February

Out with the old....

And in with the new...

Who knew I had so many stitches for Valentine's? I was pleasantly surprised when I went digging to switch out my little basket here!

They might have to stay in there for quite some time though because I really have nothing for spring time smalls. Not sure how that happened either (I don't hate rabbits?!? Or spring flowers?!?) but I might have to buckle down and get some finishing done if I want to keep up with this basket this year. :)

I am perpetually out of sync with the seasons with my projects though.

Case in point I *just* finished this little guy I started last Thanksgiving. 

Well, I'm all set for NEXT Thanksgiving, I guess.  It really was delusional of me to think I would get it done for last year, seeing as I started it just a few days before the holiday. This is only the second biscornu I've done, which is a shame because they are super easy to do.

(Designer is Barbara Ana, which you could probably guess because she has a distinctive look.)

Getting anything done the last few weeks has been difficult as there has been a literal plague hitting my house. We got a bad batch of cat food (I believe) and ALL FOUR CATS were violently ill in turn for days at a time. It was disgusting but, thankfully, they all seem to have come through it okay. (I think it helped that I mix two foods together so they didn't eat a full portion of whatever one was tainted.)

Then we went to see Fleetwood Mac, which was amazing - until I came down with the flu about 48 hours later. Dirty, dirty public places! UGH! I should have covered myself in Purell every time I touched a handrail. My bad. :(

I promptly gave it to the husband, of course, but at least he was about 4 days behind me so we didn't both have a high fever at the SAME time. That would have been real bad with both of us flat-out in bed at the same time. Heh. 

Man though, when does the nagging cough end? It's been almost two weeks now and I'm still sipping the prescription cough medicine like it's a crack pipe. *cough*cough*cough* So annoying. 

On the upside, you can't catch the flu twice............right? God, PLEASE TELL ME you can't catch it twice. :(

November!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! Almost missed my picture post for November!! *scramble*scramble*scramble* 

Getting in just under the wire. :)

(This post was a real labor of love, too, because I hit something on my keyboard in the middle of it that split all the paragraphs and symbols into gobbledy-gook and, well, it took some doing to figure out how I had screwed THAT up. Turns out ctrl-alt-something will change the formatting of your keyboard to.......something that does not benefit an English only speaker. Ha!)

 Hope everyone in the US had a nice Thanksgiving.  I cooked a lot......and ate a lot. So two thumbs up for the holiday from me! (Also: watched some movies I've been meaning to get to, like Catching Fire, that I never make time for.) 

 (Much better Youtube link)

The husband was  a little more pro-active than me, as he participated in a bike run through the woods in the morning, put on by the local bike shop. (Which is also a fledgling beer company. Beer and bikes! That's aweso.......wait, what? I'm not sure they thought that one out. lol)

I will admit I was still sleeping when he got back from the run. 6am on a holiday? NOT ON YOUR LIFE. lol) 

 No crazy Black Friday shopping for either of us. Not my scene, I have to say.

Went to a not-at-all-local show up in Mass. instead and got some handmade gifts for others and a couple for myself, like Mr. Sheep here. Not sure where I am going to put him yet but I couldn't pass him up!

  

 It's been an insanely busy month because beads, beads, beads, and more beads. Every day a new pile of beads made, packed up and shipped out. Thankfully, December is a little easier because that month has more to do with personal sales (gifts, etc.) than designers loading up for their holiday shows. Just keeping my head down and plugging away at it, trying not to think TOO much about where/when I'm going to knit up some gifts for Christmas. Heh.

All the pretty 'leafs' are gone for the year now. :*(

I enjoyed snapping pics of the nice ones in my travels. I love when they look like they are on fire.

'Stitches East' socks............put to bed. 

Trekking XXL striping yarn. Fruit Stripe Gum pattern.....again. 

It's so much fun I make have to make a dozen socks in this pattern before I'm tired of it. (Pair #3 is already completed, but not photoed yet, and pair #4 is in the very, very, very early stages of being completed.)

Tomorrow is a very exciting day because...

...I finally get to start my David's Tea advent calendar!

