Category: Life Happens

Oh For Pete’s Sake

Or, January Project Update

Or, I Hate Having The Flu

I could just stop there, right? Be careful what you wish for, is all I have to say. The past few weeks at work have been a bit busy, to say the least. The hospitals are not just full, we have hallways lined with sick people in extra beds sans rooms. It’s been pretty demoralizing and exhausting for everybody; last week I saw veteran nurses in tears. At any rate, I finished my work week Thursday night, ready for a three day weekend, and had the thought “It would just be nice to have a few extra days off.”

Ha. Friday morning I woke up with the crud which just got worse as the weekend went on. I finally broke down and went to our Urgent Care Sunday morning, and came away with the last two packages of anti-flu medicine, one for me to treat influenza*, and one for John to keep him from getting it. The pharmacy was also out of prescription cough syrup, which should tell you something. Our hospital was near to running out of influenza test kits last week, so we’re down to diagnosing it the old fashioned way, by history and exam. What a concept.

Anyway, this “got” me those two extra days off I was wishing for. I haven’t done much except sleep and wander around in a drug induced stupor. I’m hoping to be up to speed to go back to work tomorrow.

Enough whining. I have gotten some knitting done this weekend, though I’ve stuck to plain stocking stitch for the most part, since my brain isn’t working very well. Here are my January goals for your reference:

  • Finish the body of my Green Jeans sweater
  • Finish the pair of socks on the needles (Pot ‘o Gold socks)

And here’s where I am.

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That’s the Green Jeans sweater (AKA Corduroy). I’ve reached the split for the bodice part, and have started the upper back. This is actually pretty mindless knitting, with just a bit of garter striping for interest.

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And those of course are the socks. One done, one almost half done.

I’m not sure I’ll hit either of those goals by the end of the month, but we’ll see. I’d be closer to getting there if I hadn’t gotten distracted by that shiny shiny platinum yarn from the last post.

I’m off to take more drugs.

*And yes, I did get a flu shot. I hate to think what this would be like if I hadn’t.

 

 

We Interrupt This Travelogue…

We’re home! We got home Wednesday evening, and I’ve pretty much been in a fog since. The Budapest photos will have to wait a bit, since I don’t have them sorted. I came home with a nasty bug, and have been laid low by it, which is quite unusual for me. Most of the boat passengers were sick with some sort of respiratory bug; by the end of the cruise the ship sounded like a floating TB sanitarium. Mine kept getting worse and worse, and last Sunday I signed into my medical website and scheduled an appointment for Thursday (Group Health! Schedule your appointments from Budapest!). Both my primary care doc and I were at least a bit concerned about pertussis, so she consigned me to isolation for 5 days of antibiotics. I didn’t really want to go back to work after a nice vacation, but this is ridiculous. I just got the results this morning (Group Health! Get your test results Sunday morning online!) and it’s not whooping cough, though I still feel like crap, and I’m pretty sure most of my patients and co-workers would be glad I stayed home and didn’t spread whatever it is around.

I do have some good news to report, though. Not too long after the spinning bug bit me, I stumbled upon Watson spinning wheels, and developed a serious case of wheel lust. I ordered a Marie later that year, and mine finally came due earlier this summer. Andrew Watson is a genius and a marvelous craftsman, let me tell you. He came up with a plan after several back and forth emails, and it was done in September. He packed it up and planned delivery for when I returned home from vacation, and it arrived here the same day I got back. Let me tell you, I’m sick, but not so sick that I couldn’t unpack it and put it together. Here are some photos.

I was a little nervous about having to put it together myself, but Andrew sent explicit directions. John got the box open for me, and it was pretty simple after that. It’s a “Marie” wheel, mostly cherry wood with purpleheart accent bits. It is quite lovely, and spins like a dream.

That’s all the news I have, I’m off to take more sinus drugs.

ETA: Knitting Doctor now with Photo Embiggen! Click on that spinning wheel and get a close up view!

