I hate being sick!

I don't even look THIS good. My best guess is that I have bronchitis. In about an hour I'll go to the PA and find out for sure. Glands are swollen; I ache everywhere; when I cough, I'm sure my toenails are coming up with the cough... you know the drill.

Yesterday Pat put me to bed and made me stay there all day. (Was he taking care of me or defending his right to watch 8 hrs of football uninterrupted?)

It was great -- except when I was awake. Most of the time I had the electric blanket on high and was talking about being cold. Even at that, Pat said I didn't have a fever. I managed to crawl out of bed today and soak in the shower for a while. The back side of the house is so cold that I'm baking a cake just to have an excuse to have the oven on. I have also closed off the south bedroom and my old bedroom. That way the heater doesn't have to warm those two rooms.

Hm... I checked Weatherbug. It's just above 34 degrees, so it isn't all that cold. Must be me.

At least, if I stay awake, I can knit. I have 3 projects in the works. The one closest to finished is a green scarf that matches the watch cap I made Pat. He found his blue doubleknit hat so I get to keep the green one. That's good. I have a couple of coats that don't have hoods. It will be nice to have a hat. And a scarf.

Then there is Sue's doubleknit hat. I'm worried there won't be enough of her primary color to complete the hat. I was about 3 inches into the hat and noticed the yarn was about half gone. So I ripped it out and started over with bigger needles. May be the same number of stitches, but they should cover more territory. (I hope.)

And -- I have started (again) Pat's Oregon vest. It's made with the Chunky Wool-Ease this time. It's working smoother and looks better that it did in Homespun. I will get this one finished.

2007 Knitting

It hasn't been a good year for knitting. I've had more to do at work, so less time to knit.

The picture is of the bath mat that I made. It's an adaption of a crocheted pattern that was in one of my Mom's 1940s crochet books. (Can't find the book anymore; got the pattern from the web. http://www.freevintagecrochet.com/rugs/star93-footprint-bath-mat ) I crocheted the original pattern when I was in college and threw the bath mat away 40 years later when we moved into this house. It had a couple of large holes in one corner, but was still standing up quite well for it's age.

I didn't want to crochet the new mat, plus the space I had for it was a lot smaller than the original pattern would fit, so I garter stitched the foundation and adapted the cross-stitched feet to the new size. They aren't nearly as big as the original feet. The new feet match Pat's size 12's, so I guess he's the one who left the foot prints.

My other finished projects for 2007:

4 pairs of socks
1 baby sweater
1 baby blanket
1 baby bib
3 baby hats (It was the year for babies at work )
2 1/2 double knit hats (Sue's is still in progress)
1 quicky watch cap from bulky yarn
3 warm scarves for Joe's roommates

The 2008 Knit Fearlessly challenge from Kansas Knits is to make 4 things that stretch our boundaries. Since I dislike making anything that requires more than 2 skeins of yarn, I'm going to make Pat's Oregon vest as my first Knit Fearlessly project. It is started and I'm enjoying it.

When we picked out yarn for the vest two-three years ago in Texas, Pat picked a Lion Brand Homespun Yarn. It wasn't working up well, so I switched to the bulkiest Lion Brand Wool-Ease yarn. That's the yarn the pattern called for and works up much better.

I'm not certain what else I'll do for my other challenge pieces. Maybe I'll do that long Homespun Sweater that I once tried to crochet. I couldn't get the pattern to work for the left side. If I try the knitted version of the sweater, I may have better luck. I could use a sweater-coat.