You have to get these the SECOND they come out if you want to grab one so I've been staring at this big box for a whole month now, trying to wait until December 1st. Soooo hard! I love advent calendars in general but one that gives you a little tin of special tea every day? Ho, ho, ho!  *fans self*

I got the winter collection at the same time to keep me busy or otherwise I never would have made it. Never. Ha! :)

(Not an actual Grumpy Cat. Sweetest, Gentlest Thing Ever Cat.)

Meisha is still doing ok, so that is a good thing. Her levels are worse every time we test for them (grr!) but she still doesn't have any major symptoms. 

 I got her a new doctor, someone who can devote a little more time/energy to a rare case. Did another whole round of various tests and there is still no cause to be found for her hypercalcemia. (It's certainly not for lack of trying, that's for sure.) The testing was great overall though because her kidneys and joints showed no calcification yet, which is AWESOME. She's the healthiest terminally ill animal you've ever seen! SO FRUSTRATING! @$!@$!@#$

*ahem*

I gets angry sometimes. Just saying.

Someone pass me a holiday cookie to distract me. 

See? I feel better already. Eating your feelings WORKS, guys. 

IT WORKS. Never forget that. Heh.

An update of sorts.

I haven't much felt like updating this spring (obviously, since it's been so long), for reasons I'll save until the end of this to delay the depressing part, but things aren't all bad.

I'm quite happy that *my* hawks are back this year and in the nest above my bedroom window that they built last year. This picture is a couple weeks old now (probably from my deck around Memorial Day weekend) but you can see momma up there doing her thing. Exciting!!!!!!!!!!! :)

Last year we didn't get chicks. (The parents had a big fight with a pack of crows one afternoon while still brooding and then they never came back to the nest after that.) I was obsessed with watching them come and go at such close quarters and took it quite badly when it came to an end so quickly. So this year I've tried not to get too attached. *ahem* 

My patience has been rewarded though because this year we have two chicks! At first you could only see the occasional fuzzy wing flapping up but, as of a week or so ago, they are now regularly waddling around the edges of the nest and staring down at the house, trying to make sense of things. 

The leaves have filled in on the trees now (FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!) so picture taking is difficult but they look a lot like this picture from the internet. (I can still see them from different parts of the deck.) A little less fuzzy each day and a few more feathers and awareness. Should be no time at until they are starting to fly around.  I will truly miss them when they are gone but there is always the chance the parents will be back next year. FINGERS CROSSED. (Fact: There is no point at which I would be bored, blase, or not over the moon at hawks nesting in my yard. Ever. It's cool to infinity.)

(Also a fact: the husband and I are too dumb to figure out what kind of hawks these are. We thought sharp shinned last year but they are MUCH too big in size for that I've now decided. They are like full sized turkeys roosting in a tree. So possibly red-shouldered hawks? WHY IS THIS SO HARD FOR US??????????)

The husband continues on with his weaving. We are AWASH in scarves here. What the bloody hell am I supposed to do with it all? They just keep coming and coming. (He's finished TWO more since this picture as well.) I should set up an Etsy shop for him but I'm exhausted at the thought of it and can't quite manage it yet. (It's not as easy as all that as I have no choice but it roll it into my own online business, which changes everything I currently do for resale taxes, property taxes, income taxes, etc. UGH. They do NOT make things easy for people who WANT to do the right re: small businesses. /end rant)

What the scarf god gives, he also takes away.

 I finally came to terms that my Vail scarf is unwearable in it's current form. The yarn is too light and airy to be a scarf. It has no structure and a scarf that lies like a dead thing is a useless scarf to me, considering how cold the winters are here. After two years of using it not even ONCE, I bit the bullet and...

...unraveled it. Bye bye hours and hours of knitting. Painful, but no less painful then it's useless scarf-like state. /shrug. That's the thing about knitting with natural-based yarns - you can generally just unravel them and start over again. (If you have the balls to do it, that is. :)) Oh, it looks like a bunch of crazy hair doll there but a long soak in the sink and hanging to dry on a plastic hanger for a few days....

..and it's right back to being normal and ready for something else. I'm not quite clear what the something else is at the moment but I am glad not to have that beautiful LOOKING (but useless) scarf making me feel bad any longer.

As far as the badness.....well. My sweet, gentle, baby Meisha is dying. That sounds overly dramatic written out but I honestly don't know how to pretty it up. 

