I had Friday off from school because it was the school's Homecoming, so we used it to go down to Largish City for one of the Emperor's eye appointments. Since January, he's had to have treatments for macular degeneration (the wet kind) every four to six weeks. Making that work with my school schedule has been a real stretch, although I only missed one class in the spring and one this fall. But this time, the doctor declared that the Emperor is making good progress, enough so that he can now go longer between treatments. To this add that I don't teach on Tuesdays next semester, and our lives just became a lot easier.
On our way home, I found a really good little "natural foods" shop that has bulk cardamom and bulk puy lentils, two things I've had a hard time finding since moving here to Smack In The Middle. That was another lucky stroke. I can't find the lentils (an essential ingredient in one of our favorite recipes) in our town, and if I have to buy cardamom at the grocery store, I'm in for at least fifteen dollars for a little tiny vial of the stuff, and I use it all the time.
Sometimes those eye appointments mean an hour or more of waiting, and I've been taking books and knitting with me to pass the time. This trip, I brought my "new" project: a Bridger Cowl, made from some of my handspun (see above). I'm past the lacey part at the bottom and well into the stockinette in the round. It's nice, mindless knitting and a small enough project that I will be feeling the Finished Object Love soon, again just in time for the cold spell that the Internets and the Farmer's Almanac tells me is barreling down on our region.
When the Emperor helped me wind my handspun the other day, he brought out my yardage counter that he had given me for Christmas last year. I've never used it, mostly because I haven't had a need yet. But this time, I had a skein that I'd estimated yardage for by counting winds on my niddy-noddy; this would be the perfect opportunity to check both the effectiveness of the yardage counter, and my estimate, which was 160 yards. After I figured out how it worked, the counter showed that I had 167 yards in my little skein, enough for the project! The yarn is from a hand-dyed Blue Faced Leicester roving, spun into a light worsted weight 2-ply on my Ashford Joy. I used just a little more than two ounces.
What's the "pause," you ask? It's a brief pause in the stockinette slog that Jupiter has become. I fell into the Knitter's Black Hole and have been knitting for at least a week without it progressing beyond ten and a half inches, so I picked up the Bridger Cowl in order to have something going that I could actually finish relatively quickly and maybe bust out of the hole. I'm also fighting a tough case of startitis that has me scanning the stash and printing out patterns willy-nilly, some for things I really have no business knitting. A garter stitch cardigan? If I think I'm in a black hole with Jupiter now, into what shall I fall while slogging through acres of garter stitch?
Later: So it's after one in the morning and we're sitting up messing around on our laptops. The Emperor's treatment was a rough one this time, and his eye is swollen and hurts him. As a result, he slept very late and then took lots of naps yesterday, and when it was our normal bedtime, he tossed and turned and made lots of noise trying to be quiet. When he doesn't sleep, I don't sleep, so I got up and made myself some hot milk and turned on some classical music and picked up the laptop to cruise through Ravelry and maybe finish this post. The Emperor followed me to the living room and now he's looking at some online tool catalog. Ah, togetherness. If I didn't think I'd wake the neighbors, I'd start some housecleaning. We're due for another very thorough vacuuming.
I think I'll pick up one knitting project or another and work on it until I think I can sleep, and maybe by then he'll be sleepy, too.
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