Beautiful downtown Mayfield

About a week and a half ago, this building across from the courthouse collapsed. There were three stores on the ground floor of it. They were vacant and I don't think anyone was in them at the time of the collapse, but at least one was being worked on with the intention of opening a business in it.

About ten years ago part of the end wall of the building at the end of this block collapsed. That wall was in the movie In Country. The girl went past it on her morning run; it said Lookofsky on it. Quite a bit of that movie was filmed in Mayfield. Bobbie Ann Mason grew up in Mayfield, and several of her books are set in the area. That wall has been repaired, but I think this building will probably not be.












Further Medical Update

The ultrasound did not show any blood clots (that's good), but it did show a Baker's cyst. I Googled it and read a couple of articles. It doesn't seem to be life threatening like a blood clot could be, so I'm continuing with normal activities. The cancer center said that it is something for the orthopedic surgeon to deal with when I see him next Friday for my right hip.

Yard Work

Dominic laughed at me this morning when I said that, since I'm on steroids for a few days, and therefore can walk easier, I was going to do some work on the bank beside the driveway. I told him to come check on me if I wasn't back to the house in a hour. I don't wear a watch, so I had no idea how long I was working, but I was starting back up the drive, mowing a little and stopping to pull thistles, when I heard wheels on the gravel. I looked up and Dominic was coming down with the wheelbarrow. He knew I'd have stuff that needed to go to the brush pile at the back of the property along the treeline. I pointed to where the pile was and he loaded it up and took it back. When I got to the house a few minutes later, I noted that he came out right about an hour after I had left the house.

I rested and read for an hour or so and then mowed the fenced=in area of the yard. I think that will be all the yard work for today. Now I'll do some knitting or crocheting. I'll do more mowing tomorrow.

What's Blooming?

One lone bleeding heart remains.
Siberian iris?
I guess this is from some wildflower seeds I scattered.
Gaillardia.
Cilantro.


Medical update

Yesterday was my monthly oncologist visit. Things continue to be good, but my left foot has been puffy for a couple of days, so I had to go to the hospital for an ultraound on my legs to see if there are any blood clots. We left the house shortly after 9 am for a 10 am appointment, and didn't return until after 3 pm.
This morning it's my eyelids that are puffy. Well, the foot is, as well, but not as bad as yesterday, although it may be later. I start taking the steroid again today for four days, so there will be more edema for about a week.

Kindergarden Graduation

Yesterday was the kindergarden 'graduation' at Alexis' school. We had to go, of course. Here they are processing in, each one looking for their family members in the audience. There are three classes, so it's a pretty large group. Each class sang a song for us, and then all three classes joined in singing the alphabet forwards and backwards. Finally, the teachers called them individually and presented them with an informal group picture of their class on a piece of playground equipment, with a picture of the child on the back. After that, each class went to a different part of the gym, where we could take pictures. Then we were invited back to the classroom to view a dvd, I guess about the year's work. Alyssa went to see that, but Dominic and I didn't. The kids had to stay for the rest of the day, and had to go back for half a day today. They had some fun activities planned for them yesterday afternoon. Alyssa said Alexis had to take her bathing suit. Today is the last day for the entire county school system.



Dominic and I came home for a few hours, and then went to Paducah to have the stitches from the tooth removal taken out. They said everything looks good. Then we had an early supper and did our monthly grocery shopping. We got home about 6:15.

Gardening

On Wednesday, I overdid it pulling weeds in my little garden - mostly in the paths. I was having trouble walking yesterday morning, but the acetaminophen I took helped some in the afternoon. I have some Percocet, but I don't like taking it; it makes me dizzy. I figure since it is acetaminophen and a narcotic, and since it is probably the narcotic that makes me dizzy, I would be better off taking just the acetaminophen.

Knitting

I took twelve dishcloths to the Art Guild on Tuesday for the gift shop - not a bad production for a week in which I was also doing other things. Now I'm working on something for the 'All Strings Considered' exhibit at the Guild. The quilting group's work will make up the main part of the exhibit this year, but they want other things, as well. They had a black and white challenge, so they want everything to be black and white. I decided to do two hats - one white with black 'fiar isle' designs and the other the reverse. I finished the white one last night, but wasn't going to start the black one after dark. I don't often do that much black - too hard on the old eyes.

