Body and Sleeves Wed in Holy Matrimony!!

It has been a long time coming but finally I have sleeves and body all on one circular needle. So now I have to carefully read the "pithy" directions that came from Elizabeth Zimmerman by way of SchoolHouse Press. And let me tell you they are clear as mud to me right now. Maybe I am just not "pithy" enough what ever that really means!! But I will press on and I am sure I will figure it out as I go. I had forgotten how many stitches end up on the needles right after joining body and sleeves on a raglan style sweater. It feels like it takes forever just to make one round. But don't you just enjoy eating away at that number as you make those wonderful decreases up to the shoulders? This sweater is saddle shouldered, similar but not exactly like a raglan so soon I will be entering totally new territory. According to the pattern along with the front body steek I will also be using a neckline steek-eeeekkkkkkk-steeks!! It shouldn't be to long before I have to take that plunge and make the cuts. Maybe 2 more weeks? Oh the agony of it all!!

I am also proud to announce that I officially made it to the half way point on Audry II. I hit 400 squares the other morning while waiting for hubby to be discharged from the hospital after his surgery(more about that later in the post). The day of his surgery I knit 13 squares and my arms and wrists just about rebelled when I picked it up to knit the next day. But the afghan got alot of attention from 1 lady in the waiting room and the doctor when he came out to talk to me after the procedure. I love it when people notice AudryII(blush, blush)!!

I did not get a chance to do alot of dyeing but I badly needed to whip out 2 small skeins for a sock yarn trade I am in to benefit Audry II. I had ideas in my head but of course what I produced was nothing like my ideas!! The self striping came close but the other-not at all. In fact the "other" was so ugly that I had to break out the dyes the next day and over dye it. But now I love it and have learned another in a long line of lessons in my dyeing voyage. The base yarn for this adventure was my long awaited "Trekking XXL" from Webs and I have to say that even tho it felt rough before dyeing it was wonderful after taking up the color. And the gauge was finer than the Knitpicks Bare so for now it will be my yarn of choice even if it is almost double the price.

Now for some of the more personal stuff going on in my busy life right now. Nothing earth shattering but important none the less. First of all my husband finally got the surgery done on his neck to fix the pesky herniated disc he had been living with for months now. I knew the surgery was not going to be all that bad since I had exactly the same thing done almost 9 years ago. As expected he did very well during the surgery and his recovery is going great. He says the pain in his neck is much better although he still has numbness & tingling in his hand. The doc told him it could take weeks to months for that to resolve but DH wants it NOW of course. He is not supposed to drive for 3 weeks so he is going to work from home-I offered to drive him in each day but noooooooooo-he wants to be home and bugging me!! I bet he gets bored enough next week to want to get out of the house so I will just bide my time and he will eventually get back out of my hair.

Another kind of big thing has to do with my son who lives in the LA area and has struggled with the financial aspect of that for 7 years now. He has had a roommate, given up his car & driving, eats as cheaply as he can and still he can't really make ends meet. So what does he do? Quits his job!!! To finish writing a book that he has no promise of getting published. What is the boy thinking? So we have asked him to move back home and live with us until he gets his book finished and decides what to do next with his life. We have never supported him even thru college so we don't have a problem with helping him some now. We can actually use him to help with the back breaking task of moving from here to our new location and eventually getting our new place set up. And we would love to have a built in house sitter for a year or two so we can do some travelling even if we get some small farm animals like the chickens I so dearly want. But we will see if he wants to even do this since I know he will feel somehow like this means he is a failure, which he is not. So if everyone will say a little prayer that his heart leads him home and that we can make it all work. By the way-we are looking for a house in Tennessee or Alabama with separate living quarters on the property!!!! We are not that crazy to want him underfoot 24/7!!