Nothing, nada, zilch

No knitting, no beading, nothing to report.

Actually, that is not entirely true. I did work the cuff of the sock in the Shibui sock yarn and am almost finished with the first sock. I am quite surprised because I am almost out of yarn. I won't run short, but I don't have exceptionally large feet - quite the contrary, and I usually have a lot of yarn left over.

Also, I am useless at winding center pull balls without a Nostepinne or a tube of some kind. I wound this on my fingers and it was a huge mess. So much so that I took some time and rewound it into a usual round pull-from-the-outside ball and life is much better. I should be binding that sock off shortly. I am going to try one of the 2x2 rib bind-offs I learned from Jean Wong.

After Ann and Barbara so kindly gave me advice on baking stones and replacements in the comments to last week's post, I went to Target and bought a pizza stone. It is small but it works. I made pizza last night for dinner and also baked the remainder of the bread dough. It came out well. Next week I am going to try a whole grain recipe from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I also found a couple of links via Ravelry that you might be interested in: Manjula's Kitchen (how to make naan in your oven) and Vegan Feast Kitchen (a variation on the no-knead recipe).

I am in a relative state of shock this weekend. A colleague of mine -my age - just passed away this week. My husband spotted her obituary in the newspaper. I had just heard from her a few weeks ago so I am dazed. The wake is tomorrow. What a fine line there is between life and death. It continues to reinforce my philosophy that we have to live each day for that day and not wait till someday to do the things we enjoy - especially the simple things. Spending time doing the things we enjoy, stopping to enjoy precious moments along the way, and making time for the ones we love is something that we have to do all the time. To balance that loss, I also heard that my friend's daughter had a baby girl. 5.5 weeks early but healthy and doing well. In the midst of life there is death but in the midst of death, there is life.