Thursday night at knit night I crocheted the edging around the neck and armholes . Then Friday after lunch, I spent about an hour and a half sewing buttons onto the dress, and sewing my tags into the dress and the little cardigan. Bryan and I went to La Prima Tazza in Lawrence to have some hot tea and he read the various papers around the cafe while I sewed the buttons. I wrapped the gift up at the cafe and then we went to the Love Garden record store.
It was an action packed weekend! Bryan and I went to Kansas for the weekend!

We left my house early, early on Friday morning to catch our 8:30am flight to Kansas City. We landed about 10am and picked up our rental car for the weekend. We then drove to Lawrence.

In Lawrence, we had lunch at the Free State Brewery – hot artichoke dip for appetizer and black bean quesadillas for lunch. I had a sample sized Ad Astra Ale, it was just as good as I remembered it. After lunch, Bryan and I went to La Prima Tazza to have some hot tea and he read the various papers around the cafe while I sewed the buttons. I spent about an hour and a half sewing buttons onto the dress, and sewing my tags into the dress and the little cardigan. I wrapped the gift up at the cafe. We then went to the Eldridge Hotel to see the Crystal Ballroom, where we are having our wedding reception. It’s a really pretty and elegant place! :)

We went to the Love Garden! It hasn’t changed a bit since the last time I was there. They still play the rockabilly bluegrass music and a few of the same people still work there. The one thing I noticed was there weren’t any cassette tapes and they have computers now. :)

Then we when to see Shannon, Emma and Claire. Emma is so adorable. I felt like I knew her before I ever met her because her little personality comes through so much in the photos that Shannon has sent me. I gave Shannon the “Rosier” dress and cardigan that I made for Claire. Shannon loved it and she tried it on Claire, it’s a bit too big but she’ll grow into it. :) When Shannon opened the gift Emma wasn’t quite as shy because she realized that I was the girl who made her sweaters. :) It was so fun to just visit with Shannon and look at the photo albums that she’s put together of Emma and her family. Claire slept a good part of the time, but when she was awake she was so good. She is so cute! Shannon and Scott have two of the cutest girls I’ve seen! :) I hated having to leave, but Bryan and I had to get on the road to Hutchinson, so we said our goodbyes and headed up to the KU campus to see Danforth Chapel, where we are having the ceremony. It’s so cute. It’s perfect and small.

After seeing Danforth, we headed for Hutchinson. It seemed like a really long drive. I felt sorry for Bryan because I’m sure he felt like he was driving forever. You know how it feels like it takes a long time to get anywhere when you’ve never been there before? We got to Hutchinson about 7pm and went out to for Mexican food for dinner with my parents.

I’ve knitted a bit in the last several days. I have been working on the Pagan sweater in Rowan Calmer. The size 8 needles feel a bit too small for me right now and my hand was bothering me while I was knitting so I decided to see how knitting with the Rowan Cotton Tape would be. I swatched on Tuesday night and started the Joy sweater from the Rowan Cotton Tape Collection. I have about 10 rows of the back finished. I’m not knitting a whole lot because I don’t want to overdo it. I also have been making a concerted effort to be in bed by 10:45 or 11pm, so that I can read a little bit before I go to bed. And I’m trying to get up about 6:45am so that I don’t have to rush in the morning to get to work, it’s really helping!

I’m going to see Shannon and her new baby Claire tomorrow. I also get to meet Emma, who’s so cute but I’ve only seen in photos. I want to get the “Rosier” dress finished so that I can give the outfit to Shannon tomorrow. I think it might be a bit difficult, but I’ll really try.

Last night I only knit three rows. Not a lot of progress. In class, I was teaching two students intarsia and my hand was a bit sore last night. I didn’t get home early enough to do much knitting and I wanted to get some reading done before I went to sleep.

I’ve tried knitting a little bit in the last week or so, but it’s never comfortable. Monday night while I was teaching, I knitted about four rows. Then I came home and knitted two more rows. In the last week, I’ve knit probably an inch on the “Pagan” top. Mary finished sewing the seams for the “Rosier” dress and blocked it for me.

