Writing about the journey to weight loss surgery, knitting, crafts and life
My spiral headband, which was done long ago….
I talked about starting it here and here. It’s been done long enough that I don’t remember the hook size (think it was E). I do remember it was done w/ Lion Brand Microspun in aqua, purple and black. The spirals are from
201 Crochet Motifs, Blocks Patterns and Ideas done in 3 different sizes (not obvious from the image itself).
So it’s Fiber Fest weekend. As usual (since starting work at JA’s), I couldn’t go out today, but I’m going tomorrow. Buddy Robin, from Tuesday night knitting group, is tagging along for her first visit to the fest. Given the monetary situation at our house, I’m not planning to buy much if anything, but it’s always fun to get out and see friends - some that I see only once a year. I always try to work there for a bit too - either at the spinning guild booth or the knitting guild booth. The fest has really grown over the years, thanks to lots of work from the many on the committees over the years. Thanks too, to the fairgrounds doing a lot of renovating and building new buildings that just NEEDED to be filled 
One thing that I’ll have to try to remember to do is bring home a chicken dinner for Chuck. He’s only been to fest once, and the only thing he really remembers about it was the chicken guy. Leave it to him to only remember the food.
We had a support group meeting this week and I’m re-energized. I had fallen off the wagon in terms of tracking what I was eating and walking. Just plugging it into a form someplace, like sparkpeople, really helps me, so I’ve been good about tracking the last few days. We had a good surge of activity (nobody new, but comments on the meeting and sharing of additional information that was partially discussed) on our support group’s spark team there too.
Yesterday, apparently, was “talk like a pirate day” so there were some interesting threads on Ravelry. I’ve seen Eggface talk about other days of “importance”, like eat pizza day and there was another one that sounded goofy. So, I went on a quest to find out how does anyone know about these weird things. Well, leave it to Wikipedia to have them. Of course it takes 365 clicks to find all of them, but I did see that “OneWebDay” is this coming Monday. Found out, too, that there’s nothing interesting on my birthday or Chuck’s. Checking for all kinds of weird days sounds like too much trouble… do you know of a place that you can just find all the weird ones? Let me know if you do.
So the reason I couldn’t go to the fest today was because it is class preview day. Once upon a time it was a big deal day, only 4 times a year and we were busy. Now we do this once a month and it’s not nearly as busy. I had quite a few samples out for display and Nikki, the new Wilton instructor, was there to talk about her classes. We’re doing “Christmas Crafting” on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings in October and there were a lot of people interested in those, but I didn’t have a single person sign up for a single class. 
Some will probably be back, but it can be so discouraging.
One of the samples I finished up was the Market Bag (click here or search for it on Joann’s - go to projects, knit and crochet and select crochet and purses/bags - it’ll show up there). I made it from Bernat Handicrafter and was a little dubious as it was in progress - it seemed so BIG at the top edge, but the last 4 rows of the body did a great job of pulling it all in, then the handles go across most of the top, continuing to hold it together. As I put it in my Ravelry project log, I searched what others had done with it and found one done as a watermelon (dark green base, narrow stripe of lt green, the rest rose colored w/ black beads) that was ADORABLE. Well, getting into the Halloween mood, I decided to do one, scaled down a bit (smaller yarn, smaller hook and not quite so many rows in the base), in yellow (base), orange (wide stripe on the body) and white (stripe at the top and handles) to look like candy corn and to be used as a halloween treat sack. Not that I have anyone that can use it, but it should generate some interest as a class sample and maybe even get a sign up or two for the class.
I had a panic yesterday. I was walking around at the grocery store, listening to a book (Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult) and it just shut off. Okay, so the battery probably needed to be charged - a bummer since I had the ride home from work and the real grocery shopping to be done before I could plug it in to be charged. Fine. I get home and plug it in and…. NOTHING! Yikes - what’s going on? It was late, so I just finished my day and went to bed. Went to work today without it. Tonight I go online to check it out and find out that if I hold the on button down for 10-15 seconds THEN plug it in, it might work. Voila, it worked! So now it’s charging just fine. What a relief! I just can’t imagine being without it.
I’m going to go work on the candy corn sack now for a bit before getting ready to rest up for festival visiting tomorrow. (I had a typo there - I wrote candy *cane* rather than *corn* and just went down a whole “what if” design thought process)
All those years I spent as a software engineer at the yellow box, I was on the creation side of things when it came to new systems. We’d test and test, fix and fix, and hope that when it was rolled out, it was perfect. Of course it never was, but we tried. I tried, as an engineer to be as understanding of the user and how to try to mitigate the pain of a new system.
Now I’m a user of a system. We have a new point of sale system at work and boy is it “fun” getting used to it. Of all weeks, we had a go-live during “coupon commotion” which is just generally a crazy time anyway. Then the day after go-live, there’s a power outage and we lose some of our registers, and we are CRAZY busy. OMG! We’re all learning lots, but unfortunately some of what we’re learning is probably not quite right. Hopefully all will settle in good soon. In the meantime, it’s frustrating to know that they’ve rolled this out to lots of other stores, and some of the things we encounter seem like we should have been able to be better prepared for them. Oh, well… such is life, I guess. I’m glad, though, that we weren’t one of the very first places - at least we can call on others to talk us through our questions.
