What I Have Been Doing

I have learned a lot the past couple of days: How to feed a kitten with a syringe.

And how to feed a kitten without a syringe.

Poor Baxter has had, and still has, a respiratory infection. Apparently this is serious in cats, and he has spent part or all of three days at the vet's clinic. Because he wouldn't eat or drink, he had to spend a day there getting water via an IV and getting food through a syringe.

Then he came home and I fed him with a syringe. Dh is out of town, and a VERY kind neighbor helped me do this, since Baxter wasn't remotely cooperative. This was tough on body (my neighbor's) and soul (Baxter's).

Once he showed some interest in eating, I had to switch to what the vet refers to as "fish heads."

It is made of chopped sardines and shrimp held together a bit by aspic. and even sick cats have a hard time resisting it. If you think that this stuff looks gross, you should smell it.

So Baxter is not himself yet, and as a result, I've gotten some knitting done! I'm making a Christmas gift, which can't be revealed, but I'm not using the yarn the pattern calls for. The LYS doesn't carry it, and since I only need one skein, I decided to work with yarn that is close to what I should have used. It does not knit up to the same gauge on the size needles called for, so I switched to larger needles and made a swatch.

I'm supposed to get 4 stitches/inch, and I got five. What now?

I did what I always do-I ignored the swatch and knit up the first ten rows. The pattern calls for size 8, 16" circular needles, which I don't have, so I am using size 7. Then after ten rows, the pattern calls for switching to size 10, 16" circular needles, which I don't have, so I am using size 10 1/2. My theory is that since the gauge is a bit small anyway, switching to needles a half a size larger is a good thing.

I am VERY sure that this will work.

I'll let you know.