My days at the office have been quite full since around Christmas. I've been coming home feeling like I've been rolled out by a pastry chef and left to rise. However the leavening in me hasn't been very responsive so by the weekend I was spending the day feeling like flatbread. But I've been getting more energy lately. Not enough to wash the walls and scrub the floor but enough to get a few things done like taking out the recycling and washing and folding (yes folding!) the laundry. There haven't been very many spoons* available thanks to the asthma occasionally coming up when I least expect it and kicking me in the gut, but something's changed and so far (fingers crossed) I'm finding more spoons in my energy drawer to use.
One thing I did was the Seattle to Portland Yarn Train** last Saturday. This is the crawl's 3rd year. A group of Seattle knitters ride the train south to partake of the riches our city's yarn shops provide. Since I have access to these pretty much all the time, I didn't go about with the crawlers but parked myself at the Starbucks in the Governor Hotel as Portland ambassador, navigator, guide, and commisserator to those with sore feet. Around 1 pm a group had assembled with me and took over a healthy chunk of the place, changing the ambiance from a quiet corner to a place full of gabbing knitters. However I didn't escape the fumes from the nearest shop, Knit/Purl. I came home with a couple of skeins of sale yarn and a new tote that looks a lot like an attache instead of a knitting bag. Tres chic!
I currently have on my plate another Harry Potteresque scarf, another commission from the same woman who ordered the Gryffindor scarf only this in black and green. Combined with the work at the office, my hands were getting a real beating. For a while I was having to not do any handiwork at home while my hands recovered but I found a solution that has helped me immensely: a touchpad for my office computer. It has more features than the touchpads you usually find on a laptop computer and the motions require much less effort and tension on the muscles. The effect was almost immediate. Now I'm doing my knitting without feeling like I'm getting claw hands from all the work at work. I'm also spinning on a handspindle at work on one of my breaks to have something different for my hands to do.
I was asked what I would be doing when I was 80. I told him I'd be running races up and down the nursing room corridor. I probably wouldn't in reality because I don't want to hurt someone who couldn't get out of the way, but I'm sure I'd be thinking up some kind of mischief or something to make people smile. Like attaching playing cards to my wheelchair's frame so that they flap in the wheel spokes. The staff won't forget me.
*If you want to find out what the heck I'm talking about, read this.
**Here I am a slacker because I have no pics of the crawlers at other locations, but here you'll get Michelle's posting.
1 comment:
I didn't do the crawl with the PDX group, because I don't stash much, and I knew I'd have many chances to see the group during the year. So it was nice to see the SBUX group! But I did hook up with some Seattleites and squire them around town. That was fun, because it meant I went to Yarnia for the first time. Cool place. I almost, but not quite, made yarn. I needed it to be heavier, and I didn't have time to start over because the train was calling our guests.
Nice to see you! See you at a Spinnerati or KB thing, soon.
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