Would You Like Some Cheese?

Well, that was a waste of a perfectly good two weeks.  If you thought there was some whine in the last post, you ain't seen nothin'yet, as the man said.

First, though, some fibre content and the good news...

I got my SSZ black silk/merino plied.  Just over 500 yards, 15 WPI, and 6 TPI.  It will eventually be the warp for a rigid heddle project, but I have to make the same yarn spun the traditional ZZS first.  At least, that's the plan.

Then I got this all plied and washed, too...

...the Louet Northern Lights from this post.  Super bulky and cushy, there are about 14oo yards of 4 WPI at 2 TPI.  It's all washed, and it took it 3 days to dry, but it's now waiting in a bin until I can get the design muddled out.  Here's a sexy close-up....

I love the colors and there is a sheen to the yarn that is absolutely fabulous!

Now on to the whine..in my last post, I alluded to a lingering head cold. It went away.  It was really just a sniffle, sort of a ripple on the surface of my immune system.  Little did I know that it was a preview for the upcoming tsunami... 

Steve came home about 2 weeks ago with a little sniffle himself.  Which turned into a monster headcold overnight.  And for 2 days he laid on the couch sneezing and coughing.  I soldiered bravely on, making soup and making sure there was plenty of Kleenex in the house.  Then, a little tickle began at the back of my throat.  I started to sneeze.  Hard.  My eyes got red and watery.  And the headache set in.

Being the stoic type, I marched ever onward.  There was laundry and spinning and correspondence to see to.  So for three days, I tried to pretend nothing was wrong, all the while munching cold and sinus pills, echinacea, and vitamin C tabs.  On day four, I gave up the fight.  I didn't even try to get out of bed.  I surrendered to The Worst Cold in the History of Humanity.

There are not words to describe my misery.  I had what we suspect was the dreaded H1N1 in November and was livelier than this.  For four days, I barely opened my eyes.  I had the most amazing sinus headache--my migraines are so much more pleasant than this headache was.  I had goo built up in the passages in my ear, so the room spun uncontrollably at times.  I lost my voice to post-nasal drip irritation.  I couldn't inhale.  It was gruesome. 

No fever.  No chest symptoms.  Just a head cold.  And ten days later, I am still struggling to recover.

AND AT THE SAME TIME--yes, there is more...

You see, sometimes, when the weather turns really, really cold, the sewer gas exhaust pipe on our roof gets blocked by ice.  This requires us to get the maintenance crew to come and unblock the pipe, which sometimes takes several days to happen.  And while that pipe is blocked, we invariably get not only the delightful aroma of sewer gas drifting through the upper floor of our house, but an airlock that prevents the upstairs toilet from flushing properly and slows the bathtub's drainage to a trickle.  This happened just as we were about to go away for a few days after Christmas.

So, we left it.  We figured the weather would change or we would get someone to fix it once we got back in the new year.  This turns out to have been a bad plan.

We came home to a partially-flushing toilet and a slow-draining bathtub and a forecast of above-zero temperatures.  That meant we didn't have to call the maintenance creww, which, in the past, has turned out to be a great big hassle most of the time, anyway.  So we didn't.

And then the toilet stopped flushing.  It just filled up with water and overflowed.  The bathtub ceased to drain.  At all.  There was much mad plungering and bailing, all in vain.  It was the weekend.  There was no maintenance crew to call.  Steve was sick, and I was beginning to feel a wee bit punky myself.  Then Julia went into the downstairs bathroom, which is directly below the upstairs bathroom.  When she came out, she asked why the ceiling was bubbling in the bathroom.  A brief inspection, followed by a ginger poke at the bubbled paint on the ceiling, resulting in a sudden downpour of sewage into the downstairs bathroom.

Buckets were grabbed and every available container was pressed into service.  I stood, valiantly, under the downpour, catching the mess in what ever container came to hand while Steve cursed above my head, trying to bail the upstairs toilet and stem the flow of water.  Every towel in the house was put to use.  There were tears and curses and all manner of drama.  Then we went to bed.

The next morning, the maintenance crew was called and they mosied on around that evening, climbed the ladder, rattled a hook the exhaust pipe and asked us to check the toilet.  This resulted in another deluge in the downstairs bathroom.  Mr.  Maintenance diagnosed the problem as the ice jam being too far down the pipe for them to reach and promised he would be back in the morning with some brine to pour down the pipe and fix things once and for all.  Steve decided he would try snaking the drain line to see if there was a problem there, too.

