Monday, October 26, 2009

I have been granted a six-month (at least) reprieve on all things dental.

Nothing wrong with my teeth this time, thank goodness. (At one point the dentist was scraping and blowing air and "hmmm"ing over a spot, but he concluded it was a stain.) And the x-rays were clear. And no old fillings had decayed to the point where they needed replacement.

I will say they "sonicated" a couple of places that had tartar, and no sir, I didn't like it. High pitched whiny thing that gets warm and has a point on it - pretty much my trifecta of things I do not want in my mouth.

And the insurance re-enrollment went amazingly easily. The only change is that I will pay a dime less per month for my dental coverage. (No scales, or blood tests, or long scary lists of "wellness" initiatives and being told to pick three off the list to do...)

So I'm back in my office (I kind of, um, promised myself and the Universe that if my teeth were OK - therefore not necessitating going home and lying down in a dark room with a cold compress on my forehead while I contemplated the horrors of a crown or filling replacement - that I would start writing the ecology exam I need to give next week.)


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And this is why I like having a stash of both books/patterns and yarn: I was flipping through what I think of as Clara Parkes' Big Book on Yarn (it's really called The Knitter's Guide to Yarn or somesuch) and spotted a pattern for a simple, worsted-weight, pullover vest with what are known as XO cables running up the front. And I thought, "Gee, that's kind of cute." And then I thought, "Gee, I have some nice Nashua yarn I bought the last four balls of on sale over a year ago thinking I might have enough for a vest."

I went and found it. I have 880 yards of the yarn; the largest size of the vest (46") takes 780. (And I think - given that a couple of the 46" sized things I've made have been a little bit too big on - I would do the next size down, which is 42," so it would have zero ease and be more fitted.). So, hooray: I found a pattern for yarn bought more or less "on spec," and I have "free" yarn (once it enters my stash, it becomes "free" to me, as I've already spent on it. Illogical, but whatever) that I can use for the vest.

Oh, I do have to finish a few things first, and I really should aim for finishing the Honeycomb vest before starting yet another blue-green vest. (The Nashua yarn is in a color called "blue pine.")

But I really do love - and find one of my greatest sources of happiness is - looking through my books of patterns, and my pattern magazines, and the patterns I've bought/printed for free off the Internet over the years and daydreaming about what I want to make "next." Periodically I take the books off the shelf I've not looked at for a while and flip through them, and I often see patterns I've looked at numerous times before with new eyes.

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