One Crazy Fiber Lady

I hope everyone had a good weekend.  The short people and I huddled in the house as the weather changed drastically.  The temperature dropped 30 degrees F on Saturday during which we had rain –> sleet –> snow.  Eew.  The kids played and I knitted.  The next installment in the FLAK (for which there is a new netring) was posted so it was time to finish the second swatch.

I finished it off, washed and blocked it.  While this picture is pretty cruddy, the stitch definition is very clear and the yarn isn’t quite that orangey in person.  I did cheat and let it dry on the laptop that lives in the kitchen.  It is a bit of a brick in that it is OLD, has no cd or floppy, but it does work and it does allow me to get away from the desktop, especially since I added the wireless router a couple of months ago. 

Back to FLAK, I like the cables and how they work together.  They all make changes on rows that factor with each other.  Okay, I know that makes no sense and I’m having a hard time explaining it in my own mind.  Maybe an example would be beter, the wave cable crosses on the same row as the 3/3 crosses in the center cables.  The honeycomb, braid and baby cable all are active on every row.  Halfway through the swatch I was able to put the chart away and just read the cables. 

I started the thing using one of those nasty little metal Boye cable needles.  While it works, the darn thing was very slippery and would periodically fall out of the work.  Not good.  I don’t like doing the cables without a needle for anything bigger than a 2/2 switch, especially with a somewhat blunt knitting needle and the tight gauge this pattern is calling for.  I dug out a short wood DPN that I used for most of the swatch and into the first of the two saddles.  Before sitting down to knit yesterday, I found in my basket ‘o fun a shorter nylon/plastic dpn that worked even better.  I finished the second saddle in almost no time.  Granted I have a small advantage, I’m small.  Mom took the necessary measurements for me on Friday.  I have a 14" shoulder width.  Awww.  Guess that does make me rather petite doesn’t it?  So with the width on the center cables section of 7", I needed to make saddles that together measured 7".  3.5" at 28 rows/4" really isn’t all that much knitting. I had one minor mess up on the braid cable, repeating the same row instead of the next action row as I had the distraction of having to pull one biting short person off the other one.  It was easily fixed as I hadn’t even finished the row yet.  Short people.  Ugh.

In other knitting news, I finished up the first of mom’s socks last night watching the season premiere of 24.  I so love that show and its nice to see it back.  Man did it start off with a bang.  Looking forward to two more hours of it tonight.  There are very few tv programs where I actually pay attention to them instead of just listening.  24 is one of them and the plain socks were the perfect knitting accompaniment to it.  Battlestar Galactica (an excellent episode on Friday night had me on the edge of my seat) and House are the other two shows that I actually seriously stop and watch.  Not much knitting during those except for the simple stuff that I can glance at every now and again.  I did work on the smoke ring (sorry, no updated picture) Saturday night while watching X-Men on FX.  I have to admit, it was more of a listening movie as I worked on the lace.

I’ll leave with some shorty zen:

Craft on.

Since I finished something (and the WIP list isn’t quite long enough yet) and I don’t quite have enough to keep me busy, I cast on something else last night.

This is a Natchaq (Smoke Ring) pattern that I’ve had printed out since 5/2001 (thank goodness for dates on web page printouts) meaning to make it.  Good thing I’ve printed it out as the website – The Qiviut Homepage – is now defunct.  You can use this URL (www.higharctic.bc.ca/natchaq.html) with the Wayback Machine to access the pattern if you want it.  The yarn is the Cherrry Tree Hill Laceweight Possum that I bought while out on the yarn crawl with Elaine this past summer.  It is a scrumptious blend of 40% merino/40% possum/20% silk at 480 yards/50g and is just divine to work with.  Being the good geek that I am, I just finished the progress tracking spreadsheet so that I might accurately post progress updates. 

