Sea Legs

I can finally say that I'm not seasick anymore. Whatever that flu was that I had, it was annoying. I wasn't terribly sick, but I was constantly dizzy, almost seasick. If I moved my head, I got dizzy. Knitting made me dizzy. When I closed my eyes, I had the spins. I hate being too sick to knit. After almost a week, I could knit again, so I finished up one front of the Pas de Valse and started the other:


I need to finish up the second front and the back. Then I join the shoulders, finish that shawl extension, and knit on the sleeves. At the rate I'm going, I'll finish by March. Maybe.

As I mentioned in my last post, the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Swap group (my main hangout on Ravelry) ran a week-long series of auctions to benefit the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. This wasn't something that was planned; it just sort of happened. It started off and snowballed, with yarns, shawls, and other goodies donated not just by group members, but also by some of our favorite indie yarn dyers like Claudia (Wollmeise), Allen (Numma Numma), Gryphon (Sanguine Gryphon), and Stephanie (Rainy Days & Wooly Dogs - Gothsocks). In the end, after a lot of hard work by our mods and fierce bidding by a lot of very determined yarn hos, we raised over $22,700! I'm in awe of everyone's generosity. There are still people who want to donate, so the auctions may continue after a short break to allow our mods to regain their sanity.

I was also lucky enough to manage to order four skeins of laceweight yarn at a Wollmeise update a couple of weeks ago, and the yarn finally arrived yesterday. For my future knitting pleasure I have Maus Jung:


My Old Blue Jeans:


Magnolie (dark version):


and Baristo (also dark version):


There's a lot of good knitting there :)

In the Reading Report, after I finished Wolf Hall, I read a newer book, A Friend of the Family, by Lauren Grodstein. It started out ok. I wasn't sure, but I kept going. It kept getting better, though, serving up a couple of big gut punches at the end. I finished it very late one night (sick + insomnia = no fun) and I had to start something else to take the edge of the emotional ending of the book. So on a whim I decided to re-read Jane Eyre. I can't remember the last time I read Jane Eyre, but I'm really enjoying it once again. I remember loving Middlemarch when I read it in college, but it was definitely a slog when I picked it up again this summer. Not so with Jane Eyre. It's as fresh and readable as I remember.

Last, but not least, tomorrow is Jr. Jr.'s 9th birthday. He's doing great, but this is making me feel old. After this year, there's only two more years of elementary school! Sigh. Tonight we're all going to see the Caps game to celebrate. I doubt we'll be on tv, but I'm wearing my brick red Nantucket jacket...