2 Knitters for the Price of 1

One of my biggest goals from last weekend’s family visit was to teach my niece, Alexis, the very same yarncraft that I was also taught at the tender age of 4. I gave her a sampling of knit and crochet, and settled on the idea that she is best off if I start her with a knitting loom. When we returned from the camping trip, Michael and I went to return the rented minivan. I took Alexis on a trip to Joann’s. She has great taste in yarn. I told her that the yarn shop is the one place where you want to touch everything (with clean hands, of course). As she ran her hands along the fibers, Alexis found a brightly colored ribbon yarn so she could make a scarf for her brother.

I picked Michael up from the car rental office when Alexis and I finished shopping. “When we get home, can we do our knitting,” Alexis asked. I love that enthusiasm. She actually asked that question several more times over the next few days.

Alexis’ mother claimed that she doesn’t have the patience for something like knitting. “I need to show you a few things so that you can help Alexis with her knitting when I’m not around,” I informed Alicia. I showed her how to cast on to the loom, how to bind off, and how to make stitches.

On the last night that we were all together, we sent Alicia home with Michael and the kids, and my brother and I went out for coffee and one-on-one time. We talked about life in general, and he taught me some basic self-defense in light of the recent increase in crime in my neighborhood. This would be a good time to mention that my brother instructs other people in how to teach MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program).

When my brother and I got home, we found Alicia watching TV on the pull-out bed next to the sleeping children. Guess what she was doing? That’s right, she was lured by knitting’s siren song. She was madly knitting stitch after stitch while watching the television. “It’s addicting,” she told me. Alicia was hoping that we would have time to teach her how to knit with straight needles, but since we ran short on time she decided to learn to knit via books and the internet at home. If she doesn’t manage, we are planning a trip next year, just the adults (to Hawaii), so she’ll learn then.

There is another order of business I wanted to mention. When I started writing, Carisa offered to do a guest blog at some point. She helps coordinate events and fosters for Rattie Ratz. The British term for baby rats is “kittens,” so I’m thinking that her post might be quite in keeping with me Knittin’ and Kittens theme. Look for her post in the near future!

I’m not dead yet

This is where we spent our weekend. We were camping at Hendy Woods state park. It was more of a hybrid version of camping – there were bathroom facilities around the corner, and you could pay for a hot shower. We spent our days mostly away from the campsite, but we slept in tents and ate meals prepared over a campfire.

See?

Our first day was just about setting up camp. The guys (and I mean all of them, even the 1-year-old, Blaine) set up the sleeping tent. My sister-in-law, Alicia, and I set up the changing tent (it was too small for the blow-up mattress, so no one slept there). The kids ran around and covered themselves in the dirt until they passed out. Good times. After the kids went to sleep, we adults had time to sit around the fire and chat.

The next day we devoted to wine tasting. There was one particular winery that Michael and I wanted to find – Navarro – they have a non-alcoholic grape juice that Carisa just loves. We tasted at several other wineries as well. Alexis only got to taste the non-alcoholic wine at Navarro, but she is such a ham that she had to have a picture just like Uncle Michael’s.

Alexis also hammed it up in front of a fountain. That girl just loves to be photographed.

When we got back, we decided to take the kids for a hike to burn up the energy they had pent up from sitting in the car all day between wineries. Robert (my brother) skipped rocks and Michael threw a stick into the little bit of water that was left over from a drying river bed. Blaine apparently channeled a puppy and charged into the water after the stick. All I saw was Robert reaching into the water and catching the baby by the back of his shirt and his diaper. Everyone but Blaine thought it was funny!

Blaine’s little adventure did inspire the girls, though. We found a secluded spot, had the guys keep watch, and stripped down to our birthday suits for a little skinny-dipping. It was kind of liberating for Alicia and me – we are both a bit conservative in the nudity department. Alexis wanted to be just like the big girls, so she took a dip as well. Her face depicts how we all felt afterward – free and happy!

It turns out that our nights at camp were all pretty much about the same. Save for the conversational topic – we were planning a cruise while we were on a camping trip. How’s that for irony? I, of course, sat by the campfire and knit until I could no longer make out the stitches. I should have chosen something a little more straight-forward than entrelac for the campfire knitting, but I guess you only learn by being in the situation.

