If you're happy and you know it...

Clapotis! (I'm probably the 57th knitter to start a post that way.) I joined the Clapotis Second-Wave KAL a few months ago and, thanks to my infirmity ("No, honey, I can't get you a roll of toilet paper. I have to lie here on the couch and knit rest my back.") I'm finally working on it. I like to knit on it in bed, falling asleep with it clutched to my bosom.

The yarn is the Mountain Colors yarn that I dyed at the beginning of October at a Mountain Colors dye workshop hosted by my LYS. I love the knitting and I love the feel of the wool, but I'm not sure that the color lives up to my expectations. I might over-dye it with blue after I'm done knitting.

I'm twisting the stitches (on either side of the dropped stitches) on both the knit and purl rows. I'm also just doing a purl stitch to mark the to-be-dropped stitches, instead of using markers.

great-nephew

I'm about to have a great-nephew. This will be my 4th! I've even got two darlin' great-neices. Their parents, my nephews and neices, are such great parents and I'm so impressed with them. They are good and kind, just the sort of people I'd like my children to be when they grow up. This is one of my neices leading races in the sand this past July at nearby Bear Lake with her daughter, another niece, and my little PeeWee.

I have planned to knit adorable and amazing little gifts for each new little grand-nephew/neice, but this bib will be my first completed effort. Finally, I've finished something. It's a variation on the Mason-Dixon Knitting Baby Bib o' Love. I used less than one ball of brown Peaches n' Creme, knitted one strap instead of 2, and made a giant bobble in place of a button. I think I need to make a boatload (not to be confused with a buttload--even if I do live within a schoolbus-ride of Napoleon Dynamite's stomping grounds...) of these for this nephew and the other 2 impending arrivals.

I love brown. Back when I was developing what one might generously term my "fashion sense", I used to hate it. Was that just because it was the 80's and brown was out? I was all about the forest green and salmon pink. Yeah. I used to boldly declare that nothing should be dyed brown except silk, because flat brown is UGGGG-ly. Ha.

nervous

Right around Halloween I began to get nervous. (Let's insert a Halloween picture here, shall we? Yes, we shall. If this were your child, you'd be nervous, too. Just kidding, Bob! Love ya, babe.) I started mildly freaking out in the quiet recesses of my brain, worrying that maybe the reason I had a pinchy nerve that kept getting worse was because of a tumor. I went to my nice family doc and told him about my worries and he suggested an MRI. I thought that was a great idea. So I had an MRI two weeks ago and found that IT'S NOT A TUMOR! (said in my best Arnie-as-Kindergarten-Cop voice) Yay. It's just a herniated disk! Who'd have thought that would make me so happy?

I think the initial injury happened back in May when Eric was out of town and I decided to move a couch down to the basement by myself. Moving it down wasn't so bad, because I had gravity on my side. I think the problem was that I decided about 20 seconds later that I didn't want the couch in the basement after all, so I wrestled it back upstairs. I had just started doing that Couch-to-5K thing and I thought I was having sciatica from not stretching properly after exercising. And for the past 6 months, I've just been making it worse.

So now, I'm lying around or standing, avoiding sitting if at all possible, not driving, and (hardest of all) not picking up any children. Ever. Well, for a while, at least. PeeWee doesn't mind, she's 2 and she wants to do everything by herself anyway. I mind it more than she does.

You'll notice that I'm back at the computer--that's because I finally thought outside of the box and realized I can stand and type at the same time! Duh. Also, I'm feeling much better today and I must show off my latest obsession: entrelac! I ripped out the langishing 1-1/2 inches of ribbing on the Boberly Hat and made another entrelac hat. That entrelac, it's more fun than a bottle of Percocet.

The yarn is Noro Silk Garden, color #258, just over 2 balls. I cast on 64 stitches and started with 3/4" of 2x2 ribbing, did 8-stitch sections for the base triangles and 2 rows of rectangles. I then reduced to 6-stitch rectangles for 2 rows, then 4-stitch triangles at the top. The top was finished up with 2 rounds of k2tog, then I cinched up the last 8 stitches to close the top. Boberly has been wearing it which makes my heart very happy. I've been enjoying knitting backwards so much that I think it's time to make the plunge into my long-awaited Lizard Ridge Afghan. Yeah, remember that KAL I joined about 2 years ago? :) It's time.