Mid-Week Miscellanea...

It's Wednesday.
It's cold.
It's way beyond cold. (In the teens)
Needless to say, my whole system is reacting to it.
Yuck.

I missed St Brigid's Silent Poetry Day. Since I did? I want to direct you to the blog of a friend of mine, Geraldine, who is a very talented lady. She's into fiber arts, sure, but she's also written and published a very good vegetarian cookbook Not Just for Vegetarians: Delicious Homestyle Cooking, The Meatless Way. These days she's writing a lot of wonderful poetry and exploring other avenues of creativity (specifically photography). Had I posted a poem for St Brigid's? It might have been this one (if Geraldine would have allowed me to post it that is...)

Anyway. Maybe that makes up for my missing it?

Today was a lost day, in that the muscles, joints, and tendons reacted to the cold in a very negative way. So I hibernated with microwave hot packs and muscle relaxers. I did spend a little time online, and visited Margene's blog as I'm liable to do most days.

Margene was in a quandry over the next sweater she wants to knit (Margene is a gifted sweater knitter, but I'm so very impressed that she's committed to knitting a sweater a month!) and then mentioned a Ravelry group that has sprung up to knit an entire vest in the short month of February - you've got it, it's called Vest-uary. Margene was considering doing a vest this month and earning the newest blog button for her sidebar.

And you know me, right? If there's a blog button to be earned? I'm all over that one. So I jumped on board (it's in my sidebar)...I immediately went to pull out my Noro Iro, bought to make My First Vest by Leslye Solomon (there is no real link to this pattern, but you can google it and find it at several online stores - the pattern's not even in Ravelry for some odd reason...).

I wound up the first skein, and started to knit it, and suddenly thought What is wrong with me?...I'm knitting BMFA Raven Korppi socks:

BMFA Raven Valkyrie Seraphim (pardon yet again the fact that this piece does not open up well to show the lace - there really IS another line of holes down the left side of that center line...but one-handed photography doesn't allow it to be seen - wait till it's blocked, okay?)

And I swatched the Noro for Vest-uary:

Do you sense a trend?

DULL...DARK...BROODING...(this wouldn't be February would it?)

It's a bit better now that I've started the second skein and you can see the stripes of color in the Iro (plum, emerald, charcoal, taupe, gray, navy - just my very favorites!)


And of course, there's still the forest green chemo hat on the needles too! More dark.

And why have I put so many things on the needles in the first place? I mean besides the fact that I'm suffering from a severe case of Startitis?

Well, one of the things that has been bothering me in this aching chilly-ness is a tendonitis-y sort of thing in my left hand. So each of those projects is a different size needle (and the chemo hat isn't making it into my knitting time very much because it's a chunky acrylic that is killing my hands all by itself - only a couple rows a day allowed). So I've got 4 projects going with size 1.5, 3, 7, and 11 needles...and I'm rotating them.

I got up briefly this afternoon to check email and came back to my knitting chair to find this:
Why, yes, Mommie, I did take your seat, what of it?

(sigh)