will take over her old room! Hayley has been gone for 2 weeks (first to chorus camp, then on a plane BY HERSELF to go to Grandma’s for a week). In that time, she has turned 13, and has called home exactly twice. On her new cell phone (b-day gift from Mom and Dad - couldn’t send her on a plane without one) - and the ringtone she picked was the theme from The Office. That’s my girl! She’s doing great, and we’re driving to Charlotte to pick her up today, but she is just growing up too fast! She’ll probably have grown another inch when I see her. Shea, of course, has been growing up too, but I think it’s easier to see the first one grow up when there’s still another little one behind her. Here’s a pic the girls got together and took of themselves:

Anyway, before she left, Hayley moved in to Holly’s old room, and we’re fixing up her old room as an office/yarn room. We can’t move the computer and its assorted stuff in there until we get the electricity upgraded in that room, but we can do just about everything else needed. The only thing really missing at this point is a comfy knitting chair for me, and we haven’t found one we can afford yet. Looking in through the door to “my” corner:

Notice that the swift and ballwinder have permanent homes, much to Mark’s chagrin. The unit the swift is on has wheels, so I can just roll it to where I need it.
The desk area:

We found this great desk at World Market - we wanted something really simple, yet elegant. Mark picked the curtains, and we chose the wall color based on that. Backwards, I know, but it worked for us. Here’s my little corner, sans chair:

Bookcase with knitting magazines and ballwinder, and a yarn-holding moose. The red pig was Mark’s choice - he found it when we bought the curtains and had to have it! Imagine a nice comfy chair right here - it will be my quiet getaway place.
And of course the closet:

I’ve been kind (OK, OCD) enough to label it for you so you can get the full effect. You never really know just how much yarn you have until you put it all into one place. I still have to move other craft stuff in there that has been stored in my room.

In other news, the Socks of Kindness are finally done. They weren’t hard, but the repetition kicked my butt for a while. Now that they’re finished, I absolutely love them, and hate that I dragged them out so long.

The yarn is from Mama E - Signs of Spring, I believe an exclusive KnitPicky colorway that I picked up back in March when Mama was here for the dyeing workshop.

Currently there are lots of boring socks on the needles - a brown one for Mark, a rainbow one for me (which may be frogged), one for me in Mama’s Pajamas (another Mama E exclusive), and my carry-around striped one. Oh, and another pair of cute baby socks for another new baby at school. I’m waiting for some yarn to come in from Turtlegirl - she was destashing and just happened to have some SWTC Bamboo in a colorway that The Queen sent me a ball of a few years back. I think that it’s going to become the Artisokka Rose sweater instead of the ArtFibers, which just doesn’t do the pattern justice. I know, poor ArtFibers yarn just can’t decide what it should be. I’m starting to contemplate Clapotis.

I’m off to go get ready to go get my girl - I’m so glad she’s coming home. It has been SOOOO quiet around here!

Forgive me, oh great and powerful Internet, for I have sinned. It’s been 5 1/2 weeks since my last entry, and - whoops, sorry, channeling someone else’s childhood. There has been so much going on the last few weeks, all leading up to today - my last day of vacation. While you would think that this would mean that my house is clean and stocked with groceries, and that I’ve caught up on all the little things that have been going undone, you would be completely wrong. The house is a wreck, there’s nothing to eat, and while I’m going to try to rectify that last part today, the wreck will just have to remain. I have baked, I have lazed, I have read, I have knitted, and I even went for my Mother’s Day massage and manicure yesterday. Since there’s so much to catch up on, I’m just going to hit the highlights and throw a bunch of pictures up, and it will look like I’ve worked oh-so-hard on this entry, while I’m really just flying by the seat of my pants as usual.

We (and I mean that in the royal sense) have graduated, or at least survived it. Holly’s family came in from Korea, did a whirlwind tour of Winston-Salem and Atlanta, and went back home, taking her with them. We’ll see her again at Christmas, but that’s a long time away! Before she left, I made sure she was appropriately knit-covered:

Fountain hat from Interweave Knits - pattern here. Yarn is some funky hand-dyed we found on Granville Island in Vancouver.

