The blob that ate Leesy's life

I dropped off the radar for a while again, I know.  I have been busy, but in very weird ways.  I don't even remember if I mentioned here in bloggy land about what happened right after the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival at the beginning of May, but basically I spent that whole Sunday walking around, got up the next morning to take a walk, and as I finished the walk I crouched down to pick up some dyeing lichen I saw lying in my next door neighbors' yard.  At that point I suddenly felt a burning pain in my leg which turned out once I went to the doctor two days later to be:

THE BLOB THAT ATE LEESY'S LIFE

Okay, it was a superficial venous thrombophlebitis.  In English, that means a medically non-significant blood clot and inflamed vein.  It's the kind of thing you get warned about if you're going to be sitting a lot on an airplane, except then they're more worried about the deep vein kind because that's the dangerous kind.  The thing is, I had been very active the weeks and especially the days leading up to it developing.  Plus I have been exhausted since then, and short of breath, and having fluttering feelings in my chest.  So since all my bloodwork came back pretty normal (you WISH you had my cholesterol readings), my MD set me up immediately for some cardiac testing--a Holter monitor and next a stress echocardiogram (which was going to be today but had to be rescheduled until Thursday).  So my leg is still lumpy (that pic above was taken today, a month after the blob first appeared), I have no energy, and generally I feel like I can't do anything.

But since being me I couldn't really do nothing (except of course when it comes to housework) I had to develop a new obsession.  Oh, yes, I'm still spinning and dyeing--

And I'm still baking

Sunday's bagels; we had run out of bread so baking was necessary, right?

But now I'm making CHEESE!  Mozzarella, yogurt cheese, feta, it's been a blast.  Okay, the ricotta was a bust, but I didn't know what I was going to do with that anyhow and it was just an attempt to use the leftover whey from the second batch of mozzarella.  And here is about half the mozzarella, turned into pizza Margherita and white pizza today.  

Yes, I couldn't resist eating some before I snapped the photo

I figure, hey, fresh whole local organic milk in an amount to make 1 lb of fresh mozzarella costs pretty much the same amount of money as 8 oz of kosher store-bought mozzarella (it costs more if you want cholov Yisroel, but we don't), and we eat so much mozzarella that even the cost of the kosher rennet and the citric acid needed are made up the first week.  Now I want to get a cheese press to be able to make pressed, long-cured cheeses!

So I hope to get back to speed once my leg and my general health get back to speed themselves.  My knitting and spinning are just really in slow motion.  But at least I have my bread machine and local stores which sell fresh cow and goat milks and my bottle of rennet in the fridge, so what little energy I have can be channeled to something.  Just not to house keeping, sadly.