There has been a lot of testing over the last few months, with both good and bad results. A bit of confusion. (The vet has never actually had a case of idiopathic hypercalcemia in his practice so we're figuring things out about how to proceed together.) Her soft tissue is being mineralized as calcium builds up throughout her body. There is no cure but there are things that can help some cats. We're doing injections of B12 at home for a few months to see what happens with that. So far, I am not optimistic but there are many months and many more injections in The Currrent Treatment Plan. There is no way of knowing how long she has. (Months? A year?) Her kidneys could give out and give us no options or they could hang in there and leave it to us to decide when the pain is too much, or the anorexia is too much, etc. She seems on this side of 'ok' and more thin than 'sickly' for the moment but things are changing from week to week. This week we are adding in an ulcer medicine, for reasons I don't want to get into because it's depressing. It's all depressing (I AM depressed...or my soul is depressed) but what can you do? You do a bit of face down crying, get over it, get on with things, and get used to the new normal. (The new normal sucks though. Just to be clear. I want my old normal back. Sigh)

Booooo?

Poor neglected Blogger. :(

I  have been really sick lately though. *cough*hack*cough*

Though I feel MORE bad for the husband than for me. Poor guy. Ended up spending our 22nd anniversary in the hospital - for me. (Where no food was served. Worst anniversary dinner ever. lol)

It wasn't all bad that day though because, in addition to some other things, he gave me a trio of worry warts as a gifts:

Photo credit to Blobhouse because, really, I can't promote her stuff any better than this. It's PERFECT.

How prophetic! Ha! We had laughed and laughed over Blobhouse's whole Etsy shop a while back but especially the worry warts. Those faces SLAY me. (I love EVERYTHING in that shop though. Seriously.) But I hadn't forgotten about them since then so I really did love being surprised with my own warts. 

And then the day after the hospital (which came with some new meds and more doctor appointments to line up) I started to come down with a vicious head cold that, two weeks later, I'm still dealing with. Duh, right? OF COURSE ALL THE SICK PEOPLE ARE AT THE HOSPITAL. IT'S PAR FOR THE COURSE YOU WILL CATCH THE PLAGUE THERE. Cue even MORE ferrying about to doctor appointments and more testing and it's all so MUCH FUN, I can't even. (Nothing definitive yet but beta blockers seem to be helping even without knowing the cause of my heart issues and I have some nifty tranquilizers that scare the crap out me that could be helpful but, honestly, I'm too scared of them to take them.) 

Oh hey, did I mention he was on vacation this whole time too??? I brought down our anniversary AND his vacation. Go me? Heh.

In between me snotting and coughing (and being passed out from sipping from a Nyquil bottle 24/7 because it's the only thing that WORKS now that the meth-heads have stolen the good cold medicine from us) we did manage to get out a couple times though. Once to New London to see an art installation at an American art museum on Louis Tiffany. No pics (see: sick) but it was definitely worth the trip. (This state has more bloody "New" cities than it can shake a stick at though. I think it was New London? Hell, it could have been New Britain. I WAS SICK. AND NOT PAYING ATTENTION. Also, there are a million city and towns here that start with 'New'. lol)

But the real prize was a trip to.....

The Bronx Zoo.

YOU CAN JUST DRIVE THERE? It never occurred to me before but.......YOU TOTALLY CAN.

The impetus for this was an ad I saw in the paper here for a bus trip back in July. That date didn't work for me but it got me thinking....YOU CAN DRIVE THERE FROM HERE. So we did. 

2 1/2 hours down and pretty much traffic free - no complaints at all!

(We will not talk about the drive back because the 95 once you get BACK into Connecticut is the most miserable stretch of epically awful traffic every_single_time_we_do_it_no_matter_the_time_of_day and GAH! Why is it so bad? It's like a 25 mile stretch of HELL. It's literally like falling into a wormhole and coming out into HELL. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Man, I am *so* glad I don't live anywhere near that end of the state.)

Anyhoo - BRONX ZOO. YAY. Totally a bucket list thing for me. It's one of the world's biggest zoos, in operation since 1899 with some of the original buildings from wayyyy back still in use. (The architecture alone is beautiful.) If you love zoos, how could you not want to go? 

