Yes, I am very well aware that I’ve been neglecting the blog. But honestly, I have been juggling one too many balls lately.

How Many Is One Too Many Balls?

You know I was at the NorthEast Men’s Fiber Retreat at Easton Mountain last week. Right?

You know that this photo captures the happiest I ever feel. And the retreat was amazing. The guys were fantastic…perhaps the best group of guys in the 15 years we’ve been doing these. I fell in love with 30 other guys last week. They were incredibly fun, supportive, creative, talented joyous and appreciative of all that goes into planning one of these events.

All that is completely separate from my experience of actually delivering the event.

I was so disorganized at the retreat this time. Very unusual for me. Fortunately, all the pre-retreat organizational efforts saved the day. That, and the fact that the guys jumped in to help at every step of the way. I also had some difficulty sleeping on two nights there, which didn’t help. I had unusual housing (a small cottage out in the woods). It had a loft ceiling that went all the way up to the roof that was very noisy when it rained hard. It rained hard on two of the nights. One more very unusual thing…I took virtually no photos. So weird.

But despite that, I still got up for yoga each morning. I enjoyed the hot tub and the sauna. And I really connected with the guys.

Overall, it turned out to be an amazing event.

It was also great to get home to Thaddeus and Finn. And my own bed. You can imagine how deep my sleep was on Sunday night.

Then The Kidney Stone

At 2:00 am on Monday morning (my first at-home sleep in a week), significant pain roused me from my deep slumber. Having had kidney stones before, I suspected it was another one. It was. Fortunately, it seemed to pass quickly into the bladder, at which point I felt no discomfort or pain.

And then a second one descended.

It was equally as painful as the first, so I went to my physician. I got some prescription NSAIDS for the pain and a prescription to help ease the passage of kidney stones.

I’m feeling much better.

I’ve also almost finished organizing all the retreat material. I’ll be back to juggling smoothly in no time!

Current Knitting/Crochet/Cranking

Not unusually, I did virtually no knitting at the retreat. Well, except I did make two pairs of socks on the sock knitting machine.

And again, strangely, this is the only photo I took of the socks I made. The purple and gold one with the patterned green/pink/blue one above it. The red is just the waste yarn.

Between being sick and organizing the mess I brought home from the retreat (so this DOESN’T happen in May, 2023), I haven’t done any knitting or crochet on my current projects.