The Weekender Crew – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: The Mother of Cats is out of control!!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’m in the yarn stash with the Mother of Cats.

The Mother of Cats is living in CrazyLand these days. She is knitting like there is no tomorrow, and she found some more patterns that she absolutely, positively needs to knit this winter. She is full of ambition. She is making even more yarn kits for knitting projects. She is happy. SHE BOUGHT MORE YARN!!!! Like I said, CrazyLand!!!

It all happened with some new pictures and patterns that appeared on her Facebook feed and led her to Ravelry. Oh, my goodness. She found a sweater that she thinks would be perfect for her tubs of collected yarn. She has been sorting and sorting yarn, and dreaming the dreams, and look at what she has put together for a Hearthside Cardigan:

The Mother of Cats is pretty sure that these yarns can be combined to create that marled cardigan. Goodbye Sea Glass sweaters. The Mother of Cats (that fickle creature) has switched all of her affections and attachment to this new sweater. She is on fire to get started!!!!

That means that she is knitting away at her Alchemist Pullover every night and she is almost to the point where she can start the ribbig.

Then the Mother of Cats found a picture of socks knitted with the Cat Doodle patterns. Oh, oh. More craziness in the yarn stash happened right away…

But I think that she really should make some socks with tuxedo cats on them right away!!!

I thought that things were kind of settling down and we hadn’t dug around in the yarn for a few days when the Mother of Cats went to her favorite yarn shop to buy some cookies. Yeah. I thought that the story was a little fishy myself (hey… I think that it is almost time for my nightly TUNA snack. I’m hoping that the Mother of Cats puts a tuna onto the socks…), and sure enough, the Mother of Cats came home with more yarn for another sweater.

She said that the store had just restocked this color and that if she didn’t buy it RIGHT NOW she wouldn’t get the chance to get it later. She plans to make another Weekender Crew out of it.

I’m pretty sure that the Mother of Cats is out of control, but I’m supporting her the best I can.

So that has been the week. The Mother of Cats has snapped out of her inability to start a new project to this new (CrazyLand) version where she is lining up the projects up faster than they can be knitted. She is happy, knitting away on the sweater that is on her needles at the moment, and dreams of the new sweaters-in-waiting while she waits for the first snows to come.

Speaking of snows… Look at Mateo!! He is starting to grow out his winter coat and his ruff is looking like a ridiculous halo at the moment.

This year his new undercoat is coming in silver colored, which makes him look a little more elegant, but I have to say… he is still a silly boy!!

Guess that is all for now. This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

Here is the link for the sweater that I am kniting on like crazy right now, the Alchemist Pullover.
I haven’t forgotten about the Colorica cardigan and the Renaissance sweaters. They are also dancing in the yarn stash trying to get my attention. My hands are doing pretty well with the size needles that I’m using right now, so I’m sticking with them for the moment, and the Weekender and Hearthside patterns use the same (size 7) needles.
I’ve made some good effort with the books that I’m reading over the last two weeks. I finished The Wedding People, stalled on Buckeye, read Nightshade by Michael Connelly, and I’m now listening to The Black Wolf while knitting.
The Wedding People is engaging, and a little hard to explain, but I do recommend it. In a nutshell: people are a little crazy around weddings, and there is perhaps too much focus on the wedding, and not enough on the marriage. At the heart of all relationships, people need to learn to identify and respect who they are, and to build authentic lives and goals based on that.
Nightshade is a police procedural thriller, and it is set on Catalina Island off Southern California. I know that part of the world fairly well, and the setting of the book was like visiting an old friend. The story was okay… there is a mutilated buffalo… a dead body is found… the investigator is at odds with the system… some rules are circumvented… our hero solves the murder in spite of the system and animosity of coworkers… there isn’t a wedding in sight.
The Black Wolf returns me to the world of Three Pines, somewhere in Quebec, Canada, and to Inspector Gamache. Another thriller of a sort, but gentle, introspective, and socially conscious with a huge cast of memorable characters. I’m enjoying the journey so far.
Hey, I want to say that I really did buy those cookies!!!