The promised brine showed up late the next day, and when I checked the flush this time, there was a mighty bubble and a rush of sewer stink, and a slow, gurggly drain.  Huzzah!  And I sent the maintenance crew on their merry way.  I was so excited that I ran upstairs to flush the toilet again, and that's when the real trouble began.  Not only did it rain in the downstairs bathroom again, but water started to come out around the base of the upstairs toilet.  The wax seal under the toilet had given.  It was too late to do anything but sulk that night, and both Steve and I were well into our nasty colds by this point, so we decided we would get a new seal and lift the toilet the next evening and repair it.

So, twenty-four hours later, with a mercifully stuffed nose, I helped Steve lift the toilet off the pipe and remove the old seal.  There was water right up to the top of the drain, which is not right, so Steve thought he would send the snake down the drain while we had the chance.  Two minutes of snaking, and a clump of something furry, resembling a drowned rat, came up.   It seems that the airlock had created something of a vacuum that sucked all the debris in our drains up to a turn in the pipe and made a massive dam.  Furball removed, the water miraculously drained.  We did not examine the furball too closely, but it did contain, among other stuff, construction garbage that must have been there for the 30 years since this condo was built (because I'm sure none of my children would have flushed nearly 2 feet of baling wire).  The toilet went back onto its new seal, and all has been well since.  Except for the massive hole in the downstairs bathroom ceiling that we are waiting on an insurance quote for...

That was when I decided to stop getting out of bed for a few days.

But I'm up and around now, and while I am not 100%--there is still some congestion that makes my inner ears suddenly malfunction and dizziness ensues, and a mild lingering sinus headache on the left side--I'm trying to catch up.  So many wonderful opportunities have come my way this last few weeks, and I couldn't say no.  But I did have to say "later".  And now later is here.

Whew!  Thanks for letting my get that out of my system.  And for those of you who held on until the end, here is a gratuitous pet picture to cheer you up...

You just know Teagan the Wonder Schnoodle is thinking, "Oh, the crap I have to put up with around here..."

My Glass of Whine

...has been half-empty for the last couple of days.  I'm feeling quite trapped in the house by the cold weather, and I seem to be caught in a never-ending spiral of housework that is keeping me from spinning, or doing anything else interesting.  Everyone I know seems to be in a crisis, recovering from a crisis, or anticipating a crisis.  Add a lingering head cold, a sore knee, and a plumbing problem that seems to have no other viable fix than to burn the house to the ground, fake our deaths and move to another country, and you have quite a case of the Oh-Poor-Mes. 

I spent the morning drinking coffee and feeling unusually pessimistic that things would never improve, even though they usually do.  Even a beautiful morning view like this did nothing to cheer me up.

So imagine my amusement when this showed up on my horoscope this morning:

Rather than being a pessimist, embrace the happy moments around you. This attitude will make you feel better. There is no good getting upset over things out of your control.

You know you are a grumpy panda when even the great sages at mytelus.com start noticing.

So let's embrace some happy moments, shall we?

First of all, the workshop line-up for Fibre Week 2010 is finished and up on the website.  Huzzah!  My rather scattered fall made the tasks of getting all of the instructors sorted out and the schedule arranged a little more difficult than it should have been, but the information has all been passed on to the fabulous team at Olds College and they have managed to make sense of it all and put together what looks like another amazing week.  You can check it out for yourself right here.  (I have to add my thanks to Otto and his team at Olds for all their patience and support at this point.  I would still be flopping around in a pile of papers if not for them!)

Secondly, the Christmas knitting is almost done.  Yes, I am well aware that Christmas was two weeks ago.   But the Christmas knitting is usually finished in March, so I consider being one sleeve away from the end of this year's batch a personal triumph.    As usual, I did not have the sense to take photos of the work, except for this one:

The pattern is Eunny Jang's Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knits Fall 2007 and I knit it up in that yummy, yummy alpaca/silk/cashmere blend I had spun in November.  The yarn was a joy to knit,and aside from a few issues with the fact that I do not read charts carefully, the knitting went quickly.  Okay, there were a lot of issues with my inability to read each line of a charts carefully, which led to the Tweets about the Celtic Cables of Insanity.  This is in no way a reflection upon Ms. Jang and her pattern, but should have been the first clue that things were slipping around the edges of my mind.

