Knitting in the Shadows

In Which I'm Distracted from Pathology by the Idea of Tiny Stitches

Today, while taking a break from studying for the Pathology exam that I have in about three hours, I popped over to one of my favorite blogs and read this review of The Mary Frances Sewing Book.

First off, of course, Franklin's writing is a delight.  I now crave that book.  I may have the sequel, The Knitting and Crochet Book, but I'm pretty sure I've resisted this one ... so far.

Franklin's description is wonderful, but it reminds me that these books are more than just fairy tales (even if faries do appear). They're excellent instruction books.  Franklin demonstrates what you can learn with a petticoat for his doll.  It's perfect.  It's beautiful.  It reminds me that I have a sewing machine and yards upon yards of fabric languishing in various storage places in my house. There was a time that I sewed well enough to make my own prom dress -- and a three piece suit for myself.

It reminds me that I have a daughter who would love little more than to discover that she has a full wardrobe of garb to choose from the next time someone murmers the words "Renn Faire".  I also have a daughter who will be out of school in less than a month. 

I wonder.  Could we learn to sew together this summer?  (Not that I won't be busier than ever with classes, but I already know a lot of this stuff, so for me it would be a refresher course).  Perhaps it's time to pick up that second book (which is actually the first).

Said daughter has a birthday coming up. ...  This is the point where it gets really hard to resist deciding that what she wants is a sewing kit.  I'm pretty sure what she wants is combat boots, and not a sewing kit.

I'll ponder this deliciousness a while longer, but first... Pathology awaits.   I need to be able to identify which disease it is that comes with "a progressive degeneration of the brain, leading to memory loss, personality change, and eventually death"* and indicate whether massage is okay for someone who has it. We will not discuss that today, I feel like I have memory loss, and I fear a personality change is in the offing since I'm oddly attracted to the idea of applying lace edgings to tiny linen things.  At least I know that this exam won't kill me.

 

Music Happens

This week I got music.

I got awesome classical music -- and the next night -- I got to see Kitty perform in Beauty & the Beast (more music).

First up, Joshua Bell performing Beethoven with the Academy at St. Martin in the Fields.  I love Beethoven.  Especially the symphonies.  And with this performance, I heard things in the 7th Symphony that I'd never really heard before. 

I've listened to this version (von Karajan directing the Berliner Symphony Orchestra) countless times.

Bell does something deliciously different, so it was familiar and new at the same time.  I love it when musicians do that!

I'm still missing my "mindless" knitting -- so no progress was made on the AWOL Hopeful Socks.  Luckily, The Beethoven was so good I hardly missed it.

And the next night, I saw again why our school's drama department is so well known.  We had a packed house for the third formal performance of Beauty & the Beast.  Alas, I have no pictures, but it was GREAT.

I still had no knitting, but I did spend part of the time waiting for the show to start (and intermission) winding a skein for a new project.

I'm so lucky.

Gratitude for the day:  I'm so grateful to not be tone deaf!

Happy Belated Birthday......

Wednesday, we celebrated a very special birthday here in Shadowland.

It was so special, that even the rehearsal lords at the school cooperated, which meant that by 4:00, the whole family was free from our various obligations.

It was so special, that the massage gods granted mercy on my, and let my body not go into exhaustive melt-down at the end of Clinicals (the fun day during which we go in at 11:30, prepare our spaces, and then do three massages back-to-back, with only 15 minutes between the time one massage ends and the next begins - more on that in another post).  So I had actual energy to be THERE to celebrate.

The postal gods were not as kind, and thus, the birthday celebrant has only IOU's to show for the day.

Despite the fact that there are probably thousands of pictures of our celebrant on Facebook, she was a bit camera shy.

Who is that person?  You mean you can't recognize her from the black fingernails and ginger hair?

I'll give you some hints.

She's bright and witty (though lately her wit has become a bit ascerbic).  She's got an uncanny ability to remember exact lines from a dizzying number of  movies and TV show episodes.  Despite having a mother who is only marginally adept at applying make-up, she's came into the world with a talent for applying make-up that some professionals wish they had.

She may hide from the camera, but when she's behind it, she takes some pretty amazing pictures.

She is talented, and responsible, and fun.

She has an internal radar for bargains that means that her wardrobe is larger than mine, by a lot, though she buys it all herself, using only allowance money (and the earnings from occaisional baby-sitting).  She's thrilled with birthday gifts of gift-cards from her favorite stores, and always manages to stretch them into at least twice as many clothes as anyone else would be able to buy.

I'm sure you'll be shocked to discover that she plays in the band. (Well, maybe not.)  Since she plays trombone, it's usually hard to get a decent picture of her in concert.  The last one I took was at least four years ago.

She's adventurous.

And stylish

Not to mention foxy enough to make a parent nervous.

And now...

she's a ginger.

This week anyway.

But whatever her hair color, she's one of my favorite people.

 

happy birthday Bookworm.

 

In Which My House Feels Like A Day Spa

When I got up Sunday morning, my plan included studying for Monday's Pathology exam, possibly paying bills, reading, and giving one homework massage.

Instead, I took Bookworm to the store to get supplies to repair a hair disaster, and spent the next couple of hours carefully re-bleaching her hair, in preparation for re-coloring her hair. 

Bookworm is very grateful that my camera when on strike today.  Otherwise, you'd see photos of the hair disaster (in which her hair color ranged from the dark mahogany/burgundy brown she'd last died it, through various shades of fox, dark strawberry blond, butterscotch, platinum blonde, wheat, apricot, ....

While it could have been VERY COOL, the color ranges weren't in interesting natural looking streaks.... they were more.... spotted.  Like someone took the fur colors of a red fox or red panda, and used the patterns of, say an ocelot.  In short... NOT good.

There would also be pictures of the process, with her hair mostly pinned up, and some foil wrapped, to show you just how small the sections were that I worked with, so that I'd bleach the brown parts, and lighten the darker foxy colors, without over bleaching the honey and platinum.....

Of course, there are also no pictures of the almost finished results -- the bleaching is done, and her hair looks pretty good -- sort of strawberry blond.  But we're going to even it out a little better with a round of blonde dye after it's had a chance to breathe from two days in a row of bleaching.

For the record -- I'm actually opposed to my high school aged daughter dyeing her hair.  I'm even more opposed to her doing it in ways that require bleaching.  But -- the whole thing started months and months ago when she slipped out to Walgreens and spent her own money on hair dye.  She surprised me with the new color - fait accompli.  And luckily, it actually looked quite good.  I decided that this was a battle I was not going to win.

However, after this weekend's mishap, she and I had a chat about intense color changed (especially ones invovling bleach. Next time, she's going to buy the product from the beauty supply shop, not Walgreen's, and she's going to have ME help her for things more complex than simple coloring.  Kitty meant well, but she's never had it done, much less watched it being done, and thus didn't quite know how to tackle the job.

By the time stage one of hair repair was done, it was time for me to give a massage.  (Day spa time... get your hair colored (or trimmed), and a massage.  I can even paint your tonails, though I'm no pro at the whole pedicure thing. (snicker).

I closed the day giving a massage to Golf Pro, who was long overdue.

I finally got to the pathology book at about 11:30 p.m.  Color me grateful that the exam wasn't until 2:00 p.m.

I'm hoping that the camera and I get back on good terms so I can show you the new BookWorm.  It looks great, even if I do keep having to do double takes.  (It's a pretty drastic change).

Color Me Proud

I've been blessed in the past three days with seeing three wonderful performances.  One of them, I'll be posting about in a day or so.

The other two were more important - to me any way.  Why? Well, mostly because of one of the performers.  My beloved Kitty, fun, feisty, challenging, irritating, beautiful, insolent, loving, joyous, angry gal that she is (what? she's a 16 year old girl, how else do you describe a 16 year old girl?), made her hight school theater debut this weekend.