The Scleroderma Chronicles: Updates from the Sclero Front

It’s spring here in Colorado. The first baby bunny appeared this week, and the plants in the yard are starting to burst out in green buds. The roses are looking like they are going to do really well this year (except for that one that the bunnies ate…) and there was a huge outbreak of my little bulb flowers in the front garden. I have new cushions for my patio swing, and I sit in the sunshine, reading and drinking my morning latte, every warm morning. On chilly mornings I wrap in a favorite shawl and stay out with the cats as long as I can. The first grasshoppers of the year have arrived for the cats to chase, and the air is filled with birdsong. There are even blue jays!! Good days.

The phlox in the front is looking great!

A couple of day have been so warm I couldn’t stay in the sunshine long and I’ve had to deploy the umbrella shade. Then, the next day, there may be snow. This is spring in Colorado: rapid changes and big temperature swings. The same is true for the barometric pressure; look at what happened this week.

My emotional stability has been a little like the air pressure the last couple of weeks as I’ve gone through a round of testing and doctor’s appointments. I was very upbeat when I went in to get my blood draw to check my iron levels, and the bone density scan last month was just routine. I mean, I’ve been feeling soooo much better: more energy, sleeping better, more mentally alert and even my appetite has improved. Suddenly my gut doesn’t hate me, and I am getting out of the house more. I went to my knitting group for the first time in months! I was positive that my test results would reflect the improvement.

Not so much. After weeks of eating iron-rich foods and downing my iron supplement there was absolutely no change in my test results, and in fact, the test that measures the concentration of hemoglobin in individual red blood cells (MCHC) got worse. Seriously? The only gain was one value of 25.5 that went up to 25.6; still too low. After all that red meat, salmon, iron pills, avocado, and spinach all I got was 0.1 improvement? Kind of disheartening as this means that I have to have some invasive testing to see if I’m bleeding in my stomach (it’s a scleroderma thing), and I don’t think my doctor will put it off much longer. (It’s called watermelon stomach) (fabulous) (of course this is rare) (my zebra self is not happy).

Then the bone density scan results arrived. I have somehow developed a fairly serious case of osteoporosis in a short time span; the report says to start immediate treatment. Then I did some googling and found out that the diuretic that I take can cause osteoporosis, and I absolutely shouldn’t have been taking it because I have a strong family history and I’m kind of high risk. (Of course I am) (I stopped the diuretic) (now my feet are swollen) (my zebra self is crying).

I have to be honest. I was kind of crushed by the bad news that I absolutely did not expect. Then I mentally slapped myself around, did my exercises, potted some lavender plants, and went shopping on Amazon for some cheer-me-up jewelry. Just what I needed to pull myself together. One day at a time, right? I already have more than my share of challenges, so I shouldn’t waste any energy on things that haven’t happened yet. Next week I have an appointment with my internist, and we’ll work out a treatment plan for the osteoporosis and next steps for the anemia. (I took another iron supplement) (my inner zebra has pulled itself together again) (the zebra wants to point out that its lips aren’t as blue as they used to be).

I also pulled out the La Prairie sweater and knit steadily through the sadness until the body came off the needles. Gosh. It looks really nice so far. Something has gone right this week…

Today I woke up to a snow/drizzle mixture that was too unwelcoming for even Mateo to go out on the catio. All my joints hurt, and my muscles weren’t sure if they were going to play nice either. Of course, I had to drive across town to get lung testing and a sit-down appointment with my pulmonologist to go over all my results. I put on my cute Weekender Crew sweater, wore my new “in your face, scleroderma!” jewelry, and headed off for the testing. It hurt to breath as I walked into the building. I convinced myself that it was just the cold air; after all, I feel pretty good, and I was overdue for some good news.

