Brick House, Cherry Leaf, and Where Did the Week Go?

The weekend away was totally wonderful. Wonderful food, wonderful wine, wonderful accomodations, wonderful weather -- no high temps and no high humidity! A very much living-in-the-moment weekend, just what a 32nd anniversary weekend ought to be.






Then reality hit. We got dropped off at LAX on Monday morning to the mother-of-all standing room only out the door on the sidewalk waits. We waited to check in. We waited to drop off our luggage. We waited to be searched. And in the middle of it all, a phone call from home about another medical emergency. As if we could do anything about it then. Finally get home, drop everything, rush to the hospital. Where we spent most of the week. I finally finished unpacking yesterday, a week after we got back. It was Nana who had the health crisis and she is now in a 24 hour care facility to finish convalescing. I think my nerves are recovering. But now I need another vacation!

Not much knitting got done at first, although I did end up taking knitting finally while sitting at bedsides. The new Brick House Monkey Socks are coming along; I'm ready to start the heel flap on the first sock. This is being made from KnitPicks' new sock yarn, Felici, in the Clay colorway. The yarn is nice and soft and I like the staggered stripes in this one.

At one point I was so desperate for something to keep my hands busy that I picked up the very neglected second sock of the Welsh Country stockings and got back to working on some straight stockinette stitch. This sock was definitely suffering from second sock syndrome, but I think that after this last week I'm getting back into the groove for it.

However, I've been desperate to be knitting something with some concentration involved in it. The socks are nice, but the patterns are easy; my other current knitting, the two blankets, are just garter stitch. (The Icarus has been abandoned; new yarn will be acquired at some future point.) I needed something that I would have to concentrate on in order to get my brain and nerves to relax. Garter stitch may be relaxing, but it still leaves the mind too much room to think. And worry. So I cast about for something to cast on and finally decided on the beautiful light fingering weight yarn that Roxie sent me a good while back. I perused my books to find something that I could make with a thousand yards and the Shoulder Shrug in Cherry Leaf Pattern from Victorian Lace Today leapt out at me. I used Ravelry to see what other knitters had done with this pattern and the choice was clear. I cast on and started knitting this afternoon. But not until the laundry and the bills were caught up.

I'll be visiting Bloglines soon and trying to post more regularly now. I'm so behind on my Ravelry notebook and groups! Hopefully as things ease up around here I'll get back to more normal activities. I miss visiting with you all each day! Sorry there is no time to add links for everything in this post, but it's time to start dinner and then the nightly visit at the care center. And then hopefully more lace knitting. And a glass of wine. And maybe cheesecake. Or chocolate. A girl's gotta have her stressbusters.