Off the Clock

I'm a little embarassed to be posting this but I consider it a public service announcement; keep a fire extinguisher near your bbq. I was bbqing ribs on the weekend following a recipe from a bbq book. It had you put a pan under the grill to keep liquid in and for the drippings to go into. The liquid ended up running dry so I refilled it, but I didn't notice when it ran dry the second time. The drippings that were in the pan then caught fire and the whole Binford 9000 was up in flames! I pulled the pieces of ribs off with Mom trying to blow out the flames as I went (yeah, we're a real Laurel and Hardy team here) , then I slowly poured water into the edge of the pan which put out the pan fire (please don't spray water on a grease fire!) . So then I had a huge mess to clean up out there. I'm just so greatful I didn't burn down my house! :o The Binford survived it's ordeal (would that be "trial by fire"?). So off I went to Canadian Tire the next morn...

Still no knitting news; sorry! The rheumatoid arthritis is kicking in as bad as when I was first diagnosed 17 years ago. Which means very little mobility in my hands and what movement I can make is painful. Not a good recipe for recreational knitting. I did get myself on the waiting list for a rheumatologist in London; hopefully I'll have an appointment within the next couple of months. The one (and only one) in Windsor is booking for next year so I'm hoping to get in sooner by driving to London for treatment. I usually try not to be a whiner and accept that there are waiting lists and stuff, but the problem is that once the damage is done it's irreversable; the key is to get good meds and fast. Unfortunately the family doctor I have now is reluctant to prescribe anything strong. I can't bend my wrists because of the damage done before I got on "good" meds the first time round. Now it's going after my... (what do you call those things?) where my fingers...

Well it's not my knitting. Although I'd like to thank Amanda j for her suggestion about purling the dropped stitches in clapotis; that's speeded things up immensely. Not to say I've got much more done on it, but I'm on the right track anyway. In other knitty news there's suddenly lots of hits on my Diced Tomatoes page; I usually get 5 or 10, this week there's been over 300. What the heck happened there?! Well with a little detective work it turns out the page has been linked from a free pattern site . How cool is that?! Anyway the reason there's been such little knitting is because a) I've been busy trying to "deal" with my 15yo DS who has a birthday in a few days but might not live to see 16 if he keeps it up; b) my ferns are suffering from sunburn and my Peeping Tom neighbours over the back have a clear shot of my pool from their kitchen window, so I spent the weekend building a triangular arbour to give shade/privacy; and c) may ...

After three terms as chairperson of our local union's women's committee I decided to step down and let someone else run the show for awhile. You can't find a better group of women anywhere, and the sisters bought me a bouquet of flowers as a "thanks" and gave me a gift certificate for my favourite store in the whole wide world, Canadian Tire. Well I wasn't sure what to do with this certificate. I didn't want to just get regular old household stuff, I wanted it to be something more meaningful since it's a gift and all. I didn't have any must-have tools on my list not already in my garage at the moment so I just sat on it waiting for the right thing to show up. Then the weather warmed up. I had the scathingly brilliant idea to buy flowers with the certificate and fill my yard with them. Now as I enjoy my backyard all season long I'll think of my sister's and how beautiful they are. I have great knitting news; I found two more balls of ...

DD had her prom Friday night. How things have changed! I don't even have any pics from my prom, Mom had made my dress and I did my own hair and makeup, as most of my friends did back then. Now it's like getting ready for a wedding! Oh well, it's only once, and I have to think it was worth it, don't you? They did have a really good time, and memories for a lifetime. In knitting news (yes! finally something knitting!) I think I'm giving up on the Vogue shawl. The yarn I'm using isn't what was called for and I think it's too heavy. Not only is it more like a blanket but after an interim weighing it's only going to be about 42" long when it's done; that's about two feet short. {sigh} I've been working on this off and on for about a year, and I've currently only got about 32" done. Time to start frogging. On the other hand I can start on Clapotis with the laceweight handpainted yarn in my stash. ;)

You just can't beat the feeling of work being done in the house; especially when you're not the one doing it. Ok, so I had to hire these guys but just leave me in my dreamworld for awhile, won't you? The upstairs bathroom is next in line for a "makeover". The old robin's egg blue tile from the '60's that I can't get clean and the icky bathtub that's lost it's finish need to go, but I can't put in one of those nice all-in-one units because you can't cut out for the window. That means I have to deal with tile again. OR; just call Bath Fitter! This is the company that makes a cover and surround to go over your existing bathtub and tile and they can cut out for a window. Not to mention they're the ones doing all the labour, not me. Beautiful! Now I'd normally be worried that it's a gimmick, that it won't stand up, that I'll regret taking the "easy road". But a very good friend of mine had this don...

I think we've completely missed May and gone straight from April showers to July heatwave. It's been in the 90's all weekend (yes, I know I'm Canadian but I live on the U.S. border and still think in Fahrenheit; it's probably been just over 30 Celcius). I had scheduled the pool company to open the pool on Monday since I was tired of doing most of it myself every year (darn kids make sure they are never around on pool opening day) but it was so hot on Saturday that DS offered to open it himself. Knowing how much work was involved I was loathe to cancel the pool company, but figuring that some good hard labour would do him some good I told him to have at it. Never underestimate the ingenuity of an almost 16yo on a mission. First him and his buddy (whom I call second son; SS) called up a bunch of friends and invited them over for "a swim". Yes, cruel, I know. We threw the pump in the cover to start pumping out the water, usually a 36 or so hour process (...