Setting Goals

Check this out – I’m posting again within a few days my last post. I don’t know what to think about this – maybe I’m getting some of that ambition back? It would be nice.

I’ll start with a short health update: I haven’t been able to experiment with the magic combination of supplements because, unfortunately, I got a cold. I can’t help but feel my physical response to getting a cold is exaggerated. I mean, for most people, they get a little stuffy, maybe a little tired, but they can function. When I get even a small cold, it just wipes me out. I forced myself to have a good time with my gaming group yesterday because I have so few interactions anymore with real people who aren’t doctors. Since I last posted, I also managed to do some research on nitric oxide, and I learned something hilarious – the supplement I’m taking seems to be the herbal equivalent of Viagra! No, the doctor isn’t crazy for prescribing that to me. Viagra was originally developed to help people with heart problems, basically by modulating the nitric oxide pathways in the body, thereby opening up blood vessels. The reason we know Viagra as a drug for erectile dysfunction is that the pharmaceutical companies found this to be a more profitable way to market the drug.

Today, I’m going to get back to the original topic of my blog, to some degree. I’ve been feeling that since I’m kind of trapped in my house, sentenced to doing low energy activities, I should use that for some practical purpose. I just hate feeling like I’m doing nothing, like I’m useless. I’ve got some goals related to knitting and outside activities, so I thought I’d share them, to make me more accountable. Here they are, more or less in the order I manage to think of them:

1. Write a book. I have no idea whether this book is just for me, for only close friends, or for the world, but I want to write a book on what it is like to live with a long-term, mysterious and invisible illness. I won’t know for whom I am writing the book until I’ve finished it because it is kind of personal, and I just don’t know what I want to share and with whom.
2. Finish all of my knitting and crochet WIPs. This has failed in the past, largely because I see something new I like, and I just toss the old stuff aside like dirty laundry. I know that by denying myself the freedom to cast on something new I only manage to trigger a rebellion and I suddenly feel a burning need to cast on a ton of new projects, so I’m going to set guidelines like, “I have to finish three projects already in progress before I cast on a new one.” Of course, then the new one will soon become one of these old projects, so I am really just making the problem worse by adding to it, but at least I am taking a few steps forward as well. And who knows, maybe being trapped into this disciplined yarn crafting might just be the trigger my body needs to get better. I will gladly discard my newly instated rule if I have energy and can do other things that don’t involve sitting down. It would be a reward, in a sense. If I don’t get better, seeing that pile of half-finished projects get smaller would be a different kind of reward.
3. Do a wardrobe purge. This is a smaller project than the others, probably something that will take a day or two, but it’s something I really need to do. I’ve lived in parts of the country that have had relatively consistent weather since I was fifteen years old. First it was Hawai’i, then Florida, then San Francisco (I am using the city here rather than the state because SF really is different than the rest of California in general. They get seasons everywhere else in the Bay Area, but not so much in SF. Southern California has a consistent climate, too, but it’s warm, whereas SF is cold. Even in the summer.). Now I have to have clothes for multiple seasons, and some of them are worn out, some don’t fit anymore (due to weight loss), and some I just don’t like. The volume of clothing I need has become comparatively greater than before. I need to get rid of what I don’t wear, then supplement the areas of my wardrobe that are lacking. The latter part will be harder, since I really don’t have the energy for shopping trips that involve trying on clothes. The goal, though, is just to get rid of stuff. The replacing will come later.
4. Blog more often. This goal is a little vague, but I want to aim for once a week right now. I won’t get too hard on myself if I only manage every other week, though. I think that it might help me achieve my goals if I write down the progress I’ve made. Sometimes I feel like I’ve done nothing until I’ve made an accounting of it. Right now, I need to see that I’m not entirely useless for my self-esteem. I have none left after all this being sick business.
5. Spin a skein of yarn. Also a small goal, but I just haven’t spun anything in a long time, and I really want to. I got a lot of fiber for Christmas (Amazon.com allows you to add things from other websites to your wish list now, so I went to Etsy and added the pretty things I saw), my fiber storage is overflowing, and, well, it’s a way to get new yarn without having to go shopping for it. Plus, spinning is a very mild form of exercise (see how your calves feel the day after spinning for a few hours), and I really want to try to get exercise. I miss simply moving around.
6. Sort out my digital pictures. This is a medium-term project. I have hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures on my hard drives, and I want to do something with them. I’ll probably put quite a few on Facebook, I’ll print some to hang on my walls, maybe I’ll showcase pictures of kittens I had before I started keeping this blog… the idea is that I don’t know what the point is in having all these pictures if they are to remain unseen in a hard drive.

So, I’ve listed goals of varying time commitment and difficulty. I think that I might start with a smaller goal (like spinning a skein of yarn or the wardrobe purge) sooner so that I can get the accomplishment momentum going. The book, WIPs, pictures and blogging will be things that sort of happen in the background, perhaps concurrently, or perhaps I will focus on one of them at some point just to have the achievement. I will make regular updates about them, just to keep me on track.

There are more goals I have in mind, but making them something I have to commit to right now would simply be setting myself up for failure. There are things I want to do like finishing the painting in the house (there is still a lot of wall space left unpainted) and getting back to fostering, but my health limits those. It’s downright dangerous for me to get on a ladder, for example, because all it takes is one black-out and I’ve fallen and broken my neck. Of course, my over-arching goal is to get healthy, but I don’t think I have much control over that. Control that I haven’t already exerted, I mean. I go to the doctors regularly, and I take my supplements regularly, no matter how nasty they are (and let me tell you, some are quite powerful). I’m planning to see a new specialist in Los Angeles for a diagnostic procedure called non-cognitive biofeedback. Admittedly, this one seems a little… out there… but I’m at the point where I’m thinking anything is worth a shot. I cannot go on like this anymore.