So while I feel sorta guilty for starting something new, I feel good for using stash yarn.  Especially in light of my internal fight of yesterday.  I really really really wanted to make a nachaq/smoke ring and couldn’t find this pattern, which I vaguely remembered, anywhere on the net.  I did find a picture of this one that another blogger had knitted a while ago with a reference to searching for it at the WayBack.  Unfortunately, my company recently installed web blocking to various sites and sadly the Wayback is one of them.  That left me surfing where I found the Heartstrings pattern.  I was oh so tempted to go to Purl and see if they had it and oh maybe a skein of a nice laceweight to go with it.  Yeah, I know I have a crapload decent stash of laceweight, but I wanted something super soft and warm.. um cashmere.. for this.  I figure a nachaq would be excellent head/neck warmage for the mostly inside commute, but would need to be good and warm for the not inside portions.  Plus, yesterday was just gorgeous.  60F in January?  In New York?  Yeah, perfect time to go to a yarn store.  Anyway, I was good and stayed away, hoping that my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me.  After getting the twins down and giving the cats some dinner, I hit the pattern notebook and found right there on top the printout.  Sweet.  A quick peek into the yarn cabinet revealed the CTH laceweight sitting right there, with good yardage so I was off to the races.  By the end of ER I was well into the lace pattern.  I discovered this morning that the colors are perfect with my Land’s End parka.  Life is good.

And now for a moment of kitten zen:

Have a great weekend.

Craft on!

One.  One glorious finished object.  Ah ah ah. 

Yes, I’ve watched too much Sesame Street and count like, well, the Count.  Sadly, it seems the recent Count doesn’t count the way he used to.  Yes the numbers are in the same order, but the whole delivery has changed over the years.  That’s pretty sad, really, as I found his whole laughter and glorious thing quite amusing.  But you don’t make a stop here for my musings on Sesame Street now do you? 

I have my first finished object of this here new year.  I finished up the Multidirectional Scarf last night

I have to say, I really liked this little project.  Was a good way to get a start on the new year.  Full project information can be found in the album (I did a little organizing and now have a sep. album for 2006 projects and created links to the different albums in the sidebar).  I can totally get into this thing.  While not a huge scarf knitter, I can see the appeal to them.  It was perfect knitting for during lunch with the gang and while commuting.  Heck, I could even work on it while standing in Penn Station waiting for my track to be announced.  Oh yes, I’m back to taking the train from Penn Station rather than Hoboken for the duration of the winter.  It allows me to stay either inside or under cover from the time I leave my home station, rather than schlep two avenues outside.  The schlep is nice during warmer seasons and it is nice to have an option.  Though this is the same route I took for the first year and a half back after the twins were born, that I complained about pretty regularly last spring.  For the last week it has been acceptable, but they could be lulling me into a false sense of security.  Time will tell.

My order from Joann’s arrived last night so now I have this rather sizable box sitting around with ALOT of Plymouth Decor to make the Great American Aran Afghan (GAAA henceforth).  You’ll only have to put up with terribly lighted pictures for a little while longer.  I took advantage of the sale the Joann.com is having on OTT lights and purchased a floor lamp from them.

For the daily picture of the kitten, I present "Sara as couch accessory".  Only a cat can get that comfortable.  Only a persian can look that regal draped over the back of the couch.  This is where she sat as I finished up the scarf last night.  I had Earl lying on the couch next to me.  Looks like she’s settling in, doesn’t it?  The limb I went out on yesterday?  Rock solid and short as can be.  She and Earl were engaged in play last night.  Woot.  Life is good.

Craft on.

I’m tired.  Mom has been sick the last couple of days with what looked like pneumonia.  Fortunately, it is just a bad case of bronchitis, but it has left her pretty darn wiped out.  I’ve been making dinner for the family after work.  Only trouble is that I don’t get home until a little after 6 and then start the dinner thing.  Last night I made a chicken stir-fry that went over so well there were absolutely no leftovers.  It does make for a later dinner though and a later return home.  I didn’t get the kids in bed until 8:30 last night.  I still then had some work to do in my house and really didn’t park myself on the couch with the furry things and the knitting needles until almost 9.  At least a new episode of House was on. 

The Multidirectional Scarf in Noro progresses.  Doing the math, as of the end of my commute in this morning, I’m about 75% of the way through this thing.  It is very colorful.  I am having some issues with the Kureyon, but it is the same issue I usually have with a singles yarn.  Because of my rather unique knitting style (left-handed eastern uncrossed), I wind up adding twist to a standard singles yarn which gets pretty kinky if I don’t modify the way I usually feed the yarn.  It also means that I tend to untwist a plied yarn to some extent when I knit with that.  Generally doesn’t cause any kind of problem, but it does mean that a singles yarn doesn’t quite feel as nice as I would expect due to the extra twist.  At least the garter stitch keeps it from biasing all over the place.  Anyway, this bad boy should be done rather soon and I’ll whip out one of the Boogie hats to go with it.