Basic socks in Online Summer yarn.

Also on hand is yarn for socks and a scarf and hat in Holly’s new school colors, sent by Mom with her graduation gift. Fortunately I have a few months to worry about that.

Hayley’s chorus teacher and his wife welcomed their first baby, Madeleine. We thought socks an appropriate gift (aren’t they always?), and the teachers at school just flipped over these:

My own pattern with a ruffled edge in leftover Lorna’s Laces in Happy Valley.

Sarah and I joined the girls from the Charlotte Purls and the Charlotte Knitting Guild for some fun on WWKIP Day in Charlotte. There were lots of knitters, knit shops, pizza, and even snow cones! And of course, door prizes. Sarah and I both got prizes for being the people who had driven the furthest to the event - I got the Little Box of Socks (I love it!) and Sarah got Stitch ‘n Bitch on CD.

Stacey gave me a hard time about my lazy-person chair, and the fact that my ball of yarn was conveniently resting in my drink holder:

We ran into the lovely and talented Jan Smiley again, and met Connie with the cool Columbine wheel.
I of course had to pose for pictures with Cristi and Stacey.

Before we headed for home, we made a quick detour to Charlotte Yarn, where we’ll just say we had a great time and found lots of stuff we loved!

Fast forward to last Thursday, when we left for Waynesboro, Virginia. Now Waynesboro is not really that exciting, but it is where the Blue Ridge Parkway officially starts. Mark and I, and about 30 of our MINI friends, met there to drive the entire Blue Ridge Parkway this weekend. The Parkway itself is 469 miles, but driving to the top and home from the bottom added considerably, and we put about 1100 miles on the new MINI over the weekend. We made stops at key sites for photos, hiking, eating, and spending the night. We had a great time, though I was truly happy to be out of the car when we got home. I got teased a good bit about always having knitting in my hands, but I managed to finish about a sock and a half of this pair, along with bits of another pair, during the trip.
They’re officially known as Spring Forward socks, but I can’t stop referring to them as Sproingy socks. The twisty-turny pattern was perfect for the drive we were doing at the time. I did have to put down my knitting at a few points, this one in particular (this is a GPS photo - the pink is the road we’re on):

It does look pretty bad, but realize this - it’s down the side of a mountain. Down, the whole way. I held on pretty tightly, and Mark was ghostly white by the time we got to the end of it. It was worth it, though, for these gorgeous views.

We got a lot of strange looks when we were stopped anywhere as a group, and here’s why:

(We’re the front car on the right in both pictures.)

We had tried to visit a yarn shop in Staunton, Virginia, but they apparently had a staffing issue and were closed. There was a sign on the door stating this, and they gave a number to call in case of emergency. It took me a few minutes to decide that me being there probably wouldn’t qualify as an emergency, so we left. We did have a few extra minutes in Boone (9, to be exact), during which I popped into a cute little shop called Laura’s Yarn-Tastic. Since time was limited, I bought the only thing I knew I could buy without a pattern or yardage needed - sock yarn. They had just gotten in a great shipment of Miss Babs sock yarn (and chunky yarn - oh man - need more time!), so I found 3 that I loved, and we were out of there.

From top: Rainbow, Rock Wall, Rose Garden (got my 3 R’s for the day!)

So, that’s it - 5 weeks in review. I promise to try to do better, if there’s anyone out there still actually reading!

and I’m almost finally back up to speed. Short version of the long story - I was sick. Really, grossly, coughing, fevered, feeling like crap, sick. Off and on for about 2 weeks. Thursday before last, Kim guilted me into going to the doctor. Strep and flu tests both negative, so it was most likely a viral infection, made worse by the fact that my immune system is suppressed - I just couldn’t shake it. She gave me a z-pack anyway, just in case it was something bacterial, but basically said the main thing I needed to do was stop my arthritis meds and let my immune system get back up to speed and fight off the infection. Almost 5 days completely in bed, and no Enbrel or methotrexate for a week and a half, and I finally seemed to shake the rest of it. Of course, by this Thursday I was hurting so badly that I asked Mark to cut my toes off. We made the decision that I was “better enough” to start taking my Enbrel again, so I’m getting back to normal now. Then I woke up with a migraine today - ugh. Ever feel like your body is just totally working against you? I’m definitely ready to trade mine in for a younger, healthier model.

