It's been awhile

"Oh pleeze.  We begs you...no more Chris Matthews, no matter how much my hair looks like his!"

With the anxieties of the past few months reaching fever pitch, it's with relief I note that "things" have finally settled down.  Despite my best efforts of avoidance, I was dragged into the entire 24 hour news cycle drama.  In the evenings, I watched what the left was saying while at night I tuned into the comics. For balance, I awakened early in the morning to listen to what the right had to say for themselves.   Between all of this, I was besieged by television & radio advertising, or by pollsters at my door, on my computer and about 4 times a day, on my phone.  While I love our democracy, I find that more and more, I abhor the ugly process.  It is with great joy that I note the political candidates who offended me most with their radical beliefs and expressions and whose quotes were featured in my sidebar for weeks, were voted out of their government positions.  Thank you, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois voters.  It would seem their beliefs mattered and offended all of you, too.  And Florida?  I'm so glad you showed Allen West the door.  I hope he doesn't let it hit him in the behind on the way out.   My hope now is that all of the children in the sandbox can finally learn to play nicely together.  I won't hold my breath for there is sure to be dramaz galore for the next several weeks.

My gmail account, which for months had at least 30 emails a day from politicians begging for money they didn't need, has gone down to a more normal one or two new messages a day, most of which are from knitting sites.

Squares on the Roll.  Separate squares from the same continuous ball of yarn.  Two down, 47 to go!

And speaking of knitting, I've been working on the Squares on the Roll afghan.  I'll be leading that workshop soon and I've been playing with the yarn, needles and various ways to make my decreases mirror one another.  It's been such a long while since I made my sample for the yarn store that I made many mistakes on my first square.  I misread the directions more than once, pulled double points out of my work (which liberated live stitches) twice and generally felt like a rookie knitter.  We'll blame it on the news, OK?  What should have been mindless knitting was anything but.  Today that's all changed.

I've been inspired by a visitor on the oncology unit at the hospital who has worn a different hand knit shawl every day this week.  Each one was more beautiful than the next and each was a work of art.  While I won't be knitting a shawl right now, just as soon as I'm done swatching, I will be casting on for Mr. Bluejeans today.  I'm using the Nashua Creative Focus in Blue Moor Heather.  What's better than knitting something blue in a free Amy Swenson pattern?

I think nothing.

It's good to be back to something that resembles normal.