A Little Yarn On The Side

To bring everyone up to speed on Kitty Convalescence, here's a short recap: * Original blue cast with the festive turkey - lasted 2 whole weeks * Festive red holiday cast - On on Monday, off on Wednesday * Lime green splint - stayed on, but Theo ate much of it. Vet wanted more protection for the joint--and from Theo. Removed on Monday * Festive red holiday cast - put back on Theo on Monday. Off by 6:00 AM on Wednesday * New not-really-keeping with the holidays purple cast: 8 hours and counting. Theo actually spent the day at the vet clinic--which was a huge relief to us. Not that he was feeling bad, but his Feline Houdini tricks have made him a bit of a group project for the folks at West Vet, and they wanted to see if they had outsmarted him yet. We were just thrilled with a few hours of kitty daycare. I took full advantage of the kittyless hours to mail packages, run to the library, do the grocery shopping, do a few miscellaneous errands, and They aren't done, but they...

So Theo hasn't been able to remove the splint, but he ate a great deal of it. We had a soft collar for him from the vet, which only slowed him down a little, and I tried spreading Tabasco sauce on the bandages, which he seems to have actually enjoyed. I finally called the vet & they said they should check that he hadn't damaged anything with his chewing and that they had a solution for me. This is our newest addition to the kitty torture device collection we're accumulating this month. As if that weren't enough, he's back on antibiotics for a possible infection from last week's cast removal trick. Three more weeks...... Last night I ran to the pet store and found this: It's a kitty pheromone spray that is supposed to help cats feel calm and relaxed. I think the new kitty satellite dish is perhaps beyond its powers, but Callisto is positively thrilled. She's purring even when there's no one in the room. Of course, that could just be because...

So on Thursday I really thought we'd have clear sailing for one week--I had 2 days of pain killers to give Theo and 5 days of Valium for him. On Thursday the pain killers knocked him for such a loop that he spent the day laying quietly, but by Friday he was disoriented and angry and flinging himself around wildly. Worried that he might cause himself more harm, I gave him one of the Valium pills, which instead of calming him down made him even wilder and I spent 3 hours trying to keep him from killing himself. Not that the vet told us this when he gave us the valium, but for MANY cats, it will indeed have the opposite effect. Don't you think potentially giving an injured kitty speed might be a key item to mention? Since the new pain medications were making him loopy and angry, Andy made a cross-town trip to the original vet clinic last night to get another 5 doses of the pain medication we were giving Theo when we first brought him home. Mercifully, they make him really sl...

Well, we're back to this: Theo now knows that casts can be removed--though he's managed to not draw any useful lessons from the severe pain that results from pulling casts off--so we've had to resort to kitty satellite as well as the drugs. We have 2 days of kitty pain medication--which knocks him out nicely but has to be applied to his gums rather than just forcing him to swallow it. I had never noticed before, but cats really have very small gums and they're not generally fond of exposing them--except to bite someone who is really irritating them. After that, we have kitty Valium, which thank heavens is in pill form. Not as easy as the liquid oral medicines, but too many more days of the gums sort of medication and Theo would not be the one getting the valium. Full-time kitty patrol has at least allowed me to make some progress on dem fischer sin fru: and I'm just about to finish with clue 3. I don't know if I'll be able to get back to Fleur. The cuf...

I took Theo in for a checkup on Monday and to have his bandage changed. Yesterday I knew it was bothering him, but when we called the vet clinic they didn't seem too concerned or have any suggestions. This morning he was really cranky and angry--which is very unusual for him--so I put him back in the cage thinking maybe he had pulled some muscles trying to walk around on his bandaged leg. Shortly I heard a cat shrieking in pain and found Theo with his leg free and the cast laying on the other side of the cage. I have no idea how he did that, but with me pinning Theo (and trying not to faint as anything medical or involving blood makes me ill) and Andy driving like a maniac, we took off for the closest vet clinic. The one that could do surgery is across town, but they all have drugs, and all three of us could have used some. They gave Theo a shot of pain killer and put a splint on the leg, then sent us home with several doses of pain killers (which will knock him out), kitty V...

So I decided that even though I would be giving the stockings away & would rarely see them, I couldn't live with the errors. (I know--if you can't beat your neurosis, join them) So, I decided that since it was just an outline design, I would simply rip out the problematic design and do something else. Two hours later: To be fair, that did indeed work, and there's no guarantee that I would have found something better to do with those two hours of my life, but I didn't want to do that twice. I am curious to try free-hand machine embroidery, but I try to keep "learning opportunities" away from things I want other people to see. It works better that way. So, I took a deep breath and: hand stitched the missing bits. It isn't perfect or even perfectly symmetrical, but neither is the vertical one which was part of the original design. This I can live with. Before his vet appointment, Theo came in to help me and his poodle-do is now just looking ...

The 14th WIP in a row is finished, washed, and blocking: and does a pretty mean "little teapot" as well. And--drum roll please--I have now used 18,106 yards or just over 10 miles of yarn this year! Oh my! Now if that only made a sizable dent in the stash...... I haven't cast on anything new, nor have I worked on Fleur or dem fischer sin fru today. Instead, I worked on the five red stockings: and all the legs are now embroidered, but tonight I noticed this: Notice anything? Part of the design didn't transfer through to the embroidery card, so the holly leaves look a little funny. Two stockings have this problem--though I didn't notice until I did the second one. My options are to rip out the design & put something else there, try to fix it by hand (and this would be a good time to mention that I am not a good hand embroiderer--I tried doing a pillowcase a few years ago and it looks like it was done by a five year old with the shakes), or ignore it...