Knitting in the Shadows: Disjointed Babbling from the Past Week

OY oy, what a week.
Not particularly fun, and not, alas, particularly productive.

J was sick. On Tuesday, she presented w/ a fever, and a shivering fit, and an ache in her side. A visit to the doc, and some x-rays, ruled out pneumonia, anything abdominal, anything respiratory.... and left us with the diagnosis of "a virus" that has to run its course.

So, I brought her home, where we hung out with a fever of 102.5 for a couple of days. We called the doc again on Thursday, and were told that we should "wait a couple more days."

Now, with all this hanging out at home w/ the fevered child, you'd think I'd be knitting up a storm. I did do a bunch, but not as much as you'd think.

Finally, on Sunday, a trip to the ER (where the lab is) revealed a stealth infection that yielded no symptoms other than the fever. Finally, we have antibiotics.

During that time, we also experienced a refrigerator malfunction....

I'm upstairs tapping away on my little keyboard, when I hear what sounds like running water. I know J's asleep... so I discount it... but it persists. Then DH comes home, and asks how long its been since I looked at the kitchen. It all sounds ominous.

It was ominous. There was a lovely 1/4" pool of icy water on my kitchen floor, and the freezer door was spitting more. Now, on good days, our freezer will happily dispense ice-water into a glass for you on demand. It's not supposed to do this voluntarily. Nor is it supposed to do this continuously for what may have been up to an hour. But that's what my fridge did.

We opened the freezer door (which effectively stopped the fountain) and called the refrigerator repair folks. We wanted one thing first: how to stop the flow of water without leaving the freezer door standing open. Luckily, the guy was about 10 minutes a way, and he stopped in. I spent those ten minutes sopping up some 5 gallons of water into beach towels.

When he arrived, FridgeMan took the face plate off the panel from which the door dispenses water and ice, and revealed this:

Yep, that's a computer panel. It has a bit of a problem:

Note the black streak to the right of the yellow square? and the soft misshapen bit to the left of the green dot? Evidence of frying chips that. Evidently, when the chip fried, it melted something, and solidified the switch for the water dispenser into the open position.

Fridge-Man disconnected everything, and left us with that bizarre fridge-front. Wednesday should see it's replacement.... for which we'll be paying about $275.00. Sigh. I guess I really didn't need any more yarn any time soon, did I?

So... the Fug Report (it's what you came here for, right?)

Mid week, I discovered that I had to rip back about two and a half inches of sleeve one to finish sleeve two and have any of the darker shade left over for shading into the yoke.

I've since finished both sleeves, and gone through all sorts of machinations to shade from the darker color to the light in the yoke (which, frankly, I'm not sure makes any difference). With any luck, it looks like I meant it to -- but, what with the blending behaviors that have been happening repeatedly, I now have a boatload of ends to weave in. Since I'm knitting with two strands, I'd do a row of two pale strands, then a row with one pale and one dark, leaving the other pale hanging. At the end of that row, I had one pale strand at each end, and needed two pale strands... I'm sure that with some judicious thought, I could have come up with a solution that did not yield many ends, but the only one I could think of involved winding off balls from the cone -- the length of which I'd have to calculate, and I was too darned lazy to do that. I just wanted to knit the thing and be done with it.

As of this morning, I have finished the front, and am about two inches away from finishing the back. I plan to block the sleeves later today, and with any luck, finish knitting, and thus bathe and block the body, as well. All I need is a couple hours of TV time to finish knitting and weave in a bunch of ends. Photos when the knitting is done!

I do, however, have a real update to report.
You may recall the Sideways Cinderella Sock. I had two blog readers indicate that they might fit the sock. One, to whom I now owe something fun as a consolation prize (Janet, would you like some sock yarn? something else?), thought that it might be close, but the wrong length. The other, who chimed in second, was HERE this past weekend. So, she tried it on, and I think it fit her rather well:

The sock, the yarn, and the pattern have now gone home with Alyse. This means that I get to mark another UFO OFF of the list!

UFO Resurrection Report Summary

January - resurrected 2 - finished 1, frogged 1.
February - resurrected 3 - finished 1/2 - gifted it and its yarn, frogged 1 to start of sleeves
March - resurrected 1 (disassembled)
April (shhhh)
May, resurrected 1, its end is in sight.

So... do I focus on finishing the previously resurrected UFO's in June? or do I resurrect another (having skipped April).

Comments

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Glad you finally got some aintibiotics for J. Sorry about the 'fridge, I'm worried that mine is on it's last legs, but I'm pretending I have no idea ;)
Love the sideways sock!

Posted by: Donna | May 29, 2007 at 06:52 PM