Short blurbs....

The strep is in retreat....
The sunset sock is found (was hiding out in a pair of jammies)...
I've developed a thing for fuschia and lime green. You should see my toenails.

I do not need more yarn.
I have much yarn already.
I will not buy more yarn.
I will not buy more yarn.
I will not buy more yarn.
(Bart Simpson as a knitter).

However, if anyone wanted to BUY me yarn...

I've been drooling at these web sites. Lorna's Laces and Colinette.

More yarn projects later. I'm finished the fingerless-glove part of a convertible mitten for the spousal entity. Colinette Jitterbug Jewel colour. Yummy.

Strep and other nastiness...

So, this one'll be short because typing is painful.

My annual strep event is a bit early this year - actually, I guess the really bad ones are happening on a 10-month cycle or so, with little one-day bouts of unexplained fevers in between.

If you read my sister's LJ, there's a strange parallelism going on here.

So, THIS time - I had a 39.5 degree fever this morning, brought down to 38.5 by Advil, and I haven't been able to swallow anything but liquids. The penicillin I started this afternoon was a challenge.

I am ALSO going for an ECG. My doc didn't seem to concerned, but my heartbeat is all out of whack. I don't know whether she really wasn't concerned, or didn't want to alarm me. I have, as long as I can remember, noted that when I really exert myself - I mean REALLY, like biking up the Escarpment in one press - that my heart will occasionally skip a beat then follow the skip with a big, floppy-feeling WHUMP. I've mentioned this to past docs and they've all said it's not unusual, if it's infrequent and just once, and if I don't feel ill or dizzy. And it usually is infrequent - it'll happen once in a blue moon, always after exertion or maybe a really hot hot tub.

But with this bout of strep, it was happening constantly all night long last night. It lessened slightly today- and of course wouldn't happen at all when my doc was actually listening - but it's back now. So ECG tomorrow, I guess.

In better Maui-news, not only has the boy been eating on his own - including cleaning up some, ahem, recycled food the Sprout! deposited around today, but he's decided to be a purry lap cat. Now, that IS weird. Since we got him he's seemed quite uninterested in us, though he likes strangers. The spousal unit pragmatically pointed out that he's probably enjoying my 39 degree fever. But it's nice, I'll take it.

At least I got an off-work note for the rest of the week. I'm going for a warm bath and off to bed, now.

Greeny-Blue Blog Sock, and Maui status

So, well, sock #7 (4a) and I have resolved our differences, mostly, and it's almost done.

I've actually temporarily tucked it away to rest on a spare circular needle, while I get its mate started. This is the largest sock yet in terms of foot length, as Adam's previous pairs are a bit snug. But I was concerned, as this was a toe-up species, that I might not know where to stop and might not have enough yarn for its mate.

As for the cat status - slow progress is being made. We've got him up to about 48 mls ( a FULL 10 ml syringe is 12 mls) a feeding in his tube - AND - he's started slurping up the contents of the refill bowl himself, but doesn't have a lot. He's busy having hairball issues too, as he has another large naked patch he's cleared off his side and back under the harness that was holding his tube on - so I changed it to just a collar with the tube wrapped to it. He had a bit of a downturn into withdrawn, sullen hiding Friday and I'm not sure if that was the hairballs (he ejected quite the volume of them...) or starting his meds, but he seems to be a bit up again today.

Right now he's supervising my computer time from a heap of old towels in my closet opening (they're intended for cheap, pet-quilt batting, so I might as well let him warm up on them).

Gotta run - dinner's on.

Wooly woes and wows....

So, the WOE part is, MY WASHING MACHINE ATE ONE OF THE SUNSET SOCKS!!!! Auurgh!

3 weeks to make socks, I wear them twice, and then one has wandered off into that alternate dimension where socks go to be reincarnated as tangled wire hangers in the closet. I've checked all the other laundry done around that time - it doesn't seem to be hiding in a pillowcase or gym shirt. I'm not even going to check the closet - because I can't knit hanger wire. There's no point.

The wooly WOW is probably an epiphany only to me, not anyone actually experienced with yarn. So far, the knitting has been with the not-cheap-but-not-crazy-priced Regia sock yarn - the self-patterning type. It's 75% superwash wool and 25% nylon. At this exact moment, though, I'm knitting up a mitten (or, well, so far it's a cuff) with a 100% superwash Colinette Jitterbug yarn. I think it was a $23 hank of yarn. WOW is it nice to work with. It's moving smoothly, my hands are more relaxed, it's "springier" - came from bouncy sheep, I guess. I must admit, during my previous knitting adventures back in university, yarn was yarn. As I'm re-learning the craft, I have of course come across all kinds of info on different yarns, but it hadn't quite sunk in like this before.

I can understand now why I've read how some knitters hate cotton yarn - nice as the finished garment might be, it's stiff and inelastic and the actual task of knitting will be more strain.

Hopefully, these mitts will be as nice to wear as to knit.

In an unrelated post-script, Maui-cat while not having regained any substantial body mass, is both tolerating his tube feeding well, AND having a munch at kibbles on his own now. Chemo pills and pred start tomorrow.

