My Only Sunshine

My Pretties

I got my yarn from my dye-o-rama buddy.  Boy did I ever get lucky, my buddy is Adrian of Hello Yarn.  She sent me the lovely hand dyed superwash on the left and also some ready for me to dye alpaca fiber that I can spin on my new wheel.

I'm pretty sure I could not have imagined a better swap package.  Thank you, Adrian!

While we are on the topic of the Dye-o-rama swap, I have finally gotten my yarn dyed, dried, and tied.  Want to see it?
I'm calling it Monet's Sunset, as the colors are based on this painting.  My colors came out a bit brighter though.  I need to get a label on it and round up a few other things to send to my buddy.  I hope she likes it.

Last week was Get Mail from Boogie week also.  I got the fiber I ordered from her and then two days later I got sock yarn and more fiber from her.  Can you even begin to think of anything better?  Me neither.

Happy Birthday to me, on and on.

Oh, and there has been a little knitting going on, surprisingly enough.  My cousin and her family are moving back to Texas after living for the last 4 years in Maryland.  They will be passing through Bob's house on the way down, so while we were at Bob's I dropped off a gift for her to give to them.

It's the Mason-Dixon washcloth knit in Crystal palace chenille and wrapped around a lime eucalyptus scented soap bar.  I'm hoping it will make a nice, if small, house warming gift for when they arrive to their new home after driving across the country.  Next I need to get to work on knitting a kimono for their sixth child who is just a bun in the oven right now.

Ok, knitting and fiber content is now over.  I do have a couple more pics I want to show though.

Yesterday was Bug's first day of her "summer intensive" dance program.

She will be doing a ballet technique and ballet rehearsal for the final performance each day.  She will also do a different dance between the two each day.  Yesterday was Character class.  Tomorrow she will do Contemporary and then friday she gets to do African dance.  She will be dancing 9 or so hours each week.  That sounds crazy to me, but she LOVES it.  Yesterday after 3 hours and 15 minutes of dancing she asked if she could keep going because she wanted to do Jazz.  They are working so hard that they stop down to eat each hour in order to have the energy to do the next hour.

For character class she had to have new shoes, and scarf and a fan.  I can't begin to tell you how cute she is in these shoes.

Happy Birthday to Me (have you noticed my new banner?)

I know it's not my birthday anymore, but it sure feels like it is.  Look what I got in the mail the other day.

My final birthday present.  This is what my family got me.  Can you believe it?  Amazing.  I got a new sewing machine, a Palm T|X, and a SPINNING WHEEL.  I am one lucky girl.

That's another picture of my wheel, up in my new banner.  In case you haven't seen enough, I have more pics.

She is an Ashford Joy who does not have a name yet.  She's light, she folds easily, she treadles like a dream.  I'm in love.  Ofcourse, I should mention that I have no idea how to spin yarn on a spinning wheel, but it is just a matter of time.  I've been practicing, learning, practicing some more.  I will get there, and I will do it in style with this lovely wheel.

Oh, and I am not the only person in the house who likes treadling this wheel.  I can hardly get Bitty to leave it alone.

No "pocket full of game over" for me

This morning Bitty, my younger daughter, told me that if I drop the ball I will lose and that means I have a pocket full of game over, while we were playing catch.  A pocket full of game over, she's so clever.

I was thinking about that pocket full of game over while I was trying to resurrect my leaf lace shawl.  I don't even know how long ago I started knitting this lovely lace shawl.  It was probably shortly after finishing Kiri.  I would say I knit about 1/4 of it before having other things I needed to do.  A couple of days ago I decided it was time to dig it back out of the bag of forgotten WIPs (see, they weren't THAT forgotten) and get back on track.  It didn't work out so well.

The problem is that I had marked each repeat of the leaf pattern but I had forgotten over time that the markers often have to be moved.  I was trying to fit each repeat into the space left between the markers when it wouldn't always work out that way.  Things got WAY off.  It was time for a shawl intervention. 

I'm not exactly a lace expert, though I have knit some lace in the past.  The shawl didn't have a life line, I don't know what I was thinking.  The only thing I could think of that would get me back to a problem free area without causing me to tink a large section (that would take forever) or start over, was to frog and cross my fingers.
Here she is with no knitting needle.  She is just laying on the floor, live stitches relaxing as I prepare to rippit rippit.

Over here is the post frog shot.  I had to take off about 20 rows to get back to a point where I thought I could get back on track.  Once the traumatic ripping back was done I threaded a needle with some quilting thread so it would be sturdy but disturb the shawl as little as possible as I try to get the live stitches ready for my circ.
 
It worked out better than I expected it to.  I got all the stitches back on the needles, I figured out where I was in the pattern, and I even got the pile of yarn untangled.  Now I am back on my way.

Oh, and in case anyone has any doubts.

I HATE CHIGGERS!

Y-me Yarn

I finally roped the kids into drawing a name for the pink sock yarn.  Chappy's Mom, if you would send me your address you will be the proud new owner of some hand dyed pink sock yarn to thank you for your contribution.

I would like to thank everyone who so generously helped my Bob raise money for a very good cause, in memory of my beautiful grandmother, Mildred.

