A Little Yarn On The Side

It would be hard to say whether the hour in the pool turned out to be good or bad, because yesterday morning while doing leg squats propped against my exercise ball against the closed bathroom door, the door swung open on the 10th one and I fell.   Right on my ego.  Apparently even Theo can recognize a cry of surprise, because Andy only beat him to the hallway by a few seconds.  Tonight I'm feeling good enough to know that I didn't do any serious damage, but yesterday was really, REALLY painful, and I spent the day on full medications and the heating pad.  So, if I was at all sore from the pool, it was pretty much covered up from being sore from a losing battle with a door.  Thank heavens THAT didn't have to go on my medical record.  The turkey incident was bad enough........... There was some very simple knitting, starting with finishing the green ball, then stripes when the drugs were at their strongest,  then getting a bit trickier as they...

The original plan was to maybe finish up the shirt for Andy's Valentine's ensemble today.  However, I was feeling pretty good and excited about spring, so I went to the gym and walked in the pool for an hour!  Okay, it felt better mentally than it did physically, quite frankly, and it has meant spending the rest of the afternoon on the heating pad, but it's the first time I've been able to do it since November, so it's sort of worth it.  Spring is in the air, and this knitter's fancy is turning to thoughts of getting out of the house occasionally...............

I've had three really good "back days" in a row, so yesterday I felt good enough to kick off Finishing Friday with a blanket repair job that I've been meaning to get to: The original satin edging had ripped across the top and formed a very strange string, so I had ripped it out one day while doing back stretches, and raided my stash to find a new satin binding for it.  Ivory would have looked better, but I didn't have that, and it's for the guest bedroom, which I assume no one checks for exact color matches.   It's always sort of a risk to start my day with a repair that I haven't done before, because if the repair goes badly, nothing else happens, but I did it on the first try, and was still feeling good enough to lay out the rest of the fabric for Andy's ensemble on the floor and finish getting it all cut out.  My back didn't last long enough to finish anything, but one of my Ravelry groups is having a virtual "sew-in" toda...

I had a pretty good back day yesterday, so last night I felt like sewing.  At first I thought I'd whip up a few produce bags from this mesh fabric I bought a while ago, but I was using a white chocolate martini to get a break from the drugs (weird, but it works once in a while), and this fabric is NOT one to be tried when consuming anything stronger than water.  It's the sort of thing that DRIVES one to drink.  So, this will be a future project.  Like when I'm having a bad day and don't think it could possibly get any worse. Andy and I usually make each other Valentine's gifts, and ever since I made myself a set of summer clothes from this fabric:  Andy has wanted some as well, so I started cutting out these last night: His will be the shirt with the collar and short sleeves (why do men insist on that collar?), and the long pants.  Obviously, we'll never appear in public in this sort of dreadfully-cutesy matching attire, and mine are at least cr...

So I'm thinking that a smart person might have decided to take it a bit easy if one was trying to get off pain pills.  MY approach, however, generated some pretty serious pain by evening, and of course by the time I was in pain AND tensed which generated even MORE pain, I ended up taking full drug doses last night and needing a rest today.  The GOOD news is that resting today gave me time to make two new ornaments today: and I think I'm smart enough to try half doses next time.  These are improvised ornaments with worsted weight acrylic yarns, so they're much bigger balls than the color-work ones, but I am very pleased with them.  They're both made with sparkly yarns and look very festive.  The acrylic isn't nearly as easy to work with as the wool fingering, but it's still fun and it didn't require using any charts.  ALWAYS a consideration when back on pain meds...........

The Christmas socks are done, and came very, VERY close to sending me back to mostly toe-up socks.  Out of a 100-gram ball with 458 yards of yarn, I finished with this: I have no idea what I actually would have done had they required any more yarn, since I don't have any more of this AND it's been discontinued, but I do love knitting on the edge.  Not that I'm not making a note in my project book to make the legs slightly shorter for this particular recipient.  Once is fine, but I don't want to press my luck too much.  I try to save THAT sort of behavior for lace. Lately I've been feeling nauseous almost constantly instead of just afternoons as I had been, so I have decided to try going off the pain pills entirely.  The spine specialist said to take them for 2 weeks after my back stopped hurting, but I don't think I'm going to get better if I can't exercise, and I can't exercise when I'm nauseous, so today is my first pill-free day in ...