The Ents Are Sad

We are at the tail end of a big snow storm here in the Pacific Northwest. It started on Monday, and we woke Tuesday to a light layer of icy snow on the ground. Snow here is pretty crippling in general, mostly because the weather hovers around freezing, so we get a layer of ice along with the snow. It hit in earnest on Tuesday night, and we had about 6 inches on the ground yesterday morning. It’s all quite pretty, and John took some cool photos yesterday to prove it. I don’t have the heart to post them today though.

Last night we were doing the end of the day routine before we went to bed. John took the dogs out back and came in. A few minutes later we heard a loud crack and a crash. A huge old maple off one of our back decks had come down from the weight of the snow and ice, landing within a few inches of the kitchen windows and decks. It took out at least one smaller tree that we had planted on the other side of the yard a few years ago, we can’t really get to it to see for sure but it is leaning and looks like all the branches are stripped.  There are broken branches over all three decks, but the only house structural damage is a bent railing on the upstairs deck off our bedroom. A few inches to the left and I would not be sitting in my kitchen this morning. A few minutes earlier, and this could have been a tragedy, since it came down right where John had been standing while the dogs did their thing.

Here are a few photos.

Sorry those are so dark and gloomy, it’s pretty difficult to get decent photos here today.

I’m pretty bummed out by this, though it could have been much worse. One of the big branches landed right up against our kitchen windows, I’m really surprised that the windows didn’t shatter. The fence that separates our yard from our neighbors’ house got pushed over a bit, but there was no damage to their house. We also lost a big limb from another large maple in front of the house, hopefully the rest of that tree won’t go as well. The forecast is for about the same temperature today, with freezing rain, so hopefully this will be the only tree damage we get. Right now we can’t get out of our driveway due to downed limbs. We have the tree guy coming hopefully tomorrow, I’m supposed to work tomorrow, so I hope we’ll be able to get out by then.

In light of other tragedies, this seems minor, and I’m not unaware of how lucky we are that this wasn’t a disaster. But still. There have been many, many days in the eleven summers we’ve lived here that we sat out on one of the decks under the shade of that big old maple. We have commented many times how much we loved the canopy of the tree. Especially from our upstairs deck, it felt like we were living in a treehouse. We’ve complained every fall about the little whirligig seed pods that end up everywhere, including the rain gutters. I really will miss that tree. I’m already trying to get used to our new view, and I suppose we will plant new trees to replace the two that are gone. It won’t be the same.

I’m sure that the Ents sang a sad tree song last night.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

Crabby Crabby Crabby

That’s me. I just want to smack somebody, anybody, which generally isn’t considered good manners, especially when it’s not anybody in particular that I’m crabby about. John says he definitely doesn’t volunteer to be the smackee, though he was nice enough to say he’d make me a martini for cocktail hour tonight, so I guess he wouldn’t be on the smackee list anyway. The dogs are looking a bit nervous, though Willie’s not nervous, he knows that any respectable cat wouldn’t stand for being smacked.

Let’s see, what am I crabby about? Let’s start with being sick again. I’ve had some sort of bronchitis bug all week. I was at a medical meeting the last part of last week, started feeling crappy on Sunday, fortunately had Monday off. Went to work Tuesday feeling sick, had to take yesterday off since I couldn’t talk except to squeak. John nearly got smacked for laughing at my squeaking. I had today off, which was a good thing, but I have to work the weekend and tomorrow. Fortunately I’m feeling better, and I don’t sound like so much like a demented mouse anymore.

Then there were technology issues. I seem to have lost the camera cord and spare battery, fortunately I found a spare cord so I can upload photos from my camera. Then I lost my sunglasses, which may not seem like a big deal in the Pacific NW in October, but the sun does actually shine here at times. I found them today, in a case, in my bag, right where they should have been. Weird.

