It's Friday Already

Where do I start?

I just got a phone call from John. He had an opthamologist's appointment this morning. It seems the blood in his left eye has cleared enough for the doctor to get a better look at the inside of that eye. There's another tear that needs to be repaired. Now, I'm waiting for a phone call from the doctor's office, letting us know when John will have to go back to Kamloops for more laser surgery. I'm thankful this is all being handled very quickly.

On to knitting and stuff. Yesterday didn't see a lot of knitting being done. I did a lot of running around, shopping and getting things done. Like getting ink for my printer so I can start printing out some of my patterns, finally. I did check out the competition and purchased some lovely alpaca yarn from Garnstudio. It's a natural colour, which I love. And, being alpaca, it's very soft. I also purchased this...

I love simple things like this. This shawl pin is made here in the Okanagan Valley. The wood used for this one is apple wood. Apparently, the man who makes them uses a variety of woods and they're all equally beautiful. The wood is smooth and warm to the touch (the shawl pin is keeping my hair out of my face at the moment, so it's a multi-use item... I like that!) and I thought apple wood was appropriate because of all the apple orchards that used to grace the Okanagan valley. Many of the apple orchards are being removed to make way for either housing or vineyards.

Then, because I wanted to do something quick and simple, and because the pattern floated out of my files, I did this little cap.

The pattern came out of a magazine a number of years ago. My copy of the pattern is just that, a copy. I scanned it into my computer back when the magazine came out. There's no information about the magazine on the copy and all I remember about it is that the pattern was part of an article about the actress Tyne Daly, who is a knitter. I've made this hat a few times and I figured there might be others out there who'd like a copy of the pattern as well, so I've typed it out and turned it into a pdf file. It's under "My Patterns", only because I typed it out.

I suppose I really should go and get a few things done today. I did tell John I would mow the lawn today as I didn't get a chance to do it yesterday. However, I can't do anything yet that will take me away from the telephone. I guess that means I can do some knitting!

Oh, I almost forgot. Betty asked about the yarn I'm using for John's socks. It's Trekking XXL, colour #155. And on that subject, I'm a little ticked off. When I wound the yarn into two balls (so that I could knit both socks at the same time), one ball ended up smaller than the other. I weighed the other balls of Trekking and they don't weigh 100 grams as the ball band says. They all weigh 97 grams. That doesn't sound like much, but I'm running out of yarn. On both socks. I've never had that problem before. I'm up to the toe on one sock and just over halfway done the foot on the second sock. I'm hoping I have enough to get to the toe on the second one; I'll have to do the toes in a different colour. That's annoying!

Just to compare, I also weighed a skein of Fleece Artist merino sock yarn that I'd wound into a ball. It weighed 105 grams. Lesson? If you choose to wind two balls out of one, weigh the yarn first.

Alright... this is long enough and I've been sitting here long enough. There's knitting calling me!