As The Yarn Turns

Sometimes Life Sucks

Phoebe is gone. The vet called us early this morning to tell us that Phoebe had gone into cardiac arrest, she resuscitated her and then she went into cardiac arrest again but couldn't be resuscitated. We're stunned and feel like we've been run over by a truck. We've never lost a young ferret. We still don't know what the problem was but the vet feels she had an underlying problem and this was just too big of a hurdle to climb over. I know we can't all live to a ripe old age and sometimes stuff just happens, but I still don't like it. I always feel responsible. Course I would feel responsible if I had a ferret that lived to be 150. My vet always has to remind us that our ferrets have an excellent life. She has seen animals that are kept so poorly that it just makes her heart break.

Phoebe always lived life to the fullest. Ferrets are notorious for sleeping more than cats and going full out when they're awake. By ferret standards, Phoebe seemed to hardly sleep at all and was always on the go. She was always awake when we came home. She was the leaping, climbing, flying ferret with very little time to stop. I used to joke with her that if ferrets have nine lives like a cat, she was going to rapidly use up hers. Sometimes I think she realized she didn't have much time to spare. This is how I like to remember Phoebe, doing her happy dance on her back.

by Sydney  |

Excuse Me While I Scream

Okay, I feel better now. It's been one of those weeks. Work has been busy. Normally I'm okay with that, but we've had all of these other things going on this week. Animal issues haven't helped. First Elvis got a broken leg. Then last night while I was getting the ferrets ready to put up for the night, I noticed Phoebe wasn't herself and when I checked the litter boxes, things weren't right there either. So this morning I rushed her off to the vet. When went over all unusual symptoms. It was decided that Phoebe needed to stay at the vet's for fluids and antibiotics. She's still there and we're still stumped. We don't use the canned or pouched foods here (nobody will eat them) so the recalled foods aren't a factor. If she's not better by tomorrow morning (Friday), we'll take her down to the specialist. Balt is still fresh in my mind so I've been fretting all day. Elvis is doing fine though. He's just a little bored because he's not very mobile with the giant cast on on his leg and is restricted to flat surfaces.

On to knitting though. I decided last night to use the Claudia Hand Painted for my next socks. There's just one problem. As I was winding it into balls last night, I noticed one skein is a lot lighter than the other skein, although they don't look so different here.

So I've come up with two options. I can just live with fraternal socks. Well they will probably be fraternal no matter what I do. The other option is to use one ball for the legs of both socks and the other ball for the feet. Right now I'm leaning toward option 2.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a couple of fun links. The first is a hamster-powered paper shredder. Seriously! The other is LapSchticks, artistic stickers for your laptop. I think I've got to get one of these.

by Sydney  |

Weekend And Oh Yeah, Project Spectrum

We a nice quiet Easter weekend, for the most part. We dyed Easter eggs. That's when I found out that Rick had never dyed Easter eggs before. So he did all of the egg dying this year and had a blast. I would show you pictures but he also ate all of the eggs before I got around to taking a picture. A lot of the leaves on the trees got frozen over the weekend. The good news though is that the new growth on the bushes also got killed so now I can put off trimming the hedges a little longer. Even some of the weeds got frozen.

But there was some bad news. I'm not sure if I ever mentioned that we got another dove to go with Sophie. Life was really hectic around that time. Anyway, his name is Elvis. On Sunday Rick was cleaning the cage and didn't realize Elvis had but his feet between the bars on the bottom of the cage and was standing on the tray. There's not a lot of space between the bars but Elvis must have had his reasons. When Rick went to pull out the tray, Elvis' leg got stuck and it broke. We have an emergency vet in town but they only do cats and dogs, so we had to wait until today when the bird vet had a empty slot. Elvis has a cast on his leg now and should be healed in a couple of weeks. I haven't seen it yet. Rick took him in this morning and they want to keep him overnight to make sure the cast doesn't slip down. I was kind of surprised. Elvis took the whole thing in stride, as if he breaks a leg all of the time. He even got praises from the vet on his good bird manners. I promise pictures of his cast when we pick him up tomorrow.

Speaking of pets, the pet food recall has been expanded again to cover Nutro Max Cat and Natural Choice cans and pouches. The American Veterinary Medicine Association has a complete list. Also Jeannie posted a link to a blog that has been following the recall story. Since the story isn't getting as much press now, you might want to follow one or both of these sites if you have a cat, dog or ferret that may be affected. Ferrets are often fed kitten food.)

Finally, I've been a Project Spectrum slouch lately. April and May cover pink, green, and yellow. My current socks fit into the previous set of colors and actually have some pink in them too. I decided to dive into my sock stash for some more appropriate yarn and came up with these two.

On the left is some Claudia Hand Painted yarn in the Freesia colorway. On the right is some Strapaz Ringel yarn. I'll probably go ahead and start some socks with one of these even though I haven't finished the current socks yet. Yes, I know I'm getting into the dangerous, too many projects territory.

by Sydney  |

A Brisk Saturday Sky and a FO

Well by now it's actually Sunday but the sky is from Saturday. The really warm weather we were having? It's gone. Unfortunately many of the trees and bushes were convinced that the cold weather was gone for good. The lilacs on the lilac bush, almost gone. Just the ones on one branch remain.

They probably won't look so good tomorrow though. The leaves on the redbud tree didn't fair as well.

My beautyberry bush looks about the same.

It was a good day to finish up a chemo cap for a friend who needs cheering up though. Zoe is checking out my work before I mail it off.

"I think it's ready to send off, Mom."

by Sydney  |