Guys, I needed this weekend so badly! Between everything going on at home and a huge work project that’s been giving me fits for 2 weeks, and stress even before that, I just didn’t know how much of a stress ball I’d become.

The work project finished up on Friday afternoon. I was able to go home and grab a power nap, then Mr. Ink and I mowed the lawn before a weekend of rain began. I did some weeding and some housework and we made an easy dinner, then settled in to watch a movie together while I knit on the pair of socks that need to be done by Monday.

I finished them.

It’s VERY rainy and dark today, this is as good a photo as I’ll ever get. These are for Mr. Ink’s sister in law, who is just one of those people who gets jobs done. She and I think alike, but I haven’t been in the family 30 years, so I don’t say that which I think. She says it for me. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate her. Also, she’s so knit worthy. I sent her home with a large cowl a little over a year ago, and she wears it ALL OF the time in the winter.  These socks are an easy way for me to say thank you for all the help and support she gives us.

If all goes well, I’ll have another finished object soon. But, as of right now? I am thrilled to report that’s one skein of commercial yarn out of my stash during my month of knitting exclusively.

I’ve been doing a lot of gardening lately, I got some gladiolus in the ground, and I’ve got some cannas waiting to be planted. I have moved a bunch of day lilies to another area in my yard in order to claim more space for my veggie garden. The veggie garden is mostly in, and I’ve planted a bunch of various plants in my shadier gardens, which were just mulch and no plants. Mr. Ink’s hill has gotten a lot of work lately as well, he’s been removing old dead roots of bushes long choked out by weeds he’s finally eradicated. He tells me the erosion out there is getting pretty bad but I’ll like the solution. I asked him what the solution was, and he said more plants, plants and rocks. That’s great, since I keep going to my favorite plant store and purchasing him plants that like rocks. I guess I get to continue!

I’ve got two more gorgeous blooms to show off, my iris bed is busting out now.

Irises are such elegant flowers for the time they bloom! And, I’ve got a beautifully established columbine which never had a chance to bloom last year, so choked out was that flower bed.

Now it’s blooming beautifully in the midst of siberian irises that haven’t bloomed yet. With all the rain we are getting right now, expect a lot more bloom pictures!

With all the upset of Mr. Ink’s mom starting directly after I decided to give up spinning for a month, I am not sure if I just find it relatively uninspiring to blog about knitting, or if I’ve just been too busy and lack the motivation to blog in general. I suspect I’ll need to try another month off spinning to find a better baseline in the future.

Here’s the heel of a second sock! I began, and knit the heel flap and heel, starting on Monday. Pretty good I’d say, for a couple days work. I thought that Mr. Ink’s sister in law would be arriving on Friday, but that didn’t work out as anticipated. She’ll be arriving on Monday instead. That gives me a weekend, a rainy one at that, to finish this sock.

Actually, I plan to knit about to the toe, and then leave it be. Once she arrives, she can try on the complete one, and I can either finish up, or make adjustments and finish up both socks to the proper size.

As for Mr. Ink’s mom, she’s now in a home for rehab, working on learning to walk again. We visited last evening and I was impressed with the facilities. They’d come highly recommended, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was really nice to see how lovely they are. I hope the care equals the facilities. In the meantime, the next month brings us paperwork, and cleaning out her apartment. It’s been less than a year since we cleaned out the old family home, and I still have nightmares about it, so I am not exactly looking forward to this next clean out, despite the fact that it’s only 13 years worth of stuff, and a much smaller place.

Meanwhile, there are the regular inconveniences of differing opinions that different family members bring to the table in situations such as this. For instance, the one where some family members believe that all the stuff from  her apartment will be coming to my house to be stored. Those family members would be mistaken. I’ve got issues with “stuff.” I keep my level of “stuff” WAY down whenever possible. And clutter drives me right crazy. We are currently housing stuff for kids who don’t live with us, and that’s about my limit. I do believe that there are lovely things called storage sheds, and you can rent them by the month, and “stuff” can just stay in there.

