Bittersweet

Its a dark rainy day and fitting to what has been going on. First the bitter: A close friend of ours "E" passed away suddenly the night before last in his sleep. He'd had high blood pressure and was changing his diet and taking medication, but I don't think anyone realized just how bad things were. We're stunned and sad and and I can't quite wrap my head around all the things I'm in the middle of.
Here's the sweet: I'm planning a HUGE Birthday party on Sunday, for my daughter who is four years old today . I'm tired and I'm weepy and I don't feel like cleaning the house or cooking anything. Tonight after celebrating very very briefly our daughter's birthday with my parents who are driving in from several states away, we must go to a gathering of friends to remember E. It will be a long night for me, and then I must get up again tomorrow and clean and decorate and bake and cry some more.
On a slightly brighter note: I have accomplished some knitting over the last few weeks: the socks for dh who may not appreciate them as much as I'd hoped. They are a tiny bit too small. The hat and booties for my sister's baby and using some old yarn, I knit up Marnie MacLean's Lake Park Hat only I changed the way it was ribbed, twice actually. It called for a rolled edge and then a couple rounds of single ribbing. I did a very short edge of single ribbing instead. It was too short, so I had to pick up stiches and I added a much longer double ribbed section over it, leaving the smaller one on the inside. This will all make more sense when you see the photos. This hat took me some time! I had about 3 false starts first knitting it flat, and then when I got the hang of the pattern I knit it in the round, so I had to rip it several times before I got the result I wanted. Yeah it has a couple of mistakes, but thanks to this weird dk yarn I used, you can 't really tell and I was damned if I was going to rip it one more time! So I've started a matching scarf adapting the pattern to a long skinny one to use up the rest of that icky yarn that is in a nice colorway.
And the only good news this week: My LYS has GIVEN me some of the extra yarn I needed to finish Emma's Sweater. It was either that or I buy another 30.00 skein just for the neck! Argh! So she was nice enough to give me some from a similar sweater to mine that she was finishing for someone.
Whoops I'm having trouble uploading the pics. I may have to edit them a bit to make them smaller. They'll be on the next post.
Until then... la vie peut être triste.