Holding pattern

You know that new pair of socks I cast on the other day? I'm not happy with them. The Colinette JitterBug is gorgous, shades of tuquoise varying from light to dark, with bits of cranberry, burgundy, green and blue sprinkled in. I'm very much in love with the color. The problem is I don't like it with the stitch pattern. The colors are pooling, a lot. So much so that the socks appear to be one color and one side and a different color on the other. I also think the yarn is too dark to see the stitch pattern well.

Exhibit A

This side of the sock is mostly dark.

Exibit B

This side of the sock is mostly light.

Exibit C

This is a view between the two above (I rotated 1 needle instead of flipping it over.) You can see that the color pools are starting to "travel" around the sock. I'm OK with with that, I just don't think it works with the stitch pattern. I'm debating on finishing the socks and giving them away, or frogging them to the ribbing and working them in a simpler pattern. Possibly just plain old stockinette or a wide ribbing?

I would still love to make this sock pattern, but I think I want a lighter colorway with less variation. Good excuse for yarn shopping!

In the meantime, I started a new crochet project. I using the new Red Heart Soft Yarn I purchased a few weeks ago. It's a beautiful shade of purple. (You might have noticed a trend here, yes purple is one of my favorite colors, my other favorite is green.)

I'm giving the shracket from Uncommon Threads another shot. I recently mentioned I had attempted this pattern before and didn't have enough yarn for it. I think I'm good this time, I've got three skeins. I'm using an N instead of a P hook. I thought P was just larger than necessary.

I let you know how it goes.

Finished socks for hubby

Grey Striped Cascade Fixation Socks

I've completed my second pair of socks in Cascade Fixation. This pair is for my husband.

Details:
Cascade Fixation color #9192, self-striping shades of gray.
Size 3 DPNs

Hubby likes them very much, as soon as I finished them he put them on and wore them for the rest of the day. I had to steal them back this morning in order to take the picture.

New Socks

I cast on a new pair of socks today. I am using Collinette Jitterbug in the Jay colorway. I purchased this yarn in San Fransisco when Angie and I were on the Yarn Harlot trip. I'm using Sockbug's River Rapids pattern. I am making these for the Ravelry Sockdown Challenge.



I tried casting these onto a Size 1 47" Addi circulars to make both socks at the same time. Wrangling the cable and two balls of yarn was just more of a challenge than I was up for, so I switched to my Knit Picks DPN's. I'm using Size 1 - 2.5mm. It's going much better.

Ravelry

I finally got my invite to Ravelry about two weeks ago. I'm loving it. I've been very busy uploadng pictures of my stash and my projects. I can't wait to see everyone when they go live. I'm under the name Grandysdaughter so feel free to add me as a friend.

I’m locked out of my own brain today.

I’m going through my day today doing stupid stuff that would make people think I have no brain. I know I’ve got one, I used it before (once or twice); but, for some reason today I can’t seem to access it. My headache isn’t too bad today so that’s not it. Maybe my brain just went on vacation without me. I’m so glad it’s Friday.

Anybody else ever lose access to their brain?

Butterfly Rib progress

Here are a couple of progress pictures of my Butterfly Rib socks. I've completed the first sock and the second is cast on.

I'm very happy with the way the gusset in the back came out. Hopefully I can repeat what I did for the second sock.

One skein?

I haven’t broken down and cast on any new socks yet, but I did have a breakdown of another kind. I’ve been eyeing Red Heart’s new Soft line since it came out. I’ve been dying to try it out but I’ve been resisting it…until today. I went to Michaels at lunch and three skeins of the Lavender color just begged to come home with me. I haven’t turned into a yarn snob yet; I still love my easy care acrylic yarn.

I’m thinking I’m going to try this shrug again, the "shracket" version. I had attempted this once before in Red Heart Super Saver in a variegated color I just loved. The problem was I only had one skein and it just wasn’t enough…and wouldn’t you know it…Red Heart had discontinued that particular color. I could only find it online and was just too lazy to order it. So I frogged my progress and wound the yarn back up. I still haven’t decided what to do with it now. I’m still very much in love with the colors in it. What can you make from a single skein of variegated Red Heart Super Saver?

For the love of sock knitting

Twice a day I go outside with my friend and co-worker to take a break. She smokes, I knit. Today one of our shop guys happened to walk by. He stopped to say “Hello”, then looked at me and said “You’re knitting!” He sounded a bit surprised.

I answered him, “Yes, I am.” Hee hee hee, I’ve just shocked another Muggle!