Our beach trip was great, though way too short. The drive down there pretty much did me in, so I was on the couch or in the rocking chair on the screened porch during our downtimes. It was great being there with 2 cars - on Saturday morning the girls took off to do what they wanted, and Mark and I took off on our own - wow! What a difference from our normal “dragging the kids around” vacations. This was the last big family trip before the big girls leave for college, and that made it just a little bit sad. We won’t be a family of 5 for much longer - suddenly it will be 3, something we haven’t had in almost 13 years! The girls spent most of the weekend running around taking crazy pictures (with my camera), so I didn’t really get to take too many. Here are some of the good ones:

On the way…

The ice cream shop in Calabash

Silliness on the beach

Silliness around town

As you can see from the pictures, they just didn’t have any fun at all! Now that we’ve taken Holly to both the mountains and the beach, we asked which was her favorite. Definitely the beach, she said. I’m not sure how 2 mountain-loving people have managed to have 3 beach-loving girls.

There was of course knitting at the beach. We even stopped at the one knit shop in town, Knitting Up a Storm. It was a nice shop, run by a very nice British lady. There was nothing there that I would consider particularly unusual, though she may have had every single color of every single line of Regia sock yarn in stock. I did come home with some Regia silk, some Happy Feet and Universal Pace sock yarn for Mark, and some gorgeous Misty Mountain Farm Jubilee sock yarn for me. I spent most of my weekend working on these - they are Artichoke socks in the gorgeous Pagewood Farms merino/bamboo blend (colorway Creamsicle) that Tricia sent me for Christmas. This yarn is so soft, squishy, and shiny, and I need more. Right now!

I also finished up some Tidal Waves in another Pagewood Farms merino/bamboo for Mom (for her birthday - these went to her along with the socks in the last post, which were for Mother’s Day). These came close to not going in the package - Hayley developed a strong love for them, and tried them on more than once!

Also, for OtherMom for Mother’s Day, I whipped out some Fixation footies in between coughing and fever spells (I believe they should earn double points for that!).

Finally, I managed yesterday (on a trip to have lunch with the MINI folks for the club’s third anniversary) to finish up the socks I worked on during Hayley’s softball games this season (they finished 1 and 8, but they had lots of fun!). She picked this yarn and loves them. I did make them a little long, since she’s growing faster than ever, and her feet just keep getting bigger.

The best part of working on these socks was the reaction of 2 kids (1st and 3rd grades) to my knitting and the yarn. They had never seen anyone knit. The little girl, in particular, wanted to know how it all worked, and Sarah and I patiently explained the different parts of the socks (Sarah was at the toe, and I was at the heel). The self-striping yarn, in particular, fascinated her, and she kept trying to guess which color was next. I let her pull the yarn out of the center of the ball until the next color change, so she could see it. I believe by the end of that game we had created 2 future knitters!

These last few weeks of school are always crazy, with every group having an end-of-year party. Add to that all of the graduation stuff, baccalaureate, etc., and Holly’s family coming into town, and it equates to large quantities of stress. I suppose I should go finish up the grocery list so we can have food this week. I’m desperately looking forward to a 3-day weekend next week, and praying that I will feel good so I can get some stuff done around here!

In my last post, I talked about feeling good.  My mom says this cursed me, and apparently she was right.  A week and a half ago, Mark brought me home some nasty virus.  That, combined with all of the &*#@^%$ oak pollen outside right now, has conspired to make me a sick, miserable mess for the last 10 days or so.  Hopefully the worst of it is over now, and I can enjoy this mini get-away we have planned. 

Due to our unusual staggered vacation this weekend, I spent last night at home all alone.  Mark and the girls are at the beach, and today Holly and I will join them.  Holly, however, didn’t want to miss her last day of school today, and had to be there at 7 a.m. - and since I wasn’t working today, I was not about to get up and take her.  I asked her to see if she could find a friend to spend the night with, and ride to school with this morning, and she did (and they say teenagers never do what you ask!).