So, for now, I’m focusing on what I can do. Modest goals.

Knittin’ and… Video Games?

I still haven’t the energy to do anything too exciting about my knitting or my kittens, let alone post about it (but I have, at least, gotten to the owl part of my Owls sweater). I found my camera, by the way, and I have every intention of photographing my sweater for the next post. I’m mostly posting because I saw couple of things that I just had to share with my yarn people.

There are at least two new video games out with a fibery theme:

Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Crafting Mama.

I was under the mistaken impression that there just wasn’t a whole lot of crossover between the knitting and video games crowds. I wouldn’t have guessed that there was crossover between the yarn craft and bowling crowd, either, but there is at least another woman in my league who crochets between turns. I also met a crocheter at Tacticon. We’re everywhere!

For those of you who are following the uphill battle with my health, I have just a little news. I went to the neuro-endocrinologist, and he did find a few things. I tip to the left when I walk with my eyes closed. He says that points to a mid-brain issue. He was also concerned about my low blood pressure, so he prescribed a supplement with licorice root in it. Normally, licorice root will raise blood pressure, but of course I cannot be normal – it dropped mine. I was taken off the supplement today. I’ll be very interested in what he has to say about it when I see him later this week. I have a feeling I’m going to hear the five word phrase that every doctor seems to say to me lately: “I’ve never seen that before.”

Wish me luck that this can be solved.

How I Knew

I’ve been on yet another of our combined business/ friend visiting trips this week. We have one more trip to San Francisco coming up, then we have a break until September when my sister-in-law is expecting to have her (currently unborn) baby’s christening. After that, there are no plans, but I know something will come up. For example, I came to understand that my Aunt Lydia and Uncle Greg are in their last year living in Italy, so I may leave the continent for the first time in my life. Anne-Catherine, if you’re reading this, we plan to come see you, too!

I had a few very odd feelings before this trip. A day or two before, I got the feeling like a big life change was coming. I spoke to my husband about it, but he couldn’t really think of anything momentous that should be coming up. Regardless, I knew. I’ve always had such strong pattern recognition skills combined with a high passive perception score (sorry, I’ve been playing too much Dungeons and Dragons of late!) that I have dreams of events before they transpire. I’ve been informed more than once that I seem to always know how something is going to play out, but not a lot of people believe me until after the fact (Cassandra syndrome). The feelings I had about this upcoming event were so strong that I felt compelled to share them on Facebook, particularly when I was at the airport (we all know by now how I feel about that place) and there were tornado warnings blasting over the intercom. I just felt like everything was as it was meant to be.

Also in the week prior to the trip, I learned of a cruel coincidence. The National Needle Arts Association (TNNA) was going to have their trade show in the hotel right across the street from the hotel we were in for the Ohio portion of Michael’s business presentations. Why might this be cruel, you ask? Well, I am not a member of TNNA, and you have to be in order to get in. I would have to own a business with a business ID number, or since I teach, I’d need a long list of requirements that I simply could not gather in time for the show.

When we got to the hotel, it was very late. The tornadoes delayed our trip by about an hour an a half, so we had to get in and get to sleep right away so Michael could get up in the morning. If I was going to do anything about even trying to get into the trade show, I also needed to be up early. Before we attempted sleep, I looked out the window. My view

was this – the location of the TNNA trade show.

I found myself simply unable to sleep after about 7:20am. All the better since, if I wanted to see the pretty yarn, I had to get it all in before noon when we were scheduled to drive to Michigan. I went to the restaurant attached to the hotel for my breakfast. Almost immediately after I sat down, the waiter asked if I was one of the knitters. Cool – I wasn’t even knitting or wearing a knitted item! A critical (natural 20) on the stealth (or perhaps the disguise or streetwise) check. I informed him that no, I wished to attend the trade show, but I could not. However, at this point I knew that I could blend in if I wanted to attempt to gain access to the show. I belonged there!

On my way out of the restaurant, I noticed a woman with a Eucalan bag. Knowing that she had to be involved with the show, I stepped out of character and started up a conversation with her (I don’t usually talk to strangers unless the approach me first, but I’ve made a concerted effort to be less shy lately). I told her about my situation and asked if she knew of any way to get an “ordinary knitter” into the show. The very kind lady informed me that no, I could not get into the show since they were checking badges at the doors, but if I happened to have the requirements together I could sign up to be a TNNA member on the spot. I told her I didn’t know about the show early enough before my trip to gather the letters and such that I would need, so I was out of luck. “Well, there is a display right before the gates,” the lady informed me. “You could look and touch the yarns, maybe pick up a few samples.” Perfect. I went straight to the convention center.

The walk to the part of the convention center with the trade show was very, very long. I had to climb flights of stairs and walk nearly to the other side of the surprisingly large building. All at once I saw the knitters – and the yarn. Oh, the pretty yarn. I helped myself to one of the books listing the names of some of the vendors and what they had on the sample display. I noticed other knitters taking samples of yarn from beneath the displays and taping them into the books, so after gazing at and fondling some of the samples, I did the same. I noticed another knitter taking pictures, and since no one yelled at him, I did so, too. Here’s what I have:

These two were my favorite displays. The one on the left is Pear Tree Fibres, 100% pure Australian wool. The yarn was so soft that I just couldn’t stop touching it. In fact, they call the yarn “Supersoft.” The one on the right is Knitcellaneous. I particularly liked the “Scrumptious,” a blend of merino wool and silk.

