Things Learned

I leaned 3 new things today.
The first is that hipster restaurants are not really wheelchair friendly but they will accommodate you.
The second is that hipster restaurants are not the best places to take your adult kids for birthday celebrations.
The third thing is that Eric just loves the new Tucson Street car. Now to figure out how to get him a discount pass so we can ride more often.

Family Time

I am enjoying family time. Teri is here for Thanksgiving. I am sad that the time is flying by so fast. 

Really, Did you Mother Teach You This?

Yes, it has happened again. Someone helped themselves to 3 hand woven scarfs. Two of the scarfs I made for Teri and had hidden them in her room. No one really needs to be in there when she is not home. The other one I was deciding weather to put it in my Etsy shop or put it into the fundraiser for Eric's day program.

I personally feel that it is in very bad tasted to steal from an artist in her home or studio. Certain areas are always off limits.  If you really like something offer to buy it. I will tell you if it is for sale or not. Please also know that if I see my stolen work on the street I will let the person you gave it to know it was stolen from my studio. Also just what kind of a person gifted you stolen work. They really need to know what kind of person they hang around with.

If after reading this you feel the need to redeem yourself you may leave the scarfs in my mail box or give them to my friend Lisa. If I get them back in the original condition no questions will be asked.

Update: 11/28/2014

The scarfs have been returned. Thank you everyone.

6 Dozen

The 6 dozen plus one or 73 hats (2,969 rows) were delivered to the Flowing Wells School District today.  I also threw in 5 scarfs (928) too.  So here is what a pile of 73 hats looks like, the scarfs look even less impressive. For a total of 3,897 towards the one million row challenge on Raverly. 

Knitting Roulette

After knitting six dozen +2 hats over the last couple months I've decided it's time for a change of pace. I'll bring all the hats in Monday but before I could bring that many I will take a picture so you can see what six dozen hats looks like.

Meanwhile I've decided to play knitting the roulette I took down a box of kits that I got when I was a new knitter. I will now go through them and knit up each kit until I can complete the box. The first project I took out the box this evening is half done, the project was a little intimidating and now I can say it's pretty pretty easy. I will show you a picture of them probably in tomorrow night's blog when I'm finished with them.

In the meantime here is a picture of the first box that I'm going to be working through. As you can see some never even made it out of their mailing envelopes.

Yarn

I seriously thought that knitting 6 dozen hats would have used a lot more yarn. I guess I will have to knit more hats.  Pictures and row count to follow. 

It's Just Another Manic Monday

Wait a minute it can't be Monday. Its Wednesday. Let me backtrack a moment. Our dear sweet Eric after being back at his day program for all of one day on Tuesday after 2 weeks of being home sick, spent from 9:30 pm to until 3:30 puking his guts out and needing to be held. I managed to get all the laundry he made last night washed and in the dryer by 3:30 am and then took a short nap until 6:10 am. A good solid nights sleep by any mothers standards.

This morning Eric had decided that his room needed to be cleaned and organized before I finished Teri's room. No sibling rivalry there. So the second bookcase was emptied and polished this morning. I went through everything. The net result is that 2 bags of junk left his room for the trash and 1 bag will be going to Bookman's here in Tucson. This afternoon I spent another 2 hours organizing and putting everything away. There were an awful lot of Elmo's, some for nearly every shelve. There is only one thing left to put away and the top of the bookcase needs to be polished and dusted, I will leave that to my over 6 foot tall volunteer, not that I don't enjoy perching precariously from step stools.

Because I am sick of take out food, I made a pot of chili while I was putting together my lunch. I let it simmer all afternoon on low. I made a pan of cornbread when John called and as soon as it is done we will have dinner. Just so it does not seem that I am perfect and can do everything, I will admit that I left all the things I used today, but the cutting board in the sink for John. Afterall I just can't do it all in one day.

Well, John just got home so it is time to set the table for dinner. I hope I don't go go to sleep face first into the chili.

For those keeping track of step counts, I made it to over 10,000 steps walked 3 days in a row. Lets hear from everyone else.

The Good, the Bad and the Eyrpy

It is one of those oh bugger nights. After 2 weeks at home sick, Eric finally made it to his program today.  I got a weeks worth of errands done in a few hours running at full speed.  

