A Lucky Day

Today we got the letter from our insurance company saying that Eric’s formula will be covered for another year. This is the first year in a long time that we did not have to spend months fighting this. We are not sure how this happened, but we would like the trend to continue.

Gloves

Today I went shopping for gloves. It was a total washout. The cashmere gloves at one store were 90% acyclic. The super wool gloves were 50% acyclic. The rest were plain ugly or solid acyclic. I guess I will be finding time to pick a pattern and knit some gloves for myself.

The take away from this is to check my gloves for holes in August when they first hit the stores in Tucson. Not like this week when I found holes in the 2 pairs of cashmere gloves that I bought five or six years ago.

Crazy Busy

I have been crazy busy for the last few days. I had a full day on Thursday. With an appointment to start the day. Followed by rushing to arrive on time to teach a drop spindle class, the student set the time and did not show. To top that off I dropped my coriander drop spindle from too high and the wrong angle, needless to say it is now in 3 pieces. John will try to fix it for me, we just have to find out what adhesive to use. Wish us luck on that one. 

When I got home I went to say hi to Eric and his teeth were chattering and he had that look about him. I was praying that he was not overly tired or getting sick. Shortly after we finished dinner the wild eyrping started. I was a long night. I only stopped doing laundry when I ran out of baskets for the clean clothes. Somewhere around the house I know that I will find those baskets. I finished 4 more loads of laundry today. Just don't tell Eric that I am almost caught up. 

Eric woke up smiling so we started him on Peidlyte and he is now back on formula. Now instead of sleeping he wants to play. I decided to tink a project that I was 25% done with, but not happy with. I was a little too tired to knit today, although I did have big plans to work on a blanket and a sweater. I had also wanted to warp a loom, I was also too tired for that. So now that Eric is quiet, I will head to bed. 

Finally

I finally felt well enough to make dinner tonight. A wonderful chicken pecan salad and fresh ginger bread. John brought home fresh frech bread. I would have added a picture but apperently blogo has not updated to IOS 11 and everything is not functioal in the app.

Eric thought it was funny that I said we were going to Trader Joes just for dinner things. Well I guess he was right, I got a few extra things. Although I did stop at 1 basket of groceries.

An Afternoon Out

John and I had an afternoon off. We went and saw the play Rent. I was not overly impressed with this play. Maybe it would have had a greater impact 20 years ago, but it seemed a bit old and tired today. The cast could also work on enunciation so we could understand all that they were saying. Maybe if the audience would have been a bit more polite and not clapped before songs started and continuing at least a verse in the song or the cast members waited until the clapping was done so that first timers could enjoy the music too. Also if you are going to sing with the cast at full voice, please, please, please not be in the key of off. Also as a parent I was dismayed at the lack of judgment of some parents. I personally did not think that this play was suitable for the under 12 year old crowd, no matter how cute the outfits the kids were wearing.

Afterward we went out to dinner and enjoyed patio dining. I just love our 2 weeks of fall weather. I am also 6 inches into the scrappy hat ( this is to read all the blue and green small balls of yarn in my knitting bag) that I started this morning. I will try to finish it tomorrow.

Halloween

Halloween has to be my favorite night of the year. I love seeing all the kids in costumes. We have also had a record number of trick or treater's even though it was a school night. 

 I did something different this year and placed the non food items and the candy in the same dish. I think this worked better because the kids did not have to ask for the other bowl. They were not made to feel different.  I went through 2 packages of pencils, which surprised us. I went through about a gallon of small toys too. I also used a basket with handles and that seemed to work better than the big yellow Tupperware bowl. 

All in all it was a great night.

Haircuts

We have decided that we will no longer give Eric advance warning for haircuts. He does any number of the following things and more to avoid haircuts. Stays up all night so we will be too tired to go.  Makes mountains of laundry that make the laundry room hard to ignore. Yes, when the laundry room hits knee deep, I will stop to do laundry. Yes Eric has been known to fill the laundry room knee high by himself over night, as he did last night.  Also by looking or acting sick until it is too late to head out for a haircut. That is the bad thing when he knows his schedule so well.