The third morning we went to Mendocino. We visited the Ford House where we got tips about how we should spend our day. The volunteer at the register told us we should go to Fort Bragg to see Glass Beach. The beach was covered in bits of glass that had been tumbled against the rocks for years after the location stopped being a public dump. That’s right – someone got the bright idea to turn the beautiful coastline into a garbage pit. At least the error was corrected.

I also had another small squirrel adventure. I don’t believe I had seen a California squirrel before. I’ve lived here for 4 years, so you’d think I would have seen one by now. The thing is, we live in a city. In order to see squirrels, you have to go to the park, and it’s a bit of a haul to get there from our house.

Before we got back on the road, we had to stop again in Mendocino to use the restroom. I know this seems silly, but I saw one of the best ideas I have seen in awhile:

I know it seems like an odd thing to be impressed by, but think about it – how many times have you been to a rest stop where they were out of toilet paper? No one ever seems to have enough staff to keep the restrooms stocked. It’s more efficient to put a dozen rolls on the wall and let the staff tend to whatever other business they have. Now if I can only convince business that the one-ply sandpaper toilet paper is a bad idea…

Save for the car sickness (at least 3 of us had varying degrees of motion sickness on the very twisty road that led to Hendy woods), it was a really great, relaxing trip.

Lord of Chaos

There is only one word to describe the last week, really. Chaos.

The four of these little dudes stayed with me for a few days. These are the kittens that came to me in the middle of the night earlier this week. They were all on the bottle, but as the days passed, they got more and more difficult to feed. I was worried no one would be willing to take them so we could go camping this weekend, but I managed to work out a trade. I gave an experienced foster parent the 9 kittens I had, then I took her easier-to-place 6 kittens. This time, karma worked for me. I took this older kitten named Abbey earlier this year. It turns out that I was the only person who responded to the plea to help her, so the woman who was in charge of her thought it was time to return the favor. She took 4 of the easy kittens, and another newer foster mom took the 2 sicker ones. What a relief!

It turns out that it was good to have a few kittens when we first arrived. My niece, Alexis, was really excited to see my cats. She was gentle and listened when I told her how to handle the big cats (and Wesley is a sucker for little girls). Blaine, my nephew, was another story. He is only a year old and has never really seen cats. He was terrified of the kitties! It doesn’t help that they are as big as he is. We were able to ease him into dealing with cats by showing him the smaller kittens.

I am not generally one for “cute kid stories” but I have one today. While we were out gathering supplies for our camping trip, Alexis managed to get her parents to buy her a fan and a pink, sparkly scarf. My brother (her father) found her new toys and dressed himself up for her. “Do I look pretty?” he asked. Keep in mind that my brother is a Marine, a little bit muscular with barely any hair – that alone was hilarious! Alexis was not amused, however, and she said “You look like a fuh..fuh…”. Oh, dear lord. We live in San Francisco. Please tell me she is not about to say what I think she is about to say. “You look like a fweak!” Whew!

Later on that day, Alexis asked about my knitting. I believed that this was the perfect opportunity to start teaching her the necessary skills so that she, too, can become a knitter/crocheter. I gave her some pink yarn (her favorite color next to purple – just like me!) and a crochet hook first. Her daddy came by and asked if she was making a chain. “No,” Alexis replied, “I’m making a sweater.” Pretty ambitious for a 4-year-old. She also helped me make some washcloths for her grandmother (my sister-in-law’s mother). I am so going to mold this child in my image. Narcissistic much?

I do believe that the entire family has some sort of yarn-crafter tendencies. When Alexis abandoned her crocheting (she is 4, after all), Blaine picked up the crochet hook. He then crawled across the bed to get the ball of pink yarn. He doesn’t have the manual dexterity to crochet yet, but he sure does know that a hook and yarn go together somehow.

9 is enough

I do have pictures to put on my blog, but you won’t be seeing them today. I have 9 kittens who need a lot of care. Some are sick (5 of them) some are bottle-dependent (a different subset of 5) and all need looking after every few hours.

