Thursday, March 08, 2007

What I've been doing

Working -- to be specific, every other Friday or Saturday night. Not many extra hours really, but cranking out reports in the middle of the night makes me feel like I'm working 24x7. As Cris said "you wanted a job right? now you got one." so watch out what you wish for.

Listening -- My Life in France by Julia Child; and Who Moved My Blackberry by Lucy Kellaway. You have to love food to enjoy the first, and you have to know the rotten corporate live to appreciate the second.

Stitches! -- Only spent an afternoon in the market, but thoroughly enjoyed showing off my De Colores. It's utterly thrilling to be stopped by strangers and be told "you've done a marvelous job with this jacket." I told at least five people about the Student Fashion Show that night, hope Fae got some good cheering for her few minutes on the runway.

Tahoe -- Took the family to the snow for a weekend, for Henry's birthday. The guys really enjoyed it and I managed to suck in enough air. The dry cold air did a number on me and I'm just feeling back to normal after three weeks. Reminds me why I moved out of Beijing.

Knitting -- Coat is coming along, very slowly. It took me a good part of a week to reorganize my stash to incorporate the purchases from Stitches. After hearing me mutter over and over again -- "where am I going to put all this yarn" -- the wise husband wondered aloud, "well, you might want to start knitting some of them ... " Wishful thinking on both sides.

Family -- Some of you already know that Bill's parents' got into a car accident on Sunday. Their car was totaled, my father-in-law suffered a broken wrist and they are both quite shaken. My mother-in-law is still recovering from her hip replacement surgery a few months ago. They damaged a nerve during the surgery and she cannot walk on her own. They will have to go through a serious lifestyle change, have to count on other people to do most of their caretaking. Something much easier said than done.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Vivian, Your knitting yarn stash sounds like mine, and it is interesting how our partners have similar ideas when the matter of its storage arises. Of course, they are absolutely right to suggest that we should start knitting with it, and we have every intention to do so, ... but in the meantime many of us knitters acquire any beautiful or useful yarn when we can. We are visiting Beijing this year and I would love to seek out the yarn stores to add new yarns to my growing collection! I would be very grateful for any store suggestions. Many thanks and look forward to hearing how the coat progresses! Happy Knitting.

Vivian said...

Hi P, thanks for visiting. A trip to Beijing sounds wonderful, really wish I could be planning such a thing right now. Unfortunately won't be doing so for another year or two; on the other hand, since I haven't been there since I was a teenager, a year or two hardly matters. My aunt bought me some yarn from Beijing a few years ago, but I don't have the names of the shops. I bet you can ask the hotel or local people and they can give you some pointers. If you just want Chinese yarn, the Yarn Place in Sunnyvale sells them by the boat load http://www.yarnplace.com/ I won't be surprised we'll see more in the US, bet it's quite profitable, just like any other Chinese goods.

Unknown said...

Many thanks for your reply Vivian, Sorry, I saw "Beijing" plus "knitting" on your blog, and got writing without thinking of the length of time since you were last there. You are very kind to reply so soon. Other bloggers have also been kind, and have taken time to advise me. I'm really excited about Beijing; I expect it to especially busy when we go in early October - I believe there are public holidays then. I will ask at the hotel about stores ... I might get to speak a little Mandarin which I'm trying to learn but I'm not getting very far very quickly - hello and thank you so far - but at least I'll know that much. I'm from the UK so don't know Sunnyvale, but thanks for the tip. Really nice talking to you and will let you know how I get on in Beijing. Many thanks again! P.

Lesley said...

Glad to see you're back!
Been wondering about you...
Hope you'll be there Monday night.. think of it as work... only no reports to run!

AlisonH said...

Best of luck with your parents. Hopefully it's just a temporary setback; it takes nerves about a year to regrow, while broken wrists heal much more quickly.