1. Exactly what it says on the tin: Owls In Towels.
2. Is it very helpful? No, it’s invaluable! Check out Lose The Very if you’re stuck for an adjective.
3. This makes an intriguing point: 
4. A noble use of time and technology:
Just Look At This Amaryllis
It’s not quite in bloom yet but look at this monster–my first successful amaryllis re-bloom!
This is the bulb that last bloomed in January 2024. Despite all the helpful literature included with it, I kind of made up what I did: Let the foliage grow for 6 months or so, then stopped watering until the foliage died, then put it in a cold garage for a month or two, then back to the basement and until I noticed the flower spikes, when it came upstairs.
I think the first spike is going to pop any day now–I’ve been watching that calyx open since Monday. 
Wednesday Poem
The Poets.org Instagram account shared this one four days ago and it was a good interruption to the doom scroll. We didn’t sign up for this but “you might as well/ get up and at it, pestilence be damned.”
Incantation of the First Order
by Rita Dove
Listen, no one signed up for this lullaby.
No bleeped sheep or rosebuds or twitching stars
will diminish the fear or save you from waking
into the same day you dreamed of leaving—
mockingbird on back order, morning bells
stuck on snooze—so you might as well
get up and at it, pestilence be damned.
Peril and risk having become relative,
I’ll try to couch this in positive terms:
Never! is the word of last resorts,
Always! the fanatic’s rallying cry.
To those inclined toward kindness, I say
Come out of your houses drumming. All others,
beware: I have discarded my smile but not my teeth.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Sewing While Waiting
Once we knew Toby was going to be ok on Saturday morning, there was a chunk of six or so hours when we could stop worrying but before we could bring him home. What do you do while you wait? Sew, of course.
This is another “in between top” (last seen in the fall), when you don’t need a full sweatshirt but could use long sleeves. Like before, I used the Named Patterns Sloane Sweatshirt, but I added about an inch total to the center front and back for a boxier shape. I also left off the bottom band–was it because I like the cropped look or because I forgot to add width to it to match what I did to the body? Who can say.
And that fabric! I just got rid of a lot of fabric I didn’t LOVE, so it was time to start using the good stuff. This is from a print run from Doops Designs, who usually does ready-made clothing but will offer some yardage periodically. Obviously I didn’t hesitate to get it shipped from Australia last year.
17 Years With Toby / A Toby Close Call
It’s Toby’s “gotcha day” anniversary today, 17 whole years ago … and I almost didn’t think we’d get any more days with him over the weekend.
He’d been getting slower and slower and using his box less and less over the last couple weeks, but in the middle of last week he got the “big sad eyes” that he had the summer he was diagnosed with diabetes. He was also not walking well, another thing that happened before we got his diabetes under control, so I thought, “Maybe he needs more insulin.” So I gave him a little higher dose than usual Thursday night and Friday morning but he still seemed so distressed and lethargic, we made a same-day vet appointment for Friday.
Reader, he was hypoglycemic. His blood sugar was at 30 (normal is 150-300). He wasn’t walking well because he HAD NO ENERGY. I feel absolutely terrible. That larger dose Thursday and Friday sent him over the edge but it’s likely he’d been getting too much long-term, which was causing the slowness and the big sad eyes. Did I mention I feel terrible?
He ended up having to be transferred from his regular vet to the 24-hour emergency vet to go on an IV drip of dextrose for a night and a day. We visited him twice in the ER and he was NOT HAPPY–this was his first night at a vet in almost 18 years, he didn’t want to eat food, he just wanted to go home. Needless to say, everybody was a wreck.
But we were able to get his blood sugar back to normal and take him home Saturday night, where he immediately had a wash and an entire can of wet food and a big nap. And now he’s like a new cat–getting on the bed with us at night, walking fast, being sassy. I am so relieved (and still feel so terrible–we’re not doing any insulin until we can consult with his regular vet and get a blood sugar monitor on him).
So Happy Adoption Day to Good Old Toby. I’m so glad we didn’t lose you.
Friday Things
1. It’s our anniversary! I met Doc 11 years ago at a fancy taco place and here we are doing legal paperwork and planning to buy a house together. We met later in life so statistically speaking we probably won’t have the 45 or 50 or 60 year anniversaries, but that just makes every year more precious. Happy anniversary honey! I love you.
2. It’s also the Spring Equinox. FINALLY. The light is back!
Is It Time To Start A Craft Night?
I’ve saved two articles about starting a craft night in the last month. Is it a sign? Molly Jean Bennett writes about how they’re for building community, which is the thing I hear about again and again as the antidote to despair and helplessness.
…sewing and knitting circles, with their complex gender, class, and racial history, foster whisper networks and the quiet dissemination of information.[…] I’m under no illusion that craft night alone is going to solve the childcare crisis, stop ICE raids, or ensure that trans kids can access medical care. But crafting with others builds strong community.
And, in a thematic 180, fashion designer Jessie Randall writes about her craft club, which includes friends in Vogue and professional flowers and hiring experts to teach (!). But strip away the eye-rolling parts and there’s a pretty solid framework for how to get started:
Our framework is this: each month one member of the group hosts the club. They come up with the craft, provide the supplies (and refreshments) and teach the craft to the group. The only thing you need to bring to craft club is yourself. When you are host, you can invite other people to join for that event. It’s fun having fresh faces.
Frog Meme Roundup
I noticed I had a frog collection of screenshots going, so here’s some frog stuff for Wednesday.
This is all of my team at work by the end of every day (it’s busy), by Sara Nilson:
I am Toad here (by Hayley DeRoche; the whole slideshow is good):
This is me if I start thinking too much about possible terrible futures (pro tip: don’t) (by Arcane Bullshit)
And I forgot to save any attribution for this guy, but he’s here for us:
Tuesday Project Roundup: Using Scraps For Basics
Using fabric I already have to make a pattern I’ve already made, twice in a row, was not thrilling sewing. But I needed gym bras and I was on a tear to sort and use all my sewing detritus, so the timing was right.
This is my trusted Greenstyle Embrace pattern with a layer of powernet between the front and the lining. The powernet was leftover from the bottle pocket on my travel backpack (!) and the scraps have been sitting in my “big athletic scraps” box for 3-5 years (!!).
I couldn’t be bothered to change the thread in my cover stitch machine so I just did a honeycomb stitch around the neck binding, but I immediately regretted it because the cover stitch looks so much more professional. Oh well! They’re finished and I already wore one to the gym yesterday. Plus I can check something off the “sewing intentions” list.
Craft Circularity
My sewing supplies have gradually crept over the entire house, especially the basement. We want to buy a new house this year and the thought of moving all that finally got me motivated to look through what I have and GET RID OF IT.
I took the nice over-two-yard lengths to the IRC here, but I had a bunch of remnants and smaller cuts and yarn and half-finished sweaters and beading supplies and an entire box of children’s sewing patterns … where can that go?
Turns out it can go to Making Space Thrift in Springville, about an hour away. They’re “happy to accept raw materials, half-finished projects, tools, notions, patterns, and books”–bingo! I FIRMLY INTENDED to come home empty-handed, they had leather scraps (!) for $5 a pound (!!) …. and also elastic in its packaging and grosgrain ribbon on its spool, which I grabbed because my source for that was Joann and RIP, Joann.
So I brought back more STUFF but compared with the four boxes I left, it’s still a net loss of stuff, hooray.