After work yesterday, Sarah and I attended a self-defense seminar put on by one of the teacher’s husband, a tae kwon do master.  It was fun, funny, and man was it a workout!  My butt may never be the same.  Sarah then took me to pick up my car (oil change before the long drive), and I was on my way.  I stopped at the grocery store to pick up my favorite “alone” dinner - Stouffer’s mac & cheese, and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.  I also stopped at a discount store and picked up 3 Sterlite clear tubs - I was going home to have fun with the yarn!

While my mac & cheese cooked up nice and brown on top (yum!), I broke out the yarn.  All of the yarn.  My, what a sight to behold.  The problem with the yarn being cooped up in non-see-throughable containers is that I forget what I have.  I petted, played, sighed, and admired.  I had threatened to come home and roll around in it, and take pictures of it in comprising positions, but someone had already packed and taken my camera, so you’ll just have to believe me.

In the end, the yarn (which was in 2 large containers and 2 big plastic bags) ended up in 2 large containers and 3 smaller clear containers.  The sock yarn, being king of course, got 3 clear containers of its own.  One is for the really good yarn - CTH, STR, LL, Mama E, and any hand-dyed (including mine).  One is for the “other” sock yarn - Regia, Trekking, Online, Louet - you get the idea.  Both of those are rather full.  The third is for sock yarn remnants.  Some are actually full balls, but they’re 50 gram balls and wouldn’t make a full pair of regular socks, so they’re in with the remnants.  I actually have some really good remnants - maybe I’ll make a pair of Monstersocken some day.

The rattan chest in the living room that formerly held most of the “other than sock yarn” stash now holds the good stuff - shawl yarn, Noro, some llama - the stuff I’d like to see most.  The former sock yarn container now contains all the felting yarns and all of the other stuff - the stuff I probably won’t need too often.

While eating my yummies and playing with yarn, I watched most of the 2nd DVD of Firefly - still loving it, though Shea says it’s the most implausible show she’s ever seen.  Well, yeah - combine the future with the prairie days, and it’s a bit strange, but I love it.  And obviously there’s a knitter on the costume crew.  You’ll catch glimpses of knitted shawls and sweaters in every episode.  In one of the episodes last night, I saw Zac Efron playing a very young Simon, and I was impressed that I actually figured out it was Zac - he looked very different.  I stayed up late, watched Lost, and slept in until 9 this morning.  

I suppose I should go start packing!  It’s very strange to only have to pack for me - other than the bag of food I sent with Mark and the girls, everyone packed for themselves.  One definite bright spot in this whole growing-up mess.

For the first time in a long, long, long while, I’ve been feeling pretty good. So much that I actually got to tell my rheumatologist that I’ve been feeling good. He’s so used to seeing me when I feel like crap. Instead, I’ve been waking up (early, even on the weekends!) in the morning and feeling like getting up rather than hiding under the covers all day. On the way home from school I haven’t been yawning my head off. Last week (over the course of two evenings) I took my beloved Scumbuster and power-scrubbed the kitchen cabinets - all of them. It’s something I can’t do by hand, as I just don’t have enough elbow grease or the finger strength. But give me a powered scrubber, and watch me go to town. The first night I had all of the bottom cabinets done, and its batteries died before mine did! I have also begun walking again (this could have something to do with the whole feeling good thing), and have walked just over 10 miles in the past 2 weeks. I’m still exhausted at the end of the day, but it’s a good exhausted, and I feel like I’ve earned it. Sorry if I’m dragging this on and on, but feeling good is just such a new feeling for me, I have to be excited about it!

Of course more feeling-good time leads to increased knitting time, and I’ve been cranking it out. First I finished up the Big Bad Brown Socks - aka Classic Socks from The Knitting Man(ual) for Mark. He picked the pattern, I picked the yarn - Louet Gems fingering in (I think) Bark. I like the yarn after it’s been knitted and washed, but while knitting it I tended to think of it more as string than yarn - it made my fingers sore, and made me seriously rethink the enormous quantities of it that I purchased back at Christmas.

