After John tested positive on Sunday, I did the same on Monday. We were restricted to our cabin for 5 days each, so John was out yesterday, me this morning. I felt pretty lousy for a couple of days, but have no symptoms now other than reduced sense of smell. We missed four ports in Norway, though did get a few photos from our veranda. The prettiest day so far was Geirangar fjord, which was spectacular, with many stunning waterfalls.
Our cabin attendant, Mohammed, took good care of us for the week. He made sure our window and veranda wall were kept clean so we had a good view at all times.
We arrived in Bergen yesterday, and today is the midpoint of the cruise. Many passengers are staying on for the full trip to Stockholm, though there is also a lot of turnover from people only doing the two week portions. We did a tour in Bergen today, here’s one of the highlights.
Some fine Norwegian wool, and a sheep-themed bag to put it in.
And I finished a pair of socks.
The wool is from deep stash, Elliebelly 100% BFL. Same old pattern. These are for me.
Stay tuned for more adventure now that we are able to explore!
And that’s likely all we will see of Norway for the next five days.
John had a scratchy throat yesterday so we retested. He popped up positive. I didn’t, but have the same symptoms this morning. We are waiting on PCR confirmation, but we’re in quarantine. Neither of us feels very sick, which is good. The ship staff couldn’t be any better. We are able to order food from the main dining room menus, as well as from the specialty restaurants. They are crediting us for any shore excursions that we will miss.
And of course, I have enough knitting and reading material so I can’t possibly run out of things to do.
Speaking of knitting, I did manage to find some yarn. This was from Orkney island, the guide on the tour we took was a knitter and gave me directions to a little shop selling yarn.
Who knows what that all will be, but it is awfully pretty.
Remember when you were a teenager, and life was creeping along so slowly that you never thought you’d get to adulthood? Savor that, children. You’ll get to a point where the years are whizzing by in a blur, and you will just want to pull the emergency stop cord to slow things down a bit.
I’m going to knit for the rest of the day. I have a lot of stash to get through before I die. I have a lot of everything to get through before I die.
My Dockside cardigan is all seamed! And it fits! Imagine that, I used a pattern generator that works off my actual measurements, and it worked. What a concept.
I now have the wide collar and the button bands to do, and it will be done. I received some buttons that I ordered on Etsy, and have a couple more sets on the way, so stay tuned for a button-choosing post. I’m really pleased with how this one is turning out. It may well be the best-fitting sweater I’ve ever made.
And now for your public service announcement.
I posted about this on FB, but this has been one hell of a 10 days or so around here. A member of our extended family was killed in a motor vehicle accident a little over a week ago. The family was still reeling from that one, when my husband woke me up a week ago Sunday night, having a stroke in progress. It looked pretty dire initially, although his symptoms were already dramatically improved by the time the EMTs arrived. He spent a couple nights in the hospital getting some tests done, but is now home and doing well. If you weren’t married to him, you wouldn’t be able to tell at this point that anything happened. So we feel very fortunate all in all.
Since many of our friends and family are in our age group, we’ve gotten asked the question, “What do you look for? How do you know you are having a stroke?”
Stroke.org has lots of good information, but just remember F.A.S.T.
F: Face drooping
A: Arm weakness
S: Speech-any changes in speech or comprehension
T: Time to call 911
Time really is of the essence here. If you have a typical ischemic stroke (due to blockage in a blood vessel), the administration of “clot-busting” drugs can be life saving, but this is a time-critical intervention that may not be beneficial if you wait too long.
If you or anyone you know has any of these symptoms, call 911. Don’t just wait it out, don’t drive yourself to urgent care, don’t sit on hold with your doctor’s office. Call 911 and let the professionals sort it out. Time is brain, and you don’t get it back once it’s gone.
It is Thursday, right? I’m a bit discombobulated this week. First there was the damned time change. I don’t care which “they” pick, I just wish “they” would pick one and stick with it.
Then I had my colonoscopy on Tuesday. Which meant both Monday and Tuesday were shot, and yesterday I was a bit befuddled as well. My sleep schedule had been a mess the past year with all the pandemic/work related anxiety, and it had just started to get back to normal before the time change.
