This month passed in a hurry. I spent most of a week in the hospital, and then the rest of the month recovering from the surgery. I haven’t been exactly frisky for the whole month, but I have been making some progress on several projects.
Doesn’t Hannah look pleased with her box? The house is pretty much full of boxes at the moment as I have been making use of all the shopping services that cropped up during the height of the pandemic. I’m getting everything that I need with little effort and Hannah and Mateo are having the best time ever. From their prospective it has been a really great month!
Knitting
I worked on a sweater and community knitting this month. I really pushed and got the body of my Goldenfern sweater done early in the month and then immediately lost it on sleeve island. Poor sweater. It languished for the rest of the month in its knitting tub while I knitted chemo hat after chemo hat with a few PICC line covers thrown in for variety.
I know that this is the end of month report for May, but I want to acknowledge that now that we are in a new month, I have pulled myself together and taken that sweater off of sleeve island. I made some good progress over the last couple of days, and I finally got to the colorwork section of the sleeve today.
I also made a couple of more passes through the yarn stash culling out yarn that I will never use and throwing out scraps. (So hard to do; I deserve a gold star!!) Altogether, I knit 6 chemo hats this month (Barley Light by Tin Can Knits), 5 PICC line covers, and used up or removed 38 skeins of yarn from the stash. I think that I deserve more than one gold star for the destash efforts this month… I am kind of thinking that I will get more than 100 skeins out of the stash, and to be truthful, things are looking a lot more tidy in the stash room.
Garden
Everything is growing like crazy now. The roses all made it through the late season snowstorm and there are buds everywhere but very few blooms. The snapdragons, however, are blooming their little flower hearts out.
With absolutely no effort on my part these snapdragons have spread through the front gardens (and rocked landscaping…) and have brought lots of early color in reds, oranges, pinks and yellows. There is a BioGeek story here, but I will save it for another day. 🙂
Books
I managed to read 5 books in May. Not great, considering that I was a slug for most of the month, but I’m still on track to make my Goodreads challenge goal of 50 books this year.
I’m reading the most amazing book right now.
I read A Visit from the Goon Squad, so I had some idea of what I was getting into with this book. The book is organized like a series of short stories about people who are connected to each other. There are a lot of names flying past, and there are also embedded themes within the stories, so there is a lot to keep track of. I am creating a flow chart showing the linkages and themes as I read which is helping me immensely. How I long for a book group!
So, here’s the simple backbone of the book: what if there was an electronic, open forum vehicle that let you store all of your memories? Think of this like Facebook on steroids where it is open to the world and people can access and search other people and memories. What would such a thing do to us; what would we lose, and what would we gain?
The people and themes that I am meeting as I read the book are engaging and I’m really enjoying myself. Also, I am going to need some really big chart paper to map out all of the interconnections the way things are going as I read.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
Yarn, Books & Roses 
Snapdragons are so cheerful – and, of course, so wicked .. I mean, the way they just wander off and go wherever they want to, regardless of where they were put !! 😀
I really do like them. The plant lives more than one year, and the way they reproduce makes them kind of a forever addition to the garden. Mine, however, are definitely out of bounds!
And all the more fun because of it 😀
Very well done. We also have a plethora of snapdragons this year. That looks an interesting book
The book is really engaging, but I am seeing lots of negative comments online. It helps that I am tracking the people and themes in a chart, and every time a new connection appears I’m like.. aha!! as I add it to the chart. I suspect that this book will be winning some significant awards like her last one did.
I do love snapdragons! I’ve been making a list of flowers I want to plant when I have my own garden, and they’re on it for sure.
I didn’t know that they reseed the way they do. It’s pretty cool as you get an assortment of colors from the original plants. Also, I’m really liking the dwarf variety that I have but may put some rockets along the back fence.
Depending on what we find, I might end up needing to plant in pots—in which case I’ll be looking for the dwarf variety, too. But I didn’t know that they reseeded like that, either! Very cool.
Not only do they reseed, but the new plants will be in a variety of colors connected to the original parents. Even more cool!
That is so cool!
Hannah does look so happy with her box! Your snapdragons are beautiful – so cheery and lovely 🙂 Your sweater is beautiful too!
Thank you. I was going to throw out some of the boxes this week, but Hannah was like… NOPE! She really does love her boxes! I am loving the sweater; Jennifer Steingass really is a great designer. She even tells you which hand to hold the colors in for the best outcome!
She is adorable! I wouldn’t be able to take her boxes away either 🙂
Very cool – I have been eyeing that design for a while – glad to hear it is a good knit 🙂
It is a good knit. The ferns are set up to be faded using 3 colors and she has that in the charts too. When I looked at the projects that other people did it really helped me see how other people adapted different color strategies which was nice. I may make another one…