Next I finished up the Mardi Gras socks. They’re not for me, but we’re not going to talk about that. Suffice to say that the intended recipient likes the yarn, and the socks are a bit small for me. She will just have to wait, however. The yarn is my own hand-dyed (KnitPicks Bare merino/silk - very yummy!).

Part of my increased knitting time has been due to good movies (and thank goodness, the end of the writers’ strike), and we have seen a few. We watched August Rush, and though the story was pretty improbable, it was still really good, and the music was awesome. Then Friday night I watched the original pilot of the Firefly series, Serenity. I had heard so many good things about it, and I really loved it. I can’t wait to watch the next episode, but I want to wait until Mark watches the first one, as I know he’ll really like it. I tried to explain to him that it was like a combination of Star Wars and an old Western, but that just didn’t make much sense to him. Then I looked it up online and saw that that was exactly what Joss Whedon was going for when he made it!

When we went to see the Harlot, I cast on for a new pair of socks for me, with some great Mama E yarn (her warehouse is back open, BTW!), Signs of Spring, that I picked up when she was in town. It’s in super bright springy colors, and I knew I needed a funky pattern. Through Ravelry I found the Socks of Kindness, and knew that they would fit the bill perfectly. Here are 2 pics of the first sock in progress - the first shows the color best, and the second shows the pattern best.

I also started a more mindless pair of socks today, and am surprised at how quickly these are going. They are yet another pair of Tidal Waves, in some really yummy Pagewood Farms merino/bamboo/nylon blend. The color is called Meadows, but it is really very aqua, and they are cute enough that Hayley has already threatened to steal them when they’re done.

I should have lots of knitting time this week, between a chorus concert and softball. Oh - and how could I forget this - the new MINI is here, and Mark is over the moon, and very busy making modifications! And yes, it looks very much like the last MINI, but we’re not allowed to say that.

I have decided to put a sock project in the car and leave it there, and only work on it when I’m riding. Since we go on lots of drives, it will be fun to see how many socks I manage to make “just” in the car. This one is an automatic, so it should be a little easier to knit while Mark’s driving. Unfortunately, I will be driving at least one way on an upcoming 4-hour trip, so there’s knitting time I’ll never get back.

I have friends at work who struggled for years with infertility issues, then finally gave up on the idea that they would ever have a baby.  After struggling with that for a while, they decided to start the steps toward adoption. There were some ups and downs on this, but about 6 weeks ago they had a call saying that they had been matched!  Surprise!  2 weeks ago they headed off to see their beautiful new baby girl.  They of course sent pics, and you have never seen as big a smile as Mom’s - they had their baby at last.

Of course this much longed-for baby needed something special, and I decided to attempt a Baby Surprise Jacket.  It took some doing, and trusting, and a little ripping to get the striping just right.  Observant readers might recognize the colors - this is the leftover yarn from the Siena Fair Isle Hat that I did for a Fair Isle class.  Shea can be seen modeling the hat here.  I knitted and read instructions and knitted and read some more, and came up with this amorphous blob.

I spent at least half an hour looking for buttons for this last Wednesday, and the jacket hibernated until I finally got up the nerve picked it up last night to sew it up.  I tried 2 different techniques to sew up the sleeve seam (horizontal garter to vertical garter - not as easy as it sounds), and ended up going with kind of an overcast stitch that looked decorative, instead of trying to hide it.

Here are the final pictures once it was all sewn and buttoned up:

 While I was riding home from button-shopping, it occurred to me that this much-loved baby will have her own “Coat of Many Colors”, just like a much-loved child from long ago.  Welcome to the world, Meredith!

