DisKnit: there is a time for worry and for knitting

I am going to stay somewhat quiet for a while. April and May were hard -- my 100 year old grandfather, William Lancelot Holland, grew ill for the first major time in his life. I spent more time in hospitals than I had before and learned how to transfer him to a better care situation. But recovery didn't happen and he died on May 9. Next weekend we have the funeral in Mass. and I've been reading his memoirs to think about what to say, but also just thinking. I did learn that acute health care crisis do not inspire me to much knitting. A conference I went to in Montana a week ago was much more useful I turned the heels on two socks knit at once on one circular needle. It did not prove that hard in the quiet light of powerpoint, but was impossible to contemplate admist suction, palliative care, and 1-800 numbers. So here's some incomprehensible images of that accomplishment and one of my grandfather and I in the hospital.



Hold us all in your light and needles.

k-brow: school's out fo' summah!

Cue my man Alice Cooper. I am free, baby, I am FREE!

Here's a little peek at something I decided to do with those balls o' Koigu. Gets me off the hook for making socks, and since that Koigu's already shared its feelings with me about socks, I figured we'd try something else.
But this isn't really my knitting focus these days - that'd be the Minimalist Cardigan, which is actually making progress, thanks to ongoing Battlestar Galactica watching and the heartbreaking season finale of "The Tudors". All's I can say about "The Tudors" is that Jane Seymour is in waaay over her head. sigh.

Yes, my friends, school hath ended, and I am pretty much done with the work to be done on-site for the moment. But since I am changing grade levels, and the school is radically changing the way reading and writing instruction is done, it's more or less a working vacation for me. Not really a problem, or it wouldn't be if we didn't already have just a 6-week summer. ugh. So I've got a healthy stack of curriculum maps, teacher's editions and articles to read, and planning dates set up with my new pseudo-teammates. I say pseudo, because I'm under no impression that we are a functional teaching team, but being at adjacent grade levels requires some planning and coordination. meh...

Thanks, from the bottom of my heart, to all well-wishers and commenters for my dad's health. He's doing well in rehab, right now, and I will be going to Virginia on June 23, to stay for a couple of weeks to hang and have family time, and to possibly, just maybe, stop my mom from firing up the riding mower for a couple of weeks. My mom is ON IT with the yard maintenance, apparently. She's a scream, but really, what business has a 70 year old got riding around on an acre of land on the John Deere? Or whatever little tractor-ette they have now... I should be grateful for her friskiness, and hope I am so vigorous at that age. Anyway, all Salem-Roanoke knitters, be advised; I'll be around til July 7, or so, and will diligently attend any knitting events, cafe klatches or other such crafty ventures you have going on at the time. Hopefully my sister will know your schedule, otherwise, drop a note in the comments for me to find.

I'm tired. Too much to do, and nothing really is an emergency anymore. Miss Akamai gave me a big pile o' pencil roving that I'm tempted to spin up, but the evil gremlin also brought back an unbelievable array of spindles from MS&W-fest, and so has infected me with this perception that I can no longer spin without a new spindle. I'm telling you, there's not a damn thing wrong with my current spindle! Pah! Still, it was nice to admire her pretties, and I think I may get to spindling again this weekend, just to celebrate the summer.

But right now, I have to take some furry friends out in the developing drizzle and run them ragged.

k-brow: finito!

The stripey socks, they are finished. Mindless knitting, with Austermann Step in the color "laub," on #1 addi circular needles. Stockinette at its best. These are for my sister, simply because she was audacious enough to ask for them in a blog comment, many moons ago.

Little else going on here at Chez Nuuanu Estate. Dry, sunny and windy is a welcome change from hot, hazy and humid, I assure you. I've been baking more bread, working longer hours, in preparation for school's end, and letting the house go. meh. I'll catch up in a week, for that's all we have left of this school year. The funding for my reading resource job dried up, as our school's enrollment dropped. Thus, I become a classroom teacher, once more - 5th grade this time. A far and welcome cry from Kindergarten, let me tell you. Now I've got sex ed, drug n' alcohol ed, (thank the Goddess for DARE - the national program for this aspect of my job) number theory, the American Revolution, and major forays into the Scientific Method to occupy my mind. Fortunately, I've met the students, and really like them. High hopes for a fun year, and no real designs on becoming a forever 5th grade teacher, at this point. Who knows?

Summer beckons seductively, with beaching, an agility trial for Ms. Ella, a renewed determination to get some sweaters off the needles, and a long visit back East with familly. My dad fell and broke his pelvis a couple of weeks ago, and is in a long-term rehab/convalescent facility while he recuperates. At 80, this is a serious injury, and we're looking at probably 30 - 60 days in the place. He was diagnosed, last year with myeleofibrosis which has left him anemic, weak and achey, though he's responded really well to recent blood transfusions. My sis and I are going to try and work some things out with my mom about getting some household help for her, and in-house care for my dad, if that's needed. Our mom is a can-do type who often bites off more than she can chew, and doesn't always consider her own physical limitations.

Meanwhile, since I'm looking at a long boring plane ride to Roanoke, VA, I couldn't resist setting up a little travel knitting...

What can be done with plenty o' Koigu in 2 different colorways? All this Koigu, by the way, has been ripped from failed socks, in my now-abandoned attempt to break the Koigu curse that haunts me. I LOVE this yarn, its scrunchiness, its "dry" feeling, the lucious colorways. But I have yet to knit it into a pair of socks that doth please me. Fortunately, it's not a troublesome yarn to frog out, and I have a feeling its new incarnation will be the pleasing antidote to my sock woes.