I had 11 kittens yesterday. I was able to send Moonlight and Wisteria back to the shelter to head down the adoption highway, leaving me with 9. So wait, how did I end up with 9? I went to the shelter on Monday. Toni tried to convince me to take home 4 kittens who had just come in and needed bottle-feeding. I told her no, I had plenty. Besides I was just there to get her credit card so I could pick up kitten food for the group. She convinced Naomi (not Wisteria’s Naomi) to take them. Naomi hung out at the shelter too long, though, and just before she left someone brought in 6 10-day-old abandoned kittens. That left her with a total of 12 (the other 2 are a pair she had before all this named Christopher and Robin). She called me later than night and asked me to take some of them off her hands. I can’t leave someone who has a full-time job, plus a petsitting business on the hook for 12 kittens who must be bottle-fed. Crud – now I’m overworked, too.

Since my brother is coming to town tomorrow, I have to be rid of those kittens very soon. My sister-in-law is a little bit allergic, and with 12 cats in the house it seems kind of dangerous for her. She hasn’t had a reaction to my adult cats, and of course, 9 of those cats are babies, and it is very hard to be allergic to kittens. They don’t make the dander that people are allergic to because they don’t wash themselves. The dander comes from saliva. In addition to all of that, we are going to be camping and away from the house for a few days.

I have no time to knit, crochet or spin. I am hoping to have some time when I unload the kittens. Let’s hope I live that long.

Trading

I’m thinking of changing the theme on my blog. This one is ok, but I think that I would like something that allows me to organize my page a little differently. The thing is, my current theme does not seem to be an option anymore, so once I change I can’t come back. I just don’t want anyone to freak out if you’re a regular reader and the blog looks different!

On Wednesday, I traded in the smallest 5 kittens for 6 who needed me more. My guys got the good end of the deal – they are staying with Toni in her huge house. She tells me they are happy and playing a lot. They have a cold though, just like every other cat in town. Carisa’s adult cat started sneezing, the 5 kittens I traded are sneezy and have conjunctivitis (pink-eye), Wisteria has red, gooey eyes, and most of the other foster parents’ kittens are sick. My own cats even had a minor cold for a day or 2. Interesting. Only Moonlight seems to have been spared.

One of the 6 new kittens was older (I think 5 weeks old), had good teeth, and was eating on his own. He’s the guy in the bottom left corner of the picture. The thing is, he died Friday morning. I think he was a bit like Sundae – way too small and failing to thrive. The night before he died, he was only 185g. I was planning to ask if we could euthanize him in the morning if he had lost more weight, but I guess he knew it was his time just as much as I did.

The next piece of work is Snuffles. He has cloudy eyes and he’s stuffed up so badly he has to take breaks from the bottle to catch his breath. He was losing weight, too, but in the last few days he seems to have maintained his weight. I’ve been using a Vicks plug-in vapor diffuser to help clear his sinuses enough to eat and sleep. He actually seems better now – his eyes have cleared up a little and he’s more cheerful. I was going to ask to put him out of his misery as well, but I think that maybe I had better wait in light of his improvement.

Number 3 is a black boy kitten with some sort of leg trouble. He’s a sweetheart, totally chubby and strong, but when he walks it’s like his legs can’t support his weight – we wobbles, practically swimming with his back legs. When he’s off the bottle he’ll be checked out more thoroughly, perhaps for a neurological issue.

The other 3 are normal weaning kittens. There is a black girl – still on the bottle, a grey tabby that looks very similar to Snuffles, and a dark brown tabby who is eating on his own mostly, but wants the bottle for comfort reasons.

Moonlight has gotten big enough to be spayed now. I am giving her just a few more days because she seems to have relatively large (50g) swings in her weight. If she has to fast before her surgery, she could wake up too small and she’ll have to wait in the shelter longer. Plus, she can use the socializing.

I have some very wonderful news about Wisteria. My friend Naomi (from the spinning class I took recently) is planning to adopt her! I was worried that no other home would be good enough for my little sheep-kitten, but I am totally sold on Naomi. The whole family met my kitten and handled her well. They listened to my advice about her behavior. They also agreed to keep her indoors because she will be stolen otherwise. I feel good about this adoption, so I can let her go. Plus, I get to see her from time to time in the future. What a relief.

