Whole Lotta

There is a whole lotta taking care of Momma going on, here at Yarnkettle Cottage. Helping Momma heal is painstaking overwhelming work. 

Burt feels it is best to direct his focus to my foot area. Melissa has been assigned the task of keeping a watchful eye on Momma. She may decide she needs to pee in the middle of a cat therapy session.

I am continuing to heal and even feeling well enough to get a bit of my knitting mojo back. I found it hard to find and stay in comfortable positions. I did experience some brain fuzziness and concentration issues. But each day is getting better.

I finished a pair of socks for D, in some 70s appliance colors. 

I also may have finally found the right shawl pattern for my Kuni yarn I bought a while ago.

I tried a pattern I love the look of but my make one's were really not right. Guess I just love a yarn over instead. This is Half Circle Shawl by Jennifer Jones. While my post surgery brain was not firing on all cylinders, I found this a bit confusing. But working through it, it is a nice simple concept and repeat. Once I got going it is almost as easy as my plain socks to knit. Just what my brain requested.

I think the plain simple pattern will show off the color changes nicely too.

And Still Recovering

I am a person that is happy to stay home. I am very comfortable being alone. Wait, I have cats I am never truly alone at home. I am rarely bored because I learned long ago how to entertain myself, and I amuse easily.

The last few weeks have been very frustrating. Everything takes more time, planning and awareness. I am not able to stay comfortable longer than 10 minutes or so. At least that is what it feels like. The cats are frustrated because every time they get comfortable on my lap, I have to move. I swear I can feel at least two screws. OK fine I probably can't but it does feel that way.

On the plus side we have not wanted for people feeding us. Meals have been arranged and delivered. The food has been flavorful as well as plenty and easy for Hubby to prepare. I have a great safe environment, even if it looks a bit same every day.

My husband has been loving, kind, understanding and encouraging through the whole event. He really understands what I am going through even if it is different than what he went through. Seriously he has done more than I could have ever hoped for. We are a team.

So Yeah I may be frustrated and a tinge bored, but I am well cared for and safe. Hubby will even have a new pair of socks soon.

Recovering

So my world has gotten rather small. I had my surgery. It went well. I am so happy to be on the road to recovery.

But... the changes are astounding. Everything needs to be figured out over and over. How do I do things without hurting myself further? How can I make something into the easiest most efficient process? And most importantly how do I feed the cats?!

It took a few days after the surgery to even feel human and somewhat competent.  Now I have moved into the I should be doing more stage. Oddly enough I really want to be doing household tasks! I want so badly to feel productive. I am just a bit obsessed with laundry for some reason.

I have been knitting and doing some exercises, but mostly my time is taken up with sitting uncomfortably and trips to the toilet. My world exists in two rooms.

I am safe. I am cared for. I am healing.

But I feel like I should be more me. I just have to tell myself I am super busy knitting myself back together.  I am productive. I'm growing bone. I am where I need to be, doing what I need to do.

I'd say give myself a break, but... that's how I got here in the first place.

dreaming of shawls

I have wanted a Catkin shawl since I saw one at a fiber festival. Or was that several? It was never a trendy pattern like some others but I loved it nonetheless. I didn't buy the pattern till several years later at Rhinebeck. I finally admitted that I could make something so complex, one day.

And more time went by knitting other things. When we moved to Oregon and I had a little time I was busy exploring the new yarn stores. I thought to myself finally I am going to make my Catkin! I spent some lovely air conditioned hours gazing at yarns. Remember it was over 100 our first few weeks here, I looked for any excuse to dally in AC!

I finally picked out two complimentary colors that I thought I could wear with just about anything, blue and grey.

I diligently knit up a swatch, making mistakes, ripping back and learning the way things should look.

Isn't it pretty? Then I let life take over. I was busy settling in, bringing Burt home, finding a job, handling D's very serious accident and rehab. Life it just keeps going on. And I am very thankful for that.

But the shawl is no closer to being a real object than when I took those photos. Sigh...

