Vacation!

My stay-at-home vacation started today, though I've been considering myself on vacation since I got home from work on Friday. No, I haven't tackled the basement yet, but I intend to work on that later this week. In the meantime, I have a tiny problem.

I can't lift my arms.

One of the plans for the week was to start doing regular exercise, whether by going to ballet class, joining a club, or working out at home. I've gone too long without any exercise at all to jump back in to ballet class, so I thought I'd better get a few workouts in first. I checked in at Curves, and they're having a special this month, and the lady said I could come and try it this week. So I thought I would do that tomorrow. Today, however, I finally grabbed my exercise ball, stuck the DVD in the player, and did my own at-home workout.

That was two hours ago, and I can hardly raise my arms above my waist. The exercises didn't feel that hard while I was doing them (though I did feel hideously clumsy--trying to drape myself over the ball without falling off was a hoot. Probably I really hurt my arms from flailing them in vain attempts to keep from sprawling on the floor. The cats were clearly baffled by the whole ugly scene.) Anyway, the pain didn't set in until about  half an hour ago. Which is a more holistic treatment--a pain pill or a shot of Old Crow? Pain pills have fewer calories, which is a consideration.

The really bad part of this is that I had a violin lesson scheduled for this afternoon. I was so embarrassed to call and cancel only an hour beforehand, but I have a wonderful teacher. She started laughing and said, "Oh, I did that once. I had to call in to the XXX Symphony (a fairly large orchestra) and tell them I couldn't play because I'd done a workout and couldn't move my arms. I was tempted to lie and tell them I had the measles or something--anything but the truth." So we had a good laugh, and she was totally cool with it. THEN she told me she'll be in China next week, playing with the orchestra for the Olympics! How cool is that? Bet she doesn't do any workouts between now and then...

So I obviously can't clean the basement today, which leaves me doing more of what I've been doing since Friday afternoon: cleaning the sewing/weaving/stash room, knitting, loading my iPod, knitting, adding to my Ravelry queue, knitting, winding yarn balls, and knitting. Obviously, I have a short attention span.

Since I have to set up the swift and ball winder on the dining room table, I'm trying to get all my skeins wound and stored neatly. I pulled out the bags and boxes of random yarn items--leftover bits, odd skeins, acrylic, novelty yarn from the scarf craze a few years back--and have decided what to keep, what to give to the Knitting Guild for community projects, and what to throw away. I've kept some yarns for small projects, but a lot of it is going to the guild. They do hats and mittens and lap ropes and such, so they'll make good use of it, I'm sure. And I didn't give them crap yarn, so I feel virtuous.

I didn't realize how much laceweight yarn I have, and that's what remains to be wound. I'm not looking forward to it, especially after the 2500-yard skein I wound the other day. I thought it would NEVER end. (But now I'm looking for the perfect shawl pattern for it. That's where Ravelry comes in. I've seen pictures of some breathtaking shawls, so I'll have to go through all my "favorited" items and see what calls to me.) And once I get all this yarn wound, I'm going to "repurpose" the clear storage bins hubby bought for the basement last week. Heck, we can use cardboard boxes down there. I need to see my yarn! I just need to get them up here before he comes home and sees me doing it. I hope I can carry them. Heck--I hope I can walk down the stairs and back up again!

I'm still plugging along (sort of ) with SOS. After I started digging through all the yarn, and figuring out how many projects I have planned, I decided that the priority list needed revamped. It's not an official List yet, because I'm still sorting, but by the end of my vacation week, I hope to have a better idea of what I really want to do.

Moving my arms will be high on the list, I'm sure.