Pulling Teeth

I must be having fun - the time is sure flying between my posts.

I've done more mowing, but not since Wednesday. I had two teeth pulled on Thursday. They were both broken; one of them so badly that Dr Ciampa had to cut the gum. I've been having some pain from the teeth, but at first thought it was from the steroids. However it lasted longer after stopping the steroids than it had before, and on Tuesday there was some swelling in my lower left jaw. On Wednesday morning, before I even got out of bed, I knew that the swelling had increased. The strange thing was that I no longer had the pain, but I was glad that I had the appointment to have them out. I go back next Thursday to have the stitches out and to check for signs of necrosis. That is a risk with the Zometa they give me for bone health. The nurse in the treatment room at the cancer center had mentioned it the first time they gave me Zometa, and Dr Ciampa mentioned it on Thursday. I'm now taking Amoxicillin to clear up the infection. I think the swelling is pretty well gone today. I also have Percocet for pain, but I've only taken two of them. The most pain was when the anesthetics wore off. I was asleep during the extraction, but of course they also used local anesthetics to numb the gums.

Knitting

Last weekend, to take breaks from the crocheting, I knit two 'random' scarves. The first one had 250 stitches, and the second one had 175. Each row was a different yarn, with the ends of the yarn left hanging as fringe - three or four ends tied together. I used seed stitch because it mixes the colors up better than other stitches do, and I put in an eyelash yarn about every inch. Dominic kept saying they were the ugliest things he'd ever seen, but the knitters loved them on Tuesday. They didn't even let me bring them back home, but priced them, entered them on my inventory sheet, and hung them on a rack in the gift shop. I hadn't weighed them, so I'll have to estimate their weights for my spreadsheet after I make the next one.

Dana (Art Guild director) said on Tuesday that they need more handknit dishcloths/washcloths for the gift shop, so I've been working on some since then. I think I've done nine so far. I'll make more through tomorrow, then wash them on Monday, and take them with me when I go to the knitting group on Tuesday. Then I'll get back to crocheting the bedspread; I really do need to finish it.

Knitting from Stash 2007 - April

I've let a week go by without posting, and we're four days into a new month to boot. My knitting in April consisted of:
finishing an afghan started twenty years ago
knitting a blanket for my 18-month-old great-granddaughter to take to daycare
four adult hats
one hat and mittens set for a 6 or 7 year old
two scarves
one short cape for a friend
eight preemie caps
two baby surprise jackets
This all used another 6.75 pounds of yarn.

This is one of the baby surprise jackets. It's worsted-weight acrylic yarn, knit on size 7 needles, so it's bigger than what Elizabeth Zimmermann envisioned. The other one is one color, baby-weight yarn on size 4 needles, so is more in line with EZ's sizing. I haven't sewn the shoulder seams in that one yet, because there are a couple more people I want to show it to in its "what the heck is it?" state.






These are a few of the hats I've made in the last week or so (at least two of them are May projects).

Now I plan to switch to mainly crochet for a while, otherwise I'll never get Yvette's bedspread done. Each 'square' takes me about two hours to complete. I don't know how many I have left to do. I'm joining them as I go in strips of sixteen, then joining the strips when I get one completed. That way, when I'm done making the squares, I'll only have the border to do.

Mowing and other garden stuff

We still haven't gotten all of the first mowing done, but I started on the second mowing on Monday. Tuesday was taken up by two knitting groups, so no mowing was done. I did some on Wednesday, but yesterday it rained. It might be OK for mowing now, but I'm not going to do it. Maybe tomorrow.

The trees that had leafed out in early April, and then looked dead after several nights in the 20's, are putting out new leaves now, so things have gone from brown to green to brown and back to green again - strange spring! My redbud and crepe myrtle that I planted last year seem to be doing well.

The hummingbirds have been back for about two weeks. I have feeders on both porches, but in another month there will be more flowers for them to visit, as well. They sometimes pass very close to my head when they're zooming around. With all the trees I have, I get a lot of other birds, too, although I don't know what most of them are. I know cardinals, robins, mockingbirds and eastern bluebirds, but that's about it.