Tuesday, April 20, 2010

New website...

As an assignment in my designers class (knitgrrl.ning.com - designers 101) we had to re-vamp our blog/websites. Since I created my new website - www.hooknstick.com and my new blog - hooknstick.blogspot.com they were not cohesive at all, and I still post to this blog about everything (knitty and not) I really need to shape them up.

So, I'm stopping hooknstick.blogspot.com (I'll try to move the posts over) and keep all the design stuff on the www.hooknstick.com site. I'll still update here, of course, but go there and let me know what you think!

My socklet pattern is done and sent, my eye mask pattern is done and emailed with the snail mail package to follow soon and I have to finish up my proposal for the lbd REALLY quick so I can get it started.

Jake's doing ok, today was day 2 at school and his first legal ditch of PE. Doc follow up says he's doing fine.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Home and stuff and all

We escaped the hospital on Monday morning, and no surgery. Yay!! He's doing much better, walking upright and not really in pain so that's a good thing. Lacerated spleen. Crazy stuff. His limitations per doctor's orders: no school for a week, no PE for 6 weeks, no bike/skateboard for 12 weeks. Not a happy boy! Especially since for his birthday on 6/19 he wanted to go to the Skate Park.

This week has been Spring Break (handy since he couldn't go anyway) and we haven't really done much - stayed home and let him go outside with his friends but stay off wheels. It has been a pretty crazy week though, my Grandmother is still pretty bad but hanging on at the nursing home, a friend of mine's Mom died today, another friend's little girl has been in the hospital for some unknown tummy issue (think she's getting out tomorrow so yay!) and I have not finished the pattern for the socklets that are due in a couple days.

I also need to get a sketch and proposal for the lbd that I'm working on so I can submit it and get working on it. I really like the concept and I am excited about it.

And finally... I'm a dot com (sorry for swipping Christine!). My new website is www.hooknstick.com. It's not very fancy schmancy but it will get there.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Guest of the hospital

Thursday afternoon around 5:30 Jake tried to do a bike trick and fell - bit through his lip and scraped up his chin, shoulder and knee. He was wearing a helmet thank goodness but the lip through and through we KNEW needed stitches. We headed to the after hours pediatrics place and they said Yep, stitches. While they laid him down to clean out the chin for stitches he complained that his shoulder hurt when he breathed laying down. Okay??

They sat him up, and manually manipulated his shoulder - swung his arm around, up, down, pressed and nothing. So it's not the shoulder, clavicle or arm. Off to xray. Xray showed nothing but the doc thought You know, it might be a spleen issue.

Huh? How'd shoulder pain = spleen issue. And c'mon, does a spleen REALLY exist? I always thought it was like Kansas - something they made up because no one I knew had actually seen it.

So after they gave him 2 lip stitches and 2 chin stitches, they sent us to the er for a ct scan. That showed, you guessed, a spleen laceration. Who knew? Well they don't have a pediatric surgeon at our hospital so we had to go to a different one about 30 minutes away. We went to their er to wait for a room (luckily their er spots are rooms with actual doors and everything). We got up to his room around 5 in the morning. 12 hours from fall to room.

Luckily the laceration isn't bad enough to require surgery. Why they couldn't give us this lovely bit of info BEFORE we went to the other hospital, I'll never know. But, apparently the spleen takes a lot of time to heal. He's really not eating much and can't walk upright but hopefully soon. We're still here, and it's Sunday afternoon, and we'll be able to go home at some point tomorrow. I hope.

You'd think that I'd get more crocheting done, really. I having been working on a little black dress design and I really like how it's coming out. I NEED to get a request in for yarn support, because it's gonna take quite a bit of yarn and this will be submitted for publication. I have discovered Hulu though, which is really cool, and I've been thinking about getting to work on changing up all my current patterns to the new template. I've just been incredibly lazy it seems.

Well, keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Sometimes being me is cool!

I just had my Cooling Eye Mask design accepted for publication. !. It will be in the January 2011 Crochet! Magazine and I am so excited. I also have a ton of other ideas floating around in my brain (and in my notebooks) that would be really cool as a book. Just sayin!

I wanted to give you an update on freezer cooking. Here are the one's we've tried and notes about them:

Chicken curry - this was good but the flavor was really mild. I found another freezer curry recipe in Fix Freeze and Feast and I'll try that one next. There was more than plenty.

Shephard's pie - my whiners didn't like the onions and peppers in the meat mix. So next time I won't do that. Also, there wasn't enough food so I'll have to make it bigger. (funny that the other meals had the SAME meat mix and they were fine.)

Chili - this was a BIG hit! Everyone loved it, even my father-in-law who I sent a single serving to. The problem, not enough food (wonder if that's related to Dad's portion? hmm.) so next time I'll make more.

Hamburger Macaroni - we had this one last night and it was really good. It made what I thought was plenty, and I sent one of these to Dad too, but it just wasn't enough. Next time I'll make more. Everyone loved it, so score!

Sloppy Jakes - which is basically sloppy joes with the leftover shephards pie meat/corn mix instead of just meat mix. They loved it and there was more than plenty.

I think that's all the ones I've tried. So far so good I think. Also, I really like that new book I borrowed from the library - Fix, Freeze and Feast. So many more recipes that I cant wait to try - especially one for ribs that looks awesome!

Well that's it for me. Have a great day!