Daily lifting life's empty bowl to see what God provides to sustain, nourish, and strengthen His child.
Wishing you a blessed and joyful Christmas.
I will have an early gift tonight, one not under the tree. For the first time in a month, I can sleep with an unencumbered foot. No more heavy boot. Snow is expected overnight into tomorrow though only about an inch. We will have a white Christmas.
I checked a few weeks ago, and my account on healthcare.gov had a clickable button to remove my “completed” application and start over again. The good thing about that is that I did not have to verify my identity again. Thursday I received the results of my over-the-phone application in the mail. Several mistakes plus I needed to send documentation to verify my income. They showed my husband buying insurance though he is on Medicare and not eligible.
I decided to go back online and use the remove button. I had been planning to wait until after December 23rd as I thought the website would be busy and hard to access. I got right on. Wow! What a difference. The new application process went smoothly and fast. They had even changed the wording of a few questions that removed some ambiguity. One choice was to allow them to link your application to income verification at the IRS by providing Social Security numbers. I did that, and when my eligibility results arrived online I did not need to provide any more documentation. There was a button to view the available health insurance plans for my area.
I am still comparing the plans. I will probably enroll by the end of next week. We will see if that part of the site works OK. Since my current insurance expiration was extended to February 1st, I do have time to think about which plan will work and to work thru any bugs in the enrollment process.
Too bad it took so long for the government to get a decent site up and running. If it had been in this shape in October, their enrollment figures would be higher and fewer people would have been stressed out.
I mentioned prior to my surgery that I was going to teach myself to knit. The dishcloth pattern on the internet had a video, but I knew that would not be very viewable on my Nook which I was using the first two weeks while my foot had to be elevated. I used a booklet I received probably 20 plus years ago to help me remember what I had seen on the internet re basic knitting.
Actually, this gift included some yarn and a pair of knitting needles, and I knitted a few practice swatches but didn’t make anything. My memory of that experience was positive; I felt pretty sure I would enjoy knitting. This time I wanted something I could use. Besides ending up with a dishcloth, the goals were to not go stir crazy and to take my focus off of my foot. It worked wonderfully.
Unfortunately, I ran into some problems. I made a mistake and didn’t know how to fix it. This was during my 3rd start and I was pretty far along; I finally decided it would still be useable as a dishcloth, flaws and all. My binding off definitely doesn’t look good. This dishcloth had a special effect around the edges. It required me to do a yarn over plus the first few stitches I had to follow a pattern before knitting to the end of the row. Those tasks were new to me. There was only knitting, no purling so I will have to find a different project to relearn that. I found I liked least knitting two together.
Since I had some yarn left over, I decided to make a second cloth to reinforce what I had learned. I surmised I had less than half the yarn I used in the first cloth so I made this cloth slightly smaller. You can see in the photo the “end tail”; it was a close call.
Second dishcloth
Again I had some trouble binding off. I guess I need an instructor, not just a book. I definitely will need an instructor to move on to more difficult projects, learning about gauge and how to use more than one ball of yarn, fix problems, etc. I still need to find a crochet hook to weave the “tails” in.
Yes, I enjoyed the experience enough to continue. My second cloth went more quickly. I never became a speed demon, but there was a nice rhythmic flow that was kind of soothing.
I bought this book at Half-Price Books for $2 ( discount bargain section) that has several scarves that interest me.
As I knitted, I couldn’t help but see parallels to the Christian life. God has purposes for us and can use us with our flaws. However, sin has consequences which can go on for some time. I had hoped when I started a new row of knitting, the “mistake” would remain in the previous row, but it continued. About midway, I learned about knitting two together and decided to see if that would help my flawed place. It worked, but I don’t know why. Just as I found I need an experienced knitter to get me thru the hard times, Christians need one another with our different gifts and backgrounds to advance in our Christian walk.
3 more weeks until I can slowly start bearing weight on my operated right foot. There will be more extensive physical therapy then, too. The knitting experiment did help the time go by.
I am always amazed at the diversity, intricacy, and beauty of individual snowflakes. We have lots of the white stuff here today. You can see more in this slideshow .