So if there’s a teeny-tiny completely unrecognizable picture of me on the Harlot’s website does that make me semi-famous?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.  Here’s her pic of the balcony crowd:

Disclaimer:  We got home really late last night.  I am really really tired.  This post probably will sound like a 4th grader wrote it, and I don’t care.  I can’t be witty, I can’t be funny, but I can just lay out the facts of the day.  If you’re looking for prose, please stop here. It didn’t occur to me until I was in the shower yesterday morning that this was a cute little rhyme.  I mentioned it to a few other people, who hadn’t realized it either.  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was finally going to be within 100 miles of me, and after much finagling, Kim and I finally pulled it off.  We left about noon for a 90 minute drive and a 7:00 event, figuring that there would be a line, we might even have to wait outside.  We got there, realized there was no outside line, and figured we’d go eat a good lunch that would last us a while.  After lunch, we wandered into Borders, saw ZERO knitters and no set-up, and thought this was odd.

Kim found the manager, who assured us that the event would go on as planned, gave us 2 orange wristbands for the signing (meaning we were in the first 50), and told us they would set up at 3:00.  We wandered around for a while, and decided to go upstairs to hang out in the coffee bar, where we would be sure to see when they started setting up, then go downstairs to snag seats. In the coffee bar we found Charlotte knitters - from the left, Jan, Cristi (Turtlegirl) and Corey (KnitDiva), then Kim of course.  Funny note on Jan - I noticed her socks (we saw lots of great socks last night) were Lorna’s Laces Tuscany - the same ones I was wearing!

We claimed our corner, and waited and waited.  The 3:00 setup time had come and gone.  We found the manager again and offered to help set up, as we were sure they had no clue what they were in for.  She calmly told us that she knew - there were at least 4 buses coming from Atlanta, Raleigh, Myrtle Beach, and somewhere else.  They were expecting 300 people, but they could not set up until 2 hours before the event.  She had 5 people coming in at 5:00 to set up, but they would not do it before 5:00.  In the meantime, several more knitters had come in and tried to tell her the same thing.  They staked out the benches near what was to be “the front” and were in for the long haul.  We decided to go back upstairs and grab our comfy chairs, and that we could watch just as well (and more comfortably) from up there.  About 4:15 I guess the manager had had enough.  She pulled a few people and they started setting up.  130 chairs - all that they had.  We decided we were glad to stay upstairs.  In the meantime we had fun chatting with the Charlotte knitters, and a few more showed up.  Including - Dani!  Dani and I have been online buds for a few years - before she even moved to NC.  We’ve talked about meeting up but it has never happened.  It was good to finally meet her in person, though she was “gimpified” (not my word, I promise) and couldn’t even knit.  It turns out that the gang we had been hanging out with were Dani’s knitting peeps in Charlotte.  Here they are, waiting for 7:00.

(From the left, clockwise): Erin (from Wilkesboro), Dani, Aimee, May, Cristi, and Corey.  We had great fun hanging out with them and being a bit snarky (ok, maybe more than a bit) about the Borders people, some of the other knitters we knew, and just the situation in general.  We also met Jan, Rachel, Stacey and Davey (sorry, no pics) who was hilarious, and I helped him tack down a long-ago dropped stitch.  We waited and waited to see buses arrive, but NONE showed up.  We’re not sure whether they were a myth, or they went to the wrong Borders, but we never saw a bus.  By 6:00 it looked like this, and we were feeling a little sad - we wanted to represent, and show those Borders folks that they were idiots.

By 7:00 the seats had mostly filled up - only a few empties.  Stephanie came on at about 7:15, and it was so much fun listening to her.  She of course started off by taking a picture of the crowd with the sock:

We hollered that she missed us, so she did it again (though my shot was blurry, I hope hers isn’t!):

We knitted and listened, and laughed and hollered a good bit.  The listening was made difficult by Borders employees who thought that the coffee bar would be a good place to stand around and talk to each other while Stephanie was talking, so we missed a bit here or there.  I still laughed until my sides hurt!  This was our view for the whole thing - not too bad!

When she was done, they called groups up for the signing by wristband color.  We were the first group, though by the time we got downstairs we were at the end of the line.  No big deal, more time to laugh with new friends.  When it was our turn to meet Stephanie, we got our books signed (one for Sarah too!), and she commented on how gorgeous Kim’s sweater was.  Kim blushed and said thanks.  We all got together for a picture, and she noticed my shawl and commented on it.  I told her it was an Alison Hyde pattern, and she said, “Alison is so lovely!”  I had to agree.  (BTW, Alison, I had several people asking for the pattern last night - perhaps there was a slight jump in book sales at Borders!)  We posed for a picture together and I held “the sock” - I hope Kim’s picture of this is better than mine.  This is my hair and makeup 12 hours after it was done - needless to say there was nothing good left of either!

