I Poke Badgers With Spoons

Under the knife

Tomorrow I will have an endoscopic carpal tunnel release on my left hand. It is surgery, so I'm nervous, but I'm also excited to be pain free in at least one hand. (Once I heal, that is.)

Here is some cuteness for you:

Follow Up

I visited the surgeon and I am having a carpal tunnel release on July 11. That's the bad news. The good news is that I don't have to have surgery on my right hand. At least not yet. woot!

When we last visited, I told you about wrecking the car. I took it the body shop the day after Memorial Day and I still don't have it back! Thank gawd for rent car coverage or I'd be up s**t creek without a metaphor. The car is supposed to be finished tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath.

That's all for now. I have many weddings to prepare for.

Here I am again. I have new pictures in the sidebar that will probably be of no interest to most of you. They're of sheeps!

I'm quiet lately because things have been weird. I have a consult on Friday with a hand specialist. I have severe carpal tunnel that can only be relieved with surgery. I'm kind of pissed about that because I can't knit much now and won't be able to at all for quite some time after the surgery. I'm waiting for the consult to decide whether or not I'll have both hands done at once or in two different surgeries. I do feel better since I found out that I won't have to undergo general anasthesia for the surgery. That really screwed me up after my back surgery, so I don't care to have it again unless it's life threatening. (Oh, and you might think that I should have had this problem looked at long before now. I did--the specialist I saw then just blew me off. Asshole. And no, I don't have cubital tunnel syndrome.)

I thought that was enough to keep me busy, but it wasn't. I wrecked the car on Friday. yay me! I'm fine, fortunately, but the car is not. I wasn't going fast (I was in the parking garage, ferchrissake), but I sure did a lot of damage. The passenger door won't open and the hood is jacked up. It looks like some major body work on top of a new fender. But no worries--I didn't need that money anyway, right?

Meme

I'm back. And for a meme!

Here are the answers to Dan's interview  questions:

1) If you could download expertise directly into your brain, what entirely new skill would you most like to have?

Do I have to pick just one? It's a toss-up between singing and sewing. Sure, I can sew a little, but there's a crapload of sewing knowledge I don't have.

2) If money and family obligations were no obstacle, where outside the US would you most like to spend a year living?

If money were no obstacle, I'd like to spend a year living in Europe. All of it. I'd travel all over. I've been to several European countries and I love them, so I would at least be happy in a few places. I want to go pretty much everywhere, but since there are so many places I haven't been to yet, I don't know if I'd be happy there for an entire year.

3) If you were running a yarn store, what would you do to make it most appealing and useful to the kind of knitters you'd want as clientele?

Wow...good question. I feel like I need to lay out a business plan for you. ;) I would carry lots of yummy yarn, as well as good quality, inexpensive staples. I would create an non-judgemental atmostphere for asking questions, and make sure nobody felt like they were walking into a clique when they came into my store. (That's a big problem in a lot of places.) I would also want to have a space big enough to hold classes/knitalongs so people could move around and not feel like they were sitting in a shoebox.

And last but not least, my yarn store would be way more punk rock than old lady.

4) You have the space and the budget to set up your dream workshop for home improvement projects. What's in it?

A designer, a boatlad of money, and several carpenters/craftspeople

5) Your taste in reading covers a broad range of material. What style/type/subgenre of fiction do you read that you wish there was more of in the world?

Modern urban witch-type stuff

Stitches East 2006

Wow.

Bernie and I arrived at the Baltimore  Convention Center at about 9:45am, 15 minutes before the Market opened yesteday. We had to wait in line until 10, but it was so worth it. Honestly, I had no idea it would be so incredibly BIG.

Bernie and I started on the right side and worked our way across. At noon, we'd made it about 2 rows over. At that point, we decided that we'd need to go back on Sunday as well. Fortunately, we made it through the whole thing in one day, but we weren't quite as thourough as the day progressed.

I'll post pictures of our haul later today (I haven't taken them yet!). We were both amazingly restrained, I must say. The amount of stuff there and the number of vendors was just overwhelming.  Also, we met/talked to a ton of cool people during the day.. Everyone was so friendly. We met Stitchy McYarnpants and she signed Bernie's fabulous new book while we laughed our asses off in the booth (people stared, dude.)

May haul in list form:

Tess' Designer Yarns DK Cascade Silk in subtle blues
Tess' Super Sock & Baby yarn in blue/purple/green
Faroese Scribble Lace Shawl kit (also in blues)
Candy-colored fingering weight wool
One glass button
Very short size 0000 needles for bead knitting (they have cool glass beads on the ends too!)
free spiced pear jelly from Tess'

See? I said I was restrained. I'll post Bernie's haul later too. I can't remember everything she got and she's still sleeping right now. I'll post more as I think of it.

Edit: for all you Swampstockers out there, we saw TOM and his wife, Susan, in their booth. That was strange, but cool!

Three Things

Better late than never:

These aren't necessarily my all-time favorites (I'm too lazy to think about that right now), but they're up there.

3 books:

eh. I'll plug this in later.

3 albums:

Lion and the Cobra, Sinéad O'Connor
Gordon, BNL
Mirrorball, Sarah Mc.

3 movies:

Steel Magnolias
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
American President

3 thoughts:

Why hasn't the pizza arrived yet?
Will the Dems take back Congress?
Should I be using a Magic 8 Ball?

Pictures

I've done no knitting for quite a while now because of this:

Cubital tunnel syndrome and ulnar-sided wrist pain (with no know cause.) I am now wearing a wrist brace and very attractive acrylic sock with sewn-in shoulder pad on my elbow. Quite sexy.

However, I've taken lots of pictures and there are two new albums up on the sidebar. One with more Swampstock pictures and one with some pictures I took in Baltimore yesterday (Patterson Park and Canton, mostly) Have at it.

Owen

I have more pictures of baby Owen up in the sidebar.

Preliminary Swampstock pictures are up on the Swampstock Yahoo group. I'll post all of them as soon as I figure out where I'm going to do that.

Owen David McCrady

In case you haven't already seen or heard, please meet Owen David McCrady born September 2, 2006 at 4:41pm, weighing in at NINE POUNDS AND FOURTEEN OUNCES and 21 inches long.

He's a super cutie and Jeff is a very proud papa:

China

In case anyone is reading, Caren and Niels arrived safely in China. I still can't believe they're gone, but I'm so excited to hear about their first impressions!

Oh, and it would be terrible if Caren scored some nice Mongolian Cashmere for me. mwahahhaha