Exhaustion. My ex-husband and I have just witnessed a catty miracle. Hector, black killer boy, was critically ill with a brain tumour or some sort of brain infection (our bank accounts being too small to buy the diagnostic tests to be definitive). It's been comatose cat duty for the past six days. Without the gory details, we dug his grave and were taking him to his "last" appointment, when we saw a bit of life (one last chance to try feeding him, he licked his chops when I opened a can which he promptly turned away from). His death sentence was commuted for another day, while we waited for some or any more improvement. Two days later he is his old yowly self, insensed with me that I won't allow him out, yelling for an A-team rescue from every open window, hissing at his pills, and consuming 3 cans of stinky cow gut beef gravy cubes in the past 12 hours. But this week, I sat with him outside on the front veranda with his little dish rag body and 1000 yard stare. I picked up some mindless knitting on an unfinished sweater from 3 years ago. I call it my Jamestown sweater. I travelled to New York State with a couple of friends to a picnic on a very hot and overcast August afternoon, and convinced them to go to a wool store with me. It turns out the wool store was in deep woods, quaint but sparsely stocked. I was jonesing for fibre, not having developed the habit of always always carrying a small project with me (like this week at the vet when we were juicing up Hector on a fluid IV every morning because he wasn't drinking - out came the socks). So at this country woods wool store, I bought the "local" stuff, which turned out to be Maine wool. Scratchy, but hardy, a good outdoor under the down vest sort of sweater. I picked all the colours I liked, and thought I'd figure something out later. Each colour band is four rows, and the gradation is mostly consistent. Pretty boring knitting, and I guess I hadn't figured out a complete plan for it. I went to the Interweave book of sweater patterns, worked the numbers, figured out how much yardage I had, and committed to a plan of action. That would make it the Jamestown funky public boy school sweater with the split t-neck and semi inset sleeves. Wait for it... the experience of showing bd teacher the stash has me interested in finishing a couple of things. That and it's cool here, finally. More about the new thrills of my bd life tomorrow...