A Little Yarn On The Side

In the traditions-I'd-rather-end-immediately, I'm finishing up the holidays with bronchitis.  The good news is, at least this is the first time since the back injury and even the most severe coughing can no longer throw out my back.  The bad news is, three days of severe coughing hurts my back muscles anyway.  Today, at least, I have felt good enough to knit, though I started a Baby Surprise Jacket because I didn't think I was up for anything but garter stitch.  Still, that is progress.  I'm hoping to be improved enough tomorrow to be up and about some.  Fingers crossed!

Happy Holidays – finally! As you probably noticed, there was no 2012 holiday letter. So a brief recap on the last TWO years: In 2012, Andy took up the bass guitar, painted the sewing room and built some seriously beautiful shelves for me, and designed and built us a greenhouse. In August my father was hospitalized with an advanced staph infection, he spent 5 weeks in hospitals here in Boise while my mother lived with us, and he not only fully recovered from the infection—he survived Blue Cross of Idaho, which is even more remarkable. I began the year attempting to get my back/hip straightened out, joined a congressional campaign for a few months, spent 5 weeks trying to cope with my inability to cope with hospitals, due to all the stress ended up back in physical therapy as soon as my father was released, managed to sprain my back while doing physical therapy, and ended 2012 even less mobile than at the start. This year has continued to be dominated by my back prob...

* The good news is, cold no longer makes my back muscles seize up.  The bad news is, snowing--especially the changing pressure building up to snowing--makes my back muscles ache.  Right now it's more accurate than the Accuweather weather predictions, but I'm hoping this new superpower of mine is just temporary. *  If one's back has woken one up in the middle of the night to tell one that it is snowing (or going to snow), one might as well have some fun with it later. * Just because one's cat has a long shaggy coat and hair between the toes to help cope with snow, it doesn't mean one's cat is going to have anything to do with snow or building snowmen. *  In true Jo-Ann's customer service tradition, my order did finally ship more than two weeks later, minus 14 items , including gray, black, tan, and pink paints, which were the big reason for the order in the first place.  Luckily, I found most of the replacements at Fred Meyer, except gray, which ...

Did you see it?  That tiny little yarn tally on the side of the blog finally moved today!!!  I have finally used up another ball of yarn from my stash!!!! I had sworn that I wouldn't stress about my yarn tally this year, but this was a lie.  I didn't stress about it while I was stressing about 365 ornaments and while I was trying to finish up everything for Christmas, but now--during the last two weeks of the year--I'm going to stress about my stash.  The red scarf is half finished, and now my compulsion to finish the year with as high a number as possible in the "stash used up" category is going to be duking it out with my saner side that thinks I should hedge a little so I could start the 100-finished-projects year with a running start.  I don't know which side I'd actually bet on, but I'm guessing it's likely to be a closer match than most of the holiday football games will be.................

It has been a busy week!  After attending TWO parties on Saturday, there was a lot of resting on Sunday,  but I did manage to finish off some details on a few gifts, like the bows for the ballet slipper ornaments,  wrap gifts (using the small bit of the crafting table I have cleared up), and Andy took packages to the post office on Sunday.  I dropped the last one off after an appointment on Monday, and I think everything is shipped for the year.  Or most of it.  I think.  There has been some crafting, including a new bowl with slanted sides.  These are by far the hardest to make as I can't use the sewing machine as a guide, but I'm getting better.  There has also been a bit of knitting, and the new red scarf is almost half finished already.  I just finished the holiday letter and the first cards will go out tomorrow.  I'm dragging around with a cold, but I think I can still make the Secret Santa party tonight. I was re...

........and my order with Jo-Ann Fabrics is still "processing."  I wouldn't mind quite so much, but I've dealt with Jo-Ann Fabrics before and the odds of them being out of the things I've ordered when they screw so long with shipping is about 99%.  So, I'm not even sure I'll get the paints I am so anxiously awaiting.  I want the next spending ban to start on January 1, so I'm hoping they can be bothered to send whatever is left at least by December 31 so I'll have a chance to find replacements for the things that they no longer have.  Bastards. Luckily, everything else is going much better than dealing with Jo-Ann's.  Yesterday I had physical therapy first thing, and I have a glowing progress report to take to the physiatrist on Monday.  I'm still continuing the weekly therapy as I still have a long way to go, but for the first time in 2 years, I can sometimes forget about my back. After therapy, in spite of the cold (we might get ...

