J had fun last week in his sailing school. It was hard work and there were nights when he fell asleep reading because he was so tired but he had a great time. This is week two of sailing school but he missed today. He has some kind of weird bite on his knee - we think it was some kind of bug bite. Last night he said it hurt but it looked fairly normal. This morning he woke up and there was a big white blister thing on it.
We decided to take him to the doctor because it didn't look good and in the past he's had an infected bug bite. Of course the blistery part popped before we made it to the doctor so she couldn't see what it looked like then. The doctor said it wasn't infected (yet) but she went ahead and gave us a topical antibiotic for it to prevent it from getting bad. It's making his knee sore so he stayed home from sailing today but he will go tomorrow. I won't share a picture of it because well, it's pretty gross.
Last week while J was at sailing, S and I went to check out a newly reopened toy store in town. Over a year ago there was a fire in the back part of their building. I don't think there was fire damage to the toy store part but I believe there was water/smoke damage. Also, the owner had to get the building up to the new codes. While we were there, S used some of her own money to buy a kit for making her own dinosaurs. We mixed up the plaster and poured it into the moulds and once they were dry she could paint them. This is the result:
They are very colourful! She had a great time painting them. At this point, all she has left to do is add a little glow-in-the-dark paint to them and they will be done. We should have some time to do that tomorrow.
On Friday I received my first clue for my Once and Future King MKAL. It seemed like a fairly simple clue until I started working with the yarn. I thought I had the right needles for the yarn based on what I used for the gauge swatch - they were bamboo needles. I don't know if it was the needles, or the lighting, or a combination of both, but I had to tear out my work at least 4 times on Friday. I finally gave up and put it away until Saturday.
On Saturday I tried working in better light and it helped but I still felt like I was fighting with the yarn. I switched to some aluminum needles and suddenly I was doing a lot better. I had tried those needles when I did the gauge swatch and really had trouble with them. I've been using the aluminum needles since then and I have been making a lot of progress.
The shawl is worked from the ends into the center and then grafted together so I had a decision to make. Was I going to work this asymmetrically or symmetrically? To work it asymmetrically I would start with skein 1 for one end and skein 4 for the other and then work towards the center using skeins 1 and 2 for one half and 3 and 4 for the other. After some thought I decided to work it symmetrically. I decided to start with skein 4, so I split it up into two balls. I've worked one of the end patterns already and I've started on the second one. Both ends will look like this:
It's not the best picture but I didn't feel like trying to block this section already. I'll be picking up stitches with the next clue and actually working on the body of the shawl. Yes, that is a bamboo needle in the picture. I'm just using it as a holder right now while I use my aluminum circular for the other end panel. I think I'll be picking up a second set of aluminum circs so I don't have to keep moving my work onto holders. The chances of me dropping a stitch will increase with how many times I have to move my work from holders to needles.
Tomorrow I'm going to be meeting with a salesperson at a car dealership to see about getting a new car. We'll see how it goes tomorrow!
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