There were other very nice displays that I liked, but the ones above were my favorites. Here’s just a sample of what they had:

I plan to show my samples to some of my local yarn shop owners and ask that they carry them. Heck, I’ll probably take them to San Francisco and ask my favorite shops out there to carry them as well. I figure the TNNA folks can’t get too mad that I kind of snuck in if I bring the vendors some business. I should also note that I would not be foolish enough to blog about it if I actually did sneak in to the trade show because a) I might like to be a member one day and having a written confession in a public forum would not help my chances and b) had I managed to do it, giving away my secrets would make it impossible to do so again.

That said, I realized something after I left the trade show. I wanted in badly. I wanted in so badly that I contemplated trying to con my way in, maybe trying to sweet talk someone at the front desk into taking pity on me because fate wanted me to be here. I also realized that I’ve been trying to figure out what career path I want to pursue now that I’m feeling better. The last time I had to have blood drawn, I had a moment that I truly believe was predestined. I forgot the paperwork but I didn’t realize it until I had driven all the way to the testing facility. I had to drive all the way home, and I was starving because I was fasting. It made me bitter because when I came back, the waiting room was much fuller and I’d have to wait even longer to get through it. I sat down and took out my knitting. A few moments later, a little girl arrived with her mother. “Oh, look!” she cried, “Mommy, she’s knitting!” The little girl asked her mother to teach her, and the mother was kind of trying to dissuade the little girl, so I wasn’t sure if I should offer my services (in retrospect, I could have slipped the mother a card and let her decide for herself). I wondered then if it was a sign. I think, my friends, that my questions have answered themselves. I have officially decided to pursue an honest-to-goodness career in the needle arts.

I most certainly thought about a career in other fields. I mean, this blog is “Knittin’ and Kittens” – I couldn’t pick just one subject. I seriously contemplated finishing what I started in college, ending up as a veterinarian. I still desperately want the title of “Doctor,” and I want to be just as important as the teachers always told me I’d be when they realized I was a lot smarter than most of the other kids when I was going to school. Alas, life has not led me there. Now that Michael and I travel so much, going to school and having a practice of my own would be impractical. Additionally, I began to realize that I hate it when people come to me for advice about animals, then ignore it in favor of  what their friends and family think. As a vet, I’d have to deal with people not giving the meds I prescibe and then wondering why their pet isn’t getting better. I’d have to kill animals that I believe I could save, just because the owner doesn’t want to pay the bill and won’t surrender the animal. I have to bite my tongue to keep from ripping the back yard breeders a new one for their contribution to the killing of perfectly wonderful shelter animals. I’d fail as a vet because I care too much about the animals themselves – it would be better if I just liked the field of medicine. My contribution to the animal welfare field is best kept to exactly what I am doing right now – fostering. This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t also go to school for the vet tech license I was contemplating. Getting the education would give me a better understanding of how to help my kittens, and give me a way to earn extra cash if I want to. I am writing all this here because I had to admit it to myself first, and that was a hard step to take.

I’m not saying that the yarn-craft career is a second choice option, either. When I really think about it, it’s what I should have been looking into all along. I started to work with yarn when I learned to read, and that was well before I started to attend school. I love yarn. I want to be involved in every aspect of yarn, from making it to dying it to making it into projects. I am good at and enjoy doing the math to make my projects look and fit the way I want them to. I’ve written technical manuals, which aren’t that different from writing a pattern book when you get to the essence of it. As a bonus, a career in yarn craft would absolutely suit the lifestyle I have now. I can knit and design projects when we are traveling (so long as the government doesn’t keep punishing knitters for the acts of terrorists… grr… as if we had something to do with it), and if someone doesn’t like my knitting advice, I am not at all offended because no lives are at stake (and it’s art – there are no hard and fast rules in art). The best part is that I enjoy the work so much that I do it for fun – imagine if I could draw a regular pay check from it!

So the events leading up to and including the trip I am on now have shown me what I should have known all along. I am not a knitter – I’m a Knitter.

Improvising

Last week was one in which things just didn’t go as planned. I thought everything was going well. I spun exactly one ton of yarn for the baby blanket I am knitting. I was on top of the infections the mommy cat and her kittens had. I started bottle feeding at the first sign of weight loss. I spiked the formula with Lysine and probiotics to help warn off the URI that mommy cat had. It all just… failed.

The blanket:

As I spun the yarn, I was pleased with the thought that I was making so much I could not possibly fall short of what I needed for a baby blanket. I mean, come on, baby blankets are small, and I spun pounds of yarn (I think maybe 2 pounds?). I began the pattern I selected on Ravelry, knitting happily away with the green yarn. I moved on to the blue, a little concerned about the amount I had of that color – I had to dispose of a significant amount of yarn due to a chewing incident that Serra and Duck perpetrated. No big deal, it was just one color, and maybe I could make it up with another color of yarn.

