It’s been a few um…months.  I kept putting off posting since I’ve waited so long, but eventually it became clear that I was going to have to post *eventually* if I ever wanted to post again, so here I am.

I did have surgery on my foot.  It was scary, since I’m overweight and I worried about the general anesthetic, since being overweight makes you more at risk for things going wrong.  Other than some issues with the breathing tube, though, I managed to survive.  The surgery was about three weeks ago.  I’m non weight bearing for at least another week and a half, and maybe for another three weeks.  I’m not sure when I’m going back to work.  The earliest would be June 26th, but considering I can’t sit more than 15-20 minutes without my leg swelling so much I can’t get my fingers in the cast, I don’t know how accurate that is.

As you might imagine, being off work has provided me with copious amounts of time for crafting.  I’ve knitted some, but lots of cross-stitch.  I also taught my sister to knit.  She loves it.  She stayed with me the first week and a half or so, and is coming back today for a grocery run and maybe Hobby Lobby and just getting my butt out of the apartment.  I haven’t taken pictures, but I will later today, and I’ll try to actually post this time.  Granted, I need to *find* some of my knitting projects.  I had to clean my apartment so that it was crutch-friendly so things got bagged/boxed in a rush and while I know where all of my yarn, knitted or not, is - there’s a lot of it to go through!

I’ll keep this semi-brief so as to not babble too long, but I will say I’m quite happy with how the Democratic primary turned out.  I don’t think Hillary should be the VP for a number of reasons, and most of them aren’t even snarky.  I think she’s an incredibly intelligent woman and her talents would be much better used in another position.

My life has been sadly music-free lately since when I’m at home I normally only listen to music when I’m at my computer.  Since I can’t sit for long periods now, without having my foot up, I don’t sit at my computer much.  That said, my aural crack before surgery was Griffin House.  I saw him open for Mat Kearney a few years ago - maybe a year and a half?  Anyway, he played a song about war that I loved and I asked him about it after the show and he said it hadn’t been recorded yet.  Fast forward to the beginning of May or so, and I came across a CD I had purchased at the show.  I wondered if the song had ever been released - it had been!  It’s called “I Remember (It’s Happening Again)” and it’s fairly amazing.

Griffin says it’s not a protest song and at first I didn’t agree, but I think I do now.  I think it’s something, perhaps, that only someone who was raised in a military household could understand.  My dad was Navy for most of my childhood, and I’ve had quite a few family members in the Middle East in the past few years, and I have a cousin who is currently there.  Anyway - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJoT96xnRZ0 - and yes, that’s his actual grandfather in the video.

I have more to tell you, like how I broke my cell phone, and how I’ve seen way too many Disney movies in the last three weeks, and how sad I was to miss my favorite band in concert last Friday.  Alas, I am faced with an increasing need to shower and eat breakfast and the like.  Showering is fun, by the way.  The entire area around my tub gets a bath.  It’s great.

I think that the busier I get, the less I post.

Before anything, go visit the wonderfully cute Wyatt Ross over at NoMinivan.com - yay for new baby cuteness!

I have been crafting my fingers off, doing lots of homework, and generally keeping myself out of trouble.

However, things with my foot have gotten worse.  I have, for those just joining us, insertional Achilles tendinitis.  Basically, the place where the tendon goes into the bone is inflammed and I’ve developed calcification and a bone spur.

It used to be that I would hurt without the walking boot - which I’ve been wearing for 13 weeks or so.  Now it hurts even *with* the boot - and a prescription anti-inflammatory.

I see the doctor Friday and while I don’t have a medical degree or anything, I know that this will probably be surgery.  The surgery is pretty intense - 2 weeks in a splint till the stitches come out, 6 weeks in a hard cast, then 6 weeks in a fracture walker (provided the x-rays come back clean after the cast).  It takes 6 months before you can walk normally, and up to two years before you’re at 100%.

So why do that?  Well, if I don’t, with it getting worse, there’s a chance the tendon could rupture.  A tendon rupture would result in similar surgery with the same recovery time - if not worse - and the surgery would be done on an emergency basis.  That means I might not get my doctor, I might not have time to get it pre-certified by the insurance, etc, etc.

Still, though.  Three weeks of non-weight bearing.  That’s a long time.  I worry I won’t be able to go to work.  I can do some things at home, but not everything.

