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.