It's Official-I really have 2 left feet!!

You would not know it from today's weather but spring has roared into Oklahoma. Last week I had one entire plot of daffodils bloom. After snapping a pic I brought them all indoors and they are still blooming despite the temps plunging into the low 30's and the wind blowing in the 40's (mph) that is!! Another few warm days and the Bradford Pear's should all be in billowing white robes. The other day I sat out on the back porch in bare feet and a tank top and came close to having a sunburn, now I need heavy sweaters and thick socks. I guess that's good being that I am a knitter!!

I am now able to reveal pics of the 4 day socks I knit for a dear friend on Weight Watchers. I am still blown away by the fact that I knit them that fast. I do believe I had a little speed boost from above. God knew Gail needed some warm fuzzy soft socks to wear this week while going thru more tests to see if her cancer is hiding any where else in her body.

I have long waited for a great way to take sock pics. First buying a set of sock blockers from a knitting store(not cheap I may add), trying to take pics while the socks are on my own feet(need a gymnastics background for that one) and trying to con someone else into being my model. Who knew that I could buy 2 left feet on ebay for less than 20$? Well they came in after I sent the above socks off to Gail but I threw my most recent handknit pair on and real quick snapped a pic and here is the result. This is exactly what I needed and maybe by the time I get my next pair finished I can have a better background set up and really shoot some quasi-professional shots.

And now for an update on my all consuming project-The Million Square Afghan. I am still totally in love with this piece of knitting. I knit on it everyday, sometimes to the point of insanity. At first I could only do about 4 sq's a day, now I do 6, 8 or even one day, 10!!!! I keep thinking that I will burn out at some point but so far the fire just burns more intensely. And even better? Someone on Ravelry started a group just for this afghan. In just one day there were over 150 members and it has grown alot since then. I set up threads for American swappers and International swappers so maybe we could all add to our variety in our stash. But so far no takers although some have talked about really wanting to do it. But it is a very active group even for Ravelry and so sooner or later I bet I will have some willing to participate. Meanwhile I keep buying yarn like it was going to go away tomorrow!! And I keep knitting like I will need this afghan to ward off this winter's cold!!!

I also got my new photo-editing software (Nikon Capture NX)this week and spent a fair bit of time messing with the options available on it. This is true editing software and not photo manipulation software. I know I have just barely scratched the surface of the learning curve but so far I really like it. There is a book out there that can be purchased to help walk you thru and understand the program in more depth than you can get from the pre-packaged user's manual. So next discount coupon I get on Barnes & Noble will be used for that bit of knowledge. And sometime down the road I will probably still want to get Photoshop Elements but with the rate I buy yarn it will be quite a wait!!

The Saddle Shouldered Aran is currently off the needles and the yarn back in balls. I just need to go in and make some minor adjustments to the spreadsheet and recast on with about 2 more inches of stitches in the body. Plus I want to change the plain knit 2's I used to separate the cable's into 2 stitch cables just to dress it up. Hopefully I will have this back as a current project by next week.

This next week should be a great one. Scrappies meet on thursday night plus this week I get a bonus!! BBF Carol is coming down from the city and we are going to go eat before the meeting. We haven't been face to face for awhile and since we are both homebodies most of the time, this will be a major event for both of us!! I get to pick the restaurant and I have been racking my brain for a few days. Lawton is so well known for it's choice of gourmet places to eat(not) but I have finally come up with an option and just need to let Carol know. Otherwise I will do the usual, knit, walk, clean, pack, ect, ect, and I will be back same time next week to bore you all with the details!!

Itchy Crawly Heebie Jeebies

Is my nose clean enough Ma?

This post won't be as long as usual. I hear lots of sighs of relief in the background so I won't feel the least bit guilty!