I’m annoying the heck out of everyone though, and I know it, but since I can’t do anything about it but worry, I am worrying.

In other news, crafting.  I almost broke my camera this weekend (!!!) but didn’t, thankfully, so I will be taking pictures tonight of a few things.  Mostly bags, which are mostly finished.  Well, sort of.

Let me tell you - i-cord (or idiot cord) - is really easy to make…which makes me wonder why it’s so darn tedious.  I’m making some for handles for one bag (my first decreased bottom!  Whee!) and I can’t do more than a few inches at a time.  I haven’t even finished the first one and I need two!  Still, they will be much easier to felt than the silly straps I was trying, so I guess it’ll be worth it in the end.

I should go be productive now or something.  I re-started Weight Watchers today.  Of course, this means one of my co-workers just *had* to bring in Krispy Kreme.

I had one - but I counted it!

Lots of crafting stuff below, but first - did you know that caffeine withdrawl can be evil?

I gave up soda a little over a week ago.  Normally when I’ve given up soda in the past, like for Lent, I replace it with something else.  Gatorade, Minute Maid Lemonade, etc - but I always have plenty of sugar to replace the feeling of caffeine at least a little bit.

Well, this time, I decided I was quitting soda and I was also quitting any beverage that has caffeine, high fructose corn syrup, or fake sugar.  Do you know what that leaves me with?  Water, juice, and milk.  Juice is too high calorie to drink a lot of and I don’t like milk much, so I’ve been drinking a lot of water.

In the past, the worst side effect to quitting the soda was a headache for a day or so.  This time, my body was not at all please I was giving up both the sugar and the caffeine.  So  I spent the last week or so (started 4/5/08) feeling dizzy if I stood up too quickly, tired, and generally pretty miserable.  Normally I find ice water refreshing - but last week, I wanted to pitch my water bottle through the window.

I think I’m past the worst of it, though, and I know I’m doing the right thing.  I feel more clear-headed, and just…cleaner.  I don’t know how else to explain it.  I think I’m going to try to move towards cleaner living, but we’ll see.  More fruits and veggies and lean meats, less pre-packaged food.

In crafting news, I almost finished a bag this weekend!  I will take pictures tonight.  I need to seam the bottom of it (it’s just a flap that needs seamed on 3 sides) and then make a handle.  I think I’ll double knit a strap.  I know that icord is seen as the way to go, but I don’t want round handles.

I’m working on another bag, of course, that is about half-knitted.  I’m going to try actually *shaping* the bottom of this one.  Decreases and everything!

Once I get these knitted up and felted and I make sure they work, I’m going to post the patterns.

I’ve had folks tell me that I should charge for patterns because if you don’t, you devalue your work.  I see the truth in that, but at the same time, I’m doing this for fun, not for profit.  I might install a tip jar or something.

Lastly, I have (sort of) mastered the art of Continental knitting.  Knitting in the round is so much faster now.  It’s taking some getting used to, with moderating the tension with my left hand, but overall it’s much faster.  It’s not so mindless yet, though, that I don’t have to watch myself knit.  When I’m knitting English, it might take longer, but I can look away for longer periods of time.

Also - no idea how one would purl Continental.  I suppose it’s good I don’t purl much.

That said, next up to learn is Fair Isle colorwork.  We’ll see how that goes.

Alas, off to drink water (bleh) and do actual work.  Pictures later, provided I remember and the like!

I managed to leave my iPod at home today.  I didn’t even realize it till I was too far out the door to go back for it without missing my bus.  It’s a sad day in Teresa-World.

I haven’t been crafting much the last few days.  Instead, I was de-cluttering.  For years I was a packrat.  Not bad enough to go on one of those shows about people forced out of their homes - but closer than is healthy.  It was at a point where I didn’t want people to come over.

Over the last year or two, I’ve learned some things that have helped me deal with some of the hoarding-type behavior.  I’ve gotten a lot better at not “collecting” so many things, but there’s still years and years of junk to go through.  I mentioned this before, and it’s still a work in progress.  Part of the reason it’s taking so long is I’m going slowly - intentionally.  I’m letting myself take the mental time I need to realize that it’s okay if I throw out certain things that may have seemed important at one time, but really aren’t.  My future children, should I ever have any, are probably not going to be interested in their mom’s collection of Bop and Tiger Beat magazines.  That said - anyone need several years worth of Cosmo magazine?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

What crafting I have done has been on a bag (of course).  The interesting thing here is that I was at a knitting group last week at the lovely Knitty Couture on the Delmar Loop.  I had never been to this group before, but my normal group was cancelled (they’re both held on Thursday), so I checked it out.  I noticed the owner of the shop was going incredibly fast and I commented on it.  Someone next to her said something like, “Oh, she’s knitting Continental, that’s why she’s so fast.”  I watched for a moment, then realized she was controlling the yarn with her left hand.  I shook my head and made some comment that I could never do that.

