Codeine And Crochet

So I was sitting on the couch today, watching The Girl In The Cafe and working on my third mitered square and I thought to myself, "I've never liked stripes. And I still don't."

So why am I knitting a blanket of mitered squares with stripes? Why did I buy 8,923,659 balls of Rowan Pure Wool DK to knit a blanket I don't even want? I don't know. I'm not even crazy about the colors I picked. I mean, it's one thing to buy a single skein of sock yarn and take it home and go feh ... but this was an undertaking of monumental proportion! I even photocopied the instructions out of my Mason Dixon Knitting book and had them LAMINATED. LAMINATED. When you laminate something, that's a commmitment. But now .. the love is gone. Yet the yarn remains. Hmm, let's move along. More codeine, anyone?

I've managed to finish the first of my New Year's Day Socks. Of course, I've kind of missed the deadline and all but whatever. I love this colorway of Colinette Jitterbug a lot more than that horrid pink number I did in November. This isn't a true represenation of the actual color but it does show the pattern rather well. Or maybe that's the codeine talking.

This little number here will be forever known as "The Pnuemonia Scarf." It's pretty much all I've worked on while I've been sick. Being the arrogant knitter that I am I figured "Deathly ill, must do crochet, crochet is easy." Ha, this scarf has kicked my ass six ways to Sunday. Of course it didn't help that Interweave Crochet, in it's infinite wisdom, left an entire line out of the pattern that sets the whole thing up. Which for a while left me crocheting a circular scarf. Not good. But I think we're on the right track now. Hopefully. Anything's possible these days.

And last but not least, allow me to introduce you to Eoin. I got Eoin from Susan's Etsy shop. He's from Galway and is a master chef. But really all he does know is keep me company when I'm on the computer. You should check Susan's shop out, she's a VERY talented lady. OK, time for more pills, night all.

Welcome To Snot Island

Care for a Kleenex? Some steroids? An inhaler? How about some antiobiotics followed by a codeine cough syrup chaser? You name it, we got it goin' on here at Mucous Production Central. Apparently someone in this apartment has pnuemonia. And it's not DeeDee, Andy, Wilma or Clover. Blerg.

I went to see the doctor on Monday because I had been getting progressively worse over the weekend. Couldn't breathe, had no energy (I think that may be related to the breathing thing), no appetite, blah, blah, blah. They gave me a breathing treatment and instead of being a normal person and feeling better I went into respiratory distress. Fortunately the hospital was right across the street so some poor soul from the doctor's office WHEELED ME ACROSS THE STREET IN A WHEELCHAIR.

Now I am not an overly vain person. I regularly embarrass myself and find great humor in it. However, this had to be one of the most mortifying experiences of my life. Not to mention it's freakin' hard to text message the office on your cell phone to tell them you won't be back that day when you're being rolled down a bumpy sidewalk. I also seem to recall apologizing for being so fat to the kind person who was wheeling me over. It's all a bit of a blur now.

Unbeknownst to me though, was the fact that everyone in Silicon Valley is sick now. So it was pretty busy. And apparently it doesn't matter if you're imitating a whooping crane and your pulse rate is soaring through the roof you still need to "take a seat at the back." Six hours later I had a handful of prescriptions and a overwhelming desire to just go home. Just how sick was I? During the entire six hours of waiting I did not knit a single STITCH. There, whatta ya think about that, eh? I could probably have knit a scarf at least. Yeah. Sick.

So I'm off work until Friday and it's month-end and I'm an accountant and I'll be in deep doo doo when I get back. To take our minds off that fact let's look at some yarn.

This is from a new yarn store in San Jose called The Bobbin's Nest. Actually it's a yarn / fabric store with a kind of English Victorian feel to it. Mostly Rowan and Karabella yarns, they have a rockin' supply of books and kits. This yarn is from the Sheep Shop Yarn Company and was made in Uruguay. 100 gram hank with 130 yards of worsted weight loveliness. Fingerless mitts, anyone?

And I am still involved in a love affair with Rowan Pure Wool DK.

Or would this up that to "obsession"? Well, whatever. I seem to have gotten it into my little brain that I need to knit a BLANKET. A Mason Dixon Mitered Square Blanket, no less. I have 2 1/2 squares made, I need 80. Hopefully it'll be done by the next time I get wheeled somewhere in a bloody WHEELCHAIR so I can wrap it around my bony knees and go for the Complete Invalid effect.

You Thought I Was Kidding?

Apparently there will be a lot more blogging done this year by a lot of knit bloggers. The latest bandwagon to roll into Yarn Town seems to be the Blog 365 project wherein you blog every day for a year. I fully intended to jump on that bandwagon. Hmm. I'm not off to a very good start. I seem to have missed the first day. However, that was only one of the 6,259 resolutions I have for 2008. This is one of them.

Really. I wasn't kidding. I bought this book about 3 years ago in the hopes that if I learned to speak Spanish I'd actually get what I wanted at Wendy's. Alas, I don't think I even cracked the cover. But after the New Year's Eve flat tire debacle I've decided it's time I learned to communicate with a large portion of the population of California.

Es el raton.

Impressive, si? I just said, IN SPANISH, "It is the mouse." I imagine it's only a matter of days before I'm offered a position at the UN as a translator. Especially given the fact that my Spanish textbook was co-authored by the venerable Senora Ruth Silverstein. If that name doesn't conjure up images of the Aztec ruins, well frankly I don't know what will.

And now here's another New Year's resolution! "Under no circumstance, do we attempt to learn a new knitting technique at 10pm after a *few* glasses of wine."

Why I had such a burning desire to learn how to do toe up socks at 10pm last night is beyond me. I think it was the yarn. I was stash diving and came across this lovely skein of Claudia's Handpaint in the "Purple Earth" colorway that I bought about a year ago. It's a sport weight with only 225 friggin' yards. And I want a pair of socks from it! But I don't want to buy another skein because the one skein cost me $23.00. Ergo, the need for toe ups. I still don't know if I'll have enough yarn. But I do know that it's most foolish to expect socks done toe up to look the same as socks down top down when you start them. Let us not speak of how many times I frogged this sock before the Clue Phone finally rang. Soy estupido.