It's MAY???!!!

Good grief! It's amazing how time flies when you're lost in the haze of acute illness.

Yes, I'm always sick, but sometimes the chronic stuff flares into acuteness, and opportunistic things take advantage of the whole situation. That's pretty much what I've been dealing with since December: painful and brainfoggy flares of Lyme and Bartonella, gut infections, acute muscle spasms, and now a whalloping case of bronchitis. Spending much time zoned out from pain, fever or side effects of drugs. Blech. I didn't get into "recreational drugs" in my teens or twenties because I hated what they did to my head the few times I had to take similar drugs for medical reasons. I don't like the side effects any more now, but it sure beats the alternative.

So, there's not been much in the way of knitting, or picture taking, or writing. I thought I'd do a sort of catch up post, of the things I've been intending to write about. and fill some of the space with some photos.

I have been doing some knitting, completing a couple of kitchen towels for me and one for a friend, along with a matching washcloth that I used to wrap a cute soap in for her birthday. I also knit a week's worth of washcloths for baby who should be making her world debut within the next couple of weeks:


I knit a pair of socks for myself out of the worsted yarn I dyed a couple of years ago, using a sort of progressive vat dye (dunk the yarn in then immediately pull some out, and keep pulling some more out every 15 min or so, the result being shades of color:


I knit a pair of wrist warmers for Rose, using Cascade 220 Superwash in a lovely teal. I also knit a sock in Cherry Tree Hill's Sockittome Country Garden. I was going to use it to make a pair of Kathleen Taylor's Simple Stripes Fair Isle socks, but needed a gem-tone color infusion for my soul, so the yarn is going to be just plain (Jaywalker) socks instead. I also started (and finished) a sock using the yarn I originally dyed as a gift for my niece (part of my sneaky plan to try to get her knitting again), but didn't gift it as it didn't turn out the way I wanted, and so I overdyed the whole mess in blue, giving me a yarn with some deep blues and a variety of nice-to-yucky (to me) greens (excuse the blurry photo - gots me a bit of the shakes, I do):


In April, Karen had to fly to another town to get her plane's avionics looked at because the company here totally flaked on her. Having nothing to do (well, unable to do much of anything), and not having been terrified in quite a while, I went with her. Shifting weather fronts made for lots of turbulance, the day was overcast and sort of bleak, and watching Karen work her cobbled-together radio as she communicated with the various towers and such was, er, interesting. A few of the photos I took that day:

Part of the mothballed fleet off Mare Island:


Infineon Raceway:

The wetlands along Highway 37:


The Napa River running out into the San Pablo estuary, alongside the aforementioned wetlands:


After some lovely summery days and working on conserving even more water as we head into mandatory conservation season, we actually started getting some rain yesterday in most of the Bay area and points east. My rose bush, which had been covered in blooms, looks a bit beaten down this morning:


In context, however, despite the overcast, everything is looking pretty happy with the rain:


Speaking of conserving water, I finally found a siphon that works for me, for transferring Mikey's bath water into buckets for use in my yard, to water the plants that need assistance throughout the summer: my fig trees, jasmine, rosemary, lavender, and mint. I got this beauty at one of my favorite places to browse and shop, Harbor Frieght.



To water my pots of succulents, and my lemon balm and chives, I use cooking water used to steam veggies.

Treppie, who is still a bit out of synch after having come out of hibernation too soon due to the unseasonally summer weather we've been having since February, wandered over to my desk to see if I could do anything to make the sun any hotter on a cool day earlier this week.



Tobago is in her typical Spring "I want to eat every worm in the world" mode:


And, Mike is....Mike. Getting ready to shed, checking out my shoes to check my pheromones, and actually being very good about not waking me up for his baths on morning's I've finally been able to sleep.


Here's sprawly boy asleep last week:


I also helped do moulage for a drill at the local airport for fire departments who will be called on to respond to airport disasters to assist the airport's own fire department. For those who are not squeamish, you can see some of the photos of victims and the rest of the exercise in the Kodak Gallery Photo Album I've created.

I just added a couple of product reviews to my Miscellani blog, one on Get Serious Products stain remover, and the other on shipping reptiles and other stuff via UPS - at about 30% off - at ShipYourReptiles.com and AllProShipping.com.

Now, off I go for some long-overdue hot tea...