Thursday, October 05, 2006

Holiday and Wedding Knitting--Update

Holiday knitting is proceeding. I have completed:

  • 3 pairs of socks + 1 sock (Please note these socks are now mostly in pairs instead of as individuals. This is a step up.)
  • 1 hat
  • 1 scarf

    Still to go:

  • 4 pairs of socks + 1
  • 1 set of wristwarmers
  • 1 hat (forgotten on last tally, oops)

    At present, though, I've stopped work on all holiday knitting in order to make my sister's wedding reception shawl. After much consultation, I realized that my sister didn't want anything frilly, lacy, or, really, complex. I was just at the point of steeling myself for the grim prospect of miles and miles of teeny stockinette when it occurred to me that there was, in fact, a simple yet attractive shawl pattern in existence that nearly every single damn knitter on the planet had already made.

    Yep, I'm making my sister a Clapotis.

    I'm knitting it out of GGH's Mystik, a cotton/viscose blend that's very smooth and satiny and quite wedding-dressy, especially in the white that I'm using. It's also very, very slippery. When Boo dropped a hand puppet on the cord of the needle as I was knitting, I had the somewhat heart-stopping experience of the needles shooting right out of each and every stitch. It was pretty impressive, really, to be sitting there knitting and suddenly be holding nothing but the knitting. (And yes, I got all the stitches back on, no harm done.)
  • Monday, October 02, 2006

    Sylvester--Now With 9% More!

    Took Sylvester to the vet this morning, and the news is quite good. He's gained 3/4 of a pound, bringing his weight up to 7.25 pounds. He's still way below his optimal 11 pounds, but the gain means that he's got an appetite and isn't throwing it all up. This can only be good.

    The vet sent me home with a sample bag of three different brands of prescription cat food, with wet and dry varieties of each. They started making up these sample bags at my vets so that owners wouldn't have to invest in 5lb sacks of food--that their pet might not like--in order to find the one that the pet *did* like. Very clever. Of course, Sylvester usually gobbles up whatever I put in front of him, but it's good to be able to see if he has a preference.

    We've also pared down his medications down to three: The thyroid medication, a potassium supplement, and the Pepcid. And if he keeps eating well, he doesn't really need the Pepcid.

    The tricky bit, the vet says, will be to keep a balance between the thyroid medicine and the needs of his kidneys. In some ways, a quicker metabolism is actually beneficial to his kidney problem, and I'll need to make sure that we don't correct his hyperthyroidism to the point that it suppresses his appetite.

    The best news is that Sylvester seems to be feeling very much better. He's active and curious and even playful, and has returned to being the pain in my ass that I know and love. And the vet is now talking in terms of maybe a year or more instead of months. So, all in all, it's been a good morning.