Way out in the Middle of Nowhere

It's been more like a week without any real knitting. Friday before last I woke up feeling like the floor of a NYC Taxi cab. Even at work, the boss noticed. Although he thought I had gone out partying the night before. It was a vicious cold. The remnants are still hanging on. I've got bronchitis and a set of sinsues that scream each time I cough. But the worst of it is over. Odd though, even when I'm laying there wheezing and shivering and wishing to be unconscious, I don't knit. I'll lay there doing nothing, but I will not knit. You'd think I would just be knitting all the time since my brain is too stuffed up for any higher-level processing. Oh I know knitting can be tricky, but knitting hats is easy. Before I started back at school, I knitted a 6' long stole for myself. It's just like 100 stitches, knitted in stockinette with the exception of the last 3 stitches on each side, to keep it from rolling. All white sock yarn, all off a 1,100 yard co...

oh Hey! that's George saying hi to me. He and Fred like to come up and chew on me a bit while I'm outside. I've been inside now for a few days struggling with a nasty cold. First day was the clogged yet drippy sinuses, Yesterday was the migration to the asthmatic lungs. Today is just meh.  really really meh. I'm tired and glad to be going nowhere. Last weekend was the Sheep and Wool festival in Jefferson, WI. As Dave found a cooking partner this year for his task of cooking the roasts for the Church's Harvest Festival, I got to go! I finally got my hands on one of Adam Mielke 's spindles. I've wanted one since he started making them. I understand he's stopped, but a few can be had. I started spinning with some nice red merino roving in it from the Fairy Yarn Mother. . Susan is a good friend of mine that I enjoy talking with at the fair each time. She has the most wonderful shades of roving around.  It's the one roving I am most trustworthy ...

Last week, my shoulder decided it did not like shoveling loads of muck out of the mud pit. I had a grumpy arm that wouldn't allow me to move it without griping about the movement. Lovely, eh? It was my left shoulder as well, which makes it oh so much more challenging as a left-handed person. I had gotten the TENS unit that Icy Hot sells for Dave, as his back was hurting. It did wonders for him, but was fiddly: the buttons are on the unit itself and impossible to reach when attached to the back. I tried it on my shoulder. It made it worse. It got to the point where any movement on my upper body sent it to thralls of great pain. The pain itself reached a crescendo Friday night when we wrapped the shoulder. I ended up on the recliner to sleep and spent the next 2 nights there as well. There was just no way to sleep in bed without it hurting. At least in the recliner, I could prop it up and put the heating pad on it.  A regimen of 4 ibuprofen plus the heating pad helped out a lot....

We have our worries about Sissy, center in the photo.  She's been acting oddly lately; standing in corners just zoned and walking aimlessly not with her flock. Her bad eye has been looking worse lately, and I suspect she's lost more sight in it.  Her depth perception is worse: I see her trying to lap up water about 1/2" from the actual water. If it is true, and she's lost all sight in that eye, she WILL eventually adjust. We'll need to adjust as well.  Before I walk over to pick her up, I talk to her and make sure to touch her side so she knows I am there. She had an injury to the area below her chin. With the hot, muggy weather lately, it was important to keep it bug-free.  I slathered triple antibiotic ointment on it twice daily to keep it from blood sucking bugs. It's healed over now, so that's another thing that will make her feel better. I've been working on a redesign of the banana squash head pillow.  I discovered that it is a great th...

Let's just list the crap pile that was my week. They are in no particular order of crapitude but some are worse than others. 1. I can't wear my wedding & engagement ring because I bashed my hand against something doing chores and bruised my finger. Every time I put the rings on I get a burning pain.  Great.   2. My Hubby got his hours cut, again. Now he's down to 30 and we're scrambling to cut budget and/or make up the loss in funds.  3. Which leads me selling plasma. I'm all-around healthy, so it's not all that difficult. I DID find the 4 hours spent there yesterday and the 30 mile round trip to home and back to get a marriage certificate to prove I changed my name to be almost too much to endure. And all that for 20 bucks.......... 4. I was sitting down in the garage on a bale of straw cleaning the fog off my glasses when my left  lens fell off into a pile of straw.   Think of it as trying to find a needle in a haystack, blind.   We h...

It was a tough week last week.  The death of Goosie, then a brutal head cold kept me pretty much laid up on the recliner heavily medicated.   I've been trying to work on a satchel-type bag that was never real popular (except for one Aussie who likes it) but I find real handy. So...for a few pictures.. The first is a delft blue with yellow interior. It's about 15" wide by 12" deep. I need to finish up securing the raw edges. Raw edges like to snag yarn. And now that I look at the picture and  the real thing, yes...the pockets are a bit skewed on this one.  This was the first one made.  I'm not happy with the loops for the strap: too much raw edge showing. I also did not like the size as it's very deep but not very wide. And it's skewed too.  I gotta work on that.  The last one is hard to see the pockets in the front because the interior fabric coordinates with the exterior so well.  Now this one might be a bit TOO big 16" by 14"  ...

This is Tyler 'Spud', our youngest kitty.  He's a spud all right.  Today he's been hanging out on my lap while I spend the day resting.  My asthma started up last night and would. not. stop.  At 3 am I found myself on that same recliner struggling to breathe while I coughed up a lung. So any effort to do something well, productive went out the window at 3 am. I've decided on a project diet when it comes to knitting: no more projects started until the ones I've got on the needles are finished.  Two out of 9 are finished but there are three sweaters in that queue. 

