Thursday

Eric is feeling better and is back on formula. I am tired and out of sync. No knitting projects finished today. I am calling it an early night.

76

Hat number 76 since June 1st came off the knitting needles today. Hats number 77 & 78 were cast on and started. Eric has the cold du jour and it was a very long night and day. Not much was done besides laundry and taking care of Eric was accomplished today. My grand plans for a to do list went in to the blender.

Tagged

I finally got the bag of hand knit items tagged today. It just took taking the tags, a pen and the knitted objects out of the house. So tomorrow I will divide the items for my two charity projects, the Flowing Wells Clothing Bank and the annual fall sale for the Taglit program. Before I take the hats and scarfs in To the clothing bank I promise to take a picture. As of today I have about 6 dozen hats and 1 dozen scarfs. My friend Eva knit a whole tote bag of sweaters for the kids too. Eva is just so talented. I will take and post pictures of her hand knit sweaters too.

My body is doing better than yesterday after the dentist, although I still did take a 1 1/2 hour nap before I picked up Eric. I also managed to get to the grocery store and finish 2 hats. The hat I started after dinner is only 60% done, it's not getting finished tonight. I think a good nights sleep is in order instead.

I really can't say that I personally recommend having major dental work done during an arthritis flare up. If I thought my face was puffy before, the after was much worse. No earrings for me until the swelling goes down. Also softer food for at least a few days. It also left me more tired than I have been. If that is at all possible. Thank goodness, John was able to arrange his schedule to be the driver for the day. I was too worn out to drive home after the dental work. Once I got home I slept for 4 1/2 hours. This meant that I slept through Eric's pick up time too. John also did the afternoon pick up Eric run too. I am so glad he was home today. When I woke up my left hand was a little to swollen to do much knitting. I hope it is better by tomorrow. I wonder if it will ever get back to 100%?

At least I will have 2 weeks before the crown comes in. I should be doing much better by then. It should also be a faster appointment with less fuss and no driver required.

I hope to have enough energy to be able to do a little laundry tomorrow as I have 2 loads of laundry that are over knee high. That means that the washing machine will be filled to the top.  I seems to get behind on even the basics when my arthritis is flared up. Also on my list is organizing Eric's DVD collection. I have an entire stack of empty cases with no DVDs. I really wish that people would put things back in the right cases. I am also hoping to find all the missing DVDs. In my search tonight, I found one more case without its DVD in it, but none of the missing ones. That makes it close to a dozen that are hiding somewhere in Eric's bedroom. Now if I were a DVD where would I choose to hide in Eric's bedroom? With that thought I think I will call it a night.

Sleep

My body won today. I spent most of the day catching up on sleep that I lost over the summer. Eric even slept through the night ladt night.

Feeling Good

Dispite being up with Eric for most of the night, I got up early and completed the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona Walk to End Hunger. It felt good to be able yo raise money for such a great group.

I think Eric has mixed up night and day again which has made life a little on the tough side. We need to reset his clock. I am not as productive as I would like to be when I am on this strange nap cycle.

It has quited down so maybe I can grab a few hours of shut eye. Night all.

72

I have now reached a count of 72 or an even 6 dozen hats since June. These hats are all going to the Flowing Wells School clothing bank. I am not sure that it has made much of a dent in my stash busting quest though. Although there will be 72 warmer heads. Here is hat number 72.

Zenning Again

This week with the encouragement of my friend Vicky, I am taking zenning to a whole new level. I have started going through my craft bags looking for unfinished objects. Henceforth to be called UFO's. So far I have emptied one bag completely. Finished three scarfs. Did I mention create more small balls of yarn for hats? Found a lot of knitting needles. In my defense in the past when I had too many empty knitting needles I just cast on a few more projects. Stash them away in a craft bag until I was bored and needed a new challenge. This is why I have so many bags filled with UFO's.

I am going to try to eliminate the extra craft bags.  There are no guarantees here though. I have so many beautiful project bags. I now have a lifetime supply of large tote bags and project bags. Some I will pass on to new knitters that I teach. Some will be used for shopping, although since the zenning project began a few years ago, I am less likely just to go shopping if I am bored. I am more aware of what I bring into the house. I just don't buy more stuff. The exception here seems to be yarn, roving and tissue paper. After all I have spinning wheels, looms and knitting needles to keep busy, not to mention my idle hands.

Eric is having less bad nights since we discover that his vitamin D was contaminated. Last night was an exception. I was up with him until 4 am. Got a little sleep when he settled in. We both took naps this morning. I am still at the point where my energy reserves are completely gone. So I need to slow down a bit until they are back. A perfect time to sit and knit.

Now what to make for dinner.

A Good Day

Today is the first day in a very long time that the laundry got washed dried and put away on the same day. Considering the laundry was overflowing from the laumdry room, I think that this is great. Yes, the impossible does happen from time to time.

I also managed to lay out Teri's blanket on a table in the craft room. The idea behind this is that because the blanket is so big, that it usually takes longer to find a place to put it and set it up each time that I want to knit. So it is now ready for me to walk in and do random knitting. Today I had time to knit 3 short rows. In case you were wondering, it is a queen size blanket knit in a modular pattern. Yes those are U.S. Size 7 knitting needles. What was I thinking?

I am also waiting for Eric to fall asleep. We put him down at 7 pm to give hime 3 hours to settle down. It is now almost mid-night. Hopefully I can get him settled down in the next hour or so. Wish me luck.

11

Last night I got 11 hours of sleep. It felt wonderful. My only problem is that one great night of sleep does not make up for all the sleep that I lost over the summer.

After a slow start I did manage to get a 1 load of laundry done. I also got to watch Dinosaur Train with Eric while I got to knit. I am off to knit now.

Consolidating

In the past two days I have consolidated 4 bags and 1 basket of hat yarn into 1 basket and 1 bag. So I now have 3 empty bags that used to hold yarn. Progress. I also managed to finish 2 hats and 2 scarfs today. Yes, I did cast on 2 more hats, I don't want the knitting needles to get lonely. I also found this UFO hat and added 3 more inches to it.

It's Been Awhile

I have been busy deep cleaning and taking care of the guys. We have also had a nice visit from Teri and Tej. Eric had also received a very bad batch of vitamin D,  that was contaminated with bacteria. So tomorrow we will start another round of antibiotics to make sure it has cleared his system. Did I mention that the contaminated vitamin D has already caused one round on pneumonia.

So what did I do when both guys cleared the house today? Since I have a fundraiser coming up in October, all bets would be on , making some jewelry. Maybe tagging and pricing some finished pieces. Maybe even warping a loom or putting together the new loom. If you choose any of the above you would have been wrong. I was too tired to do any of it. Instead I took a 3 1/2 hour nap. It in no way makes up for all the lost sleep over the past month but I do feel better.