Then he asked “Is that a sock?”

“Yes, it is.” Woohoo, I’ve reached the point where my tube of knitting is recognizable as a sock.

Just for fun I did some knitting in a bar yesterday when my friend and I went to lunch. Might as well, that place is a little slow with the food. My friend looked a little embarrassed to be seen with me knitting there. She’s just begun to crochet; I don’t have her fully converted yet.

I received a very lovely surprise yesterday. My friend, Angie gave me Knit Picks new Double Pointed Needle Sock Set! I’m so excited; I can’t wait to try them out. It’ll be a couple of weeks though, since I currently have three pairs of socks going right now. Although, don’t be surprised if I break down and cast on another pair, just because I can.

Purple Socks

Purple Cascade Fixation Socks

They are Cascade Fixation Color #6388 in Trekcelt's Varsity Socks in a solid purple. I had a little difficulty working with this yarn in the beginning but I finally got the hang of it. I'm very happy with the way this pair turned out. The picture is a bit off in color, they look blue here. They really are purple.

Just so ya'll know....

I didn't fall off the planet. I'm doing OK. I finished a pair a socks a couple of weeks ago. They are Cascade Fixation Color #6388 in Trekcelt's Varsity Socks in solid purple. I'll try to get some pics. I started a new pair in Cascade, no real pattern this time. It's a self striping colorway in shades of gray. I'm making them for my husband, although there are days I don't think the grouchy a** deserves them. I'm also working on my Butterfly Rib Socks in the purple Koigu I bought in Petaluma. I restarted them to add a gusset to the back of the leg to better fit my chubby legs. I'm very happy with the way the gusset came out. Last night I took a needle and ran some cotton thread through the stitches and took them off the DPN's so I could try the sock on. Perfect! Hopefully I can remember exactly how I did the gusset so I can repeat it on the second sock. Anyhow the first sock is back on its needles and I'm going to be starting the heel very soon.
I'm still crocheting as well. I've been working on my fall colors blanket. It's a five color repeat with a main contrast color row between each color. So that makes the pattern a ten-row repeat. The length of the blanket with take 14 repeats, I'm on the seventh repeat. Woohoo, almost halfway there! I really want to finish this one soon.
It seems I need to bust out the camera and take a bunch of pictures for ya'll. Maybe tomorrow, tonite is our Crochet Meeting. See you there!

Finished Seraphina

I finished my Seraphina

Our local crochet group here in HELL (I mean Las Vegas..it's been up to 120 degrees the last week or so), decided a while back we would do a Crochet-a-long. We were all making the Seraphina shawl in various yarns. Mine is in Patons Grace in the "Lavander" colorway. I finished weaving in ends on Friday, but I still need to block it. Many of our group have already finished thiers. Angie even made two! You can see some pictures here.

How I am supposed to sleep through this?

This weekend I had one more medical test to take. A sleep study. My primary doctor ordered it. He thinks I might have sleep apnea. This is where your throat closes up and you stop breathing at night and when you gasp for air you wake up. Apparently this can happen up to one hundred times a night and you may never realize it! I have very severe allergies (read: allergic to everything under the sun.) According to my mother I have always snored very badly, even as a small child because of my allergies. My husband says I snore and claims to have heard me stop breathing on occasion. Since I’ve never heard myself snore I can’t confirm this.

Anyhow, I went to the Sleep Center on Saturday night and checked in. They connected a ton of electrodes to me. There were two on each of my legs, one under my chin (along with a microphone), one next to each eye, one under each ear, and several on the back of my head. In addition to that, they put straps around my abdomen and chest with sensors on them. It’s a good thing I took a sleeping pill; otherwise, I’d never have slept with that much crap glued/tied to my body.

I haven’t heard anything on results yet, but I’m a little concerned as to the quality of data they may have gotten. You see, sometime in the middle of the night a really loud alarm went off. It scared the hell out of me. When I buzzed to technicians, they came into the room and seemed a bit surprised by the sound. Apparently they hadn’t heard it up front. They returned a couple of minutes later to tell me it was from someone breaking into one of the nearby stores (the sleep center is located in a strip mall.) Yeah, so much for getting a good night’s sleep.

They “put me to bed” around 10 pm and came in around 5:30 in the morning to release me. Hopefully they got the data they needed, ‘cause I gotta tell you, I do not want to do that again! I still have glue in my hair, even after washing it.

See the baby?

My friend, Angie and I went to San Francisco/Petaluma to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee a couple of weeks ago. She's on tour promoting her new book. (It's a great book.)