Verdict? It was awesome. And big. So so so so so big. We used up every last minute of the 7 hours the zoo is open to see everything. And we had to HUSTLE at the end, I tell you. For real. You can not overstate how big this zoo this. (My Fitbit recorded us walking SEVEN MILES while we were there. No joke!)

The favorite was the lowland gorillas. They have a really BIG enclosure that wraps around and around (and even over you) but a lot of them like to spend their time up right against the glass. I've seen gorillas before but never so close and at eye level. You could literally sit right NEXT to them, with just a slip of glass between you. Even hold your hand up against their hand, if you want. (And they do interact with you at times.) They stare at you AND through at the same time. It's uncomfortable, to be honest, and makes you think about a lot of.......stuff. (Also? Very humbling.) I would go back just for this. 

Worth the trip if you can make it. :)

I felt pretty good while we were there, magically (?), and then my face blew up on the drive home for some reason and I was a drippy, swollen, cherry red eyed sad sack of a mess by the time we got home. I have no idea why it waited until we were finished with the zoo part of the day but I was so thankful it held off like that. WHEW.

Wish we could have gotten out more but........you know. Stuff happens. 

Also good that week:

HONEY HONEY HONEY HONEY. 

HONEY WAS HARVESTED.

This year's stuff is the darker colored honey. What a difference from last year, huh??

Funny how that works out. 

Now have almost 65 bottles of new honey so this year was a success. THANK YOU.

Kind of nice after both hives collapsing last year. 

Fingers crossed they live through the winter now! :)

More stitchy stuff to update now that *light cough* I'm starting to feel better but I'll save it for a post of it's own. :)

Back to work Monday!

 Had last week off for vacation........or a staycation as it were. Weather was still a little chilly but it was sunny out all week so we got to do some outdoor things and he got this lawn situated for summer while I did some spring cleaning, etc. (And there may have been some indulgent shopping and eating in there too.)

It wasn't all good because a quick trip to the vet's to get Mooshie some meds for his spring cold turned ugly rather quickly. He had another reaction to antibiotics (a different kind this time) and had a couple seizures a few hours after we got home. Very upsetting. And disturbing. I was 99% positive he was heading in that direction after we'd been home for a little while (pre-seizure activity is fairly easy to spot with him) so I dug his prescription of Valium out of the medicine cabinet to get ready but I would have rather not had to use them, you know? He only had the two seizures before it kicked in and stopped any more from happening, so that was good. His failing kidneys couldn't flush the Valium out of his system though and when he was still knocked out from them 13 hours later on HALF a pill, he ended up in hospital for a couple days while he got IV fluids round the clock to get him situated again. So. The last part of vacation wasn't much fun. :(

He seems fine now - for him anyway. (He's still suffering from late stage kidney disease, of course.) And there is one small upside in that the storm in his brain is making him really hungry so he's eating all the time vs. me having to cajole him to eat a tablespoon of food here and there. He ate a full can of food by himself every day the last two days which is AMAZING.

Needless to say, he's off all medications now for the rest of his life, as it's too risky. We thought he was allergic to one specific class of drug but it's obviously more complicated than that. Sigh. Poor little guy. :(

Anyhoooooo. I managed to knock off a bunch of projects with the time off. I rewatched all of season five of Mad Men in the early part of the week to get ready for the new season - thank you Netflix streaming - which was GREAT for making progress on things. (I was shocked how much I forgot about last season too. Was I dozing when I originally watched those episodes??) Must get pics of that stuff today. It's a crazy-inducing 64 degrees here today so maybe I'll even get to take pictures OUTSIDE for the first time in forever. :)

Last week, in a word was... (+ lots of pics)

HOR. RIB. BLE.

The Horrible Sinus Sickness finally caught up with me. Like it does, every_single_fall. Every single one! It was getting kind of late in the season for it so I thought, fingers crossed, I had managed to not attract him this year. Uh, not so much with that. *cough*snot*hack*aches*death*

 (Plus some terribleness with my totally broken girl parts but we won't go there. Let's just say......bad timing. REALLY bad timing on that.)

