Kiss My Knits!

Earlier this year, I laid off doing the Couch to 5K program for a while, but with the weather so nice, I was ready to start back up. After a week or so of walking 2 1/2 miles a day, I gave it a go today. I’m not dead, so that’s good! I am, however, as red as always. I’ve written about this before. It’s strictly a cosmetic issue, as near as I can tell.

I think from now on, I’m not going to use beats per minute as an indicator of how good a workout is. I’m going to use a color scale, like dentists do when bleaching your teeth. Today: strawberry syrup. Good workout!

Having my skin turn this red is probably bad for my complexion, but then, dying of health problems related to obesity would probably be even worse for it, so I can deal.

Flickr now allows uploading of video, so let’s try it out and see how it works. Is it visible?

This is my husband and daughter last night. Darling, this is not what they mean by “winding down for bedtime.”

Check out what Turtlegirl76 got me! This is 360 yards of “Luxury” sock yarn from Creatively Dyed Yarn in colorway Saranac Lake. The fiber content is 80% Merino, 10% Cashmere, 10% Nylon.

I met Dianne, who owns Creatively Dyed, when Turtlegirl76 and I went on a road trip to Greer to visit her yarn shop. That was before she shut her doors to concentrate exclusively on dyeing. She kept her shop open past business hours to show us some spinning tricks. Dianne is crazy talented and extremely nice. She’s also the hardest working woman in the yarn biz.

Turtlegirl points out that Saranac Lake is very close to her hometown in New York, which no doubt drew her to this particular skein. Thanks, Turtlegirl! It fits my color sense perfectly and it’ll make a gorgeous pair of socks. What a great belated birthday present!

In other yarn news, the Koolhaas is about to be unraveled. Here we see one pattern repeat done. This was not a good yarn choice. While lofty and beautiful, it’s too unevenly spun for cables to really pop. It’s also striping, which isn’t the look I was hoping for.

Instead, I think this will get made into My So-Called Scarf which I’ve been wanting to try. We’ll see how that goes.

In Jayne hat news, I’m working on mid-March orders now, so that’s going well. Can’t Stop The Serenity venues are getting their requests in, which is good since the wait is creeping back up and is at the seven week mark now. I want everyone to be cunningly hatted at these events, so I’ll keep plugging away!

I mentioned a medical mystery involving my mouth last week, and then I never followed up. Bad me. So here it is:

I have a weird taste in my mouth. It gets stronger and fades with the days, but it’s there. It’s kind of metallic, but not rusty like blood. It’s a little bitter and astringent as well. I have no clue what it is.

Last week when it was so strong that I kept thinking, “what is that taste and why won’t it go away?” every ten seconds, I made an appointment with the dentist. My teeth and gums look fine. He found nothing.

ETA: My husband says he hasn’t noticed any change in the quality of my breath, so whatever’s going on, it’s not manifesting itself that way.

I haven’t made any dietary changes. I’m not on any medications. I even discontinued my vitamins for a week to see if that did anything. I do have some dry mouth, but I don’t know if that’s a cause, or if it’s an effect – you know, like I keep swallowing to try to get this taste out so I have a dry mouth.

I decided to start keeping a diary of what I ingested (a depressing exercise) but nothing really turned up so I stopped. The taste seemed to diminish some, but today it’s back just as strong as ever. Last night we had takeout ribs and chocolate cake, because a) we had our IEP meeting yesterday and that always means headaches and stress all day so we decided to indulge, and b) we got our state tax refund and wanted to live the high life. So I guess I’ll start a food diary again, and this time I get to put down all the junk I ate yesterday. Swell.

My husband goes to the same dentist’s office I do. Different dentist, though. They usually don’t make the connection between us since we have different last names. I guess word got around of the medical mystery, because his dentist kept asking him all kinds of questions about whether I was still having the taste. Glad to know my mouth is water cooler material.

I guess the next step is to make a doctor’s appointment. I can’t think of any cause for this, and weird sensory changes should probably be checked out. Until then, if you see me making weird faces like a dog eating peanut butter, just ignore me.

I have a lot to write about, but my time’s been a bit limited lately. So, let’s throw in a little of this and a little of that!

–The newest thing to happen in our lives has been that this weekend, we finally, FINALLY got a new floor for the bathroom.

Here’s the flickr photo set of before, during, and after pictures. We really haven’t done much to improve the house since we bought it more than ten years ago, so a change like this is very exciting. We have other things to do in there, but this will at least keep the floor from actively rotting out, so it’s good to have it done.