The big techno glitch is our cable TV. We have a Tivo DVR, which is only a month old. The old one gave up the ghost while we were in Scotland, we think it might have been a power surge when we lost electricity for a bit, but who knows. Of course it was just dead, so we couldn’t recover anything we’d recorded while we were gone, including the first couple episodes of all the fall shows I had lined up to watch. No big deal, we caught up with them online, mostly, and set up the new Tivo that they sent us. We’ve been a bit busy this past couple of weeks and haven’t watched much television, and sat down night before last to catch up a bit. Of course there are now about 16 hours of new shows that we’re behind on. We were in the middle of an episode of The Good Wife (great show, by the way), and poof, the TV goes off, and Tivo starts to reboot. After much swearing and messing around with it, it turns out the the NEW Tivo box has died as well, and all the episodes of everything we had recorded are toast toast toast. Crabby crabby crabby. The Tivo guy on the phone today has no idea how close he came to being smacked.

Last but not least is the knitting. Medical conferences are great for knitting! So I finished the Little Devil red socks I’ve been working on for about a hundred years. Here they are:

Done! Then I tried them on, they are too fracking short. It just wouldn’t be a Knitting Doctor post without screwed up knitting, now, would it? I stuffed them back into the bag until I got home and could deal with them. Who knows, maybe they would become longer with a little time out. Not so much. So in a fit of pique, I grabbed my scissors and cut off the very end of the kitchener graft on both of them. John was horrified. I got the first one ripped back to before the toe decreases and back on the needles. So they’re not done after all. More crabby.

The other crabby crabby crabby knitting thing is that flipping True Blood Faery sweater. This pattern is making me crazy for many reasons, which I won’t go into just now, but the sleeves are one of them. The initial pattern was just in a few smaller sizes, and the designer, who at the moment is on my smackee list, sort of jerry-rigged the larger set of sizes, but never actually finished writing it up. The sleeves were never finished in the larger size range, but the armscye measurement for the next size smaller is the same, so I figured I’d just use those instructions to knit the sleeves. After I got about a foot of sleeve done, I realized that this is just a mess. Several other people who have knitted this pattern have had to rewrite the sleeves, since the way she’s written it ends up with huge balloon sleeves at the underarm, not a look that is flattering to anybody, especially not me. Here’s a photo. The blue green sweater underneath is a Peace Fleece cardigan that I did a ways back. I mostly wear it as a jacket, and the sleeves are plenty big around under the arm to fit over anything I might need to wear under it.

It might not look so bad just now, but I still have  10 sets of increases to go, so that sleeve will be 20 more stitches around in circumference by the time I hit the underarm. Damn.  I’ll rip it back to just before the cables, and plan to dust off my sweater wizard software and come up with a different game plan. Crabby crabby crabby.

The not crabby part?

I have a pot of homemade bean soup on the stove! I have a sweet husband who loves me! I get to knit all those sleeve cables again! I love knitting cables! And I almost forgot to show you two of the things I bought in Scotland! Here they are:

Every Queen needs a pencil with a crown on it. And a God Save The Queen mug to drink her tea from.

Last but not least, I have a good job, and that means that I don’t have to knit for a living, which is a good thing, all things considered.

Surrender!

I had all these great plans to do post after post of the Scotland photos. I just give up. John got ahead of me and did a Picasa photoshow, complete with captions, so I’m just going to link to it and leave it at that. I will admit that even I’m a bit overwhelmed by all the photos we took. Here it is, go have a look. He picked a pretty good representation of where we went and what we did.

This week is starting off a little badly. I had the weekend off, which was great, except that yesterday I felt like crap. By evening I was feeling better, so figured I was over it, but woke up this morning still feeling like I had a bug. I went as far as taking a shower before I just threw in (down?) the towel and called in sick. I generally think that staying home sick is a real waste of time, since if I’m sick enough to stay home, I don’t feel like doing much else either. I guess that fits with the “surrender” theme. Oh well. I’m feeling better at this point, so will drag my sorry butt out of bed tomorrow and get to work whether I feel like it or not. If I spend too many days sick in bed, I can convince myself that I really AM sick.

