I was just sitting here wondering how I catch you all up on everything from the last little bit because there has been so very, very much and I thought I’d start there. Holy cats, wing of moth, what a lot has happened – or maybe it’s not really that much and just feels like it because of one enormous thing that’s made everything else so much trickier.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been feeling like trash. No- wait. Hot trash. I’ve been catching everything that goes by for ages and never feeling like I catch up health-wise which leads to me feeling really behind on everything else (because I am) which was stressing me out and making me feel worse, and then I had several really scary … episodes, is I guess what you’d call them, and the whole thing culminated in a really terrible trip to the ER on Family Day weekend, which then wound up being emergency major abdominal surgery two days later. 0/10, do not recommend, and it was such a traumatic experience that I don’t even want to write about it yet.

I do recommend having fantastic kids and a great husband who all busted a move taking care of me and replacing my efforts around the house once I got home. I felt so crummy for the first week afterwards that not much of anything happened, though when conscious I did make really decent progress on that baby blanket I was working on the last time we spoke.

Me and the blanket, tucked up in bed together. A romance for the ages. Pattern is all mine, of course, and the yarn is Juniper Moon Pategonia.

I was supposed to fly out for a visit to a friend just a week after surgery, and then go on to the Spring Retreat at Port Ludlow, but my surgeon said I couldn’t fly for two weeks so I rearranged everything, cried into my pillow a little, and then put all my efforts into making sure that I was in the best possible shape to go and work at the retreat. (Also, I finished that baby blanket, I’ll show it to you when the recipients are in possession of it. It’s still making it’s way to them and I don’t want to spoil the surprises.)

Let me tell you – the day that I headed to the airport to wing my way west, I was not my usual chipper self. I managed to get it together by the time I got there, and Debbi’s a formidable powerhouse who made the whole thing possible but I am convinced that it was the power of my will and how much I love the retreats and the knitters that come to them that got me through that thing.

Another distraction, and proof that I do indeed finish things. This is Delightful Dots – yarn is from Lamb and Kid.

When I got home I went to bed and… well. I stayed there for about 24 hours – I think I slept almost 14 hours straight, and when I got up I was determined. I was saying all sorts of things like “enough is enough” and “time to get it together” and boy was I sick of not being well. I was tired of the restriction that I can’t lift anything, tired of being exhausted by the end of every day – absolutely fed up with wasting time on crap like naps and early bedtimes and stupid rests with lame cups of tea. I got up and I gave the week my all. Determined to muscle through we celebrated Charlotte’s birthday and gathered to observe the anniversary of her death, and I cooked and cleaned and organized and I suppose what happened was predictable.

I am here distracting you with a picture of my finished February Socks. Yarn is Jadawoo Designs in “forest moss” and the pattern is Siroc.

It didn’t work. All I’ve been trying to do is go, go, go, and all I hear from my body is no, no, no, so for the next few days I’m going to give up, as gracefully as humanly possible. I’m going to knit. I’m going to work quietly at my desk. I’m going back to rests and naps and lame cups of tea. (I actually like tea, I don’t know why I’m so mad at it.) I’ve started another baby blanket, if you can believe it – one more epic and then I think there’s a lull in the baby train for a bit. I’m only at the centre for this one, if I can truly rest and knit today then I’ll be blocking it tonight, and pick up all around for the edging tomorrow.

Yarn is still Juniper Moon Pategonia. Pattern is still all mine.

This one’s got a pretty epic set of borders, so the middle is comparatively wee. Tonight while it’s blocking (do you hear that optimism it is so impressive) I’m going to work on my SISC socks.

Yarn is Northbound Knitting MCN in Metallurgy, Pattern is Footsie.

Shocker – I’m behind on these. The rules (they are my rules so I can break as many as I want) of the Self-Imposed-Sock-Club say that I’m to knit 10 rounds per sock per day – but it turns out that there’s an invisible asterisk by that rule, and it reads “unless I am rushing a blanket”. So.. behind I am, and it feels right and valid – at least when it comes the socks.

Sigh.