She's not a Thespian yet, but I think she certainly proved herself.  She took on the role of Amelia in Othello, and performed it brilliantly.  Most folks won't realize that the few moments she had on stage in the First Act may have shown greater acting ability than the brilliant rendition of righteous indignation in the last act, but she played the subservient handmaiden to perfection when she appeared beside Desdemona.

She then played the saucy wench, toying lightly with her husband, in a manner that I hadn't known she knew how to do.  (I'm not at all sure I like that she can pull that off so well, but it made me proud to see her do it on stage).

But my favorite part was in Act II.  There, she had a fairly lengthy bit to say, in a scene where she not only had to wrap her 21st century tounge around 17th century English, but do so with feeling.  And my goodness.  This woman-child just OWNS that Shakespearean English!  There was no sign of stumbling over the odd locution.  No hint that this isn't just the way one talks!  No funky pandering to the iambic pentameter that so many let make Shakespeare sound stilted.  Not here.  She was feisty and furious and wonderful!

And..

She died well.

How many actors die well?  Really.  You've seen them, the actors who over-die.  Or who just flop so it looks like someone pulled the plug.  This is not my gal.  She get's stabbed -- in the lung, one suspects.  She stumbles, as one would.  But she doesn't flail about.  And you hear in her speech that she's losing the ability to breathe.  The coughing was just right.  It's hard to die well, but she did.  I saw it twice, and both nights, she did wonderfully.

I'm more than a little proud.  Now if only I'd managed to get a decent picture!

(Oh, and while I wouldn't say that the production was the finest Othello I've seen, severa of the other cast members proved themselves able as well.  The Othello in particular was amazing.  He too, owned the language as well as the role. This is the second show I've seen with him; very different roles, very well played. I will be surprised if we don't see him on bigger stages in the future.)

Not my usual Friday. ...

I keep making these plans about what's going to come up on this blog next.

Lately they've included knitting, and traveling and such.

But today clearly had other things in mind.  Today was so not normal, I kind of want to have a record.  And... most of what wasn't normal is likely to pop up again before the year's over, so I may as well share.

Friday mornings are supposed to look like this:

I get up at 7:00, and make sure my daughters have already gotten up too.  We load up the car by 7:30, I drive them to school, where they shamble off without having said much, and I drive to school myself to learn about anatomy.

Today, my day started at 5:30 a.m. when Golf Pro informed me that he was finally ready to take me up on my offer to drive him to Convenient Care.  (Tuesday night, he fell somehow, and hurt his back so that he woke up in pain Wednesday. I'd been urging a doctor visit since Wednesday evening).

I persuaded him that if he'd been willing to wait two whole days, two and a half more hours to take the cost from a $175.00 ER visit to a $20.00 Convenient Care visit might be okay.

So, I got up shortly before 7:00, went to roust Kitty (who is usually up before that) only to find an immovable lump in her bed.  She opened one eye and outlined some symptoms that sounded unpleasant, and I let her sleep.  I rousted Bookworm, who wasn't terribly happy about it, then got dressed, and helped Golf Pro down the stairs.

I made coffee, drank coffee while writing up all I could about Golf Pro's last couple of days and the various symptoms I'd been keeping track of, and then loaded Golf Pro into the car.  Bookworm loaded herself, and I drove 7.5 miles to the school, then back 7 miles to the Convenient Care.  Checked Golf Pro in, and abandoned him to the medical folk while I drove 8 or so miles to school.

I managed to get myself into the first group for our first Practical in the Cadaver lab.  (I feel quite confident about this test, since I'd been fretting about remembering "popliteal" (the area behind your knee), but then was able to remember it for the question that happened to ask us to identify the popliteal area!  Go me.)

Golf Pro texted me that he was ready, and I got the text right after finishing my test.  So I drove back to Convenient Care to fetch him, and pick up the meds they ordered.  He'd been given a pain shot and an anti-nausea shot (evidently, when you're in serious pain and they poke at the injured place, it can make you nauseated -- duh), so he wasn't too clear on stuff.  I took him home, and he went up to bed.

Normally, Friday noons involve me eating lunch and studying a bit.  Or maybe giving a homework massage.

Today, it involved me having a long chat with Golf Pro's doc (I am SO glad he signed that form that says they can talk to me).  I got the low down on his four fractured ribs.  I learned that he needed to come back today to have his pulse-ox taken since thy discovered a "pneumo" on his x-ray (translated, that means that there was air in the pleural cavity that was OUTSIDE his lungs, which is not where it's supposed to be, and a wee hole in his lungs from which it had come.  They weren't terribly worried though, since it HAD been two days, and his lung showed no sign of collapsing).  I took good notes, and made his follow up appointment for Monday.

We did go back, his O2 was fine.  But the pain meds weren't doing diddly. The doc and I worked out a new plan, and she gave me a scrip for something more exciting just in case we really need it.  (As it turns out, we've not needed it yet.  Fingers crossed it stays that way).

Normally, I'd go to class in the afternoon, and then fetch a child or two, and come home.

Today, I went to class, and then went in to write a big check to the Band Boosters -- out of nowhere, Golf Pro decided that based on a long overdue payment that we'll be getting this fall, Bookworm gets to go to Disney with the Marching Band.  And so do the rest of us.  We'll be having Thanksgiving there -- with the band -- after watching them do their marchy goodness that afternoon.

Bookworm is pleased.  Kitty doesn't really know yet.  Heck, I only found out that it would be feasible 22 hours ago, and only learned that it was actually possible 9 hours ago (when the band director confirmed that she could sneak us in despite yesterday having been the cut-off).

Normally, I'd spend the evening at home, hanging with my kids, and watching TV or movies.  Instead, I'm about to get in my car, and (voluntarily mind you), drive to a place where people will be playing (and watching) football.  Then I'm going to park my car, and go PAY some one to let me into the area where I can SEE them play football.  ???

What?

Who am I?  What have I done with myself???

Oh yeah. 

I"m a mom.  And I have a daughter in marching band.  And she's quit telling me that they "suck" and is now willing to have me come watch their half-time show. 

Even though it's cool, and threatening to drizzle a bit, I know that this weather is WAY better than boiling hot, or freezing cold.  And my experience wtih football is that you're far more likely to encounter one of those two than a brisk but otherwise pleasant evening.  So..

My lace and I are going to the football game.

Visible Progress...

I've been working on this Holiday Stocking for BookWorm for .. literally .. ten years now.

It's really rather embarassing.  Last year, I really tried to finish, but though I thought I was close, this year's efforts have proven that I was not. In November, I began working on the stocking during knit-night every week.  I thus guaranteed at least 2 if not 3 hours a week of diligent needlepointing.

This past weekend, I spent an extra afternoon and evening's worth of TV watching with Bookworm diligently needlepointing away (c'mon it was a blizzard out there, we weren't GOING anywhere).  I also ventured forth into the icy windy evil that was the weather on Sunday -- to find more floss to match the green that she chose for her name, and to match the blue that was required to finish two ornament balls on the tree.  When I got home... it was more needlepoint for me...

And last night, just after knit night,  I finally achieved what had begun to feel impossible.

Kitty and I pored over it, finding all the missed stitches (one here, two there -- the buggers hide).  And yet, I am not done.  Oh no.... for this lovely stocking also has a whole swack of back stitching to do.  Yep, outlining things with single strands of floss.

Why?  Well... because it really does look better.  Without the backstitching, the bows look like this:

As the back stitching comes in, they start to look better...

And they work best with all the back stitching in place

Besides... how else will you see his whiskers?

