I seem to have my own little version of Devil’s Tower, thanks to a humungus ice dam (now all melted, thankfully). For anyone who doesn’t know what an ice dam is … see wikipedia.
What to do about it? (sigh) Handyman or road trip?
Believe it or not, I have actually finished a knitting project! Not that I have any proof, mind you. I was so excited (and overdue!) about giving it to its recipient, that I gave it away before I had a chance to photograph it. Bad blogger!
You will be seeing it soon, though; my Mom and I are both test-knitting it because I'm writing it up as a free pattern. It's just a little winter accessory that's quick to knit up. I did a lot of thinking about how I wanted to design it, but the actual knitting only took a couple of sittings.
So what the heck have I been up to if I haven't been doing any knitting?
Well, lately my crafty ambitions have been tending much more towards baking than knitting. Knitting is a creative activity that appeals to my brain, but baking has always been my comfort activity. When I'm under stress or feeling overwhelmed, that's usually when I usually start baking a lot. I don't know what it is - something about it feels so natural and basic and comforting to me.
I've been working my way through Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day and have made six or seven loaves in the last few weeks. I just can't get enough of it. This book really makes it easy to make time in your life for homemade bread. I whip up a batch of bread dough on the weekend and let it rise for a couple of hours, then throw it in the refrigerator. Then a couple of times a week, I grab a chunk of dough from the fridge and bake a loaf. My favorite recipe so far as been a loaf made from whole wheat flour, steel cut oats, and dates, with some raw sugar sprinkled on the crust.
I also have the itch to sew something. I finally checked out the store Crafty Planet in Northeast Minneapolis and feel like I've been missing out on a treasure. I knew it existed but somehow the way I imagined this store does not do justice to the actual place. I think because it has both yarn and fabric, I imagined that neither selection would be great. Instead what I found was a carefully edited selection of fantastic yarns and fabrics. I left there dying to sew something. Unfortunately, I have a bad track record with sewing. Everything takes forever and I feel like I'm constantly asking for help. Knitting is much more my speed, yet I lust after all the beautiful fabrics out there; so I think I need to spend some time increasing my sewing confidence. Does anyone have recommendations for easy sewing projects to start me out?
If you're looking for inspiration for any sort of fabric project, visit the Midtown Global Market. Sometimes I go there just to browse the unique shops. Sometimes they have craft shows or special ethnic celebrations ... there's always something interesting and visually stimulating happening.
We were there recently with my son's mother-in-law, who is from Hong Kong. Every year she treats us to dinner for Chinese New Year which this year was on January 26th. It's a lunar event so the date varies from year to year. Anyway, we went to the Jade Asian Restaurant in the Midtown Global Market on Friday, and saw a really excellent Dragon Dance.* She knows the owner of the restaurant, so we got a look at the Dragon up close and personal.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
These performers were fantastic. I thought it was one of the best Dragon Dances I've seen in Minneapolis.
Whether there's an occasion or not, plan to visit the Midtown Global Market. It's a feast for the senses, a potpourri of ethnic colors and flavors and smells. It really is one of the most colorful and delightful shopping experiences you can have under one roof.
*My friend refers to it as Dragon Dance, but I think it is more accurately Lion Dance. Costume is more consistent with a lion, and Dragon Dance, I'm told, involves more dancers in the costume. Anyway, it was great!
And where did the time go? I had intentions of getting so much done but ....
That’s a lot of didn'ts. What the heck did I do?
And now it's Sunday and tomorrow I go back to work. Four days off ... gone just like that, without having accomplished all that much, but feeling just fine about it!
My husband finished the chemo part of his chemo+radiation treatment today, and has his last radiation treatment tomorrow. Two more chemo cycles to go.
This post has nothing at all to do with knitting.
It has been difficult getting into the Holidays this year, there’s no denying it.
Yesterday I was all caught up in how everyone seems to be struggling this year … why? I’m sure there are lots of reasons, we all have our own. The economy for a lot of us, late Thanksgiving/short shopping season maybe. All the gloom and doom in the media doesn’t help. Our own unique challenges this year fur-sure (that’s Minnesotan for certainly). Fear, ya, that too.
I was noticing (and lamenting) yesterday that a lot of people in my neighborhood and along my drive to work who normally decorate like crazy haven’t decorated much or at all this year. My front porch is not decorated this year.
But my drive in this morning ....
We’ve had quite a lot of snow over the last week or so. We’ve gotten used to the roads being greasy. It forces a person to slow down a little. That’s not a bad thing, slowing down a little.
It snowed some last night, and during my drive to work today, we received another light dusting. Not a problem … I was just putzing along, mentally inventorying where I am with regard to Christmas preparations. (I’m not doing too badly, actually, now that I finally have some Christmas spirit … getting the tree Saturday is what did it for me.)
Anyway, I was smitten by how beautiful things are. There’s something special about buildings tuckpointed and roofed in white, tree branches and trunks, and even grasses outlined in white … and weak, cold-blue shadows on a pristine white blanket.
So, thank you, Mother Nature, for filling in the cracks, chinks, and battle scars, with some Christmas decorating of your own.
Happy Holidays to all!
