An interesting thing happened over the weekend. I was online, and I saw a hat pattern. The hat pattern had a flicker group. In the flicker group there was a photo of the hat that excited me. I ran to the stash to get some Kathmandu Aran. Why? Because aside from being a cool hat, it TOTALLY reminds me of the Hoh Rain Forest Nate and I just visited. Specifically the nurse logs.

I needed the hat. And now I have one.

It’s a very tall hat, probably because I was using bigger needles than called for, and so I didn’t mind when I had to cut 10 rows to avoid running out of yarn.

It’s neat that I happened upon the pattern so soon after our trip. It’s like I have my own, personal souvenir from the rain forest.

And that makes me happy.

Thank you all for the comments and emails. It’s so nice to feel cared about.

I feel better today. The fever seems to be gone, but I’m keeping an eye on it. My abdominal pain is all but gone. I’m supremely tired, but I feel ok. I’m optimistic.

Yesterday afternoon, I perused the stash and saw two skeins of soft, heathered purple wool without a label that I know I’ve had for 5 years or so, but have no idea where it came from… wait a minute…

Upon typing that last paragraph, I remembered that I used this yarn to knit thrummed mittens way back when Stephanie had her knitalong, so I went to my archives and happened to guess the correct time period. Apparently, I bought the yarn label-less for cheap out of the sale bin at my LYS that is no longer in business. Mystery solved. The funny part is, that the entry I read made mention of “that brief, humorous, and now frequently joked about period of time that I thought I was going to learn to spin.”

That’s really funny.

I mean, it’s totally cracking me up.

Getting back to my original story, I looked in the stash, saw the pretty purple, and decided to whip out Veronica’s legwarmers. She was at school so I couldn’t measure her, but I’d deliberately looked at her leg recently. I held the yarn doubled and cast onto size 10.5 needles 24 stitches. (24. Because she’s dinky. I’ve been calling her my itty-bitty-midget for a couple of weeks). I knit 42 rounds, bound of with a picot, knit the second one like it, and after sleeping in them last night, the mini munchkin wore them to school.

So I’ve checked that off my list, happily. This morning, I finally set the twist on my handspun designated for Liv’s legwarmers, and while I was at it, I did the same for my lovely silk/camel laceweight before taking an artsy picture.

Minimal physical exertion was required. And it may be the most productive thing I do with my day, outside of knitting, don’t worry.

I don’t know what to knit today without going to the yarn store. Liv has changed her requested sweater from a striped hoodie to that gorgeous, cabled yolk sweater in the Tahki Stacy Charles ad in the latest IK. It’s an adult sweater, so it’ll take some modifying, and I want to raise the horizontal band up so the sleeve joins the sweater closer to her armpits if possible, but I know that could be tricky.

In the meantime, I’m probably going to end up going back to the stash to try to come up with something to do with my day.

First of all, and sorry for forgetting this earlier, yes, it’s a kidney infection.

I’m back from the doctor, and apparently, I’m worse off than I thought. I’m not out of the woods for being hospitalized. She upped my prescription to the maximum amount and said if I’m not done with the fevers (apparently, I had a fever in the doctor’s office), chills, and abdominal pain in a day or two, they’re going to do a CT scan and possibly admit me.

Dangit.

This is seriously lame.

And I’m hungry.

Monday sucked. I don’t even know how to adequately express the pain. But I’ll tell you that I felt like an idiot almost passing out in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. And it wasn’t the kidney pain, my chest suddenly seized up and I broke into a sweat and couldn’t see.

I was trying to deal with it myself, breathing, walking around, leaning forward… (the guy in the row of chairs across from me was trying not to stare). When I thought I was going down for sure I called up to the receptionist, who was helping someone, and told her I needed help. Suddenly, there were two nurses and a doctor by me, discussing amongst themselves where they were going to put me, because the rooms were full.

I was humiliated. But I didn’t pass out, and I’m guessing it’s because of the anxiety associated with making such a public spectacle.

So, they wheelchaired me out of the lobby into a room, gave me oxygen, put little, electronic beeping things on me to check stuff. My oxygen level was at 70%, and that was after I was feeling better. I didn’t know they could check that.

Anyway, I was prescribed an antibiotic and sent home once they were convinced I could drive safely. The rest of the day was, incredible as it may sound, worse. They didn’t prescribe any pain medication, and I was so out of my wits with pain, I didn’t even think about the fact that I should have some for several hours. I was in bed, writhing, falling in and out of sleep and sweating like a fish.

At around 6 pm, I woke up and thought to take Tylenol, slept for an additional hour, at which point I felt better enough to get out of bed and eat.

Now I have other pains, I’m tired, and I have a follow up appointment in about an hour.

At some point, I’ll have the energy to talk about our weekend. I apologize if I’m neglecting emails. I’ve had a bunch recently, between school stuff, Girl Scouts, Yahoo groups, family matters, and blog queries, I know that some have gone unaddressed. So, email again if you need something, because if you haven’t heard back from me, you’re lost in my inbox.

I’m only writing a blog post right now because I’m trying to kill time before I leave for the doctor in an hour, and all I have the strength to do is writhe and moan. Time crawls when you’re doing nothing but writhing and moaning. So hopefully, by posting, I’ll be a little distracted.

That back pain that showed up on Thursday stayed with me all weekend. I managed it with Tylenol and Advil, and now it’s worse. I called the doctor and they said I might have a kidney infection. I’m miserable. It hurts so bad I’m nauseated.

