Rest in Peace, Darling Mackie: February 2011 - November 14th, 2013

 

Yesterday, our world lost a small but strong little light.



Two and a half weeks ago, we learned that Mr. Mackie only had a little while left to live.  Since then, he has eaten grandly, spent hours on our bed hanging out with us, and been showered with love, attention, and visits from friends.  A few days ago, I started noticing that he was cuddling a lot more than he usually did, and exhibiting signs of pain.  We took him to the vet to weigh him and found out that he had already lost 30 grams of body weight - a sign of rapid decline in small furry ones like him - so he was prescribed an opioid painkiller.  I pretty much knew then that we needed to start saying goodbye.

It's been pretty horrible watching such a sweet, energetic, and inquisitive little dude get so sick, so fast - only a week ago, he was bouncing around and snatching treats straight from the bag, but by Tuesday he seemed to have lost a lot of energy.  Wednesday night was spent with him curled up in our arms, and around 2 am we decided that it was time.  Blake was up every hour checking on him while I slept, and we took him into the vet's office the next afternoon.

It's going to be hard to come home and not immediately say hello to him, or to get ready for bed without him poking around in the pillows.  He's followed us through so much growth and change in the last two years, and he has been a constant source of solace, entertainment, and companionship.  It's amazing how such a small presence could bring so much joy into our lives.

So to celebrate Mackie, here are a few of my favorite photos of him.

His favorite places: our bed, any couch or interesting piece of furniture (including people), and his various nests of blankets, tissue paper, and cardboard.

Mackie enjoying a boop, in our first apartment in Seattle.



Always up to something.

Rest in peace, my handsome little buddy.  You are so loved, and so missed already.  <:3O~

Family Pictures

  

So after my last post, we took Mackie to the vet again and got some very bad news.  He has a growth in his urinary tract that is causing pain and inflammation, and the associated surgery to remove it would be risky, complicated, and unlikely to improve his quality of life, so we made the difficult decision not to pursue further treatment.  Since his diagnosis, we've been giving him lots of treats and snuggle time, giving him pain medication, and trying to enjoy the time we have left with him.  (Not gonna lie - there have been a lot of tears.)

Mackie is my first rat as an adult, Blake's first rat ever, and our first pet together, so he has been an integral member of our little family.  He has been with us through two moves, my fashion show, and our wedding, so he's become the go-to furry dude for cuddles during both happy and stressful times.  It's difficult to even think about what life is going to be like without him.  Since we realized we didn't have many photos of us with Mackie, our friend Sooz was kind enough to take some photographs of all of us together this weekend.



I think she nailed it.

Design Brainstorm: Baby Blanket

 

We found out a few days after the wedding that there's a baby due in the family early this spring, so of course I immediately started scheming a baby blanket design for them.  It's been a new challenge for me, since I'm not very baby-focused, thinking about the functionality as well as the look of a pattern.  I want it to be the perfect blankie for dragging around, snuggling, and throwing in the wash, so I've had to nix a few ideas right off the bat: although I love lace, little fingers might get caught in the holes, and since it's meant to be transported and used every which-way, I want it to be somewhat reversible.

With these ideas in mind, I did a bit of swatching a few weeks ago with some Berroco Comfort DK.  This yarn has the proud honor of being the only mostly-acrylic yarn I've ever enjoyed working with, so it has the convenience of acrylic yarn while still satisfying the texture snob in me.  We haven't yet heard the sex of the baby, and I hesitate to give gender-normative colors to children so early in life anyhow, so I settled on this lovely clear aqua blue.

I think I've worked out a pattern I like, so now I just need to crunch some numbers and cast on!

In other news - for the last month or so, Mr. Mackie has been trying for the world record in vet visits per week.  He's currently doing okay, but still angling to squeeze in one or two more.  He had a broken tooth 3 weeks ago, an abscess a week after that, and so much inflammation near the abscess site yesterday that we took him to an urgent care vet.  Poor little dude!  We'll be taking him to his normal vet again tomorrow, and hopefully he'll be back to his bouncy self soon.

Little Things

 

Some nice things today:

Snuggly Mackie; just-about-finished socks out of Socks That Rock from deep stash; the new Spin Off, which has a gorgeous rectangular shawl in it; my beaten up copy of Knitted Lace of Estonia; a new Miralda for me out of cream laceweight alpaca.

Happy Friday!

Hallo there!

It's been a while!  There's been a few changes around here.  Mr. Mackie had another health scare a few weeks ago when he broke one of his teeth clean off!  Luckily, the vet determined that he had just "done something stupid" and the tooth would grow back pretty quickly.  It did, and since then he has kept his little butt out of the vet's office.

 

In other news... I cut my hair!  I had been thinking about it for quite a while, and a few days before my dear friend Ondrea's wedding in Oberlin, I decided to take the plunge.  I love how easy it is to care for!  I will admit that it's been a bit of an adjustment.  I started growing it out when I was 19, so long hair has been part of my identity for a long time, and I've found that both myself and others have been referring to me as "that girl who used to have really long hair".  It's a little weird, but I'm sure it will pass in time.