Speaking of spinning, I finished and plied the merino/tencel. I decided to make it a 2-ply, and I am keeping it myself. I have no idea what to make with it, but since when do I need a reason to keep a skein of yarn?

Let it go

I made yarn! I think it took me something like 12 hours altogether, but I have about 190g/535 yarns of worsted weight, 3-ply wool yarn. It’s a little scratchier than I like, but the scratchier yarns are easier for a beginner to work up.

I made this yarn in a colorway that I am not find of. The reason is, I want to be able to give it away or sell it. I have a hard time giving up yarn. If I continue to make yarn, however, it will overrun my house. I won’t be able to knit all of it, and it will be wasted just lying around. I think I am going to make a supply of yarn and open an etsy store. I may be new to spinning, but this is one thing that I am really good at, so I have grand ideas for my spinning future.

I’ve also spun something that I think I want to keep for myself.

It’s the merino/tencel blend I got from Urban Fauna. I had a hard time getting the hang of spinning a fiber like tencel, but it just took a few inches, maybe a few feet before I caught on. It’s very fine. I’m not sure if I am going to make this a 3-ply yarn or a 2-ply. I like 3-ply because I understand it wears better. However, 2 ply is easier to spin and it could make a very nice yarn. I think I’ll just get started on a second bobbin and see how I feel.

At long last, a decision I have been putting off is demanding to be addressed. On Tuesday, Wisteria made weight. She is technically adoptable now. The thing is, I can’t bring myself to let her go. I loved her from the moment I first saw her. Shoot, everyone does. She is so pretty, so unusual, so fluffy… Wisteria also has good manners. She is polite to Buttercup and doesn’t press their relationship. She and Serra have a jolly time playing together. When Wisteria is out of the kitten room, I never have to worry where she is – I just look down to my feet.

The thing is, keeping Wisteria would be a big deal. She would be the first foster kitten I ever kept. I would have 4 cats – that’s a lot of attention to give. I wouldn’t have the bandwidth anymore to keep a long-term foster kitten if something came up. It’s one more mouth to feed, one more cat to haul to the vet. Right now, Wisteria is a lot of work. It’s one thing when the kittens are generally contained in the kitten room. If Wisteria were to become mine, I’d have to let her out. She wants to play with me late at night. She needs to be protected from Buttercup. She is terrible at keeping her hind-end clean, and I have to do it for her (I really hope she learns to care for it herself soon).

This is agonizing. It makes parting with my yarn seem very easy in comparison. I thought about the idea of trying to get someone I know to take her, but all my friends are cat people with plenty of cats already. I’ve parted with another cat who I loved as much once before. Her name was Margo (I’m sure her new people have changed it by now). She was this shiny black mom cat with intense orange eyes. She had the same quality that I love in Wisteria – a bright, shining outlook on life. She was self-confident, happy, and affectionate. I still think about Margo a lot. I hope she isn’t a cat who was abandoned (or will be) when her people lose their house to foreclosure. I have no way of knowing.

I have a little more time to meditate on this. My brother and his family will be here in just 2 weeks. We are leaving town to go camping, so I either have to return Wisteria then or adopt her. I am hoping Moonlight will be ready by then, too.

In the meantime, I have continued to knit the baby dress. I’ve added some pink stripes and spots for interest. I was stupid, however, and left the project at Carisa’s house last night, so I can’t work on it today. I’ll just spin instead.

The saga of the wheel

It arrived on Friday, just like Jamie and Blas said it would. I dropped Michael off at an appointment and rushed to Urban Fauna, excited as a kid on Christmas morning. Parking is really hard in San Francisco, but the spot right in front of the store was open. Blas had already confirmed that all the pieces were there and had the box waiting at the front of the store. He even carried it out to the car for me!

After getting the wheel, I picked Michael up and went home. I emptied the box, laid out some paper and got to oiling all the parts. It took a few hours to do, and it just happened to be one of the hottest days in San Francisco ever.

Well, I thought it was all of the parts. After the Danish Oil dried overnight, I carried all the parts upstairs from the garage. Michael and I set about assembling the wheel, when I realized that I couldn’t find a part called for in the instructions. I knew right away I must have missed one in the box. How dare it hide from me!

