Brooke The Higgins Day

Occasionally, a person's faith in humanity can be restored. Today provides a good example. This morning, a few of my coworkers celebrated my return from Wooster by presenting me with gifts galore: gorgeous flowers (seen above), a dinosaur book, plastic dinosaurs, an Oprah magazine, and... groceries!!

They also declared today Brooke The Higgins Day and we all went out for Mexican for lunch. (Here you can see a few of the plastic dinosaurs gathered at the salsa hole.) I'm a little overwhelmed. This was super nice of them, and I know my stammered thank yous will never be enough. So here's a public "Thank You!" to everyone involved. You are wonderful people.

Another "Thank You!" to everyone who has kept my parents in their thoughts and prayers. This is a rough time with a fraction of a sliver of light at the end of the tunnel. As of Monday evening when I left Wooster, my dad was still in the hospital. I'm hoping they'll be able to move him to the nursing home soon, if not for rehab, then at least so Mom won't have to drive so far to visit him. Thanks again for your thoughts. I made sure to pass along all of the kind words you left in the comments.

Hospital visiting makes for some good knitting time, however, and I made some progress on a few different projects. I'll have to show you pictures later in the week, as I haven't taken any updated photos of the projects I worked on.

I finished the striped part of the baby hat, picked up the stitches at the brim, and have worked a couple of inches in the blue.

I worked another half a repeat or so of my Pomatomos socks. I love the pattern, as I've told you constantly since I started it, but it's coming along very slowly. This is not a fast knit, at least not for me.

I worked quite diligently on my entrelac market bag. I completed the next row of orange squares, and I'm a little over halfway done with the next row of blue squares. The squares are getting smaller every round now! I told my mom I absolutely love this bag and I love knitting it, but it's really difficult to finish more than three or four squares in one sitting unless I'm changing colors and starting a new row of squares.

The last project I worked on in Wooster is a new Jaywalker sock using my first Socks That Rock acquisition. I cast on for it late in the week, and I'm almost ready to turn the heel. They will be ankle socks, since they're for me, and I only have one skein of this Red Rock Canyon colorway. I added 8 stitches to the larger cast-on (two stitches per repeat, 92 total) and I'm hoping that will help me avoid my previous Jaywalker disaster. Some may say I'm being selfish by making a sock for myself first, since I also bought a skein for socks for Anthony. In my defense, I'm experimenting with mine so that I know how long the cuffs can be for Anthony's socks. See how giving and sacrificial I am? Hehe. Pictures after I turn the heel, IF it fits.

(Oh! And I got to talk to my favorite niece on the phone Monday night before I came back home, and I got to hear first hand how much she loves her stripy socks!)