Then I got to the undyed yarn. I knit the first section using the suggested number of stitches and rows, thinking nothing about it. When I bound off, I noticed that the ball of yarn was a lot smaller than it should be. I weighed the yarn, and it turned out that I had used exactly half of what I had spun. Half?! Really? I had two more sections to do, and they were to be larger than the first. Oh, crap.

It was at this point that I decided two things. First, I decided that the pattern is just a suggestion. I would place the color blocks in the same places (roughly) that the pattern called for, but they might have fewer rows than suggested. Additionally, the blanket might turn out a little smaller than I intended. My friend Julie pointed out that the new blanket size would be absolutely perfect as a nursing cover up and as a place to just put the baby on the floor. Julie is a doula, so I believe anything she says about human babies. She could tell me they were born with horns and I would believe it. Not going to find out, myself. The second thing I decided is that I would spin more of the undyed fiber, since I have quite a bit of that.

I might also have to cook Serra and Duck for dinner. I keep threatening to eat them when they destroy my yarn.

The kittens:

At the beginning of the week, Charge finally started to feel better. I was able to stop giving her fluids, then I was able to stop hand-feeding her. The babies were still on the bottle, though, because their poor, sick mother dried up. The little ones also developed an eye infection – Quark in both eyes, Neutrino in just one.

I jumped on everything. I started the boys on the bottle at the first sign of weight loss. I started them on eye drops the moment the eyes got infected. I added Lysine and probiotics to their formula when Quark showed signs of their mother’s cold. I thought that if I stayed ahead of everything, it would all come out fine.

When the kittens’ eyes didn’t improve on the eye meds I had, I took them to the vet. They were given stronger meds and some Clavamox to fight the first signs of mommy’s cold. Two days later, it all went down hill. Quark couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t breathe. Around every 30 minutes, he woke up screaming. I offered him the bottle, but he lost the will to suckle. When I tried to give him fluids, he would panic and back into the needle causing himself to bleed. It all broke my heart. I spent two days holding Quark in the steam from the humidifier until his nose cleared enough to eat and sleep. He loved that – he would hang is head over my hand (I kept my hand in the steam to make sure it wasn’t too hot) to sniff the moist air. I fed him twice as often as his brother, but he still kept losing weight. On the last day, Michael and I took turns holding him, keeping him warm so he could sleep an hour at a time. We even offered Quark to Duck for the grooming his mother couldn’t give and I couldn’t manage because it would involve wetting and chilling him to dangerous levels.

Duck is such a good mommy for a baby boy-cat.

By the next morning, I knew Quark was finished. He clamped his jaw closed and refused his beloved bottle. He could not be consoled no matter what I did. Neutrino was gaining weight and getting chubby, and in comparison, Quark just looked so small. He was also cool to the touch. I called the shelter and asked that he be put down. I’ve gotten better with this. It’s such a bad feeling, wondering if you gave up too soon, but I have had that worry so many times at this stage and it never ends well. My opinion is always seconded by the vets at the shelter, so it’s not even a unilateral decision. I know I did the painful, but right thing. I have to keep reminding myself of this.

Within two days of Quark’s end, I noticed that Neutrino wasn’t taking the bottle so well for me. I also noticed that when I stimulated him to go to the bathroom, there was usually nothing coming out. I was concerned, until I reached under his mother and rubbed her tummy. Imagine my surprise when I discovered she was full of milk! Now that Charge was feeling better, she went right back to caring for her baby. By the end of that day, Charge was so full of milk that she sat in the kitten room howling with discomfort.

I then got a brilliant idea. I called the shelter in the morning to give them the status update on my kitty family. I also suggested that if they had kittens who needed a surrogate mother, Charge might be a good candidate. It turns out that I couldn’t have called at a better time. Another mom cat came in to the shelter with six newborn kittens. The problem is, the mom was very defensive of her kittens, and the babies had nasty eye infections. The shelter staff couldn’t get enough access to the babies to give them regular treatment to clean up the eyes. I brought Charge to the shelter to see if she would take in some new kittens. It could not have gone better – the first thing Charge did when she saw one of the new guys was bathe, then potty him. I gave her the 3 sickest kittens (one had so much pus coming out of his eye that I thought the eye had exploded) and took them home. By that evening, the babies had gained weight, so I knew mommy was caring for them. Charge just seemed so happy, so relived to have more babies to care for.

Meet Butterscotch, Fudge, and Marmalade. Yes, the umbilical cord is still attached to these kittens.

Neutrino is great with the new siblings. The day after they arrived, he started eating wet food like a big boy, so he isn’t really competing for milk. He snuggles the babies as if they were his litter mates, despite the disparity in size. The only problem is that Neutrino’s eye didn’t heal all that well – he probably got an ulcer – and he seems to have bad vision in that eye (he falls down a lot, always the same way, on the side with the bad eye). The little guys’ eyes are clear, but it was just too tough for Neutrino.

(I know I look rough here – I’ve been a little unwell, but I’ve started getting tested for everything). Neutrino’s right eye might be like this permanently. It’s just so cloudy and misshapen. If you compare him to the kittens above, you can see he doesn’t fit in my hand as well anymore. He’s big, and getting bigger every day! I feel good about his future, despite the eye.

So, the whole kitten thing may not have gone as well as I had hoped. On the other hand, if I hadn’t lost Quark, I may not have been able to save these other babies. I do still have Neutrino, and I’ve given his mother another chance to be the great mother she started out being. While nothing this week has gone like I planned, with a little improvisation, I still managed to get something good.

