Just stuff

Just a few things to update those who might be interested about what's been going on.

• Thursday was my 2nd appointment with the Rheumatologist. She looked at the x-rays of my hands and was very happy with how they looked. Apparently there is no joint damaged yet. So, now we can start treatment. I'll be starting Methotrexate, a DMARD (disease-modifying antirheumatic drug) at the end of next week. Methotrexate is considered an aggressive treatment for RA, so I'm happy with her decision and the information she gave me. I'll go back to her in 7 weeks and we'll see how things are progressing. Until then I'll continue to take Prednasone and sometimes the Mobic (for pain mostly) along with the Methotrexate and folic acid.
  
• For someone who has never been good at taking lots of medicine for an extended period of time, on a schedule, this is going to be harder then it seems.
  
• My new sweater is coming along, have about 10 cm of the back done, need 30 before I start the next section. Right now I can work on it without a pattern, love that kind of pattern.
• Went yesterday with DF Melody to the local ANG meeting. I enjoyed myself. Even worked on the canvas piece I've had a few years. I managed to finish up 2 of the squares on it. I'll have to get a picture this week and post it. I thought I might start my FSU Santa canvas, but I didn't. I did get some wonderful help on ideas for stitches. I think it's going to look great. When I start I'll take pictures.
• Today's ReGenesis service was great! Or at least I thought it was. We had somewhere between 91 and 97 people in attendence. I'm so excited that the service is growing.
  
• The coming week looks busy. I'm wondering what I'll manage to do, and what I'll have to leave undone. Only time will tell.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and has a wonderful week. I promise some pictures of what I worked on yesterday and the framed "Little Green Acorns" later this week.

As much as I can right now

So, I've finished as much as I can on Traditional Elegance II. I am on hold until the Japan Thread arrives from Needlecraft Corner. (I completely forgot to link to Drema's site the last time I mentioned this, so here you go. If you stitch and you've never ordered from her, I highly recommend this shop. Everyone is always nice and helpful.) I know, you want to see some eye candy, so here you go...
I'm very happy with the way it looks now, so I can't wait to see what it looks like with the added sparkle.

I also worked on the Baby Surprise Jacket I'm making for one of my co-workers who's baby boy is due any day now. Didn't get a lot done on it, but at least I got a few more rows done.

Can't believe the weekend is over. Thursday is my next appointment with the rheumatologist. Hopefully this time we'll talk more about treatment protocols.

Saturday's are too short

Is it just me, or do Saturday's seem much shorter then other days of the week? Intellectually I realize that they aren't, but they do feel shorter. And I can't seem to get much done during them lately. I have big plans, but then I want to do silly things like sleep in, eat more for breakfast then a bowl of cereal, watch the ACC basketball tournament (or more specifically FSU play in the ACC basketball tournament), and the whole day is suddenly gone.

All in all though it was a good day. I did accomplish getting the lemon trees trimmed up, so hopefully they will produce more lemons next year. I was going to stitch and watch the basketball tournament, but I couldn't seem to do both, so I gave that up and just watched. I did get my last name put on the sampler before I gave up though, so that's something. It ended up being the only stitching I managed to do today however.

I was craving catfish, so I took mom & dad to Whitey's, my place of choice of catfish, for dinner. As always it was yummy. Ended up getting both catfish and some oysters. (Ok, color me extremely surprised that Whitey's has a website. But I guess I shouldn't be. I've grown up going to Whitey's. It's very different now then it was when I was a teenager. Much more "upscale", but still it's a fish camp and you can eat out on the porch any day of the year.)

I have hopes that tomorrow I'll manage to finish the sampler except for the parts that I'm waiting for the thread. (Oh and Ria, it's easy to sit and stitch. Kind of like sitting and knitting. Plus I'm never JUST stitching. I usually am watching TV, or listening to an audio book, or something else while I'm stitching. And for some strange reason I find it relaxing, at least most of the time. The movement of putting thread through the fabric can be zen-like. But then so can knitting, so hey.)