Did that stop me from being terribly busy with work? Nope. Da beads get made no matter how bad I feel. Such are the 'perks' of working for yourself. You work every single day, no matter how deadified you are. lol

So knitting or anything else fun, not a bit.

Beads? LOTS AND LOTS.

OMG SO MANY NEW THINGS TO SHARE.

Mostly Christmas/holiday stuff. 

A welcome change from all the Halloween stuff I've done the last few months. New color palette, new blank stare characters.

That's not even 1/5th of the new stuff I've churned out lately. The rest can be peeked at here. WHEW! 

And that's not even getting into the special order stuff like...........

SQUIRRELS.

How cute is this squirrel party??

I think I'll go lie down now and rest a bit. *cough*

So much sadness lately.

First it was a couple weeks ago with a person I knew for almost a decade on Livejournal. Just *poof* and she was gone in her sleep, at age 47. No warning at all.

Then one of my husband co-workers also passed away in his sleep, at age 51. He was a runner and in (seemingly) perfect health.

And now Lisa, who've I've followed online for a quite a while. 

Just a terrible, terrible cloud hanging over everything lately. My heart breaks for all of their families and loved ones.

It really makes you step back and reexamine your priorities. Or at least it does for me.

I was a little sick this weekend, out of the blue, for what reason?? I don't know. I just woke up Saturday sneezing every 10 seconds with leaky eyes and a floaty head but some allergy meds beat it back and it was gone by Monday morning. Not sure what that was about but I'm grateful it didn't hang around for long. Maybe it was just allergies though because Maggie's allergies have been driving her insane lately so something is in the air. (Weird fact: the cat and I take the same allergy medicine. Literally. OTC drug, only she gets half a pill and I take a whole one. lol This is the new thing for cat's with allergies, I guess, vs. dragging them in every other month for a steroid shot. Doesn't seem to work as well though because she's been walking around with a nasty hot spot on her shoulder despite the meds. Grrr.)

Here is my sweater progress for last week:

Maggie loves to act as photo assistant. :)

So for the week I got  a couple inches done on the bottom, the woven band (which KILLED my hands!@!) and up to the shoulders. (I finished the left shoulder bit last night.) It said to block it before doing the sleeves but I'm not sure why? I'm not into doing a whole big wet blocking unless the WHOLE THING is finished so I just laid it out and sprayed it a bit using a spray bottle. It seems like a waste of time to do an aggressive blocking at this point?? Am I wrong, anyone??? Thankfully, the sizing seems to be okay so far. I was worried it was too short but I tried it on and it falls on the long side of my hips. Now I'm worried that the arm hole openings seem too big so the sleeves will be huge, etc.........we'll see how it works out. :)

I'm kind of ready for this project to be done, to be honest. I've been faithful to it for 3 weeks now and my interest is waning. I'm ready to dig into some stitchy projects and another pair of socks. Oh woe is me and my short attention span. lolol

Like a Phoenix she rises.....

Well that was a crappy week. Turns out a double ear infection - not as much fun as a double rainbow. Who knew? lol Feeling much better now though. I still have one ear blocked so I'm going around saying "What?? What did you say??" a lot but at least it's not STABBITY*STAB*STAB*STAB hurting anymore. I seem to ALWAYS get sick for Labor Day weekend/week with some sort of sinus thing, I assume because of allergies.

 Woodstock Fair 2010 Sand 'Castle' - not as big as the ones in the past. The economy has even gotten to the sand castle builders, I guess. lol

We always go to the Woodstock Fair that weekend and I always feel craptacular in a myriad of ways involving my head when we go. (At least this year I wasn't so stuffed up that I almost choked to death when trying to eat. That would be Labor Day Week Sickness of 2009. I'm still taking three times longer to eat food than most people from that little incident. *shudder*)

I didn't take a lot of pictures at the fair because I'm not sure how many pics of 800lb pumpkins and scores of sheepies one person needs (I think I hit my personal limit a couple years ago) but look at this little cutie:

Look at me and not the poop! 

I've never seen such an interesting color pattern on a bunny before! Black body, white head, with ice BLUE eyes. So so so pretty. This breeder had a bunch of entries this year and all of her bunnies had pretty blue eyes. Some of them were for sale and it was hard to resist them. :(