The sweater turned out to be stunning, in spite of my best efforts to ensure otherwise, and was much appreciated by Miss Lexi.  I'm hoping to see a picture of it being worn someday (hint, hint?)

The other gifts included a Moebius wrap for my sister that I liked so much that I'm making one for myself out of the same yarn, and a hat for Brendan.  Promptly wrapped and shipped off to Edmonton, without a photo shoot.  D'oh!

My third little happy thing actually involves a project that got bumped from the Christmas list pretty early on.  I spent the last couple of days spinning up the cashmere for a hat for Miss Julia and I now have about 225 yards of lovely, is somewhat pink, 3-ply fingering weight yarn to knit up...

Mmmmm,mmm,mm!

So I've made some nice string, gotten some knitting done, even set up the loom to finish those tea towels I started last year.  My household is all suffering from the same cold I have, and we are all red-eyed and snuffly, but we are together and wearing handspun, handknit goodies to ward off the chill.  The forecast is for warmer weather, which should resolve the cabin fever and the plumbing problem for a while.

And I have three weeks of clear calendar to spin in.  Things start getting nuts again in Mid-February and the teaching season kicks in in March, but, for now, there is time for me to spin.  What could be better than that?  Okay, maybe a working bathtub, but what else?

Today is St. Distaff day, also known for some bizarre reason as Rock Day, the day when spinners and weavers traditionally return to work after the Festive Season, so it seems appropriate that I set aside everything that's bugging me and sit down at the wheel.  There is a bulky yarn to finish up, some Merino/silk to ply, and some guanaco calling my name from the stash.

Well, what do you know?  It worked!  I'm in a much better mood.

I'm gonna go spin.

In With the New

Happy 2010!  We managed to make it through another year--some of us more gracefully than others, but here we are nonetheless.

We celebrated the changing of the decades in Edmonton, with family.  There was much laughter--perhaps a little too much--along with fondue and, well...

...shoes.  Really sweet shoes.

At this time of year, so many of us pause to reflect on the year that has passed and examine its events and their impact on their lives.  Every time I tried to do this, I felt a little overwhelmed.  So much has happened that my wee brain cannot process all of the data at once!

Let it suffice to say that 2009 was a year of transitions and flux.  So many changes in my life and the lives around me.  So many babies born, jobs lost, couples married.  So many new ventures, successful and otherwise.  So many illnesses diagnosed (too many!), new friends made, old friends lost.  So many adventures embarked upon, and much travelling to new and exciting places.  So many new knitters and spinners converted.  To list everything that happened in 2009 would take longer than it did to live it!

Life is change, and this year was well-lived.

I have learned through the years that, like a roller coaster, life will go where it's supposed to, and it's best to just hang on tight and enjoy the ride, no matter how scary.  And on the first day of 2010, the first day of a new decade, I'm clutching the bar of the roller coaster cart and closing my eyes as it climbs that first climb.  I know that when the car reaches the top, the ride will begin again and all I can do is hang on and scream when I need to until the car rolls into the boarding platform.  And I'll stagger off and maybe throw up a bit, then yell "Let's go again!"

Or, who knows?  Maybe this year I'll decide to ride the Tilt-a-whirl instead.

"Tis the Season...

...for warm, woolly socks,  long nights lit by candles, and marathon knitting!

As I have mentioned before, I am not a big fan of winter weather.  And the last two weeks have reminded me why, with a cold snap of temperatures in the minus forties, before the windchill.  Top that off with a couple of power outages that shut down the fan on the furnace, and you have one cold, cranky woman on your hands.  However, this nastiness has given me an excuse to wear all my little self-indulgent socks that I've been knitting.

Now, I knit a lot of socks.  There is always a sock-in-progress in my purse, for those moments when I am waiting in line, sitting in a coffee shop, or stuck in traffic.  There is usually a half-knit sock on the coffee table, too.  But do I personally have a large collection of hand-knit socks?  Of course not!  I don't really know where all those socks I knit go--kids, Steve's sock drawer, friends, I suppose--but sometime last winter, I realized that I had only 1 pair of my own knit socks, and they were looking pretty threadbare.