The gifts that NEED to happen are done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Or at least until I get a wild idea or think of someone not on the original list.  After all the trouble with the laces on the first pillow, the second one was no problem at all--I got the original method to work.  I have no idea why--maybe I was stronger yesterday.  I also have no idea why, having cut them out at the same time and probably mixing and matching pieces, the one on the left is fat and wide and the one on the right is taller than it is wide.  It doesn't really matter, but it was funny.  They should be exactly the same.  They are even washed, and I have to admit, I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.  They could be a bit more football-shaped, but as they are pillows, I think it works out. I even finished up the music bag! Though TWO rounds with the iron on high hasn't eliminated all the wrinkles in it.  I even took it out of the dryer while still wet to i...

Surprisingly, my back was fine yesterday even though it was hurting by the end of the party, so I got to spend some time working on the 3 (I think) remaining Christmas gifts.  With my trusty sidekick almost with me, I dug (not an exaggeration)  out a spot on the cutting table in order to have room to cut out a new bag, when I remembered the canvas bags I'd bought YEARS ago before I realized that one wouldn't actually be able to embroider on bags already made.  One CAN, however, embroider them after ripping out a seam.  These have webbing for the handles, which is probably stronger than fabric and yet another thing I forgot to get, so I'm hoping it's a bit stronger than the ones I make.  I have an idea for a modified sashiko design for bags that I've been mulling over, but that is going to have to wait until the gifts and holiday letter are done.  While Jeeves was busy embroidering, I dug out fleece football pillows.  I had cut these ou...

Finally! We were able to have an actual party!  I've had a Christmas party almost every year for the last 20+ years, so going two full years without a party was really strange.  And we rejoined the human race in style, albeit a really ugly style. Andy wasn't the only one sporting lights--our contest winner had both lights AND a singing hat, and is seen here trying (quite unsuccessfully) to get everyone gathered for a group photo.  It was hard enough to get people for individual shots--there was no stopping the party for a group shot.  We had some wonderfully creative sweaters, front AND back: and I'd love to show you pictures of all the fun stuff, but even taking shifts with the camera didn't capture all the creativity.  But we did have a MARVELOUS time!

Yesterday was a bad back day again, which is REALLY frustrating as I thought I was being really good this week AND it meant missing a Christmas party last night.  It turns out that there are lots of things that can cause my back to freak out while I'm trying to heal, including changes in the weather.  I won't know for about a year if the weather problem is permanent or not, but for right now, it is possible that snow combined with a zippy 4 degrees can throw my back for a loop.  Fair enough--the rest of me doesn't care for that kind of cold either.  So today while getting ready for our party, I am taking regular breaks to sit on my new massage cushion.  The therapist told me that when muscles knot, one essentially has to re-injure them to get them to relax.  Fortunately or unfortunately, my new back massager believes in this program as well.  The packaging calls it "Shiatsu action," which sounds much more friendly than "back pulverization with heat,...

The last party we had was about two years ago now.  I had already sent out invitations for a Christmas party, and luckily had made it a "Share your traditions" party where everyone was to bring the food that was most traditional for them for Christmas, before landing in the hospital with my back.  So, we went ahead with the party with me drugged heavily and my friends had decorated the house for me and all the food came with the guests.  But since then with all the back issues, we haven't had a party since, which is my longest dry spell EVER.  So this Sunday we are hosting an Ugly Sweater party, which explains the lack of blogging.  The decorating is almost done, including the swags which I was thinking might be the hardest on my back.  We got some shorter light strings, however, and this took about 15 minutes and didn't hurt at all.  YAY! I did have one bad day this week, so I spent it making my Ugly Christmas Sweater, since I have never owned...

It's December 1.  Our Ugly Sweater Christmas party is a week from TODAY.  What happened??????????? Hope everyone had as much fun as we did on Thanksgiving.  I got to go somewhere!!!!  The last 2 Thanksgivings I have spent in bed drugged to the gills, so I would have been pleased with anything, but we had THE most delightful time with our friends and everyone had a lovely time, so it really was a great day.  And, instead of the Black Friday greed stampede (which in all honesty I have even been tempted to participate in), I worked on gifts  including a new approach for a bowl.  The bowl started the whole idea, as after working on the base Thanksgiving morning before retiring to the kitchen to make stuffing, I came back Thanksgiving night to find the base curling upwards.  Or downwards--it was pretty flexible on that part, it just didn't want to lay flat.  So, if you can't beat them, join them. Usually I use the sewing machine side as ...