I spent the late afternoon dealing with a change in suppliers for Eric. The good news is that everything is 90% done. We just need the paperwork to go through.  

Just as we were getting Eric ready for bed the eyrping started.  I am on the second load of laundry for tonight.  As soon as Eric settles in for the night I will try to get a nap in.  

To end on a positive note, I did hit 10,000+ steps 2 days in a row.  

Cleaning New Spaces

The cleaning and organizing has hit Eric's room. I am almost done organizing his first bookcase. My plan will be to finish Eric's first bookcase then go on to finish Teri's room and then go back to finish Eric's second bookcase. Yes I got distracted in the cleaning of Teri's room. It's not like I never do that, get distracted when cleaning; "Look a new thing to clean that I walk by everyday and never noticed before" Yes that is me to a T.

I also have two complete sets of bedding to wash, including the quilts. I hope we will have a couple of sunny days for the quilts to dry outside. I will leave the dusting and vacuuming to John. I will also put Eric in charge of the smiles.

I have got to keep my eye on the calendar as I am running out of days. Cleaning is not the only thing. I am only 4 hats away from 6 dozen hand knit hats in a few months. Yes this time I will take pictures of the whole lot, but basically it is 3 grocery bags with 2 dozen hats per bag. I will also give a total row count for the 1 million row challenge on Ravelry. I hope to add about 2 thousand rows to my count.

Eric is feeling better and I am hoping to have him out of the house in a day or two. Exhaustion has just caught up with me. I don't know if I will just step up my cleaning or go out for a cuppa tea and some knitting. Then get back to work. Stay tuned for further updates.

An Uninvited Guest

An unwelcome guest stop by to visit Eric this week. Considering that he has had 2 different colds in a 2 week time span we were not at all surprised when a secondary infection popped up at the house. Eric is on his second day of medicine for the secondary. We have been working hard to clear his lungs out. I have been doing percussion until my hands feel like cement. This does not bode well with getting a lot of knitting or spinning done. I am lucky to finish one hat in a day. I am back to wearing fingerless mittens to keep my hands warm at night, it helps alleviate some of the stiffness and pain.  With any luck we will be through with this by the time Teri comes for her visit.

My cleaning has come to what I call fine tuning. For the most part this involves areas of less then one square foot. Shelves are emptied and re stacked. Papers gone through. You would be surprised at the amount of unnecessary paper that is leaving  the house. If I keep going like this it will be hard to believe that an artist lives in this house. The picture below is really my craft room and it is hard to believe that it is even neater than in this picture.

I will keep adding items to my etsy shop as time permits and hope that some of the items actually find new and loving homes. Things will get pretty eclectic for a while.

Well the guys are asleep so it is time to either start cleaning or wind down and get some sleep.

Ups and Downs

There are 2 different colds going around Eric's day program. He has gotten the second one so he is home again for a least part of the week this week. This has left me a bit on the tired side. What a week for equipment failure. If I am grumpy and complain that my hands are sore it is because I am doing some manual percussion. This to shall pass with the arrival of the replacement later in the week.

I am also beginning to think that the klutz gene gets more active when I am tired. All I am going to say on the subject is that I swear that the fireplace had it in for me today and jumped out to attack me and won. The shirt I was wearing will be remade into a rag rug. I think I have enough rags to make a few of them now.

I was also gifted with some eyelash yarn today. I will take 1 strand of eyelash yarn and one of wool or cotton to make some cute kids scarfs. These go fast because I cast on 13 stitches on US sized 17 needles and knit until I am nearly out of yarn then bind off. About 90 minutes per scarf if Eric is not being too demanding. I will add a few pictures later. These will be going to the Flowing Wells School District too.

Well it is time to get ready for dinner. So enjoy your families this week.

Almost Done

You have been hearing about the craft room clean up for months now. Except for about 2 square feet on the book shelves, the room is finally almost done. So you can now see a picture.  Sorry it was probably the wrong time of the day to take the picture. The main question to ask at this point in time is weather I can keep it this neat after Thanksgiving.

Overdone

I can honestly say that I might have overdone it by more than a little. My goal today was to wash 3 loads of laundry, take all of Teri's Charity boxes to Goodwill, make dinner and, and, and, I think I might have recycled the rest of the list when I got too tired.