So on my travels over the spring and summer, I collected a few little skeins of, shall we say, indulgent sock yarns.  Alpaca blends, silk blends, superwash Merino--handpainted and luxurious.  Mmm, mmm, mmm.  And then I used the hours in airports, on airplanes, and in the passenger seat  to actually use these yummy yarns.  I made myself some socks.

First, the alpaca blend.  Handpainted yarn from Alpaca Plus, 60% alpaca, 20% wool, 20% nylon. The knitting was done in May and June, mostly on planes while I did my little stint in the US.  These socks did sit in a drawer for a couple of months, but I'm wearing them now!  They are warm and have developed a slight halo from the alpaca that makes them feel super soft.

The next pair I knit were a Merino/silk blend from Red Fish Dyeworks.  The four-ply yarn was a little on the heavy end for socks, and a little dear with 5 skeins costing about $85, but I wanted the colors together.  I do have enough for about 2 more pairs of socks, so the cost will even out when I get those guys knit.  I knit these during Fibre Week and into early August, using my basic sock formula and a simple Fair Isle pattern.  I must admit that these are my current favorites--the combination of the silk and the bright colors make me happy every time I put them on.

                                     

And last, but far from least, are these beauties.  There was a great frenzy of knitting in August, getting the first sock finished in about 2 days, then...nothing.  I cast on the second sock in early October and knit about 3 inches of cuff, then...nothing.  Then it got to be 30 below, and I decided to sit in my house and knit.  I finished the second sock on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago.  The yarn is handpainted by Mary Ann at Three Waters Farm.  I loooove the colors! And these soft, comfy socks have gotten a lot of wear this past couple of weeks.

So, my toes have been warm and very stylish during the cold spell.

The other "up-side", if there could be such a thing when it is 40 below, is that there was no way I was going out into that weather.  This turned out to be an up-side because that meant lots of time at home to spin and knit, and with the Big Holiday fast approaching, this was an added bonus.  I do not buy a lot of gifts anymore, but I do knit and weave a lot of gifts.  The more time at home, the more on top of the Christmas list I get.  There is one Really Big Project that is moving a little slower than I would like, but otherwise, the dreaded Christmas knitting is under control.  (Touch wood!)

The long dark nights and the cold, cold weather have not been very conducive to a festive state of mind around here, but things are looking up.  We are having a heat wave of -23C today, and the Christmas baking is done.  The tree is up, and there are even a couple of gifts wrapped.  I ventured out yesterday to the post office and the mall, two place I usually try to avoid this time of year, and everyone I met was cheerful and helpful.  And the dark drive home at 3:30 p.m. was lit by Christmas lights. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

And my toes are warm.

Just a Bunch of Stuff That Happened

(which could really be the title of any blog post anywhere on the internet.  Either that or "You Are Entitled to My Opinion, and Here It Is.")

Since my return from Manitoba, there has not been a dull moment.  A "bunch" of stuff has happened, indeed!

Catching up on my blog-reading, I discovered that Sara had given me partial credit for her newfound interest in spindling.  Which inspired me to pull out my current spindling project.  Which, sadly, has sat in a bag in my studio since the events of which Sara wrote.  So, in a way, her writing about me inspiring her to spindle has inspired me to spindle.  (Sara also inspired me to do something else, but we shall remain quiet about that one for now...I'm still shaking a bit.)

Meanwhile, I spent much of the week knitting itty-bitty kitty mitties.  Or, more accurately, kitty mitties, hats and scarves for the Odd-Lot Puppetry Company's visit to Heritage Park's Old-Fashioned Christmas. 

Yes, that is a banana wearing a custom-knit toque.

This, of course, also meant that I had a houseful of puppet mayhem this past weekend.  Number One Son Brendan and his partners in crime Jess, Anna, and Patches ate, slept, built, and rehearsed in my little tiny living room.  The noise and mess took me back to the days when I had a houseful of kids all the time.  Nice place to visit, but I think I'm glad I don't live there any more!

And after the puppet mayhem died down, we went and saw Westwood Cheepiyak Theatre's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.  It was, in a word, amazing!  There are a huge number of talented kids in the cast, some great voices and some pretty spectacular dancing.  An all-around great accomplishment on the parts of Ms. Mort and Ms. Redfurn, along with every member of their cast.  Our Miss Julia is a member of the chorus, and also has the most fabulous camel moment in theatre history!
Go see it if you can.