The next stage

We’re in a strange season here in Colorado. Winter isn’t quite over, but Spring is fighting its way into existence. One day it will be in the 20′s or 30′s, snowing so hard that you can’t see more than a foot in front of you, but the next day it will be in the mid to high 60′s. It’s strange, but it gets us a jump on watering our lawn for the summer. Plus, you get really neat images like this one:

The snow that covered the skylight just a few hours before is now melting.

As the seasons change, so do the kittens. Unfortunately, Charge got sick, but her babies have been surviving well despite the exposure to a pretty rotten URI. I’ve been bottle feeding for at least four days now. The smaller kitten, Quark, has an eye infection, but antibiotic drops are making a big difference. The larger kitten, Neutrino, has no signs of his mother’s illness. In fact, both boys started walking today! They have crawled out of the nest before, right when their mother got really sick and couldn’t feed them. Kittens that small just don’t leave the nest unless they are hungry or neglected – it keeps them safe from predation. When they leave their nest in search of care, the little guys cry in such a way that anyone with even the faintest mothering instinct can tell that something is wrong. Today’s outing was different. They see me as “the other mommy” now – they purr for me, which doesn’t happen when the little ones are dependent on their mother. The kittens also come out of their nest to see me, hoping I’ve brought the bottle. I had not warmed a bottle for the babies when I went in to see them last, but I had filled a syringe with food for their ailing mother. While I fed her (she had to breathe between bites of food, so it took a long time), the boys just explored their world. They tried their rubbery little legs, leaning against my foot to stand up. After a few wobbly steps, they would fall over, frustrated and shaking from the exertion. They sniffed the food bowls and climbed into their litter box. They walked toward Michael and me in search of the elusive bottle. They licked mushy droppings from the syringe off of the floor. Those boys will be honest-to-goodness kittens soon!

As for the yarn side of things, I’ve also moved on to a new stage in the hand spun baby blanket.

I finished spinning all the yarn ,

ending with the light blue and undyed wool .

I began knitting the Moderne Baby Blanket (Ravelry Link), first with the green, then adding the blue.

The blanket looks a little uneven in the picture, but I assure you that in real life it is just fine. I think that attaching the new color distorts the work a bit, but as I add more sections, the green square will be pulled equally around, making it appear even again.

I noticed as I knit with my freshly spun yarn that it looks store bought for some stretches. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still a little thick-and-thin, but I am really happy with the way my yarns turned out. I hope I have some left when I finish the blanket so I can give it to Sara to play with!

I mentioned my observation to Michael while we were watching TV.

Me – “Look at this – it looks like real yarn!”

Michael – “That’s because it is real yarn.”

It looks like all that practice is paying off!

Spin you right round

I been spinning. Round and round the wheel goes, and occasionally, yarn comes out. The thing is, spinning in my house is much more difficult than you might originally think. I can boil the difficulty down to three words: I have cats.

Duck especially has been curious about my wheel. Every time he figures out I am spinning (it wasn’t hard for a while there), Duck runs into the room to interfere. He likes to put his paws in the spokes. He bites my drive band. On one particularly frustrating day, he put his head on the treadle while I spun.

I managed the fix the squeak, for what it’s worth. It turns out that the dry air here in Colorado is really tough on wood. In the winter time, all the wood in my house shrinks. Remember the floors I installed less than a year ago? Well, as soon as winter comes, the boards start to shrink. No big deal, I expected that. The thing is, I didn’t expect them to shrink as much as they actually do, and spaces have formed between the boards that are big enough to collect stray cat litter. I think next time I install wood floors it will be in the dry season. As for the wheel, the wood shrunk in such a way that the parts I screwed together got loose and made the wheel squeak when I used it. The dryness has also caused most of my bobbins  to just fall apart. It got really ugly when five ounces of green singles fell off the broken bobbin in a tangled heap.

I’m just glad that I managed to figure out the cause of the squeak, because it would have eventually driven me off the deep end. I am spinning so much yarn for Sara’s baby blanket that the noise might have bored a hole in my brain! As it is, I have managed to get some nice yarn off the now squeak-free wheel.

That cake of green yarn is probably the biggest one I have ever made. This includes store-bought yarn. Yes, I have been spinning that much. I have a light blue to make (one ply is pictured above with the purple singles), and I am going to add some undyed wool to the mix. I plan to put them all together to make this blanket (Ravelry Link).

So, that’s my current life: spinning yarn, repairing broken spinning wheel parts, and fighting off rogue kittens. Coming soon: furious baby garment knitting!

Where did all this come from?

I have been using the downtime of kitten season and the time I would have otherwise used to teach classes to catch up on the things I have gotten behind on. Priority number 1: housework. Number 2: Catching up on the Newspaper comics (I am currently on August 13. To be fair we have 2 newspaper’s worth of comics in the one paper that is currently surviving the newspaper downfall. That makes for 5 glorious pages of comics a day!). Number 3: Yarn and craft organization.

I focused on number 3 a little bit today. I went outside and used the white snow as a photo backdrop for the completed projects and  yarn I have accumulated in the last few months but have not yet put on Ravelry. As I looked at my storage in the craft room, I kept thinking that I was running surprisingly low on yarn. Heh. Not quite. I just hadn’t moved the new yarn and fiber in there. Here’s just what I photographed today:

Projects:

Michael’s Steelers Hat

Froot Loop Sock (Only 1 so far)

Ballband Dishcloth (My old dishcloths are wearing out, so I need to make several more. Can’t use store-bought ones after I’ve used hand-knit.)

