Yopping Update #13 - making progress

I am making slow and steady progress on both my fisherwoman's sweater and my knit slip love shawl.  This despite being away from Monday - Wednesday and being sick with a rotten cold from Wednesday and still counting.

My son is arriving on Wednesday for the month of October and he wants to go camping so finishing the sweater is my main priority now. 

Stitch marker shows where I had tinked back last week

So far so good with the arm. I am knitting a few hours a night and switching between the two projects if the cabling on the sweater gets too tedious. 

three sections done this week, three more to go until done

Thank goodness for Netflix as I sit most days in my jammies sipping cold medication.  We have been watching Fleabag, and Kim's Convenience.  Now they are done and I need to find a new binge.  Any suggestions will be appreciated. 

No pool this week because of my cold, and only one short walk on Tuesday.  I will walk to my hair appointment this afternoon.  I am sooooo overdo and will be glad to get my shaggy mop under control. 

Fall is truly here.  The juncos and nuthatches are emptying the bird feeder rapidly, and the stellar jays are happily picking up the left overs.  The poor cat thinks he must be on high alert watching their comings and goings so he is spending most of his days on the porch observing the antics.  The hummingbirds have been squabbling over their feeder, and the squirrels have completely removed all the apples from our trees.  Everyone is getting ready for winter.

My dear grand-daughter turned 9 months old on Thursday and my daughter called us for a nice video chat.  Baby girl is now standing on her own for a few seconds at a time, and babbling away to her gramma in Canada. 

my daughter calls her the boobasaurus

Now, back to that sweater - it needs to be done before the rainy windy camping trip on the Pacific West Coast!

Yopping Update #12 - A lot of knitting - and some tinking

 

My week started out with taking my car to get a new clutch.  Mucho dollaros!   Sigh. 

On Wednesday I went for lunch and saw the movie "Brittany runs a Marathon" with a childhood friend.  It was good to get out and it even turned sunny for a bit of a walk after the movie.

It was my son's birthday on Thursday.   I have been a mother for 34 years.  He is coming out at the beginning of October for a few weeks so we will celebrate then.  It will be so good to have him here for an extended visit.  It is hard to have both my children living far from my home. 

I made quite a bit of progress on the Fisherwoman's sweater this week, and it was clear I didn't have enough yarn to finish despite using some extra my sister had given me.   So yesterday I took the sweater to my local yarn shop to see if they had something to match enough to finish it up.  She did find the perfect match with some Briggs and Little Sport yarn and if I knit it two strands together it will work very well.  I split the hank into two balls last night and then started to finish the front.  In a fit of pique I decided to tink  (tink is knit backwards) back about 5 inches of the 12 inches of work I had done on the back so I could use the original yarn to finish the front just so there would be no doubt that the front will look uniform.  It was a lot of unravelling but I kept repeating my mantra "No one ever regrets pulling out some work, but they often regret not doing so". 

It is pouring with rain here today on this the first day of Autumn.   I suspect I will need this sweater very soon so it will be my priority to finish it this week. 

When not knitting (and then un-knitting) the sweater, I picked up my Knit Slip Love shawl which is a mosaic knit.  I have finished the third mosaic pattern and I am on to the next garter dot stitch.  It is fairly easy to remember the pattern of each right side row, and then each wrong side row is just knit the knit stitches and slip the slip stitches.  Not too bad TV knitting. 

On the arm front I have made it to the pool eight days in a row to do my arm exercises and yesterday I.....drum roll please....could do up my bra the proper way by reaching behind my back!.  This is progress people.  (and if too much information, my apologies). 

I also attended my first Tai Chi class on Friday.  I signed up for 11 classes - an hour a week.  It wasn't easy, but I think it will be good for me both on the physical and mental level.

Yesterday was a memorial at church.  It was a communion service dedicated to my friend who died on the 10th.  I wept through most of it and have been weeping off and on since.  This death has hit me hard.  I am doing all I can to take care of myself and it is all I can do right now.

Tomorrow I will go spend a few days with his widow.  I will help her navigate the phone calls and paperwork that must be done now.  I think it will be a help to me as well to feel I am doing something.

I have a scratchy throat today and fear I am fighting a virus of some sort.  I did have a shingles vaccine on Tuesday and have been quite tired all week.  So today lots of vitamin C and staying warm in my jammies on the couch.   Netflix, me and my fisherwoman's sweater.  A good trio on a rainy rainy day.  I have started watching the series 'Kim's Convenience' and it is a very good, light-hearted show with lots of laughs.  I need the laughs these days. 

I did get to my Croatian lesson on Friday, but I haven't been practicing as I should so mostly we had tea and chatted in English.  I will get back to it soon.  I think once I am feeling better I will look for a conversational Croatian meet-up group so I am forced to practice listening and speaking.

I have linked to other Year of Project bloggers on the right hand side of my blog.  That way you can get to their posts even if you are not a Ravelry member. 

I can't leave you without a picture of my dear daughter, my grand-daughter and my son-in-law.  A beautiful family!  So much love in this photo.