The lung testing specialist is now my friend. We laughed and talked and caught up as she got me ready for testing, and then I breezed through all the parts of the pulmonary function testing and the 6-minute walk test. Every single result was cause for celebration as Stephanie (my technician) became more and more excited with the little graphs and data appearing on the computer screen. “This is better!” she kept saying. By the last test she was practically jumping up and down with excitement. “This is great! This is great! she crowed as she walked me to the exam room to see my pulmonologist. “I’ll let him know that you are here.”

I love this pulmonologist. He is the doctor who first listened to me and picked up on the fact that I had a hole in my heart and pulmonary hypertension. He held my hand and told me I could cry when my interstitial lung disease was first diagnosed. He has always been the doctor who was most honest with me; he told me last year after the tide had turned that they hadn’t been sure I would make it a year. He supported me when I halted the anti-fibrotic drug due to quality-of-life concerns. Today he was all smiles as we went over the results and my exam. My lungs have maintained on the scans. I have regained some lung function. The decision to halt the drug was the right one; there is no obvious sign of fibrosis right now. This is the best possible outcome right now; everything that he hoped for. I was the last patient he saw today, and he was pleased to have such a good one. “Best appointment of the day!” he declared as he walked me out. We were both enclosed in a bubble of joyous happiness as we walked.

I took this picture outside the building.

Outside the clinic the parking lot was almost empty. The cold drizzle was steady, the sky was full of sad lumpy grey clouds, and the gloom of early evening was creeping in. Around the building some ornamental trees were just beginning to open their flower buds, but in the shelter of the courtyard on the south side, the sunniest location, one tree was covered in blooms. Kind of a metaphor for the last couple of weeks. Sit in the sunshine and bloom, no matter what is going on in the world around you.

On the drive home, in my mind, my zebra self was dancing for joy.

Weekender Crew Touchdown!

What a knitting journey this has been. The minute I saw The Weekender Crew by Andrea Mowry I wanted to make one. It’s a big, comfy sweater with some cute stylish details (pockets on the front) that I thought would be my best friend all winter long. Dropped shoulders. Long sleeves. Split hem. DK weight yarn. Deep ribbing on a perfect crew neckline. I mean, this was an ideal sweater for me. I went on an online hunt for the yarn and my son drove me to a yarn store up north of me for a birthday yarn shopping event.

Isn’t this just the perfect yarn? I’ve knit with this superwash merino before, and I’ve found it to be soft and squishy with almost perfectly matching skeins.

I cast on in late September and immediately ran into trouble with the cast on. Tubular cast on, to be specific. I think that I’m a pretty accomplished knitter, but definitely that new cast on required a learning curve. I blogged about that whole adventure here. The edge created by the cast on looked really nice, so I patted myself on the back for hanging in there and mastering a new technique and enthusiastically knitted on. I should have realized that the cast on was a harbinger of things to come. This perfectly simple weekend sweater was a great vehicle to learn many new things.

Behold: tubular bind off. I’ve done a type of tubular bind off before, but the one in this pattern required set up rows and a rearrangement of the stitches on the needle to create a perfect, sturdy (stunning) edge that matched that cast on that the sweater started with.

So, now I’d learned a new cast on and a new bind off. Cool. I managed knitting the rest of the sweater and arrived at that wonderful moment when the whole thing gets blocked. This sweater had obvious ripples in the fabric at the transitions between ribbing and the stockinette, so it really did need to be blocked.

Do you see how puffy the body of the sweater is above the ribbing on the bottom? Not the look I’m wanting in the final sweater.

Andrea gives good directions in the pattern on how to block using a good soak, sandwiching the sweater between towels, and then walking on it. Who are you??? I wondered. Have you been channeling my mother… she absolutely would block like this, but there was no way I was walking on my beautiful squishy (expensive) yarn. This yarn is superwash; I’m nervous about it stretching during blocking. While thinking of mom, I suddenly remembered her explaining how to steam the gathers out of a pinned sleeve before sewing it when I was a nervous teenaged seamstress. I decided to go with mom on this blocking adventure… I laid the sweater out on the blocking mats, misted it well with a spray bottle, and then gently steam blocked the gathers away with my iron while the yarn bloomed and the ribbing opened up. Yay!! I covered the damp sweater with towels to dry, and Hannah immediately moved in.

