I’m one-handed due to my flexor tendon release surgery (aka trigger thumb surgery) on my left thumb on March 14. The surgery went well. I’ve been staying with Bryan since my surgery, my recovery is taking a while. I’ve been frustrated at times because I didn’t realize how much I use my thumb. Driving is a huge challenge because I can’t grasp my steering wheel with my left hand. It’s also hard for me to close the driver’s side door and put my seat belt on. I drive a stick shift so driving with my left hand is essential. I can only type with my right hand, so typing anything of length is a challenge and my spelling is atrocious because my fingers want to hit two keys at once. (btw, this has been edited because I’m so embarrassed by all of my typing mistakes) The pain pills they gave me have made me so tired, so I’m very caught up on my sleep. I still have my stitches in my thumb and they are so irritating because the incision is along the crease where my thumb meets my palm. The stitches poke my incision if I bend my thumb a certain way. They are not beautiful at all, they are the gross black ones that look like black fishing line. I get my stitches out on April 2, so I won’t be knitting until after that. I’m sure getting back into knitting won’t be difficult but it might be a bit painful.
I’ve been catching up on Days of Our Lives, I had taped three weeks before my surgery so I’ve been watching that. Bryan doesn’t have cable and has no reception, so regular tv is out of the question. It’s been kind of nice because it keeps me from watching too much war coverage.

I’ve been reading a ton. I was about 75 pages into Moo by Jane Smiley before my surgery, which I was reading for Bryan’s book group at the library. I finished that in several days. Debi was so nice, she loaned me a bunch of books that she’s gotten from book reps. So I’ve been reading some books that aren’t even out yet. :) I read Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser. It was really cute, I really enjoyed it. It was a quick read because after each chapter are several recipes that are mentioned in the chapter. I won’t be cooking any of the recipes because most of them have either meat or sugar in them. I think it’s a reallly neat layout for a book. If you liked Bridget Jones and those kinds of books, you’ll like Cooking for Mr. Latte. I’m currently reading Behaving Like Adults by Anna Maxted, who also wrote Getting Over It. I’m really enjoying it. I have about 9 more books I want to read. I’m sure I won’t get through all of them but Debi was such a dear for loaning them all to me. Bryan is doing The Lovely Bones by Alice Seybold for his May book group. Hopefully I’ll have time to get more of the books read that Debi loaned to me before I start The Lovely Bones.

I thought I would miss knitting and cable tv so much, but I’m really enjoying just reading most of the day. :)

I’m one-handed and on a knitting break due to my flexor tendon release surgery (aka trigger thumb surgery).
I probably won’t be updating this much until I start knitting again around March 30.

Last night I couldn’t get enough knitting done. I had a hard time making myself go to bed because I wanted to stay up and knit all night.

I finished the front of the “Rosier” dress! So now I just have to sew the side seams, put the buttons on and do the edging around the neck and armholes. I will do the edging after I’ve recovered from my surgery because now I just want to knit.
I got a lot done during my class last night. I didn’t realize how much I had done until I got home. :) Then I shaped the neck and the little straps last night after class.

My knitting motivation has skyrocketed in the last day because I’ve realized how weird it’s going to be when I can’t knit. I figure get my fill now so I can take two weeks off from knitting and not have projects sitting that I really feel I need to finish, such as the dress.

I worked about 3.5″ (8 cm) on the right-hand side of the front neck on Karla’s sweater during lunch today. It’s amazing how quickly working on 30 stitches goes. I would love to get the front done tonight, but if I don’t then it’s not a big deal.

I started the “Pagan” shell from the Rowan Calmer Collection last night. I’ve worked a little over an inch of the lace on the bottom. It was a struggle because there didn’t seem to be any pattern with the increases, yarn overs and decreases. I was frustrated and I can’t imagine how one of my poor students will feel once she gets going on it. I hope that it looks okay because right now it looks so off – as some lacy things do when they are really close to the needles.

I’m going to knit night tonight! It’s my last knitting evening for a while so I feel like I should take full advantage of it. Hopefully, it will be a good group tonight and I’ll get quite a bit done. I know I might have a few students drop by but that won’t be a big deal, they aren’t students who demand a ton of attention.

Hopefully, this won’t be my last post for a while, but if it is – Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all!

I knitted a bit last night during American Idol and during lunch today at work. Here’s my progress on the “Rosier” dress, since it’s all I’m currently working on. I have 12.75″ (32.5 cm) of the front done. I have 1.75″ (4.4 cm) to go before I start shaping for the neck. Once I start shaping for the neck it will go really really quickly. I want to get as much knitting in before my surgery but at the same time I’m starting to lose my motivation for knitting a bit since I know I won’t be able to do any knitting for two weeks. I really want to get the dress done before my surgery, though.

I don’t feel like I’ve been knitting a lot lately. When I’ve knitted it’s mainly been working on the “Rosier” dress. I want to get it finished before my surgery on Friday. I have 11″ (28 cm) of the front of the dress completed. I was starting the eyelet pattern on Sunday and now I’ve finished the three repeats of the eyelet pattern and am working on the little fancy stitch at the top part. I have four more rows before shaping the armholes.

It’s going to be a long two weeks after my surgery on my thumb. I can’t knit for those two weeks so I’m sure I’ll slowly be going stir crazy. I’m working on an engagement/wedding scrapbook so I think that’s what I’ll be doing those two weeks that I can’t knit. I’ll be off of work for four full days and probably will watch tv or read the first few days after my surgery.

