A Little Too Busy

I know it has been awhile since my last blog post. We have been very busy since then. The antibiotic that Eric is taking for his LRI gave him a thrush infection. The good news is that I now know what to look for and we got him on an anti fungal before we landed up at the hospital. Score one for me.  I have had a lot of long nights in the past week so I am very glad that everyone slept through the night.

While I have been sitting with Eric, I have been getting a lot of knitting done. With the exception of the finishing work I have gotten 3 projects finished in 3 days. I have my knitting mojo back which has come at a perfect time. There is another fundraiser for Eric's Taglit Program coming up. I am using this as an opportunity to use up a lot of cotton, rayon and sock yarn from the what was I thinking drawers. If I can keep up this pace I will be able to reorganize my primary stash and possibly bring one box of yarn out of the garage in the coming week.

It has been firmed up that I will be teaching 2 classes at Eric's summer program. One will be a weaving class. This means that all my little scraps of yarn will go towards that project. The other is making a beaded bracelet. I think I will be working with the younger group of high school students.

I have also decided that it is time for a new lounge chair by the pool. The one we bought in 1995 is getting too hard to sleep on. We have only had it for 18 years and I was not ready to part with it. So we will keep that one and buy 1 new one for the purpose of napping. It's time to start looking for the sales. I was so close to buying one at the end of last summer but held off, darn I really missed that call.

Eric's aide is almost done, so it is time to end this blog and get back to work. Have a great day everyone.

Happy Passover

I would like to wish everyone a Happy Passover. If you happen to celebrate Easter, please enjoy your holiday too. I think. With that out of the way. Eric has a LRI and with no day program tomorrow the best we can hope for is a Wednesday back to everything day. I am mostly over the cold that Eric shared with me. Although the flare up has started.

I did manifest destiny shopping for the holidays today. Yes just 6 hours before the start of Passover I was at Safeway looking for the things I needed for Passover. The result is that I bought a lot less, do to the fact most of my favorites were gone. Along with 2 of the 4 special tables. So no Passover coffee cake for breakfast this year. John said that it was probably healthier that way. My favorite macaroons and egg kichel cookies were gone too. I guess we will eat a fairly normal diet this week sans the leavened items.

I will be modifying our holiday dinner this year. With Eric sick and just the 2 of us eating we will not be doing a Seder. However I will still take time to read the Hagadah. Yes I think that was where we were at last year at this time too. I did however make charossets with John's help. Although he said that he would deny that he took Teri's job from her. I have also made a roast with potatoes, carrots onion and celery. John is getting so good in the kitchen, he now knows what size to cut the vegetables for a particular dish. I love spending time in the kitchen with John, he has brought the fun back to cooking. He on the other hand thinks I just like to make more messes.

In the I can't believe that it actually happened category. Teri's shawl is now in the hands of the post office. I also mailed another package today, I could not believe that the postage cost more then the yarn costs to knit my portion of a memorial quilt. This has got to be one for the books.

Well it is time to go take some yarn off the spinning wheel before dinner.

Teri's Shawl is Done.

It has been 3 days since I last blogged and guess what? Eric got a head cold that morphed into a sinus thing. So tonight I tried a little sinus massage to see if that works. We have just been trying to keep up with laundry and Eric's needs. Yes, this week it was a losing battle. We are hoping for a projected day of Monday for Eric to get back to his schedule.

The Big News of the week is that Teri's shawlette of hand spun natural black baby alpaca is packed and ready to ship. The above picture is the full shawl. This was taken on the patio table. I tried to capture some of the pattern in the second picture. Even in full day light I find solid black hard to photograph.

Well it is getting late and I am really hoping that Eric will sleep tonight. If not I will try to finish the laundry tonight. Wish me luck.

Day 3 of Very Little Sleep

I would like to let everyone know that Eric had another bad night last night. That being said he has seemed to turn the corner late this morning. He is now back on formula, currently at 20 mils per hour. When I get him up to 30 I hope to call it a night. Heaven knows we all need a little sleep, caffeine only goes so far.

John sent me out shoe shopping today. I think I needed a little break from the very long days. So I am down 1 shoe size and 1 width since November. I did manage to find 1 tall pair of shoes. 1 medium heel pair and 1 kitten heel pair. The only thing I did not find were some Ariat sandals, may be later in the spring or at the western store.  It was a lot harder to find shoes that I did not slip through.

I would like to thank the large cosmetic company's for pairing down their product lines. Because I could not find what I usually buy and like at gift time, I saved a heap of money on product that I would have bought to get the "free" gift sets. I really do understand the need to get back to the basics or the bread and butter for the lines to save money and increase profits in this down economy. I do personally think that it will cost them customers in the present and future.

