Throwback Tee – Yarn, Books & Roses

MacKenzie Speaks: So Much Knitting!

Hi. I’m MacKenzie.

The Mother of Cats has been staying inside for days and never lets me sit by an open window. When she does open the window smoke comes in from outside. It’s because there are lots of fires burning in Colorado right now. I don’t like smoke all that much, either, but it is so boring when the window is shut.

Hot cat. — Do you see how hot and bored I am?

It is also hot. Really hot. You would think that the Mother of Cats would devote all of her time to helping me stay cool, but she has spent the last week sitting downstairs, watching Netflix, and getting lots of knitting done. Today she went outside WITHOUT ME and took all the pictures of what she has been making.

Socks — She finished both of her new socks.

Close to You Shawl. — a little shawl to go on the sweater…

During all of this knitting did the Mother of Cats remember to feed me cookies and to play with me EVERY hour on the hour? No, she did not!

This afternoon the Mother of Cats is getting ready to start another pair of socks and we are all sitting downstairs watching the weather radar on television because there is a big thunderstorm right over us. Rain! Thunder! Hail! What is next? This is completely unacceptable. Maybe she will open a window once the rain is over.

I’m such a good boy.

Can I have my cookies now?

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The wildfires in Colorado have been just stunning in their intensity and unpredictable behavior. We need rain very badly; today it arrived in such intensity that we are now under a flash flood watch, and the new weather brought a tornado to one of the fire zones. Truly, we need a break here in the western part of the United States. This picture arrived in my Facebook feed last night showing a fire in the southern part of Colorado. Just heartbreaking. I hope that the rain coming down now helps them.

The socks are another one of the vanilla pattern Dave by Rachel Coopey. I measured the little ball of bright pink contrast yarn and I think that I will have enough to do the band at the top of the sock too. Casting on another pair this evening…
The sweater is the Throwback Tee by Wanda Eichler. My project notes are here.
Both of the shawls are Close to You by Justyna Lorkowska, a free pattern on Ravelry.
I am really, really bad at finishing items once I get them off my needles. Last night I finally sat down and took care of all the loose ends to finish a small stack of items and this afternoon I got the pictures before the rain arrived. Now it is raining hard outside: knitting time!

MacKenzie Speaks: Knitting in the Time of Thunder

Hi. I’m MacKenzie.

Once again the Mother of Cats has been disappointing in her priorities…

It has been horrible here for days and days. The days have been dark, there are huge booms, and so much water has fallen out of the sky it makes my tail curl. Seriously, Yellow Boy has been hiding in the closet for days, and I have to admit that I’ve been going to ground there myself.

Does the Mother of Cats come to comfort me the way she should? Does she double up the number of cookies to help me deal with all of this stress? No, she does not. She has been a big disappointment for days!

Yarn and knitting. — She found all of this yarn in the yarn playground (she calls it a stash…) that she decided to make into a sweater.

Cat and Knitting. — She has been knitting away on the sweater for days and days…

Normally I would love to hang out with the Mother of Cats while she is knitting, but this yarn is made of cotton and tencel. It is boring. It tastes terrible when I chomp it. The Mother of Cats did give me some pieces to play with, but why bother? Now if she would just take a few minutes to knit me a cute little mouse stuffed with catnip out of this yarn… I would even share it with Yellow Boy. Really, the Mother of Cats needs to be more caring of others, don’t you think?

Growing sweater. — Just as the sweater was getting to an interesting length she became bored with it…

Sock yarns. — …and pulled out these sock kits that she bought one day when she left me alone to go play with sheep and other funny smelling things up in the mountains.

She struggled with her decision, but finally she picked the yarns in the middle of the picture and I helped her get them all wound up into cat toy cakes. What would the Mother of Cats do without my help?

Sock knitting — Before you knew it she was making a sock!

That sock yarn is superwash wool, but did she let me chomp it? No, she did not! It thundered and rained again this weekend so I hid out with Yellow Boy in our safe zone in the closet for just hours and hours, and when we came out…

Yay! I think that the sock would be fun to play with too; a little catnip seasoning would make it perfect! Did she give it to me? Nope! Always, with the Mother of Cats, it is nope, nope, nope. I even ask nicely, too!