I finally downloaded all the pictures from my camera today. This picture is from our first day there. We went to Pier 39, ate clam chowder, checked out the sea lions and shopped. Lots of shopping.

Isn't he cute!

We maybe shopped too much. We found this really wild tea that blooms into flowers when you brew it. It tastes really good too.

I'll post more pictures tomorrow. Right now my head is trying to explode.

These guys really like to bark!

Under pressure

After having to wait an extra week because the lab didn't draw enough blood for all the tests.....I finally have a diagnosis. The lab called while I was on vacation in San Fransisco to tell me I needed to come back in and have the additional blood draw. I took care of that on Monday after we got home. The doctor's office called me to schedule my follow-up and they told me the one test the lab didn't get done takes 10 days to run. You'd think they could have run that one and skipped something that didn't take as long to process!!!

Anyhow, I finally saw the doctor and all the labs were normal, as was the chest x-ray. The diagnosis? Excess pressure in my spinal fluid is creating my headaches. WTF??? It's just some strange thing that happens to some women, usually those who are overweight. He gave me a prescription to take to help lessen the pressure and advised me to lose weight. He felt he didn't need to take a lumbar pucture to verify the diagnosis unless I really wanted him to. Yeah, I'll pass. His opinion is based on looking into my eyes (with a really bright light) and seeing that my optic nerve is flat. Apparently having this pressure in your head places pressure on your eyes as well and can cause a loss of vision. Great...lose weight or go blind. Well, I guess I have some serious dieting to do and some major incentive. I'm also thinking an appointment with my eye doctor is in order.

The results are in...we need more tests.

My appointment with the neurologist to go over the MRI's and the EMG was yesterday. Everything came back normal. The only thing they found was some swollen lymph nodes in my neck. Those are probably the result of a recent upper respiratory infection. Since I haven't had an upper respiratory infection quite some time we were "back to the drawing board". We went back over all my symptoms, headache, neck pain, ear aches, pain radiating down my left arm, stuffy nose. I told him I had expected the head MRI to show a sinus infection. I asked him if my symtoms could be the result of some other kind of infection. He said if it was my primary care doctor would have found it in the bloodwork. I informed him that my primary care doctor hadn't done any bloodwork. So he order lots of blood tests and a chest x-ray (to check for that upper respiratory infection). It's about damn time, I've told my primary care doc a couple of different times I thought it might be an infection!!

The neurologist did tell me about another possibility. He said my headaches could be caused by excess pressure in my spinal fluid. He wants to do a lumber puncture. Yeah, not real thrilled with that idea. He said I didn't have to make a decision right then, I could go home and discuss it with my husband first. I told him I wanted to wait until we had the results from the lab work and chest x-ray. Lynn agreed when I told him.

The doctor also gave me a couple of other options. He told me about a headache specialist in town I could go to. The only problem is he's not on my insurance. I'd have to pay him out-of-pocket. We'll hold off on that for now, I don't have that kind of money. He also mentioned a type of drug for depression that sometimes helps people with headaches like mine. If the tests don't come up anything I might try it. I'll have to research it first.

So, still no anwsers, but at least we're getting closer.

7 Random Things

There’s this thing going around on several of the blogs I read where you are supposed to list seven random things about yourself. So here goes:

1: As a kid I lived on wheels. I was on roller skates or a bike, every single day. My best friend and I used to skate back and forth across her front porch listening to the soundtrack to “Footloose”.

2: I was born in Colorado, but raised in Texas. The town I grew up in only has a population of about 2800 people. I’ve also never been east of Texas (in the U.S.)

3: I was born with two earlobes on my left ear. I think technically the one was somehow split so it appeared to be two. You couldn’t really see the second lobe; it was a smaller one behind a larger one in front. Doctors told my Mom it would eventually “drop down” and be normal. It never did. I had my ears pierced at 11 years old (it was only through the front lobe) and a couple a years later the piercing tore all the way out. At 14, I had surgery to repair the rip and they cut off the back earlobe. If you look you can see where it used to be.

4: I have 2 sisters and 3 brothers. My sisters are from my mom’s first marriage and my two older brothers are from my biological father’s first marriage. After I was born they got divorced and my mom later remarried. Her third husband adopted all three of her girls and a few years later they adopted my little brother. They are still married today and he is the man I call my “Dad”.

5: My husband and I were introduced on a blind date. My cousin Laurie and I were sharing an apartment at the time and she only introduced me to Lynn because she hated the guy I was dating at the time. (She was right, the guy was a jerk.)

