Some updates and a hiatus.

The CT scan results indicate that there isn't anything seriously wrong with my neck or brain. We think it's just that stress and poor sleeping and sitting positions have resulted in my shoulder and neck muscles being so tight that they made the Physiotherapist laugh, and that was pushing on one or more of the nerves to my arm.

I saw the afore-mentioned Physio last night and I have sore but more relaxed shoulder and neck muscles and a little list of homework exercises to do.

So that all turned out well, I think.

I've managed to get Margot all caught up to where I was before I ripped out 38 rows, and then some. I'm now 1.75 inches beyond the division for the sleeves, and it's motoring along now. I still can't knit as much as I'd like as I am still getting some pain in my wrist, but the wrist has improved and I have high hopes for the improvement to continue.

Today we dug out The Boy's christmas stocking, which I made for christmas in 2005. It's a normal top-down sock pattern, sized up, knitted in 8 ply acrylic (if you look closely you can see the colour change in the red when I ran out of yarn) with a much-shortened foot. It turned out a bit bigger than I was originally thinking of, but it seems kids like big christmas stockings. Could it have something to do with lots of room for presents perhaps?

So I'll wish you all a Merry [insert festive season of your own choice] and I hope Santa brings you something nice.

Here is my version of the Twelve Days of Christmas!

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
12 Storage boxes
11 Lexie Barnes bags
10 Ysolda patterns
9 skeins of mohair
8 knitpicks cables
7 bags of roving
6 top-whorl spindles
5 DPN’s
4 blocking wires
3 sock yarns
2 spinning wheels
and a skein of yummy malabrigo.
(I wish!)

As a final note, I will be taking a short break from the blog and will be back in mid January.  I hope you all have a safe and happy time over the next couple of weeks and get to spend some time with people you love, and who love you and cherish you. I hope you get to have a rest and to take care of yourself and your friends and family, and that you get to eat and drink well, but not too much.

I will be spending time on what's most important to me - my family, and some knitting, of course!

Finally! An accomplishment or two.

The first software release I was totally responsibile for at work was completed this week. I'm proud of it, but it's hard to feel excited as I'm still a little fatigued from the long hours I did last week to get it all developed, and there are other big issues I still need to take care of at work this week. We are quite understaffed at the moment due to a bit too much work and a number of people who have left but have not yet been replaced. There's another great developer leaving at the end of this week, so it's going to get worse, but at least we are coming up to the slow period over Christmas when everyone goes into code freezes. That does of course mean that the next few weeks are going to be hell as every customer wants their work done before the freeze, but it's only for a couple of weeks. I also got a bit of a compliment on my work this week so I'm feeling pretty happy about that.

Plus, I worked out a design for my Christmas cards and so far I've got 11 of them done. Only 20-30 or so to go. !

Oh, and the Christmas gift knitting is going quite well. I'm not happy with the handles on the first of the booga bags, but I did do them on the clover wonder-knitter rather than a 5-stitch i-cord as recommended in the pattern so they're a bit thicker than designed. I will need to work out an appropriate replacement for the bulky knots on the handles, but that should be easy. I might try actually doing the proper i-cord for the second bag..... what? actually following the instructions? How novel! *grin*