Cat sleeping on bed. — Tonight it is nice and calm outside and it is even cool.

This evening the thunder has stopped and it is nice outside. The birds are singing like crazy and Yellow Boy has come out of the closet and is standing by the back door hoping to see a bug. Not me. I’m just exhausted by all the thunder excitement and the knitting. I’m taking advantage of the break in the weather to catch a little cat nap.

Maybe when I wake up the Mother of Cats will give me some cookies.

I’m such a good boy!

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The sweater is the Throwback Tee on Ravelry, and my project notes are here.
That wonderful sock yarn is from Western Sky Knits, and I bought it all when I lost control in her booth at the Estes Park Wool Market.
The sock pattern is a vanilla sock called Dave from Rachel Coopey. I am going with a really simple sock to show off the yarn, because, hello! It is so gorgeous!
Today should be the last day in a cycle of thunderstorms and rain. Starting tomorrow the sun will be back out and the heat machine is back on! Welcome to summer, kitties.

Dreaming and Fading…

I’ve been just cranking on my What the Fade?! shawl for the last week or so since I last wrote about it. Once I had bid the brioche section at the top of the shawl goodbye it was garter time… lots of garter. This is really easy knitting even with the fun of the fading, and MacKenzie and I have just settled in to binge watch Netflix and crank out the rows of changing colors.

Here’s the thing… I’m doing a lot of dreaming about yarn colors and projects while I’m knitting. It makes things worse that I still have the fabulous Western Sky Knits yarns that I bought at the Interweave Yarn Fest last month still out on display to encourage my dreaming. I already blogged about this yarn: check this out if you want to see my fabulous dream-inducing colors! I’ve been reorganizing the yarn stash and going through my patterns between bouts of knitting, and then I kind of slip into a garter stitch, color-induced waking dream state where I match color/yarn ideas with patterns to decide on projects.

So, with no further ado, let me introduce you to the line-up of May and June projects:

Yarn for sweater — The blue tonal Posh Fingering yarn from the Uncommon Thread has been hanging out in my stash for about a year waiting for the right project. I just love this golden brown from WSK, and it also is 10% cashmere. Perfect match! I’m going to make a Zweig sweater from them, and the golden brown will be the lace yoke in the sweater. I can’t wait to get going on this, and every time I think of how cool this sweater will be the garter stitch pace in my Fade shawl picks up.

Yarn and pattern. — I absolutely love this skein of painted cashmere blend yarn from WSK. Don’t you think that it will look great with the Zweig sweater? I love the look of this little shawl, and I’m thinking that I should transform some of the handpainted Christmas yarn in my stash into scarfs like these for gifts. But not now. Now I have to knit all of this fabulous yarn that is calling to me.

See why I’m knitting so fast? Look at these fabulous yarns and great patterns! Actually there is a lot more where this came from. I just checked, and I have 25 items in my knitting Queue on Raverly, 1,122 patterns in my library, another 159 patterns in my Ravelry shopping basket, and a world class yarn stash. This is all kind of overwhelming if you think about it too much, which is why it is hard to finalize decisions. The last couple of days things just fell into place and I made a list of knitting decisions and kitted up the yarn with the appropriate pattern.

Then I went back to knitting my fade and dreaming of what to do with the colors I have left over. Dreaming of yarn and the beautiful, useful objects that I can make from them.

What can be better than that?

In case you’re wondering… I am still in the middle of testing to clarify the cause of my worsening scleroderma-related symptoms. This week I head in to see another doctor and will get my echocardiogram done; after my heart is sorted out I can get the pulmonary testing that I need. Right now the discussion is mostly about my heart, but they are still gathering data so no definitive diagnosis yet. Through all of this I’m just rocking my knitting and refusing to worry about what I can’t change. Tomorrow I’m planting more flowers in my garden! Peace on, everyone!