Countdown ... T minus 4 Days....

So.. now that I've found my camera (it was sulking, having been put away for much of WindyCon because I wanted to enjoy the con, not just photograph it), I can show you progress on Golf Pro's sock.

Here's where I am as of 5:00 Wednesday --

Last night, I started just before the decreases and cable crossings began,

The dpn marks where I quit last night, having figured out the cable etc. (It included some frogging, and reknitting).

This afternoon, I snuck in a viewing of the movie 3-Iron.  Very strange flick, but compelling.  The two main characters don't speak.  I'm serious.  She has one line -- very near the end -- and he has none.  For most of the movie, only people who are themselves violent, or who have witnessed violence have any lines at all.

Anyway, despite the subtitles (it's a Japanese film), I managed to finish off that cable, and knit on into the leg.  Then the Mom-Bus was on duty, so I had to stop. The dpn in the next picture shows that spot...

Once the driving duties were over, I snuck in a bit more knitting while watching the first half hour or so of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone (who? us preparing for the opening of the Deathly Hallow's Part I? nahhh... couldn't be) (and no, Bookworm isn't reading through them all at a prodigious rate either).

Then, Golf Pro and I managed to go out for a moderate dinner just us two! (Bookworm went to a friend's to watch Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - part two of their Movie Marathon this week, and Kitty went to a French Club dinner, and suddenly we were all alone!).  I snuck in some knitting while waiting for food to arrive -- Golf Pro didn't even notice <evil wicked grin>.

After dinner, there was more driving, but I did get in a few more rounds, leaving me here:

Which felt like real progress until I laid it down to pose with the finished sock.

Suddenly, I feel doomed.  See that cable coming up?  yeah, I have to "read" that one too, and figure out what I did, because the notes are still hiding.  I seem to recall doing something fancy about the heel too.  I hope not :-)

Ahh well, there are two doctors' appointments today, which will give me waiting room time to knit in. We finally get to see Kitty's "Primary Care Physician" for a follow up after her little "incident" last Wednesday.  She really needs to hear from someone other than me that it's actually normal for her brain not to work as well following a concussion -- and that it really truly will get better, but that it will take time.

It's not making things easier for her that she appears to have post-concussive syndrome -- a condition whose symptoms include:

• Changes in your ability to think, concentrate, or remember.
• Headaches or blurry vision.
• Changes in your sleep patterns, such as not being able to sleep or sleeping all the time.
• Changes in your personality such as becoming angry or anxious for no clear reason.*

According to Mayo, these symptoms can last for weeks or months... or even up to a year or more. This will not make Kitty happy.  She's a mentally oriented person, and having her brain act like it's not receiving her radio signals is frustrating and scary.  I'm really hoping that the docs today can at least set her mind at ease, even if we don't get promises of a rapid fix.

*WebMd Concussion Overview

Public Service Announcement

In the interests of public safety, I must announce to you all that Kitty is now ...

well...

perhaps a picture will do the job more easily

Yep.  she's out there, on the roads...

I'm working on my wings, to let me soar above it all, as fast as I can.  Not so fast, but here's a left wing....

Meanwhile, my computer thinks that it's time to be slower than molasses in January in Alaska, so I'm doing as little as I can get away with.

When this latest diagnostic is done, I'm shutting it down and hoping that sleep heals something.

A little bit of Random.

Everything this week seems to be going slooooowly.

I did finally recover from the Arthrogram/MRI ... but my shoulder is not as good today as it was the day before I went in. Grrr. Tonight, for example, I managed to twang it moving laundry from the front loading washer to the front loading dryer.  I had to just sort of stand there and cringe and whimper.

Better yet, I get to wait until Tuesday to learn what that bloody awful test revealed (did I tell you that the doc canceled/rescheduled my appointment that was supposed to have been yesterday?).

On the other hand, I did get all the buttons sewn on the second BSJ

Bad picture, sigh, but it's dark outside, and that always means the pics are... welll.... less than they could be.

I also managed to squeeze out a second sleeve cap from the collection of wee balls of yarn, and have actually finished the Wolf Hoodie!  It was scary close -- Here's how much of the silver yarn I have left:

This means that the i-cord that will go through the casing in the hood (and maybe even the body) will be out of the dark yarn.  That, I've got plenty of.  As soon as the zipper (special order, of course, sigh) arrives in the mail, I'll be installing it, and photographing the finished object.  It lies, damp, in the laundry room as I type.  Pseudo blocking.

I've even managed to get a couple of repeat's of Irtfa'a's border done:

It's mind boggling to me how long each of those repeats takes!  I mean, c'mon! There are only eight rows per repeat, and the longest row has a whopping 18 stitches in it!  How can they take so long.  What? well, yeah, there are up to four beads (in two sizes) in every other row, but compared to the body, that's, well, nothin'!

Okay, I admit it, each repeat takes a tad less time, but there's all this flipping and stuff going on.  I'm hoping that as I get more and more of the shawl bound off the flipping will be less cumbersome. (that is what's happening here, in a very circuitous way -- for each stitch of the body that gets used up, I knit two rows of a repeat, but it's happening).  I suppose I could try knitting backwards (well, purling backwards), but I'm not sure about the ptogtbl's going backwards.  And those appear in every wrong side row.  I'll let you know if I try it.

Not much else to say.  The big progress around here seems to be that I managed to put away all the needles on the first floor that are not actually in projects.  And yes, that took far longer than any non-knitter would ever understand. 

And no, that doesn't actually mean that ALL of the needles have been put away.  There are still some escapees upstairs.  In theory, I'll round them up in the next week and put them away too.

And next week -- Kitty starts.....

she starts......

Drivers Ed!!!!

At least it's only the Safety Section this time...she's not going behind the wheel just yet.....she's got to learn the rules of the road first -- and pass that test at the DMV.

I think I'm going to go lie down now...

Surprise Addictions and proud moments

People have said "it's addicting" about various patterns.  But until now, I've never found one that I was inspired to cast on and knit again within a week of binding off.  Heck, sometimes I struggle with second sock syndrome, and have to fight to cast on a second sock, even though I knit right and left socks...so they're not identical.

But ti's finally happened to me.

The Stockinette Surprise Baby Sweater has got me.  This evening, I cast on for number two.  Luckily, I have two more babies to knit for.... (okay, perhaps I'm casting on because there are two more babies.... but still...).  This one is also stash yarn (only this time it's been in the stash so long it's lost it's ball bands, so I have no idea what I'm knitting with.

I'm alternating baby sweater knitting with working on Irtfa'a.  I managed to knit 1 1/2 rows before running out of beads from the old set, am am now trying to figure out how I'm going to allocate them in the edging.

Oh....

And Bookworm graduated from 8th Grade today.  The lovely lighting, and the fact that we couldn't get seats anywhere but the balcony meant that this is as good a picture as I could get from the graduation itself...

But, here's how she looked last night before she went to the Dance.

What? you wanna see the whole dress? okay..

 

And you thought I'd never chaperone again.

The morning dawned far too early, and woke me too often.

First, there was the alarm which was intended to wake the Golf Pro, who had to ferry Bookworm to school by 0600, so that she could board a bus bound for St. Louis and Six Flags.  And then it went off again (making me hate snooze buttons, since Golf Pro had hit that one instead of off).

Then, I woke again when Golf Pro returned, having decided that he wasn't done sleeping.

Then, at last, I woke to my own alarm.  Of course, it was far earlier than usual.  For Kitty and I had to be at her school around the time I usually drag my weary bones from my bed.  Why?  For Freshman biology of course.  Yes, I caved to the pressure and agreed to chaperone a bus full of high school freshmen to the zoo -- in St. Louis.

What?  wasn't I just in St. Louis? well, yes.  But we had to come home for a day or two, so I went back.