Work on the cable swatch for FLAK proceeded last night.  It went a bit faster and a bit easier for a couple of reasons.  As the cables are all "moving" on related rows, i.e. the wave moves on the same row as the 6st cable cross of the center braid or the baby cable twists every other row, as does the little braid.  It makes for a busy texture that doesn’t take that many brain cells to track.  Considering I set up my coffee maker this morning and couldn’t figure out why the coffee was so light when I returned (forgot to put coffee grounds in the thing), I obviously don’t have very many spare brain cells these days.  The other bit is that I’ve returned to using a cable needle.  Previous projects have seen me cabling without a needle, but I’ve found that I’m fighting the yarn, the needles and the whole thing is not quite as enjoyable an experience as it should be.  Now the little metal cable needles are really no better of an experience.  Nancy (blog-less) suggested in a posting on the FLAK list using a toothpick or skewer, as they wouldn’t be quite so slippery.  I went digging in the cupboards last night.  While I couldn’t find the dopey toothpicks, and the skewer that I modified needed some more work, I did pull out from needle stash a short bamboo dpn to use.  Works beautifully and Elaine’s tucking the cable needle under watchband is also a wonderful solution to needle tracking. I apologize for darkish photo.  I only get a chance to shoot these things at night and I don’t have the best lighting about.  I am pleased at how well the cables are looking together.  I hope to finish this thing tonight and get it blocked shortly.

Now if you can stand more kitten photos….

I took these all last night.  Only a cat could stand on a drumcarder!  Note the now huge zipper bags full of yarn above the drumcarder.  I did a little organizing of the stash as I mentioned yesterday.  These bags full of a sweater’s worth of yarn is part of the results of said organization.  I also pulled a couple of skeins out of the yarn cabinet to otherwise dispose of, including that nasty second skein (4oz) of Recycled Sari Silk (seen amongst the stash acquisitions here) that I totally despised during the KAL I led last year.  Some folk really like it and that’s a good thing.  It would be a very boring world if we all liked only the same things.  But that does leave one skein of yarn in my stash that I despise.  Trade anyone?   I’m also happy to see Sara rubbing up against Earl as she did here.  Earl tried to engage her in some play last night as I heard him trill and then run in/out of the room.  She’s been hunkering down in stalk/pounce mode, but I’ve yet to see her take him up on the invite.  It probably is just a matter of time and I would suspect that I see them playing by the end of the upcoming weekend. 

Craft on!

Thanks to everyone for their warm welcomes to the new furry baby that joined my household and the fabulous name suggestions.  The monkeys and I finally settled on a name for her, that is not surprisingly the one that came to me as I was typing my last post (and I pick on the kids for their stream of consciousness speech!):  Serendipity.  We’re calling her Sarah for short.

I do so love the macro mode on my camera combined with the seriously sleeping kitten.  She was out cold on my desk Sunday evening when I snapped a few shots of her.  This one is my favorite.  I love the little tip of her tongue sticking out.  I gave her a combing last night to get her used to the process.  Start em young, isn’t that the way to do it?  Maybe I shouldn’t do it though when she’s at her friskiest   I see in our future some lovely apricot colored hand-spun yarn, when she’s a tad bigger and producing loads more fiber.  What I combed off her last night wouldn’t fill a thimble, even mine (a size 2.5 Roxanne’s)!  She’s fitting in very nicely and has quit hissing and growling at the other cats.  She and Duchess even shared the breakfast bowl yesterday before one of them discovered that there was a second bowl about.  The twins totally dig her.

My Peruvian Highland arrived yesterday for the FLAK.  Excellent timing as I spent some time recently looking at alternate cables for the center panel.  The original pattern has three horseshoes separated by baby cables.  Very lovely, but I’m not a huge horseshoe fan and I wanted something different.  I do love the Saxon braid but wanted something different.  I did a little surfing and turned up the braid that was used by the Knitlist during the A.R.A.N project a while ago.  It is an easily memorized pattern that should go well with the other cables that Janet has put together for the FLAK.  Having swatched the moss stitch last week on the black PH that I had leftover from Ribby, I knew where to start for the cable swatch.  I plunked down on the couch last night with several copies of the cable charts, tape, scissors and went about creating a large "chart" that had all the cables side by side.  This thing is 22 inches long, but it did make it worlds easier to get a start on it.  The cables all work nicely together mathematically as they all cross on the same row, odd rows are knit the knits and purl the purls.  So over my 100 stitches, I have all my cables and filler stitches so I’ll be ready for the next step in customizing the sweater to fit me.  I made it through 8 rows last night before deciding I really needed to get to bed.  I fell asleep with a tiny little furball purring loudly on the pillow next to me.

