Update

Wanna see something cool?! This is what happens when you try to keep from falling. Sometimes, it's probably better to just hit the dirt. Just to be clear, I never hit the back of my leg where all these bruises are. As you can see from the last post, I fell on my shin, not my butt (where there's way more padding!). The bruising is from whatever I did to the muscle. One doc said the muscle is torn. Another said it was just badly strained. I don't know how all that bruising happened from a "bad strain", but then, I'm healing up way too fast for a tear too, so who knows. I have done just about everything you can do to repair the damage, including acupuncture, therapeutic massages, and PT replete with ultrasound. I'd like to imagine it was a tear and I really do heal that quickly, but with my alcohol intake, I have to seriously doubt it. So, for now, I'll just describe it as a "blow out" to my hamstring.
But don't you think the colors are awesome? Seriously, if I dyed yarn, I'd definitely use these colors to create a new colorway and then call it Graceful - as it was my undeniable lack of gracefulness that led to these spectacular colors.
In other news, I've finished another holiday gift. I'll be very curious to see if the recipient of this gift actually ever gets to wear it, or if it will be the "temporary" property of his mate. Heaven knows I'm gonna have a hard time giving it up

On to more gifts. Also still working on the never ending bolero - who would have ever thought such a small little thing would take so long - not to mention so much yarn - had to send off for more, so it's on hold until that arrives.

I also picked up the cardigan I hibernated several years back and started it over again. I'm still trying to learn to pick instead of throw, so I'm trying that technique again (P.S. The scarf above was knit entirely picking - but then, you can't see the guage variations in the picture like you can in real life - hopefully the great colors will detract from that). I reduced two needle sizes, so hopefully this time the cardigan will fit someone other than Hagrid. My goal is to have the cardie ready to steek by Veteran's Day when I go to Georgia and have my friend help me overcome that scary hurdle. Once done, this cardie will have helped me learn three new techniques:

1. Picking

2. Colorwork

3. Steeking

that's a lot to live up to for one little cardigan.