Knitting is proceeding. I’ve fallen in love with that True Blood Faery sweater again. I’m still on the first sleeve, but it’s going well. Here’s a crappy photo or two. It looks much like it did the last time I showed it, but it really is bigger.

OK, I’m off to collapse on the sofa again, with a book and a cup of tea. Fortunately I have a huge stash of good books to sustain me!

P.S. Thanks for all the great birthday wishes! I might surrender and never get around to answering all the comments, so I figured I better say it here.

Swear Words, Again

Or,

When Your Closet Shelves Fall Off The Wall, It’s Probably A Sign That You Have Too Much Stuff…

Early this week, at the very beginning of a long, (atypical for my new job) 7 day work stretch, I had a little closet disaster. I had gotten dressed and was at the computer checking email and heard a crash from the other side of the house. John and I rushed to investigate, and found this.

I stood there stunned for a minute, then burst into tears. Fortunately I was already dressed for work, since my underwear basket is at the very back of that mess. After we did a pet head-count to make sure nobody was lost under there, John sent me off to work with assurances that he would figure something out, and he did, of course, being the swell sweetheart that he is. I did figure it was time to dredge out the stuff I don’t ever wear or use. After working at it half-heartedly in bits and pieces, I waded into it in earnest yesterday and finished it up.

Here’s what’s going to the local domestic violence shelter:

Not Lewey, of course, he’s staying here. That’s probably about a hundred pounds of clothing, which is likely why the metal brackets on the shelves finally failed. Here’s what’s left.

The last photo shows the ingenious temporary “closet” that John rigged up, with the help of Randy, the guy that’s done all the remodeling work on this Halloween fun house that is the place we live in.

And yes, those are suitcases sitting there. Today is my birthday, and my sweetie has surprised me with two nights up north in the big city, here. We even have dinner reservations for a swanky French restaurant. And fortunately, I can get to my clothes so I have something to wear! Later, I’m off to pack!

Okayyyyyy….

I didn’t mean to just disappear like that for almost a month. You all must have thought that I ran off with a banjo player at Wintergrass. Let’s catch up, shall we?

Wintergrass was swell. It’s hard to pick my favorite artist of the festival, though the Swedish group Väsen was right up there. Not traditional bluegrass by any means, but great Swedish folk music. Dry Branch Fire Squad, a more traditional Appalachian style group, was another favorite. You can’t beat a guy who sings great gospel, tells great stories, and plays hambone like a pro. We don’t have tickets yet for next year, but we’ll surely go again.

We also did a quick three day weekend trip to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Round about January it dawned on me that we had neglected to plan a winter vacation this year to someplace with sunshine. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, and if you tend a bit towards letting the undertoad get to you in the dark rainy months, this is not a good plan. So we did a little get-away. I even won a bit of money, though we undoubtedly spent it all on food. The best thing we did there was eat at Joel Robuchon’s French restaurant. Yum. Just yum. It was seriously one of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten at.

Otherwise the winter’s been about work, knitting, spinning, reading. Work is going well, just the usual winter busy-ness. I’m still loving the not-so-new job.

Knitting: I still have pretty much the same projects going. I’ll try to update them here over the next week, but here’s a new one. I joined the Evenstar Mystery Shawl KAL on Ravelry, and I’m partly through the second of three clues. Of course you all know that photos of lace at this stage look like crap. This one’s a circular shawl, which I’ve never done before. There was some serious swearing that went on over the circular cast on, but after a couple of tries, I got it going.

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The yarn is from Colourmart, and it’s a silk/cashmere blend, in a 28/2 light laceweight. The color is Aquamarine, and it’s pretty much finer than anything I’ve knit with. The finished shawl will have beads on the edging, and I’m planning on using clear silver lined beads. At least that’s the current plan.