I had a fun demo today. I made a sunflower from Studio by Sculpey - covered the top of a paper mache box and made the sunflower (I just checked, the project isn’t listed on their site). I still have to bake it, but it looks pretty cute. I’ll bake another day at work, then use the antiquing medium to give it more dimension. I also did some demonstrating of a battery-operated bead spinner. I haven’t quite gotten the “feel” of working with it yet - I’m used to speeding up and slowing down as I do with my manual one, and I think I do things a little differently when I have control of the speed. Since it’s moving at a consistent speed, it needs a different hand to grab them just right.
The only thing left on the patriotic socks is to graft the last toe. Tomorrow I have a knitting group get-together and I should be able to wear them there. Now I have to decide what’s next. I’m thinking I should finally finish the matinee swing sweater that I started all those months ago. It’ll probably take next to no time to finish. I’m about 1/3 up the last sleeve. Then it has to be sewn together and the collar picked up and knitted and it’ll be done. I could get 2 projects done this weekend!
I did get to see the baby girl this week. Two days in a row even! She stopped at the store on Thursday and then we went out for b-fast on Friday. She thinks it’s a waste to go out to eat w/ me these days. I told her that I can still enjoy food, I just don’t have as much of it. I got the 1 egg and ham that included hash browns and toast. All the toast went home for Chuck to make tomatoe sandwiches, most of the hash browns went home (i had about 2 T worth of them) and about 2/3 of the slice of ham went home as well. Meanwhile I had a nice visit with Shaundra and got numerous rows done on the sock. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to hijack the camera to get the pictures that we taken last month when I saw her
I’m being brave tonight and started some chili in the crockpot. I don’t even really know what to put in, but I gave it a shot. Chuck’ll probably like it no matter what and I’ll see if it’s something I can eat or not. I’ve read that many post surgery folks find chili to be a good meal and Noelia from support group makes a batch every week, so we’ll see how it goes.
I’m watching The Memory Keepers Daughter again. I think this is the 4th time I watched it. I also “read” the book on my MP3 player. It strikes such a chord for me - Phoebe’s mother. Caroline, reminds me a lot of my grandmother. The book was way better than the movie, but even the movie is great.
I guess it’s time to shut up - get something accomplished around the house before I crash.
So this week was the beginning of our (knitting) guild year. Of course I managed to not have a pair of mittens done for the mitten drive (note to self - get working on some!). Nor did I remember to take a skein for the skein swap. When I read about it, I figured I would take one or two and have my tickets passed on to a visitor since I don’t need ANYTHING more at my house. It was fun getting reactions from folks after about 3 months of not seeing me Several people claim to have not recognized me, or only recognized me because they were specifically seeking me out. Now, I don’t *quite* believe that because I think I still look pretty much the same except my hair is being pulled back, but I guess there’s a difference after a 3 month absence.
Last night we had our weekly knitting group at Louise’s shop. I was pretty late getting there, as usual. Louise has a schedule together for fall classes. I had to make a couple of modifications, but hopefully the classes will take off. We’re doing some on seafoam lace, the jojoland swirl shawl, I-cord techniques, and entrelac.
Amber’s been up and down these last weeks. Two Fridays ago, her packed cell volume was up (to 27 from 15, should be around 40), so we were feeling very good about things. Last Friday we went back, hoping it was up some more so they’d start to ramp down on the prednisone. Nope - the value was down (to 23), so I had to go home and wait for a call from Dr. V. She had also gained 12 lbs in the 2 wks from the initial vet visit. Now she’s on a second medication - more expensive, of course - that does seem to be helping, but we’ll know that better this Friday when we go AGAIN for bloodwork. Pretty soon she’s going to get wise to “going into the vet” = “getting poked for blood” 
Needing meds for both of us AND the dog has lead us to joining up to Walgreen’s “prescription savings club” program. Believe it or not, you can add your dog to your family plan and get discounts on their meds. Now that she’s added, I’m thinking the next prednisone might be coming from there rather than the vet.
I dragged Amber out for a walk with me tonight. Actually, she was pretty hyped to start the walk, but about 3/4 the way through the walk she was starting to lag behind. I had to keep prodding her to keep up until we were about 200 paces from home, when she apparently “saw” something and tried to take off. I’d become pretty blase about holding tight since she was so slow but I recovered pretty quickly! So, we did our 2.75 mile walk around the block rather than the 2 mile walk I originally intended and I am feeling more positive about having done what I needed to for me.
Sounds like I will see the baby girl briefly tomorrow. She’s needing to come home to do some paperwork, so she said she wanted to stop by for a few minutes. I wonder if I can wrestle those pictures away from her while she’s home. Probably not