I chose to assemble the whole thing anyway, with the one unfinished part standing out. I’ll get some of my spinning fix, then finish the wheel and let it dry another 24 hours. I tell you, this is torture. I want the wheel to last for a long time, so I need to make sure it is properly finished. I know that the moisture in the air and the temperature changes can permanently warp my wheel, but how much can it do in a week’s time when the wheel lives indoors?

It’s not like I don’t have knitting and crocheting to do. I am only about 1/3 of the way through the baby dress, and I am making steady progress on the Crochet-Along afghan. Plus, I just got 2 video games to work on: I just topped off my collection of The Sims 2 expansions with Apartment Life and started feeding another obsession with Spore. I also have a daily game of Agricola that I play with Michael and whoever else happens to be over that day.

My knitting group has finished the last of the hats for Kristy’s hat project. The monkey in the corner is just adorable. Carisa sent them to Kristy on Thursday. Does anyone know the total number we made?

One more thing – I think I found another avatar to use somewhere – probably here. How perfect is this? It came from a pair of pajamas. It might have come from the kids department at Target. I also might have purchased a matching one for my niece who is coming to visit in a few weeks. I’ll never tell.

Expensive plastic bracelets

I believe that I have mentioned before that I don’t have the greatest health. I have many mysterious symptoms that come and go without any rhyme or reason. Doctors often can’t explain major events that have happened to me. I am starting to believe that I am a hypochondriac, despite my many doctors’ suspicions that I am actually not faking anything.

On Thursday, while I was waiting for Michael to come home with the black light, I had chest pains. I’ve had them before, and my endocrinologist thought they were muscular. It’s always just left of the center of my chest and tends to radiate to my left shoulder and back. The thing is, this time, the pain was worse. The first wave hit, and it was pretty mild. I sat here in front of the computer, surfing the internet, waiting for them to go away. Then the next wave came on so strongly I had to call Michael, interrupting a meeting with his boss. He rushed home from work and took me to the hospital, despite my protests.

At the hospital, they tested a lot of things. With chest pain, the first thing they do is an EKG to check your heart. I sat there with little electrodes and sticky conductor tabs on various parts of my body just to hear that my heart was “working great.” The doctor then came in and asked a lot of questions, like “Does it hurt when you breathe in?” and “Does putting pressure on it make it worse?”. The answer to both was no. Actually, the pressure made it better. I was feeling like I should have stayed home rather than wasting money on an unproductive trip to the hospital. Then the doctor said he wanted to do more tests – a CT scan. They hooked me up to an IV, injected contrast dye into my veins, and took a computer aided x-ray. This is in addition to a prior, regular x-ray. Still nothing. Why did I subject myself to this when I was already feeling I wasted my time? Well, the doctor said that there was a chance the this was a pulmonary embolism. Consequences? Death. Since I had a history of this sort of pain before, and asthma, and since I am on birth control pills, this actually seemed possible. One blood clot and it’s all over. Alas, the doctor could find nothing.

After all that, the doctor said that my chest pain was unexplainable and that I should take ibuprofen (a higher dose than the bottle recommends) when I feel the chest pain starting again. I could have done that on my own. So what did I get out of it? Expensive plastic bracelets.

I did manage to come by the black light to check my kittens for ringworm. The brand name on it was hilarious! As for the ringworm? It was just my imagination.

It might be back.

Ringworm. That nasty little fungus among us that we can’t seem to eradicate. It might be back. Barnacles! Here’s what happend:

I noticed for the last few days that several of the girl kittens had dark wax in their ears. I cleaned them out, but then I started noticing that more kittens had it. I folded back Ling Ling’s ear, and inside was this coffee-grounds like substance. I immediately suspected ear mites, but I was uncertain because the kittens did not have smelly ears, they did not shake or scratch their heads, and they seem in otherwise good shape. I decided to take them in to the shelter vet today, and she confirmed that they did indeed have ear mites.