OK, that’s enough for one post. I don’t want to overwhelm you. I have more to say about knitting and spinning, as well as an upcoming blogiversary, so stay tuned!

Happy New Year!

A day late, but better late than never. At least I have an excuse. Over the weekend, that would be last weekend, I developed something I’m calling Ebola virus. I got both flu vaccines earlier in the fall/winter, but the symptoms are quite flu-like, and I’ve now had it for 7 days. I took two days off work last week, then fortunately have the 3 day New Year’s weekend off, so hopefully I’ll mostly be recovered by Monday when I have to go back to work. I actually went in to the office on Wednesday, but the nurses quarantined me, then sent me home as soon as they could get the patients rescheduled. So, Happy Fracking New Year! I’m having so much fun so far! I have a relentless cough, a squeaking voice, and today I got to add Imodium to the lineup of pills I’m taking for this! What fun!

We did sort of celebrate the New Year, though I was out cold long before midnight. If there were any fireworks on the lake this year, I missed them. We had clam chowder and champagne for NYE dinner, then blackeyed peas yesterday for supper for good luck. Today I’m thinking tea and toast, since my tummy is a little iffy.

Now, on to New Year’s knitting resolutions. They’re pretty much the same as last year. I want to knit more of everything, knit more of my stash, learn to be a better spinner (a new resolution this year!). First up is to go through all the WIPs and UFOs and clean house. It will be finish or frog around here.

Here’s the first UFO/WIP. It’s now officially a WIP again. This is the Froot Loops Morning Glory stole, which according to the blog and Ravelry, I started in May of last year. Who knows why it got sent to the UFO pile, since the pattern is a lot of fun, and the yarn is delightful. Here’s the non-Rav link for those of you still in the dark ages. The yarn is Brooks Farm Harmony, which has been discontinued. It’s a mohair, wool, and silk blend that is very lustrous and just a little bit on the fuzzy side.

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The stole is knit in two pieces, then grafted down the center. I’ve finished the edging and the mesh border on the first piece, and am in the first repeat of the main part of the stole.

I’m off to find more cough syrup. Stay tuned next time for the next WIP/UFO!

Unnerving

I had a cheerful post-Thanksgiving post all planned for today, but as of this morning, I’m sort of out of the mood for cheerful. Four local police officers were gunned down as they sat in a local coffee shop, just a few miles from our house, prior to starting their morning shift. The lunatic who shot them is still at large, and police helicopters are circling over our house. I’m generally not easily spooked, and awfully lax about locking doors and such, but you can bet we’ve checked everything twice and battened down the hatches. Hopefully they’ll catch the guy soon, and we can all sleep easier, but I cannot imagine what the officers’ families are going through tonight. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

Work is going well, even though I haven’t posted in a while. Eventually I’ll be in a rotation where I’ll work about two thirds in the hospital and the rest in the office, but for now I’m in the office still, learning the computer system. It’s going well, and I’ve been thoroughly welcomed and oriented nearly to death, which is a good thing. I’m not seeing that many patients daily yet, since they really want me up to speed with the computer system first, so I’ve had plenty of time to get to know how things work. This next week will be my last full week in the office, then I go to the hospital for most of the December shifts, with an unexpected week off before Christmas. Of course, I have to work Christmas, but that works for me. Somebody has to do it, and I got Thanksgiving and New Years off to compensate. I go into the regular shift rotation after the next round of holidays. So it’s all good. And spinning and knitting are proceeding. When I feel that cheerful mood again, I’ll post photos.

Have a good week, and hug your loved ones tonight. Be careful out there.

A “Real” Post

With “Real” Knitting!

Well, maybe only partly real knitting. I’m still working on that baby thing. The secret thing. Yes, I know, the baby’s almost a month old. What I’m knitting won’t be usable for a few more months anyway, since it’s very heavy wool. Which is why I’m not done with it. We’ve had an unusual heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, and knitting with a ton of heavy wool in my lap is just not fun.