So besides laundry today, I zenned another drawer in my dresser. This leaves 1 empty dresser drawer.  Decided that yarn for a fussy blanket would go into hats instead.  We definitely do not need another fussy blanket around here. The yarn still needs to be wound into cakes. Worked on a knitting UFO. Organized my shirts by type, I am thinking that cardigan sets will be a separate group. Last but not least found more than a few hours to relax and nap.

Instead of heading to Goodwill as planned for today, John and I kept adding things to go to our ever growing pile of donations. I hope to have that out of the house this week.

Lost

I seem to have developed a bad habit of losing things that go on my left wrist. 6 weeks ago it was my watch, I have still not found it. Today It was my favorite 17 inch leather ruler that double wrapped around my wrist from i Love Handles. It was so nice to always have a ruler close by. That never got lost until today. I hope that I can find a replacement very soon. My poor left wrist feels naked.

Maybe if I just spend more time slowing down and centering myself.  I would not be losing things right and left. No pun intended. Now back to Eric. 

Busy

After a very successful fundraiser for Eric’s day program I am still trying to get Eric to go to sleep before tommrow. I was at the JCC from 7 am to 4 pm. It’s been a long day. 11:30 pm is to late for such a long day, but John was on Eric duty last night so it is my turn. Wish me luck. I may go for the caffine if it is a very long night.

Feeling Under Siege

After being awake since Sunday morning, Eric is finally asleep. This has been a rough cold on all of us. My first hope now is that he does not get a secondary infection from this cold. I also hope that John and I did not catch this cold. As usual it takes Eric about 1 day to recover for every day that he has been sick. So I think that I will keep him home for the rest of the week. I have help for the next two days so that I can play catch up.

Believe it or not laundry is one of those things. Eric managed to hit all of my PJ's So my clothes are on the list to wash. Yes I managed to wash Eric's clothes, towels and sheets so far this week, these clothes are less fussy then my clothes as they can be left in the dryer once they are finished. Almost all of John's and mine need to be hung wet to dry.

On the knitting front I went a little wacky and started knitting a scarf for the fundraiser with a combination of art yarn and sock yarn. Since both yarns have been discontinued it will be a one of a kind scarf. I will show pictures when it is finished. Now I just have to motivate myself that it is really time to weave in the ends of the hat and scarf that I managed to finish even with Eric sick.

2,444

This is what 2,444 rows looks like. There are 3 hats, 7 scarfs, 2 shawls, 2 cowls and 5 kitchen things. These will all be at the Taglit fundraiser.

The other score for the day Arthritis 1 Sheri 0. John an A+ for a great dinner. Last but not least I think Eric is doing better..

Eric is Sick Again

The cold symptoms started last night. Eric has the Cold Du Jour.  Eric is miserable The three of us are not very happy with this cold. We know that is just a matter of time before John and I get sick. We are not fully back to our version of normal from this summer.  What we don't understand is why people continue to go about their daily activities  when they are sick, knowing that they are spreading the cold. 

John and I continue to prepare for the Taglit Fall Fundraiser in between taking care of Eric. I managed to assemble 10 pairs of earrings today. John has the 3-D printer running at a good clip. He is making some really cool things. We are both very happy that other artists have agreed to let us use their designs for the fundraiser. It is not a hard sell when we tell them that 100% of the sale price will go to Eric's Adult Day Program. We are both very grateful for the community support for this fundraiser year after year. 

I am really hoping that Eric has a good night tonight but I am not very hopeful at this point. I hope that Eric makes less laundry tonight then last night.  Eric managed to fill the washing machine to capacity today. Wish us luck and if you don't see us for a few days you will know the reason why. 

