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broken streak

I’m giving up on having daily posts. I’d rather only write when I want to, then force myself to find something interesting to share.

Truthfully, until this past week I didn’t have much to share. Not much going on around here. We had some family dinners, I bought some lovely new clothes and costume jewelry, picked up more nail polish, and squeezed in knitting and studying whenever I could.

Our final test for this year is due on Tuesday, and then we have our final exam on April 22nd. I hope to have all our written stuff done by then too so we can have a true summer vacation…or as much as possible with a full-time job.

I’ve blocked and seamed my Linden and am in the process of knitting the lower garter band. I want it 2.5″ long, and am about halfway there. Each row just takes so long! I should only have ends to weave in afterwards but I might lengthen the sleeves first so I don’t know yet how soon it will be done.

I’m also working on my stockinette stitch swatch for my current design. I had a bit of time to work on it this week but I just couldn’t bring myself to knit.

More on that tomorrow.


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lazy thursday

I HAVE to share this pic of Henri from last night:

This kid cracks me up with how he sleeps!  From finding him hanging half out of bed, to this…I’m surprised he doesn’t wake up when I walk in and start laughing, then rush out to get the camera!

Today was a lazy day.  Since Jakob is still contagious until 24 hrs on antibiotics, and we won’t know if Henri has strep until tomorrow, they were both home again today (and will be tomorrow too).  Nowhere to go and nothing special to do meant a nice, relaxing lazy day with all of us in our jammies.

I’ve said before that my boys are close, and they really, truly are.  They’re this amazing mix of brothers and best friends, the kind of relationship where they won’t go into their separate classrooms without hugging and kissing goodbye in the hallway first.  Before lunch, while watching a bit of Artzooka, they were like this:

That’s Jakob lying down with his head in Henri’s lap, while his brother absently strokes his hair.  I swoon, I really do.  I know Yannick and I are really affectionate with the kids, constantly hugging and kissing them and telling them all day and randomly how much we love them, and it’s so great to see them not only reciprocating with us (Jakob makes the ladies at the mall or hair salon melt when he comes up out of the blue to say “I love you Mommy”), but also with each other.  With two boys I don’t know if this kind of relationship has an expiry date so I’m try to record or at least witness and remember as much of it as I can.

Both kids were awesome (or sick, depending on how you look at it) and slept all afternoon.  I LOVE a 1-4:30 nap time!  I finished reworking my shawl swatch and got a good chunk of it done.  I finished up the rest of it tonight and now just have a stockinette part to get through so I can move on to the next bit of charting.  Just me, the yarn, and Excel…good times.


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and the results are in…

wed mar 7-boys home, back to dr tonight for them.  more swatching for shawl, blanket yarn pic

Kept the boys home again today.  They only had low-grade fevers last night, and I was thinking that they might be able to go to school today.  It was Yannick’s morning to get up with the kids, and when I got up I asked how they were doing.  He said Henri was acting fine, but Jakob seemed sick.  I took their temperatures and Jakob had no fever any more, and Henri’s was low-grade again (99.8).  You just can’t tell from how they’re acting!  I was debating sending Jakob to school but really didn’t want to go out if I didn’t have to, and right as I was thinking about it he had a mini coughing fit and sneezed a few times, and I realized it wasn’t worth going out to bring him there.  Plus we still haven’t heard back from his strep test, even the 24 hour results aren’t in yet.

Because they still weren’t well, and it has been 3 days since Sunday when we saw the doctor last, I called up to book an appointment.  It was 8:30 when I called (they open the phone lines 30 min before they open for booking “emergency” visits) and they were already booking for 2pm!  The entire day had filled up already!  I really didn’t want to bring them in during nap time, so even though it would suck to go out at night if it got cold, I decided to wait and call back a bit later when they had gotten closer to 5pm.  Sure enough, about 45 minutes (and 3 call attempts) later, I was able to book a 5pm appointment, meaning I could let the kids nap until the usual 4:30 then get them ready and leave and be there just on time.

They played well in the morning, and ate well even though I gave them a light lunch.  At nap time Henri fell asleep right away, and Jakob was still up and playing when I went in around 3:00 to ask him to be quiet.  I was DEFINITELY thinking that Jakob was feeling much better, and be able to go back to school.  Around 4:00 Henri woke up and asked if he could go play with Jakob, I said sure ‘cus I knew Jakob would love a partner to play with.  Imagine my surprise when 2 minutes later Henri came back saying he couldn’t wake Jakob up!  Huh?  Wake him?  I went upstairs to check- and sure enough Jakob was SOUND asleep across his bed.  Oy.

Before heading out to the doctor I took their temperatures again just to be able to tell the doctor what was going on.  Jakob had no fever at all (97.2 by the time I took it out).  His only current symptoms were a bit-more-than-occasional cough, runny nose and sneezing.  Plus the unknown strep results.  Henri, on the other hand, had gone up to 102.2!  The poor kid- his voice was “off”, his nose was really runny but thick, and he had the occasional cough/sneeze.

