Wristers – Yarn, Books & Roses

The Saturday Update: Week 2

So, I am a little late with the weekly update. Since it is only the second week of the year it doesn’t really look at that good, does it. I mean, I should start out the way that I mean to go if I am going to stick to this posting practice. In my defense I an only say…

I tried to write the post up at my son’s place while dinner was cooking and the kitten had other ideas. He decided that my arm was a kick toy and that the computer was almost as much fun. In the face of such determined kitten wildness I retreated from the battlefield and watched a movie.

I really had a busy week, but it was sort of a nonproductive one as I spent most of my time fussing around, swatching, making phone calls and struggling to make decisions.

Knitting

I want to make another knitted cat that looks like MacKenzie, but he is a hard combination of colors and patterns. I spent part of the week shopping the stash (which I did clean out and reorganize while I was at it!), going to the local yarn store, and hunting online. Then I made swatches of various combinations of yarn as I made decisions. Finally, finally, on Friday I cast on and started to knit. I did blog about this project and you can find it here.

I also have some mohair that I bought in December that I just love. Look at this:

This was a totally serendipitous discovery while I was hunting for the yarns to knit cats. My favorite color ever!!

I want to make a sweater with this yarn by stranding is with a fingering. I have struggled with the decisions: I need the perfect pattern and a fingering that will work with the pattern and make this color shine true. Not as easy as it seems.

I first focused on the color. There was NO pink yarn at my local yarn store that would work with this mohair. I wanted pink with a little bit of speckle. Nope, nope, nope. There was baby pink, hot pink, brownish-pink, bright pink, but not the pink that I wanted. I want to keep the dusty greyish undertone in this yarn! I tried to swatch with various grey yarns hoping that the mohair halo would dominate. NOPE! I tried to swatch with a muted variegated yarn hoping that I would like it as an alternative. NOPE! Actually, that was a huge nope. I want that dusty pink!!

Forget the color. Maybe I should make a decision about the sweater first. I was torn between knitting The Daydreamer and Iskald. I own both patterns so I read through them and made the decision: Daydreamer it is! That sweater has lots of detail work: honeycomb, moving stitches, and bobbles. I needed a smooth yarn that would show off the details through the mohair. I went back online for the umpteenth time hunting for the right color with the correct yarn properties. It has to be a smooth yarn, maybe something not quite pink, something that would add some depth but maintain the dusty hue… with the new focus I looked at yarns I hadn’t considered earlier. Bingo! There was the yarn at the Loopy Ewe.

A single ply yarn in the shade Into Dust by the Uncommon Thread jumped out at me. The color is kind of a light orchid with grey undertones.

Yay! After all the agonizing I had made my decision. I immediately tried to order the yarn from the Loopy Ewe instead of driving up to Fort Collins, Colorado, to see the yarn in person with my mohair in hand.

And I failed. The website refused to let me log in or to register me as a customer as someone else had my email address. Right, you dumb ass computer, that person is me!! Get with the program here!! I have bought yarn in person at this store in the past and now I want to buy online. Nope, nope, nope said the computer.

I called the store and suddenly the week did a complete turnaround. The wonderful woman at the store verified my identity, reset the password in a workaround at her end, pulled my yarn for me to check the color consistancy, and sold it to me on the phone. Yay!! The yarn arrived by express mail the next morning and I just gasped in joy when I saw it. Loopy Ewe, you are the best ever!!!

Now we’re talking. I went with the more detailed sweater design as I knew I was going to end up with a monochromatic yarn. This is going to be the perfect color and texture for my Daydreamer sweater. I am in business people!!

I spent almost the entire week making knitting decisions, but I did get a little knitting done too.

I made a pair of fingerless mitts to gift to a fellow scleroderma patient. Here is my pattern if you want it. 🙂

I also finished another pair of wristers. Should I write up this pattern too?

Garden

My sister sent me two amaryllis bulbs for Christmas. They are close to blooming!!

My African volet plant continues to put up new blooms. Good plant!

A cyclamen plant came to live with me this week. Hey, it was at Sam’s Club and it just followed me home.

The orchids continue to do well and another plant has buds that look ready to burst open. I think this plant will be purple. Yay. Can’t wait. It has been a good week for plants, and a bad one for the white flies. I think that the Neem oil did them in. Bye white flies. Don’t come back!!

Books

I’m reading three books at once this week, I have to get another one done by Tuesday evening for my book club, and I’ve finished nothing. Stay tuned. I’m sure to get something finished soon.

So that was the week. Lots of indecision and swatch making. I also spent way too much time on the phone and computer trying to set up an appointment with my doctor during the week, but by the end of the week everything was in place for an appointment and testing next week to track down the source of my extremely annoying new symptoms. <Yep. This was more of the NOPE! theme of the week. Would I like to see another doctor? NOPE!! These new docs tend to go crazy when they get their hands on rare disease me. Would I like to go to Urgent Care? Umm… in the height of a major flu outbreak? NOPE!! See, I can do nope too!> Hopefully there will be some answers on the medical scene soon and I can write a post about that. 🙂

Have a great week everyone.