Well, on Sunday I was working on my bag on my new Addi needles and I thought I’d give it a go. 

While the first few stitches were not pretty (or fast) - I can see how it could be a lot faster once you got used to it.  So, I think for my next bag or scarf or whatnot, I’ll give it a shot.

I also tried oil painting this weekend - I got one of those little kits.  Let’s just say my crafting ability has some limits (which I already knew, but sometimes need reminded of).  I could probably give some four year olds a run for their money, but I’m not exactly Kandinsky.  That said, he didn’t start art school till he was over 30, and I’m 26, so who knows?  I liked doing it, but I’m not sure I’m all that good at it.

In health related news - the burn from the evil Mac and Cheese has almost healed.  My foot, however…I don’t know what’s going to happen.  I made my PT upset last night when I told her I was out of the orthopedic boot almost all day on Saturday, but it didn’t hurt!  The only thing that hurts is shoes.  I worry that this is going to end up with surgery to remove the bone spur and the calcium deposits.  I’m a wimp and a fraidy cat.  I don’t want surgery.  That said, I’ve had this boot on for going on 11 weeks and it’s not really getting better.  As such, maybe surgery would be the best thing.

Still, though - ick on having someone cut my foot.

Today is rainy - we’ve had a lot of rain lately.  I love thunderstorms, but can’t say I’m that big on flash floods.

Off to get work done.  I might go to the grocery on the way home, provided the rain holds off.  Heck, maybe even if it doesn’t.  It’s not like I have to worry about my iPod getting wet.  Blah for no music.

I have much to tell you but have been in training for three days so I’m at that point where I almost have too much to blog.

However, rather than not post for fear of missing something, I’ll post what I can and then fill in the gaps later.

I should start with the training, I suppose.

 I’ve spent the last few days in training for “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” through work.  I know - if you’re like me - you’re probably thinking, “Yawn.  Self-help.” but it was actually fairly fantastic.  There’s a book out there - a bestseller - but this was an actual program of training to learn the habits.  Of course, our trainer got sick and we only made it through Habit 4, but hey - at least I’ll probably be a bit more effective now, right?

One of the best parts - which I think you can get from the book, but I’m not sure - is what’s called a “Benchmark” which is a term used to describe the survey they send to your boss and co-workers to find out how you’re doing before you start the program.  It’s questions like “Seeks out the strengths of others to get things done” and “Maintains self-control, even in difficult or emotional circumstances” and then they rank you between strongly disagree and strongly agree.

So there’s dozens of questions and people rank you and you rank yourself and then they give it to you.  The only person you see as an individual is your boss - then I had 5 co-workers give feedback.

A few things surprised me - though not in a bad way.  I’m seen as honest, loyal, and a hard worker who produces high quality work.  Yay.  The lowest scores, however, were things like “Is flexible and open-minded in trying new ideas,” “Does not dominate discussions,” and “Receives negative feedback without becoming defensive.”

The most…negative of my “Things I could work on” was this “Reduce time taken up with personal chit-chat.  Share, don’t dominate the conversation - it’s not all about you.  Be more polite when answering questions, especially ones considered obvious.  Be considerate of other people’s time.”  So in short, stop being such a pain in the rear.

So of course, I get defensive.  I don’t know for *sure* who wrote it (though I think I know) but I got fairly indignant when reading it.  I complained to fellow trainees (who were going over their own Benchmarks) that it was interesting that my boss thought my biggest weakenesses were planning and organization but this person seemed to think I was just so horrible.

I stewed for a bit but then realized something - they’re probably right.  I have a very low tolerance for questions I see as simple.  I also don’t take well to someone asking for help on something that I wouldn’t need help on (if that makes sense).  I do tend to dominate discussions, and I really don’t take negative feedback well.

