Chicken Pox First Aid For Moms

After a rather grueling few days of nursing an itchy but very sweet chicken pox patient, waiting on a worried spouse who has moved into an "apartment" in the basement to avoid further contagion and dealing with disgruntled siblings who are just a bit jealous of all the special treatment Bubba is receiving, it was time for Mom to take a time out and get some first aid for herself.

Hence, a quick trip to the local nail salon for a pedicure and a set of acrylic nails (both firsts for me). You'll have to forgive the funky color of my skin. I truly do not have lavender feet. Because the scratch coat is going on the exterior of our house today, all the windows and door are covered with plastic, so the light coming in is somewhat filtered. Either that, or Hockeyman messed with the settings on the camera again and I'll have to exert some maternal pressure to get him to fix it. Anyway, the nail polish is lavender but my feet aren't.

As for the teaser for the Chicken Pox Project, when I snapped the photo of the yarn in my fading fall garden, I didn't have a design in mind. A conversation with Bubba and a few sketches later and we have a sweater design. I am making the pattern up as I go, working from the top down. I cast on a collar about as long as I thought she'd need, knit a few inches of ribbing, then divided it into sections for fronts, sleeves and a back. Some raglan increases and slip stitch front gives the sweater the beginning of the special shaping I'm developing as this sweater grows. How it will end up . . . well, that depends on my ability to make this one up as I go. I've done enough top down sweaters now that I think I can do this on the fly, ala Elizabeth Zimmerman.

Or pride may goeth before a fall. If I fail and need to do some frogging, I'm sure another pedicure will go a long distance toward soothing my bruised ego. Stay tuned for a potential "Frogging First Aid For Moms" edition.