About 2/3 of what Teri had for Goodwill filled up the center of the van. So I dropped that off and debated weather I should finish the job today. I was sore and tired but not ready for lunch, so I thought what the heck and finished tallying and loading Teri's stuff into the car. Then there was still room in the car so I decided to gather our stuff for Goodwill. I managed to fill the van yet again. The guy at Goodwill did not believe that I had managed to fill up the center of the van twice in a few hours. I can honestly say that I got a lot of stuff out of the house that will not come back again.

This left me a little to tired to move let alone cook lunch for myself. So instead of going for my 1st idea, which was a couple of donuts and a cup of tea, I went home. The pomegranate looked and tasted great, but it was still not enough for lunch so I added a couple of Justin's dark chocolate peanut butter cups to top things off. The peanut butter had the protein and who can say no to dark chocolate.

I found a little time to get some holiday shopping done before it was time to pick up Eric. Eric had a great time at his day program today. I am so happy that he is well enough to go to program. I even managed to get a little more cleaning done before it was time to make dinner. I wonder if I am going to be fired for not spraying the casserole dish with Pam? Well it is time to fold the last of the laundry and hopefully knit a few more hats after dinner.

Help Needed

With the next phase of deep cleaning, I am going to need every ones help. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know that I am constantly creating new things. I have been hiding all the finished work in bags. In closets and drawers all over the house. Well John found just some of them. He was not to happy with all my "clutter". After a very gentle conversation it was decided that I need to fill up my Etsy shop with everything.

I will be putting as many finished objects a day in my shop as possible. I will have hand spun yarn. Hand sewn project bags and bibs, both regular and special needs. A lot of hand knit items not suitable for donation to charity. Some hand woven scarfs, my newest obsession. So if you can visit my shop and share my shop with your friends maybe we can have this next phase of cleaning done by the end of the month.

I will also have a de-stash section with yarn that I was in love with and now that I know a lot more about knitting can't really see myself using. I just love lace knitting, but with my current lifestyle I can not see myself knitting lace. So that is some of the first yarn to go. There will be other yarns and things as the month progresses.

What you will get are some very nice presents and useful everyday objects. Did I mention that the holidays are just around the corner. You can shop in your P.J.'s and have everything dropped off at your door.  What I will get is a very happy husband and a lot of closet space back..hum more closet space to store things...well maybe not so much.

So here is where the sale will be, https://www.etsy.com/shop/skaro964 . Please feel free to pass this on to everyone.

Next Up Sit-ups

I have been working on getting back into shape. For me it has been a very slow process.  It goes in a cycle something like this. I get into an exercise routine with walking and deep cleaning the house. Deep cleaning is basically tearing everything down and deciding what to keep and toss. It involves a lot of physically moving things. Usually one armful at a time. Then finding a home for everything. A lot of bending and twisting, which my body does not always love.

The next step in the cycle is Eric getting sick. If we are very lucky it is a very short cold. This still takes a toll on my body because of the long hours and stress. This is followed by a flare up for me. The sicker Eric gets the longer the flare up lasts.

This sometimes leaves me 2 steps backward. Unable to do the 8 to 10 thousands steps a day plus as many stairs as I can find, that I usually strive for. Sometimes it is back to square one struggling to get 3 to 4 thousand steps a day. Followed by the struggle to get back to my previous fitness level.

About 6 months ago I started adding push-ups to my routine. At first I started doing them against the wall. Then I gradually worked up the the high bathroom counter and this week I graduated to the lower bathroom counter, albeit with 2/3 less push-ups because of the lower height. The lower height equals more work.

Tonight I decided to go for broke. I have not done sit-ups at all for years. Tonight I managed to do 30. I don't know how long that I will be able to keep this up, because Eric does have a very bad cold right now. The hours have been long. I am still holding out hope that I can at least do a few sit-ups tomorrow.

For me exercise is not an all or nothing thing. It is to be done in harmony with my body and life at the moment. So some days I do a lot and other days not so much. I am on the very slow road to getting back in shape. Maybe someday I will pose in my skirt that was much too tight then and now will not even come close to fitting now.