ASG 2008

Every year, for quite a few years, I've been going to ASG in the fall. I started going and didn't know anyone except Rae & Ron who put the entire thing on. Over the years I've made quite a few friends and have had some excellent classes from fantastic teachers. This year was yet another great weekend.

I was very happy that we were back on Hilton Head Island, SC. Although I'm not a "beach person" I love Hilton Head, maybe because of all the trees, even if they do make it terribly hard to find your way to a new resort in the dark. Our hotel/resort was wonderful, both the accommodations and the people who worked there. Kudos to them for making our stay very enjoyable.

Thursday I went to work, bright and early, so I could leave at 3 and head to SC to meet up with DFs Jean, Jill, Heather and Ann. They were driving in from Atlanta, Ann having spent the night at Chez Jean. They made it there before I did and amused themselves with some shopping at the outlets. It took me longer then I thought, probably because the state of GA has most of I-95 torn up and actually had workers out so you had to go 55 and 60 most of the way. By the time I made it, dusk was settling in, ok, it was dark people. Now I had my cute little GPS all cranked and had the address to the Marriott in it, but that really didn't help. I still managed to take a wrong turn. I swear she said to "in the roundabout, take the 1st right", which I did. However, that led to the Hilton. It looked like a lovely hotel, it was just the wrong lovely hotel. Thank goodness I hang with a group of geekylovely women who all own multiple electronic communication devices. Jean, being the "early adopter" among us, has an iPhone and she's who I called first since she was driving and might have the best shot at telling me how to get to the right hotel. She didn't, but the guy at the front desk, where she was thankfully standing, could and I arrived while 2 bellmen were unloading the "Party Van" (tm). Between the 5 of us, we had 2 very full luggage carts. I'm not sure how we managed to fly to Knoxville (I mean) Louisville the last few years. It may be that if we can't bring our entire households, we actually manage to pack only the essentials. Thankfully this year we could all drive. I say this for a number of reasons.

1) Because we could bring lots of fun things. Some knitting, some stitching, some brownies, some alcoholic drinks, my new Mac Book Pro, printer, remote hard drive, wireless router and sundry other items. (Let me take a moment to thank Richard & Jean. Richard is a great guy. He set my new computer up for me and got everything ready to go so I could just start using it. Thanks Richard! And thanks Jean for bringing me all the stuff.)

2) We had great teachers and projects. First we had a great class from Catherine Jordan. First we painted our linen, then we stitched on it. See...
Well, that's kind of what it will look like when I'm done. This is what it looked like when I started.
That's the top on the left and the inside part on the right. I went for the look of some of the beaches in the Bahamas.
Here's with some of my ship stitched in. I need to go back and put another row in the bottom of the ship and finish the sails. I looks much more interesting in person.

The rest of the rundown will have to wait for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

ETA: Changed Knoxville to Louisville, since apparently I was so tired I didn't know what I was typing. Not that Knoxville isn't lovely, it's just not where we've been going the last few years.

Great weekend update

Well, that should probably say: Update on my great weekend, but hey, I'm tired.

Seriously though I had a wonderful weekend. Friday night some of my very dear friend from church, none of whom have a blog, took me to dinner at The Hilltop Club. It was very, VERY nice. We had a great evening just talking, drinking some great wine and having a wonderful meal. Our waiter even brought me a piece of strawberry shortcake to help with the celebration. (We were celebrating my getting a job.)

Then Saturday was the big FSU v. Colorado game here in Jacksonville. More fun ensued. Unfortunately I don't have pictures, since I completely forgot to pick up my camera before I left the house. I think that DF Jill will have some soon. At least I hope so. The really great news was our Seminoles won!!!! Plus we had a great time tailgating with friends and just generally hanging out.

Unfortunately Jill couldn't stay long on Sunday, so I didn't even get to see her Sunday morning before she left since I'd already left to go to church. But she got home all safe and sound, so that was good news too.