I have more completed projects, but I still need to photograph them and I ran out of sunlight today – stupid short winter days.

Fiber:

I got this on Etsy from Freckle Face Fibers.

These were birthday gifts from Naomi, Kilala’s (Wisteria’s) mother. She now has an Etsy shop: Sheepy Kitty. The green one is “Melted Witch” – Falklands wool, and the purple one is “Good Witch” – Tussah silk.

Hands + Notions merino wool from one of my Urban Fauna trips.

Various merino wools I purchased from Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins to spin and knit into a baby blanket for one of my regular blog commentors.

Stuff I bought when I taught in San Francisco at the Bazaar Bizarre. From the Girl on the Rocks booth, (in order): Banana Bread (superwash merino), Haunted House (superwash merino), and Lavendar Frost (80% merino, 20% tussah silk).

Yarn (I’ll just put up pretty pictures. If you really want to know where I got it, check my Ravelry page sometime in the next few days):

This cashmere yarn will be an heirloom christening gown for Michael’s family.

Berroco Sundae, which I immediately made into a hat for Michael (the picture I took today was blurry, so I’ll try again tomorrow).

The blue yarn is Miski, and the red ones are Sulka. The Sulka yarns contain a small percentage of alpaca. I’m trying the immunity-by-exposure method of beating my alpaca allergy. Miski is 100% baby llama. Somehow, these are going to become a hat, scarf, and mittens combo for my brother, Robert.

Sock yarns (I had to make some of these pictures a little bigger so you can see them – one looks suspiciously like a turd if it is much smaller): Fannie’s Fingering Weight in Harvest, Chameleon Colorworks Bambino in Eggplant, Cherry Tree Hill Possum Sock in Birches,  Dream in Color Starry (with real silver sparkles!), and Creatively Dyed Yarn in Beaches.

And some random other stuff I bought because it was either pretty or because I am trying to expand my choice in color (I have a shockingly large amount of blue, green, pink and purple yarn. Not much red or orange – I despise those colors. I’m trying to take a more tolerant view. After all, who’s ever seen a purple pumpkin?)

Bengali

O-wool

GGH Safari. This is a Linen/Nylon blend. It is almost like suede to the touch.

And 3 cheap acrylics for a project for a friend (note the complete lack of fiber snobbery here): Red Heart Eco-ways in Cinnabar, TLC Essentials in Sandstone, and Caron One Pound in Lace.

So, yeah. Not running out of yarn. Not by a long shot. This little adventure makes me fear going through the other piles of things I’ve been meaning to sort. Maybe organization isn’t such a good thing after all…

Addition and Subtraction

Your favorite knitter/foster parent/blogger/insane do-it-yourself-er is finally back. The whole floor, trim, and most of the touch up painting is done, done, done. I feel so much better now.

I had a serious case of start-itis near the end of the flooring project. I think the stress and chaos of living in a construction zone made me want to escape, so I just kept starting new yarn projects. I even obsessed about plans to make a crocheted sock – my mind was racing with thoughts about how to construct the thing and how exactly I wanted to do the ribbing – to the point that I had to get out of bed one night and start crocheting. I guess when a muse takes notice of one of my ideas, she won’t let it go until we get into action. I think it would be most helpful if we took inventory of what is on the hooks and needles again.

Knittin’

1. Crocheted Sock – I am going to turn this one into a class. Unlike knit socks, I consider crochet socks to be an advanced beginner project. Yes, the hook is small (but you could make a worsted weight sock with a slightly bigger hook), but you only really need to know how to single crochet to start a sock. In my class I am going to teach skills like increasing, decreasing, and even how to crochet to fit. Socks are really great for teaching technique.

2. Mr. Greenjeans Cardigan – I really need to start layering now that I live somewhere it snows. It seems like a cardigan is the easiest way to get started.

(All of the following will be Ravelry links)

3. Two-in-one socks – I tried this technique, but it was so slow going that I had to admit I hated it. I separated the socks and began knitting them separately. I am much happier now, but I did learn that my gauge is much tighter when I knit double-stranded.

4. Robert’s Boot Socks – These are going to be much like kilt hose, but at the same time more plain. Robert is my brother in the Marines. He wanted a good pair of thick socks for hiking, and he really liked the pictures of some kilt hose I made in the past, so he asked for some. The thing is, I started it using Cascade 220. Somewhere after I made the first 20% or so of the first sock, I realized that I should have used a superwash yarn because the hiking will most likely felt the things. Does anyone know if Cascade Superwash comes in khaki?

5. Cat Couch – I started working on this project for the cats again when I started teaching classes. I really owe them something nice, and I now I’m starting to owe them lots of nice things for neglecting them. I am such a bad mom.

6. Beaded Deep Space – This is a Christmas project for a friend. I do hope to finish it for this Christmas, but it may have to wait for next. The long floor project robbed me of quite a bit of time.

7. Colorado Gloves – I am actually thinking of turning these into mittens or fingerless gloves. I realized that the fingers make it way too slippery to wear the gloves while knitting or driving, and they wouldn’t be nearly as warm as mittens.

I also took something out of my project list recently – the Earl Grey socks. I know now, without a shred of doubt, that I am allergic to alpaca. Sometimes when I help a client at the store, my throat starts to itch and then swell up. Every single time I ask the client what fiber she is using, it turns out to be alpaca. I was seriously crushed to learn this because alpaca fiber is incredibly soft and warm – as a matter of fact, it would make a great winter blanket. In the end, I rehomed this project and some unspun alpaca fiber to my friend, Julie. I know she’ll take good care of it.

