another week whooshes past

It's been another week of ups and downs and I'm feeling too migrainey to even try to make a coherent post out of it all so you're getting it in Sheepie's world famous WNBPP form:

- Saturday saw Nadie arrive about lunchtime, committed to a turn of David-minding so that I could go to the opera in Melbourne with Corrie. Later that afternoon I duly conveyed myself to the railway station armed with some Terry Pratchett to pass the 2 hour trip. As is always the way of such things, because I had alternate entertainment, I naturally met up with a dance friend and spent the whole trip catching up.
A change of train for a brief ride through the loop and an equally brief walk across the Yarra saw me to the Arts Centre and the Playbox Theatre for a delightful performance of Ariadne Auf Naxos.
I was quite sanguine about for missing the 10.15 train and therefore arriving home in Castlemaine sometime after 1 am but Corrie's hubby was having none of that. He leaped to his feet the second the opera finished, pausing not for the traditional applause, and sprinted to the carpark, trailing we smaller females in his wake ... being somewhere around 6'5" does have its advantages when it comes to parting crowds ... and zipped across town to Southern Cross with all the elan of a Formula 1 master. When his forward progress was halted near the station by a million gazillion footy fans, I sprinted across two sets of lights and the station forecourt and threw myself into the train [ which had fortuitously been delayed for the footy hordes ] with about a minute to spare.

- Monday: Nadie rose at an unnaturally early hour and suitably fortified, we dropped David off and headed to Bendy for the morning session of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Best movie in the series so far in terms of cinematography and special effects, and I had no quibbles about the inclusions/exclusions from the book.
Down side of the day was scraping the bottom of Nadie's low-slung car on the dirt road which was in the process of being regraded. After a rather fraught drive to Bendy in which every creak and clunk was magnified into imminent disaster, and to ease the maternal mind [ given the 2 hour freeway drive ahead of her ] we visited my friendly mechanic who put the car up on the hoist and pronounced all well, albeit in need of oil which he rectified.

Tuesday and Wednesday passed in an apprehensive blur, and I woke on Thursday with a thumping migraine for reasons that have already been documented. The test wasn't pleasant - but not as bad as it might have been - and now I await the results.
Some retail therapy to soothe the shattered nerves was indulged in at the magic back room at the Woollen Mills: Luxury 4ply and 8ply, some cream laceweight for dyeing,and mmmmm...drool... alpaca
followed by lunch and petting of all the animals at PND-and-Brenda's new place [ sadly unphotographed but that's a good excuse to go back, right ?]

The rest of the week has included knitting [ gasp! ]
and yes this is yet another cowl
same as the alpaca one - good old feather and fan - in one of the yarns spun during the Tour De Fleece. I made this particular iteration of the cowl a bit longer than the alpaca one because I don't see the point in ending up with a little useless nugget of my precious time-consuming handspun.
Finally sewed up these Saartje's Bootees
that I knitted months ago and while I was on this sewing up kick, resurrected a shrug that I'd knitted two years ago...
I lost one of the proposed cuffs on a trip down to Melbourne and tossed it in the UFO basket in a fit of pique.
Having finally accepted that the second sleeve was not going to miraculously reappear, I pulled out the stitch dictionary, figured out what I'd been doing first time round and got stuck into sleeve reconstruction, after first sewing on the 60 odd inches of lace border ... at which point Nadie opined that she liked it the way it was, sans cuff.
You don't have to tell me twice!. Down needles and call it finished!

specs:
heavily modified Lacy-Hug-Me-Tight - changed the lace pattern and left off the cuffs
yarn: BWM Caprice 50/50 wool alpaca 8ply [sport or DK]
needles:
6mm [ lace] and 4mm [ ribbing ]

and the migraine meds are wearing off so it's the couch for me with possibly some canine and/or feline company