I feel like I haven’t gotten anything done today, but I did start some sourdough bread.
It’s just plain old white bread, with flour, sourdough starter, water, and salt.
And I started a pot of black beans for tonight’s supper.
Isn’t that a pretty bean pot? It’s a Colombian-made Chamba pot, and it makes terrific beans and stews. Here’s another photo.
Now that the Blue Cloud Shawl is done, I’m on to the next lace thing. I have two lace shawls still in progress, both ancient. I picked the one that has been on the needles the longest, my Cathedral Stole.
According to Ravelry, I started that in 2016, so it is just freaking time to finish it. As usual, that color is way off. It is more of a deep scarlet red. Once we get some sunshine around here I might get a decent photo.
And the Blue Cloud is almost ready to come off the blocking mats. I may have a Finished Project for Friday.
Well this has just been a hell of a week, hasn’t it? I’m not rehashing it here, you’ve all likely been stuck to the news as I have, and if you’ve been following me for more than a minute, you know my political leanings well. All I can say is that I’m blaming the flaming migraine I had for two days this week on trump.
So I’ve been looking for ways to calm my anxiety. Not getting sucked into social media helps. Meditation helps. Knitting definitely helps. Oddly, one of the books I’m reading is Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein, and that helps, as did reading Bagman, by Rachel Maddow. This insanity didn’t just start in the past year, or even the last century, which is weirdly reassuring.
And spinning! I haven’t used my wheel or my spindles much in the past year, who knows why. I suppose it’s related to too little free time and too many shiny knitting (and other) things that capture my attention. But I’ve dusted off the Watson wheel and started spinning. And my lovely little spindle collection has seen some use this past couple of weeks.
I was internet browsing late last night (insomnia is bad for the credit card balance!). I had a couple of shopping carts worth of spinning fiber loaded up, when the little angel on my right shoulder yelled loudly that I should check what’s in the fiber closet before I hit “pay now”. I’m glad I did. After a brief inventory today, I found FIVE of those big plastic tote boxes stuffed full of lovely spinning fiber. I have a huge yarn 401K saved up for retirement, and apparently I have enough spinning fiber to last several years as well.
Here is one of my favorite little spindles with some yarn-making in progress.
I’m not sure what the fiber is, or where I bought it, but it really is that eye-searingly pinky-orange. It feels like Polwarth or perhaps Targhee, it spins easily, and is nice and bouncy.
The spindle is a Golding Ringspindle, it is tiny, with a 2 inch whorl. I can’t fathom why these have been idle for so long.
In other news, I finished a little shawl. It’s still drying, so I’ll save it for another day, but it’s a good feeling to have a finished project for the new year.
Last but not least, I got my second Covid vaccine this morning. Hallelujah is all I can say. The next group to be vaccinated is the 70 and older, which means John will be vaccinated in the next few weeks. I’ve lived in utter terror this past year that I would bring it home to him. Most of my medical colleagues aren’t as much afraid of getting this as we are afraid of bringing it home to our loved ones.
Keep calm, and “Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises”*
The yarn is from deep stash. It’s from Three Irish Girls, when I was a member of the Sock Yarnista sock club.
Here is the ball band for reference. I have a crazy cat that steals ball bands and carries them all over the house. If you can’t read that, this is McClellan fingering, a merino, bamboo, and nylon blend. It doesn’t look like they carry this particular blend any longer. The color is Waterlilies, I think it looks like Easter egg candy.
Who, me??
The other new thing is at work. I have been working in the clinic seeing outpatients for the past few years. With the coronavirus outbreak, our local hospital and my medical group have been trying to plan ahead for the surge. So today I completed the last of the paperwork I need to do to obtain privileges to practice at the hospital. I surely hope I don’t need to do that, but if it gets as busy as expected, we’ll be ready.
I’m pretty proud of the company I work for, by the way. I was at my desk one day earlier this week, and kept hearing one of the medical assistants on the phone, having what sounded like the same conversation over and over with patients. It turns out that KPWA (Kaiser Permanente Washington) started a process for our nursing staff to methodically call all of our higher risk patients. They ask about who they have as a back up person if they need it, whether they have an adequate supply of meds on hand (if not, they order them right then for mail delivery), and whether they have adequate food on hand and if there is someone available to assist with that. They also ask about their mental health, ask how they are holding up with all of this. They connect them with our clinic social worker and community resource person if they need it.