—Turtlegirl76 now has me hooked on Dead Like Me, yet another brilliant but cancelled TV show. Thanks, Turtlegirl!

–I have finished sock one of the Rainbow socks. I always make them a bit short, so I knitted them a little longer this time and now I think they’re a little too long. Also, I CANNOT FIND MY SECOND SKEIN. I know exactly where I put it, because I made a mental “don’t lose this!” note, but I swear it’s not there now. Maybe I moved it unknowingly when shifting things around to make room for bathroom stuff in the bedroom while renovating. I don’t know. It’s making me a little crazy, though.

–I sold some sock yarn from my stash via Ravelry’s “for sale or trade” stash section. So pretty, but I’d had it for a year so I don’t know when I was going to use it. I’m going to put a couple of bulky skeins in there to further pare down my stash. Maybe I won’t lose any more yarn I actually NEED if there’s less total yarn.

–April is National Poetry month, so I brought home a library book of poems by Dean Koontz called The Paper Doorway. It inspired Emily to write this poem:

“Hannah, Hannah you are nice.
I think you really look like ice.
I make you beautiful wrup.
We’ll bake you in a pie and eat you up.”

My daughter tells me “wrup” means “afraid.” Click on the picture for a bigger view – you can see feet sticking out of the pie. Black eyeliner and Siouxie and the Banshees cannot be far behind.

That’s it for now. Got to get an Alaskan Browncoat’s hat up to the post office!

This big craft fair looks like fun. It seems a lot like the one Pat and Laura and I went to in Raleigh, but it’s in Pat’s hometown, Richmond.

I wish I could show up in her doorstep this weekend and drag her out to go shopping. I miss my friend.

I’ve got a long to-do list today, and more than half of it involves getting packages ready to mail out. Non-Jayne packages, too, although I’m really excited that the http://www.wearwithstyle.com waiting list is very close to coming down under 20, which would mean the wait would be more like 4-5 weeks. I like having a little breathing room.

I’d like to use that breathing room do work on other things, like figuring out WordPress. I have a new and catchy little domain name that I’d like to move my blog over to, but I don’t feel like I can publicize it until it looks better. Part of the reason for the move is that I have a few simple free patterns I’d like to put up on a sidebar. I can’t do that easily on LiveJournal. just got her knitblog set up over at JetsyKnits and it looks spiffy. I, meanwhile, can’t even upload a two-column theme. I need some time. And possibly a “For Dummies” book. And maybe a screwdriver. The kind with orange juice or the kind you take things apart with, take your pick.

But before I launch into boxing things up and running all over town, here’s the progress on the Rainbow Socks. Normally I’d link to the MagKnits pattern there, but MagKnits is no more and I don’t know if the author has put up another copy somewhere. Thank goodness I printed the pattern out before I started.

There’s visible laddering on the front, but I find it kind of interesting since it shows the meandering path that the stitches take as the short rows are knit. Turtlegirl, I know you can’t see Flickr pictures, so I stuck an extra pic here.

Some who have seen the sock in person say that it looks better than it did in that poll with the post and have switched their votes from “Meh” to liking it. I didn’t show them this fishing net gap at the heel. Serves me right for not paying attention. I’ll have to go back and reinforce it, since the heels are always the first thing to go in my handmade socks (did I mention the striped socks got their heel caught on a nail sticking up from our floor last week?) and I don’t want these to suffer that fate. Note to self: buy darning egg.

Next time, we’ll talk about the weird medical mystery involving my mouth. Insert your own joke here.

Later!

So today was a big event, but my husband and I both forgot until he was already at work. It led to this exchange via online chat:

Him: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!
Me: WHAT? What??
Me: I actually for… I mean, I can’t believe it took you this long to tell me. Yeah, that’s it.
Me: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!
Me: Sooo… what are we doing? Takeout at home with TV?
Me: We could play some Zombies or something. God, we’re boring.
Him: I guess, we don’t really have any other plans, and really, if we had someone come over, we’d do what, go out and drive around thinking about the shows we’re missing? heh. We’re old.

Yes, the gift for 14 years of marriage is apparently “inertia.” We are now bodies at rest, and we intend to stay at rest.

Love you, man o’ mine!

Bet you wish you were eight years old again.

And now, a mellow antidote to the Deep Hurting of taxtime.

The video from that Geico Caveman song in the airport.

Message thread with lovely pics of all 50 states
Pretty much all of http://eternallycool.net/
The House of Emperor Augustus. Discovered in 1961 and only now open to the public (More pics).
Underwater sculptures

The secret caves of Arras

And, for giggles, Where On Earth Is Waldo? Find a blank roof and play along!