6: I have no musical talent, but I really wish I did. My sisters used to tell me I couldn’t “carry a tune in a bucket”. I don’t sing in the shower but I will crank the stereo and sing in my car. I sometimes sing in my office when I’m working.

7: I am the world’s biggest klutz, always have been. I trip over thin air and bang my arms and legs on everything in my path. I knock things over and spill drinks. It’s a really good thing I never became a waitress or went to work in an antique shop.

Ok, that’s enough random for one day.

Beaten, burned, electrocuted and stabbed

The last few days have been rather exciting. We went camping this weekend in Parker, AZ. We stayed in La Paz County Park, right on the Colorado River. There were sixteen of us that went, we had our own little “tent city”. We bar-b-que’d and rented Sea-doo’s and floated on a big raft. It was a really good weekend. The “beaten” part would be the little sore spot on the side of my head my where I bonked it on the lamp hanging in the center of our tent and the “burned” is the sunburn on my chest. I wore sunscreen and tried to stay out of the sun as much as possible but somehow managed to sunburn just the tops of my knees and my cleavage. My knees are no big deal but the boob burn really itches right now.

The prior auth for the EMG finally came through and I had that done yesterday at lunch. That accounts for the “electrocution and stabbing.” The tech put all these little stickers on my hands, some were little squares on my palms others were long thin strips that wrapped around my fingers. Then he clamped wires to some of them. He took a marker and made little blue hash marks on my wrists. Finally he took a gizmo that looked an awful lot like a tazer gun and dipped the prongs in some gel and touched the hash marks with it and sent little zaps of electricity through my arms. He did this several times from several different places on my wrists and elbows, occasionally moving the wires around to different stickers. When he was done testing both my arms he called the doctor in to conduct the second part of the test. The doctor stuck a needle in my hand and arm in several different places and then had me flex that muscle. With the needle in it! (Remind me not to do this test again.) All of this is supposed to tell them if I have a pinched nerve somewhere that’s causing my headaches. I have a couple of small bruises from needle and my arm is a little sore today, but it’s not too bad. I’ll let ya’ll know when I get the results.

MRI's are really loud

Well, I went in on Saturday morning and had the MRI on my head and then again on Monday morning for one on my neck. It wasn't too bad. After you change into the "high fashion" nightgown, they lay you on the table and push it into the machine. They give you headphones and put it on whatever radio station you like. The headphones also allow them to talk to you from their controls outside the booth. They take several different scans and each scan lasts a different length of time, anywhere from 20 seconds to five minutes. The machine makes a "knocking" sound while it does the scans. The knocking is quite loud loud and changes in tone and rhythm from scan to scan. The table was a little uncomfortable as it is narrow and there was no were to lay my arms, I had to hold them up, which caused my left arm to ache. After the several scans the tech gave me an injection of contrast and took one more scan. Laying very still for the head scan was fairly easy, for the neck scan it was a little harder. I wasn't supposed to swallow, but my throat has been feeling very dry and I'm having some sinus drainage so that part was very difficult. I wound up involuntarily swallowing a few times. You don't realize how often you automatically swallow until your not supposed too.

I called the Neurologist to see if he had the results yet. He does, but he still wants to do one more test. A nerve conduction study, an EMG. The test still has to be prior authorized and scheduled. Once that's done, then he'll bring me in for an appointment to go over all the tests. Grrr. Arggg. Frustrating heh?

That's alright, I'm "smarter that the average bear" (as my Daddy says). I went by Steinburg Diagnostic on my way home and picked up copies of the reports. The report for my brain MRI says that my brain is fine-no tumors. Whew! The one for my neck says all my vertebrae are OK. The only thing that one mentions is some swollen lymph nodes-possibly related to an upper respiratory infection. I keep telling my regular doctor I think I've got an infection!! Unfortunately, I still have to play the waiting game with these guys.

Tana in the duffle

I came downstairs on Saturday morning to find this on my living room floor:

After I laughed my butt off, I just had to take a picture. She doesn't seem to get the joke, though. After I took a couple of picures of her, Lynn picked her up in the duffle so I could take a couple more. She really didn't appriciate this much. But she looks so cute.

That's my hubby and our other dogs are in the background there.

Fetching FO's

While I was taking sock pictures the I thought I'd take some pictures of the finished Fetching gloves. Yes, they were finished ages ago and I never got aroung to taking the pictures. The pink ones are for me and the blue ones are for my Mom. These were made with sport weight yarn on size 3 DPN's.