 

I've been taking a bit of a break from sewing and general creative work since the show, but lately I've been dipping my toes back in.  I made my bridesmaid's dress for the wedding, which was the first thing I had sewn for several months.  I've also started going back to knitting groups, and blocking and finishing some of the projects that were on hold while I worked on my collection.  And yesterday, I ran into a friend from Purly Girls and we started scheming a project to work on together - more details on that once it's more solidified!

Hope you've all been well, and hope to see you a lot more around these parts!

<3

Cory

The Mack is Back

  

Mr. Boo had a health scare late last week, but he's now on tasty grape antibiotics and hopefully on the mend!

And in other news, we're moving... again!  It seems like yesterday that we were moving from our apartment in the suburbs and hoping that it was the right decision.  It absolutely was, but now it's time to move on to bigger and better things.  We're moving to a townhouse about a mile away - still plenty close to the school, but with more space, and more importantly, with a room big enough for a proper workspace!  We're moving in with one of my friends from the show, who for the purposes of the blog shall be named Pants.  She likes Mackie - so much that she once made him a rocket ship out of a cardboard box with functional seats and wings! - so we'll all get along just fine.

I'm hoping to start posting again regularly soon, probably once the move has happened and life starts getting back to some semblance of normal.  Hope everyone is well!

Good Morning!

Mr. Boo is getting a little slower in his old age.  Even though he's still a little rocket-butt in the evenings, in the morning he's sleepy and a little sluggish.  This morning he kept on poking his nose out of the blankets and actually sitting still for a minute or two, which was too cute not to photograph.

Then Lumberjack picked him up, and he decided that he was fully awake.

Nothing like a little parental humiliation to get you moving in the morning!

Friday Morning

  

So far, today has been a pretty quiet morning.  The weather has been rainy and cool, and in response, all I want to do is eat soup and hang out with Mackie.  This week was busy at school - I finished all of my black dress patternwork, steamed my black wool fabric, and cut out the pattern pieces.  Last night, I started construction of the dress, and when I pinned the front and back bodice pieces together to check the fit before finalizing anything, it fit absolutely perfectly.  Paradoxically, the wool gives it both a crispness and a softness - the fabric itself is pretty structured, but it has just the slightest amount of give that the treated cotton muslin doesn't.  Just another reason to love wool.

Speaking of which, I've started another shawl project.  Who's surprised?

I'm using Abstract Fiber Arts Matisse, a light fingering weight superwash BFL yarn, in the colorway Alfafa.  I'm curious to see how it blocks out, because it's just a little stiff and scratchy, and very tightly twisted.  I'm knitting another Ashton Shawlette, and scheming another Dee O'Keefe design in some Prairie.

In the last few weeks, my lack of knitting time has apparently been converted into pattern & yarn matching brilliance.  I have been sifting through Ravelry patterns hard, and finding all sorts of things to knit from stash yarn.  It's funny how this sort of thing comes in waves - I'll have weeks where I have no idea what to knit, and my stash weighs me down, but then I'll have a week like this where I'll get flashes of inspiration every two seconds and I want to Knit All The Things.

Last of all, the grey yarn is a new baby alpaca by Juniper Moon Farms.  It's worsted weight, and it is like butter.  I have a weird relationship with alpaca yarn: most of the time I'm not huge fan, but sometimes I touch an alpaca yarn and cannot live without it in my life.  Herriot was one of the latter - natural color; incredible softness; a warm, rustic wooliness that I can't resist.  I've started scheming about making a cowl out of it, based on the Salt Creek hat pattern.  We'll see how that goes.

And of course, there's Mr. Mackie!  He was being really sleepy and cute this morning, and I managed to get a few good pictures of him with his curlers still in.

Happy Friday!

Rat in a Drawer

We had a rather relaxed weekend, including a trip with knitting friends to Churchmouse Yarn & Tea, a fabulous yarn shop on Bainbridge Island that stocks Brooklyn Tweed yarns and patterns - and happened to have the Fall collection in as a trunk show.  Needless to say, we tried on a lot of woolies!

Sunday morning Lumberjack and I slept in and had Mackie out for a bit.  He managed to jump over to an open drawer, and he was just sleepy enough that I caught a few shots of him.

I've been doing a lot of knitting, and tomorrow I'm off to Oberlin for a short break before jumping straight back into school again!

Mackie McMackerson, Esq.

 

Either my allergies are really acting up or I'm getting a cold, so here's a rattie interlude for today.

Mackie is quite the busy little person these days!  I've been having him out several times a day on our bed or just out for a quick snuggle with my elbows (he prefers to hang out my forearm with his nose in my elbow), and if it were even possible, he's started to chill out even more.

His favorite pastimes while out:

1.  Trying to eat my engagement ring.  Which is made of diamond.
2.  Bouncing.  When he's excited, it's like he has a rocket pack strapped to his butt.
3.  Hanging out on my shoulder and wrapping his tail around my face for balance.
4.  Licking my face in hopes that I have saved some lunch for him.
5.  Licking my forearms.  I have no idea why.
6.  Hiding under pillows.
7.  Headbutting pillows to get out from under them.
8.  Running across my computer keyboard.
9.  Tunneling around under the bedspread.
10.  Nibbling things, deciding that they're not delicious enough, and bouncing away.

Gosh, it's tough to be a rat.