And after typing all that out, I think it’s pretty clear that the mental exhaustion of each day right now leaves me little room for blogging about knitting. It’s not the knitting, it’s the situation.

Oh. Yeah. And also the huge work project.

OK, here’s the thing. Life is full of cycles, and the cycle for me is stress. Hopefully it’ll settle down soon!

Just when you say something like “speeding right along,” life throws you a curve ball.

And that’s exactly what happened with the end of my week. On Thursday afternoon while I was still at work, I got a call from Mr. Ink’s sister in law. She’d called over to his mother, and his mother reluctantly admitted to her that she’d fallen two days prior. And not told anyone about it.

Now, knowing that any fall in an 88 year old could potentially be quite serious, and not being able to get in touch with Mr. Ink, I headed over there. She was able to get to the door, and I was able to get her into the car. We headed to the urgent care which is practically next door to her, but they wouldn’t see her. So, we then headed off to the only hospital she seems comfortable with, which was quite a ways away, in rush hour traffic.

By that time I’d been able to get ahold of Mr. Ink and he met us there. I was so thankful we’d gone to an ER, as what I didn’t realize was that while I could get her IN my car, I was completely unable to get her back OUT of my car. But they had experienced staff to help with that.

We learned, once in the ER, that she’d not just fallen 2 days before, she’d fallen 2 days before, and then fell again the next day. On fall 1, she’d broken her hip. On fall 2, she broke some ribs. And naturally, she hadn’t been eating because she was unable to make herself food.

I REALLY don’t know how long she would have gone without telling someone, if Mr. Ink’s sister in law hadn’t called and then pried the information out of her. I spent most of the day yesterday at the hospital with her as she was poked and prodded by all manner of docs and nurses, just to confirm that she was fine for surgery. As it turns out, besides the hip, she really couldn’t be healthier. So we made some decisions about surgery, information was conveyed to Mr. Ink’s brothers, and then Mr. Ink arrived to take over for the actual surgery part.

She came through surgery just fine! She’s got a long recovery ahead of her, and no more living alone, but she also did very well. When we have to take her to an ER for something, it’s always really fun for me to listen to the doctors and nurses talk about her outside the door. “This is an 88 year old female on absolutely NO medications whatsoever, with no known health problems.” “WHAT?!” “Seriously. No meds at all. No known health problems.” And it always continues in that direction for awhile. She’s such an anomaly, they can’t, initially, believe it.

I will be headed back up to the hospital soon. Tomorrow Mr. Ink’s younger brother comes to town. At the end of the week, Mr. Ink’s sister in law will come to town. So, we will be having a full house again, which has been the case the majority of 2016 so far. But we’ll be very grateful for the help! And we continue to be grateful we’ve got a house large enough to have people stay at.

Here’s what I realized, as I sat in the hospital yesterday knitting on a sock. The sock I was knitting on was started for Mr. Ink’s sister in law. She’s our greatest support when it comes to Mr. Ink’s mom, even though she lives 1,000 miles away. And she wanted socks, and I was happy to make her some. But as I sat there knitting on it, I realized she’d arrive in a week, and I could present her with a pair of socks! Also, it was SO appropriate that I was knitting socks for HER while in the hospital with the person she helps us care for from miles and miles away.

I finished that sock (Though it may be too long, I can always pull back the toe once she arrives) and I’ll start the second sock on Monday. I feel confident I can finish it by Friday.

It seems only reasonable that during a month of self inflicted exclusive knitting, I’d have a pair of socks on the needles. I started these mid March, as I needed another pair of “emergency knitting” socks.

I am photographing them in the car, because that’s where they reside! I keep them around for moments I might need knitting while I am out, but they get knit on most often when I decide I’ve had enough single track riding but Mr. Ink wants to do a bit more.

That was the case yesterday, and I got a bit further down the foot. 10 out of 13 repeats are complete on this sock.

