This is just a test...

Having some serious problems with posting tonight...just testing to see if I can get blogger to post something.

edited to add:
What the hell?? This message posted, but the one that wouldnt post earlier has now posted itself 3 times...

ARGH!!!

Anyone have any suggestions for good bloghosting sites?

Just to prove I can do it...

Ok, so I might have mentioned a couple of times that I'd finally figured out how to knit...so here's the proof.

I'm still having problems casting on...Red Heart yarn has a nasty habit of untwisting itself as I'm casting on, and I really hate that. My solution to the casting on problem is to take an afghan hook and to do a Tunisian crochet cast on. Then transfer the yarn from the afghan hook to the knitting needles. I like the edge that cast on gives. Maybe some day I'll actually be able to knit something more than swatches.

I'm not really making anything with this. It's basically just a swatch. I know I have a few issues with gauge, my fingers hurt when I knit and the yarn gets really tight around the needles. So I'm just using up some of my scrap yarn practicing.

My dad (the resident knitter here) looked at my swatch and he said it looks pretty good, except for it's pulling in a bit the further I knit. We're both pretty sure that's being caused by my gauge. I know I'm pulling a little too tightly on the yarn. I dont have this problem when I crochet. I guess I'll just have to keep practicing.

I remember when I was learning to crochet (a long time ago in a galaxy far far away) I crocheted very tightly. I dont know what I did to fix that other than getting more confidence in the way I held my hook, and practice.

It is kind of fun to learn something new...and it gives me more excuses to go to the yarn store.

we have improvement!!!! (yay!!!)

I am so excited right now!

My wonky left eye has been steadily getting better since friday night. Friday morning and afternoon, my good eye (the right eye) was hurting and the eyelid kept twitching.

So, naturally I panicked. I was worried that whatever fubar-ed my left eye was making it's move on the right eye. Called the eye doctor. He was out (naturally), but luckily one of the other opthamologists was in the office and could take me that afternoon. So, I went in and he checked both eyes. Said that nothing was wrong with the right eye other than maybe a little eyestrain and said the pain was probably from that or may have had some leftover pain from a migraine I had the day before. He didnt even put drops in my eyes. I guess he was checking my pupil responses. My bad eye had an "afferent pupillary defect", which means that it wasnt responding normally to light.

So, he said to just rest my eyes and sent me home. That night and saturday morning and afternoon, my eye started flip flopping back and forth between crappy vision and really really really crappy vision.

Sunday I went to the Lincoln airshow with some friends to see the Blue Angels. Got to the airshow and started thinking it was a big mistake to go to an airshow on a sunny day with optic neuritis. My glasses have tint in them, but it was not up to the job. So I bought some of the overpriced clip-on sunglasses they had there. That helped so much. I was able to enjoy (and see) the Blue Angels.

Woke up monday, vision was less fuzzy.

Got up this morning to take my dad to his eye surgery (we've been the House Of The Half-Blind this past month) and my vision was a lot clearer. It's not normal yet, and some colors (green and red) still look weird, but I can see pretty good now with that eye. I even crocheted and knitted some tonight. I think I forgot how to knit...mostly I couldnt remember how to cast on in a way that my yarn doesnt split apart, but at least I can see what I'm doing now.

Now I can finish the pineapple shawl I crocheted with one eye closed when this all started. I finished crocheting it, but I couldnt see well enough to weave the yarn ends in. Gonna go finish that now. whoohoo! I was having serious yarn/crochet withdrawal.

Hmmm...I wonder if we're out of the drought now?

It's been an interesting evening meteorlogically. We had a tornado warning around 830 or 9pm. (that was fun) With all the required lightning, thunder and hailstones. (the tornado stayed a little south of my house. It was actually right over the area of my OLD house. I havent seen any news reports of damage, but there was apparently a LOT of rain. The weatherguy said that some manhole covers were blown off by the rainwater in some areas.

After that storm, my dad and I went out to pick up some photographs he had printed at Walgreens...on the way home, the next storm decided to hit.

Ever seen Titanic? The scene where Jack and Rose are running thru the corridor towards the little kid and his grandfather and the water is chasing them down the corridor...that's about what the streets looked like tonight, but with a lot more water.

I thought we were going to need pontoons on the side of my dad's Rav4. Halfway home, the hail started. It wasnt bad...wasnt big, and stopped about 10 seconds after it started...and then the rain got worse.

We were getting close to our house, came around the curve where the nimrod neighbors have to always park their cars and some asshat was coming towards us, VERY FAST, and didnt even wait for us to get past the cars that were on the side of the street. I'm sure that in the morning, if I go and look there will be tire tracks from that guy's car on the neighbors front lawns. Who drives 60mph IN A MONSOON on a street that curves like the letter "S"?????

After that we just had to float to the front of our house, drive out of the river that our street had become (gotta love fulltime 4wheel drive!) and made it into the garage. Just before the next batch of hail hit.

**********

I may have mentioned before that I've had a problem with my vision. Well. I went to the eye doctor the other day for him to check the progress of the problem. He confirmed that it's optic neuritis. (inflammation of the optic nerve) and he agreed with the ancient neurologist I saw earlier this month that it was migraine induced optic neuritis. This time he told me the optic nerve was swollen (it wasnt when he looked the first time last month) but said that was normal.