Well, I obviously didn't post about my second gift project yesterday, like I said I would! It turns out I didn't get a chance to give the gift, so it'll have to wait a little while.
In the meantime, I am working on Dad's sock, in hopes that I'll finish it by Christmas, and watching A Muppets Christmas Special on Hulu. Have you discovered Hulu yet? I'm addicted to it and it's almost completely replaced actual TV watching in my household. (In case you don't know about Hulu yet, it's a website that allows you to watch lots of network television for free, with minimal advertising.).
I have to admit, I feel far less Christmas-y this year than normal. I guess it must be a combination of pregnancy exhaustion, stress over my husband's unemployment, worry about my dad, and the fact that my sister won't be making it home for Christmas this year. Nothing seems normal and the holidays feel like too much work. I really think more than anything else, it's the pregnancy exhaustion. Ever since the baby started to drop (in the last week or so), I've been sluggish, uncomfortable and completely exhausted. Today, we're totally snowed in and it's been nice to do nothing all day but cook some yummy soup, take naps, and work on my knitting. That's more my speed this year... not the holiday parties, holiday shopping, and holiday decorating.
At least I'm not as much of a grinch as Oscar the Grouch, though:
Hope you're staying warm and feeling the Christmas spirit more than I am....
Andrea wrote in her blog that it’s been a long three weeks. Now it’s four. And during all this time surprisingly little knitting has been accomplished.
Four weeks ago today my husband had his initial surgery for colorectal cancer. The bowel did not resume normal function as expected post op, leading to a condition called ileus. His colon became severely distended, eventually leading to a rupture at the anastomosis site. They put drains into him to drain out and clean up after some very nasty leaking and infection.
After a week or so with drains and tubes we don't even care to talk about, the docs decided the rupture would not heal without diverting the bowel. So they constructed a colostomy (planned to be temporary), and outfitted him with a bag. (Don't you just love wikipedia and wiktionary?)
Things do seem to be looking up. (Can you believe that getting a colostomy bag is “looking up”?) But, yesterday a CT scan show multiple additional abscesses! So later today we have placement of additional drains in the two largest of these new abscesses.
What was to have been maybe 5 days in the hospital has been four weeks and a day, and is looking like it will be 35 days … if everything goes well from here on. He does look better than he did there for a while ... but it sure ain't pretty!
Sigh …. as promised, no photos.
I don't like to talk about a lot of really personal stuff, and I promise, no photos.
Andrea really has been overwhelmed with crazies lately .... all that goes along with being pregnant, getting ready for the baby, keeping up with home routine, and being crazy-busy at work.
Another really, really overwhelming "crazy" she didn't mention, that we all in fact could barely say out loud even among ourselves until the last few days, is that her dad, my husband, was diagnosed recently with colorectal cancer.
What a shock! The whole family has ricocheted between denial and sheer panic for the last two weeks! We’ve kind of settled in for the moment at least at very concerned but optimistic.
We’re through the diagnostic and screening processes. The tumor was found on routine colonoscopy. It is malignant, Stage I or possibly very early Stage II. The doctors assure us that we have every reason to be optimistic that the tumor can be removed completely and he will lead a perfectly normal life.
So in a couple of days we meet with the surgical team to discuss next steps and set up a date for his surgery. Then, once all the pathology results are in, we meet with the oncology team to decide if chemo and/or radiation will follow.
So the bottom line on colonoscopies: Ya, the prep is gross and awful, and the colonoscopy itself sounds so rude and crude a person doesn't want to think about it, much less talk about it! But folks, if you’ve achieved the age where your doctor says you should have that routine colonoscopy, or if someone in your family has had colon cancer, don't put it off like my husband did. It might be icky and no fun at all, but it pales in comparison to hearing the words “we’ve found ...colon cancer.”
We'll be beating back the crazies on this one for a while yet so keep the needles handy. Clickity, clickity, click ……
Monday I was at a job location with some coworkers, all women. We’re all about the same age. We four were the advance crew, setting up for a project prior to the client’s arrival the next morning.
CR says something like, "I thought MG might come over and help set up … but I guess she’s just planning on showing up for lunch tomorrow, when the hard work is all done." (Now understand that this was all in good fun and we'd have carried on the same babble if she were standing right there ... and she'd be dishing it right back at us. She’s a stitch.)
“Oh, did you hear one of her girls is expecting, again?” asked SW.
CR said, “How many grandchildren does that make for her?”
“I don’t know but it's a bunch,” said ML.
"About a hundred and twelve, I think," chortled SW. She asked ML, “You have grandkids, don’t you?”
ML said, “Ya, from my husband’s side, not mine … but I still consider them mine. We have two.”
I’m saying nothing, nothing at all, just keeping quiet, staying on-task, doing what needs to get done through all of this idle chatter.
SW says, “You know, the three of us (referring to herself, CR and me) should have a contest to see which of us gets to be a grandma first.”
I stopped in mid-motion, turned around and looked from SW to CR to ML and back again. I could feel myself slowly turning color, on fire, exploding ... and I blurted out, in spite of clamping my hands tightly over my mouth … “I WIN!!! I WIN!!!”
Andrea, your turn ….
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