52 hats :: 23 – scrap busting

Not very creative, just working my way through scraps (leftovers from the mystery shawl).

Thanks for sticking with me and my boring posts while I try to catch up with the 52 hat challenge. I’m still behind on both posting and knitting, so I have at least a week of these to go. But I will try to mix in some other posts too. 😉

52 hats :: 22 – giving up on cables

I guess the title says it all. I was going to do cables, but we were on Curaçao when I was knitting this one and the acrylic yarn was no fun in the heat. So I decided to give up on the cables and finish in stockinette. I was also a bit too eager to wrap this up, so it ended up being just a small beanie. I do sort of like it though…

Three things I'm working on right now

1. Cleaning and organizing. After all the traveling and the scary times in between, I’m finally trying to get a grip on my household tasks. Ahem… I had things under control back in October, but fell off the bandwagon during the holidays in December and never really got back to it. Add trying to finish renovations in every room in the house to that and you can imagine I’ve just been doing damage control these past few months.
Today I started on my kitchen cupboards. Deep cleaning and organizing. Oh my…  The hard part is letting go of stuff.

Hmnn, this is an ‘after picture’, but there’s still too much stuffed in there, don’t you think? I”d better sort through it again…

2. Knitting! A few weeks ago I felt I lost my knitting mojo. I just didn’t feel like picking up my needles. I even considered giving up on the 52 hats challenge. But I’m back at it. Still a little behind, but I’m getting there.

3. Writing. I’m *this* close to finishing my next novel (it’s been a while since the last one was published, but this will my eleventh). Just waiting for the final scenes to play out in my mind. And then I need to find time to write it down, of course.

Linking up with Carole Knits’ Three on Thursday

52 hats :: 21 – hospital green

I started this hat in the waiting room when my husband was going through some examinations for his heart, back in May. It’s just a simple 2×2 rib with a stockinette top, but that was all I could handle at that point.

Life has been scary and unclear for a while (since the end of April, actually). It seemed T. was having minor heart attacks, but all his tests were negative or didn’t work out. He had a scan to look at his coronary arteries last week and we were going to hear the results of that yesterday. But last Sunday he got even more severe chest pains than before and we found his heart rate was up to over 200 bpm. He was rushed off to the hospital by ambulance and there they found out he was born with a deficit that causes arrhythmias.
Yesterday we heard his arteries are fine, but he has to have an operation to fix the deficit. It’s a relatively small, simple and routine operation. We will have to postpone our move to Curaçao until next year though because there are waiting lists, but we both feel that’s worth it.
This operation will fix the problem for once and for all, so once it’s done we can finally look at the future again. Without fear and doubts about the decisions we were about to make. Without worrying about the lack of good hospitals on Curaçao (they do have hospitals, but for only 150.000 inhabitants they can’t afford AMC standards), without working out a plan for me if/when I would want to move back to Holland as a widow soon.
Also (on a lighter note): now I can finish my 52 hat project without having to worry about moving them all with me to Curaçao and then to have to ship them some place where people actually wear warm hats 😉

Curaçao :: More buildings

I know I did this before, but oh, Curaçao is full of beautiful old (and new) buildings and I love to take pictures of them.
I actually planned to go on a bit of a photo walk and take pictures of some old homes we drive by a lot on our way to the beach, but that never happened (it’s on the list for the next time we’re there). But I did manage to take pictures of these three. The blue one is my favorite.

Joining Carole Knits’ Three on Thursday