Behind us in line was Cristi, who was hoping to have Stephanie cut her first steek.  Stephanie politely refused, saying that everyone had to cut their own, but that she would hold her hand and get her through it.  Stephanie held apart the layers of the sweater while Cristi shook and shook, then cut.  She managed just fine.  Then Stephanie said, “Let’s go ahead and cut the back one.”  It wasn’t reinforced yet, but they did it!  Here’s Cristi during and after:

We had such a great time, and I’m so happy that I finally got to meet Stephanie.  And Cristi and Corey and Davey and Dani and May and Aimee and Erin and Jan…  You get the picture.  And next time we’re in Charlotte, we’re definitely hitting Charlotte Yarns.  If they had been open at 10:00 last night, we would have gone then.  It’s probably good they weren’t - I was on such a knitting high there’s no telling what I would have bought!

If you read me through a reader, or allow pingbacks or trackbacks to your site, please forgive me now.  I have spent probably 9 hours in the last 2 days reformatting and moving all of my posts from the old site to the new site, and in the process, the RSS feeds are going a little insane.  You may see 100 or so “new” posts that aren’t really new - they’re just finally getting put into the right place.  But it’s done now, so the issues should stop.

2 posts in 1 day to make up for a month of nothing? Today is the last day of our official Spring Break - we were out beginning last Friday and we go back Monday. This is probably the first break in 3 years or more where we didn’t go somewhere or have a major project to work on, and as people at school asked, “Are you going anywhere for Break?”, my answer was a resounding No! We made no plans - we’ve just mostly drifted through the week. Shea is babysitting 8:30-5:30 all week, which I’m sure makes going off to college look great. I was heading off to lunch today, and made a mental list of things I have accomplished this week, and thought I’d share it (though I’m not sure anyone but me will care!).

All of my normal “time off” buddies are out of town this week - no Sarah or Kim to hang out with (Sarah’s cruising and Kim’s visiting family), and even The Queen is out of town, so no Thursday night phone date! I was worried I’d be lonely, but thus far I have survived, and Cindy came over Tuesday to keep me company and give me my first spinning lesson. I’d say it was a disaster, though not the fault of the teacher. It was horribly overspun (The Queen said, “Of course it was. You’re a tight knitter too!”) and really resembled rodent intestines more than yarn. I will have to practice - and read a bit - and watch some videos. Just when you think you’re somewhat coordinated… Cindy promises it will get better.

So #1 is that I spun. Sort of.

2. Had a lovely anniversary (#18!) day trip with my husband.

3. Finished and blocked the shawl.

4. Started and finished 1.5 socks or so.

5. Bought Easter basket stuff for the kids.

6. Had a lovely Easter dinner with family and saw some people I hadn’t seen in 12 years! And made a rockin’ pan of au gratin potatoes!

7. Paid bills.

8. Filled out financial aid application for school - much harder and more painful than it sounds. The FAFSA is a cakewalk compared to this one.

9. Blogged! And learned how to use the new software - mostly.

10. Actually posted something to Ravelry, and pulled a whole bunch of FO pictures to upload when I find time.

11. Made a Sam’s Club run by myself (yes that’s a big deal - it’s very difficult for me to push a 100 lb. cart around and load all that heavy stuff into the car!).

12. Had a long catch-up lunch with a friend - we’ve honestly been trying to get together for lunch or coffee for 4 years now.

13. Caught up on my sleep.

14. Took H to the doctor for a shot.

15. Read 3 books.

16. Finally caught up through the current season of The Office.

When I look at that, it almost looks like I’ve been busy this week. OK, maybe not busy, but certainly not sitting around on my butt the whole time.

What I failed to mention before all of this was that the prior 2 weeks are my worst weeks of the entire year at work - just surviving them without going off the deep end is enough, but having a week off afterwards is priceless!