I was in charge of 11 students (one of whom was Kitty).  I'd only met one of the kids before, but we did okay.  Upon arrival, I handed out worksheets for a scavenger hunt that they were required to do.  We started with bears, The American Black Bear was hiding, but the Grizzly was out with attitude

Well, maybe not so much attitude.  Mostly he was placid, hanging out in the pool there despite temperatures that I, for one, found a tad lower than was comfortable.

It was damp and cool and drizzly.  So I was pretty happy when our next stop was the Insectorium.  I did try to take pictures of the silk spider, but it did not come out well at all.  I found the displays quite interesting, but only got one picture worth sharing (and even that's questionable). 

dimly seen there is the Salmon Pink Birdeater -- or a very large tarantula (legspans of up to 10").  Spiders as big as dinner plates do seem more like fiction, but these fellows do exist.

I did much better photographing birds

 

The new penguin home is really quite nifty.  Outside, the Humbolts swim about.  Inside, you've got these fellows on the right, t ... and right across the walk way we see the more familiar

 

Just around the bend are puffins, but they seemed to be camera shy.

The birds in the 1904 Flight Cage were much more cooperative.

That's an American Wood Duck in the back ground, and a pair of Buffle Headed ducks on the log.

 

Here's a Great Egret (and yes, I do think he's pretty great, but that is his name).

Though my favorites, the roseate spoonbills, were too busy showing off how stunning they looked in flight to let me get any good pictures.

I'd likely plague you with even more pictures, but the kids had gotten everything they needed from the flight cage and were eager to get to the bird house.  We did pass this fellow on the way

That's a Saddlebill Stork.  His buddy had been flaring his wings at the antelope like critters they live with, but I couldn't get a decent shot of that.

Just outside the bird house, we met this Cinerous Vulture.

I'd never seen a vulture sit this way before.  I'm guessing he was offended at having had to sit in the rain and was drying his wings, but then that's me the human talking.  If I had a nine foot wing span, I'd object to carrying the extra weight they'd hold when wet.

I personally think that his wing stretches were more impressive than this King Vulture, even if he's not got the royal name

We saw many more very cool birds and critters, but I was more focused on keeping track of kids than taking pictures.  Once their worksheets were finished, however, I got to turn them loose, and Kitty and I enjoyed lunch, and prowled the gift shops for the last hour or so.  I even managed to sneak in a birthday present purchase while she wasn't paying attention.

I was able to knit on the bus (yay).  And I would have finished that baby sweater I started on Monday night except that during the cast off row I encountered this:

We are not amused.

We are amused, however, by the magic of this design.  It's a variation on Elizabeth Zimmerman's magical Baby Surprise Jacket.  It looks like this, rather like I had some difficulties knitting a simple rectangle:

Some wonderful fellow worked up the adaptations to make it stockinette! I had hoped that by avoiding the yarn consumption of garter stitch I'd have enough yarn.  And actually, if I'd found them before I'd knit the cuffs in garter, (or if I'd sucked it up and ripped back to do the thing in stockinette all the way) I'd have had enough to bind off and sew the two shoulder seams.  But nooo......  So now I'm going to go digging through the sock/fingering stash to see if I've anything with which I can fake it for the second half of the bind off row.

Anyway, folded properly, it suddenly, mysteriously turns into this

 

It'll look better with a bit of blocking and some buttons.

Sigh.  I don't suppose any of you have just that last bit worth of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Mountain Creek do you?

At least we like the answers..

Monday, I spent the morning paying bills.  Sigh.  My favorite thing (not).

The afternoon marked another journey to St. Louis -- so that I could take another daughter to Children's Hospital there.  Luckily, this time it wasn't an attempt to diagnose some mystery ailment.

Kitty's got congenital hypothyroidism.  A huge deal if undetected early, but no big deal to treat.  We caught it, and had full diagnosis and treatment in place by the time she was two weeks old.  But.. such things need to be monitored and watched, and from time to time it's truly worth it to visit with a specialist. 

When we moved here, we moved from a place with actual choices in pediatric endocrinologists to a place with none at all.  For the past nine years, Kitty's doctor has monitored and appropriately adjusted doses, and cared for her well.  But puberty, those several years when the body's hormone system goes awry, and brain chemistry shifts and all things adjust and re-tune themselves ... can play havoc with systems that worked just fine before.  And thus, we took ourselves to the nearest pediatric endocrinologist our insurance company counts as "in network".

The journey down made me think that there is a section of I-70 that is permanently beset by torrential rains.  When last we drove it, the rain got so bad I had to pull over to the side of the road until it had abated some.  This time, though my wiper blades were flashing as fast as ever they could, the rain was not beyond their ability.

And once again, the rains lessened as we crossed the bridge over the Mississippi.

As we passed the evening in our hotel, I cast on for a wee gift......  I'm hoping this

will suit both baby and mother.

Our doc was delayed, and thus, though we had a 9:30 appointment Tuesday morning, we were not seen by the actual doctor until nigh on 10:30.  Luckily, we'd gotten all the blood-work we needed ahead of time.  We learned a few things, most important of which was that we're doing well.  A mild tweak to the dosage is all we need do - and it is one our own local doc would have (and in fact did) order upon seeing the test results.

I'm pleased with the results, but sure wish we didn't have to travel hundreds of miles, and pay for hotels, to learn them.  And yet I am grateful that despite all our other financial challenges, we've still got health insurance and thus can afford to see the specialists at all.

The journey home Tuesday afternoon, we traveled under sunny skies. And we saw something I'd never seen before:  bison!  Who knew there were bison in Southern Illinois?

Casting on, getting smug, learning my lesson

So....

I was all smug at the soccer game yesterday.  

Bookworm made a great showing....

 

(There are more pictures where she's kicking the ball and all that other good soccer stuff).

And I was merrily knitting away on a pair (okay, on one of a pair) of wrist warmers that I'm knitting for one of my dear  dear friends that I've not gotten to see in person in almost a dozen years.  I cast on what I was pretty sure were enough stitches ... and knit a good three inches in the designated lace pattern.

We all know where smug gets us, don't we.

It gets us a lovely trip to frogland.

But... that got me to do something much more interesting with the pattern design.

So today, while it rained... and rained.... and rained, I pretty much took the day off. 

I watched a bunch of TV, clearing out stuff that has been sitting on the DVR since I was too busy watching the Olympics to watch my "regular" shows.

And while I did that, I fussed, and knit little swatchy things and fidgeted, and played with charting software...

and then cast on for real (with enough stitches this time) and knit some more...

and recharted some more...

And I'm quite pleased with the results!  I just have to decide whether or not to SHOW them off... so the wonderful friend gets to watch them grow, or to hide them so they're a complete surprise when she gets them.  I can at least show you the yummy yarn I'm knitting them from

Malabrigo Sock, in Turner (which is ever so much greener than it appears in this picture (and my photoshopping skills (what with not having photoshop) are less than they could be).

Treading water..

Well.

The car saga ended well, if a tad mysteriously.

Turns out that my key has a little chip like thing in it.  That chip talks to the car.  When the key is in the ignition, they evidently carry on this long conversation, in which the car repeatedly asks "are you MY key?" and the keep keeps confirming that yes, it is THIS car's key.

They had a communication problem the other day, and the key must have gotten tired of saying "Yes, I'm YOUR key."  Either that, or the car couldn't hear it.  Either way, the car didn't get the assurances about the key being it's very own key. So the car shut off.

According to the dealer, this is a fluke.  A freak sort of thing.  The two are speaking to each other well now, and the dealer assures me that it won't happen again. (What, they've got marriage counseling for keys and cars now?).  I warned them that if this silliness occurs again we'd have to take more drastic measures, and they brought my car home to me.

