A trip to the Children's Hospital

For me!

At long last it looks like the Long QT Syndrome genetic testing will begin in earnest. We met with the geneticists at the hospital yesterday and my blood is now on its way to having DNA extracted. All that is left to do is wait... first on financial approval from the hospital (which is fairly sure), and then probably 6 to 12 months more, while the people in Italy study our files and my blood. They tell us that if there is a gene issue that there's a 70% chance that they can identify that... well, that's a 70% better chance than we've ever had. My hope is that before Nini is a teenager, they'll be able to draw her blood and rule out LQT on the spot. Dida has never had symptoms, but that doesn't rule her out as a carrier.

As as an update... it didn't take the universe long to whack me in the head about the wind comment. Yesterday's ride home was near impossible; the wind was so fierce. As I was coming down HOME ROAD it was a direct headwind that slowed the bike down to a crawl.. without brakes I was just creeping down. The ride along the river was against a crosswind that wanted to push the bike over; trees were whipping around me and generally it was an hour of a special kind of hell.

Barely even knit last night. By 9:30 I was in bed.

Sometimes a person should just shut the heck up.

Dear HOME ROAD

Dear friggen unrelenting, summer-long headwind/crosswind:

Thank you. You made me strong and able. I'm sorry to have dissed you so bad all summer long, when in reality you were the greatest free training program available.

Bring it on (oh, please don't make me regret this).

Regards,
Annie

ps: I'm knitting Casbah socks to raise money for my Ride to Conquer Cancer. One pair is almost finished, and I have an order for a second. Nice, nice socks, I must say. I was knitting on the second sock on Saturday night, at Roller Derby, when a strapping young woman came flying into our faces and in fact, pasted Mug to the bleachers. Everyone lived through it, but it was scary for a while. Besides that? Super.Fun. Don't miss Roller Derby if you have a chance.

And totally unrelated:



Natalie Dee rocks. Plain and simple. You should buy her stuff.

Bath time for Apache

He's still small enough to bathe in the sink, but not for long. He's having extreme fun at this moment, as you can clearly see.



Here he is doing his impression of a whirling dervish. Roxy thinks he has gone crazy. I know this because she told me.



Here you have the cutest dog in the world. Tell me I'm wrong.



Crashed.

Two hours from now, after he's woken from his nap and gone outside for a pee (where he will dig, and roll in dirt), he'll look almost exactly like he did before we started. And that's ok.

Martinis and knitting

May lead to a long life?

PSA

Queens of the fiber cannot dye mushroom shades. So any of you tangled darts out there, don't be trying to trick me into doing that on account of me trying to raise cash for cancer.

That is all.

Did you see this in Knitting Daily?

A YouTube video on how to stretch silk cocoons, and then how to knit with them. To be honest, I wouldn't tug like that if I was going to knit, I would use the same technique as I do to spin, but I'd probably start with 4 or five layers instead of trying for one.

Up until the moment I saw this video I honestly believed that hankies were prepared in a way that did not kill the pupa. Processing. Processing. Processing.

Not even for money

That's all I have to say... tho I can see the logic in it if you needed a fingering weight lace, or planned on making yourself some silk socks (says the woman with a cone of white Zephyr).

Video is in Russian, but the words aren't necessary as far as I can tell.