So having had a few days to go over the training and my Benchmark, I’ve got a few things planned to help me actually become more effective.  I’m going to take the first 30 minutes or so of every morning and plan out my day.  I’m going to try really hard to not be so dominating in conversation and try to actually listen to people.  I’m a work in progress, and I should try to actually make progress.

I suppose to be effective I should go get some work done.  Whee!

Despite my last post where I talked about how this blog isn’t going to be all about crafts, I am posting about crafting.  Nothing in this world makes me happier than working on making something.  The problem I have, sometimes, is that I’ll start on something and either decide it doesn’t work or decide I have a better idea and then scratch whatever I was working on.  I was, for a long time, the queen of uncompleted projects.

That’s changing, though.  It’s a slow process - but it is a process.  I’m decluttering my life in a lot of ways, including the boxes in my closets and the t-shirts from high school that are never going to fit again.  To be honest, I’m fairly large chested, so I don’t know that the mediums ever fit in the first place.  However, a tight t-shirt at 16 isn’t quite the same as a tight t-shirt at 26, so they need to go.  Oh, and if I ever have a 16 year old girl, she’s not going to be allowed to wear some of the stuff I wore.  Not that it was all that…unclassy, but I had no taste.

If you saw the bright orange scarf I’m knitting right now, you might think I still have no taste.  Honestly, I have no clue what I was thinking when I bought not one, not two, but three skeins of Moda Dea’s Eden yarn.  The site for Moda Dea seems to be down, so I grabbed a pic from someone’s flickr.  It’s a very soft yarn…but it’s thick and thin which I’m not used to.  It’s also Bright Orange.  I don’t look good in orange.  Again - no idea what I was thinking.

However, I think I have enough for two scarves of a reasonable length.  I’ve made it a goal to get 10 things ready for my Etsy shop before opening my doors there.  It’s hard, though, since it’s March and for the Northern Hemisphere, it’s not really going to be cold enough for most of the things I like to make for awhile.  I may wait and stock up on making finger-less gloves, hats, and scarves, and just have a blowout in September.  We’ll see.

Speaking of finger-less gloves (and posts about things that aren’t crafty) I bought some “Audacity” yarn (found a picture on someone else’s flickr site) from the wonderful Carol at Black Bunny Fibers.  I paid $28 (!!!) for some fingering weight (sock yarn for non-fiberholics) and $15 goes to Barack Obama’s campaign.  The issue with me buying sock yarn is…I don’t knit socks.  I only wear socks to keep my shoes from getting stinky.  So what’s a girl to do?  She makes fingerless gloves.  I think I might even have enough for two pair, but I don’t need two and the yarn is so pretty I want to make good use of all of it.  I might make one pair, and one headscarf/hat type deal.  The colors (thankfully) go really well with my skin tone.  I called myself a pale white girl before, and that’s mostly true, but I’ve got the weird tendency to look like I have both yellow and pink base tones in my skin, and then medium dark brown curly hair.  So pink/brown/tan yarn is going to look pretty good, I think, and maybe I can make something to keep my curls from sticking to my neck in the hot, humid St. Louis summer.

I do have two hats on order that I’m waiting for the yarn for.  I took advantage of a sale online to get lots of Lion Brand Wool-Ease yarn and some needles (Size 1 for the fingering weight, since I’ve never knitted it before, and some Size 11 circulars for bag-making).  Once that arrives, my two pairs of Size 8 circulars will be making hats. 

I need to post some pictures.  Perhaps tonight, once I make more progress on the “WOW!  That’s ORANGE!” scarf. 

And now, off to take the last day of my first antibiotic for the burn.  I’m special so I get to take two different kinds!  Whee!  In all honesty, I did see the doctor today and they even had a wound specialist look at it, and she said I was doing a great job caring for it and it might not even scar that badly.  I was quite excited.  It did look pretty good in the doctor’s office.  I think it was showing off.

Did you know mac and cheese can be dangerous?  It really can.

Well, it can if you’re a total klutz or someone who is prone to bouts of extreme klutziness. 

I’m the latter.

I went to make mac and cheese on Saturday.  I had a productive semi-productive morning of cleaning and Diablo II and just wanted some lunch.

So the noodles boiled, and I moved to dump them in the drainer in the sink.  I realized the microwave door was open, so I moved the pot up to not hit the microwave door, and managed to tilt the pot enough that I dumped scalding hot water on myself.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced pain like that before.