Yarn Creep

Today I spent part of the day cleaning up the yarn creep in the living room.  I know yarn creep what's that all about. I used about 90 skeins of yarn knitting hats and scarf's this summer. I should not have one basket and two totes full of yarn left to knit hats with. This is the yarn that does not fit in the hat yarn roll away.  The only solution I can come up with is to knit more hats and scarfs. Did I mention I found a tote bag 3/4 full with yarn for hats too. No, it was not in the living room. I think that I will sort it out after the fundraiser for Taglit on October 26th.

I have been doing a lot of knitting besides hats too. So tonight I think that it is time to find non-hat projects to fill my UFO basket. I am getting a lot of projects that have been put on the back burner for whatever reason finished. A huge thank you to Vicky Konecky at Grandma's Spinning Wheel, here in Tucson for the push. I am sure that John appreciates it as much as I do.

I have been so busy finishing things that I have not posted pictures in a while. I only say this because I have a full tote bag of finished objects that was under a corner table. I just did not notice how full the bag was getting. I should check that out more often. So I will take pictures tomorrow.

The New Curtains Failed

The new curtains were much to sheer to make them useful. They are now in the Goodwill box. I washed the old curtains with the intent of sending them to Goodwill. So I did not follow the line dry directions and they shrunk 4 inches in length when they were put through the dryer, when I only needed them to shrink 2 inches. The old curtains are back up dispite being 2 inches too short. Guess what John and I will be doing when we can find time to go shopping?

I did not finish my chores today do to waking up with a migraine this morning. It was dark sunglasses for most of the day. I am on the tired side so it is time to call it a day.

No Presser Foot 18

The day started out very slowly due to a headache. I trudged through the laundry and finished all 4 loads today. After dinner things started clicking. I hemmed and hung the new bed room curtains. Reapired the lace work on a jacket. Then I went to the next repair job and came to a sudden stop. I do not have the number 18 presser foot for my sewing machine. Thank goodness for Amazon, the repair will be made later this week when the presser foot will arrive.

I am hoping that tomorrow will be better.

Things Always Catch Up

Things always catch up with me. Take sleep for instance. This summer when the guys were not feeling well I often had to get by on 4 to 6 hours of sleep a night. Now that the guys are feeling better and I am not running on adrenaline my body seems to want to sleep 14 to 16 hours a day. No matter how hard I try to get things done sleep is winning. I am sure that John can come up with some Scientific principle to cover this phenomenon. I had paperwork to do after my errand today. The paperwork is still there.

Me I just want to have the energy to play with fiber and beads after I get my chores done. I want to have the energy to warp the looms to weave. To sit and spin, especially since John has made me some new drop spindles. Instead I am taking daily naps and I am tired the rest of the day.

Scarfs and hats

Every year I get asked the same question. What does ?, the number of hats I knit over the summer look like. Well this is what 6 dozen + 7 hats (79) and 14 scarfs look like. This is a 2 seat couch. The volume fills 2 very large carrier bags. In addition to what I knit this summer my friend Eva knit 6 sweaters and Rita crocheted 1 hat, so I will have 3 large carrier bags to bring to the Flowing Wells School District Clothing Bank this week. It is packed and ready to go..my work is the top photo with Eva and Rita sharing the bottom photo. Sorry for the sideways photos, the lighting was better that way.

By the way I still have 2 hats on my knitting needles right now, 1 is plant fiber and the other is animal fiber, but no bunny.

Bunny 1 Sheri 0

The bunny won today. Eric's day program has a bunny. I am allergic to the bunny. After 10 minutes in the room with the bunny and my day was shot. So that is how the bunny won the day. In other words nothing got done. I am so far behind right now.

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.

Not As Planned

Today went into the blender by 7:15 this morning. Eric is feeling yucky and will be home for a few days. My hands were to tired to knit for most of the day, so I landed up doing some more deep cleaning. All kinds of things were moved to new homes or tossed. Two bushes also had some dead wood pulled off. It was a great stress buster. One bush actually perked up as the heavy dead wood was removed. I will have to play pick up sticks tomorrow.

