tomato puree, vinegar, and sugar...

...also known as "ketchup." Yep - I'm back, I'm punny, and I still don't have any new pictures to add. I figure three months is about long enough for you to wait for newness, however disorganized.

There's been a lot going on - some of it good, some of it not. Good: I still love my job, I'm really happy with the knitting I'm doing right now, and I'm getting my, ahem, *stuff* together slowly but surely.

Bad: I was sick three times in four months, sometimes work is way too busy, and my husband has Crohn's disease all the time. (He's fine now, but Bryan had a bad flare-up over the last few weeks and it took a while to get him back to [ab]normal.)

I've been away for both the good and bad. More specifically, the not-so-good has taken up a lot of time in the last month; when it hasn't, I've mostly been spending time on the good. I'm still working on the Red Shawl Dammit, and have been really getting somewhere on the Forest Canopy. Plus, I'm starting to plan ahead for rather a wide variety of things.

Since those things include knitting, I was pretty jazzed to finally get my Ravelry invite! There's not much I could say that everybody else hasn't said already, so I'll just add to the chorus of love. And another testimony that the system works: I found someone else (in Canada!) who had done the Forest Canopy in Sea Silk on US4s, which is exactly what I'm doing. She really helped give me a clue as to how many repeats I'll want to add to get it to the size I want.

Speaking of Sea Silk, I've bought a whole lot of it since I've been away. As an update to the Yarntopia outing I mentioned back in March, my total haul was two skeins of the stuff in Berry. Of course, I thought that was enough.

This was before lovely Evelyn at Knitty-Noddy.com announced she'd received (as did several other stockists) a whole bunch of 150g skeins of Sea Silk. "Like white on rice" doesn't even begin to describe how on that I was. So now, in addition to the IP Amethyst and the two skeins of Berry, I am the proud owner of 600m each of Ocean, Sea Storm, Vintage, and Sangria.

At least it's the only yarn I've bought lately, right?

Almost as stunning as the Sea Silk (and believe me, it's stunning) is the fact that I've only been working on two projects for a couple of months now. I reclaimed a few random UFOs recently, one of which I started working into a quick desk coaster for work (Sugar 'n' Cream, of course) yesterday...but otherwise, it's the Forest Canopy when I can focus, the Red Shawl Dammit when I'm mindless.

All my creative mojo must be going to the shawls, though, because it's certainly not coming out in my cooking. I've been doing more of it, but it hasn't all been great. To some point, it's "only" weeknight dinner stuff and is therefore almost acceptable...but I like cooking mediocre food even less than I like eating it...and that's saying a lot, which you know if you've met me in person.

All in all, there's just a whole lot of getting my groove back. On the one hand, it was good to discover that I'm more prepared for a random crisis than I realized...and on the other, random crises SUCK ASS. As does seeing your husband ill and knowing there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do until the flare-up passes. We both think he'll be fine - all things considered, his form of Crohn's is still the (ha) mild one - but he has to get the right medication and the right doctor, and we both have to learn how to help him maintain. That's all right with me, even if I wish we didn't have to.

So it's not altogether a cohesive post, but it's a start. Back on the planning note, I'm trying to pick back up on being Plum Texan and telling you lovely folks (if any of you are still out there :) ) all about it. My blogiversary comes around on July 30, which gives me about 5 weeks to Bring It (Back). Ideas are in the works...there may be polls, if I can figure out how to use them...and I could very much use some assistance with CSS, if anyone local is interested. (I pay cash and/or yarn shop gift certificates. Seriously.)

P.S. No photos now, but I'm working on getting my Flickr together and taking more shots. I make no promises, but there's a chance that your patience will be rewarded this week.