The other thing that I’m proud of is the dedication of my colleagues. We have a hospitalist team that is part of our group, and they will of course keep doing the tough work that they already do. But when the call went out for volunteers to help out with the “surge”, there were so many more that answered that we will have a full team in place to step in, and a backup team on top of that. We all tend to bitch and moan about work and everything that pisses us off, but KP has had a formal disaster plan in place since COVID hit the US. Of course, there are always going to be parts of this out of our control, but I feel about as secure as I could in this situation.
And the blog is sort of fixed. The posts from the past 2 weeks weren’t backed up, but I think there were only one or two. I have no freaking idea how I managed to delete the blog, but I’m very glad that on a whim I added a blog backup plugin in February. I’m going to upgrade that to something more robust, since it took all freaking afternoon to get things restored, and lots of photos didn’t get reattached to the blog posts they were supposed to accompany. I’ll probably fix at least the more recent ones. We are busy “socially distancing” ourselves here, so it’s not like I don’t have time.
This morning we woke up to this:
Covid-19, Friday the 13th, a full moon (which I apparently won’t see due to the weather), the fact that I live in one of the epicenters of the US epidemic (as a front-line primary care clinician), and snow. With all the recent commotion, I might just have ditched the no yarn-buying policy and added some things to the stash. I’ll take pictures when it arrives, assuming we still have mail service.
That blogging every day in November sort of fell apart in a big hurry, didn’t it? Mostly it’s because my work day leaves me brain dead for much of my outside of work hours. I’m “just” working three days a week, but they are long days, and require every brain cell I have to keep on top of everything.
Which leads to work meetings. Who the hell plans a work department meeting that is scheduled to run over 5-6 hours? Any meeting that goes over an hour is just going to degenerate into a big bitch session, as far as I can tell. And since it’s my day off, if I went, it would be on my dime. Thankfully, I had something else already planned for this afternoon. Otherwise, there might be a good chance of me stabbing someone with a knitting needle.
I don’t think I’ve even touched my knitting for the past three work days. See above. I plan to remedy that today.
My cable needle went missing over the weekend. I found it this morning.
The creeping crud from yesterday was enough to keep me home today. I haven’t done anything all day except sleep and drink tea. I’m starting to feel a bit more human, so I should be able to go to work tomorrow. It isn’t anything serious, I’m just whiny and really hate being sick. It seems like such a waste of time. I have found that I don’t bounce back from being sick as well as I used to. I suppose it’s that aging thing. I realized a couple of weeks ago, to my dismay, that I am the oldest person working in my clinic. I’m twice as old as some of them, and three times as old as a few. Sigh.
I did start that new Hitchhiker yesterday during the Seahawks game.
Wollmeise Pure, 100% merino, color is Flower Power. I’ve quit trying to use straight merino to make socks, it doesn’t wear as well under foot.
And as you can see, I’m making a valiant effort to stay awake and do a little medical review. It makes me feel a little less like a slacker for staying home from work. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I get to go to the dentist again today. I’m in the midst of a root canal, I had the first stage of it done a couple of weeks ago. It was not painful, but just long and unpleasant. The second half is today. The first stage was complicated by the partial crown that had been on that tooth fracturing a couple of days after, landing me in my regular dentist’s office for an emergency partial filling to patch it up. That happened the afternoon before we left for 10 days in Mexico. The rest of the old crown has fractures in it, so I’m expecting the same thing to happen today.
I also had several hours of rather weird vertigo hit me after the first part of the root canal. John is driving me today in case that happens again.
Sigh. At least I have dental insurance. And I have an appointment with my usual dentist later this month for a new crown.
Today was the first day around here that really felt like spring. John’s kids and grandkids were here, so we took advantage of the sunny day to go to the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. This is a huge wetland refuge at the Nisqually river delta, and is a glorious local treasure about fifteen minutes from home.