Since the sock pic is a bit boring and I don’t have much progress on anything else today, can I show you garden photos?

Not entirely sure what this plant is on our retaining wall, but it’s in its glory at the moment. Really gorgeous! You can see, behind it, phlox peeking out. Here’s a close up:

It was far more abundant last year, that plant, but kind of got choked out. We are hoping that it fills in above a bit this year, and we are working on encouraging that.

Another phlox photo is one that Mr. Ink planted last year, and it’s just blooming like mad too!

It seems to be really enjoying it’s spot on the hill.

And finally, the tree we planted when our 17 year old dog passed away last year, the Coco Memorial tree, made it through the winter! It’s a red bud, and we weren’t entire sure it would make it. Not only did it make it, but it is exhibiting it’s first flower!

When we moved in to our home, we realized we had no trees. It’s a huge yard, and NO TREES! None at all. Now we have two. And another one arriving shortly. (And frankly, our rose of sharon is rather tree like. But it’ll never grow like a tree.)

After doing a bunch of yard work this weekend, prior to the current rain, I am highly inspired to get out and buy plants. I love that I’ve learned to enjoy gardening, and also love that Mr. Ink picks up where I slack in that department. But most of all, I love that gardening happens for a season, and then we get a break.

You know, it occurs to me that it’s been awhile since I’ve posted much about knitting in progress, what with the batts and the spinning and all!

I started a new little project. The pattern is called Drake the Snake, and it’s a two color scarf. The yarns I chose are both dyeabolical yarns, the green semi solid is the leftover yarn from my boxy and buttony sweater, and the pink toned colorway is a discontinued one called “We’re All Mad Here.

Since it was a discontinued colorway, I just wanted something lovely and not socks out of it! And also something large enough that I’d wear it regularly. The addition of the darker green makes that a possibility for me.

I am having a ton of fun with this one, I love short rows and I love seeing those wedges knit up. This one is currently residing at work, which means it gets a good amount of time devoted to it during the week (when mostly I spin or bike at night) and then it comes home on the weekends, when I am more likely to knit.

Speaking of biking, with the weather change, and an attitude change in me, we’ve been biking a whole lot more! I mentioned that over the weekend Miss Bug got my old mountain bike set up specifically for her. We’d told her we were going to take her out biking, and I had been thinking paved trails around a lake. But, she was most insistent that she doesn’t like riding paved trails, and wanted to go mountain biking. Sunday, Mr. Ink and I had just ridden a full lap of our favorite easy access mountain bike park. On Monday, we took Miss Bug as well. I figured she wouldn’t have the stamina to do much riding. But, as it turns out, since she’s also a little trail runner with her dad, she knew exactly where she wanted to go, and that was a whole lot more biking than I’d anticipated.

Gratuitous photo of Bug trail running:

Or, perhaps more accurately in this case, trail jumping.

As a mother, following her on her first big mountain bike ride, riding a new bike that’s rather big for her, I had to tamp down my instinct to tell her that she couldn’t do things. The reality was that she could do almost anything she tried, and she had very little fear. Anything we encountered she wanted to try, and often times she wanted to do it again.

It was also rather exhausting, as there’s a real change in how *I* ride when I am behind her. I have to slow way down, put myself in super low gear, do a lot of extra balancing to accommodate her slower speed, and then trying to maneuver whatever obstacle is ahead at such a slow speed, and slowing down for her unexpected needs is quite a challenge in power output on a bike. All of this being probably very good for me. And something I don’t expect to last, as her first time out was such a massive success that she’s likely to speed up beyond my own abilities very quickly.

I took along my phone but didn’t get any shots of her riding. However, I did get some great shots of Mr. Ink riding a large log skinny. I so rarely stop to take photos, it was nice to have that opportunity this time.

He nailed it, naturally. I really need to start riding those smaller logs, but at my age, I DO have a big case of fear and my brain is in the way more often than not.

All in all a great evening!