Hannah: Don’t you just love the smell of wet wool in the morning?

Here’s the blocked sweater. Hmmm…. pocket sewing isn’t exactly my forte…

Yep. Time to learn a new skill. Andrea linked to a tutorial on pocket sewing that was extremely helpful, and after letting the sweater sit in a corner over-night, I pulled myself together and tackled the task.

I used a lace weight yarn to outline the exact row of knitting that I was going to stitch into while attaching the pockets with mattress stitch. What a good idea, right? I also followed the tutorial directions in attaching the pocket bottoms, which gave me a perfect bottom edge. Wow. An old knitter can learn new tricks!

Ta-daa! I have the perfect oversized, comfy sweater with lots of polished details that I am going to wear all winter long. I kind of wish that I had made a smaller size now that it is done, but I can always make another one, right? Altogether, a great knit and the perfect birthday project.

Hannah: she couldn’t have done it without me!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Caturday Updates

Hi. I’m Mateo.

I’m all grown up now. I should be trusted outdoors on my own, right?

This has been a busy week at Casa Mother-of-Cats. The shower broke and she had to get a plumber to fix it. Hannah practically teleported into the closet for that! Then the Mother of Cats had to go get some blood work done for her crazy scleroderma and she has been dragging sadly around the house waiting for the doctor to call. Finally, the Mother of Cats pulled herself together and went to the garden center to buy roasted green chiles: Yeow! Those chiles are stinky!! Hannah refused to go into the kitchen while the Mother of Cats was packing them up for freezing. Late in the week the Mother of Cats got some knitting done and early this evening the doctor messaged her, and she has finally perked up.

Through the whole week she took a lot of pictures, so here they come:

There is a bunny hanging out in the front yard that makes the Mother of Cats happy every time she sees it.

These mums came home from the garden center with the green chiles.

The leaves are starting to change on the trees.

I managed to escape from the catio last night and ran wild through the yard under that supermoon for a couple of hours before the Mother of Cats came looking for me. So. Much. Fun. I looked everywhere for that bunny, but I couldn’t find it. There was a garter snake in the yard last week too, and that sounds like a lot of fun, but I couldn’t find it either. Unable to have really outstanding fun ~~or a bunny snack~~, I just ate a bunch of bugs and threw them up on the bed after I came back in… why does the Mother of Cats get worked up so easily?

Hannah: I was a good girl and stayed on the catio.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. There was a lot of knitting that went on this week, too.

This heap of pink mess is the beginning of the new Weekender Crew sweater. I’m sure that it will actually look like a sweater some day.

The sweater is being knit inside-out, so the Mother of Cats tried to pull the knitted tube open so you could see the part of the sweater that will be on the outside. It is totally a mystery to me, but hopefully you will kind of get the idea. The color is nice, right?

The Mother of Cats really made progress on the new arm warmers. The first one is done, and she has started on the second one; they are so long they go up above her elbow. The next time she had a medical adventure they should help keep her nice and warm!

Well, that’s all for now. I’m going to carry on downstairs for awhile to see if I can get Hannah to come chase me.

Hannah: that would be a big NOPE!! CoalBear. It is bedtime for me…

Happy Caturday, everyone!

This is Mateo the CoalBear, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The last few weeks have seen the emergence of new symptoms: my hair is falling out, I have more edema, bruises are popping up everywhere, and I get sudden muscle cramps. Itching has become a problem, and cuts are slow to heal. Fatigue is back in a big way. I finally contacted my doctor, and she ordered some testing to make sure I wasn’t going into kidney failure.

