Worried

The Fuzz went into the kitty ICU yesterday, which is not good for any cat and positively ominous for a 20-year-old kitty.  I’ve been trying not to stress because he’s in a state-of-the-art hospital and they’re doing everything they can for him, but it’s hard not to.  He’s been with me since I graduated college, and I love him dearly.  But at the same time, it’s impossible to ignore that, at his age, and having suffered from irritable bowel disease for five years, his odds aren’t great.

That said, he’s had a good run, and a good life – very few cats make it to twenty, and he is nearly twenty-one! – so perhaps it’s just his time.  But I am devoutly hoping not.  As I said, we love him dearly and were hoping to celebrate his twenty-first birthday with him in about a month.

At the moment, the vet thinks it’s simple dehydration, brought on by a cold, and they’re rehydrating him via IV.  He did eat something yesterday evening and nibbled a bit today, but he’s still lethargic.  So if you know any kitty gods, say a prayer for him, OK?

Meanwhile, I have been burning off my stress by weaving and gardening.  I have transplanted my precious violets (I love them and have fond childhood memories of them, but they are rare around here, probably because they’re tricky to grow in our climate) and set up an irrigation system for them and for the lemon tree.  I also fertilized the lemon tree, which it probably hasn’t had in ages, and Mike broke up the concrete slab that was smothering the roots:

(I’m super impressed: we didn’t rent a jackhammer, Mike just broke it up with a sledgehammer!  Lots of raw muscle involved.  Woot!)

And I finished warping the loom, and wove about 30″ worth of sample:

The warp is 10/2 cotton, the weft is Henry’s Attic Alpaca Lace.  I’m pleased with this sample, as it shows I guessed the sett correctly: 30 epi for twill, using a weft that’s slightly thinner than the warp.  The squares are square and the cloth looks quite nice.  I plan to use this to illustrate the tradeoffs in design: the bolder the woven pattern, the simpler the dyed shapes should be.

But first I need to confirm that these yarns will dye correctly.  I had a major surprise once where a wool yarn, which was not supposed to dye with fiber-reactive dyes and soda ash, did take the dye – rendering it useless for cross-dyeing.  So before I weave 16 yards of fabric using these two yarns, I’m going to dye a sample.  I will probably do that tonight, assuming The Fuzz is doing well.