Better late than never! My Saturday Evening Hoodie knit.

Last year, around this time, Lion Brand had a knit along for their Saturday Evening Hoodie.  The yarn I picked was the Bluebell color of their Wool-Ease Chunky yarn. I didn't think it would take me that long to knit because it was a chunky yarn.  Boy, was I wrong.   I got 2 new needles - US 13 36 inch cable needles and US 11 30 inch cable needles, both made of wood.  Mainly because its easier to travel, I usually get cable needles since both needles are attached to one another. You can knit flat or on the round with cable needles.
I knitted both sides of the front and the back using the round needles as flat needles.  I think I finished those three pieces in September.  That is when I got hit with bronchitis for the first time.
Mid-November is when I got started on the sleeves.  I wasn't looking forward to knitting 2 sleeves on flat needles (I am not fond of knitting flat, I prefer knitting on the round)  so I spent the first few days trying to convert the sleeves from knitting each one separately to knitting both on the round using the method of 2 socks one needle (magic loop is another term).
The way they wrote the instructions, they have you start at the cuff using Knit 2/Purl 2 ribbing for the first 3 inches.  They wanted you to cast on 30 stitches. If I did that, I would have had 4 Knit stitches in a row, so I had to choose do I add 2 stitches or take 2 stitches. I chose to add 2 stitches so I would have 32 inches (since the ribbing pattern is 4 stitches, I wanted to have the cuff be divisible by 4 so it would be a clear pattern with not obvious seam.) I have to admit, the ribbing kntting on the size 11 needles was challenging for the first 5-8 rows.  What made it easier was I got another set of 11s and so I would knit back and forth between the 2 cable needles. It took me most of December to finish the cuff, but it was hectic and I was still recovering from bronchitis.

To the above right is a picture of the finish cuffs on the US 11 needles. I am using 2 skeins of yarn - one for each sleeve to make it a bit easier. From there, I knitted directly onto the US13, making it the first row. On the 4th row, I K1, increased a stitch (I think I did M1L) K15, M1L, K16 (to the beginning of the round on that sleeve.) and then repeated on the second sleeve on that same row. 3 normal knit rows, and then I did another increase, and the second increase was K1, M1L, K16, M1L, K17.  Each progressing increase I would move the 2nd increase 1 stitch farther along.

Above Left are my knit markers.  They snap closed so I can snap them into my knitting and easily remove them. (so I can snap them into stitches directly to help count rows!) Above Right is my sleeve, with 4 of the adding rows done, marked with my stitch markers. To the right is what my sleeves look like currently.

To the right here is the sleeve on my arm.  I have done 9 of the 10 increases.  It currently covers my arm from wrist to just past my elbow.












Here is the sleeve with a tape measure next to it. from the beginning of the cuff to the end of the sleeve is 13 inches long. :)











I am doing the sleeves this way for several reasons.  One of which is the fact I want the sleeves to be the same length without having to count and recount rows.  Another is, I hate sewing up seams, so doing this I wont have a seam for most of the sleeve.

When the second part of the sleeve directions start - where you decrease stitches and start to form the shoulder, I will do that flat.  Hopefully this will work out!

Migraines are awful

I look up this morning feeling groggy and yucky. That's to be expected with someone with bronchitis, right? I also felt the start of a migraine forming and started to think what else could go wrong?!?
Then I looked at the clock. I could see shapes - circles, lines, squares. But I could not make sense out of those shapes into any kind of numbers. Great, I thought just great. So I took my rescue medication just after I woke up, and discovered that I could also not read letters! Let me tell you that made it very fun to figure out which medicines were which.
I told Munchkin that I was going to need her help with Monkey today so I would need her to get her schoolwork done as quickly as possible.
Almost 10 hours later is when I realized I could start making sense of numbers and letters again as long as I concentrated hard. This was after taking almost a four hour nap after taking all of my rescue medications for a second time.
If you're wondering how I am writing this, my phone has a transcribe feature that I'm using that all I have to do is add punctuation. Makes a heck of a lot easier than finding the letters on little keyboard!
Right now the migraine is just sitting there throbbing and being annoying but it is not debilitating like it was this morning and this afternoon.

Kitteh torture- aka bathing

My counselor, Dr. K gave me two kittehs for therapy last May. Dora - all black except for when she's in a sunbeam, then her beautiful fur shows browns and reds. She is the smaller that the two kittehs. The second kitteh is named Hattie - black and white into a similar pattern the the cat in the hat.
Both are females and are litter sisters. They are both loving and playful kittens.
They both have longer than most kittens, and they do have difficultly keeping themselves clean. Many times things get caught in their fur after they use the litter box. Because of this, we try to bathe them to help clean off.

Tonight was bath night. At least both kittehs are talking to me again

Today's summary

So, I have the cruds that are going around. My GP, Dr. H, said yesterday that my lungs still sound gunky (I love his technical terms for things!) like they did at the end of January. He gave me a different antibiotic this time, in hopes that it will help clear it up AND prevent me from getting any further infections from having congestion in my lungs for more than 3 weeks. Say like a sinus infection, ear infection or for my congestion from getting worse and progressing into pneumonia.
And here I lay, at my parents house in their guest room with the humidifier on, heating pad on my chest, doing my best to regulate my breathing so it is slow and steady (not gasping and panicky like I feel currently). I just took one of my inhailiors to help with the irritation in my chest. Hopefully the inhaled steroid will help this nasty thing to go away.
One thing I have found out today: it is not pleasant to wheezy cough and hiccup at the same time.
I woke this morning, feeling like that woman in the COPD commercial is at the beginning - laying on the sofa with an elephant sitting on her chest. An apt description on how it currently feels for me to breath. And then about 45-60 minutes later my voice decides to go hide, so I now have a frog in my throat, too. What will next come upon me that we compare to animals?