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Seven Months, going on Eight

Our seven month-iversary passed with no fanfare, which is good, since it means that nothing much was going wrong.  My doctor was concerned with my electrolyte balance, so she had me check that a couple of times and start drinking a supplement which is supposed to replenish electrolytes lost due to exercise.  I guess you do sweat during swimming but I don't know if that's the reason they're a little out of balance.  I made Pat take my lab report to the nephrologist who is the head of the transplant program at the UW and he thought everything looked fine for this stage.  I will take him at his word for the expert that he is and go on my merry way until the one year checkup in January.

In family news, we had a visit from Mr. Hollywood and his GF earlier in the month.  It was so good to see them and, of course, the visit was much too short.  When they weren't sightseeing or entertaining, this was their favorite spot.



So what else have I been doing?  Knitting, of course.  I've been working on some handspun socks, which are getting close to being finished.  Since I last posted, I made a pullover sweater, Brickyard, which I don't think looks as good on me as it does on the people wearing it on the pattern page, but oh well.  I used Wollmeise Blend for the first time in the Moses colorway.  I had lusted after this color for years and had the chance to buy it some months ago.  It's as beautiful as I thought it would be.




I also made two hats, one from handspun falkland from Into The Whirled


and one from Cascade 220 superwash.




They are both Malabrigo Head Thingies, which I find to be a hat that is easy to make and will fit most people.

I made the hats for Pat and me because we are finally getting to go on a trip!  Labs have been good enough that the doctors gave permission for a month's absence, so on Sept. 18th we fly to Iceland for a few days, then on to Scotland and England for the remainder of a month.  We're going to try to do a northern lights tour in Iceland, which is where I thought we might need hats.  I'm sure whatever type of clothing we bring, it will be not enough of what we need.  We are going expecting cool and rainy weather but, just like here in Seattle, you never know.  Whatever happens, I know we'll have a good time and I'll keep a travelog here and on Instagram, updating when we have WiFi.  I've been obsessively checking each hotel we consider for the presence of WiFi in the rooms, so think we should be ok. 😏

In the latest chapter of Crazy Athletic Things I Decide to Do, I swam across Lake Washington last Sunday with about 400 other people.  For those who don't know, Lake Washington is the largest lake in King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington.  Compared to Lake Wilderness where we live and I swim, Lake Washington is a sea and Lake Wilderness is a pond. We have only electric motors on our lake, Lake Washington has ski boats, tugboats, seaplanes and industrial barges. The longest and second longest floating bridges in the world cross it.  It's pretty big.  And very pretty.



Always a sucker for a good cause, I signed up for the Park to Park swim benefitting Seattle Children's Hospital.  The distance from the park in Seattle to the park on the east side of the lake in Kirkland was 1.3 miles.  I had swum that distance a few times here at my little lake.  That distance involves me going from one end to the other and then swimming back and forth a little bit until my Apple Watch tells me I've gone far enough.  I knew I could swim that far.

The difference, though, was major.  Even though we had a nice, calm morning for our swim, waves on a lake that big are constant.  Add a few hundred swimmers, support craft including a few big police boats to watch for unobservant boaters threatening to zoom through the line of buoys and swimmers, and you have significant chop.






I made it, though, and it only took me a few minutes longer than I thought it would.  I'm a slow swimmer at best and so being able to arrive on the far shore ahead of about 40 other people was icing on my cake.  Will I do it again next year? Don't know.  Maybe if I forget about how much water went up my nose....

Stay tuned for more exciting happenings and travel adventure.  Enjoy the labor day weekend here in the states and I'll be back soon.






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