Kittens

In the time when I was absent, the kittens continued to grow and change. Goose made weight, and I had to return her earlier than I expected. She is incredibly friendly. Too friendly. Every night since I got the Twilight kittens, she got to sleep with us. In the middle of the night Goosie would wake up so happy, purring and rubbing her face against mine and Michael’s. While it was perhaps the sweetest way to wake up, it was still waking up. Multiple times a night. I was a wreck.

I was completely flattered that Goose loved us so much.

Lambie is still with me. She had a lesion on her muzzle that looked suspiciously like ringworm. Since the shelter I currently volunteer for puts kittens with ringworm down (they are working to change that policy, just slowly), I had Lamb’s spot checked. What a mistake. She is still with me because the test came back positive even though the lesion cleared up within 3 days. As anyone who reads my blog regularly should know by now, no ringworm has ever cleared up that fast. Ever. While the vet agrees with me that it is probably a false positive due to cross-contamination, they have to wait until Lamb has a negative test to release her for adoption. The test takes 2 weeks for a negative result. I am leaving for a trip before that test comes back, so I was distressed. Fortunately, the shelter vet has a plan – they’ll treat her with lyme-sulfur and put her up for adoption with a note that she was possibly exposed to ringworm. It means she will be in a cage by herself, which makes me really sad. However, she is a black kitten. Nice as she is, people are superstitious about black cats, and the older she gets, the less adoptable Lamb will be. I cannot stand the thought that my baby will be overlooked because her coat is the “wrong” color. You could do a lot worse than Lamb. Lambie loves to give kisses, and she really loves yarn-based cat toys. And face it – she’s beautiful.

That Duck character – well, where do I begin. I’ve loved other foster kittens. I loved Carrot, who found a perfect home right before I left San Francisco. I knew when her new mother started to speak to me that Carrot was meant for her, the only person good enough for my baby. I loved Margo, a black momcat whom I fostered long before I started this blog. She has bright orange eyes, and she used to pull your face to hers with her paw so she would kiss you. She also had this pure joy that you couldn’t help catching. I loved Roman, the first foster kitten that I really had to fight to keep alive. He died in the end, but I thought if he lived that I might not be able to let go. I also loved Gareth, who survived Panleuk with some brain damage. He didn’t seem to have a good flight instinct when a situation was dangerous. He also couldn’t figure out simple obstacles like glass doors. He got into my entertainment center once, through an open glass door. The other door was closed. As Gareth tried to get out of the closed glass door, he started to panic. He threw himself against the glass, not noticing that there was  a way to freedom just inches away. He also panicked if he was alone. It was heartbreaking to realize what he was going through. I would have kept him, too, if a woman hadn’t come along who inquired about him, left the adoption center to really think through what she was getting into, and came back completely prepared to love him the way he needed.

Duck is like the others I’ve loved. He’s handsome. He has a very gentle personality, and nothing really bothers him. He has the innate joy that Margo had. I went through a lot to save him. On October 1, Michael took Duck to the shelter. At 4:00 that afternoon, after his neuter surgery, I adopted him. That’s right, I adopted my first foster kitten. I managed to resist the charms of 183 kittens, only to be suckered in by Duck. Save for a fight he started in his carrier the moment I signed the papers and handed over the adoption fee (Duck was recovering from the anesthesia, and we think he’s a mean drunk), Duck has continued to be the same, wonderful baby cat he always was. And now he’s mine.

The Twilight kittens are all still alive. I truly thought that Renee, at 197g and at least 3-4 weeks of age was going to die, but she is still alive. She’s still tiny, but she is bright and friendly and gaining weight, just a little at a time. Edward and Bella are alive and thriving, as are Jacob, Emmett, and Rosalie. Alice is struggling, but I think even she might survive. She looks awful, but she gains just a little weight most mornings. There will be more photos of them in the future, but they won’t be with me much longer. When we leave town, the kittens are going to other foster homes. They are off the bottle, so the healthier ones can go to any foster home. The little ones will need special care, though. These poor kittens came to me with giardia (I know, what a surprise). When the meds didn’t clear up the infection, the doctors found clostridium in their stool. This is another disease that people can catch, but not as easily as they can catch giardia. You might know other forms of clostridium: botulism, food poisoning, and tetanus. It is also responsible for lethal hospital infections, under the name of clostridium dificile. I think this may be what killed so many of my bottle-feeders in San Francisco. Luckily, there is a treatment – an antibiotic called Amphoral. I think I like that drug, given that it seems to save lives.

So, I believe that you are now caught up. If there is something I missed, please mention it in the comments so that I can be sure to update everyone. Feel free to raise your expectations to the previous level

Mystery

I love waking up to this every morning.

I love having 8 kittens to care for. I love bottle-feeding them, I love snuggling them, I love introducing them to new food, and I love watching them learn. There is a lot to love here.

But there is one thing I do not love. There is this mystery… thing… that has been plaguing my kittens. They seem fine, and then I come back a few hours later to a half-dead kitten. These kittens have been tested for bacteria, viruses, and whatever else the vets can think of. Nothing comes back positive. While I think it’s great that the kittens don’t have any recognizable diseases, it’s really terrible that there is nothing to treat either.