My Day (and even a little yarn related content)

My kids woke me at 7 to give me Mother's Day gifts.  Bitty made me tissue paper flowers.  Aren't they lovely?  Bug drew a portrait of me.  I think it is a very accurate likeness.  Orange hair, glasses, and my favorite earrings.  I think my 6 year old is brilliant.

After presents I got to go back to sleep for a little while.  We went out to a nice lunch and then a little geocaching.  We found two caches in local parks.  They were nice easy caches to get to with the kids.  Then we took a break for some ice cream at Ben and Jerry's before hitting a couple of harder caches on a gravel road not far from our house.  It was a beautiful day to be caching in the sunshine and I couldn't ask for a much better way to spend my Mother's Day.  I just wish Bob could have been here with us.  I did call to wish her a happy day and she told me she completed her Y-me walk this morning.  I am very proud of her for the walking and the raising money.  Tune back to My Only Sunshine to find out who gets the pretty pink sock yarn tomorrow.  The girls will be picking a number out of a hat tonight.

This little charm in the picture is attached to a keychain we found in one of the caches.  I need to try to think of some knitting ralted things to leave for other treasure hunters to find.  Maybe I should start leaving stitch markers in the caches I visit.

One other stop we made today while we were out was to Barnes and Noble.  I had a gift card I earned on MyPoints to spend.
I got the new Vogue Stitchonary with it.  This one is all about cables.  I'm hoping to start designing my own aran pretty soon.  We'll see.  I don't have the yarn for trying anything like that, right now.  I got the new Norah Gaughan book a few weeks ago, Knitting Nature.  It's a beautiful book.

It doesn't seem like I have been knitting very much lately, I've been sick in bed so much, but I have done a little.  I kniw one of the felted boxes from Mason Dixson but I haven't taken pics yet.  I also finally put the duplicate stitch on my tech socks.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, though they are far from perfect.  All that is left is a little blocking and they are done.

Last but not least, I want to show off the stunning yarn I got from Amy Boogie.
This was the first installment of her sock yarn of the month club.  I can't wait to see what else comes my way.

Uh oh, I lied, one more thing to show.  I got my birthday present from my Dad yesterday.  It's Palm T|X and I love it.

To My Bob on Bob's Day

That's my mother, over there in the picture with me.  We call her Bob.  I know that sounds crazy, but she's special so she deserves to have a name different from what most people call their Mother's.  I know, everyone thinks their mother is special, but mine really is.

I can't be with her today because she is walking in her breast cancer walk and I am here in the next state over celebrating mother's day with my kids.  I'm sure thinking of her though.  It's hard not being with your Mom on mother's day.

I wish I had the money to send her flowers, but these will have to do.

Tomorrow

Look at the email my Mom just sent me.

"One beautiful daughter, one beautiful day.

Your birthday...another reason to be so proud of the person you are, to be
thankful for all the happiness you bring to my life.

Your birthday...another chance to say how much you mean to me, how much
you'll always be loved.

Happy birthday tomorrow."

She made me cry.  I had totally forgotten that tomorrow was my birthday.  Too much going on and I am far too exhausted.  I'm not entirely sure what is wrong with me, but I am obviously not recovering like a should.  Anyway... happy birthday tomorrow to me, and happy birthday to the mom who gave birth to me 32 years ago tomorrow.

I know it has been a while...

...but I have good reason, I promise.

For the last three weeks I have been sick, sicker, and at times what felt like near death.  No, I don't think I actually could have died, but a few times in there abyss seemed pretty welcoming. 

Three weeks ago I started feeling pain in my left kidney.  I am no stranger to kidney pain as I have had several kidney stones, many procedures to deal with my kidneys, and one really bad kidney infection.  When the kidney pain didn't go away after a week and I started feeling nauseated I went to the doctor.  I was told I had pyelonephritis (kidney infection) and that I needed a CT scan to see if I had a stone.  The CT was negative so it was an extra long round of Cipro for me.  The pain was horrendous and very exhausting.  Midway through the infection it was time for the girls' annual recital.  What great timing huh?  I made it through that but it was hard.  As soon as that was done my husband got sick with some kind of stomach virus that had him laid up in bed really sick for 24 hours.  I was still in pain, and starting to run a fever.  The doctor told me that if the fever shot up or if I started to vomit I needed to call her.  It could be a sign of basteria in my kidney that was resistant to the Cipro. 

Two days after my husband got sick and then better I started throwing up.  Not pretty.  We thought it was probably just the same bug he had gotten, but when I couldn't stop throwing up we thought we should probably call that doc.  At 4:30 Saturday morning the doc sent me to the Emergency Room.  The kids were asleep so I had to drive myself over.  My kidney function was checked and I got two liters of saline and then I was sent home.  The doc thought that either I had the stomach virus or the Cipro was causing a digestive bacteria to run rampant.  He thought it better to wait and see.  I went home and spent the entire day Saturday laying in bed with chills, delirium, vomitting, and everything else you can imagine.

I'm better today, though really rung out and I haven't had a bite to eat in about 60 hours.  I'm trying to drink a little here and there but it is hard.  My kidneys are finally starting to feel better, which is a huge step in the right direction.  Want to know the best part?  The husband goes to Canada this afternoon for the next three days.  Ugh.

Well on a cheerier note, how about some ballerina pictures?