I did cast off Teri's little black baby alpaca shawl tonight. I had 24 inches of yarn left over that I will save for repairs. I think I cut it pretty darn close. I have a few ends to weave in before I take some pictures. Of course I am showing it off at guild tomorrow then letting Lisa take a look before I mail it off. I am almost ready to check that off my long term to do list. Yeah!!!

Well it is time to go check in on Eric. Also there is a slim possibility that I can go to bed tonight.

I Could Use a Slower Pace

I was all set to blog last night when the wild eyrping started. So let me back up a few hours.
Most of Monday was spent resting and napping because Eric had a really bad night Sunday too.
 I started the final skein on Teri's shawl, silk-moon-crescent-shawlette. I currently stand at 130 rows knit, with 6 of those rows knit last night. Please remember that the patterns first few rows are 3 stitches each, which morph to 9 before the real adding starts. the increases are 2 stitches every other row. Plus a mega increase every 10th row. So I am well beyond 300 stitches per row right now. It is so soft and squishy that I might just have to spin some baby alpaca and knit my own.

Most of last night and today was spent with Eric. I got caught up on laundry when Eric dozed for a few minutes at a time. I am running on caffeine and chocolate plus the healthy meals that John is cooking. I am knitting a charity scarf in Eric's room, I love the yarn, but hate the color so I want to get it off my needles asap so I can start something new.

I managed to get to Trader Joe's to pick up the ingredients for dinner. John and I put it together and we will eat as soon as Eric is through with thump.

The things I need to accomplish before Thursday are getting a new pair of summer heels. Its really awful when I shrink out of everything in one clothing category at once. This time it was shoes. Also make a few more stitch markers and earrings. If Eric sleeps tonight maybe he can help with making the jewelry and stitch markers tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Keeping Out of Trouble

The longer that John is retired the more we seem to be doing. We worked together on Thursday and Friday to clean house for a party and get the jump on passover cleaning. About all we have to do is clean the stove and polish the cabinets. John and I make a great team. I also got some spinning done and a few more rows of Teri's shawl done.

Today I walked with a friend at the walk for the cure. It was no very well organized, but we had a great time anyway and plan to do it next year. I had 9,000 of my 10,000 daily steps done before lunch today. I am also over 10,500 steps for the day so I am I a roll. I thought I would have some energy after the walk to buy some new summer shoes, since I have shrunk out of all of mine. Can you believe that I lost weight in my feet? There is a little bit of a need to rush this, because all my pants are getting longer again. Even the new ones. YEAH!!!

You will notice a very big jump in my counter as I have finally logged over 1000 more rows to my One Million Row Challenge. Most of it went to fundraising for Eric's day program so they could plant a garden. If I have not mentioned it before, we did make our goal.

I am still a little to tired to tackle the chores. John and I will get them out of the way early tomorrow. Well Eric's aide is here so it is time to get things moving.

A Short Catch Up

It has been a busy couple of days around here. The days have been long and the results are amazing despite Eric not sleeping well.

Tuesday was a day full of appointments. Followed by an afternoon of making jewelry and packing up for Wednesday.

Yesterday was a big day for Eric's Day program, the Taglit group. The fund raiser was to try to earn enough money to fund the garden and nutrition program. The very good news is that the goal was achieved. There are still a few plants and hand knit cotton soap bags available. So Just drop by the JCC between 8 am and 3 pm. Monday through Friday.  Stop by the front desk and say that you would like to buy a plant or a soap bag to support the Taglit program.  Sixty three items left my stash of handmade items to help the cause. Just think about how much yarn was used from my stash.

This means I have a chance to create more items and will have a lot of room for them. My to do list will  go as follows:

1. Teri's shawl ( a home project ). 1 1/2 skeins to go.
2. Project Gratitude scarfs ( my on the go project )
3. Teri's queen size blanket that I started her 1L year. This project has gone a little slower than I would have liked. Yes Teri has finished 3 years of law school and passed the California Bar. But in my defense I did finish the pair of socks that I started when Teri and I were looking at law schools. Yes a very poor defense. ( a dining room table project ) 2/3 left to knit.
4. Some things for me that I have wanted to knit for me.
5. Adding some more shawls to my inventory. ( knitting with girls friends)
6. Knitting a few different style hats.
7. Make some more pretty jewelry and possibly make some shawl pins.
8. To card some of my own batts.
9. Type up and take photo's of new pattern designs.
10. Finish a few new designs.
11.  Last but not least to find some time to spin.

Since I spent the entire day at the Tucson JCC yesterday house cleaning started at 6 am today. I am so lucky that John did the windows and all of the polishing. This let me do the laundry and other work that I needed to do. I got the last skein of Yarn for Teri's shawl wound, but I was much to tired to knit today. Tomorrow will be full of cooking and cleaning. Since Eric is asleep I think I will end the blog post here tonight.