The Beginning Adventures of Chemo Cat

So, Maui and I have a diagnosis. My him-cat has a low-grade form of lymphoma. I cannot recall Dr. Bonnie's specific term, but she had explained it as a possibility when we did all our biopsies.

At least there is an answer. And despite the dire term "lymphoma" (yes, cancer.... again!) it is actually something manageable in a way that can make him better and keep him healthy for years. Basically, he's on chemotherapy in perpetuity.

Prednisone once a day, then every third day we add a leukeran. Dr. Bonnie herself says she's had cats live 2-4 years and has seen many last longer. I guess it just keeps the crazy cell growth in check.

So, my cat is still a pathetic scrawny little thing with a tube in his neck just now, but we have a reason, and we have hope. He starts the chemo Friday and we're going to do less tube-feeding (by a tiny bit) than we might have in hopes that the combination of less food and prednisone will get him eating on his own again.

And so we go!

Maui update...

Well, he's probably sore and dopey, but Maui's OK, so I get my kitty back this time.

Vet says there were no significant visual findings. Slightly enlarged lymph nodes which may or may not mean anything.

We're still waiting on biopsy results on every little bit of him that was biopsied. And he has a feeding tube now so we can fatten him up again whether he thinks he wants to eat or not.

He's staying with the doc for another day then we get him home tomorrow.

In other news (though most of you readers are family who tell me these things), sadly, my eldest uncle passed away this morning. While not a surprise, given that he had contracted pneumonia and had compromised lungs from long-ago industrial damage, it is nonetheless very sad. He was a kind and quiet, ubiquitous presence during my childhood and teen weekends at the grandfolk's cottage, quietly making sure things worked and kids didn't drown or break their heads or such while his wife and mother-in-law frantically tried to feed everyone and clean everything.

Family gossip has had us worried several times in the past year that he was on his way. Fortunately Adam and I got a visit in the past summer. Uncle was not as addled as the women around him were trying to make out, or at least not all the time, and still had his sense of humour. As we finished dinner, he calmly looked down at dessert bowl he had just emptied, and slyly and quietly said " I think I'll have some ice cream now".

Adam didn't get the best portrait he's ever taken, but he did get a snap or two for the family gallery (you know where that is if you're anyone concerned).

Nailbiting....

Maui cat is in surgery. We ran out of non-invasive options to diagnose his dramatic weight loss, and at a check-up last night he was down to 6lbs, 7 oz (from being over 11 lbs early last year).

Of course my worry is that it's something like Lenny had - extensive, advanced abdominal cancer. Lenny was not woken up from surgery once that was found. I don't have strong clinical grounds to suspect that - Maui is still more alert and active than Lenny was, he is not exhibiting any acute pain, there's no fluid buildup like we had been finding. But there's no innocuous explanation yet either.

Dr. Bonnie assures me that most "exploratory surgeries" show nothing on a gross level, and a significant portion of the rest reveal something fixable. The point of the exploratory is to allow extensive biopsy. Maui will also get a feeding tube for a while (assuming he pulls through) because his eating is intermittent - he just seems to not want to bother with food for extended periods, then he eats almost normally, but he's finicky.

Will update when I know more.

Sock in a Rut

So, sock #7 has been half done, pulled out, nearly done and discovered to be much too tight, pulled out, and given up on.

In the interim, I made a hat - twice - and pulled it all out - twice. I apparently have not yet figured out how to translate the gauge of a swatch, which I got right, into the gauge of a two-yarn knit-in-the-round, accessory, which was different by 1.5 stitches per inch.

The first two rows of the hat are now re-started on a needle size two larger, after more swatching and some math.

Now I'm back to the sock. I've decided since I cannot seem to get past the heel, I'll start at the toe for this one. Yet another learning experience, but I've got it started again.

I love the web. If you can't find exactly what you want, you can find enough to build it. After giving up on provisional cast-ons because I couldn't crochet an even chain, Knitty.com got me to two pages that I managed to hybridize. I first found this: TipTop Toes, and the figure-8 toe seemed a good idea, but it turned out gappy. Then I dug up the Magic Cast On, which, in its text, claims to address the gappy fig-8 toe issue. However, once cast-on, I couldn't manage to start the rounds on 4 dpns.

So I somehow hybridized the two. I used the magic cast-on, which seems to be a hybrid itself of the long-tailed and figure 8 cast-ons, but with this mod: I cast on to a larger, circular needle, then slid the stitches of Judy Becker's needle #2 onto the cable, and knit straight across needle #1 with my first, smaller, dpn. I then pulled the circular all the way through so the stitches originally on #2 were pushed onto #1, and then I knit across those with the 2nd dpn. This left me with my toe started as for Wendy Johnson's figure 8 toe, but much tighter in the cast-on rows, but not so tight I couldn't work them.

I'm guessing the Magic Toe is alot easier for one accustomed to and intending to work on two circulars, but given the investment I've recently made in both yarn and all kinds of sizes of dpns, spending $30 per pair on paired circulars will have to wait paycheque or two. Besides, I need lots more practice at the basics, too.

So, stay tuned - I'll see if I can get this sock "toe up" past the heel, then we'll be rolling. I may return to the hat, too, as it goes alot faster than the sock. More stitches per round but lots fewer rounds.