In other knitting, while I’ve put this in the sidebar, I still don’t have pictures of it.  Saturday I started the Multidirectional Scarf using the Noro Kureyon that I bought last year at the opening of Majestic Yarn.  I’ve seen this scarf in a number of places and since I decided I wanted something different out of the Noro, the scarf would be perfect.  I’m not a huge scarf knitter so its not like I’m churning these things out.  I have three skeins of it and finished the first one off yesterday on the way home from work.  I think I’ll only use two for the scarf and make a coordinating hat out of the third. 

Okay, I’m weak.  I have a bad shopping problem.  I was reading an email list, probably the FLAK, where a discussion about acquiring yarn, and bargains could be found.  There was a link (don’t click if you’re weak like me) to a site where I found bargains indeed. Now I’ve seen this sweater on a whole host of blogs and have coveted it.  I covet no longer.  I caved and bought a bag of Kureyon in shade 55.  I think the colors are subtle enough and the price, just couldn’t be beat.  It’s a special order so if it doesn’t get here in a while, that’s just as well, I do have other things to keep me busy for a bit.  I just had to have it! 

I made a serious discovery last week.  I was doing some cleaning and organizing in my living room, especially the yarn area and near my desk.  I came upon a collection of bobbins, woolee winder bobbins to be precise.  Except, I wasn’t entirely sure which wheel they were for as while they looked just like my Lendrum bobbins, they had fiber on them that I never spun on the lendrum.  Yeah, I have a trivial memory like that.  Not really sure of what I did an hour ago, but yup, I know I spun that CVM roving from Little Barn Farm that I bought at Rhinebeck 2004 on the Womack.  Scary huh?  But there it was standing next to the collection of Lendrum WW bobbins.  You know what?  They are the SAME.  SUPER SWEET.  Only Tina’s WW bobbins are different, which is okay really. 

I have done a little spinning recently.  I find that when I’m at my most twisted-up-inside that there isn’t much that unwinds me.  Knitting doesn’t do it, I can’t concentrate to read and a variety of other things just don’t work.  What unwinds me?  Transferring that twist to something else. After that horrible day during my so-called vacation where everything in the house had pushed me so far that I posted the vitriolic, foul-languaged post, I sat in front of my wheel, with my boxset of season 1 of 24 and spun.  Tina had been empty and I had that lovely colored peach stuff from Cummington.  Over the course of two nights, I filled up two of Tina’s bobbins, one with the merino/tensel blend not too well displayed in this picture, and the other with the solid peach merino.  This picture was a test picture with the camera in my nifty new telephone.  It was the crappy light through my northern exposure window, pretty early in the day, mixed with the crappy interior light.  Please believe that it is gloriously beautiful and not this scary shocking color here.  {Shudder}.  And yes, I’m still drinking TaB

Last but not least, there was a bit of a viewing catastrophe over the weekend.  The short people are really into The Big Comfy Couch these days.  I’ve programmed the beloved ReplayTV unit to record and hold some 5 episodes.  Wednesday there was some kind of hiccup with the unit where I had to reset it’s program guide and I think I might have selected the wrong cable option.  Bad.  All other programs (well except the Teletubbies) recorded fine, it was the ones on WLIW 21, a PBS channel that got futzed up.  Figures that is where Tubbies and "NuNu" (they can’t say Lunette) live.  I got quite a surprise when I dialed up the BCC from the playback menu and found horse-racing instead.  Seems instead of WLIW being on channel 21, channel 72 was.  Sigh.  I had exactly ONE episode of BCC all weekend.  They watched it over and over and over again.  NO episodes of Tubbies at all were left for them, just infomercials and horse-racing.  Naturally they didn’t want to watch the bajillion episodes of BoohBah we had as that was so last week.  Short people!  I’ve now fixed the problem with the ReplayTV and we are back to getting what we expect on channel 21.  I’ll have to bounce some down to DVD so we don’t go through this again!

Craft on!

…introducing the newest member of the family, pssst what’s your name?  Oh?  Okay.  We’ll get back to you on that. 

