A plague upon my house

Bleargh.

Thursday morning, my husband called me at work. My baby had developed a fever. No big deal, she was obviously teething like crazy, but it did mean that she couldn't go to daycare. And since my husband had to deliver a set of clubs to a client on the weekend, he couldn't both care for her and have the product ready when he said he would. So home I went.

Friday - still feverish. But improving. And the teeth were more and more visible through the gums every time I looked at them. I entertained hopes of going back to work on Monday.

Unfortunately, towards the end of the weekend, my kindergartener developed a fever.

Damn. Not teething.

By Tuesday, I had it too - the congestion settled in, and in the evening, the fever started.

I feel like utter crap. And I still haven't been able to go back to work. I'm sure my co-workers aren't pleased with me. But I have to keep telling myself that it's better that they take up my slack than to come down with this rotten thing. Hopefully I didn't manage to infect anybody before I left.

Betcha anything my husband is next...right when we're supposed to have a birthday party for the girls on Saturday (and it's the reschedule of the original party, which we had to postpone for the colds the girls both got last month).

Joy.

On the plus side, the yarn for my MIL's Christmas present, plus the additional sock yarn I bought as a budgetary excuse to soak up the shipping costs, arrived on Friday.

Lliclla for MIL

Soon after the yarn arrived, I did feel like crying. But not for the reasons you might think.

Were the colours wrong? HELL NO. The colours are gorgeous. I honestly could not have gotten better matches if I'd had them custom-dyed. Wellll, the pumpkin I suppose could ideally be more golden, but it's still great. The other colours are absolutely perfectamundo.

Did I find something at my LYS's Mother's Day Sale that would have worked just as well for a lower price? Nope. They do have some lovely stuff on sale (which ends Saturday, I believe, in case you're interested in heading in), but nothing that was right for this project.

What, is the yarn crap? Oh, goodness no. This is niiice stuff, this is. 100% highland wool, and it feels great. I still can't believe I paid so little for it.

SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?!?

I mixed up two of the colours. I ordered two of the burgundy when I should have ordered four, and I ordered four of the orange-red when I should have ordered two. All my own stupid fault.

There are no words.

So, I've had to switch the colour patterning around a little bit. I did a preview drawing on my computer beforehand just to make sure the new combination wouldn't look like ass, and it doesn't...but it doesn't look the same as the pretty pictures in the book, which really bugs me.

The other problem is that I seem to have completely lost one of the skeins of burgundy.

I am just screwing myself up right, left and centre here!

Fortunately, everything else about the project is absolutely awesome. It's knitting up ridiculously fast - I'm already almost two-thirds of the way done. Yes, you read that right. I mean, I know I've been flaking out on the couch for most of the past week, so I've had more knitting time than usual, but this is really a super-fast knit. Except for the cast-on, which was a complete BITCH. Seriously, folks. 514 stitches in a provisional tubular cast-on? Not even a little fun. Amazingly, I got the count exactly right on only my second attempt. (And the screwup of the first attempt was pretty minor and painless.) I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Oh wait...I guess the way I feel right now is the other shoe. As is the lost burgundy skein. Crap.

Anyway, it looks awesome:

Christmas socks for Dad

Coming along very nicely indeed. Except that DH tried the first one on and it seemed to be a tad short in the foot, so I'll have to lengthen that by two or three rows. But other than that - good stuff.

Jester Booties

Last week, when I was still feeling like a human being, I noticed that our neighbour ten doors up had this huge baby-foot-shaped balloon tied to one of the trees in their front yard congratulating them on their new arrival. Now, I'd met the mom of this family last summer when I was on mat leave and coming home from a nice walk with my baby. At the time, she was a few months away from going back to work after her first child. We exchanged names, I told her a few encouraging things about my experience going back to work and leaving the baby with a caregiver (she was dreading it, even though the caregiver was her mom...she had total confidence in her mother, she just didn't want to leave her child, which I can totally relate to). We told each other to drop round anytime, and haven't seen to each other since.

So I was delighted to hear of her new blessing, and immediately went home and cast on the kee-YOOT-est baby bootie pattern. It's "Jester Booties", from Zoe Mellor's "Double Knits" book.

I got this far before the yarn order arrived on Friday:



After that, as you've already read, life around here went completely to pot and I haven't picked the bootie up since. I think I shall just forget about giving the booties to my neighbour, chalk it up to Life Happening, and simply give her my warmest congratulations whenever I see her again.

Ummm...also, I might have gone a little crazy at the recent online yarn sale at the studio. I mean, they were selling Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool for $1.75 a skein!!! I rationalized it as future present spending - at last, I'd be able to make the projects I want to make for my MIL for future Christmases, with the yarn I want, at the prices I want. Alas, a lot of what I really had my eye on had already been gobbled up and I kept getting 'that's out of stock, sorry' messages, but I still managed an extremely respectable haul. Oh, and did I mention the free shipping because my order was over $75?

No, I don't know what money I'm going to use to pay for this stuff. And if you'd seen the prices, you wouldn't care, either. :)

And now, I shall wait for the painkillers to kick in to give my sinuses some relief so I can actually get some sleep. After I clean a bunch of filthy diapers, that is.

(Waaaahhh!)