Independence Day literally ended up being a wash because it rained almost all day. We ended up staying home. Ed and Blake have been doing some marathon TV watching, trying to get Ed up to date on Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. One, or both, have a new season starting soon. Ed wanted to get caught up on the story lines before the new episodes air.
On July 5, I went to visit my mom for a couple days. While I was in Cincinnati, I went out to dinner with a friend. That weekend marked the 2-year anniversary of when she lost her husband. I knew she was feeling sad, so I hoped I was able to help her a little bit through the rough days. On the day I was set to come home, Mom got a phone call from my brother that my sister-in-law fell late the previous evening and suffered a compound fracture to her leg. I took my mom up to the hospital to visit my sister-in-law. My sister-in-law has a much stronger constitution than most people. While she was waiting to get transported to the hospital, she took pictures of her own leg. I guess I have a pretty strong constitution also because I was able to look at them without too much discomfort. Mom declined the invitation to look at them. Smart lady. After I got Mom back home, we discovered her basement flooded from the torrential rainfall we had while we were at the hospital. There was a half inch of water throughout most of the basement. I pulled out the shop vac and spent the next two hours sucking up water. I'm not sure what hurt more afterwards, my back from lifting the buckets to dump them down the stationary tub or my ears from the vacuum motor. Now, a couple weeks later, my back is fine, but I think I may have done some damage to my hearing. I still occasionally notice a ringing. I worry about the basement flooding. Mom is 86 years old. She is too frail to deal with mopping up any water. She was only able to get 2 small buckets of water mopped up before she told me she was tired. If she ever has that much water again she'd never be able to get it cleaned up.
The sock I started a couple weeks ago is slowly progressing. The pattern is interesting so when I do get a chance to sit down, I can make progress. The problem is there haven't been many opportunities to sit. Here's where it stands now. I'm approaching the heel.
I do love how this yarn is working up. And I love this pattern. Cookie A is brilliant. I want to make most of the socks in this book. You can't see the pattern well in this picture. I will have it modeled when I am done.
Kristin asked me to help her make a throw for her new apartment. She found something on Pinterest. The link didn't have a pattern, so I improvised. (I find that a lot of the links on Pinterest don't relate to the caption people state.) Kristin has learned the basics of knitting. We are going to work on this together.
I had to guess how many skeins of yarn to buy. I'm going to measure once we get through the first one. We bought all the store had in this color. I doubt that we have enough so it looks like I will be hunting for additional skeins. Here's a closeout of the work. As you can see this is very basic.
The gauge is working out to 2 stitches per inch. We are using US 17 needles and the bulkiest yarn that the shop had. Kristin was hoping it would be larger stitches but I told her that was the best we could do. I hope she is happy with how it is turning out.