“They have ringworm, too,” the vet told me. I told her that I thought it was actually food-face. Every time I come in to see the kittens, they have lots of food stuck to their faces. For some reason they can’t seem to get the hang of the after dinner face bath that the older cats do. When I wash their faces, fur comes off with the stuck-on food. Besides, ringworm doesn’t strike just one kitten at time, and Wisteria and Moonlight looked impeccably clean…

But then I got home. I let the kittens out into their room, and picked up Wisteria. Then I noticed that she has awfully thin fur between her eyes and her ears. No one else is missing fur, but now that the idea has been planted in my head, I am worried. It all looks like ringworm. Even if it’s not. I asked Michael to pick up a blacklight somewhere on his way home from work, so I’ll know in a few hours. These are going to be the longest few hours I’ve waited in a long time.

Squee!

I bought it! I got the Ashford Traveller from Urban Fauna yesterday. Ashford mailed it today and it should be here any day now. It’s only coming from Washington state to San Francisco, so it shouldn’t be long. Oh, joy (no, Traveller)! I can’t wait to take it home and finish it to match my niddy noddy, then spin the heck out of my fiber stash.

I can’t stop raving about Urban Fauna. Jamie sent me the invoice today and told me that the fiber combs I also ordered were on backorder. As a special touch, she researched a tutorial about how to use the combs so she could help me out. How nice is she? I like giving my business to people like that.

There is barely any news to give about the kittens. They are growing bit by bit. They have gotten to a more playful stage now, so when we let them into the kitchen we end up with a zoo full of wrestling, attention seeking sand burrs. Seriously, when I get across the kitchen I often have at least 2 kittens clinging to my pants legs and I have to pluck them off. Their little claws snag my pants (I have to remember to not wear knit materials and only wear jeans!) and I get the same ripping noise as the burrs. As fast as I can remove them, the kittens reattach themselves to my legs. Such pests (but I love them)!

I am hoping to catch a video of this sometime, but Wisteria learned a new trick. I keep a baby gate up in the doorway between my kitchen and my living room. Sometimes I will step over the gate to do other things while the kittens are out. Monday morning I noticed that Wisteria was in the living room, but I couldn’t recall having let her out. I asked Michael if he had done it, but he hadn’t. I let her roam (she needs very little supervision because she is respectful of my adult cats), and thought nothing of it. I’m a little senile sometimes and forget things that I just did. I stepped back over into the kitchen, and in moments Wisteria came flying over the gate like the sheep you might count before falling asleep. It was kind of incredible. I left the kittens in the kitchen this morning so they could have more space to play while I did some computer stuff. Despite me not letting her out, Wisteria was peeping in the office a few minutes later. She came running to my chair and asked to be picked up. I love that all she wants is to be where I am. I never have to worry about her wandering off because of that. Man, am I going to miss her when she’s ready to go. At least I got to have her for awhile.

Tiki and Ling Ling have been a little unwell. Tiki cries a bit when I pick her up, I think because I am putting pressure on her gassy tummy. I have been putting probiotics in their food and feeding her Gripe Water a few times a day to alleviate the gas. Otherwise, she is playful and alert. Ling Ling is still kind of tiny. He is a full 100g behind the next smallest kitten now. I started to worry about him the last few days he was on the bottle. He couldn’t manage to drink it without getting some milk in his lungs, so I got him onto food as fast as I could. I didn’t want him to aspirate and die just because I was too lenient with the bottle. Now he isn’t really growing, and I am wondering if it’s related to the reason he started inhaling the milk. Poor guy.

After we sent Sunshine to the shelter, Moonlight reverted to her semi-feral ways. She ran every time we opened the kitten room door, she hid behind her bed when I visited her – it was a mess. I felt like a really bad person for taking her sister away. All I can figure is that Moonlight felt very confident with people if she was with her sister, but now that she can’t draw courage from Sunshine, poor Moon is scared out of her mind. I thought all the socializing we and several friends did was swirling down the toilet. Lo and behold, On Monday she got over her fear. I can’t figure out why. She stopped running away and she even purrs when we pet her.

When Michael gave her a magic neck rub tonight, Moonlight dropped her head back to revel in it, exposing her vulnerable neck and tummy. I have such a hard time understanding how 48 hours ago she couldn’t find any reason to trust us, but suddenly today we have the magic touch that she’s been craving. I have decided that the inner workings of a cat’s mind are not for mere humans to understand.

Well, let’s not give up on her yet.