If your name is Janet, go do something else for a few minutes. You’ll see it when it’s good and ready.

Here’s what it looks like at the moment.

OK, it still sort of looks like crap. It’s in the round, so it just looks like a bag of wool. Trust me, this stuff is squishy and warm. I want a king sized bed version of this, except I’m already sick to death of feather and fan.

I’ve discovered that when you’ve got nothing for the blog, post photos of loot. On the Alaska trip, I managed to find a few yarn shops. One in every port, as a matter of fact.

Here’s the shop in Ketchikan:


Cool, eh? My husband has no idea how I manage to unerringly find yarn shops where-ever I am.

Here’s the loot.

All of those are local, except the one on the far right, which is laceweight from Estonia. It’s prettier than it looks in that photo. Oh here.

That still doesn’t do it justice. It’s just gorgeous.

And I need more lace yarn. I didn’t blog this before, but while we were on the ship, someone made off with my Langsjal Jóhönnu shawl. I had it at dinner one night, and had it across the back of my chair. The next day I didn’t have it, and nobody ever turned it in to lost and found. If you see it on anyone, grab the damn thing off her back and shoot me an email.

Here’s a photo to memorialize it.

Oh Yeah, The Blog

OK, you want it in a nutshell?

1) Cruise to Alaska. Wonderful!

2) 4th of July. Great party, great neighbors, lots of fireworks. Dogs hated the noise, we loved it.

3) Knitting. Still working on that baby blanket.

4) Baby. Baby Jacoby was born on July 6th to my niece Janet and her husband, Charlie. It’s now the 20th, and the danged baby blanket still isn’t done. Knit faster, Lorette, knit faster!

5) Spinning has consumed my life. There are bits of fiber all over the place in this house. Bits of wool now are overwhelming even the Lucy-furr, which is saying something.

6) Teyani came to spin, eat, and drink wine on Saturday. We had a great time, check her post for photos. I have some that I’ll post when I get them off the camera.

7) Tomorrow at 7AM I go back down the rabbit-hole to work. I may or may not get more details of the above events posted before I come out the other end of the warren on next Monday.

8) Last, but most definitely not least. I have a new job. It’s probably no secret to anybody that knows me that my hospitalist practice pretty much consumes my entire existence during my work-weeks. I currently work 7 days on, 7 off, which sounds great in principle, but. It’s starting to do me in. I mostly spend the first 2 days out of the rabbit hole recovering, then the last 2 days getting ready to head back down the hole again. A local thing came up, I jumped, applied, got it. Starting in November, I’ll be working a more consistent 40-hour week. I’ll be in the same hospital, don’t have to move, and I already know all the other docs that I’ll be working with. Changes can be hard, but as changes go, this one will be relatively painless.

I’ll try to get back here to post photos if I have time this week. To tide you over, here’s the Picasa link for the Alaska photos. And here are just two of my own.

Of course, Sweetpea had a good time. Did you really have to ask?

So did I. Photo from our veranda. Yes, I know, I live with a good man. He packed lemons, vodka, and bought me martini glasses at our first stop.

Evacuating

We’re out of here for a few days. The kitchen remodel project has gotten to the “sand and repair the kitchen floor” phase. There are a few places that will need patching where we’re changing things, so most of the kitchen and part of the dining room have to be sanded, stripped, and restained. We knew from experience that none of us can be in the house during the finishing process, and the noise is really a pain in the butt.

We’re hopping Amtrak to Portland for a few days. We figured as long as we need to be in a hotel, we might as well have a little fun in the process. And I hear that there are some good yarn shops there. (Shhhhh, John hasn’t heard this part.) He wants to watch Carolina play in the NCAA game Thursday night while we’re there, so I’m planning on trading that for a trip to a couple of yarn shops. Anybody got any favorites??

