Dan's quilt is all finished. The ties are all tied and it's even been washed and dried and handed over. I think he quite likes it.
While we were out running errands yesterday we came across quite a strange sight. We were rounding the corner in the parking lot looking for a spot when we saw these odd disembodied heads poking out of a snow bank. Apparently there's a little beauty shop in near the bird store we visit and the employees must have had a slow day. Surely they didn't think this was a good way to attract business?
For Christmas I had planned to knit the boys each a Dwarven Battle Helm (or Bonnet as the pattern says but Daniel objects to this term). The one with the red beard would be for Chris and the blond beard for Daniel. I chickened out and knit ordinary hats instead but made the mistake of showing them the pattern which apparently both of them really like. Here's the beginning of a helm for Daniel.
Yesterday I managed to get the borders onto the quilt top. Making progress!
Last spring I bought a "black" (washed up to a lovely chocolate brown imho) fleece at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival. I thought I'd best get busy spinning this up so I know if I'd like to ask for it again. This is Chi's roving which is a Romney/Cormo whether. I have about 5 pounds so certainly enough to make a sweater. Yesterday I filled up the first bobbin of singles.
The results from the vet are back and Gwen has an early stage of kidney disease. It's very treatable but she doesn't even need medicine just yet. Right now all we need to do is get her onto a low protein diet. It's fairly pricey stuff so even though it would be safe for all the cats to eat it we are going to attempt to feed it just to Gwen. This should make her stomach feel better and she might even gain weight. I popped out this morning to pick up a bag before yoga class so that we can start her on it right away. It's by the same folks that make our current cat food so we are hoping we won't have any trouble with the switch.
When the kids were little they had a game called Busytown based on the Richard Scary books. One of their favorite parts was the Kitty doctor who would bandage Elephant's owies with endless bandaids. Every kid seems to love bandaids and they can never get enough of them. Yesterday I discovered an owie on Gwen's paw as I was taking closeup photos of her toes. I had no idea older cats can get ingrown toenails but so the vet informeed me yesterday afternoon when he squeezed her in to have a look. I was so appalled that I'd clearly missed this for some time that I didn't look further but she did have two. He says their nails can just get mishapen with age and we need to cut them more frequently now. Thankfully I caught it soon enough that there's no infection so now that the nails are clipped and removed it should heal up quickly. The bad news is that she's dropped another pound since last year. This is the second year in a row our girl has lost weight so we ran a panel of tests to make sure there's nothing wrong. I should hear back on those today.
There was no sewing Tuesday while I was glued to the TV watching all the inaugural buzz but yesterday I was back at it. I spent rather longer than necessary finishing up the center of the quilt top because I sewed the center strip to the wrong side of the first half and had to rip that out and correct it before putting together the second half and attaching that. Next I'll be adding three sets of borders- a narrow border of birch goes on first, then a wider border in gold and finally the widest border last in the crane fabric. I think I ought to have gone with plain black as that third border but someone is a bit impatient so I think it's impractical to buy more of the plain because I'd have to wash, dry and iron before I could get to that last border.
