Whassup?

Oh, I know I've been quiet.  Awfully quiet here, for a chatterbox like me.

I've been busy and had a series of issues that kept me off balance.

First, John's mom got very, very sick, was hospitalized a whole month, had two brain surgeries and a stint at a rehab hospital.  She's home now, and doing okay, but this was terribly serious and she's in her 90s.

A few weeks later, I got sick.  I spent a night and a morning at the hospital to rule out heart trouble, but it was a nasty reflux flare-up.  After a change in my meds, eliminating a couple food items, and a couple weeks of relative peace, I was much better.

John had a work crisis and a horrendous problem with work deadlines.  He's been working crazy hours and is almost finished with the situation.

I had an insect sting about a week ago that turned into a 4" round pink and red bulls-eye on my leg very quickly.  It looked like something from a Lyme disease article!  The doc gave me antibiotics, which cleared it up.

Through all of this, work's been very busy, I've been going to evening meetings, and I've been trying to finish my upcoming mid-gauge machine knitting book.  It's in the pattern testing phase right now.  It also really needs some photos to get it out of its current sad black-and-white, are-these-really-projects phase. 

Every spare minute I'm running to the knitting room to do a little more, try another idea, edit a little video, or wind more yarn to get ready to knit.

Some really great things are coming up really soon: 

First of all, this weekend, our knitting club is having a retreat at a center in the Hill Country near New Braunfels, Texas.  We haven't been there before, but the pictures are lovely.  We aren't having a seminar, just a "free range" knitting time and some fun and fellowship.  Doesn't that sound great?  We've never done anything quite like this before.  I'll report back and let y'all know how it went for us.

Secondly, in July, I'm teaching at the Monroe Machine Knitting Seminar.  It's going to be super this year (again).  How do I know this?  Well, Larry and Cathy Reaume have done this for years and are organized experts, the venue is a wonderful spacious college campus setup, they always have several teachers, and they bring in a chef to do great food.  Just hanging around that many knitters is a mind-altering experience.