While we waited for the doctor I asked the lab if they had Jakob’s results- no.  They said to check with the doctor’s receptionists, which I didn’t do because I’d be seeing the doctor herself in a minute or two.  She took a look at Jakob first and said that his symptoms (fever and red throat first, fading to cough/sneeze) seemed likely that he had a virus.  If the strep test were to turn out positive, then he probably just had a cold on top of the strep, but assuming it was negative, he had a virus and once he’s fever free (which he is) and back to himself (which he isn’t) then he can go back to school.  Henri also seemed to just have a virus, though because his fever has been since last Friday or Saturday night, if it continued a few more days we’d have to do an x-ray to make sure it wasn’t a light pneumonia (even though he wasn’t coughing much).  Just in case, though, she gave us a strep test requisition paper and rx for amoxil so that if Jakob’s test were to come back positive, we could get Henri checked too, and then fill the rx without having to come back in.  She didn’t have Jakob’s results so she told us to check with reception.

That’s when it almost got comical.  We go out to reception and they say they asked the lab for the results, but she was busy and couldn’t tell them right away.  I asked if I should wait because should it be positive we’d have to test Henri, but the lab had just closed so they couldn’t even test him anyways.  They said that they were open until 7:30, so if Jakob’s results did come in before they closed they’d call me, and if positive I could come back with Henri the next day to be tested.  So I get the kids ready to leave and RIGHT as we’re about to walk out they say they have the results!  Jakob’s 5 minute and 24 hr tests were both negative, but the 48 hour one was positive.

Huh?  Now that the kid has no fever and only a cough & sneeze as symptoms, which are NOT symptoms of strep, NOW he has strep?  Okay…  Well, can they test Henri, since we’re still here?  Nope, she tells me, ‘cus the lab really is closed.  But another lab nearby is still open.  It was 5:45pm, the kids hadn’t eaten supper yet, and I didn’t want to feed them before Henri was tested in case swallowing food would slough away any bacteria from the back of his throat.  If I’m paying for a strep test, I want them finding any and all available bacteria!!

The rest of the next hour and a half was a “hurry-up-and-wait” blur.  First we drove to the other lab, near the local hospital.  After a short wait Henri had his test done, then we had to wait 15 minutes for their quick-test results.  I tried bringing the kids to a cafe next door for a soup and cookie, something for a light supper, but they were closed.  The only thing open during the wait was a depaneur, so the best I could do to tide them over was get them each a drink (no sharing right now!) and a big cookie for the 3 of us to share.  The 15 minute test was negative, so now we’ve got to wait.  Since Jakob’s test was positive after the long growing span, I won’t know for sure until at least Friday if Henri has strep or not.  Which means we’re home for the rest of the week.

We couldn’t go home yet, though, because we still had to fill Jakob’s amoxil.  I know from past experience that it takes about 10-15 minutes to fill that rx because they make it only once the order comes in (I assume), but I really didn’t want to get the boys home 10 minutes before bedtime and THEN feed them.  So we hit up a McDonald’s drive through for some nuggets and fries, and I fed them while sitting in the waiting chairs at the pharmacy.  Not the best meal in the best place, but the best I could do at the time.  By the time the rx was filled and we got home, it was 10 minutes past their 7pm bedtime.  Oy.

I think the rush of activity wore them both out, because once they were in bed, neither one got up again.  They both passed right out.

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If I get back to the crafting, which is why most of you are probably here, I did more planning of swatches in Excel.  I did work up a quick swatch to test out decrease angles for a little motif I’m hoping to include in the pattern, but since I’m hoping to publish this pattern, I can’t actually show any photos here.

Instead I’ll give you this photo:

I figured it would be a good idea to have a group pic of all the yarns used in my sparkly woven blanket before they were used up in the blanket.  Because I’m striping them randomly it’s not easy to tell from the project what the yarns that went into it looked like, so this will be my reminder.

I hope you’re all healthy!


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silly faces!

The boys were home again today.  Their fevers weren’t as high as yesterday, but you could tell they weren’t “well”.  Plus we still haven’t heard back with Jakob’s strep results, so I want to keep him home until we know for sure.

I had a follow-up doctor’s appointment for me today, because when I’d seen my doctor after the bad hernia incident, my blood pressure was higher than normal and he wanted to make sure it wasn’t staying that way.  (I was sure it was because of the incident, though).  He was only an hour behind schedule today, and I did a bit more swatching though I might rip it out ‘cus I wasn’t very happy with it.

Because the kids were home, but I had the appointment, I brought the kids to my parents’ place for their nap.  Neither one slept, of course, because they were too excited to be “out”.  Still, besides being sick, they were in great moods, and we had some fun being silly with my camera.