Yep... they brought it to me. AND..... the fellow who did that helped me bring my empty garbage cans in from the curb.

Still lovin' my VW -- and my dealership in particular.

Meanwhile, life is staying VERY interesting chez Shadow.

I'm on a board of directors for a local not-for-profit - on the executive committee even (aren't we impressed? nahh...).  They're having a bit of a crisis, and it meant that I suddenly had lots to do.  This week that board was a bit like a full time job.  It has kept me from doing a whole bunch of stuff that I needed to do. Some of those have deadlines, so I'm scrambling.

The good stuff about Friday's meetings...... when I got home, I got to see my magnolia tree looking like this

Actually, it looked even better -- but this morning there was a bit of rain and a lot of wind.  Welcome to spring in the Heartland. See... wind:

 

The rest of the week also included interviews with three different Realtors. We're trying to choose one to sell the house that I don't want to leave.  I have to tell you, walking through the house, pointing out the good things... is not making it easier to leave.  And seeing it cleaner and cleaner and closer and closer to ready to list.... not making it easier either.

So far, we've gotten two recommendations on how much to list the house for -- they're REALLY far apart. So, I'm trying not to mourn the loss of a house I love, and I'm being seriously confused by the Realtors. It makes me cranky.

Tonight was much more fun. 

We were going to make some cookies... and of course there's the egg dyeing exercise.  I figured we could blow the eggs needed for the cookies, and then boil a few, and have plenty to dye.

Last year, I proposed that we blow eggs.  The kids found it to bee an awful imposition -- gross, hard.. and overall unacceptable.  I figured I could require each of them to blow one egg, and I'd blow a couple more and we'd have four eggs for the cookies.  So this year, they said no way... I blew an egg, they said it was gross.... and then once they'd each blown one egg, they insisted on blowing more.  We wound up with six before I put a stop to it.

Here are five of them.

There's even a bit of knitting going on... but not enough to show you pictures of.

Tomorrow -- we'll hunt eggs in the morning, and celebrate Bookworm's birthday in the evening.  Now THAT will be fun.

Sleep Deprivation Leads to Lame Collage Review of 2009

So, we're not through with the journeys through medical land.  Without boring you with tedious details, the short version is that this morning, Kitty had an EEG.  Allegedly, we'll have results in a week. (We will not discuss how I feel about waiting that long to know whether we learned anything at all.

Instead, we'll laugh a bit at what we did to prepare.  You see, they want their victims patients sleep deprived.  They wanted us to put her to bed at midnight and have her get up at four a.m.  I laugh.  It keeps me from weeping.  Instead, since she got up unusually early (for her) on Sunday morning, I just kept her up until 3:00 a.m.  Note -- I kept her up.  That meant that I stayed up.  At least I got to use caffeine.

How did we do this?  We watched a little TV, we read a little, then we played on the Wii Fit Plus (even though it makes no bones about my now being officially over weight according to my BMI, it still says my Wii Fit Age is 20 years younger than my actual age) -- she played for ten minutes, I played for five...rinse, repeat ... (the hip is still a problem).  We played cards -- Bullsh*t, Gin, Go Fish, Rummy... and then, at about, oh, 1:30 a.m. we got inspired and baked chocolate chip banana bread.

I'm wondering -- was it brilliant inspiration? or up-too-late-giddiness that made us fill in with insanely finely chopped apples when we realized that we didn't quite have enough banana?  Either way, it worked a treat.

Finally, at 3:00, with the bread out of the oven and cooling on the stove top, I sent her to bed, and worked on getting my overly caffeinated self to sleep.  I finally crashed at 3:45.  And got up at 6:45 to get her up...   Again, I got caffeine, she didn't.  And we were successful in getting her to the EEG folks awake, but tired enough so that she fell asleep for them while all wired up.  This is a good thing.

(And why is it that when SHE needs to be sleep deprived, SHE gets more sleep than I do?)

When we finally got home, I took a nice nap.  But am still sleep deprived enough that I've now knit the second shoulder cap on the Wolf Hoodie four times.  First I picked up the wrong number of stitches and didn't notice it until AFTER I'd done that lovely short row cap.  Then I kept "centering" the top of the sleeve in the wrong place (and no, it doesn't go where the "shoulder seam" is -- that's actually a bit down the back side of the shoulder to allow for a full straight line bind off all the way across -- stability is good.

So.  I've no knitting to show you except OLD knitting.  Last year's knitting (minus a picture of my Dad's hat, which I evidently never took, and pictures of at least one pair of socks....)

My favorite part of that collage is that I released patterns for four of those projects, and am likely to have at least one more ready soon (unless I manage to get some amazing "big" publisher to pick it up!)

I'm going to go have a piece of Banana Bread, and then head to bed now.  Maybe I'll come back and do a full review.... maybe not.  If you have an opinion ... I'll be delighted to hear it.

Knit Night -

Ahhh.. Knit Night.

It looks like this

 

and this

 

And it's full of laughter.  And some of the delicious strange views of our knitting output that most folks don't get to see (certainly not the recipients thereof).

   

It also included many rounds of the Geico Pothole ad

Oh noooo, your stitches are all dropped and junk.  Did I do that?

For me, however, it's not quite as full of knitting progress as I might like.  I only got two rows of Irtfa'a finished over the course of the two plus hours we gathered in my living room knitting together.

I did, however, receive the benefit of the Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth's husband's (Network God) assistance: now when Bookworm or Kitty log on to their computers, mine is no longer booted off the internet. I consider this to be a supreme bonus.

I also resolved a bit of lace confusion for the DTB Elizabeth after she discovered that the center panel of her shawl was not going to end up one the correct row if she did the prescribed number of repeats.  I found the problem (an inadvertent repeat of about 8 rows on the center chart), and helped her locate the right row in that center section so she could fix it via surgery instead of frogging back that far.  There were no photos of the surgery.  But we did put one of my 000 needles to use.

While I was on a roll, I figured out what was warping Banshee's lace, which required several attempts because both of us were blind to the obvious.  That pattern is kicking her butt, and it tried to kick mine.  But in the end, we got it figured out.

What I didn't do was catch up to the DTB Elizabeth.  I'm hoping that this next week will let me progress while she works up that center section again.  Maybe I'll be where I belong by next Wednesday.  Maybe

I've also slipped in a little work on my new cowl (for which I had to do the first three rows about five times. 

 

It's a sad state of affairs when a pattern of my own design kicks my butt, but I discovered that the error lay in my inability to distinguish between counting to three and counting to four.  That's why that picture up there is so full of markers.  I'm usually stingy with my marker use.  The DTB Elizabeth will use as many as ten markers to my one.  But not on this pattern.... at least not for the firt few rows.  I had to use many markers to keep it straight.  Practically a marker every ten stitches.  But they've allowed me to get the pattern set to where I can see it.  More progress is likely tonight ... Kitty has a choir concert, and I have to go early to get her there.  I'll be sitting for awhile.

Not yet Quarantined, with Knitting Progress

The denizens of Shadowland are now 2/2 in the battle against the creeping crud.  I'm still marginal, but Bookworm is afflicted.  She's been hit worse that I have been -- the fever showed up last night.  We went to "Convenient Care" this morning, and after a longer-than-for-an-appointment, but not scandalous wait, we were seen by a Physician's Assistant who confirmed flu (though not what kind, and I didn't have the heart to force Bookworm to endure a test), and prescribed Tamiflu.  Evidently, Bookworm's asthma gets her on the short list for the Tamiflu (most folks have to suffer through without because the supply is short).