I also made a hat this past week, but I sent it off to Vancouver without even taking a picture!  D'oh!

I sent the hat in a care package for Miss Lexi's birthday, which is today.  I sent it via our good friends at Canada Post, and sprung for the Express Post option hoping it would arrive within 2 days.  It arrived within 20 hours!  Lexi sent me a text thanking me for the package less that 20 hours after my visit to the post office.  So for all of you out there cursing the slow pace of our national mail carrier, here is the corollary story.  I am, however, still waiting for the package from the US that was mailed in June...USPS, I'm looking at you.

The one last thing that has happened this past week or so is the final details going into the Fibre Week 2010 lineup.  Let just say, it's good to have friends.  There have been some interesting challenges this time around, with my computer issues and random road trip adding yet another layer of chaos. A lot of stuff has to happen really fast at this point and without the help of a few really great and supportive individuals, I would have collapsed under the weight of it.  But, except for one more little thing, we are done.  Whew!

So that's some stuff that happened.  I'm sure more stuff will happen tomorrow, and the day after that.  That's the funny thing about stuff--it just keeps on happening.  I can't type fast enough to keep up!

Common Threads

Today I'm taking a day to rest and catch my breath.  It's been one thing after another since I got home from Vancouver, and I'm tired.  Very tired.

When last I sat down to blog, I had done the whole Halloween thing, and  I didn't really get a chance to recover from that.   With my typical excellent timing, I rolled right into a good bout of 'flu.  I don't know if it was the dreaded H1N1 or not, but it knocked me on my ass for several days.  Fortunately, though, I bounced back fairly quickly and the cough was considerate enough to go away after a few days, leaving me tired and froggy-voiced but otherwise rather unscathed.  I thought this little "vacation" would be a good excuse to start some Christmas knitting, but in reality, not much got accomplished.  So I thought I'd take a few days to rest and get caught up on some knitting. You know what they say about the best laid plans....

As you may have seen in my tweets in the sidebar, my Uncle Jim Beamish died on November 9.  He was relatively young and his death was a bit of a shock to all of us, including his big sister--my Mom.  My first thought was to drop everything and head out to Manitoba with my Mom, but I still had my cough and so much catching up to do, so I rationalized that I didn't need to go.  Well, that lasted two days.

I decided that I would drive out to Manitoba, where Jim had lived, with my Mom for the funeral.  From Fort McMurray, with a stop to pick Mom up in Edmonton, it would be about a 19 hour trek.  No problem--we broke it into small chunks of 5 or 6 hours of driving with a good rest in between.

The driving was effortless, with clear highways and sunny skies, thanks to an unseasonably warm November.  Dark comes early this time of year, but we were off the road by 7 or 8 each evening.  We ran into one of Mom's cousins, Barry and his wife Barb, in Saskatoon--they were also travelling from the Edmonton area and, by sheer coincidence were staying at the same hotel and eating in the same restaurant!  And the next evening, we met up with them again at another cousin's farm.  Dianne and her husband Ron hosted us to an amazing supper and a glass or two of wine before we toddled down the road to Brandon for the night.

We arrived in Brandon very late and got some sleep before we went to visit with my Aunt Muriel.  My cousins Christine and Brian were there as well, so there was much family catching up to do.  All of the arrangements had been taken care of by an amazing array of friends and neighbors, food was delivered in massive quanitities, and people came and went. 

That trend continued the next day, the day of the actual funeral.  Two more of my cousins, Bill and Brenda, travelled out from Winnipeg.  My mom's relatives gathered, four generations of Beamishes, Lindsays, Walkers, Talbots, and Falloons.  They are a large and very diverse lot.  And Uncle Jim had a lot of friends, co-workers, and acquaintances that loved and respected him.  There was, in short, a crowd.

There were flowers, and hugs, and a lot of strangers' hands to shake (H1N1 be damned!).  And a lot of family to get re-acquainted with.  They all live in or around Southern Manitoba and I live out here in Alberta--see the comments above regarding the distance.  And though the circumstances were sad, I felt a certain joy in seeing these people again. 

There are a lot of phrases in the English language that apply the language of my craft to familes.  We have family ties.  Families are close-knit.  Our lives are woven together.  We are cut from the same cloth.  Relatives come from the distaff side of a family.   We all have a black sheep in the family.  Others are dyed-in-the-wool types.  Sometimes, families come unravelled, but we pick up the common threads and carry on.

