Spinning, yarns and plates

This patchwork quilt of a life goes on apace.

Sample day, today, to be exact:

up at 7, yoga practice to divine Rodney Yee tape before HP woke, catboxes and food and water upstairs and downstairs, personal care for HP for hour and a half, pretty heavy labor, new problem, call to nurse which has not yet been returned, so I rationalize that not much can go wrong in a day, breakfast, rush out to vote, remembering it's primary day in NJ for state elections and I must do my bit to return my local assemblywoman whose office has done significant service for the Adamses over the last few years, then home, cook a lovely spinach quiche for lunch, with mixed green salad, followed by fresh blueberries and watermelon chunks, then brief flute practice, remembered my fingering and played actually surprisingly okay considering, shop for vital groceries, watch part of the French Open tennis, at least I wasn't shellacked like Sharapova today, HS needed to rest in bed, transferred him using Hoyer lift (this happens several times daily, depending on need) went for a half hour walk, met the usual suspects in the park, I always speak and people after they get over their surprise, start to speak in return, home to find HP in need of more care, not problem, just routine but a bit unexpected, laundry, practice with the spinning wheel, and then it was now, chatting on a latest style high tech computer. And it's not even evening yet.

This is how it is, I guess! but it's lovely to juggle all the spinning plates and still feel things are fairly okay considering, and speaking of spinning...the spinning study is coming along nice and slowly. The great spinning wheel portrait above, came to stay with us yesterday, and I have been studying it and the book that came with, and the lender kindly threaded the wheel so I could see how before I get all lost with it.

I can now treadle, more or less, and get the wheel in one direction most of the time, and I have found out about various parts of this nice machine. A spot of silicone on the metal parts stopped it from shrieking, which the cats liked, and for which HP is profoundly grateful. But the drop spindle still calls, too.

I realized that one reason I was so frazzled over computer and other issues is that I didn't have anything on the knitting needles, my personal unfailing cure for anxiety. So I cast on a nice little washcloth, always an easy choice, created a stitch pattern I liked, and now have a new cloth in my bathroom.

The stitch pattern, for anyone interested: multiple of four stitches, knit two, yarn over, knit two together, to end, next row purl all stitches. It makes a nice little ladder effect, fun to knit and with enough friction built in to work as a washcloth without overdoing it. A few rows of garter stitch at beginning and ending. Sugar and Cream cotton yarn. Size 5 needles, I think.

The other reason for anxiety is that we still have not got a steady supply of home health aides, partly because the nice one we had was too allergic to our cats to continue, and they had to search at the last minute for another, who we fervently hope will show up on Thursday.

Either that, or there's another washcloth in my future...