It blistered right away, and because of the size, I got to spend the afternoon at the ER (anything over two inches and you’re supposed to go the ER, as a note) getting treated for a second degree burn.  Mind you, this burn is on my breast.  Yeah, it hurt.

I’m on a Z-pack and have to change the dressing once a day.  I’ll probably have a bit of a scar, but hopefully nothing too bad.  If anything, at least there’s a funny rather than tragic story attached to it, right?  Right.

Anyway, I haven’t posted much because I’ve been thinking.  Scary, I know.  I’ve been thinking about why I blog.  I agree with the ever-wonderful Mae that no one who blogs does it without wanting an audience.  They may not all want a huge audience, but they want people to hear what they have to say.  I do think that some people blog primarily for themselves, but there is certainly a secondary reason that they want people to read them.  It’s not even really secondary - more like co-headlining.

So with this in mind, I thought about my blog history.  I’ve been blogging in different places for different reasons for probably 7 years or so.  Sometimes it was several times a day, sometimes once a month, but I always wanted that outlet.

Most recently (before this blog), I had a blog dedicated to weight loss (my own and trying to be a cheerleader for others).  I met someone (totally by accident - at a John Mayer concert in another city) once who greeted me with “I read your blog!”  Once I got over the initial shock, I ended up hanging out with her and her friend, and we got along great.  I mentioned, though, one of my posts that hadn’t been related to weight loss or health - it was related to a rather messy would-be relationship I was in at the time.  I asked her something about it and she said she hadn’t read it.  She said she tended to ignore the non weight-related stuff.

While I know she meant no harm, that stuck with me and I felt the need to have blogs about everything.  This was originally supposed to be a craft blog and only a craft blog.  Whoever would want to read about my latest knitted dishcloth obviously has no real desire to read about my family or my political views or my thoughts on social justice or heck - even my weight loss.

I think, though, that I was selling myself short and making pretty big assumption that all readers were like that.

The thing is, I’m pretty dang complex.  I’m not just knitting or weight loss or my crazy family or any of that stuff.  Why shouldn’t I blog it all?

So in short, I’m blogging this to tell you that the blog will probably be posted to more often but not always craft stuff.  I am pretty spunky and while I try to be respectful, I can be kind of mouthy.  This is supposed to be a blog about me, though - not about what I think other people want to hear about me, but about me.

I’ll just throw caution to the wind and hope that people do want the whole picture and not just parts of the picture.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go work and try to ignore the pain on my boob.

I want to tell you a story.  It has nothing to do with crafts or knitting, but has everything to do with me.  All of the debate on race in recent weeks has brought this to a head within me and after Barack Obama’s speech today, I need to get this out.

When I was in college, one of my favorite classes was Social Inequalities.  I was young, idealistic, and - to be honest - I was searching for something that would show how “open-minded” I was.  I wanted to be a liberal.  I wanted to distance myself from the place I was from - a town in St. Louis County where it wasn’t a question of you going to church or not - the question was which one.  At the time, I wasn’t a church-goer, so I saw college - where my first class was the size of my entire high school - as a chance to be the “real me.”  Nevermind that I had no idea who the “real me” was.

The professor in the class was a white female who I would guess was in her mid-thirties.  She was driven and to the point, but wasn’t unkind about it.  You could tell she cared a lot about the class and the subject.  We discussed racial inequality, gender inequality, housing inequality - lots of different things.

Mid-way through the semester we were asked to write a short paper - 3 pages or so - that addressed what we had learned in the class and our thoughts on how things were going.

It’s important to note that at the university of 23,000 students, there were very few students who weren’t white.  I won’t pretend I know the number, but I think that less than one percent of the student body was black. 

This class of about 50 students, though, was about half white/half black with one girl with an Asian background.

We turned in our papers, where I’m sure I talked about how I hadn’t really thought about the idea that “flesh colored band-aids” weren’t flesh colored for everyone.  As a pale white girl, it hadn’t ever really occurred to me.

When the professor addressed the class about the papers, I was excited to see if all the other white kids were learning as much as I was, and if the black kids thought the portrayals of racial inequality were correct.

The response broke my heart. 

The professor drew a chart on the board to show the results.  The majority of white students cared - or at least said they did in their papers - about racial injustice.  They wanted change - though they admitted they didn’t know how to bring about the change that they wanted.  A few of the white kids thought it was just a bunch of complaining about nothing, but they were - by far - in the minority.

