Knitnana's Knot Knitting...

It's been a very busy weekend (do I ever start a weekend blog post with any other sentence?) - but this week, Nana Sadie Rose responsibilities took a back seat to a bit of spring cleaning and the monthly bookkeeping for my client!

I am knitting, but just on a couple of blanket squares a la Oliver's Blanket from our endeavors three years ago with Mason Dixon Knitting...a dear friend in one of my knitting groups passed away a couple of weeks ago. We were making her a blanket (we're making 8 inch squares rather than the 4" ones in the original blanket). Now the blanket will go to her daughter to comfort her in her loss.

But in every single thing I've tried to do this weekend, I've had a fervent, excited, inquisitive Little Helper:

Here he is, making very light work of dishwashing...

He thinks every piece of machinery in this house (including the open refrigerator!) is his private playground....the top rack? His jungle-gym...

Here he is waiting for me to add more dishes to the bottom rack (or, shhhh, do you think maybe he's a little tired?)

Yesterday was a bit terrifying for him, tho. I ran the vacuum cleaner in the downstairs. Until this point, I'd just done a quick pass in one or two rooms since he arrived, but yesterday, the entire living room was turned topsy-turvy, with curtains down and washed, ironed and rehung, vacuuming and dusting - you know the spring-cleaning drill (he LOVED climbing up in the windows and chasing the blinds' cords!!).

I started into the kitchen with the vacuum to get the cat fur off the two area rugs in there, and found him in a corner spinning like a top. He'd stop and drop. Then up and spin again, the head at full-tilt, then drop.

I turned off the machine, immediately. He looked at me in exhausted fright, completely disoriented.

I think the noise, coming through his damaged ears, was just too much for him, but he couldn't stop spinning (to make the noise stop?) to get himself away from it. I had a time picking him up (he was terrified), and I got him upstairs into a room far from the noise, shutting the door firmly behind me.

And when I went back after I was done, he was sitting calmly, curled up on the rug.

Whew. We've gone back to the original daily prednisone because backing it down to every other day was causing the symptoms to reoccur. I've got my fingers crossed that in a couple of weeks he'll be much, much better.