Meanwhile, I'm feeling better enough to be up and awake ... and therefor knitting.*

As you may recall, there was a challenge made a couple of weeks ago, when Beading Banshee claimed she'd finish her Chrysopolis before me.  I lurched into gear, and made great progress for awhile, but then felt guilty when she had a feud with one of her ankles, which gave way causing her (in her words) to face plant, and strain her wrist on the way down.  I put Chrysopolis away for a while.  But in the last day or so, the fact that I'm so close to the end began to taunt me.

Now... I'm not about to STOP working on Nurse Potter's shawl.  But, I figure I can take turns with them for a bit, and finish up Chrysopolis.  So, when we're watching TV, I work on one for one show, and then the other for the next show.  In this way, I've gotten to within one row of finishing the main border pattern on Chrysopolis:

 

This means that I'm ten rows from the bind off (counting purl rows).  Wahoo!! (The next challenge will be finding space and enough blocking wires to block her -- she's gonna be HUGE!!) ((Oh Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth??  have you blocking wires I can borrow??)

I have also finished the first repeat of chart B on Nurse Potter's Garden of Alla Variant (Ravelry link).

 

This picture manages to wholly mangle the lovely colors in this shawl.  If I were a better blogger, I'd work at getting a GOOD picture, but two posing sessions is all we're up for today.  At this point, I'm starting to mess with the chart -- Though it would make a lovely cozy wrap, I don't really want to keep increasing six times every other row forever... I'll rut out of yarn before the shawl is long enough to be worth while.  So, I'm backing down to four increases every other row, and keeping the center back section stable from here on.  That'll create more of a Faroese shape, and I'm awfully fond of those.

Meanwhile, Kitty's been doing some amazing stuff.  As the result of ... a ... unique challenge at school, she switched her schedule around, and finally got into Treble Choir.  The day before the music department's first concert (all the choirs did a couple of numbers).  In those 30 hours, she got new music, and memorized two fairly long pieces -- and performed after only 2 days of rehearsal!  I didn't get to see it, I was home with Bookworm trying not to infect the school, but Golf Pro said she was great.

*Portions of this post will be cross posted with Seasons of Lace

Good Points and Bad Points

Do I detect a theme here?

Yesterday had some good points, and some bad points. (Does anyone else hear the Talking Heads when they hear that phrase?) 

I'm gonna get all predictable on you, and go through my day marking the good and bad. You can listen to the Talking Heads if you want to.

Good Point:  I slept in, and my family handled the whole getting up and getting ready for school gig without my help! (Because you can sleep, sleep in the daytime, if you want to).

Bad Point:  The Golf Pro left town right after dropping off Bookworm at school, and I slept through the moment when I could have hugged him goodbye.

Good Point:  I had an excellent breakfast with a dear friend.

Good Point:  I came home to find the garage door fixing guy here. 

Better Point: Whatever was ailing the garage door (for months now -- luckily it's the single door bay behind which we store bikes and such, and thus weighs little enough that we could open it by hand), had healed itself (or he healed it without knowing it). Now my garage doors all work.

Bad Point:  My new bike's back tire is FLAT, and I can't persuade it to take air with any of the bike pumps we have.

Good Point:  I found the button for Must Have, and even though I had to go through several permutations to get the right size hole (and then several adjustments because in a math impaired haze I forgot that seven buttons means SIX spaces between them, not seven, so I kept coming up with room for an eighth button), I finished them all.

Bad Point:  That's the only thing I got accomplished from the time I got home from a late breakfast to the time I had to leave to fetch kids.

Good Point:  Today was Library Day at the school.  Kitty got her school library card, and, having done some advanced scoping, promptly plundered the school library for 7 hardbacks (some fiction -- some NON-Fiction - my girl is getting books to learn about un-assigned stuff!).  She got so many that the librarian recognized she'd have trouble getting to class on time if she tried to go to her locker to stash them -- she wound up going back after school to pick them up.

Bad Point:  The traffic around Kitty's school is a nightmare.  I will NOT drive there between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00.  Nope.  We haven't yet figured out the best place for me to pick her up, and today's option was ... not the best. so she had to walk quite a ways to get to me -- carrying a double dose of books.

Good Point:  We all went to Old Navy for a magic 20% off everything you buy sale.  Bookworm found some very cute (and much needed) jeans that fit perfectly.

Bad Point:  Kitty and I tried on what seems like a thousand pairs of jeans.  We currently can't wear what Old Navy sells.  There was a pair for each of us that was close -- but miles too long.  The short versions do NOT fit the same.  We're too stubborn to buy JEANS that much too long.  I hate hemming jeans.

BAD POINT:  While sitting in the dressing room watching Kitty try and try and try to find jeans, I was finishing up my button band knitting.  I had, in fact, just knit the last stitch on the last row before the bind off when cable failure happened.

Look how many stitches are not on any needles or cables....  notice that there are more of the same out of view on both sides of the picture.  Notice that there is no cable attached to that needle tip.  We are not amused.

Good Point:  I was able to pretend to be calm long enough to carefully place it all back into the knitting bag in such a way that no stitches dropped before I got it home.

Good Point:  Dinner.

Good Point:  The mail yielded this:

A  plastic bag with yarn from The Coveted Yarn.  I know, I'm supposed to be on a yarn diet (aren't we all?), but they were having a SALE...  and this is Beaded Rayon...and... well... somehow the yarn fumes came through the computer screen and befuddled me.  But lookee.... this...

which could totally pass of a single giant hank of yarn, so much so that when I first opened the mailer, and saw the plastic bag, I wondered whether they had been out of stock on one of the colors I'd ordered, because I was just sure I was looking at one hank of yarn....

is actually this

One hank of Deep Blue See and one hank of Island.  I just might knit them together into one garment.

Whee.

Good Point:  early knit night at my house this week!  Let the sewing up begin!

Bad Point:  I wasn't ready to sew because I had to salvage those stitches and bind off.  Then...

Good Point:  The Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth has achieved her first ever smooth, flat, clearly picked up the right number of stitches at the right ratio button band!  It lies flat and lovely.  She is very proud.  There would be pictures, but her brown sweater clearly needs daylight to show off for the camera.  By this point, it was not daylight.

Bad Point:  Elizabeth's sleeves did not want to go gracefully into the place alloted for them.  That seam has been withdrawn.  We will try again.

Good Point:  I DID get my button band bound off.

Bad Point:  There was a knot in the yarn -- about 3/4 of the way through the bind-off row.  I hate that.

Good Point:  My sleeve cooperated (a little fudging was required, but not very much) -- even though I knit the medium back and the large front -- makes for a better accommodation to my actual body size.  

I will sew in ends, and likely sew on buttons, and then leave the other sleeve until our next knit-night so that I can show DTB Elizabeth exactly how I did it.

Today, I will resist the urge to start something totally new with my yummy Beaded Rayon. (But I do not promise not to  prowl the Ravelry pages for ideas.

Celebration!!!

Big news here in Shadowland.

Bookworm's many test results are back:  All are normal!

We're relieved and delighted.

I'm also a bit peeved.  It turns out that her specialist told her regular doc that if these came back normal, he'd just assume the whole problem was stress related.  When I asked specifically about the possibility that it was stress, he said he didn't think that was the problem, and that all sorts of things pointed to it not being stress related.  This leads me to believe that what I should have done (which is actually what I wanted to do) was wait until (if) she started experiencing symptoms again before dragging her to St. Louis and subjecting her to the stress of the tests (and the radiation dose). 

No wonder health-care costs so bloody much.  Docs are doing unnecessary tests just to cover their butts.  Grr.  These test might well have been necessary, but  it's now clear to me that the doc didn't really think so -- he was just covering himself, and letting me feel that all that could be done was being done.  Sigh.

Deep breath.

At least I have answers.

