeks ago and got yarn in every color in the new Fall palette. I regret nothing! It is important to have fun and some reckless moments while times are just crazy all around you…). Anyway, this sock is being knit with the Elixir colorway.
Elixir is the colorway next to the Uschitita on the left side of the picture. I’m working more steadily on the socks now as I can’t wait to cast on another color from the buying spree… I’m already dreaming about casting on the blue Uschitita or the purple Hue Loco…
Garden
It has gotten a little chancy for plants that live outside now that the ovenight temperatures dip below freezing so I ordered some shelves online and brought in my favorite miniature roses from outside and set them up in the living room to create an indoor garden. So happy to knit in my garden again in the afternoon sunshine in that room. The perfect spot to read. The favored cat nap spot…
Right now the leaves are falling off the roses as they adjust to the new conditions, but in my experience new leaves will arrive in the coming weeks that are adapted to the living room’s light levels. Yay!!
Reading
I am really in a mystery mood right now. I finished one last week and am working on a historical mystery/suspense book now that I’m enjoying.
Careless Whiskers is a cozy mystery and a fast read. The main character, Charlie, works part time in the college library and solves murders on the side. It’s a fun gig if you can get it. 🙂 He lives in the 3 story house that he inherited from his deceased aunt that is too perfect for words: the house comes with a housekeeper who takes care of everything including the laundry and cooks fabulous southern meals on the side. She even takes care of the cats! To make this even more envy-inducing Charlie has boarders who help out with cat-sitting and provide the meals when Azalea is off on the weekends. There is a giant Maine coon cat and a kitten in the book; both of these animals are perfectly behaved and never chase squirrels or climb the curtains… did I say that this is a cozy mystery? Anyway, there is a theatrical production, players with enormous egos, a death, and a cast of suspects that includes Charlie’s daughter. Charlie eliminates suspects between naps and meals that feature more biscuits then I eat in a year while taking the perfectly-behaved cat almost everywhere he goes. See, a perfect book to read during a difficult week.
I’m about halfway through Conspiracy and greatly enjoying the characters and the story. Okay, Giordano Bruno is one of my favorite characters ever!! A philosopher at odds with the Catholic church and an intrepid solver of murders, he is neck deep in intrigue in Paris this time. The battle for control between religious factions in Paris is pretty intense as Huguenots conspire to place their candidate on the throne which is currently occupied by a Catholic king. Bruno is caught in the middle of all of this as he is forced to work for King Henri, the English ambassador, and several other players on the board. Whew. Things are tough for Bruno who is trying to handle some personal issues of his own (like, maybe he can be restored to a state of grace with the Catholic church and perhaps run down a women he kind of likes…) while getting ambushed by different agents of the factions battling for control, and… he keeps losing his knife! The knife that Sir Francis Drake gave him in the last book! Surely, the knife will be recovered soon… Bruno needs his knife! This is an engaging book to be sure and I can’t wait to get to the end of it because I have another Bruno book waiting for me on the kindle. Yay! Good reading times.
Well, that’s it.
Have a great week, everyone!!
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