This was in the parking lot. I have no idea why there’s a skeleton on the front, but it seemed like it was a good sock photo op.
The trails through the refuge are well maintained, with a long boardwalk through the marsh areas.
We heard and saw a bevy of birds, including my favorites, the red winged blackbird. There were baby goslings, frogs, snakes, and a fine turtle.
I did take my knitting.
And the family group shot at the end:
Those of you who follow me on FB might have seen my news about Will.
That’s one of the most recent photos we have of him. The last we saw him was on Wednesday. He does go in and out, but always comes back in at night, especially as he’s gotten older. He was about sixteen, and starting to show his age, so we are pretty sure he went off by himself to die. I’m sad, but we knew this was coming. I think he is probably in kitty heaven, chasing bunnies and mice.
I woke up early yesterday feeling yucky. I hate calling in sick, so I sucked it up, got ready and went in. It should have been a sign that the cup of tea I made before I got in the shower almost made me gag. Anyway, I made it through the morning, canceled my afternoon and came home. I’m out again today, let’s just say that nobody in my office would want me there spreading this to everyone else. It just pisses me off that I get this stuff, since I’m sort of a pathological hand-washer, especially at work.
I haven’t been accomplishing much besides zoning out, but today I was able to pick up the knitting. I didn’t work on my Rogue sweater all summer because, well, heavy wool and summer heat. But now that it is cool outside I want it done done done so I can wear it this winter.
That’s where I am right now. I’ve finished the back, and the front up to the v-neck split. I few months away from this almost made me forget how much I love Peace Fleece, and how much I love this pattern.
This is the left front, I just finished separating the two sides.
And here is that gorgeous cable up the sides.
The pattern is Rogue, the yarn is Peace Fleece worsted weight in the color Amaranth. They have this back on their website for sale, and it is on sale, if you need some. The color is really much deeper than my photos show. Anytime I take a picture of this it either turns out pink or bright red. It’s more of a deep garnet red. Here is the photo from their website.
I’m still knitting those baby sweaters. I’ve finished the first one, and just have sleeves and a hood to finish for the second one.
You wouldn’t think that two worsted weight garter stitch baby sweaters would take this long to make.
I’ve been having some upper back problems for the past couple of months that are really getting on my last nerve. I don’t make a very good patient, since I’m not very “patient” with not feeling well. It finally got bad enough that I started getting regular massages, which are helping, but it’s been a slow recovery. My massage therapist isn’t one of those that gives you a feel-good spa massage. It’s deep tissue/muscle work, and I’m wiped out for a whole day afterwards. It is releasing the knotted (knitted?) up muscles though. I haven’t been able to be on my Peloton bike as often as I’d like either since it hurts. You have no idea how much THAT pisses me off.
I’ve been trying to be careful with how long I sit hunched over my knitting, so that’s my excuse for how long these sweaters are taking to finish.
Also, for those of you doubters out there, I made it to 90 days without yarn shopping a week ago. It’s actually been a little easier this time around. It helps that I dropped my work hours from 0.8 FTE to 0.6 FTE the first of the year. That obviously* correlates to a 20% salary drop, so I do have an incentive to shop from my very deep stash instead of the internet.
And in other news, I get to have dinner tonight with Jennifer AKA Major Knitter! She is flying in later today, and we’re picking her up and heading up to Seattle for dinner. We’re both planning on wearing our Faery Ring sweaters!
*That first paycheck after cutting back my hours was a bit of a reality check!
I fracked up both of the knitting projects I brought with me because I’m totally distracted. One is a mostly stockinette shawl, the other is a completely stocking stitch sock that I’ve knit a million times.
Laurie Lewis sang a “my dog died and I’m sad” song tonight, and totally destroyed both of us. John and I were weeping in our seats, then laughing hysterically at the fact that she was singing a dead dog song and we were sobbing.
I’m sure we’ll find this all amusing some day.
Tomorrow is the last day of Wintergrass. We haven’t enjoyed it as much this year, and that’s not surprising. I’m glad we came though, it provided a much needed bridge between this past week and next week, when real life obligations hit us like a semi truck. I might get around to posting about some of my favorite artists later on.
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