I also have a sweater back on the blocking boards.  Yessiree ... Must Have is blocking away in preparation for the sewing up party Wednesday night. 

I'll be consulting with the Divine though Blogless Elizabeth about whether we plan to pick up and knit the button band together, or ought to be starting it apart.

Chrysopolis is back in action.  Lace crisis averted.  All is well.  But you'll never be able to detect the progress if I force her into a photo shoot, so I'm not gonna do it.

Mumble mumble, mutter mutter

It's Sunday.  And thus, it's time for a few Unconscious Mutterings.

1. Disguised :: Incognito
2. Big wheel :: Small Trike
3. Irritating :: inane repetitive noises
4. Care :: Bear (ohh am I ever embarassed about that, but it IS the first thing that came into mind)
5. Grandpa :: Buddy (my grandpa)
6. Shooting :: photography
7. Sunglasses :: I wear them at night
8. Stampede :: dolphins
9. Painstakingly :: laboriously
10. Terrible position :: one play away from check-mate, on the losing side

Not only that... but, well, I have some mutterings about the stuff they send home from school...
First, every teacher seems to think that their students must have a separate 1 - 1/2" binder for their class.  Clearly, no student is competent to keep their papers organized w/o a separate binder for each class.  The fact that this means a kid will need a full size litigator's briefcase to carry all their stuff EVERY DAY is clearly lost on them.  Not to mention the challenge of getting this up and down the stairs between classes:
  (picture ganked from page linked above)

But slightly more troubling is the policies they send home.  Like this one:

Late Policy

• ALL LATE WORK WILL BE COUNTED FOR 1/2 CREDIT
• For every day late 2 days are given to turn in the assignment.

Make up Work

• If a student is absent he/she has the same number of days to make up an assignment as the days missed.
• Extensions may be granted for long absences

At first, I thought that what she really meant was that if you're ABSENT, you have 2 days to turn in an assignment when you come back(since that was the standard policy in Middle school), but the Make Up Work policy undid that expectation.  Now, I have no idea what she means. 

So, she's grading the biology class.  Here's hoping that she's not grading on the clarity of your reports!  (I'm going to see if I can get some clarification for that one.)

As for me, I'm working away on Must Have.  I had a bit of an argument with the fronts about the short-rows, but in the end, I got them to cooperate.  I anticipate that I'll complete the fronts tonight or tomorrow.  That means they can be blocked (again) in time for a sewing together party on Wednesday for my Knit Night with The Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth.  (though Erin may bring one of her sweaters along for the fun).  I'll take pictures.

A Day in St. Louis -- the testing ground

As anticipated, we drove to St. Louis yesterday -- because today Bookworm had a slew of tests.

We entered St. Louis in a brutal storm.  At first, it was just a little cloudy, then it was like driving past a curtain -- it was light, and then it was not.  I turned on my lights, and watched the trees whipping around in the wind.  After several miles, it started to rain.  And then ... well, the sky just fell in.  The rain was coming down so hard that I couldn't see to drive faster than about 35.  That's not a good speed on the highway -- especially when you really do need the signs to tell you where to go.  Others seemed to see better, but I knew that even with my flashers on, I was moving dangerously slowly -- so I pulled off to the side at an on ramp,  and waited for the rain to back off just a little.  The prospect of crossing that bridge into St. Louis in that was just too scary.

Eventually, though, it calmed down.  We found our hotel without much fuss, got checked in, and then wandered down to the restaurant.   While I'll be the first to admit that Applebee's is not my favorite chain, it does fare better when you're not trying to eat a healthy low-calorie diet.  By the time our meal was served, it had become down right pleasant outside again.

The wait staff here is great.  The hotel is one that is connected to the Barnes/Jewish & Children's Hospitals by one of those habitrail things (it brought back memories of another such walkway from Stitches a few years ago).  This means that the wait staff wind up serving folks who are staying in the hotel while a loved one is staying in the hospital.  They get to know folks.  This is Shannon. 

While we were there, a woman came up with her two kids to say hello, and to thank Shannon for taking such good care of them while they were there 2 years ago -- her husband had some bone related thing going on.  Shannon was our waitress too.

When she greeted us, however, she had help from her co-worker --

Kellen is quite the ... vibrant fellow. He loved Bookworm's outfit, and has opined that she'll be "make it big" someday.  He could just tell by her flair for the original.  He had flair too...

We had to pry him off that table to get the "saner" picture with Shannon.

Gotta love staff with a positive attitude like these folks.

After dinner, we went back to the room, watched a movie or two and went to bed... to prepare ourselves for the day.

So... I armed myself with three projects this trip.  I worked on Must Have at the Hotel, and am now a the bust darts for the front.

I tried working the 9 - 5 socks.  After several rounds, it looks like this:

 

Frankly, the pattern here is a bunch of fussiness.  Not bad, but fussy.  And all the pretty twisted stitches that it creates are pretty much invisible here.  I've decided not to play, and pretty much put them away after one other pattern attempt. I've frogged this bit, and am going to start on a variation of the Feather & Fan pattern to see if I like that more in this yarn.

Today, however, I spent most of my knitting time with Chrysopolis.  I've fixed the original problem and made some progress.  Mostly, however, I spent time with Bookworm and the folks in the "imaging" department at Children's Hospital in St. Louis.

First, we went for a sonogram, where I couldn't see to knit, and didn't take any pictures.  It was interesting watching a sonogram of something other than a baby.  Bookworm didn't want to see a thing.

Then we went for Nuclear Imaging to get the Meckel's Scan.  (Warning,  very soon there will be "medical pictures"  If you get squeamish about that sort of stuff, bail now).  During her scan,  Bookworm got to watch a movie while they took a sequence of images spaced five minutes apart for half an hour.  I knit, and took a couple of pictures of the stuff I could see on the screen.  It was actually pretty cool to watch the dye progress through her body.

Here, you can see her, all settled in watching Sinbad while the stuff works its way through

And once it had done its job, the dye made stomach tissue show up really clearly... (that's a front view and a back view -- evidently they take both simultaneously).

Then, they turned the machine on it's side to get a different view

And then, we were done there... and went back out to the waiting room. The cool thing -- I got to stay in the room with her for every part of this.  I like that they find ways for the parents to not have to leave their kids during these procedures.

Especially the next part.  She had to have an Upper GI Flow Through test.  The key element here -- barium.  While they've made drinking barium better than it was when I had to do it in 1978... it's not that much better.

First she had to drink some, and they had her roll all the way over (back to side, to tummy, to other side to back) and they started taking images -- watching it go through ...  and yes, I got to watch the screen. 

They "filmed' a bunch, then had her drink more so we could watch it go down her throat...

And then, after making her drink a ton of the stuff (which made her want to throw up, but she somehow managed to keep the crap down), we waited for about an hour, and they came to take more pictures.  This time, they employed a strange "balloon" to push on her belly to sort of spread out the views...(she claims this did not hurt)

they took several more images,

(one more)

(Don't you wish you could see YOUR intestines like this?).  Then finally declared that the barium had made it through her entire small intestine, and we could go!

Yahoo!

Only AFTER all this crap did we see what I think is the best view in Children's

It reminds me of a restaurant at Epcot (it's near the end of that post, or you can just look here)

We passed this on our way out.

Despite ideas about going elsewhere after the morning's ... er .. events, Bookworm wanted to just come home.  So we gathered our stuff, and headed out.  She slept most of the way home. (The drive was wholly uneventful).

Now all we have to do is wait for results.

Tomorrow -- the last day before school starts.

What do you do when it's just too Hot

Today has been one of those days.

It was beastly hot.

