At least it's not e. coli

After last week hit me like a ton of bricks, I really expected to play catch-up this week, on all the things I'm sooo far behind on. Or at least once I got through Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, with meetings every night. The wee hours of Thursday morning changed my best plans, when I woke up to, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy!" and then when I got to the room, "Uh-oh." Not that I needed the "uh-oh" to tell me what had happened, because the smell of it hit me as soon as I opened their door.

Little Buddha had lost his stomach, pretty much everywhere. And after a half hour of cleaning it all up and tending to him, Tiny Dancer woke and did the same. I stayed home from work to take care of my poor little sick ones (who braved the bug quite well), and then about midday it hit me (I do not brave such things well - I am terrible at being sick because I spend the whole time being miserable about all the stuff I'm not getting done). By last night, My Old Man was the only one still standing. By this morning, he had succumbed as well.

My mom called today to tell me about the e. coli outbreak. We live in one of the states that has been infected, and in fact we buy bagged fresh spinach quite regularly. There is even a bag of it in our refrigerator right now. But we hadn't yet opened it. So I'm pretty sure this is just a standard stomach bug. I'm feeling better already, and my three fellas all seem to be rounding the bend as well.

The worst part about it, other than watching two two year-olds be sick (and let me tell you, I have learned my lesson - you should not feed blueberries to a child who may not have yet recovered from such a virus, unless you enjoy seeing those same berries in partially digested form 12 hours later, and this time I'm not talking about blueberry poop, either), is that I've had all this time on my hands (having cancelled all appts.) and absolutely no energy to knit. This is how I know I'm really sick.

Still, even in sickness I find myself obsessed with all things fiber. I am making ridiculous plans for all kinds of fall and Christmas knits that I know I can't possibly manage. Meanwhile, today I received a package from Angelika's Yarn Store (lightning-quick shipping! - I ordered midday Wednesday - and the most gorgeous assortment of Lorna's Laces you can imagine). The package included the Fiber Trends patterns for the felted clogs (adult and children's). After nearly a year of following other people's obsession with this pattern, I finally gave into it myself. The package also included Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted, in Tuscany, to make socks for my friend T. Such a lovely autumnal colorway. I Love Lorna's Laces. It may even be my favorite yarn (will the Malabrigo gods strike me down for saying such?).

I like to have pictures in my posts as much as possible. But there are no knitting pics to show right now. I could take a pic of my new patterns and yarn, but I haven't yet dumped the 297 pictures from my CF card and just don't want the hassle of trying to upload one pic while waiting for the computer to sort through all the others. So for now, a different kind of pic. A long time ago, I promised to post a pic of a non-knitted thing I had made for My Old Man on my retreat last spring. There was a woman on the retreat who works with stained glass, something that I would never consider to be my medium since it isn't fiber-related and involves more precision than I consider myself to have (not to mention a certain degree of caution). This woman brought all her materials and taught everyone who was interested how to make a cross. I didn't think I could do it, but I did. It was a truly therapeutic endeavor. It was more soothing to work with glass, copper, and a soldering iron than I would've imagined.