Blog tour, giveaways, and a near miss

Even though it hasn't been that long since I last blogged, it seems like months ago. Not only have there been deadlines galore, I've been busy with lots of exciting promotional work relating to the new book. All of that got interrupted, though, when I had a scary health issue flare up. (I promise I won't go into too graphic detail, nor will I post close-up photographs of any suppurating wounds since who wants to look at that?)

The abridged version (sanitized for your protection):  Last weekend I thought I was coming down with a stomach bug or food poisoning, but the main symptom I had was serious abdominal pain. By midnight I realized I needed to go to the ER. After some testing, and a PA who wanted to send me home under the middle-aged-white-lady-hysterical theory, an ER doc sent me for a CT scan. Diagnosis:



Diverticulitis.

My aunt has this, so I guess maybe it runs in the family. There was some scary talk about whether I would need surgery, but we decided to wait and thankfully my body started to heal itself before that became necessary. I spent a week in the hospital, and was released Friday. Now I am very happy to be at home, although I am grappling with that exhaustion and frustration that comes from a health scare and lack of sleep, taking it all in and figuring out what's next in terms of lifestyle changes.

All of this is by way of explanation why I haven't posted already about the Official Sock Yarn Studio Blog Tour,which began this past week.  I was pretty loopy on painkillers but my dear friends stepped up to the plate and helped me out.

Our friends at the Lark blog posted my full schedule of stops. This week, we got off to a great start with Kristin Ohmdahl at her gorgeous Styled By Kristin site... (Thanks, Kristin, for being such a rock and doing such a great job in my absence!)

The next stop will be Tuesday, when Wendy Johnson, designer of the adorable Kitteh Mittens from the book, will check in with us at Wendy Knits.

(Rumor has it there will be another giveaway!)

If you're impatient, then you can download the free project available at the Lark blog.

Cintaya Long Cowl

We crammed the book so full of projects that a few that had to be cut (oh! the agony!) and the Cintaya lace cowl was one of them. But it was way too good to keep hidden, so go here and find the PDF download link. The long cowl can be worn as a single long loop or doubled as shown in the photograph above. It takes one skein (about 400 yds) of fingering-weight sock yarn -- like the BBF yarn shown in the photo.

I'll be checking in over the course of the next days and weeks with links to the stops on the tour. I may be a little quieter than normal otherwise, since, all joking aside, I do have some serious recuperating to do.

Thanks, everyone!