Sleep

This weekend was spent catching up on sleep. With at least 12 hours of sleep on both Saturday and Sunday.  I can say that my body feels a little better. The house looks a little worse. I am behind on laundry and changing out linens, there is always tomorrow for that.

Eric had a very late night asthma episode, so I am trying to relax so I can get to sleep. I think it would help a lot if Eric decided that it was sleep time instead of play time. This always happens when his treatment happens after 10:30 pm. Timing is everything in life. 

John spent the weekend designing 2 new drop spindles for me. I know, who would have thought that he would ever design and 3-D print drop spindles for me. He is now enabling my fiber addiction. I will have two new spindles to play with. Tomorrow I need to find time to do an alpha test on the first model.  I wonder how thin I will be able to spin the yarn, the spindle is very light.  Since the spindle design is his, all I will be able to post is the finished yarn for now.

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.

Blender to Tuesday

Monday evening as I wrote my blog I had such great plans for Tuesday. Well long story short, Eric shared his cold with me. I am not quite sure how Eric and I made it through Tuesday. Did I mention that this cold hit me like a brick wall, hard and fast? Wednesday was a little better, I even had the energy to watch Sesame Street with Eric after napping all morning. Eric was nice enough to nap all morning too.

Today Eric made it back to program and I slept for most of the day. On the sweater that  I am now knitting is about 1 inch below the arm holes in the mid 50's by row count. Now I know why some friends prefer to knit sweaters in the round, no purling every other row. I am also way behind on chores. I know that I will catch up 5 minutes at a time. I need to leave plenty of recovery time.

My sleep cycle is really messed up from Eric being sick and this silly cold. So the first thing I need to do is reset it. I figure with about 5 minutes of zenning the craft room tonight that I will be tired enough to sleep. Wish me luck.

Plans

My plans for Tuesday are already in the blender. I will be at home with Eric all day. Although the fever has broken from the cold, his asthma has kicked in with vengeance. So while Eric is busy watching PBS kids, I will get the serger out and make some more cleaning rags out of old cloth diapers. The cloth diapers last for about 2 years of Eric use and then become rags that last forever. I serge the old diapers in half so that they don't land up back in Eric's room.  Oh, and I love how the cloth diaper maker has raised the price about 5% in the last 2 years, but it is now a 5 pack instead of a 6 pack. So the price increase is actually much more. Can we say inflation?

While cleaning the craft room today, I finally added the charms to Teri's charm bracelet. So  instead of spending 20 minutes trying to figure out where to put the charm bracelet I spent 10 minutes getting the actual work done. Now the next time she comes for a visit she can take it home. I also have filled another box with craft supplies for Eric's day program, although I don't know when he will be well enough to go back. I am down to the dibs and drabs of the zenning and must resist the urge to stuff everything in a closet for later. Maybe I can fill another bag to go.

The sweater is coming along quite nicely. I am almost finished with the first skein of yarn and I am 34 rows into the pattern. The pattern called for 24 inch circular knitting needles. At row 18 I changed to 36 inch circular knitting needles. Tonight at row 30 I changed to 60 inch circular knitting needles. I wonder who goofed up on this one? In about 10 rows, I will take the sleeves and put them on stitch holders. Then finish the body and go back to do the sleeves. I am thinking at this point that it will take about a month to finish. I am also thinking that I might just have enough yarn to make it a long sleeve sweater. I bought enough yarn to make this sweater 2 sizes larger. This is my first me sized sweater. The 2 sweaters that I made for Elmo went much faster.

A Long Night

Eric was up most of the night. I managed to knit 5 rows of my sweater. Eric managed to make 4 loads of laundry. I did half last night and John did the other half while I took a nap. Eric is back on formula tonight, I will take this as a good sign. Eric will be home tomorrow.

I did manage to get a little cleaning done while Eric was doing his breathing treatment. As usual when Eric is sick, I fall behind on cleaning. Hopefully he will sleep tonight so I have the energy to finish the craft room deep cleaning. I also need to do laundry other than Eric's. Then I can knock off a few projects.

