Month: June 2005

Chaos

That would be my house at the moment. The remodeling is proceeding, though messily and slowly. The front entrance tile is almost in, and the grouting and finishing will hopefully be done in a few days. The boys are here to sand the wood floors this morning, and we are plastic-sheeted into a corner of our house. After the floors get finished, the other boys will come and paint the whole upstairs. I will almost be glad to go back to work tomorrow so I can pretend this just doesn’t exist for awhile.

Here are a few pictures. Where our living room used to be is now a dance hall. We tried it out the other night after a few bourbons, and I think we’ll turn it back into a living room. Note the classy furniture.

Here’s the front tile.

My yarn is locked up behind several layers of plastic, doors, and boxes, hopefully to keep the sawdust out.

When life is in chaos, I shop. It seems that there is an epidemic of yarn-buying around the blogs this week, so I joined the crowd. I couldn’t resist buying enough Cotton Ease for two sweaters of some sort. I ordered it from the Lion Brand website, and it hasn’t arrived yet to take pictures, but I got the Banana Cream and the Candy Blue colors. Sitcom Chic, here I come!

Elann has Pakucho Organic Cotton on sale, and I bought enough in Forest to make this cardigan:

I’ve had the pattern for awhile, but didn’t get around to getting the yarn until now.

Last but not least, Alpaca & Silk, from Blue Sky Alpacas, purchased from Knit Pixie. I want one of everything they have for sale! This will be a lacy scarf someday when it grows up. It is indeed as pretty as it looks.

Lest you think that all I do is shop for yarn and dream about new projects, here are photos of actual knitting. The three projects are the Rogue sweater, the Black Hole Birch shawl, and the Lorna’s Laces socks.

I’m going to go find someplace quieter than home to knit today….say, perhaps by the runway at SeaTac.

Merrily We Rogue Along

When we last saw that mystery Rogue, it was way back in March; back before I discovered that I apparently can’t walk and drink at the same time. Here is where we left off with the Rogue tale:

This week I decided to tackle this again. My hand still doesn’t like knitting cables in heavy worsted wool, but I figured I needed to get back at this. I’ve managed to get about a dozen rows done on the hood this week, though very slowly. At this pace I’ll finish it by winter.

I finished my first week back at work yesterday. The fingers made it through OK, though after ten or twelve (or sixteen) hours of writing in a day, I needed ice therapy.  It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I worried that it would be. After three months of enforced “vacation”, I easily remembered all the essential information I needed to get through my day. I remembered where the bathrooms were, all the nurses’ names, which doctors go with which specialty, and the phone numbers that I call regularly (emergency room!). It helped that it is summertime, and our hospital census was on the manageable side. After a seven-day, roughly 80-90 hour work week, I now have a week off to recover until the next one. And maybe get some knitting done.

I did discover one good thing this week. I really missed work. I love what I do, and though I do my share of bitching (or is that birching?) about a variety of crap on a regular basis, I really did miss it.  My work can be a challenge at times. I function as the “lead” doctor for up to six or seven hospitalists in the hospital that I mostly practice at. In addition to seeing a full roster of patients daily, I am in charge of managing the “patient list”: I make sure that every patient that our group is supposed to be seeing is assigned to a doctor, which isn’t always as simple as it sounds. (Organizing doctors can be a little like herding cats some days.) I coordinate admissions via the ER and outpatient offices, as well as the occasional transfer from other smaller hospitals in the region. And triage what seems like hundreds of phone calls daily.

And amongst all the whining that I can do about how difficult and energy-sucking it sometimes is, I rediscovered this week that I wouldn’t want to do anything else but what I am doing.

Home Again, Home Again…

We are finally home from the Great Wine Buying Expedition of 2005. We left almost two weeks ago, and just got home last night. We drove down the Oregon coast, then down the California Coast just past Mendocino. We turned east and drove through the Anderson valley, tasting along the way, then into Napa. After nearly a week in the Napa valley, we headed home through the Mt. Shasta area, and stopped in Ashland, Oregon to take in a Shakespeare performance. After a night in Portland with friends, we headed home. All in all we put more than 2000 miles on the Dogmobile (John’s car), though I suspect a lot of those miles were driving up and down the Napa valley, dipping in and out of wineries.

The trip was very relaxing, and with only a couple of minor glitches along the way. John had a run-in with the law the first day and has a speeding ticket to prove it (his first ever, so not bad I guess). We took a ton of pictures all along the coast. On day five of the trip, I managed to delete every last picture on the camera. Don’t ask. There were a lot of swear words involved. And I wasn’t even drinking wine at that point. At least we have the pictures from the last half of the trip.

We stayed in a number of swell little hotels and inns along the way, and then spent six days in Napa, staying in a timeshare that was billed as “individual cottages”. We’ve found that there is a wide variation in accommodations when you exchange timeshares; this one was no exception. The “cottages” basically were a trailer court. When we drove into the resort, we saw hundreds of little trailers all backed into lots right next to each other. They were all painted different colors at least, and were nicely landscaped. They were quite comfortable and adequate inside, though the outside was a hoot. Here is a picture:

That’s my new sock in progress. In Harlot fashion, I have dozens of pictures of that sock all over the Left Coast. Well, I HAD pictures, anyway. Here are a few from the trip to Shasta:

I managed to get to two yarn shops on the trip. The first was in Lakeside, Oregon, a shop called Angelika’s Yarn Store. It’s in this tiny town, way out of town in the bottom level of the owner’s home. I used to have good pictures of that one. She has the most amazing collection of Lorna’s Laces, with just about every yarn and color in stock. I bought one little skein of Helen’s Lace for a shawl.

The other yarn shop was The Web-sters, in Ashland. Here’s what I got there:

It’s Mountain Colors Bearfoot, for socks.

All in all, a lovely trip. I’m glad to be home, and I have to get to go back to work tomorrow; first day after my three months off. I hope I remember where the bathrooms are.

I’ll try to post some pictures later this week of more knitting progress. Between wine tastings, I did manage to make some progress on that sock, as well as on Birch. This week may be pretty much shot to hell, though what with going back to work, and this:

This morning the floor people came and tore up all the carpets in our main level, in preparation for the wood floor installation. It’s just a mess around here. I’ve spent most of my day packing up as much crap as possible in boxes so I don’t have to clean wood dust out of everything I own after the sanding. It’s too bad they couldn’t have done this while we were gone.

It’s good to be back!