Down for the Count

But not out entirely!  What a few days can do to a person! 

First off, I have had it with being a sock designer-this urge to put butterflies on a pair of socks for Abigail is a complete failure.  I have ripped out and redone too many times to feel the love for this idea any more!  I am going to pick a pretty lace pattern for the top and admit defeat.  To top it off, while knitting it for the umpteenth time at the doctor appt on mon morn, I got a chatty lady next to me which totally blew the concentration level.  I put it away and chatted.  When I pulled the sock out when I was in the exam room waiting for dr to show up, I realized that when I had stuffed the sock back in  my purse, I had gotten ink from my pen on the yarn-a quick wash at their sink only made it worse.  Are you sensing my angst over this sock?!!  To top it off, I passed out while the dr was removing several moles (12!) and couldn't pull myself together so they had to call Bill and get him to take me home.  Where I took another 4 hours to get upright again.  Just a glitch in the whole realm of things but sure did put the schedule out of kilter.  I had gone to the dr for a UTI and a flu shot but got a bonus, you think?!

Yesterday, I took my friend and neighbor to the hospital for outpatient surgery-she wakes right up after anesthesia-I have to admit, I am amazed at her fortitude.  I fail miserably at the revival mode after surgery!  After 2 hours of knitting on the above sock-I ripped it out for the last time.  I am finished with it.

Played catch up at home in the afternoon, laundry, and cleaned up spots were necessary for my sons and Kristen's visit tonight-I am just a flurry of activity today so I can enjoy their company when they arrive!
In between baking today, I am trying to put together a 'boot' so that a friend can slip it over his surgical boot after his foot surgery today.  I have done this for Bill in the past so I think I can do this pretty quickly today.  I am feeling like I belong to the world of the living so it is a good beginning to the day!

We got this in the mail-popcorn that Bill orders online.  What a way to celebrate tonight after church .  (You just can't go back to Redenbackers after this! )

Monday Stuff

The yard sale was not as vigorous as years past but we did make $100 so it was successful as far as I am concerned.  Today, Bill took the rest of the stuff to a secondhand store, the junkyard and the dump. 

On Saturday, I finished weaving the second t-shirt rug pretty quickly and got it fringed.  (Finished 24" x 42" )

Then out to the front yard to knit and answer questions to the people who stopped by the yard sale.  Relaxing to say the least, and Bling liked me bringing my lap outside for his snuggling pleasure.  I knit around him......  The lace shawl needed too much attention so I took out the wool I had dyed in the crockpot and began another sock from the SpinOffMagazine and it worked up beautifully and quickly.  The ball was lighter in the middle and darker as I neared the outside of the skein-what a fun result of my serendipitous dyeing. 

I went to the eye doctors this morning for a follow-up appointment after my glaucoma laser surgery in June-horray  that I didn't experience any closing of the hole they left in my eye for pressure regulation!  (Thank you Lord  for the good report;  I am usually the 'one out of 1,000' who has the weird side affects or problems if there are to be any but not this time!!)

Community Yard Sale

This is what we are doing today.......almost everyone in the community participates.  I can't wait to get rid of the junk treasures Bill has accumulated!

I am doing this in between customers!

A Different Kind of Day

Bill spent most of the day hauling stuff out of the house, garage and rental units. 

We even have a little stash to sell in the community yard sale this Saturday!  I went over to help him this afternoon and swept out the house, garage and the 2 double unit rental cabins also on the property.  The rooms  were very scary looking to me, think 1940's migrant workers and all the 60+ years of mold growth and you will be  close to the ambiance!  I said they should just level the buildings and sell the lot, Bill was telling me that someone would jump at the chance to buy it......well, when I was taking the pictures outside, someone stopped and asked if they could talk to the owners about buying it.  I hate it when he is so right-he loved it , of course. 

Well, Peg in So Carolina, I am having to face the consequences of my haphazard dyeing methods because I ran out of the dyed suffolk and now have to try and duplicate the original color!!! It isn't going to happen.  I think I will be dip dyeing the top to see just how close I CAN get and then overdyeing the pair of socks to fix the experiment!

I am going to start a new pair of socks.......Aimee socks by Wendy Johnson.  I hope to make a pair of matching mother/daughter socks out of this and then dye them to highlight the butterflies. 

The beginning of a new month is always so great for starting lists for all you anticipate to get done this month.  Hope you feel the same way!

Returned to Florida

Always wonderful to go on a trip and always nice to get home.  The white camelias are out in full bloom-they come out a full month before the red ones.  So pretty but no perfume; we notice that a lot of blooms in FL are showy but not perfumey.  Interesting random thought.

I finished the pair of long fingerless gloves for Marsel.  She gave me the yarn so I could make her a pair.  I used this pattern to give me a general idea and then did my own thing as usual.  They needed to be l o n g  for my daughter!

I am making progress on another pair of socks.  This yarn is my favorite from KnitPicks, bare superwash/nylon blend.  The pattern (Sheri's posies socks) is another from WendyJohnson's book Socks from the Toe Up.

Bill is off to a fun 'job' the Lord dropped in his lap.  While mowing the place where my parents stay for the winter, a man stopped and asked if he was willing to help him in his business of emptying foreclosed homes and then mowing the yards to keep them from looking abandoned.  This guy works for several banks in the area and has more work than he can keep up with;  is this a sign of the times or what!!!  Bill has been interested in some odd jobs for additional money and I had been resisting the 9-5 grind for him again or worse, shift work nightmares!  (I had prayed for the last of them when he retired!)  This present opportunity is so ideally suited to my packrat husband.  He has to haul all the stuff the last tenants left behind to the dump or to his garage, his choice!  This would be like letting me work in a fiber warehouse and giving me carte blanche to take home whatever I could carry each night!!!  Needless to say, he is excited.  If he gets this kind of work often enough, he can hire someone else to finish the house while he is doing something he enjoys!  He says he might even have some work for me cleaning out after Bill hauls the heavy stuff.  Who would have thought of this kind of work as being so lucrative.  We shall see how this pans out.

A Bit of This and Some of That

I made this for Abigail to match the one I made for Marsel for her beach walk. I did line it for Abigail and sent off a slip for Marsel to add to hers for when she wears it off the beach!

Bill sold his van..........couldn't get much for it at a dealership as a trade-in on a p/u truck so he put it out front to see how it would do-we sold it immediately........being a one car family for the first time ever in our lives is proving interesting! He is going truck hunting tomorrow. Hopefully, he will be successful so we can go out on the boat again-the Yaris just isn't up to the task!

I went to the doctor's today, a surgeon to talk about my gall bladder pain.............after suffering for so many years I found I had gone to the wrong kind of doctors in the past.......this man was quite cheerful about removing mine-says I have classic case of chronic 'gall bladder itis' and since it runs in my family it will be good to remove it before it becomes infected (like my Mom's!) Now that is a novel idea. I have had every test there is to have for the pain I have lived with for 20 years but I finally have some hope for its relief! My daughter was told in the ER when she went in with her gall bladder attack-go and see a surgeon about getting it out-never go to a gastrointeroligist. Well, guess where my pcp had always sent me . BUT at our new doctors I asked to see a surgeon and he said, "Great idea!" It was and will be............I have an appt for next month! Whoopee!

After the doctors we went to have a check-up for our Yaris-dealer gives free oil change and check-ups for life of the car-cool , huh?! Bill dropped me off at JoAnn Fabric Store and I shopped until I dropped...........I got everything on my list so I can finish up quite a pile of things!

We had lunch at Olive Garden and are ready to drop in our easy chairs.........it is hard work being retired!