Louise's Road To Recovery Part 3

This marks a week of treatment and I think things are going really, really well! Louise is finally feeling up to running around on the couch a bit. I did not get too terribly much video, but there is a tiny bit!

You can see here exactly how serious her head tilt is, as she so kindly graced the camera with her presence before shuffling off to burrow amid the couch cushions. It's really significantly better than it was. She used to look... scary. She is doing really great! She crawled around for a little while and everything seems somewhat back to normal. She was still not exactly easy with the medication. I'm at the point of hoping she is swallowing whatever manages to get in her mouth. I'll have to see if I can find any suggestions for a better delivery system or something. She is still her snuggly self and did quite a bit of crawling about in my hair.

I don't look really awesome and great, but she was rummaging around in my hair and snuggling against my neck, as always. :)

Finished Octarine

Well, my Octarine socks have been finished! I have a few pictures, but I don't think they are as awesome as they could be. I really loved this pattern, but there is one difference I would make. If and when I ever knit these socks again, I will probably do another repeat of the leg lace pattern, then start the foot pattern as I had 20 rounds of stockinette before the toe decreases.

The yarn is awesome and fabulous. I love malabrigo! I have heard a lot about the lack of sturdiness of this yarn, so I will be reinforcing my heel a bit later on. That will be a different post, though, as I have divided up my remaining sock yarn into minis for friends who are also on the blankie path. I have plenty of strong yarn to use to reinforce, though, so it's all good.

I think the complexity of this pattern was perfect for my attention span and I do plan to knit it again. Now, to relax with a glass of wine and knit a sock yarn square or two before bed. :)

Louise's Road To Recovery Part 2

Well, I'm going to keep this short and sweet as it's way past my bedtime, anyway. Louise has been doing much better the past few days and tomorrow marks a week since I noticed her condition.

Today, I went to get her for medicine time and found her hanging out on the third floor of their cage with the others! I had noticed she was making attempts to climb yesterday and was very happy to see this. My second thought was fear she was afraid to get down somehow, but she didn't seem worried about it. I am very encouraged.

(she's the one in the back, there)

Medicine is getting more difficult for her, though. She is learning to wiggle faster than I'm learning to wield the syringe, it seems. I've resorted to seeing an opening and shooting off the syringe and hoping for the best. We will see how she does tomorrow. I can always mix it in with applesauce or something if she is getting too wiggly.

Weekend Meetups

Well, I have had quite the busy weekend regarding fiber!

Saturday

Saturday was a really great day. I met up with the San Antonio Handweavers Guild. They have a meetup every third Saturday of the month starting at noon at Yarnivore. There were quite a few people there, I was very surprised! It was nice to meet new people and learn from them a little. My little spinning wheel was quite a hit and a lot of people thought it was cute and had questions.  I also got quite a bit done, as well! I spun up some of the dyed merino I bought from WishFox Dyeworks. It's probably the only merino I have done well with thus far and I think the spinning is coming up great! I will probably navajo ply it to keep the color changes nice and consistent, since the roving is a bit wild. I would hate to lose the gorgeous colors in the business of plying it. I'd rather try to keep it consistent. Anyway, I bought 5 oz so I'm hoping it will turn out lovely with quite a bit of yardage.

Another great thing is that this particular fiber seller is part of the Phat Fiber group. Apparently, this month each purchase made from the etsy shops of any of the sellers listed gives you a chance in a drawing for a fiber box. Wooo! If you are interested in the details, please check out the thread on the ravelry group. These fiber artists do amazing work so being the nasty enabler that I am gives me warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Oh! Pssst... speaking of enabling! Yarnivore is now carrying Tosh sock and DK weight, and waiting on the worsted. I would hate to be alone in this dangerous place, you know. :)

Sunday

Today was a local LSG meetup at 2 Rivers Coffee in New Braunfels, TX. It took me forever to get there, and not just because I underestimated the time... but because I got lost. Yes. I, even with the superpowers of a GPS and iPhone, got lost. Horribly. I will say, though, that New Braunfels is hardly the worst place to get lost. The scenery is quite wonderful and it's nice to drive around there, lost or not. Also, I will mention that it is not a horribly big place, so getting lost there is kind of... special. I did eventually figure it out and we met up and had quite a bit of fun! I gave away some fiber to the daughter of one of our local hoars and also traded her some sock yarn for her blankie, which I totally convinced her to do in the first place! She had some great sock yarn for me to add.

Please ignore that purple ball toward the bottom, there. I had meant to add it to her bag and had a brain fart and dropped it into mine on accident, even though I have an entire ball of it. I'll keep it and give it to her when I see her next. When I came home, I totally ignored my sock (the almighty last few inches of it!) and worked on four squares. The blanket is looking less and less scarf-like by the day, it seems.

I took a picture cutting off the area I haven't worked on all month, so that blue square in the top left is where I started off this month. I'm submitting my blankie squares to BSGFPB this month, so I'll probably doctor a picture up at the end to outline the squares from May. I love that big red one. You can't see it too well, but it's actually a lovely gradient yarn starting at a deep fuschia color and going to a red-orange at the top. I like it.

