the Akamai Knitter

I visited Cookie the Cat today (Friday by my reckoning) and she’s doing much better. She’s brighter, she’s vocalizing, and she’s got her appetite back. She seemed fairly happy to see us and she enjoyed some heavy petting. Barring any unforeseen events, she’ll be coming home on Monday. Yay!

As for Bosco’s checkup, things went swimmingly. He’s been micro chipped so he is now officially a member of our family. He also got vaccinated and all that other good stuff. He handled the car ride fairly well and he’s certainly bounced back from the whole experience well, since he’s been “helping” me type this post out from the start. It also appears as though the neighbors who originally had Bosco have moved out. The lanai* is completely cleared out and there has been no sign of them. Good riddance is what I say!

Here’s a shot of Bosco in a moment of rare inactivity.

*porch

Cookie came home last night, only to have to return to the doctor’s this morning. Apparently the veterinarian couldn’t find any sign of a UTI in her urine, but they did find signs of an infection in her blood. They believe she had a UTI and that it has traveled to her kidneys. She’ll have to stay there for a few days for treatment.

I’m incredibly worried and thoughts of renal failure have been dancing in my head. So thank you all for your support. It means the world to me to have such great friends surrounding me here.

I really didn’t find out that it was a UTI infection that had caused her kidney problems until this morning. When Cookie came home last night, the latest news was that it might be some sort of kidney problems, but we wouldn’t know for sure until all the blood work came back. (I knew it wasn’t due to any bad pet food as we had triple checked the food that we gave our furry children.) I just had no idea what could be wrong with my poor baby.

So last night I found myself too distracted to really concentrate on any of my usual shows and I remembered a friend’s addiction preference to E! Before you knew it I was shamefully hooked on some reality show that takes place in Las Vegas and suddenly I had knitted myself to the heel flap of the second Mona sock. Jennifer, if you are reading this, I shall mock you no more!

There are so many little things happening, so instead of trying to artfully tie them all together I’ve compiled a list of all the goings on.

• In a mad rush to finish knitting, I accidentally knit a sock for my mother. Ah well, I had been meaning to knit a pair for her. I’m frantically knitting the second sock so I can go back to selfishly knitting socks for myself.
• I have learned to never leave my Forest Path Stole laying around with live stitches on a DPN. Can you say “disaster waiting to happen”? Yes, I accidentally ripped out the DPN that had the live stitches of a Lily of the Valley block in progress. All is well now, but it was a sticky mess for a moment there.

• Bosco* accidentally caused Cookie the Cat a trip to the doctor. It appears she has a UTI, which probably was brought on by all the stress. She’s a peaceful cat who only asks for a little peace in return, only Bosco is anything but a peaceful cat. He really meant no harm, but Cookie is spending the day at the doctor and will hopefully come home with a simple diagnosis and some antibiotics. I’m a little worried that it might be something more, but I’m trying to maintain a positive outlook.

• I woke up with a ratty ball of acrylic yarn in my bed. No, I did not purposefully go to bed with yarn. I suspect that Bosco rooted it out from the depths of hell the storage room and carried it in. I do believe the boy is developing an affinity for the fiber. Thankfully he’s going for the cheap stuff.

• Finally, I learned how to make captions from the ever clever Crazy Aunt Purl. (Thank you so much Laurie!) I obviously still need to iron out the details and work on my technique, but I’m getting there! I guess the accident here is that I forgot to figure out how the words would scrunch up when I resized the picture. Gah! Cookie’s caption reads “taking a break from the chaos”, for those of you that don’t have Batman vision.

*Neighbors are still AWOL. Just in case you were wondering. Again, thank you for your continued support! You all are the bestest!

On Thursday I finally decided on a new project to lift me out of the knitting ennui that was plaguing me for the past week or so. It’s no surprise that it’s a pattern from the indomitable Cookie. I was lucky enough to have gotten a hold of 4 of them through Agnes and choosing amongst the was no easy task.

What you see here is Mona from Cookie’s Spring / Summer 2007 collection. The yarn that I finally chose is Essential Solid from Knitpicks in Dusk. I wasn’t able to really photograph the colour well, as it’s greyer in the photos then in person.

I chose a solid coloured yarn because I didn’t want the yarn to compete with the beautiful stitch pattern that Cookie designed. I’m really pleased with the result. So pleased that I haven’t been able to put this project down.

I’m closing in on the finish line of the first sock and the Forest Path Stole lies neglected in the work basket. Spring fever has whipped me into a frenzy of sock mania and I’m loving it!

Meanwhile, Bosco is loving my cute little sheep that my friend Jenny gave me for Christmas. No matter how many times I take the sheep away from him, he manages to ferret it out of its hiding place. The boy has brains!

P.S. It’s Day 8 and still no sign of the errant neighbors.

Some of you might have noticed that the site was down over the weekend. I had problems with my previous host, but thanks to the generosity of my friend Jon I was able to get it back up and working last night. I also decided to change the look of the blog. I hope you like it!

Only one post was lost during the move, so I thought I’d give a quick recap as to what it was about. I’m on Tier 7 of the Forest Path Stole.

Bosco is settling in just fine. My neighbors still haven’t returned and I really am hoping that they never come back. I really appreciate the support I’ve gotten from everyone. How anyone could leave this sweet boy out with no food, water, and shelter is beyond me.

My stomach has been in knots with the worrying over whether or not I’ll be able to keep him as a permanent member of my family. The longer the neighbors are away the greater the chances are of it happening though.

Tomorrow I’ll have a much more substantial post. In the meantime there is basketball to watch and socks to knit, as I have finally overcome my knitting indecision.