Fiber Fool

I’m still pretty lethargic and tired, but I’m plodding through. No answers from the doctor yet, though some things appear to be improving. My doctor has a newer nurse who has not impressed me, but she redeemed herself a bit on Friday by getting a good vein on the first try! They took four rather large vials of blood and I should be getting results back today. Though one of my complaints about the nurse is that she doesn’t call with results promptly and she doesn’t return phone calls all the time so there is no telling when I’ll hear back on those.

The trip to Brown Sheep on Wednesday did a lot to boost my mental health, which of course can do wonders for the rest of your health as well. It was a nice catalyst for me to return to the knitting needles once again. I took fabric I have on hand to make four skirts for this spring/summer with and I got yarn for two tops, each of which matches two of the fabrics! Yeah! Well, I had to get started, even though I was in the process of swatching for a project of my own design with yarn that doesn’t happen to match anything I own, LOL! I figured a quick interlude project while the swatches hang to see their growth tendencies is a good thing.

So, on Thursday I swatched. I measured. I washed. I blocked flat to dry. I measured again. The yarn is Brown Sheep’s Cotton Fleece in Olive Green. The project? The Ribs and Lace Tank by Jodi Green in the Spring 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. Despite the fact that at 18 hours of hanging on my project board there was little to no growth lengthwise I decided to take out one repeat of the Crest of the Wave lace at the bottom of the tank. I figure there is little chance that it won’t grow once you have the weight of the entire tank top; especially since the bottom portion is knit on US10s. But, even if it doesn’t lengthen, the overall length will be right in the middle of two other tops I have of similar lines so I figure that’ll be okay.

The weekend was filled with tons of visiting, but the low key kind. A friend of ours found himself biking in our neighborhood on Friday night so he just stopped in and spent the evening with us so I knit away while we chatted about movies and music and who knows what all else. Then on Saturday we attended a St. Patrick’s Day party of course. It was another low key affair at which I felt comfortable knitting. It often causes some interesting conversations with new people and it helps keep me from rolling my eyes when DH and M get into heavy music debates and between the two of them dismiss every group I listen to, LOL! Then Sunday night we had a handful of people over to help us eat some cheesecake that DH made from his homemade cream cheese that needed to be used, so there was more knitting. I also snuck in a few rounds here and there and now I’m about 3/4 of an inch from switching to the US4 needles. This project has just flown off my needles.

I had a fantastic day yesterday road tripping with Ashley and Hannah to Brown Sheep. I was going to show you pics of my loot, but it is super overcast right now. It is supposed to clear this afternoon so perhaps I’ll get shots then. I’m afraid it was also grey yesterday with periods of fog and rain while we were out and about so I have no pictures to show you from yesterday (though perhaps Hannah will be sharing a few she took on her blog).

We ate at the great Whistle Stop Cafe in Scottsbluff again. It is such a trip to go there. You walk through the doors and you are transported back about 30 years, LOL! The food is great and the portions very generous though. The tour of the factory at Brown Sheep was even better than last year. We ended up with the owner and she had some fantastic stories to tell and she even shared with us one of the new lines of yarns they are planning to introduce in June. I think we got to see about 1/4 of the colors they will be offering in that line. There were of course some amazing deals in the store as well. Needless to say, Ashley’s trunk was filled!

I have all kinds of designs floating around in my head so I think today I’ll spend getting those down on paper. There must be something with being surrounded by sooooo much fiber and yarn, LOL!

As far as the health goes, I have had a new symptom crop up in the last 36 hours or so. That means tomorrow afternoon I get to spend time at the doctor’s office again and perhaps even the lab. *sigh* It’s annoying, but I think all the worry about the various things that could be wrong with me is much, much worse. I’m such a worrywart! I suppose my quiet time entertainment hasn’t been the smartest option - watching House Season 2, LOL!

Anyway, thanks to all of you for your concern and support in the previous post. I really appreciate it! You sure know how to make a gal who isn’t feeling so good feel better.

In the hopes that part of my troubles lately were due to an old worn out futon mattress on our platform bed, DH finally drug me to a mattress store and we got a new mattress over the weekend. Our previous mattress of about 5 years was a no-foam innerspring which equals a recipe for disaster. Not only does the cotton compress a ton quickly, but it isn’t very effective at holding back the springs either.

Would you believe me if I said we brought the new QUEEN size mattress home in our JETTA? We decided to skip the springs this time and we decided foam was a necessary evil for a mattress with any sort of lifespan to it. So it came vacuum packed! We did indeed bring it home in the backseat of our Jetta no less! Go figure!

We picked a Dreamsleeper. It has something like 20 inches of foam and a few inches of cotton on either side of the foam, then they put it through machinery to compress it to the standard thickness and put the ties in, so you have that foam always trying to decompress to its original 20 inches of thickness, which means in theory that it won’t compress like most futon/platform bed mattresses. It even comes with a 10 year warranty on it.