Currently going by the name of "Muffin", though it doesn’t seem regal enough for a purebred Persian, and doesn’t fit in with the remainder of the names:  Duchess of A’Rat and Earl Grey.  We’re working on it. Muffy joined the family today.  She’s 10 weeks old and is just adorable.  Raised in a house with other cats, dogs and 5 children, this place should be fine for her.  She’s a very cute little thing.  Who puffed up, growled and hissed at very sweet Earl Grey.  I don’t think the two girls have seen each other.

She’s making herself at home.  Having been here less than 3 hours at the time of this posting, she’s eaten, napped and defended the world from a maniacal green crayola crayon.  You can see her stalking the crayon around the spinning wheels.   She’s currently napping in the cat carrier while the twin terrors of destruction wreck a swath of debris through the living room instead of nap. 

She is serendipity, hmmm maybe that’s a name for her.  I was on the phone with the vet’s office on Wednesday getting the final blood titer when the nurse asked if I was looking specifically for a long hair cat.  Long story short, she put me in contact with another client of the hospital who was looking for homes for 4 kittens.  The twins and I headed over this morning to get a look at them and I had a heck of a time trying to choose from amongst them.  All are girls, one light grey, one dark grey, one calico and this orange tabby.  Offspring of purebred persians.  I narrowed it down to the calico and the tabby.  The tabby was the most active of the bunch and with my love of tabbies, she was my choice, though not an overly easy one. 

One door closes and another opens.  Welcome Muffin, Countess, Princess, Serendipity.

Craft on.

All quiet on the eastern front.  Still no fallout from telling the twins.  Whew.  I was truly sweating that, but I do think that Cate was right in her comment, they fed off my reaction and since I was sad, they were sad.  I had gotten past the point where I couldn’t think about Baron, let alone talk about him, without falling to pieces.  Things get a bit better each day.

There has been knitting going on around here.  Sort of.  First, I did sneak in one more item in 2005. The Boogie Hat that I knit him turned out to be too short.  I needed to add some length to it.  I figured I could just pick up some stitches along the cast on edge and add a few inches of ribbing.  It looked silly.  Then I figured, I could rip back the top and add a few pattern repeats for a taller hat.  Ugh.  I must have been using different needles, but I had all sorts of problems with the yarn splitting, blah blah blah.  I got pissed off at it and wound up flinging the works across the living room. Yeah, grown up.  Fortunately the monkeys were napping and didn’t see my tantrum.  At least they come by it naturally   Anyway, still pissed, I pulled out the ballwinder and did a bit of surfing for a good, quick, basic pattern.  Found one quickly and got down to serious knitting.  This one fits.  Heck it fits everyone, Alexander included!  Project details are over here.

This is the Diamond Fantasy Shawl that I started back on 12/23.  I worked like gangbusters on it for a while, until I started feeling guilty about the hat and the belated socks for mom.   I’m using Fleece Artist Merino in the Ruby Red.  I love the yarn and the pattern.  I wrote out each row of the chart on an index card and keep the pile in a clear index card container that I picked up a while ago.  Perfect solution as I was having, um, concentration issues with the charted pattern while the short people were out and about.  The worst I have to do now is beat up on a toddler who makes off with the card box periodically.

Finally in the new works in progress category are the socks for mom.  I wrapped a skein of yarn, Happy Trails in Blueberry, and gave her that for the holidays, along with the gauntlets.  I can’t exactly remember when I cast on for the socks during vacation.  All the days blur into each other.  I fudged the date in the WIP list just to put something there.  It could have been before, or after, I can’t be sure at the moment.  I really didn’t get working on them until Tuesday when I went back to commuting!  I finished the short row heel during lunch.  If I hadn’t gotten sucked into the Sudoku puzzle in today’s paper, I would have gotten further during my commute home.

Some kid cuteness is probably called for at this point.  I can FINALLY put Kat’s hair in ponytails.  Well sometimes anyway.  She’d rather be scraggly most of the day.  Well she decided she wanted two ponytails this evening before dinner.  Naturally I obliged this wish as she just looks adorable with them.  Not surprisingly, her brother wanted ponytails too.
Doesn’t my dad just look so thrilled???  Boy kept them in until I took them out as I changed him for bed.  He wasn’t happy about that either.  Toddlers are just weird. 