What did not happen was laundry, weaving spinning or sewing.

25

I fell short of my goal of 31 hats in 31 days. Here are the 25 hats that are finished for July, with the last two hats in front of the other 23 hats. I will keep knitting hats because winter is comimg. I will keep knitting hats to use up the yarn my friends are giving me. I will keep knitting hats because the children like them. I will keep knitting hats becasue I like to knit hats and I have many heads to cover.

Now I need to count the rows for the one million row challenge on Raverly. I hope to see a jump in the counter. Then its time to tag and bag the hats.

A Quilt

The quilt is done. I am getting it ready to send the birtday gift out in tommrows post. I will only post the back of the quilt until it is received by the birthday person. It looks a little like a Tetrus Game to me.

23

Eric had a long and eyrpy night, followed by an early morning wake up for me. Which lead to an early morning snack of cheese and crackers at 4:30 am. Thank goodness he is now feeling better. Yes, he did make a pile and a half of laundry which with the new washing machine was only 2 large loads.

I did manage to get hat number 23 done today. This does not mean that I will go back to knitting a hat a day. I will knit as my hands permit me to knit.

Sewing

I spent the day sewing. This was a plan to give my hands a break. I tried to work around a BBD and had partial sucess. I finished one quilt, which is now in the dryer. Pictures of the quilt will be posted after the birthday person gets to unwrap it. I started catching up on repairs too.. one skirt is now in the wash and the next one will head to the wash tomorrow.

By lunch time my body won and got a nap. Everyone went to their own quiet place to take a nap. The nap did not seem to make a diffrence for Eric. He had a small sizure tonight followed by by wild eyrps an hour later. So we will be laying low all weekend. I wonder how much cleaning and sewing that I can get done this weekend. Laundry is a given, it just depends on how much laundry Eric makes. I am backing down on knitting until my hands feel better. This means that I will not get 31 hats knit this month but every hat that I have made so far will help a child. Let me know if you want to knit a hat, scarf or sweater for a child in Tucson. I have some donated yarn that you can use.

Have a great weekend.

22

You might have noticed that my knitting has slowed to a crawl. My hands are being very cranky. So I have been filling my time with deep cleaning. It is starting to take some thought as to what is going to get cleaned next. I have also taken out the sewing machine to catch up on repairs and make a few items for this October's Taglit fundraiser. I need to come up with new an exciting gifts that people have not seen before. I also want to use as many supplies from my art supply stash as possible. As I am organizing things, I have found that I have more art supplies than I thought I did. So look for some awesome new stuff in October.

With out futher ado here is hat 22 and part of the new quilt.

21

Hat 21 is done dispite a bad body day.

19 and 20

I finished hat 19 this morning and hat 20 just now. Now to start on tomorrow's hat. Knitting on a rainy night seems like the right thing to do. I am also hoping that Eric goes to sleep before 12:30 am tomorrow morning. I am a bit on the tired side.

Not Quite 19

I had a very busy hand day. So hat number 19 will be finished in the morning. With my hands at a throbbing level of pain, I thought it best to stop for the night. I will put on gloves to keep my hands warm tonight. I know they will feel better by morning. So tomorrow you will get to see 2 hats.

I am over 2/3 of the way through cutting the 360 squares for my quilt project. Hum, I wonder if that is why my hands are extra sore? I am cutting the lining squares now. I will have enough scraps left over to make an artisy quilt. I can't wait to see how they both turn out.

I even had time to go drop things off at Goodwill today. It seems to me, that the cleaner and less cluttered the house gets, less stuff needs to be rehomed. I guess that is a good thing since I now have more creative time.

I am still waiting for Eric to go to sleep. Hopefully soon. I tnik I might just get to sleep before tomorrow.