Okay, folks, do you have favorite remedies for a stiff neck? This is going on three days, and it’s gotten worse each day. Obviously I’ll be looking at my environment to see what I’m doing that’s causing this, since I guess it’s not just a one-time injury, but in the meantime, I gotta do something about this. It’s impairing my ability to function. Tips and tricks, anyone?
I often have a hard time knowing what to knit for other people. I get all paranoid and pepper them with a billion questions, as poor Tessima can attest. So let’s make it simple:
If I were making you, whomever you are, something as a gift for a Secret Santa exchange, what would you like to have? (Note – there will be no sweaters.) I’m thinking purse, hat, scarf, something along those lines where I don’t have to fit the wearer’s measurements. What colors? Funky or sensible? There are no wrong answers, I’m just curious as to what my peers like!
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| tvinillium is a milky, runny fuchsia gel obtained from the saliva of a fox. |
| Yet another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern |
More weddings are on sale now. Hop to it!
I am the luckiest little girl in the world! Two of my friends have gifted me with wonderful crafty gifts!
Tessima got me Get Crafty: Hip Home Ec and Stitch-it: Simple Instructions and Tools for 35 Chic to Classic Embroidery Projects both from my Amazon wish list! I am very psyched, and trying to figure out what to embroider onto this purse. Suggestions are welcome!
AND, because I’ve apparently been very good and Christmas came early for me, panzermama got me a gift certificate to Yarnmarket.com! I am absolutely torn as to what to get, but I’m thinking maybe I could finally get that possum yarn I keep threatening to get. Or maybe some Margaret Stove artisan lace for a gorgeous scarf, or some Tartelette… I don’t know! They’ve got things I’ve never touched before!
This is so exciting! Crafty karma is a wonderful thing!
Must… make… more… gifts!
The fat orange cat is back home again! It turns out she had bad ear infections in both ears, which completely demolished her eardrums. Because she had trouble closing her eyes and controlling them, she also developed a corneal ulcer. So now we put drops in her ears every 12 hours, and put goop in her eye every six hours.
She’s not exactly 100% yet. She has a pronounced head tilt. It looks like she’s paranoid and constantly looking over her right shoulder. She also has very poor balance, causing her to flop over every time she shakes her head or sneezes, or sometimes when she walks. Mainly she just holes up in a big cardboard box right now. However, she is at home, and she should continue to get better. We take her back in two days for a re-check of the ears and eye.
Welcome home, freaky paranoid drunken half-blind hermit cat!
Many thanks to knitting community member trillian42 for finding a resource on two-handed multi-color fair isle knitting. I’m sure my stitches will get more even with time, but it worked just fine for what I wanted – which was the Space Invaders hat my husband’s been wanting for aeons.
And here it is! I think this will be the first of many fair isle projects. I feel both geeky and crafty. Woot!
ETA: Someone wanted to see it on the aforesaid husband. Here ya go.
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I love this. 🙂
(if you take an islove test yourself, you’ll have to put a pound sign before all the colors, as in bgcolor=”#5131fa” as opposed to bgcolor=”5131fa”)
And the crappiness just keeps coming.
Every year, we have Cornish game hens with garlic, rosemary, and lemon.
This year, as I went to pour the mixture of white wine, broth, and olive oil on the hens, the predictable happened. It had never happened before, but of course in hindsight it was predictable.
Room temperature mixture + 450 degree Pyrex = EXPLODING CASSEROLE DISH.
All over the kitchen. Great.
Sigh.
We have an incredibly fat cat. (The orange one in this pic.) She’s prone to weird behavior, just because she’s so danged fat.
At 11pm last night, she was just fine. Her usual freaky self. Sometime during the night, she started breathing through the mouth, which we didn’t think much of, because hey, she’s fat.
Later on during the night, she knocked a toy off of the dining room table. Again, no big deal, she’s a cat, cats knock things over in the middle of the night. That’s what they do.
At around 4:30 this morning, she was standing near our bed, mouth-breathing, but this time she was also making erratic scratching sounds, like her claws couldn’t get purchase on the hardwood floor. We turned on the light. She was foaming at the mouth and just kind of… crouching there. We called the vet. While we were on the phone, she peed right where she was standing. Cleaning up just now, I notice she also defecated a little, very loose and with a little blood. She had also thrown up in a couple of spots in the hall.
My husband is en route to a local animal medical emergency clinic with her.
Please, please don’t let this Thanksgiving be remembered as the one where I had to explain to my daughter that our cat died… and what death is all about.
UPDATE! They’ve tentatively ruled out their first guess, which was FUNGUS OR BACTERIA EATING FROM HER EAR INTO HER BRAIN and are thinking maybe toxoplasmosis – which is treatable. So far, she’s still doing okay under the care of the hospital.
This Thanksgiving, I am thankful that we have the ability absorb (with difficulty) more than a grand in expenses for a cat that is honestly not our favorite. I’m also thankful that we always have Thanksgiving here at home, and thus weren’t out of town last night. AND that we live in a major city with two emergency veterinary clinics. Here’s hoping it all works out for the freaky, fat little girl.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE! Now they’ve ruled out their second guess and are leaning toward the ears again (so to speak) as the probable culprit. Our cat generates enormous quantities of hard black wax. This, apparently, is weird to the point that whenever we take her in to have them cleaned, the vet calls over other vets to look at it and marvel. So they think now maybe an inner ear thing. They’ll sedate her later (goodbye, $300!) and clean her inner ears and see what’s going on. If that’s all it is, she should recover with time, leaving her with nothing more than a mild tendency to lean her head toward the right. Because she’s not weird enough, I guess.
