Polyurethane or Now My House Stinks

Today, we got started on the shop floor. First, we got everything out of the front room. Well, almost everything. I left the display case in there. It is heavier than it has any business being and I refuse to move it. I also left the big tall set of cubes in there. I just covered it with a sheet to protect the yarn from the dust.

Here's everything else in the livingroom. I'm very pleased that I can still get to the computer and my chair. The big challenge is not to stub my toe on any of this stuff when I'm stumbling to the bathroom at 2am.

Here's the first coat on the floor. I love how shiny and beautiful my old floor can get. The only drawback is the stench. I'm trying an experiment. I've got the windows closed in the shop (except for one I left cracked) and I'm running the air conditioner on "Dry". I think this means that it doesn't cool the room as much as dehumidify it. I'm worried if I just open all the windows, it will never get dry. We'll see how it works.

Don't worry. I've got the shop closed off and a lot of windows open in the rest of the house. Still stinks, though.

In The Garden

Another wonderful thing about being on vacation is having the time to garden and the time to take pictures and the time to blog about it!

Here is my new side garden.

Remember what it used to look like?

Now that I've gotten this all planted and weeded, I have to start tackling other parts of the yard. I didn't garden at all last summer because I was away so much and the yard really, really suffered. I'm going to be making up for it this summer.

Gardening will be on hold tomorrow, though. It is time for some new finish on the shop floor and I'm going to be moving furniture and getting that underway with the help of the lovely Doria.

Vacation!

Thank you to everyone for your caring comments on my last post. I'm continuing to feel better and get my energy back!
As promised, here are some pictures from dye day.

I tried a few new colors and had a lot of fun!


I'll start listing them on Etsy as soon as I get a decent sunny day to take pictures of individual skeins.

BTW, I'm on vacation! I love it! I'm celebrating by cooking Beet Thing (mmmm, yummy Beet Thing). If you like beets, let me know and I'll put up the recipe. I'm not having my usual luck, cooking this. I got really big beets and didn't slice them thin enough. They are taking FOREVER to cook! I just checked them again, though, and we're in the home stretch.

Another way that I'm celebrating is by knitting something that is (gasp!) not a sock!

One of my customers started this shawl the other day and I was so charmed by it, I started one of my own. It is the Swallow-tail Shawl from Interweave Knits Fall '06. I'm using some of the yarn I bought in Korea.
The label says that it is 100% wool, but I think they lie. There is a strand running through it with a suspicious sheen, possibly rayon. Who knows. I like it and it really works for this pattern so I'm just running with it.
I have this huge list of things I want to do but I'm not hurrying because, hey, I'm on vacation!

Feeling Better

Well, the beta blocker is working like a charm. Unfortunately, it gives me terrible indigestion for which have to take Zantac. I'm not super excited about taking a medicine that I have to take another medicine to counteract the side effects of. I've talked to my doctor about it and will talk to her more next week. Right now, though, I'm not worrying about it and just revelling in the nice even beating of my heart. I felt so good today that I dyed sixteen pounds of sock yarn! I'll get a picture up when I can hang it outside tomorrow. Today, it keeps raining so it is hanging all around the house.

Bump-dee-bump

I have a benign heart arrhythmia. I occasionally have episodes where either my heart races or it skips beats, sometimes both at the same time. Any kind of physical or emotional stress can bring it on. Unfortunately, it has been bother me a lot lately. I've been tested up the whazoo and they tell me my heart is healthy but when the skipping and racing starts, I feel anything but. Of course, wouldn't you know, after blogging about how much better I felt on Thursday, didn't have a huge episode that night. To everyone I scared by having to leave dinner that night, I'm oooookaaaaaay. My doctor finally prescribed me a beta blocker that will, hopefully, get this thing under control. She gave me a super low dose. I'm so sensative to medication that I almost need to just wave the bottle of pills over my head once a day to get the desired effect. I'm taking a quarter the dose one usually gives an adult and I hope that clears things up. We'll see.

To Blog or To Do

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long. I'm actually quite a lot better since I started eating meat again. Consequently, I've been doing all this gardening and cycling! The problem? No time to blog. I realized that I could blog about gardening or I could actually garden. I didn't have time to do both and the weeds just weren't getting any smaller. I've managed to weed out the worst of the side yard and get a bunch of new plants in. The rest of the yard still needs a lot of attention but it is just going to have to wait until my vacation.
So, here I am trying to get back into at least a little blogging. No pictures, though. I'll try to get some soon. The garden is looking nice and I bought a whole bunch more plants to put in. Plants are like crack to me this time of year!