Friday night, just after midnight, Lamb went down. I came in to do the final feeding of the day, which involves Michael making rounds at the litter boxes. When he pulled back one of the boxes, Michael found poor Lambie, cold, barely breathing, and unresponsive to her world (I’ve learned that a veterinary term for that is “obtunded”). The thing is that the kittens make a full recovery by the next day. I don’t get it.

Duck has been looking kind of yucky lately, but at least he has had the decency to warn me that he might crash. He has been losing weight consistently and he’s had very low energy levels. I want to get him into the vet for another vitamin B shot. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to give him exclusive nursing visits with his mother. Theresa does still nurse the kittens, but I try to make sure that anyone who lost weight gets time alone with her. The catch is that she likes to lie on the narrow part of the counter, so I have to hold the kittens up to her to nurse – it’s exhausting!

In addition to the kittens, I’ve had a bunch of knitting and crocheting to do. I’m going to be teaching a few “Mommy and Me” classes at the yarn shop, so I had to make samples of the projects we are going to do.

This is the crochet scarf

and this is the knitted scarf.

I’m also going to be teaching some amigurumi classes next month, but I haven’t gotten to those projects yet.

I embarked on an ambitious spinning project as well. I wanted to spin enough yarn for a sweater, and then make a sweater pattern that will fit me, come hell or high water.

The yarn I came up with is a 3-ply, with 1 ply of a merino wool (the reddish brown color) and 2 of a merino wool/bamboo blend. It came out somewhere around a worsted weight. Since it’s handspun, it’s a little inconsistent, but the inconsistency isn’t terribly obvious. I’m going to knit it on size 9 needles. I tried size 6, but the fabric was just too dense. The challenge at this point is to find stitch patterns that help achieve the shaping I want, but that aren’t so complicated that they will be lost in the pattern of the yarn – it’s a little busy when it’s knit up.  You know, I should photograph the swatches. A project for later, I guess.

So, I have a few mysteries right now. Will all of my kittens survive their stay here? What is causing them to crash like they have been? Will I finally be able to knit a sweater that fits? Will it look good enough that I will wear it? Stay tuned for the answers.

Loose Ends

The last few weeks and the next few coming up are all about tying up loose ends. Sometimes literally

as in Carisa’ afghan,

but more often it’s been on the figurative side. I could have moved to Colorado months ago, or at least a few weeks ago when we closed on the house; instead, we chose to stay for Carisa’s 30th birthday party. Carisa’s whole family came to town from Green Bay, Wisconsin to help her celebrate. Carisa’s mom has been bunking with me. It was quite convenient at first with both of us making things for the party. After that was over, her mother and I just chatted like schoolgirls on a sleepover. We went to Stitches on Sunday (can you believe they wouldn’t let you take cameras in?). Today was my first day off from all the festivities -  Carisa took her family to see the Winchester Mystery House. I stayed at home to work on my gloves.

Not that I need them. Kyle, who is looking after our place until we get there, said it’s been in the low to mid 70s (°F, that is) this past week. It’s been in the mid 50s here. Hmm.

Carisa’s mom is a crafter like the rest of us. She loves to knit and crochet (she has been working on mittens while she’s been here), and she adored Stitches. We saw so many different fibers and fiber arts there. I learned about locker hook rugs (not that I need a new hobby, but I think one found me) and Naomi found the most amazing knitter’s purses. I think I need one, but given the price of them I think I need to put more consideration into the possible purchase. I bought a ton of yarn and fiber – I even found an 8oz. bag of cashmere fiber in a bin! When I brought it to Jamie at her Urban Fauna booth, she commented on what a good price it was. I felt awesome. At the end of our trip, Carisa and her mom presented me with a bag of wool locks as a thank you present for letting Carisa’s mom stay with me. Don’t tell anyone, but Carisa’s mom’s presence has been quite a treat for me – I can’t stop chatting with her.

Ah, that will be the last fiber show I see while I live here. I think in the future, fiber trade shows will be a reason for me to come visit my friends in San Francisco. Maybe I won’t have to stop going to them when I move.

It’s weird to realize “this is the last time I will do this” or “this is the last time I will go here.” It’s almost surreal. Moving East has always felt to me like the return to reality from a fairytale land. When I moved to Florida from Hawai’i it was a pretty cruel jolt, as a matter of fact. I had to wake up 5 hours earlier than I was used to so I could get to school. In Hawai’i, Fridays were shorter than the rest of the school week. In Florida, it was back to the old “every day’s the same” feeling. I don’t know, maybe I’m just strange, but leaving California gives me the same feeling of coming back to reality.

I thought for awhile I might have seen my last foster kitten in San Francisco, but just a few days ago I asked Toni to send some bottle-feeders my way. We still get the occasional orphaned kitten this time of year. The only catch is that the kittens have to be able to live in the crib I have for them – I have no kitten room any more. I still have not seen a kitten, but I have 3 weeks left. I must be crazy to be that lonely for kittens.

With no kittens, I feel I have very little to say. I mean, sure, I still do my fiber arts, but let’s face it – the knitting/crocheting isn’t half as cute as a fuzzy kitten face. The knitting doesn’t get sick or learn to walk for the first time. Thank goodness the knitting doesn’t poop, because with the way I let the projects run freely around my house, I’d have a mess. I don’t think it would be easy to litter train an afghan. The thing is, it doesn’t get out of bed and come happily running to see me when I open the door, either.

I am a glutton for punishment.