We've had this lovely pleasant not-quite-summer weather for so long that I've forgotten how to handle real mid-western summer weather. So once warned that this weekend means a return to 90+ degrees with a heavy dose of humidity ... I nixed any outdoor plans.

First, we slept late.

Then I caught up on all my Lexulous and Wordscraper games on Facebook, and read blogs and chased quizzes and learned that I might just be able to kill a man if it came down to it:

My result for The Can You Kill a Man? Test...

Maybe I could...

I scored 20% Cold and 46% Level-Headed!

In a pinch, I could do it, but I'd need a damn good reason to. And I'm not going to be too happy afterward.

Take The Can You Kill a Man? Test at HelloQuizzy

I think this is actually a pretty accurate answer. 
Eventually, though, I had to venture out of the house.  So I took the girls, and Kitty's bike, to a local Bike Project establishment.  Bike Projects are very cool things.  They're all over.  In Austin, in Baltimore, in Bloomington,in Ghana, in Lansing, in New Orleans, in Reno, in Urbana,in Wilmington, in ... (you get the picture... just Google Bike Project and your town name; if there's not one in town, go for the state, you're sure to find one).  Our goals for this trip were several: 

1. Find out how Kitty can join up to learn how to repair bikes (they have this project for kids under 15, where by the kid learns, repairs a bike for the Project, and then gets to repair a donated bike for his or her own and keeps it!);
2. Repair Kitty's bike, and determine whether or not she'd outgrown it (she hadn't, yay);
3. Get a basket of sorts put on the bike so that she can carry the clarinet to and from school;
4. Get a helmet for Kitty, so she can ride her bike to and from school;
5. Get a light of some sort on the bike in case "from school" becomes "in the dark";
6. Miraculously find a bike that fits me so I can replace the bike that was destroyed when GolfPro tried to help me clean out the garage a few years ago.

And... we accomplished them all!  We still need a really truly headlight for Kitty's bike, but we got the rest covered (including BRIGHT blinky lights for front and rear), and I'll be getting her a horn (likely one of these) before school starts, but her bike is ready to go, basket and all.  Turns out if she joins up, someone will help her learn...but they're still working on the best way to go about it.

As for my bike? 

Isn't it lovely?  Note the lovely drink bottle holder?  And, though you can't see it in this shot, a nice rack on the back .... see...

Yes, the seat is a tad torn up.  I'm likely to have at it with duct tape.  I might even go shopping for a new one.  But... since NEW bikes are hard to find for under $400.00 these days, I'm feeling pretty darned smug about this one.  Our whole bill, "new" (i.e. repaired donated) bike, basket, blinkie lights, helmet and all, was $115.00.  And the repair work?  Caitlin did most of it herself, with guidance, and thus we paid nothing but learned something. 

Life is good.

That was enough of the hot outdoors though, so we've come home, and I've been reading blogs etc. and found a new-to-me but delightful blog .... with a contest!

I did try to get pictures of Natalia, since she's clean and dry and everything.  But she's shy today.  We have to wait until the sun is in a different place in the sky I guess.

Graduation Day

Yesterday I went to my step-daughter's high school graduation.  The drive up gave me knitting time with Must Have (I'll show you later), and went smooth as glass until we'd committed to the Dan Ryan expressway.  Then it went from cruising along to a dead stop. It took forever to get the last 20 miles of the 150 mile trip.

The event  was pretty amazing. 

It was huge!  Very very traditional -- in a unique sort of way.

First off, they had everything all set up on the football field.  The parents and other folks were all seated on the bleachers.  And the field was set up with chairs for the grads:

That's a lot of chairs there...  Look at 'em all!

Like 750 of them or so... 

Which means that there are... you guessed it... over 720 graduates!  Had it been a rainy day, they'd have had to limit the number of folks (so you got tickets -- luckily we had tickets, just in case).

And then we get to traditions.  One of this school's hundred year old traditions is that no grads wear caps or gowns.  The guys wear black suits (reminiscent of tuxes) and the girls wear white dresses.  Tea length or longer.  They told LJ's mom that if her dress was too short, she might not be able to participate.  But then, if you didn't want to wear a white dress, one of the options was a white pant suit. (?)

This created an unexpected look for a high school graduation.

Notice that they're all walking through a tulle covered arch way?

Eventually, they'd all walked through, and sat in their chairs.  The speeches were actually very good. 

Then we got the lining up to receive your diploma part.  For some reason, even though there was a stage, they didn't actually walk across it.  This made it hard to see your kid at that magic moment.  Heck, without the zoom on my camera, I couldn't see it half this well!  But at least we were on the right side of the field to see LJ as she waited for her turn.

Turns out that even though her dress was technically too short, she got to play anyway. (Yep, she's the one whose legs you can see.)

There were some amazing dresses... truly lovely (and a few, um, commentworthy, variants).

After the event we took pictures of the happy grad and her family (here's one with the sisters)

And one with her proud dad

And though I took many more... I'll spare you.

After this -- a delicious dinner, and the return trip home.

I've only got one question.... when did I get old enough to have a kid graduating from high school???

Trust Issues --- The Medical Saga Continues

So.  The Bookworm had her lovely Endoscopy.  (I have pictures printed out  -  I'll scan and upload them if you REALLY want me to, but you'll have to beg).

And they biopsied some things.  Here's what we now know:

Her liver function is fine
Her pancreatic function is fine
Her thyroid function is fine
Her glucose levels are fine.
Her sedimentation rate is fine (blood).
Her Blood chemistry (sugar, kidney function, minerals an salts) is fine.
Her Amylase, Lipase, and Celiac serology are all fine.
There is no sign of GERD.
There is no sign of esophagitis
There is no sign of gastritis
There is no sign of ulcer
Her esophagus, pyloric sphincter, stomach, duodenal bulb, and upper intestine all look fine.

The doctor is "confident" that this is not a food allergy, but will run that blood test for us if we want it.

She still has some nausea, and her abdomen hurts in the small intestine area, and the back of her head hurts.

So.  The next best guess is that she has Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome (CVS) ... which means stomach migraine variant.   That is treated with migraine meds.  The National Digestive Diseases Clearing House website lists three of them, two of which the Bookworms' doc identified as his top choices. 

Even though we've pretty much ruled out an acid related problem, the pediatric gastro-enterologist's first suggestion was that we fill a scrip for Prilosec and having Bookworm take it for a month to see if it helps.  It wasn't until I called him on that that he acknowledged that he considered that only b/c the Physician's Assistant working with Bookworm's primary care doctor had given us the scrip in case it helped while we waited to see this man.  He figured it would "do no harm" to try the previously prescribed prilosec.

This made me a little nervous.  At this point, my trust is teetering on the edge.

Then I looked up the two drugs we're considering for treatment of the CVS/Stomach Migraines.  The first, amitriptyline seems okay, I guess.  it's actually an anti-depressant (which actually makes a modicum of sense to me, as stress is a known trigger for stomach migraines).  Of course, nausea and vomiting are among its side effects.  (I wonder, are they among EVERY drug's side effects?).  More troubling are the potentially serious potential side effects like ... oh... arhythmia and other cardiac symptoms.   To put her on this one, we'd need to get an EKG first.

Reading up on the other drug (which I think was his first choice) was the point at which my trust fell fully off the fence. Propranolol is a beta blocker.  it too has some possible cardiac side effects.  But when I read this: "You should not use this medication if you are allergic to propranolol, or if you have asthma or certain heart conditions, especially second or third degree heart block." (emphasis added)   I knew that someone wasn't paying attention.   Bookworm has asthma. 

Time for a second opinion.

Now all I have to do is find a good (okay, the best in the country) pediatric gastroenetrologist to take her to.

Please..... life... universe....let us find a clear safe answe soon so I can go back to writing mostly about my knitting... m'kay?