I spent part of my Sunday taking a wonderfully long 3 hour nap. I was going to watch the NASCAR race, but couldn't manage to keep my eyes open for very long. Did see the exciting ending, so that's something, even if my favorite driver, Carl Edwards, didn't win. It was an exciting ending!

That's about it. No knitting, no stitching. Tonight I came home, had some desert and am heading to bed after trying to yet again remote log in to work. Still not working right for me, but I think tomorrow I'll get it fixed and then I won't have to sit in 2 hrs. and 15 minutes of traffic to get to work when there's a major wreck. I can just come back home and work from here. That will make me very happy.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and a good Monday!

It was a busy weekend

DF Jill was in town this weekend and we used almost every minute doing something fun. From having a wonderful dinner with friends we used to work with, to stitching and knitting with other friends, we were busy, busy, busy!

That being said, I have no pictures, so you'll have to head over to Jill's blog to see a few that she took over the weekend.

There is no rest for the weary. I'm heading to NC on Wednesday for my first college roommate's wedding in Lenoir. I'll spend the night with DF Judy on Wednesday night, since I'm flying into Greensboro and Judy is conveniently located in said city. Then Thur. morning I'll drive over to Lenoir for the festivities. I'm very excited to get to spend some time with Maria before the wedding. We haven't actually seen each other in several years, but do a pretty good job of keeping in touch. I'm sure I'll have pictures from that weekend when I return.

Tonight I spent some time working on a little something for the bride-to-be. I haven't done any beading in awhile, but I wanted Maria to have something special, so I asked her what she was planning to do with her hair. Seems she's not having a full veil, so I asked if she'd like some "hair jewels" to put a little sparkle and add something to her "do". She apparently trusts me to do something that she'll like so I'm making her some pins. I'm not going to put pictures up until after the wedding. She might be reading this and I don't want to spoil the surprise. I think they look lovely, and I hope she'll like them. I plan on getting a picture of her hair when it's all done and they are in. Won't that be something different?

What a weekend!

Seriously I had a really great weekend. It was busy, but there was some fun thrown in so it was worth it.

Friday evening mom & I went shopping for a few things we needed, nothing spectacular, but I managed to find some goodies to finish up my gifts for some friends here in town. Just in time too. Now I have to put everything together and hope they enjoy the combination of handmade and cool bought things.

Saturday I got up early and headed over to KnitWitz for class with Annie Modesitt. What a wonderful teacher. You can see pictures over on Yarnfinder's blog (or as we know her Kathe). I'm in a couple of pictures for the Universal Mitered bag class, but all you can see is my back or the top of my head. I love the project, but even more I love how Annie talked about making patterns your own. She shared some cool tips and tricks and encouraged us to take what we learned and put it in our "toolbox" to take out later. I like when that's the attitude of the teacher. For some reason I totally didn't get that I needed yarn that would felt. If you've taken a look at my Ravelry stuff lately (for those on Ravelry I'm GirlWithNeedles, and if you knit and you aren't on Ravelry or signed up to get on, what are you waiting for???) you can see I have some felting yarn. And that's not all of it. I have great scraps that would have worked for something this small. But that was not to be. I guess the yarn fairies wanted me to purchase more yarn. The colors I chose are kind of interesting, see...That color on the left, that's kind of more orange then I would normally like, but I was so drawn to the multi yarn above it that I thought it would work. It's actually kind of more like a coral color in a way. But still, not my normal color choice.

Saturday when I got home it was time to start cleaning the windows on the sun porch. That room is wonderful, and I love it, especially this time of year, but cleaning those windows isn't all that fun. Luckily it doesn't involve a ladder. The decision was also made to not put up the 9 ft. tree this year. It's getting late in the season and it's a bear to put up, so no big tree. Oh well. I also did some work on the mantle decorations. That carried on into Sunday before it was done. No pictures yet though, there's still stuff in the way so I can't get a good picture. Soon, I promise.