The black kids, however, overwhelmingly didn’t think a white woman had any place teaching a class on inequality.  They thought that white people - including their class-mates - didn’t care about them and didn’t understand what they had gone through to get to college and the obstacles other blacks faced.  A few of the black kids didn’t feel that way - but the majority seemed to think it was something that either couldn’t be fixed or that wouldn’t be fixed because white America really didn’t care, for all their pretending.

I sat there, my little bubble of idealism and “bleeding heart” liberalism slowly leaking as I saw the anger on the faces of the black students.  I wasn’t mad - how could I be?  I had gone to a high school that was 60% white and 40% black with a few Asian kids.  I knew the cops in my town were much more likely to stop a black kid walking at night than a white kid.  I saw how the white kids causing problems in class were told to stay after and the teacher would work with them, or in some cases, would just try to ignore the student.  The black kids causing trouble were sent to the “resource” room where they did worksheets on grammar lessons meant for third graders.  I saw how in my AP English class of 8 students, only one of them wasn’t white.

I couldn’t blame them for their anger and it hurt to know that at such a young age, they were already so jaded that it felt like there was nothing that could be done.

It’s been a few years since then, and my interest in social issues has only grown, though my idealism is tempered by realism (and 6 months working in a homeless shelter for young mothers).

I live in St. Louis City now, which is quite different from St. Louis County, both in racial make-up and personality.  Still, though, I always hesitate before I talk about race.  I try to smile and nod when people tell me they’re color-blind, because I realize how any white person that would say that doesn’t see how advantaged they are.  I keep my mouth shut when black people on the bus go on tirades about white people while watching me out of the corner of their eye.

Obama’s speech today - located here - is the most honest speech on race I have ever heard.  The response I’ve seen from fellow Obama supporters has given me back so much of my hope that we can make this better.  There are other pale white girls who feel the same way I do!  There are also black girls (and guys) who know that there are whites out there who want to work with them to help make this better.  This is not something anyone - or any race - can do alone.  There are white people out there who realize what we have done to keep inequality alive, despite our best intentions.  There are blacks out there who understand the pressure on black kids not to excel in school for fear of being seen as “acting white” and being shunned by their class-mates.

I know that Fox News - and probably other media outlets as well - will turn Obama’s speech into something other than what it is. 

I know what it is, though.  It is the heartfelt call from a man who has lived to experience so many things - from growing up in Indonesia to going to Harvard Law School - and sees that we can do better.  We can’t do perfect, but we can do better.

Yes We Can.

If you need proof that creative/insane people should not have sugar for breakfast, check out my earrings:

I don’t have a lot of green clothing (which is surprising, since I don’t look bad in it) and had no clean green shirts this morning.  I decided if I wasn’t allowed to wear a Santa hat to work before Christmas, I was not obligated to wear green today.  However, once I got to work I started pondering and then, when talking with a green-clad co-worker, picked up a piece of candy wrapped in pale green tin foil.

You can see where this is going.

I picked it up and said I should just eat the candy and then tape the wrapper to my forehead.  He laughed and walked back to his desk.  However, I realized my earrings could use some green.  So, I spent 15 minutes (don’t tell my boss) wrapping tiny pieces of candy wrapper around two of the balls on my earrings.  Then I put them on.  They’re actually kind of cute.  I was pretty impressed with myself.  My co-workers were too, though more in the, “Wow, she’s creative but insane!” sort of way.

I decided I needed to make a list of the projects I’m working on.  I have a bit of a list going on Ravelry but as that’s not open to the public yet, I’ll do one here too:

1)  My square for the Pratchgan - must be finished TODAY so I can send it off to Scotland where it will go into the project, which will then be sent to Mr. Terry Pratchett, who is awesome and amazing.

2) “Days Go By” - a scarf made from Moda Dea “Chichi” yarn.  I hate the name of the yarn, but it’s this horribly soft microfiber eyelash stuff I found while cleaning my apartment.  Oh, and the name of the scarf is from the Dirty Vegas song “Days Go By” because of the line, “Still a whisper on my lips, feel it at my fingertips, it’s pulling at my skin.”