Meredith really liked the hat with the flower (sorry still no photo) and she wanted to borrow it. I don’t know when I’ll get it back, but at least she’s a good walking advertisement. I would be willing to knit stuff for people but not for a store where I have to turn out a specific number of hats or purses. It would be nice if I could make just one hat with several swatches into a store and they would have my card and people could order them from me or the store could take orders for me.

From my former “up to” page:
Sunday was a big day. Bryan and I went shopping for an engagement ring. It’s really pretty! It needs to be sized so I’ll pick it up today. It’s a platinum band with channel set diamonds along the top. It’s so gorgeous! I feel officially engaged now! Bryan remarked that most guys that walk in there with their girlfriends are completely out of it. They let the girl pick out the ring and the guy pays and that’s it. :) It was really funny because I got the impression that he thinks most guys are completely out of their element in a jewelry store. I’ll post photos when I get the ring tomorrow.

Yesterday Brandi and I went out shopping. We were looking at jewelry at several of the little boutiques around the city and also went to two places with handmade paper. The first store had some amazing Japanese handmade paper. It was gorgeous and made me miss my papermaking class. We went to lunch at another great vegetarian cafe called The Victory Banner Cafe. It was so good. I had a veggie burger that was scumptious. Normally I wouldn’t get dessert, but they had a maple pecan pie that didn’t have any sugar, it was just maple syrup sweetened, so we had to get it. It was SO Yummy! I would go back everyday just for the pie! :) It was really interesting because when we went into the cafe it was raining and the temperature was pretty pleasant. During lunch we watched it really rain and then the rain turned to snow. When we left it was cold out and there was snow on my car. After lunch we decided to go to another paper store that had tons of great papers, including some beautiful handmade papers and great cards. I’m thinking of making my own wedding invitations. I saw some amazing ones online, but they seem a bit expensive to me, so I’m going to see what I can do on my own. I may end up ordering the invitations I saw online.

Saturday night, Bryan, Meredith and I went out for dinner at a restaurant called Tomboy. They have great food. It was the first time that I had gone out with Meredith since I told her I was engaged. After dinner, Bryan and I went to see Cat Power at the Abbey Pub. It was a decent show but they opening bands weren’t that great and when Cat Power came on the lights were kept really low so you could hardly see them, they didn’t talk to the audience much and they had a few songs that they just “jammed” on. There were a lot of jerky people there. It was so smoky there and the smoke really got to Bryan and I. We both decided that we can’t stand to be in a place where people are smoking. For the most part it was only a few people around us that were smoking, but they smoked a lot.

Well, it’s a short week at work for me. I’m having surgery on my left thumb on Friday because my trigger thumb has gotten really bad. I will be staying with Bryan for several days after the surgery. I can’t knit so I’ll be doing a lot of reading while I’m at Bryan’s. I’ll also be off of work three days next week. It will be a nice little vacation even though it’s not for a vacation reason.

I felt like I hadn’t been knitting much this week until last night. Now I have 6″ (15 cm) of the front of the “Rosier” dress completed. I knew it would go fast once I got back into working on it. I’m about an inch from the little eyelet pattern that goes around the middle of the dress. I have 8 more days to work on it. I think I’ll have it completed considering how much I had done just three days ago. Sometimes I’ll be working on something for a while and I feel like I haven’t gotten anything done on it then all of a sudden I have a lot done.

On the Lang cardigan, I’ve been slowly making progress on the second sleeve. I have 8.5″ (21.5 cm) of it completed.

I won’t be at Knit Night tonight. I’m going to a medicinal teas class with Karla, the macrobiotics food consultant.

Dearest Bryan was so sweet Tuesday morning! He drove from Wauconda (45 minutes from where I work) to give me my very own copies of Throwing Muses and Kristen Hersh the grotto. He has connections because of the library so he got them Monday night!!! He wanted me to have copies to listen to that while I was at work! You know you’re with a great guy when he’ll do this for you! :) He thought that I might not be able to get my copies that, so he brought them to me at work. He even beat me to work, which he wasn’t supposed to.

I signed up to volunteer for Junior Achievement through work. I’ll be working with a first grade class in Des Plaines, Illinois. :) I’ll keep you all updated on what I’m doing with them. I’m really looking forward to it.

In April, Bryan and I are going to Kansas to see Danforth Chapel and just for him to see the KU campus. :) I’m really excited to take him to Lawrence and show him places that were so great for me while I was in school. We’ll probably have lunch at Free State Brewery! Then we’ll head to Hutchinson to stay with my parents for the rest of the weekend. It will be the first time that my dad meets Bryan. My mom will meet him for the first time when she’s in the first weekend of April.

I finished the flower for the hat on Saturday morning. I had been wearing the hat for two days with only part of the flower done, but I wanted to at least have something on the hat. :)

I went to my cooking class on Saturday morning and then didn’t feel like driving all the way back into the city, so I went to Bryan’s and read for a while and took a nap, while he was working.

I got about 4 inches on the Lang cardigan second sleeve last night. That’s about all of the knitting that I did for myself this weekend. The only other knitting I did was knitting the neck on a sweater that I’m finishing for a customer at the store. I’m finally done finishing this sweater. It took a long time!

I’m teaching the first class of a new session tonight. This month I’m only teaching intermediate classes. It will be a bit of a relief from beginning. Last month just wore me out with three classes during the week. I need a bit of a break right now and intermediate classes seem to be a bit more my pace at the moment. I can’t believe it’s already March.

I received photos of Shannon’s new baby last night. She’s really cute! I need to get working on the little dress so that I can get it done before my thumb surgery in 11 days. I have about an inch on the bottom of the front of the dress done. I think it will go fast because the back went fast.

Happy Monday!