MacKenzie Speaks: So This Was Christmas… A Tale of Chaos and Knitted Gifts

Hi. I’m MacKenzie.

Here I am spending Christmas Eve at the Emergency Vet Clinic

I haven’t been feeling all that well for awhile. To be fair, the Mother of Cats has been spending a lot of time trying to be nice to me. She gets me special food. She washes my ears every day before I get my medicine. She has gotten more blankets and beds for me to sleep in.

My favorite is the fluffy fleecy locks that she has added to my favorite cat bed that is located right next to her knitting spot.

Things just aren’t going well for me right now, and Monday was the worst. I couldn’t use my cat box no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t walk right. I kept vomiting and it hurt so bad I couldn’t help myself… some horrible yowls came out before I could stop them. It was really late at night but the Mother of Cats threw me into my cat carrier and off to the Kitty ER we went. The radio played some Christmas music as we drove through the night. Thankfully the streets were dry and we made good time.

Once I got to the ER I got a nice pink towel to make me feel calm and I met a nice lady vet who said that my tummy was really hard and tight. NO KIDDING!!! Then the fun started. I got whisked away from the Mother of Cats and taken back into the bowels of the clinic. They put me to sleep so I could have x-rays. They did nasty things to my bottom and gave me an enema. They cut off all of my nails!!! Christmas Eve arrived while I was being taken to the x-ray machine. Hours later they sent me home again with new drugs, special food, and a very sore bottom. WHY DID THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN TO ME?

I was so tired that I didn’t move off the Mother of Cats’ bed all day Christmas and didn’t even use the cat box once.

Hamster ignoring cat and eating a carrot. — Do you remember that I have a mouse of my very own call Pitty-Pat? (I know she really is a hamster, but I like to think of her as a mouse. She’s mine, and I’m calling her a mouse!!)

While I was getting the luxury spa treatment at the Kitty ER (NOT!!) Little Miss Pitty-Pat escaped from her cage and went on an adventure exploring the house. She dragged piles of my cat food into her cage! She took some of my wooly fleece out of my cat bed and put it into her bed in the cage. She slept in her cage Christmas Day so the Mother of Cats thought I was eating lots of the new food and never suspected what was up. Poor Mother of Cats. She tries hard but we really are too much for her.

At 2am in the morning on the day after Christmas I noticed Pitty-Pat running around on the floor of the bedroom. The Mother of Cats woke up when I ran over her to get to Pitty-Pat. Pitty-Pat ran behind the dresser and holed up underneath. The Mother of Cats just ignored me, sprang into action, and began building a barricade of blankets, pillows and furniture to keep Pitty-Pat trapped in that corner of the room. She just acted like I wasn’t there!! Fine, I didn’t want to play with Pitty-Pat anyway since I feel pretty darn TERRIBLE and my bottom hurts! I gave up and went to sleep in the sewing room while the Mother of Cats moved furniture, trapped Pitty-Pat, repaired her cage, and finally calmed down enough to go back to sleep. It was 4am by that time and I was ready to move back into the big bedroom anyway. The down comforter on that bed is my favorite!

The next day the Mother of Cats shoved ANOTHER pill down my throat and I finally began using my cat box again. I now feel a little better, but I have to eat food that I don’t like, and the Mother of Cats keeps putting more medicine on my ears. The vet has called twice since my visit to the ER and I couldn’t help hearing that I need to come back in a few weeks to get more testing. What a yucky Christmas I am having here! Pitty-Pat seems to be having a really nice one, however…

Enough about me. I bet that you want to see the Christmas knitting, don’t you. Here it is!

The Mother of Cats and I made these fabulous Christmas Gnomes. Just perfect for cat toys, don’t you think?

We also whipped out these wristers to wear on cool days alone or on really cold days under the sleeve of a sweater. I really liked this cashmere mix yarn; almost as nice as the fleece in my cat bed.

We also made a set of fleece-stuffed pincushions for the Mother of Cat’s cousin made from yarn that came from her trip to Peru.

That’s it. Not that much knitting happened this Christmas unless you want to include the knitted Cat that the Mother of Cats and I are still working on. It looks a little wonky right now, but we are going to work on it this weekend and hopefully it will be done by the end of the year. I can’t wait to write a post showing it off to all of you.

I’m such a good boy!

Can I have something nice to eat instead of the yucky new food?