3) “Hotel Life” - a bag made from my beloved Cascade 220 wool which I’m naming after the song “Hotel Life” by David Poe .  I have no clue at all if the idea I had for shaping it into a box bottom is going to work or not.  I have the first half of it done and it looks like it will, but I knit it in stockinette, so the curling makes it hard to tell.  What would have been bright would have been waiting till I had size 11 circs that were the right size (I need 16″) but I don’t do bright, apparently.  Anyway, I’ll finish the second half and then we’ll see.  The decreases I’m using to shape the bottom are making some pretty big loops, though, so I wonder if I should patch it before I felt it.  I’m sure you’ll hear about it either way.  What I could do is just rip out the decreases and make a strip to go between the two sides.  That’s a very, very tempting option.

4) “Star Field” - the blue bag named after the Duncan Sheik song, “Star Field On Red Lines,” which I messed up by making it too shallow and now need to knit panels for.  I’m still planning on finishing this now that my hand has healed from The Felting Incident, but it’ll be after “Hotel Life” is knitted, as I only have on set of Size 11 needles as of now and I need them.

5) “Bulletproof Weeks” - a double-knit hat named after the Matt Nathanson song.  I had started it, but had to frog it, and now it’s getting warmer and I can’t pretend I’m all that interested in making it now.  I’ll finish it though - eventually.

As for the bags, I have a few other ones planned.  The names are going to be the song names for now, though that might change.  It’s not so much that the bags are *about* the songs, but more that I got the idea for them while listening to the song.  In most cases, even if people heard the song, they wouldn’t even make the connection, which is fine.  It’s not always about my favorite song by the artist, either.   It’s just whatever makes me think, “hmmm…” and then I go with it.  So far I have planned a handful - “Gravity” after the Sara Bareilles song, “Piece Of Me” after the Britney Spears song (shut up), “Woman Trouble” after the song by The Artful Dodger, “Pretty The World” named after the Matt Nathanson song, “Belief” named after the John Mayer song, and um…I really need to find a job where they pay me to knit.

Until then, I should probably go do actual work.  Life updates later but let me just tell you that they’re not joking about that whole signing your tax return thing.  They will send it back to you and then the money you were going to spend on yarn and college loan repayment will be delayed.  Whoops.

I’ll talk crafts here in a second, but I need to whine a moment.

I went to the physical therapist for the first time last night for my achilles tendon.  We talked about my symptoms and what had happened when I tried to wean myself off the boot like the doctor had suggested.  Basically, it was okay in the evening, but not at work, and my trying it at work had made it hurt in the evening too.  In some ways, I was back where I started from when I started wearing the boot in late January.  Her recommendation was that I wear it all day at work, take it off for 30 minutes when I get home, wear it till my shower, take it off for the shower and my exercises and ice massage, and then put it back on.  Once I can wear it all evening with no pain, try 30 minutes off at work, then 3-4 hours on, and go from there.

I am entering my 7th week with this boot on.  When I left that office last night, it hurt worse than it did before I ever started wearing the boot in the first place.

I am so sick of this.  Things could be worse - I know that - but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.  I want to go back to the gym.  I want to stop hurting.  I want to stop feeling like I look like an idiot because this boot is huge.

So - now that I’m done feeling sorry for myself (for now) - let’s talk crafting.

My lovely knitting group - especially Lisa - helped me with my bag.  I explained that I thought it would end up too short and she had the suggestion of knitting extra panels and seaming them to what’s already there.  I felt really silly that I hadn’t thought of it, honestly.  So I’ll be doing that.

I didn’t knit much this weekend because I was cleaning.  I’m not even half done - I used to be a total pack-rat, and though I’ve recovered, I still have to get rid of the stuff I collected when I *was* a pack-rat.  I have notes from high school, a letter I wrote my dad in 1989 (keeping that), and just…junk.

I did find a ton of yarn, some of it I’ll use, some I won’t.  I also found tons of cross-stitch stuff, including some silk thread I thought was gone for good.  I may have to break out some of my old cross-stitch stuff, once I get the apartment clean.  That might be awhile, though.  We’ll see.

Actually, my little sister just moved into her own apartment after living with my mom for years.  A few years ago, she was with me at Hobby Lobby when we found a cute pattern that was marked down to 99 cents or something.  We both really loved it, but she doesn’t cross-stitch, so I bought it.  I have most of the stuff for it, I think, so maybe I’ll work on that for her this week.  She probably doesn’t even remember it so she’d be so delighted.  I think that’s a plan!

Now, though, the plan is for me to go be productive.  Blah.

More later, though, and I promise not to whine about my foot *too* much!