Kidney failure!! Cue the panic sirens!!!!

Seriously, one of the things that I fear most is kidney failure. Last year, when my lung disease was so bad, letting my kidneys go to save my lungs was an actual topic of discussion; I was a hard no on that treatment option. Ironically, a low kidney function test was one of the first clues that led to my scleroderma diagnosis, but my kidneys have improved over the last couple of years to a comfortable stage 3 level of disease. Discussion of kidney failure again seemed like a huge blow, and I have been sad this week. I cast on the arm warmers during the afternoons when I’m stuck indoors on oxygen during the heat.

The message from my doctor today was reassuring. My kidney function has maintained, but I am very low on protein levels in my blood. This is kind of a scleroderma thing too, as digested food doesn’t get absorbed well through fibrotic intestinal tissue, but I’m so immunosuppressed, it might be because I can’t make antibodies. More testing is on the horizon, but I’m not losing any sleep over this. I am, however, going to be much more careful about wearing my mask!

I’m making good progress on those arm warmers… if I hurry, I can cast on another project like maybe those pressed flowers socks early next week. 🙂

Have a good Caturday!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Knitting Time!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

The Mother of Cats gas been busy organizing all of her knitting for the rest of the year.

First of all, let’s show off the knitting that she just got done: 16 PICC line covers and 9 hats for Frayed Knots.

She even turned in the unbelievably cute hat on the bear.

Now that the Mother of Cats has made her donation for the month she has shifted her focus to organizing her projects for the rest of the year. Oh, boy. She has a lot of projects in mind. Like, a crazy amount of knitting is in the future. Yay. I like to help with the knitting.

First, she wants to get going on her new Weekender Crew, so we wound all of that yarn, and then she cast on. Then she ripped it out and cast on again. Another rip. Another cast on… Finally, she managed to get a few rows done, but she dropped a stitch, so she had to rip it all out and cast on AGAIN. Luckily, we had lots of cookies in the house while this was going on because she made three different trips to the kitchen to get them, and I talked her out of more tuna and even some kitty treats while she was down there. Finally, finally, she managed to get the sweater off to a good start.

The problem was the type of cast on. This is called a tubular cast on, and the Mother of Cats now loves it, but the learning curve was worse than learning to catch a fly in midair.

We also winded up all of the yarn for the new La Prairie sweater last week. I helped with that, too.

Did the Mother of Cats stop with these two projects? No, she did not. She also got out the yarns and organized for several other projects.

Here are all of the yarns that she has organized for her projects. The purple yarns at the top left are for another pair of Pressed Flowers Socks. The pink yarn on top of the magazine is to make a fancy lace capelet. Then there are the yarns laid out next to a striped arm warmer on the top right: those yarns are to knit a new pair of arm warmers exactly like the one laying right next to the yarn. The important detail here is… only one arm warmer! Those arm warmers are the Mother of Cats lucky pair and she has worn them to every hospital stay, ambulance ride, and scary trip into the cath lab. One of them GOT LOST and she absolutely, absolutely needs to make herself another pair right away. Or, at least, before the next serious cold snap. She is thinking of doing a tubular cast on for these mitts and will have to learn how to do the cast off too so the ends match. Learning curve: get the cookies ready!!!

Okay, now let’s talk about the bottom row of pictures. Those two yarns on the left are going to become an Alpine Bloom hat, and there on the bottom right is a reminder that the Mother of Cats needs to FINISH MY BLANKET!!! You know this blanket. We were making really good progress on it when the Mother of Cats stopped knitting because she was concerned about me getting sores all over my tummy. I’m doing much better, and the fur is growing back on my tummy, so the Mother of Cats thinks that maybe we can restart the blanket and we’ll see how I do. Yay! I like that blanket!

I need this blanket for the cold nights to come!

So, that is all the knitting news for now. Let’s go back out on the deck where the Mother of Cats has been waging a war on wasps after Mateo got stung by one of these ugly suckers.