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

Those excessively cute Gnomes are the pattern “Here We Gnome Again” by Sarah Schira.
The wristers are a mash-up pattern that I put together this fall. I recorded what I did in the notes on my Ravelry project page.
The pincushions are made with yarn that my cousin got on her trip to Peru this fall along with some Peruvian yarn that I had in the stash. The pattern is Chloe’s Cushions by Yamagara and is free.
MacKenzie is struggling with several medical issues at the moment. He is being treated for hyperthyroidism and developed severe constipation; who knew this is a medical emergency in cats? The x-rays and exam revealed several other problems including kidney disease, stones in his bladder, arthritis, and an enlarged spleen. There is some concern that he has cancer, but we are spending the next month working on the issues that can be treated right now with medications (the bladder stones, constipation, and hyperthyroidism), and after seeing where we following an ultrasound next month the vet and I will decide next steps.
The new food is supposed to dissolve the stones in MacKenzie’s bladder.
The medicine that I smooth onto the insides of MacKenzie’s ears is for the hyperthyroidism.
What was the pill that I had to shove down MacKenzie’s throat you ask? A stool softener, of course. It worked!!
I got a weighted blanket for Christmas and MacKenzie has taken it over as his own. Of course. It’s like getting hugged while you sleep. If ever there was a kitty who deserved some hugs, it’s this guy.

It’s the Little (Mash-up Knitting) Things…

My hip is in full rebellion these days and I am spending a lot of time off my feet trying heal up. For reasons beyond my understanding MacKenzie views this as an invitation to make constant demands: Pet me! Feed me!! More cookies! Let me go outside!! I must be on your lap!! You exist to serve me!!!!!

He stands next to me as I knit crying sadly, trying to move onto my lap and into the yarn and knitting. It is sad. So sad. Right up to the point when the yarn chomping starts and the claws start flashing. Sigh.

There is nothing for it but to put the knitting aside, gather the cat up onto my lap and deliver unto him all the hugs and attention that he is craving. Then some cookies!

Caught between a ill behaved hip and a demanding cat I have abandoned the sweater that I’ve been working on and switched to small projects that are easy to move away from chomping teeth and flashing claws. Projects that can be worked on in bed, outside in the garden swing, and downstairs by the television. Projects that can be easily moved to safety or stuffed into a project bag.

Ta-daa! I finished these cashmere blend yummy socks to wear while lounging around and in bed. These socks are knit a little loosely and sport garter stitch heels and toes, so they aren’t suitable for daily wear, but they sure are perfect for my cold feet while babying my ill behaved hip, and were easy to complete while evading a cat.

The socks were knit from the toe up and have cleverly shaped garter stitch heels and toes. I added the garter band to the top of the sock before putting on a K1P1 ribbing at the top. Please ignore the little gap there in the ribbing… I took the picture before the final finishing as I was losing the light. Here are my Ravelry notes. The sock pattern is Om Shanti Bed Socks by Alice Yu and the yarn is Serenity 20 from Zen Yarn Garden in the colorway “Burning Bush.”

Do you remember the light blue ribbed socks that I made a couple of weeks ago? They were just simply ribbed socks based on my rote 64 stitch vanilla sock that is basically the Dave sock by Rachel Coopey with a different rib that I liked when I knitted the No. 5 Union Street socks and then saw again in the Emily’s Favorite Socks pattern in the book “Knits About Winter.” Hey, when you are immobilized by a cranky hip and hounded by a demanding cat, you start to just invent new combinations of socks, right? In this circumstance it is just frankly impossible to have any charts or patterns involved in the knitting, so it is “have some fun” time. Anyway, there was some yarn left over from the socks, so I kept knitting…

And these simple wristers (short arm warmers) just fell off my needles.

To make the wristers I just kept expanding on my theme of stealing design ideas from other projects and smashing them together to make something that works for me. I had made some Geology Socks recently, and the top edging was a nice use of the feather and fan pattern, so I re-used it for the top of these warmers. Then I knitted the body of the wrister using the K3P1 ribbing and finished off with an I-cord BO.

I kind of like to wear these with the I-cord edging down by my hand.

But I think that they look pretty good with the lace at the wrist also.

These wristers will work well this winter under sweaters and over long sleeved shirts in my usual struggle to keep my fingers warm, but I’m wearing them alone right now whenever I get exposed to air conditioning. Pleased with my sock pattern inventiveness I cast on another sock last night…

This is another mash-up of ideas and patterns that grew from my earlier projects. This yarn, Fancy Monkey sock, is another cashmere blend for my cold feet. The edging is the same one used for the wristers, but I’m making K3P1 ribbed socks again once I’m past the edging. I’m debating putting on garter stitch heels and toes like the Om Shanti socks. It will be fun! It’s a knitting adventure, I tell MacKenzie.

Who has been watching me steadily from the foot of the bed, waiting for an opening to move onto my lap, computer or no computer. He resents the computer even more then the knitting. Let’s not even start talk about books and reading…

Isn’t it cute that MacKenzie still likes his mouse? The tail has been chomped off at this point, but he still likes to bat it around.

Hopefully my hip will start behaving better in a few days, MacKenzie will become less needy, and I will be able to get back to the Kouvia sweater. I’m getting adventurous with that project, too. I can’t wait to blog about the sweater, and I’m working myself up to a couple of hip/scleroderma posts as I’ve been racking up adventures in that part of my life also.

Have a great weekend, everyone!