Wow, so much has happened since my last post!

January - I was hit by a kidney infection, and didn’t give myself nearly enough recovery time once I knew what it was (”I FEEL better, so the drugs must be working, so I can go back to work, right?”).. so it hung on for the better part of January and into February. This made renovations really tough - have you ever tried to stay in bed while your partner works day and night to get the house in shape for guests.. after you thought it would be a good idea to tear the bathroom out down to bare studs and floor joists just one month previous? Hard. Hard hard hard. Poor C, he worked his hands raw retiling the last week, and then pulled an all-nighter right before Lolly and Kris arrived, making sure that we actually had a sink and toilet in place, and that the new tiles were grouted and caulked. I was feeling better by that point, but still gave myself 3 hours of sleep that night so I wouldn’t be a miserable zombie greeting them at the door!

Sooo.. that puts us in mid-February: Lolly and Kris are with us (and they’re AWESOME, so it was a great two weeks of getting to know them and hang out and compare notes), the Olympics are in full swing, I’m feeling better, and C is ready to NOT work on the house… so we had a good time wandering the city, checking out some of the Olympic events, going out with friends again, and just relaxing at home watching the Games. Did you know that those old rabbit ear antennea work for picking up digital airwaves? CTV was broadcasting in High Def, and we could pick it up for free (no cable subscription in this household)!

March felt like a gradual return to normal, though Vancouver itself was abnormal: We’ve had spring since early February (you might have heard of our problems keeping the snow around for the ski hills), and there was a post-party slump going on - sad to see that most of the special events and pavillions that were here for the Olympics were in total take-down mode as the Paralympians were coming to town. After being off from waterpolo for the better part of three months, I returned to practices and slowly started regaining my cardio conditioning, to the point where I now don’t feel like I’m having a heart attack after three minutes of passing the ball! I’m not quite up to full speed yet, but I can do the whole 1.5 hour practice without having to take a break (though I’m still quite happy to sub out during our scrimmages).

April has been delightful! The weather is hit-or-miss, so I’ve been scoping out some decent rain pants for cycling, while also knitting up more strapless tops for summer, and I’m currently in the middle of a summer cardigan knit with DK weight wool. We’re returning to some home-care action, and having visitors last weekend had us put in a decent amount of cleaning effort that looks so much nicer as sunshine streams in through the windows!

Design-wise, this has been an exciting time: I participated in the Ravelympics, and published a hat called Whipped Lolly (see the photo above) to win gold in the Designer Biathlon; I’ve had two requests for hat designs to go into books (woo!); a shawl that I had started for myself turned out to be just the thing that a magazine needed for their Fall issue; and I’ve just heard that another hat design has been accepted to an online publication, hooray! In self-publishing land, the strapless top and the cardigan I’m working on now are both potential patterns - I need to practice scaling the designs into a wide range of sizes, and then get them out to a bunch of test knitters so the patterns themselves will be safe to share!

Knitting classes are going well, hooping classes are picking up, my fall workshop for Maiwa is tickling the back of my brain, and online lessons are percolating, too! All in all, I’m having a lovely spring!

How’s yours?