Now that I've had my accident maybe I should dust it off and make myself a shawl of ? Healing? Good Thoughts? Gratefulness?

A shawl that I love?

Never brag

Especially if you brag about never having broken a bone. Looks like D will be taking care of me for a while. Burt is all for sitting in the comfy chair with me. Mellie has decided Momma can go to the bathroom by herself if she insists on taking crutches with her.

Time for a nice complicated shawl of healing right?

Ahoj knitting content

So do we talk about new year's resolutions or can we just skip that part and say I am always working on being a better me and sometimes I am not as successful as I would like. We good?

I did pick up some new habits that I will be carrying into the new year. Want to hear about them? Of course you do!

I finally pulled out a nice thick journal I had bought a while ago and started writing in it. Maybe to compensate for not writing here? Maybe, I've just wanted to start working through some things and journaling is something I've wanted to try for a while. Plus it is a covert way to fill my school supplies love basket. 

I made a few entries and they confirmed that one of the things I really wanted to do was start exercising regularly again. This time I instituted a guilt free and recordless plan. I tend to beat myself up a lot and I wanted to get out of the "shoulda" way of thinking. I shoulda did this, I shoulda done that. Now I just go do it for however long I want or I take a night off. There are no rules or goals other than checking the box or not. Personally it has been rather freeing. 

Another thing I identified as a priority was catching my knitting journal up. I was a year and a half behind at one time. I am proud to say that I ended 2019 caught up and ready to do better. I realized how much I missed writing up my knitting when I saw how much was sneaking into my new journaling habit. That's fine I can still talk about it over there too. Heck my old knitting journals worked as my first journaling endeavor anyways. I can split them, I can join them, I can do whatever I want with them. No guilt!

And speaking of doing what I want I made a couple of ornaments with leftover sock yarn. Though I only managed to snap a pic of one of them. My little pink one is at work hanging by my name plate.  It is super cute too.

I finished up some socks by the end of the year too. I started these the first time D went to Czechia and they sat and sat. When I went to Czechia I made sure they came with me. I ripped back the few inches I had, and turned them into my Czech Monkeys.

I just love the look of Monkey socks. It is one of those patterns that seems written on my soul. They look lovely but are not too hard to knit and easy to memorize.

One of the things I found in Czechia were cute little graph paper notebooks. I bought this one first then allowed myself to go back and get a bigger one and one more like a school notebook. See I told you I love school supplies. I have learned that it is easier for me to rewrite a pattern. I love the little squares but don't always need to count them. I have figured out a way that makes sense to me and will most likely be rewriting more.

These socks are just the splash of color I need mid winter. Even when my winter is no longer white, I love some funky colored socks!

This my languishing project that will be getting attention this year. Bouncy squishy handspun yarn, that I need to learn from. I want to make mitts or mittens from it but I need to write out the pattern for the gauge I'm getting. I have Ann Budd's handy book of projects at multiple gauges that I need to narrow down to my specific gauge and write out. See I knew those little notebooks would be handy.

So now that we're caught up I have some new yarn to take pictures of so that I can post here. Yeah I had a nice time in a yarn store yesterday. I even logged it into Ravelry the same day! I am winning!

Ahoj Brno!

Long time no write!? I've been busy and not busy. But today let's talk about my lovely trip to Brno Czechia.

After much time spent actually getting there, we arrived safe, sound and hungry. Where to eat? Let's go get some Czech food and beer. D had pilsner goulash and dumplings while I had "Moravian Sparrow" which was not sparrow but pork with dumplings and the best cabbage I've ever had.

Excited but travel weary and ready to eat!

 We took a long walk up the hill to the castle. Spectacular views everywhere. We took a tour of the dungeons and left ready for fresh air and happiness. 

Brno has a whole cabbage market/farmer's market. I wanted to buy everything every time I walked through. Fun fact paprika is the Czech word for peppers.

I loved visiting and would visit again! Don't worry I found a couple of yarn stores that I can tell you about too...