The pets are all at Green Acres Pet Resort*. That is, all except Lucy. She disappeared when it was time to get them all in the car, and didn’t come out until it was way past the time for us to have to get them on the road. Of course she came out about 20 minutes after John was on his way, so now she’s corralled into the cat carrier for the second trip to Green Acres this morning.

I have a finished project to show, but it will have to wait until we get back. We’re off to the train station!

*”Green Acres is the place to be! Farm living is the life for me! Land spreading out so far and wide, keep Tacoma and give me that country side!”

You are very welcome. I couldn’t resist spreading the earworm.

But Where Do We Make The Cocktails, Dear?

We’ve decided to stimulate the economy in a rather spectacular fashion this spring. A kitchen remodel has been in our long-range plan for the house since we moved in here. It got sidetracked a bit when we had to rebuild one whole side of our house in 2006, but it was on the schedule for this year, economy be damned. Those ugly grey plastic kitchen cabinets have been on my hit list since I first saw this place.

Our kitchen appliances started to bite the dust last fall, and when we had to replace the gas cooktop ahead of schedule due to the death of the old one, the new one required a little chainsaw action so it would fit in to the center island. This left a gaping hole in the middle of the island. Then the old refrigerator died, and we had to get a new one. We measured the space carefully, and went to buy a shiny new refrigerator. Of course, since this entire house apparently was built from stolen plans for a Halloween fun-house, the new refrigerator didn’t quite quite fit in the space that the old one came out of. One side of the cabinet above the fridge was a little lower than the other, so the whole cabinet got emergently ripped out, leaving a second gaping hole there. We’ve been living with the gaping holes for about six months, but it was clearly time to proceed with the rest of the remodel.

Our contractor started work this week. We’re getting new cabinets, replacing the oven and dishwasher that are on their last legs, and new granite countertops. Right now here’s what it looks like.

The only solution to that mess is to leave town. Fortunately the house has a tiny “kitchenette” in the basement, so we won’t starve during the couple months that this is projected to take to finish. We’re leaving this morning on our annual visit to Arizona to compete in the Great Mexican Train competition, AKA the Knitting Doctor’s family reunion. I might be able to post from the road, otherwise I’ll be back next week!

Not Dead Yet!

Well, that wasn’t really an intentional month-long blog break. I’ve had some ugly-icky stuff going on at work over the past several weeks that I really couldn’t blog about (still can’t), for confidentiality reasons, but just really didn’t feel like blogging about anyway. Most of the posts would have been:

Nothing new at work that I can talk about.
Nothing new in my personal life, because work sucks and also sucks out my life-blood.
No new knitting.
Haven’t taken a photo of anything in weeks.
The End.

Ok, things are better, work doesn’t suck anymore, and I actually knit a row or two yesterday. When I got an email today from a reader asking if I was OK, I figured I better post something to let you all know that I’m not dead. I’ve finally had some good news at work, and after all, I have a secure job that pays well, not any small thing in the current economy. I’ve also had a birthday in the past two weeks, relatively obscured by the work-suckyness, but a birthday none-the-less. I’ve had champagne in the past week, and got some lovely birthday flowers and cards, as well as a set of quite perfect Bose noise-cancelling headphones from my sweetiepie. And chocolate. Let’s not forget the non-suckyness of chocolate.

Knitting? Look at the last few posts, I’ve not made much progress. The Not-Quite-A-Cobblestone is half a sleeve and a yoke short of a full sweater. My Arctic Circle Monkey socks are one sock short of a pair. I haven’t knit a single stitch on that Peacock shawl, and the orange Morse code socks are in time-out. I’ve decided that I can only deal mentally with 1 pair of socks at a time.

And let’s not forget, while we’re talking about good things, that I’m writing a blog post while my husband is down cooking me dinner. I’m off to join him for a post-work glass of wine. I’ll be back soon, hopefully with a knitting update!