uh… free pattern, anyone?

Trying to distract you from the fact that I have been laying flat on my face for the past two weeks. Lame, I know. Imagine how boring it’s been for me.   I have the flu again.  Or maybe it never went away and the last fortnight has simply been an extended infection.  Who knows?

Anyway.  I have been managing to haul my sorry tuckus into work (most of the time) and one of my most recent Robitussin-inspired moments involved publishing another free Gratis Knits (yes, that was redundant) pattern.  You can get it here.

Also, somewhere in there (it’s all a little fuzzy right now), I finished T’s children’s bolero:

Which I really want to see modeled on T.  But I’ve been waiting to, ah, sanitize it since I don’t want handknits to be associated with the creepy crud.  Just imagine the trauma.

Oh, well.  Things have been progressing here… slowly.  Mum’s cashmere lace scarf has a good 18″ on it, I finished a sock last night (my own pattern), and I’m working on a pattern booklet for ShibuiKnits.  But that’s hush, hush.  I’m also working on a new pattern series for the blog – both free and, well, not – that I hope to have started putting up by the New Year.  I really need to find a pattern editor…  maybe I could find someone who would work for yarn?

Hmm.  It looks like I have a lot set out for me.  And that doesn’t even include the laundry – which I am falling behind on.  And on that note, I should go empty the dryer.  I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

I liked September better.

October, so far, has really sucked a lot.* I’m not trying to whine, just explain why I haven’t been blogging as much as I would like (I have tons of photos, honest).

Let’s see, the week before last I had a 5-day migraine (oh, yes, five whole days of head-splitting pain and flashing auras).

Then the day before yesterday I was informed by Kristin that she and her husband had been diagnosed with having had the H1N1 flu virus last week.

On Monday I was developing a sore throat.  Yesterday, the sore throat continued, I had developed a lovely headache, I ached all over (especially my joints), and I ended up taking a 6-hour nap (noon to 6 pm) because I was so tired.  I did try and go to work yesterday morning, but ended up feeling so crappy I left (ha, I was ordered out by the Moms In Residence) and came home and crashed.

Today continues with the same symptoms – the sore throat is better (thank you, OJ), the headache is the same, the body aches are 100% worse, and the fatigue is about the same.  In fact, I think I will go and take another nap after I post this.

Yeah.  September was much better.

*It could be worse, though, and I’m the first to admit it.  I don’t have the intestinal problems (or fever!) many flu sufferers have right now.  I’m not sure it is H1N1 (and don’t really care), but I’m not going to go to my doctor (and infect more people) to find out.  Heck, this isn’t even half as bad as Scarlet Fever was.  I just want to get well.  Soon, please.

Quick post, battery dying.

And I’m just too lazy to go upstairs and get the power cord right now.

Today was the Portland Race For The Cure. As always it started at what felt like the break of dawn (ick, 5 hours of sleep). Opus and I met at Peet’s, grabbed some caffeine to go (thank the heavens for cambric tea) and walked briskly over to the Waterfront to meet out team. Luckily for us (though not according to them), we missed the team photoshoot. Darn.

Then we lined up at the starting line for the 1K walk (I might have registered us for the 5K, but I didn’t get a choice – it being an OHSU team and all…), and I made Opus hold up her traveling sock:

I had mine out to photograph before I realised that I couldn’t take a photo of it – it’s Top Secret. Oy. In the meantime, I contented myself with taking random pictures. Specifically of a participant’s back, just so I could prove that over 51,000 people were congregating in downtown Portland:

(the OHSU team was in the upper 12,000 range)

Opus was floored to discover (as we were waiting) that the Portland Race For The Cure is the 3rd largest in the world (and the largest on the West Coast). I wasn’t too surprised, because I remembered hearing something similar last year, but still… 51,000+ people is a lot of people.

Anyway. I, of course, made Opus hold up her socks for the Finish Line…

I mean, how could I not? I’m sure she thought I was crazy, but that’s par for the course. After escaping the throng (that many thousands of people definitely counts as a throng!), we headed into NoPo to visit a knitting store we’d never been to, Close Knit.

(there is a traveling sock there, I swear)

Which, I have to say, I loved. It really looked and felt like the knitting store I’d set up, if I ever went mad and decided to do that to myself (I work at a knitting store, I know how much work it is!). It was really quirky and quaint and I loved the old recycled, well, everything. Very fun.

Okay, (sigh), my laptop battery just died and I had to rummage around and find a power cord.  One would think this means I have time to blog more in depth, but the lasagne just came out of the oven, I’m hungry, and this looks good enough.  Tomorrow night is “No Mean Feet!”, if you live in PDX, I’ll hope to see you there!

The last two days… I think

Beginning to lose track of what happened when.  Must be the sleep deprivation.  (joking)

Let’s see.   The day before yesterday, Mum and I went into the Gorge, intent on finding lovely fruit, local yarn*, and panoramic vistas**.  Oh, and local mobile art.  Mum’s very big into that.  Some highlights:

Cool curly antique light fixture at the DFG Vanhorn factory.

“Impaired Side” next to obsolete tracks.

Cuddly alpacas. Or, rather, hungry alpacas that put up with being petted in return for food.

Then, yesterday, I met with Sandy B for breakfast and she very happily showed off her (unblocked) Girasole:

Made with ShibuiKnits Sock in “Finch”, it’s intended to be a baby blanket for an soon-to-be-born baby. Good job, Sandy! It’s going to be just gorgeous when it’s blocked.

Then, after several loads of laundry and some cleaning, I met up with the ladies of The Yarnovers (the Knit Purl lace group), whereupon I rather forced Opus to show off her beautiful Halloween KAL shawl (don’t ask):

(okay, my photography skills suck)

(and a [very blurry] close-up)

I also got Leslie to help Opus hold it up, but none of those photos came out at all. The point’n'click and I are having some issues. Oh, well.

Anyway, that’s the past two days – severely condensed, to be sure.  I’ve got to go now and do some ironing (yeah, at 11:30pm), since I don’t really have any shirts for tomorrow…  toodles!

*Okay, that was me
**Yeah, fell short.  Sorry ’bout that.  It was a quite pretty lavender farm, though.

Because YouTube was quicker…

We’re gonna have a drive-by blogging incident tonight that only involves a weird little video I made (at Mum’s insistence) during our recent day trip into the Gorge. We stopped to admire this old fruit packing factory (on the rail line) that had some amazing architectural features. It actually made me wish I brought my big, clunky Olympus or at least a camera with a wide-angle lens. Until we needed the point ‘n’ click’s audio/ video movie function.

I was wandering around the side that bordered the tracks and nearly freaked out when I heard this weird creaking noise and then… SLAM! It was like something from a really bad horror film. Luckily, the place wasn’t haunted (honestly, I only entertained the thought for a moment or two, which is embarrassing enough to admit to) before I crept around and discovered that it was this extremely old and weathered office door…

making all that ruckus. Sheesh.

Anyway. It’s after eleven and I have to work in the morning. I’ll blog tomorrow night (I hope) with all sorts of lovely updates. Cheers!

P.S. Flickr still hasn’t finished uploading the photos from yesterday and today!