Mateo: Hey! No one told me that those wasps were dangerous! I was just practicing my fly catching skills. You know, catching flies in midair…

Hannah: Whatever, Mateo. Because you are such a dimwit the Mother of Cats had to hang up that goofy wasp trap on our catio. Good thing it appears to be working!

We’re planning on knitting as much as possible out on the catio this fall because it is really, really nice out there. Yay, fall! Did I mention that there are a lot of bugs lately? The crickets are the best!!

That’s all for now.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

Poor Hannah’s tummy sores have been a problem for some time, but I think that we have turned the corner at last. I’m pretty sure that she was allergic to her kitty treats, so I switched to all natural treats, but I also did every practical thing that I could think of. I put towels down on the carpet in the closet where she likes to sleep in case there was something in the carpet; I wash the towels every couple of weeks to keep them clean. I installed a calming diffuser which seems to be just helping the two cats in general as they play and chase each other more than before and some of Hannah’s kitten behaviors have come back. I switched to sensitive skin food. Hannah has gotten a couple of baths. Her fur is growing back, and the rash seems to be gone.

Yes, I did notice that almost everything is pink or purple.

Heading into a Pink Autumn

Autumn is right around the corner now. I love this time of year! The light has softened, the plants are recovering from the heat of summer, and wildlife is on the move again. A flight of geese flew over me last night, barely clearing the treetops, and this morning a hawk supervised my watering out front. Butterflies are everywhere, and I am suddenly seeing a fresh rush of life in my garden. The squirrels are standouts in this: they are going crazy digging up my planters and the flower beds as they create caches of peanuts and other goodies for the coming winter.

Mateo caught that leafbug (katydid) as soon as I let him out onto the catio after returning home from a weekend away. Poor thing! He definitely did the bug some damage (part of a leg is now missing…) but I put it into a nearby bush hoping that it would survive. The next morning, he caught another one. I’ve never seen a leafbug at my house before, but it is part of the resurgence of life that I’m seeing after our very wet spring this year. Look at what is happening in the garden:

Okay, Hannah isn’t exactly in the garden, but she kind of fits into the theme of the day, don’t you think? Everything is in shades of pink at the moment. The standout star is the stonecrop (upper left photo) that has been blooming like a champ for a couple of weeks now to the delight of every dang bee in the vicinity.

It was my birthday this weekend and I spent it up at my son’s place. He drove me up to The Loopy Ewe so I could find some yarn for a new sweater, and the drive took us up north through the countryside past fields of corn and sugar beets. Hawks sat on light poles, and the ditches were filled with flowering plants and some pretty interesting weeds that I wanted to get some cutting of (I know, I know… this sounds strange but… biogeek!) I had my portable oxygen machine with me and it served me well as I searched for the yarn to knit a Weekender Crew this fall.

I had to get that dellaQ bag to go with the yarn. Perfect, right? The color of the yarn isn’t quite as bright as it appears in the picture, but it is a nice happy color called Wilted Roses. Just what I need for fall, don’t you think?

I’m kind of stuggling with getting started on the new sweater. I have been knitting PICC line covers and (pink) hats like crazy the last couple of weeks, and I’m finishing out the week with a set of large sized PICC line covers that I plan to turn over to Frayed Knots on Saturday. Then I can knit sweaters!! I am going to wind the yarn for my La Prairie cardigan and the Weekender at the same time, and I’ll be knitting away on them both I think. If it snows, the Weekender. If it is warm, La Prairie. If I feel like purple, La Prairie. If I feel like pink… well, you get the idea. Knitting options. They are really important. There are also some socks, hats, and scarfs calling my name. So many projects, so much (pink) yarn, so little time. It’s like I’m making caches of knitting projects for the coming winter. Did I mention that several of the projects involve pink?

I feel a little bit like those hyperactive squirrels in my yard.

The Autumnal Equinox is this Saturday. Happy Autumn everyone!

Embrace the pink this fall.