What struck me the most about getting together with my relatives was that common thread.  We share a history as well as genetics.  We know the old stories, and the scandals, even though they may even have happened before we were born.  We know the shape of a nose, or the color of our hair**.  We don't see each other for years, but that connection is there.

Being a spinner,  I recognize a good sturdy thread.  Sure, there may be slubs and snarls, but the thread is continuous, and strong.  It has survived being stretched in all directions by time and distance.  In some places, it has been knit together with another thread, in others it has become a little unravelled.  But the thread endures, as good thread should.  And being a spinner, I also see that I am working to continue the string by raising my children with the stories, the connections, the values of the family that I came from.

There are other new fibres being spun into the thread that is my family.  Cousins and second cousins with their families, carrying on the same traditions, passing along the connections.  The thread is becoming thinner as our grandparents and parents begin to leave us, but it is still being spun.

The thread's length means that perhaps we are spread a little further apart.  There may even be a break or two, but at times like this, we tie a knot so the thread can continue.  I really don't know for sure where the thread started, though there are numerous family histories, and I certainly don't know where it will end.  The point is that the thread exists at all.  In this day and age, with family spread far and wide, sometimes we need to stop and remember our common threads.

The drive home was not so relaxed.  We drove across Saskatchewan in a 13-hour marathon.  There was a whirlwind of doctors and yarn shopping in Edmonton, then the usual slog home.  So, today, I'm tired.

But I have this strong thread that ties my life to the lives of dozens of amazing people.  Perhaps even hundreds.  I have a thread that will endure long after I am dust, a thread to be dug up and examined by genrations yet to come.  I have a thread that is strong enough to endure over centuries, a thread that can stitch up our wounds, a thread that ties us together.  I have a family.


**The Lindsay family of Southern Manitoba, and their descendants are notorious for their glorious heads of silver hair, acquired at an early age.  I felt so at home amongst my generation, not to mention our parents!

Whoa! What Just Happened?

There is just a blur where the last two weeks of my life should be!

I have been remiss in keeping my blog up to date, but I do have many good excuses.  Honest!  But when people start emailing, and even my Mom is asking for updates (okay, she wants to know the answer to the last riddle!), you know it's time to sit down at the old keyboard...

So, what have I been up to?

Well, there were the 12 days spent in Vancouver...

...which were pretty darned action-packed.  I visited the Vancouver Aquarium, rode The Ghost Train...

...throught the Gates of Hell and back.  I also rode on Surrey's Terror Train, meandered the pier at White Rock and walked Jericho Beach.  I taught Miss Lexi to knit...

...and then couldn't get her to stop.  I visited the phenomenal Lynn Anderson at Knitopia in her last week in  her Langley location. (She's back in White Rock now, and has suggested that you grease your hips before you visit her somewhat smaller shop.)

I took a little spinning workshop...

...which I intend to blog more about soon.  I went to see Mika in concert...

...which was waaaay too much fun for someone of my advancing years.  I listened to Elizabeth Wayland-Barber speak on Women's Work:  The First 20,000 Years.  And I got to spend some seriously high-quality time with my older daughter, an amazing young woman whom I don't get to see enough of since she has moved so far from home.

Then I had a long, weird day full of hilarious travel stories.  And I was home.

Just in time for two solid days of preparations for Halloween.

The crypt was built, cobwebs were strewn, and ghoulish goodies concocted...

...just in time for our first good snowfall of the year!  Between the snow (which made for some really icy road conditions!) and H1N1,  Halloween was a little, well, quiet.  The brave handful who ventured out to trick or treat scored much candy, and the braver handful who came to the annual party made for a marvelous , though somewhat more sedate than usual, evening.

And, for those of you waiting for the answer to the last countdown riddle:

Why wouldn't the mummy go on vacation?

He was afraid he might relax and unwind too much!

Mwahahahaha!

And after all of that activity, plus a couple of days of frantinc scrambling to get the household back in order, it only figures that my immune system would be ready to take a break.  So guess who woke up sick on Wednesday morning?  The last two days have been a festival of fevers and chills, accompanied by a sensation something like I would imagine it would be like having a flaming stake driven through my chest.  This morning, the coughing has started, and, oddly, I feel much better.  However, a couple of days on the couch, knitting, seems prudent at this point.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.  **COUGH**