Raising the White Flag

I am rasing the white flag today. The household has not fully recovered from the last round of colds. Eric has been cranky all day. So before I went out shoe shopping I checked Eric's tempature to make sure that I could leave the house. 98.6, I was good to go. Two pairs of shoes and 1 1/2 hours later it was 100.5. So much for finishing the craft room today.

i have finished row 21 of the sweater. Hopefully I can find some knitting time for the sweater later. If not it will just be hats and scarfs for charity. Tight now it's just Eric time.

My Body Won Today.

I have been super busy around here and putting in very long work days. Today my body said it had had enough and instituted mandatory naps three times today. I even slept through a round of Eric thumping a few feet away and I did not hear a thing. I do have to admit that after a lot of rest I do feel better. That being said my to do list for today might take me a few days longer to complete.

Even though I only put in about 30 minutes of deep cleaning, de-cluttering and de-stashing I was able to fill a box and a half of things to be re-homed. I have completely de-cluttered the top of the fabric storage cabinet. So even though the sewing room did not get finished today,  visible progress has been made.

I have also made progress on my first ever sweater. I started it about 10 years ago. Lost a bunch of weight and sizes so it did not fit when I pulled it out 6 months ago to finish, so I tinked it. I re-started it yesterday 2 sizes smaller and have made slow but steady progress. Pictures to come later.

More Zenning

Today was day two of zenning the craft room. There were some surprises along the way again, such as finding out that I had done enough knitting to move a lot of yarn to the closet yarn stash. Also 18 cotton yarn cones takes up about a cubic feet of space.

I am trying to organize the rack by fiber craft. This makes it much easier to see what I have lined up. Yes, I also found more yarn, please tell me that you are not surprised by this. I need to set up the wider loom to make some more rag rugs and summer shawls, yes I found a lot of supplies. A few quilts are in the line up too. Before and after pictures will be forth coming.

Today I sent 5 knitting looms to Ironwood Ridge Elementary School for their hat knitting project. One class makes hats for sick kids and baby's at the local hospital. A great project to support in my very humble opinion.

My hands are still tired and sore from last weekend so only about a half of an inch of knitting got done. I did however make a chicken tomatillo soup for dinner.  Cutting the vegetables was very interesting to say the least, no even cuts today. The best part is that we have enough for tomorrow too. Let me know if you want the recipe.

Toasted

I went to a fiber retreat last weekend and had a wonderful time. I think that I might have had too much fun. My hands are now toasted. I will have to take a few days of total hand rest with no fiber. My left hand is a little swollen.

So I guess that I will redo the craft room and do some more purging of things that I do not use. After all less is more, well maybe. I found a lot of knitting needles today where I did not expect to find them. So you know which room that I will be in tomorrow.

Deep Cleaning

My deep cleaning by the numbers today:

1 car load to taken Goodwill, thanks to John.

2 boxes ready to be re-homed tommrow. 1 box is full of art supplies. 1 box is full of carrier and gift bags and cfl light bulbs.

3 trips to the recycle bin. My recycle bin is now half full and it will not be collected until next Monday.

Countless projects were put together to be finished soon. I need to finish the deep cleaning of the craft room and its closet. I did manage to get about 3 cubic feet of closet back.

I also managed to get 2 loads of laundry finished. I also found time for a long nap.

The Quilt Front.

The quilt arrived safely. The person loves it. So here is a picture of the front of the quilt.

Busy

Today before breakfast I got Eric's laundry started. Then I spent 30 minutes picking up the dead branches that I removed from some bushes on Wednesday. I stopped when the trash can was full. I did not think that I had removed so many dead branches from the two bushes. The bushes look a lot better even with only a drizzle of rain.

After breakfast I spent the morning making some samples for next weekend. This was followed by lunch and 3 hour nap for the entire house. Everyone gets super tired when Eric is sick, so picking out a nap spot is very important.

This afternoon after my nap I cleaned my Woolie Winder for the Lendrum spinning wheel. It was the first time that I cleaned it. I layed all the parts down in the order that they came off. After scrubbing the grease and grime off, not to mention a few bits of very greasy fiber, everything went back together and is working. I wish that I had a magnifying glass for some parts of the process. Hen while dinner was cooking I spent time cleaning.

I think that I will spend the evening knitting as my hands permit.