I haven’t had the urge to jump back in to knitting full force because my hand bothers me more than I want it to. I know I’ll have plenty of time to knit after my hand completely heals, so I’m not in a big rush. I would rather have full use of my hand later on than to do something bad to it now and not be able to knit for even longer. I have to say I haven’t watched as much tv as I was before I had the surgery. I have been doing a lot more reading since the surgery. I think I may have slightly burnt myself out on knitting because I felt like it was what I had to be doing all the time and my love for reading had fallen by the wayside. Not being able to knit reminded me of how much I love reading. I might have to take a bit of a different approach to my life and my knitting in the future. Living with Bryan will definitely change things for me. I’m also thinking of just teaching one class a week after Bryan and I move in together in August or September. The two classes a week are really starting to wear on me. I love teaching but I don’t want to burn myself out completely. I need more time to myself because as it is I’m teaching on Mondays and Wednesdays then I’m at Knit Night on Thursdays and I usually spend part of the weekend with Bryan. I just need to be home before 9pm one of the week nights.

I’m back at work and having to deal with typing slower and my hand hurting. It’s been exhausting working all day and dealing with getting back into the routine. I started teaching again on Monday. I had some difficulty maneuvering with my hand still bandaged and trying to teach new knitters how to do the knit and purl stitch. They did quite well considering their teacher was at only about 75% working capacity. At least, I could use my fingers and I was able to correct their mistakes. I tried to knit a row and it was the most painful row I’ve ever knit. I bit my lip and knitted the whole row so that the tension wouldn’t be off.

Wednesday night, I taught my intermediate project class and I really wanted to go home and knit.

Thursday night, I went to Knit Night and worked on sewing the “Rosier” dress together. I got one side seam done and about an inch of the second seam. It took me a long time to do that much. Mary felt sorry for me and offered to finish sewing the seam for me and block it. I’ll do the crocheted edging and sew the buttons on after I’ve fully recovered. It’s not worth my pain or asking someone else to do it, even though I’m sure people at the store would be willing to help me out if I was desperate.

I took my bandage off last night and tried to knit a few rows. It was really painful, but I SO wanted to knit a bit. At least, I got it out of my system. I didn’t really miss knitting while I wasn’t around it. Then this week really made me want to get back into it, but I’m physically not ready. I think I’ll have to stick with reading for a while longer.

I’m still reading a lot, although I’ve slowed down a bit since I’ve gone back to work. I’m now 200 pages into The Lovely Bones. I’m missing the days of reading a lot! I’m 10 pages from finishing The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell. I’m in the middle of The Porno Girl and other stories by Merin Wexler but at least I’m not in the middle of one of the stories. That’s what’s nice about books of short stories you can put down the book whenever you are reading something else and when you want to read a short story the book is there and you haven’t lost track of what was going on. :)

Last weekend while my mom was in town, I tried on wedding dresses. I found five that I like. My favorite is a Christos dress with an empire waist and beading on the bodice and short sleeves. It’s made out of silk organza, but for a richer look I want it made in silk mikado (a word I hadn’t heard until I started trying on dresses). It’s a gorgeous dress and seemed to fit me and my personality so well. I’ve had people telling me that when I find the right dress, I’ll just know it. I’m going to try on more dresses in a few weeks with Meredith and Brandi with me.

I got my stitches out today. My hand is feeling better at least I don’t have the stitches poking my incision. I have my first real attempt at driving back to the city tomorrow. I’ll be going from Wauconda, where Bryan lives to my house which is about 45 miles from Bryan’s. At least I’ll be driving in the middle of the day so traffic won’t be bad.

I am off of work until Monday, so I’ll be taking it easy for the next few days until I go back to work.

I started The Lovely Bones on Tuesday night and am nearly 100 pages into it. It’s such an amazing book! I’m also still reading The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell and The Porno Girl and other stories by Merin Wexler.
I won’t be knitting for a few more days as my hand is still really sore. And I just started The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. And my mom is in town this weekend. :)

I start teaching another beginning class on Monday, so I hopefully will be in decent shape by then. I might not be knitting up to full capacity for two or three more weeks.