I’ve been posting at night this week as I’m working on a pretty big project coding a new component at work with a deadline of tomorrow.  I finished the bulk of the work this evening and have a few finishing touches to do tomorrow.  I’ll make deadline and still be able to get out a smidge early to pick the kids up at daycare (folks are going out and won’t be able to).  In the interim though, I haven’t been able to spare the time to do the blog thing (or the email thing, or even read other blogs) during the day.  I am so hoping to catch up with all my bloglines this weekend as I’m still behind from vacation, let alone new posts this week.  I sadly might have to just start fresh as it is a bit daunting at the moment.  Okay, I’m off to answer another batch of emails, clean the kitchen and maybe sneak in some knitting before bed.

Craft on!

To say that I am immensely touched by the outpouring of support over the loss of Baron from everyone is an understatement.  Thank you everyone.  Your comments have been invaluable in helping me mourn Baron and move towards a healthy healing.  I must add that I’m constantly surprised by this community and how absolutely wonderful it is.  I’m honored to be considered a part of you all.  I’m slowly working my way through answering each and every email and comment to thank you individually, but I do hope this public thank you, and I do thank you very very much, will suffice in the short term.

All the advice on how to break it to the twins was very much appreciated.  Honesty is the best policy and the old KISS adage does really apply to dealings with children.  I wanted to tell them the truth, but in a way that they could grasp a bit of it without scaring the hell out of them.  Kat asked about Baron this morning on the way to breakfast after seeing Duchess and Earl in my bedroom.  I sat them both down and explained:

"Baron died and will not be coming home.  He was very sick with something that only cats get.  So sick that the doctors couldn’t make him all better.  Its okay to be sad, mommy is sad.  We’ll hang his picture on the refrigerator and say goodbye to him."

They took it in stride. Surprised me at how well they did without any question either.  But there seems to be no fall out from it so far.  Thanks to you all, and getting over this initial hurdle, I’m pretty sure I’m ready for any questions that they might have in the future.  Thank you again!  If you can stand a tad more on this front, I talked with the doctor’s office this morning and the final blood titer had come in and the FIP diagnosis was as confirmed as it could be without doing a necropsy.  While on the phone with the office, I mentioned I had talked with the breeder and that she’d had other FIP losses.  I also mentioned that she offered me a replacement kitten at half price.  The wait would be a while as she’d just mated a pair, 9 weeks gestation followed by 16 weeks of rearing before adoption.  Sounds like good healing time, right?  Except the stud used is Baron’s father.  Gorgeous boy, but from what I’ve been able to tell, the ability to fight off the mutant FIP virus is genetic.  I think I’d rather not get another kitten from the same family tree.  I’m not a glutten for punishment, all appearance otherwise   Anyway, the nurse asked if I was looking for a long hair specifically as another patient of the practice had 4 kittens that she was trying to find homes for.  They were gorgeous and had just been in for shots and checkups.  Long story short, I have an appointment on Sunday to check out the kittens.   I heard the word himalayan kitten bandied about.  Ooooooh.   

Not to change subjects and at the risk of sounding like a bad mother, but OH MY G-D, two weeks with 2 year old twin toddlers is TOO LONG.  I’m freakin’ exhausted!  Damn.  Work is easier.  They move around incessantly.  They talk incessantly now.  Hell, I had to chase Kathryn through Barnes & Noble last week because for some unknown reason, I’m developing an allergy to the stroller.  Not sure why I’m so eager to get away from the minimal amount of confinement it offers, but there it is, I’m encouraging them to hold my hand and walk through stores.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  Was pretty good last week, especially when we weren’t in a rush to get someplace but in meander and waste time mode.  Oy.  I don’t know how any SAHM’s do it.  My hat is off to you ladies!

Okay, true to my nature, I bought me some yarn.  I finally settled on something to use for the Great American Aran Afghan.  Thanks to a suggestion by blogless Heather, I honed in on the Patons Decor as we would prefer this blanket be "Mr. Wishy Washy" friendly.  I took advantage of a big old coupon that Joann.com sent me, their sale on the stuff, discount for 8+ quantity and the free shipping I’d had for most of the year and picked up the Country Blue before year end. 

As if I had nothing else to do {snicker}, I joined the Follow the Leader Aran Knitalong.  I liked the idea of doing my first Aran in this manner.  Naturally I don’t have any yarn in stash to do it.  So I just had to order more.  Right?  Besides a little retail therapy was called for today, and I’d finally decided on a color.  What did I get?  Peruvian Highland in Arizona Clay.  I can’t wait to see the color in person.  It is gorgeous on my monitors!  I’ll probably start swatching using the leftover Peruvian Highland from Ribby so I can be ready when the yarn arrives.   I just have to find where I stashed it.  I hope it hasn’t migrated too far back into the yarn cabinet. Yup, needed more yarn and another project.  Yup, yup, yup.