The family has been experiencing a lot of changes lately, and I've not been knitting nearly enough! Our son Alex has graduated from High School and was preparing to enter Tech School for a welding degree. Everything was all purty and quiet here and then he got a text - from his girlfriend - who broke up with him - in a text. So 2 years of relationship ends in a text (can you tell that's a real annoying point for me, the text?) and my son is left bereft, hurt and without a real need to stay in this podunk little town. Two weeks ago, he announces, "I want to go into the Navy." Okay! This option was floated about in the last few years for many reasons: 1. We've got no real $$ saved up for college. 2. His grades are not really indicative of ambition towards a college goal. 3. This kid can code computer programs IN HIS SLEEP, and needs a place where he can expand on that knowledge is a more structured environment than college. College has too many distractions (girlz...

My right hand/wrist has been swollen and achy now for over a week. It's an aggrivation of an old injury that won't get better until I stop using the stupid hand as much as I do. So...distraction will come in the guise of a giraffe. " Mango the Giraffe from KnitPicks.com Knitting " Go get a copy of your pattern today. I'm working on Mango's head right now..slowly.

Yes, that is what I look like to day. Not bad for a woman who had her gall bladder surgically removed yesterday eh? The saga of the gallstones is at an end. Yesterday I went to the hospital and Dr. Surgeon took them out. Actually I requested them too. Dr. Surgeon was giggling, but did plop them into a jar for me! We've decided to call them Fred and George. Yep, my stones are the Weasley twins. Today, I feel like the loser in a boxing match. I am very grateful and lucky to have a hubby who is taking excellent care of me. The laptop is perched on my reclining lap while I sip my first latte in two days. AHHH Latte. Ok, really this was to say yeah I'm ok and to show off the Ptarmigan. I felt a need for a get well knitting gift, so I bought the ptarmigan pattern by Jared flood. I like his designs; they are classic and not overly frilly. So I knitted this cowl in a few days from some recycled cashmere. I frogged a 50's style sweater for the yarn and it is so soft. I extende...

That's your hint of what will become Zoe. Forgive the graininess of the pictures; my cell does not like low light. I'm still knitting and charting. It's part of a new frenzy of creativity that I'm having. I've been creating new knitting patterns. The other patterns in the works are nook-kindle-ebook reader covers. About a month ago, I got myself a nook. I've loaded about 30 books onto it, some trashy romances, some Stephen King, some Diana Gabaldon. This is the wi-fi version. The browser is a bit fiddly, but I can spot-check my email quickly and get back to reading. The last book I read was "The Colorado Kid" By Stephen King. We've been watching the TV Series "Haven" on Sy Fy and I wanted to know how close it was to the book. It's not really close to the book, but I don't really mind. The book is such a short story, that it does lend itself to being like an introduction to the town of Haven. Update on the Gall Bladder: The su...

and I forgot: 7. I've not smoked for over 2 months now! The wedding and reception were a true temptation, but I did not smoke at all. YAY

When you are a smoker, your doctor will tell you out-and-out lies. They will promise you the moon, the stars, 72 virgins, and rivers of milk and honey once you quit smoking. "You will feel so much better! You will taste food better! Your clothes will smell fresh! Your breath will be like roses!!" Oh yeah sure. For one thing; I didn't smoke in my house. My clothes NEVER smelled like a night in a bar. Now I will tell you what only one Doctor had the balls to tell me: For the first six months after you quit smoking, you will feel like SHIT. Especially in the morning. You will hack up little balls of phlegm, and it will hurt to do so. Headaches, sore chest, colds, sinus crap is all you are in for. It will get better and better the longer you are not smoking. But those same doctors will also hand you the same line when you are overweight. "Just lose 10 pounds and you won't need to take your bp meds." My doctor said. To which I responded, "Dude, I lost TWENTY...

Yeah, I've quit smoking again: (no that's not my sister in the pic, but I wish I had ONE of those ciggs) The biggest thing that triggers my urge to smoke (or the stress urge to smoke) is my sister. I'm a laid back lady. I don't freak out over little things. Drama is not my scene. I'd rather spend my days quietly spinning, knitting or sewing. But my sister lives, breathes and sustains her life on drama. She's raising her own grandkids, there's always something going on with their cars, she's got more physical ailments that most 10 people. And to top it off, her family got caught in that mortgage fiasco. Their mortgage is now more than they make per month, so bye-bye house. And hello my house! When they move out, they have a month or so that they don't really have a place to call home. Hey, we have some room...sure come on over! We can put her and her hubby in the spare bedroom, and my Godson can bunk in with Alex. That's before she said that it wo...

A few years ago, I was at my Sister's house and suffered what my husband and I thought was a very mild stroke. Sitting on her couch, my face felt odd-hot, tingly, flushed. My vision became tunneled, and everything looked as though I was looking through the wrong end of binoculars. Then I got up and went to my Sister's computer to fix some program that had a CD for it. I kept dropping the CD. My hubby got concerned. I said screw it, took an Imitrex and then headed for a bedroom to take a nap. Now mind you, I was probably about 34 or 35 at the time. When I woke up a few hours later, I felt drained, but that was about it. Since that time I have had issues with what they call Nominal Aphasia. I can be talking about some object and cannot bring the name of it up. It's easy stuff: like refridgerator, door, radio...and today Clothes Basket. I needed my son to fill the basket up with clothes from the dryer but I couldn't remember the word "clothes basket....