Nice enough…

Silly face time!!

They had supper there and played for a bit so once I got them home I was able to get them right into bed.  I got a bit of work done and decided to just call it a night.  I’m going to get into bed with my phone and play video games until I pass out.  I’m so hooked on some of these games that getting into bed with a few hours of nothing to do but play seems like the biggest luxury right now, and I’m going to take advantage of it!


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getting my weave on

The boys were both home today.  We did the strep test, and the 5 minute one was negative.  They would now grow it for 24 hours, and if that was negative they’d grow it some more until it was 48 hours, and notify us if it ever turned positive.  Great.

I did some weaving in the afternoon while they napped.  The purple/green section is my 3rd shuttle, using yarns 5 and 6 together (a green-y blend and a purpley blend).  The stitch marker is just my marker for where I stopped counting picks (rows).  As I wind it up I’m keeping track of how many rows there are so I can make each of the 5 panels the exact same length.

I’m at about 47″, and I hope it will be about 80″.

Here’s a better look at my current manicure.  Jakob was surprised that while I was home sick I had bare nails, and asked me to paint them again.  I was in the mood for a chrome and couldn’t pick which one, so I used all 3.  Then I topped them with the black-dotted clear topcoat.  I considered them “Spring-y”, but someone said they look just like the foil-wrapped little chocolate Easter eggs, and I think they’re right!


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two sick kids

sun mar 4- skip swimming- kids sick.  to dr, jakob maybe strep, internet store meeting.  jakob face pic, henri sleep

We skipped swimming this morning because of the kids’ fevers last night.  I wasn’t sure if it was worth bringing them to the doctor, and then I took a closer look at Jakob’s face, and saw this rash.

It wasn’t raised, or itchy, but bothered me, so we called up and got both kids an appointment at 10:30.  Turns out that Jakob’s fever and rash could be signs of strep.  Couple them with the fact that he had a very red throat, and even though he wasn’t complaining of it, he had to do a strep test.  (Weird that symptoms of strep are so different in kids vs adults!)  Henri only had his fever with a runny nose, so they said he probably just had a virus, and if he started coughing again I could give him his puffers before bringing him back in.  Though, both kids would have to go back if they still had fevers in 3 days.

The lab, unfortunately, was closed for the weekend, so we’d have to come back the next morning for the strep test.  Wonderful.

For 2 sick kids, they were in great spirits, and you couldn’t tell from their attitudes that they were sick at all.  At least- until bed time.  They both napped in the afternoon, and then when bedtime hit they crashed again.

Henri fell asleep so fast that he never even moved after I tucked him in- just put his hands under his cheek like this and fell right asleep.  😦  Little sweetie!


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woven spring scarf

Today was uneventful.  I didn’t get much weaving done, just a few rows while the kids played this morning.  I did some swatching for a new pattern, but it’s still in the early drafting stages, and I’m playing around with it in Excel until I get it right.

Since I’ve got nothing else to show you, here’s my aunt’s scarf all finished up.

I mailed it to her as a surprise, and she was supposed to receive it last Monday, which is why I haven’t been posting finished pics (even though I don’t think she knows about, or reads my blog).  I’ve come to find out that she’s out of town, and didn’t actually receive it yet.  Oh well- here it is.

It’s an infinity scarf with a twist, and can be worn straight or wrapped twice around the neck.

This shows the seam.  You can barely see it because it was done by machine, and it really doesn’t have much bulk at all.

It’s hard to photograph something with a twist- you don’t know how to lay it down!

This shows the crochet edging, and how tight the fabric ended up after it was washed and dried.

Today ended a bit depressingly.  I was starting to feel a bit better, and looking forwards to getting back to work next week.  Kind of my own Spring renewal.  And then…before bed I noticed the boys were acting a big sluggish.  I’d thought Henri felt a bit warm last night but since he was staying home today I didn’t take his temperature.  I took it tonight- 102.  😦  Then I took Jakob’s, because a sign that he’s sick is when he’s extremely cuddly and affectionate, and he’d been coming up to me and stroking my cheek before giving me a little kiss all afternoon- 100.8.  😦  Looks like I might not be back at work so soon…


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celery socks

Still the same.  Still coughing.  Yannick drove the boys in this morning, and my mom was nice enough to pick up the boys for me today so I didn’t have to go out and pick them up.  I spent the day in my pjs, slept a bit, and got some knitting done.

I finished the Celery socks!

So as I’d said previously, this is Knit Picks’ Bare sock yarn that I hand-dyed in self-striping shades of green.

I’d used most of it for my mom’s woven scarf (my first woven project) and these socks used up all but 1 yard of the leftovers.  (Yay for scales!)

My latest “usual” sock pattern- figure 8 cast on, toe up socks, short row heel, modified to have a patterned leg instead of just stockinette stitch.  No ribbing, about 5 garter ridges instead.