Bah, Hands

[liralen]

I strained something, yesterday, or the day before, and my right hand, yesterday, couldn't lift anything of any weight. It was a little rough, as Jet was asking to be picked up quite a few times.

Isabel and George asked to be dropped off at the local bus stop, so the three of us went with them, and dropped them off to the BOLT that went to Boulder, which connected with the airporter. They had a fairly long day getting home, but John called, last night, and they got home safely.

It's always bittersweet when they go, as we do miss them, but I'm sure they're glad to be home again, where there's oxygen and humidity and their familiar things. But the visit was great for all concerned, and they helped us when we needed it. My parents help us out, too, but it's good to give each set a turn. They appreciated the time with Jet, and we appreciated the ability to go off and do something we needed to do.

It was a good visit.



I am always bemused by the milk arriving every Tuesday morning. It's like a minor miracle. :-) We have ordered milk from The Longmont Dairy, and I'm very happy with the service. They promise their milk within 24 hours of milking and I've never worked with milk that fresh for my lattes before. It foams like crazy. No antibiotics, no growth hormones. They're not organic, but they're certainly less expensive than organic milks, and I'm just glad enough of the no hormones rule.

I love the glass bottles. I love the fact that they're just being reused, no recycling; and they'll take broken bottles if you have an accident and count it against any deposit they might ask. They supply lids on the bottles, so no wrestling with a too-thick lid. They bill once a month.

It's cool and it tastes good, too. And if they deliver more than we can deal with, I can ask for a vacation week any time we need. I really like that.

I have gone on a minor yarn splurge, eventhough my hand felt completely crippled yesterday. It was mildly ironic. But given my experience with the unspun Icelandic, I really wondered if I could get the gauge needed for the Phoenix sweater with ANY kind of yarn... so I went to our local yarn shop and bought two small balls of Jamieson and Smith's Spinthrift yarns. One was a moss color, the other was a gorgeous multi-fleck blue-green of sea colors. They're thicker than the two-ply lace weights, but about the same as the fingering-weight sock yarns I have, so I now know that I can get it tighter than the much thicker unspun Icelandic yarns. I love the colors, and given the big tube hat pattern I already have, I'm very tempted to make another hat, but with cream, white, and pale grey wools as the background, and these two heathered colors as the fore-color with, maybe, some deeper blues and greens as ringers.

Or make socks out of the plain "Shetland" style yarn from a US spinner. I also found a US wool yarn place called Blackberry Ridge that seems to sell all kinds of yarns from lace to bulky from natural fibers. But the weight to length ratio is just a bit off from the Jamieson and Smith. KnitPick's Palette is also close, but not exactly the same, still much cheaper, so I will likely use their stuff for the solid background colors or soles for socks.

I iced my hand severely last night, and this morning, it is usable again, but I'm pulling out my dictating software and my other pointer setup just to make sure I don't mess around with keeping it better.