Jewel Ball Madness

Hoo-whee it's been a busy couple of weeks! Last week was completely taken up by prep for the Jewel Ball. This year's theme was Speakeasy, so we recreated the feeling of, no, not a speakeasy exactly, because I believe actual speakeasies were prone to seediness, but that of an elegant Jazz Age supper club. We had fun, but I was wiped out for days. Between constructing the ballroom and all, the party itself, staying up all night to rip it back down again (That's the most amazing part - what took a year to plan, paint and build and then several days to construct on site is gone in time for people to play tennis on the five courts we cover the next day.) and everything else, I felt jetlagged and then finally succumbed to some kind of virus I'd been fighting for a week.

Anyway, things are getting back to normal and I'm madly playing catchup, but there's a little photo of John & me in our gladrags at about 1:00 am the night of the ball.

I'm Back - Sorta...

I'm not sure why I have a knitting blog when as it turns out I have a yearly pattern of taking six months off starting in the spring every year. I should really take up some hobby that I could talk about for the other half a year.

Oh wait, wouldn't that be the yearly creation of the Jewel Ball. The very reason I can't knit being the countless hours of computer work that make my elbow hurt too much to hold knitting needles? Yes, this is me in my blue hat, looking the way I do for a week every August...the end of a jam-packed year of putting on that party. Thanks for another flaterring photo, Fiona! I can only blame the camera angle for how those arms look sleeveless, since the truth would be too painful.

Luckily, this year's Ball was soooo much fun to put on - we got to paint gigantic recreations of famous art pieces (which, who knew the same muscles that don't let me knit and drive a mouse too much at the same time are also affected by wielding a giant paint brush) and hopefully raised buckets of money for our beneficiaries.

I hurt my left thumb during the week we set the Ball up, so I was in a cast for a couple of weeks from that, and then I hurt my right pinky, and we had a Santa Ana that made it unbearable to touch anything other than ice cream, so I haven't knit at all. Like, since April. I know, wah wah wah. You want to offer me some cheese with that whine.

On the creative side, I did have a very productive spring and summer graphics-wise.