An update

Thanks for all the kinds word of care and encouragement regarding My Old Man. I'm sorry it's been a week since I gave a report. I'm a bit overwhelmed both at work and at home.

My Old Man came home from the hospital on Friday afternoon and has been making very slow but steady progress ever since. His medications seem to be at therapeutic levels, and he is very slowly regaining his reading abilities. He works on it every day and wants it to come back more quickly, so it is pretty frustrating for him right now. I feel so bad for him, because in addition to the fact that our profession requires the ability to read (and write, and speak publicly), reading is also his favorite thing to do with his free time. So it is really sad that he can't do it very well right now, but I do have hope that it will come back to normal at some point. Right now, I am just relieved that we are not looking at surgery.

Life has been such a strange jumble lately that I didn't even knit for three days solid. It was strange to actually sit and watch a movie with My Old Man and do nothing with my hands. But I finally started a new project and am thrilled to be back to my old ways.

I'm also back to my old ways in terms of buying yarn. I order some Bernat Cotton Tots (have never knit with it before but I keep reading good things about it) to make a layette for My Old Man's grandbaby, due in July. I'm going to do a cream-colored hat (child's cotton hat from Last Minute Knitted Gifts), a baby blue sweater (child's placket sweater from LMKG), cream-colored pants (Picky Pants with seed stitch cuffs to echo the trim of the sweater), and a pair of baby blue booties (pattern to be decided). If I have enough time, I'm going to also do an opposite layette (blue hat, cream sweater, blue pants, cream booties). I also am about halfway done with a Diagonal Garter Stitch baby blanket (in cream) that I had originally started for some friends but I think I'd like to finish it for this baby instead (I gave something else for the other baby).

And I'm back to my old ways in planning new projects as well. The only "have to" items on my list right now (since I finally finished all those old projects that had been on my WIP list of my to-do list) are the layette and a pair of socks for my friend T. I'm thinking towards my trip to Italy next fall, and trying to plan some shawls and scarves to make for it. I intend to pack super-light and have decided that the way to extend my wardrobe options is with shawls and scarves. I've never done lace knitting but am getting really eager to try. I think I'm going to start with Cozy , which I've been admiring forever. Then (and this may be a tad over-ambitious) I really want to try a Sivia Harding design - am thinking this one . And then I'd like to do one more, maybe a circular one (EZ's pi shawl?). Or maybe I should do Clapotis instead. Or if anyone wants to shoot me a link to another option, I'm all eyes.

Okay, that's enough for now. I swear I'm going to take and post some FO pics soon....