I really had a tough week without a lot of sleep. Out of the blue I developed the worst case of Restless Leg syndrome in the world. Oh heck-it was actually Restless Everything syndrome. Every evening when I would start to settle in to get some productive knitting done, I would start itching intensely all over my upper arms. At first I thougt "dry skin" and bought several new moisturizers and applied them liberally, very very liberally. Sometimes 3 or 4 times a day. And still evening came and I itched. Then I realized that it was not a normal itch, it was creepy crawly, almost painful. And then other things started getting crawly like my hair. So next step was to go by special hydrocortisone cream and sleeping pills. I got the brilliant idea that I would slather myself with cream, take some sleeping pills and be knocked out. Wrong answer!! I writhed in bed all night and had a sleeping pill hangover the next day. I already had a doctor's appointment scheduled for March so I knew I just had to figure it out myself or wait til I could see him. So I Googled my symptoms and the one thing I found was a possible over dose of Vitamin B-12. And that was only on 1 website. Most of the others say you can not overdose on B-12. Usually I only take 1 2000mg sublingual B-12 a day which works miracles for me in keeping away cancer sores in my mouth. But when I injure my mouth in some way I take more to help heal the sore before it gets out of hand. And so I had been taking extra. The good thing is B-12 doesn't hang around long so all I had to do is stop taking it for 1 day and the next night? No heebie jeebies or creepy crawlies.....just beautiful peaceful restfull sleep. So lesson learned about the B-12 and I will not up my dose indiscriminately ever again.

I did still manage to get a few things worked on this week. I got a bit done on the afghan but didn't get around to taking any new pics. At this point I probably only need to take pics every

other week or so or else it won't really look any different. I also got some knit on the Aran sweater but again not enough to photograh. I am almost to the underarm and will have to start on the sleeves real soon.

But I did do something pretty cool in my knitting world. It started Tuesday night when I realized I had not knit on any socks for a good while and that needed to be remedied. So I picked up the only sock yarn that I had wound into a ball and cast on my usual 72 stitches and did 2X2 ribbing. I wanted to use some garter stitch so I figured I would knit 6, purl 6 on row 1 and knit the entire row 2, repeating these 2 rows until I got to the foot. I knit a few rows of that the first night and was happy with the result. Now the magic starts the next morning. I always check on my on-line WW friends in the mornings. It had been a few days since one of our good friends had checked in and we were all starting to get worried. And for good reason. She finally confided in us that her doctor suspected that her breast cancer might have spread to her lung as there was a spot there. She was going to need a biopsy. I immediately knew those socks were for her. So I put all other knitting aside and knit pretty constantly until 4 whole days later I had a finished pair of socks. That is with Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock and size 1's!! I have never even come close to finishing 1 sock in that time let alone 2 and probably won't ever do that again. But hopefully she will love having very soft warm socks on her feet while she continues to go thru chemo as unfortunately the biopsy did not come back with the best news. But prayers will continue to fly to her from all of her dear on-line friends.

DH finally got to go to the neurosurgeon this week. And he is going to end up having surgery on the herniated disc in his neck. This is actually good news because the chances are very good that the pain will go away and the strength will come back by having it. The bad news is that he has to wait until April to have it done. He went to the most popular neurosurgeon in town who has a long waiting list and then the guy is going to go have knee surgery before he does DH's!! Darn guy wanting to be able to stand without pain!! And of course the end result is that our move has to be shoved back another 3 months or so now waiting for the surgery and then getting thru the recovery time. So it looks like I will be around SW Oklahoma just a little longer than expected.

Our weather here has been up and down for the last few weeks. But spring is so close we can taste it. My first daffodil should be blooming tomorrow and I have seen robins and cardinals returning to the feeders. This next week I hope to have a bit more done on the afghan and be working on the sleeves to my sweater. I want to do both sleeves at the same time on magic loop so that is something I have not done before. But that is what google is for. Don't you love the computer age when you can just look up about anything and watch a tutorial someone took the time to make just for you? And who knows-I may get another pair of socks on the needles this week since there is still a bunch of sock yarn waiting to be de-stashed!!!! But if I get started right now I can get 2 more afghan squares knit tonight. So off I go and see you all next week..