Mom got a wrapped skein of yarn and a promise for a pair of socks for Hannukah.  I finally was able to get them started, after reknitting the hat for dad.  That’s a story for another day though.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll have pictures of the hat, the socks and finally the Diamond Fantasy Shawl – which is now through 4 of the 6 repeats.  I have a ton of things to do yet tonight so I’m going to close here.  Thank you again to everyone who commented and again my pledge to thank you in individually is repeated. 

Craft on.

While I had planned for my first post of the year to be filled with updates of my so-called vacation (yes the trampoline lost its gloss very quickly and I barely hear it anymore), how I did do some knitting, how I spent alot of time amazed at how verbal my monkeys have become. Not to mention finally being able to reply to a serious backlog of emails. All that changed yesterday.  It is with a heavy heart that I now report the unexpected death of my beloved Baron.

Sunday morning I noticed that he seemed a bit less energetic, a little less than enthusiastic about the delish canned food that I had opened for the feline trio, and that his spectacular coat didn’t look as glamorous as it normally does.  While not gross, it was kinda clumpy in sections.  I spent Sunday keeping an eye on him, keeping him near me in his normal place on the couch.  It was then that I noticed he’d lost some weight.  Over the course of the day, I managed to get him to eat a little cat food, some tuna, some yogurt, but not very much so I repeated frequently.  (I’ve previously lost a cat to hepatic lipidosis — a horrible disease usually in very overweight cats that they wind up stop eating and fat builds up in their livers, leads to a pretty swift decline.)  I didn’t want him to go without food so I kept at it.  Earl curled up on the couch with Baron after the twins went to bed and I found the pair still together Monday morning.  Unfortunately, Baron had become far more lethargic and I called the vet and had him there ASAP.  A quick weigh in revealed he’d dropped from 8lbs in August to 6lbs 4.5oz.  Not huge numbers, but for a little guy like him, that’s awfully big, sudden weight loss.  He was a bit jaundiced, very lethargic and just lay upon the doctor’s scale without moving much, and breathing pretty shallowly.  The vet took him in on outpatient status for x-rays of his chest, full feline virus blood work panels, subq fluids and an appetite stimulant.  I was to return between 3 and 5 to pick him up and get the initial results.  Sadly, at 3:15pm, while I was on my way to the vet’s office, I got a terrible call on my cell phone.  Baron had just passed.  All test results point at FIP – feline infectious peritonitis – as the underlying cause of death.  The diagnosis has stopped me from kicking myself for not seeing anything earlier, not getting him to the vet earlier.  I try and think back to see if there were other signs that I just ignored, that I should have picked up on.  I do thank him for sparing me from having to make that tough decision. 

I miss the little guy.  So does Earl Grey.  Markedly so.   Baron was acquired as a companion kitty for him after Casanova’s death last February.   After a mourning period for all of us, we’ll be getting another kitten to hopefully be a companion for Earl and tolerant, nay friendly to the twins.  I don’t know whether I want another Birman.  They are gorgeous wonderful creatures and the breeder has put me at the top of the wait list with an offer for a replacement at 1/2 price, but I just don’t know, the Birmans seem to have a higher sensitivity to FIP.  Yes, lightning could strike twice. 

I haven’t told the twins yet.  I’ve been doing some research on how to explain the loss of a pet to a young child.  From what I’ve found, the best approach is to be honest with them without using euphemisms.  None of the "he went to sleep" stuff as they’ll never go to sleep willingly again.  I’m seriously open to any and all suggestions on how to break the loss of a beloved buddy to a 2 year old.

Its just all so unfair.  He was all of 14 months old.  Still a baby in my book.  He was the friendliest little guy, as recent house-guests (Chris, Elaine and Nancy) could probably attest.  He seemed to love everyone equally, sharing time with the kids, me and Earl.  He’d often have to be rousted from Kat’s bed so she could go to sleep and one of the reasons their door is closed when they are asleep was because Baron would climb in with Kat and wake her.  I’m going to miss this gorgeous and sweet little goof. 

Pennyrock’s Baron Belgareth
Born:  10/31/04
Died:  1/02/06
A bright star that burned out too fast.  Thank you for gracing our lives for the short time that you did.  You’re going to be missed.