I'm baaaaack in Italy... yes, June 24 to Sept 29th... is a long, long, long time

I missed Italy and mostly I miss my knee that didn't have an ugly scar running the length of it too.   However, these things in life happen and EVENTUALLY I hope that I'll have a knee that will work just as well as the one that I was born with....    I see that the blogger is doing the 'wacky stuff' where I can't space between paragraphs again.  Grrr     I did do some knitting while I was recovering- to give myself something 'fun to do' since I was trapped without a car (couldn't drive if I wanted to anyway) and my social life consisted of going to Physical Therapy once I was out of the hospital and rehab.  Packing for a knitter is a little different than regular folks... and since I can't sleep on planes (never have been able to for the past 24 years that I have worked overseas) ... I need some knitting for entertainment.  I don't take anything too complicated (small space is a big reason) because I do get 'brain tired' even if I can't sleep.   I usually take more than 1 project 'in case' something goes wrong-- pattern wise, wrong needle (yes, one time... I forgot to take the larger sized needle that you needed to use for the rest of the pattern AFTER I got started-- all of 1 inch got started) or something else you don't expect.   As a result, I usually try to already have a project or 2 started to prevent some of the knitting glitches that I had mentioned.  This time, I took a couple of projects that I had started in Germany and never finished (I had probably got pneumonia or something like that?)... a pair of socks (I had knitted the cuff, the heel, and most of the foot of the sock- but, I could tell that 'hope against hope' that the sock was going to be too big for me-- and the needles were no longer in the sock... (I had apparently needed that size of needles at one time and removed them for another use?)   so, I ripped the sock out to the cuff and knitted on them using a smaller needle and they fit perfect after I was finished! The other project was a sweater that I had started and had knitted about 1 1/2 inches of the bottom- both projects got finished... (well, I decided to lengthen the sleeves to my wrists - since I had extra yarn left over and I just need to knit the last sleeve - about 4-5 inches and then I'll be finished).   I also knitted 2 hats (birthday gift for a dear friend and a hat for the friend's mother) where I was staying in the states- as a THANK YOU for taking me to my doctor appointments.   I also knitted 7 dishcloths as gifts.  I bought some more yarn and knitted myself a blue/white pair of striped socks too.   (You can see how much MORE SWOLLEN, from the surgery, my right leg is in this photo of the blue socks.)   Photos 2, 4 and 5 are yarns from www.knitpicks.com and the brown sock is some good German sock yarn that I bought when I lived there.  Regia brand.  The green cotton yarn used in the sweater (you can't tell much from that photo, can you?) is some amazing cotton yarn that I bought in Italy the first time that I lived here- about 1999.