Misc comments, also Emergency Room Stitching

I finally finished up the socks I was working on, both of them! They are Glad Ragg socks, from the Six Socks Knitalong group. I keep trying to post a picture, but blogger isn't cooperating tonight. I've really enjoyed knitting these, loving the feel of the yarn, though I think the color hides the lace pattern somewhat. They are not perfect mates, since the color patches are not in the same place, but are "fraternal twins". One thing to remember when knitting with more than two double-pointed needles is that you are only knitting with two of them at a time. Having the others hanging there does tend to make it feel like you're knitting with a porcupine at first, but once I figured out how to hold my hands and where to put the points so they weren't constantly getting in my way, it's second-nature.

About my garden: New Hampshire has decided it needs a monsoon season, so I only got in one session of gardening this week. I did put in tomatoes and beans, as well as marigolds around the tomatoes to keep the bugs off. I think that's called companion gardening, where you put two plants together, and the bugs that like the tomatoes don't like the marigolds, so the tomatoes are protected. You can also plant basil with tomatoes with the same effect, I've heard. I know there are books on this subject, and I'm sure, things all over the internet about all kinds of plants you can put together that benefit each other. Also, in case anyone thinks I'm being noble by getting up at 6am to do the gardening, I'm not! My son and I share a newspaper route, which has to be done by 6am. So, on my newspaper days, I'm up by about 5:20 and delivering papers, walking around to do it, then since I'm up I might as well use the time to do some gardening. So, there you have it: the little job I do to earn stash money also provides me with convenient time for the garden (when it isn't pouring!).

Someone asked about the Winter Cottage. It's a Boxer kit from Lizzie Kate. I'm now working on Spring Cottage, and actually made some really good progress last night in the emergency room. My son, Stanford, the one who graduated from High School today, began feeling severe stomach pains yesterday late morning. I kept telling him it must be gas or something, and had him lay down, go to the bathroom, etc. But the pains kept coming and were not getting better, so I finally ended up calling the doctor, who said to go to the emergency room. We arrived about 5 pm, and didn't get home until midnight. Stanford had a CAT scan to make sure it wasn't his appendix (it wasn't) and the poked and prodded, drew blood and took urine. Finally they said it must be a virus, gave him some morphine and a prescription for a narcotic pain reliever and sent us home. With all the waiting, I had good light for reading and stitching, and a comfortable chair, and we were lucky enough to have a corner room, fairly private, and the nurses and doctors were really nice. I had lots of stitching time, only having to interrupt it to get Stanford a warm blanket once, and hold a pan for him to throw up all of the iodine solution he had drunk for the CAT scan (stitching safely out of the way for this part), but with all of this, the emergency room is not really my favorite place to stitch. Oh, Stanford is doing better today, and we made it to the graduation (I was not sure we would!)