So Hot and Busy!

Today I drove through some scary parts of town trying to find a coffee shop to take refuge in during the six year old birthday party at B's house. I finally gave up and came back here.

I did get a little knitting done.  Isn't it gorgeous?

B's gorgeous homespun on the multidirectional scarf.
The foam dinosaur sticker is from the birthday party. 

It's slower than I used to knit, but I'm being careful to only knit for short periods of time to avoid aggravating anything. I wasn't sure how I felt about this yarn. It's not the colors I generally use. The zing on this particular scarf is really amazing. Gotta love short rows. Ok, you don't have to, but I do.

The dinosaur stickers are for future use. I might use them for mail art. I might use them for something else. I haven't decided yet, but I've got 10 and have access to more if I want them.

I'm also learning to play ukelele! N is letting me play around on his instruments, and I've been using his banjolele (it's the shape of a banjo with the strings of a ukelele. I can play three chords and 2.5 songs (I'm still a bit slow on switching into the chord that requires three fingers).  I am so excited - and N is planning to bring me to his ukelele group on Thursday.

Of course, ukeleles make me think of Jonathan Coulton. What else could they remind me of? After watching a video of someone playing Code Monkey on a ukelele, Nathan said that I can totally learn that soon. I already have several of the chords. So he's going to transpose it for me, and my plan is to be able to play Code Monkey on ukelele by August 1! It's what all the cool kids are doing.

You can skip to 2.50 if you want to miss his introduction to how he ended up with this ukelele version.

The humidity has been very difficult for me to adjust to. It seems that heat and humidity are making me lightheaded and dizzy. It also leaves me so exhausted that walking down a flight of stairs leaves me needing to sit down. I thought I'd have some adjustment time before a heat wave like this!  I'm sure that I'll be adjusted by next summer, but I'm hoping to be able to handle it this summer by the time they have the next heat wave. Or I won't even try. I'll just sit in A/C at every given moment until the temperatures are not in the 90s.  This isn't me being whiny. I'm just surprised at how strongly it's affecting me. I expected an adjustment. I just didn't remember how bad it was last time. I've been telling people that it was so humidity that it hurt me to breath. And now I remember what I meant by that!  

But hey, I can breath and sit in a house where someone might randomly pick up and start playing an instrument. I can knit handspun yarn and look at a loom and listen to kids play. I am not happy about how I got here, but I have ALWAYS wanted to live in a house where people might randomly start playing an instrument and folks crafts were all over the place. Somewhere that creativity was just a part of life and not a hassle. Playing bass clarinet and bassoon I couldn't create a musical home. And knitting became such a chore for me after a while. Now I am with people who love me, who give me dinosaur stickers and ice cream, who share homespun yarn, who open their home to me during the absolute worst moments of my life. Plus, they have one of those keurig machines so I've been making ice coffee each night (decaf for me) to drink in the morning when it starts to get miserably hot.