Anyway, Nate and I had a fantastic weekend, except that neither one of us slept well on that miserable mattress. We both woke up at least 4 times a night, mine made worse by the back/potential kidney pain. And that’s totally unfair, because Nate’s main objective this weekend was to get some good sleep, and I was looking forward to the same, not having Clark to wake me.

I finished knitting the sampler purse, now I need to attach an icord strap.

It sucks in at the bottom, as a result of my getting better with holding the yarns and maintaining tension as I progressed. I have to keep telling myself that it doesn’t matter, because it was a sampler purse to learn a technique. It still bugs me. But it’s pretty.

And that’s all I can write. I have to go lay down. If it gets much worse, I’m not going to be able to drive myself to my appointment, and that would be horribly inconvenient.

I have zillions of pictures from the weekend that I can’t wait to share, once I get my wits back and this pain goes away.

This is tremendously fun. I’m trying to figure out how to knit a sweater for myself that will be flattering because the dropped sleeve,bunchy-ribbing-around-the-hips thing is not going to happen.

Regardless, I’m going to knit one for Clark. And possibly everyone else I can think of. I love it. And the COLOR!!! It’s more than I can resist.

Today is my darling and delightful, brilliant and desirable, charming, witty, amazing, and incredible husband’s birthday. We’re going away. I’m not ready.

So, I wasn’t feeling too good yesterday, and I was totally scrooge-ing on Halloween (which ended up being pretty nice. The girls went out with various friends, and Nate and I enjoyed a quiet dinner before he went back downstairs to work while I knit and waited for trick-or-treaters. Aside from Clark throwing food all over the floor, it was a pleasant evening).

Aaand we’re back.

As I was saying, I wasn’t feeling too good yesterday, so I indulged a little bit and sat down with a book, 5 colors of Lamb’s Pride bits from the stash, and a sampler purse pattern to learn a new knitting technique.

It’s fair isle with one color in each hand, so you throw with the right hand and pick with the left, twisting the yarns around each other such that there aren’t any floats or tangles.

It’s awesome. I love it. I had soooo much fun. I always enjoy knitting, but yesterday, it was something more. It was sheer delight. Glee. Almost like I’d rediscovered the craft.

I’ve finished the color pattern, but I’d like it to be about twice as long, so I’m going to do some improvising. Probably just repeating the pattern but switching the colors around.

I got a picture of Abby in her legwarmers today.

And it’s occurring to me that Abby ends up with a lot more of my handknits than any other single person. I’m not sure how she manages that, because it seems to me that she shows the least interest. My only guess is that somehow, her method of request comes out more as a need than a want. I get suckered in. I’ve GOT to knit for my other children before they start calling “favorites”.

I have SO much to do today. There’s the cleanup from Halloween. I need to clean up from before Halloween. Nate and I are running away tomorrow for the weekend, and there is so much to do to prepare for that, getting everything in order for the kids… I’m tired just thinking about it. And my back hurts. I have no clue what I did, but I’m going to take a hot, epsom salt bath now before I do anything else.

Halloween is my least favorite holiday. It’s totally pointless, beyond providing the kids a good time and bonuses for the CEO’s of candy companies. And that’s all fine, for ONE day, but Halloween always manages to stretch itself out over about 5. By the time it’s actually Halloween, I’M SO SICK OF IT! And here we are. The school and evening festivities in front of me, and I’d rather spend the day in bed. Of course, I don’t feel well, which contributes. But really, Halloween is pretty lame as far as holidays go.

That being said, here are some pictures of the pumpkin carving party Nate hosted Monday night.

There were about 20 pumpkins in all, spread out among 15 families. I’ve been a scrooge the past three years of this event and haven’t carved one myself, but the girls carved their own this year and there wasn’t any blood! A definite success in my book.

I finished the Esther hat for my friend Lisa.

It’s such a pretty pattern. I hope she likes it. I knit this one out of Cascade 220, and as far as I can recall, it’s my first time using this yarn. It was fine to knit with, and it’s nice and soft for straight wool, but incredibly splitty on the crocheted edging.

I’m not exactly sure what weight it is. I think it’s laceweight, which is what I was going for. It looks finer than fingering to me.

I have about 680 yards, I believe. I’m going to find an intricate little lace stitch to knit on small needles, and make a scarf. The reason I bought this roving back in January, is because one of the samples in my silk spinning class was a quiviat silk wimple in a beautiful little lace pattern.

Do any of you happen to recognize that pattern or stitch? I don’t. I know the pictures are bad, the lighting was horrible in that room. Dark and fluorescent.

Anyway, it had the same look to it that the camel/silk roving had in the marketplace, so I bought it. However, I don’t think I’d really use a wimple, so instead, I’m going to make a large, yet delicate scarf.

Abby’s legwarmers are done. She’s wearing them at school today, so I don’t have a picture for you yet. They’re like my muppet monster legwarmers. 2×2 ribbing with a picot bind off at the bottom.

Next up, I’m knitting an Esther Williams hat for a friend of mine that just had brain surgery, and had a third of her long blonde hair shaved off.

I need to make Liv’s legwarmers out of the tweedy yarn I spun for her this summer.

Veronica wants legwarmers before a sweater.

I’m dying to play with the romney. I want to blend it with alpaca and silk bits and spin up small amounts of different combinations that I will knit into samples for my sweater. I hope to dye it soon.

This week, we have Halloween (oh, the sock hop on Friday was SO much fun, and we looked great. Even me in a poodle skirt. I didn’t look nearly as humungous as I expected. I hope to get a picture of all of us), and Nate and I are going away for the weekend, so I need to get the house and kids prepared for that.

And I have to go shopping.