I'm really hating the yellow light in the house. I'm going to have to definitely take pictures outside, probably on the picnic table in the yard. Everything looks so muted and jaundiced it's not even funny.

So Fancy!

Well, last night my family and I had dinner together. This is not a meal we have very often, but it's something a few friends have remarked is interesting and unique. We have "snobby night" or "fancy night" or "cheese and wine night". They're all the same concept, but we change the name every so often. My brother does not have any memory of experiencing this before, so I think it's been quite some time since we've done this so, yeah. Info for you!

The concept is we have a bunch of cheese, deli meats, crackers, fresh fruit, artisan bread, olives, nuts, etc all spread out. The picture above does not have most of the meal there, sadly, but I could only get a snapshot of it before the swarm came by and unfortunately not everything was laid out at that point.

We tend to have lots of food leftover for several days, so it is pretty good for snacking later. It's essentially finger foods for a meal. Everyone has their plate and we camp out in the living room watching a movie and eating. It's a really cool experience, since we tend to share which particular cheese/cracker/meat/olive/fruit/etc combination is particularly tasty. It's generally just really fun.

However, I did mention wine in this and here is what we do for this particular type. You get some fairly cheap strawberry or any type of fruit wine that is not grape, we usually go for Arbor Mist brand, and add the type of fruit it's made from. It sits and soaks up the flavor and ends up being a lovely surprise at the end of the glass. We went for strawberry wine this time around!

It ends up being a beautiful addition. We usually add the fruit to the actual wine bottle, but my sister seems to have developed some sort of minor allergy to strawberries. It's still good, though!

I am not going to even pretend that this is cheap fare, but it is nice every so often. My brother commented that something special must have happened because all of this was so fancy! He is a cute kid and he really enjoyed the meal. We had crab salad added in, mainly for his benefit, and he went nuts over it.

First Fleece: Procurement

Well, as many of my spinning friends (and some non-spin buds, too!) are aware, I have obtained a raw fleece.

The Story

Right, so my friend happens to be working as a volunteer out at Fiesta Farm and they have sheep. I'm guessing for the petting zoo or something. Anyway, the owner was selling the raw fleeces of mutt or unknown breed sheep and, when I heard about this, I totally jumped on it. This was a few months ago and I had not seen her until our potluck knit night, and I reminded her and then promptly forgot again (because that's how these things work). Then, we set up a spin day on Thursday and that's finally when I actually remembered and had cash on hand and so... yeah! I came home with a fleece. It's an incredibly huge bag and it is smooshy.

So, this is my very first fleece. I am going to obtain the necessary equipment to get it nice and clean for carding and spinning. Luckily, my friend has a drum carder and has totally offered to lend it to me or let me sit around at her house and keep her company while I use it. Score! I will probably set it up as my main project for June because Tour de Fleece begins at the end of the month and apparently I have absolutely nothing to actually do (hah!). Anyway, I am very excited about this project I have undertaken and will be doing some research about good ways to clean it up and sort it. I will be sure to share the techniques I use and the results, as always. 

I guess I really didn't think I was quite crazy enough when I started spinning...

Louise's Road To Recovery, Part I

Well, today went a lot better. I checked on her before I went to work, tried giving her some water in the syringe as I have been doing periodically to ensure she is getting fluids without having to struggle up to the water bottle. I checked her skin for signs of dehydration and she has none, so that is hopeful. After work, I came home and gave her her medicine and some snacks to make sure she is getting some food before the other three go and stash it. She is doing a lot better. She is much more energetic, interested in food, and if I'm not mistaken... I think her head tilt is slightly better than it was Tuesday. It could just be that she is feeling more perky now that she is getting medicine and has more energy to lift up or something, but even my mom and sister remarked that it looks better.

With her having more energy, I had a bit more trouble giving her her medicine today. Fun stuff, right? She took it pretty well, honestly my bigger beasts are significantly worse about it and they don't have anywhere near the same capacity for wiggling as she does. I'm glad I had to fight her, though, it means she's got more strength and alertness!

  

These are the pictures from this afternoon. Compare them to the one I took last night of her snuggled up in my shirt as I gave her little snacks and watched Battlestar Galactica.

 

I see a huge improvement in general appearance, absolutely. She is a lot more alert and looks less sickly. A lot of people might be concerned about the amount of time I'm indicating that she is lazing about on my lap or in my shirt or nuzzled up against my neck. Nah. She has always been interested in snuggling up and is my rat for things like reading or sitting and watching tv or knitting. Perfectly content to be pretty still and enjoy random little snacks and petting of the ears. The others will go run off and create mazes among the couch cushions or glomp my mom's chihuahua, but Louise has always been a mama's girl.

Anyway, things seem like they are looking up and I am glad. Even when I put her back in the cage, she seemed to be getting around much better so I'm nowhere near as worried about her ability to access food and water as I was. Now I am going to go to bed, because I am completely exhausted and have an awesome Thursday planned. :)