Told me that he could give me steroids to make it heal quicker, but that the steroids come with all sorts of icky side effects and that it's probably best to just wait for it to heal. As much as I'd love to have this heal quicker, I agreed with him that I didnt want the steroids. So, now I may have wonky vision for the next 2 to 3 months. (why do the estimates for recovery keep getting longer???)

Yay...I might get my vision back for Christmas.

It's not the fuzzy, dim vision in my left eye that's bugging me so much as the mild loss of some of my color vision. As you can tell from the title of my blog, I love yarn, and from most of the content of my blog, I love to crochet. It's pretty freaking boring to crochet when one of your eyes cant see some colors very well. Sure I could close that eye and just use the one good one, but things look weird. I never understood what it meant to lose your depth perception or color vision until this happened. Believe me, I'd rather lose my hearing than my vision. I am so hoping that when my eye heals (in 2 or 3 months...argh!) that my color vision in my left eye comes back with it.

I have a cabinet full of all sorts of different colored yarns, and none of them look appealing to me right now. It's really messing up my love of crochet. I really want to make something, but I lose interest after the first few rows.

I cant wait for my eye to heal.

**********

At least I can still read, and when I need to rest my eyes but I still want to read, I discovered a way to still read. My dad bought me a computer program called Text Aloud. It comes with realistic sounding computer-generated voices. I got it yesterday, and I just love it. It reads text on the computer to me. I can copy fan fiction stories to the program for it to read, or I can go to Project Guttenberg and download a book to the program. It'll read whatever text I put into it. It's probably one of the coolest programs I've ever had loaded into a computer.

The thing I like about the program is that I can turn the text into an audio Mp3 and then transfer that into an iPod or some other mp3 device. I can even burn it into a CD if I want to, altho the size of the file kind of limits you to what you can put onto a cd. I could end up using lots of disks if I do that.

I dont have an Mp3 player (yet) and saving the stories to a CD to play on a car stereo is ok, but all I've done so far is save some stories to Mp3 format so that I can just play them off of my computer. If I get an iPod for Christmas (hint, hint) this program will come in handy.

Five Years.

Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of September 11th. Hard to believe it's been 5yrs already.

Not too long after 9-11 I bought a bracelet...a cheap little silver metal bracelet that had the name of a firefighter who died on 9-11 engraved on it.

That firefighter's name was George DiPasquale (Manhattan Ladder Co 2)

I cant find my bracelet, so I cant wear it tomorrow like I wanted to, but I can tell people who read my blog to think about FF DiPasquale and his co-workers and everyone else who died that day.

I didnt know him, only know who he was because his name was the one that was engraved on the bracelet I bought. What I know about him is what I've Googled. He was 33, married, had a daughter named Rose and was called "Holy Man" because of his committment to religion, and he died in the Word Trade Center collapse along with seven other members from his ladder company.

So, everyone, think of Firefighter DiPasquale at least once tomorrow.

I wish I could find that bracelet.

Picture below is the patch firefighters in Manhattan Ladder Co 2 wear.

Happy Labor Day

It's been a looooong two weeks. My eye has pretty much been fubar for about two weeks, and I've had a headache for nearly 3 weeks. My dad got me some Excedrine Migraine last night that I took this afternoon that seemed to actually help. It's a mixture of Tyelenol, Excedrin (aspirin) and caffeine. Two Excedrine Migraine pills have about as much caffeine in them as a cup of coffee.

I ended up only taking one of them, since I havent really had any caffeine for the past two weeks. (been trying to rule out caffeine as a migraine trigger) It seemed to work...I think.

I think my eye might be starting to heal. I dont have the massive blind spot that was obscuring the lower half of my vision when this first started out. My vision is now kind of fuzzy looking...like trying to look thru a fogged over muddy window. I actually drove my car today. First time in two weeks. I only drove me and my parents to a restaurant that's just down the street, so it wasnt very far, and I didnt really have to go out into busy traffic to get there. I think tomorrow afternoon I'm going to Windex my car windows just so I have a nice clean window to look thru...anything to help me see better to drive if I have to.

I have an eye appointment on wednesday to go to that I'll probably end up having my dad drive me to...eye doctor is a bit further away than I really want to go to drive...plus they'll be putting all manner of drops into my eyes and I dont think I'll want to drive home after that...so it's best that I have a ride there. Hope he tells me my eye is getting better.

I've actually gotten a wee bit of crocheting done. I've been working on another of the pineapple chair back shawls. This one in white. Since I've done about a dozen of these shawls, I've pretty much got the pattern memorized...which helps, since I dont have to keep stopping to read the pattern that much.

I finished a shawl awhile back with some Joann's Rainbow Boucle'. It's basically just a giant half granny square. My parents and my aunt Janice seem to really like it. My dad said he'd take a picture of it for me tomorrow. It's actually been cool enough to wear it the past two nights. (finally!) I have enough boucle to make another shawl, so once my eye returns to normal I'll probably start on another one. (my finished shawl is blue, the new one will be green) I'll probably give the new one to my aunt Jan.

I think it's time to go rest my eye...it's driving me nuts right now.