Feb 27 2009
I’m coming back
This time for real. It’s been a long hard winter that seems to have started last summer. After a wonderful trip to the Pacific Northwest of the US where there was sun and warmth, coming back to a record wet, gray and cold English summer was a bit of a crash to say the least. My health and our move in late August turned out to be much harder to recover from than I anticipated. As the winter took hold I found myself frozen in my body and as a result I never did get back to blogging as I had intended to.
Happily spring appears to be trying to break through and with it I am experiencing a renewal of my own. I recently started a new medication that while still early days has me feeling optimistic about getting some of my spark back. I’m not looking for a miracle cure but to have a bit more fire burning in me is a very welcome change. There have been treatments in the past which have given me a little boost but unfortunately they all seem to be short lived. Not wanting to count on this boost being a permanent thing I am taking it one day at a time and trying to simply appreciate each day for what it gives me without putting stock in what it may or may not mean for the future. In the true spirit of zen – living each moment as it comes.
In my hiatus I was not all together a slug. I did finish the pair of socks I started way back in August and have gotten much love and warming of my feet out of them during the cold days.
Of course with my feet all toasty warm, my hands were feeling a bit left out so I obliged them with this lovely pair of mittens.
Which led to my husband wanting his own knitted warmth, so I obliged with these fingerless gloves. He started working for the Royal Mail in December so he needed something to keep his hands warm but left his fingers free to sort mail as he delivered.
In making these I did my first attempt at knitting on two circulars as opposed to DPN’s and must say that I am a committed convert. The speed at which I knit these was truly amazing and I found the method to be overall much less fiddly than using the DPNs. I have since cast on a pair of socks on two circs, and while they have been sidelined for another project (of which I will write more on another day) I am pleased with the speed and ease. If you haven’t tried the two circs, you should give it a go. There are some great tutorials on you tube to get you started.
And to round it out, and show that I do indeed do other things besides knit – a project that I had been planning to do for ages but never made the time to do. Recovering an old stool that we had in our kitchen. Previously it was a robin’s egg blue which was nice, but the giant hold in the middle with foam sticking out kind of ruined it’s aesthetic. A square of oil cloth, a few minutes of labor and hey ho – a newly covered stool that fits nicely into my slowly becoming retro red kitchen. I really love this stool now.
There have been other projects, but I won’t go into them all. In my flickr you can see some more and if you happen over to Beneath Our Feet and follow it to my family flickr you can see some projects around the house that we have been working on over the winter. I have lots planned for the spring and looking forward to being back and sharing them with you!
