wyntarvox

The craft group was very lively and I felt fairly comfortable even though I didn't interact all that much with anybody. Everybody seemed friendly enough but they mostly knew each other and were exchanging news and gossip about things unfamiliar to me. I did get somewhat involved in a few discussions about what we were working on. What made me more comfortable was that I was sitting across from a woman who was also very quiet. There were approximately a dozen women there (no men), and they were mostly older than about 50 although there were two or three slightly younger women there as well. I plan to go again. I figure I'll eventually just be the quiet one who everybody is familiar with.

I worked on the off-white throw, which I'm doing in a fan pattern that's not too complicated, but after i'd done a couple of rows (i.e. towards the end of the evening) I discovered that the thing was not much more than two feet long when it should have been almost four feet long. I'm using what I thought was the right weight yarn (#4) and the size hook the pattern calls for, but maybe I'm using a lightweight 4 instead of a heavier weight 4. (Why wouldn't #4 yarn all be the same size? Apparently it's not.) The lady next to me said I should just rip it out and start again before I get too far into it, but I stubbornly finished the row I was on. Then this morning I unravelled the whole thing and started again from scratch, after looking at a few other throw patterns in #4 yarn and deciding that I like the fan pattern too much to give up on it.

My hearing aids seemed to perform well. Earlier that afternoon I discovered that I need to turn them up a couple of notches; maybe if I hadn't done that I would have thought they weren't working well. I think the audiologist said if I'm consistently turning them up the higher level can be set as my new normal, so I think I'll have her do that when I talk to her in a couple of weeks. It's hard to really know how they compare to the old ones since I can't do a side-by-side comparison, but even the old ones were definitely better than nothing.

I fell asleep fairly quickly last night but I was a bit restless for the first couple of hours and didn't wake up feeling very refreshed this morning. I'm extremely motivated to go out walking or running every morning now that I've got my long-distance walking companion, so I made myself go for a walk even though I didn't really feel much like it. The humidity was over 90% and it was already around 70F/21C so it felt like hard work, but I got it done. Then Aria asked me to walk her to school again, so that was almost two more km, this time in the sun. (My early morning walks are mostly in the shade because I go so early on purpose.)

My daughter bought me some French vanilla honeycomb ice cream yesterday and it's delicious, very rich and creamy with little crunchy bits of honeycomb.

For some reason, Eden decided she wanted to walk to school yesterday, but she needed an adult to walk with her because Violet wanted to go on the bus. (Violet never wants to walk in the mornings, but likes to walk home a couple of times a week, and Eden is allowed to walk with her.) Then Aria, who is never allowed to walk to or from school except with an adult, decided she wanted to walk with Eden and me, which was fine of course. It was a beautiful morning for walking, not too warm and not humid.

This morning Aria asked me if I would walk her home, which is also fine except that after 3 pm it's usually much less pleasant than at 8 am at this time of year. I don't know why Aria is suddenly so keen on walking to or from school, but I suspect she just wants to copy her sisters. She won't be allowed to walk to or from school alone until she's in 5th grade, and I guess that seems a really long time to wait when you're only in 1st grade.

I went for a run this morning and found it harder going than my last few runs because the humidity has risen a lot. I think it was above 80% this morning while I was out.

Just now I saw a chipmunk sitting on the back step just outside the kitchen. Because I was inside behind a glass door it didn't get spooked by me and sat there for quite a while. Unfortunately my phone was downstairs so I didn't get a photo.

This evening I'm going to the craft session at the library (the Yarn Darlings). I've started the throw with the off-white yarn because it's a fairly simple pattern which should be good for working on with possible distractions. Also plenty big enough to keep me busy for more than one session if I go back.