We’ve spent two nights on it so far and I’m definitely making up much less sore. I still think the night on the guest bed while we let the new mattress decompress was a bit better. But, hopefully this new mattress will help me regain some of my missing energy. My creativity is back. Almost too good as I am feeling pulled in a hundred different directions and don’t know what to work on. But, there is a very small window where I feel like I have the energy to move forward on any of it. Of course it doesn’t help that every time I get myself all psyched up to work on something through the tiredness I’m missing some little piece that I need - not the right needle size or I don’t have the proper weight fusible interfacing or I do having the right sewing machine needle for that fabric etc. etc. And it is just enough too much to go out and obtain that missing something.

I did go to the doctor again yesterday. I have something systemic going on. All of this tiredness is not just in my head in the form of depression or otherwise. We’re opting first for my allergies being on hyperdrive. I’m getting patches of eczema in places and all the glands along my right side are swollen to painful levels - it hurts to bend my arm, to bend my legs and to sit upright because of swollen glands. If at the end of the week I’m not improved we’ll change the angle of attack. But, hopefully we get stuff fixed before too long. She said for now to give into an afternoon nap and be vigilant in taking the allergy meds and ibuprofen.

Wow, am I boring or what?!?!?!?

- I’m in a lull. I think the curtain may be lifting. I feel sparks of project ideas, but it will take a while to nail down details and such. I have sewing and knitting ideas swirling around in my head. Though I have aches and pains kind of holding me back in productivity. I should get the ideas down on paper so they are there for a lull when I feel better!

- I’ve been doing a *ton* of reading. Well, not like some people. But I’ve been reading a book roughly every 2.5 days. I just finished yesterday another book not in that stack because I was given it by a woman in my water aerobics class. It was Sisterhood of the Dropped Stitches. It was a pretty nice heartwarming romantic read about four girls who met to learn to knit while battling cancer as teens. They are all given the official stamp of remission when in their early to mid twenties and celebrate by setting goals they want to each reach by the next year. One wants to dance in a ballet, another wants to get a cat, the third wants to get an internship and the fourth wants to go on three dates. They all find out that goals are great, but they can’t always be met on a deadline. The book is written as a journal of the group. Most of it is written by one of the members, but each of the other members takes a time or two to write in the journal as well. It was decidedly Christian though. It wasn’t as preachy as some I’ve read, but Christianity was certainly a large part of the punch line so if that is not your thing you may give it a pass. If it is something you think you’d like to read, leave me a comment. I’ll send it on to someone if you promise to pass it along to someone else when you are done.

- I sprinkle in a bit of Northern Exposure Season 3 or House Season 2 (mom lent me her House DVDs since I had things to ship to her at a later date anyway). Is it just me or are our television series wrapping up much earlier than normal? The O.C. had the series finale a week or so ago. Psych is wrapped until summer. I’m pretty sure a few others are wrapped - Grey’s Anatomy, yes? That may also include it’s night companions Ugly Betty and Men in Trees…. I know there is often a lull in March while they take a break from February sweeps. But dang, I hope I don’t have to wait until September for most of these to have new episodes!

- I had my second voice lesson with SIL3 last night. It went *much* better than the first one. I wasn’t nearly so nervous. I still was somewhat and that cramps my range and she doesn’t push it much. But it’ll only continue to improve. I’m working on Dido’s Lament by Purcell as my classical piece, Come Rain, Or Come Shine for my jazz piece (which ended up being a good piece to reinforce some of the stuff I need to work on with Dido’s Lament eerily enough), and Defying Gravity from Wicked for my musical theater piece. Yesterday I was playing around on iTunes and discovered that they had an album of Wicked for Karoke! It isn’t the best one out there from the reading I’ve done, but it is much cheaper that what I’ve seen and I could have it immediately for practicing with. SIL3 or I playing the piano accompaniment for it is next to nil. Defying Gravity starts out with 5 flats and switches to 4 sharps and then back to 5 flats. Because I didn’t start learning piano until I was 13, I’m not real good. I can play the easy piano version of most anything and the regular of some things, but once you get into that many flats and sharps it would probably take me an entire year to work out playing it well and I probably still wouldn’t be able to sing with it. Anyway, Defying Gravity on that album is done quite well. Once I burned it to CD I can change the balance and turn down the demo vocals and wean myself onto the instrumental version.

- We may do another spring break road trip to the same location sometime next week! Yeah! I’m looking forward to it. I hope to get lots of fiber to dye. I’m also hoping to score some summer yarns that will coordinate with some skirts that I should be making soon so I can make some tees and tanks to go with them. Oh, speaking of making skirts, SIL3 asked me to help her make a skirt for auditions! I feel honored!

That’s probably enough randomness for now…

- Oh wait! I *hate* Bloglines! They weren’t even letting me manually ping them. It took something like 5-6 hours to pick up my blog yesterday. Grrrrrrrr!

This weekend we went to Scimoria, the home of several of our friends, to celebrate Purim. We used Tam’s family recipe for the cookie style of Hamentaschen which we filled with a variety of fillings - cherry, peach, lemon curd, and chocolate chips.

DH also made the yeasty version of Hamentaschen, but they weren’t very triangular. We had somewhat of a similar problem with the cookie style as well. But they all tasted great just the same. Tam and Drew have since pledged to become experts before next year, LOL!