Knitasha von Stashenskeins

To Jog or Not to Jog

Dudes, I am sick.  I have been miserable since Saturday afternoon and it doesn't seem to be getting any better.  And my symptoms are so stupid!  Seriously, if a patient came in to see me complaining of these symptoms, I would inwardly roll my eyes, label them a drama queen, and have absolutely no useful recommendations for feeling any better.  I seem to have traditional Influenza, minus the cough/congestion, but add debilitating nausea.  If I wasn't completely neurotic disciplined about taking my pill every night, I would suspect I was pregnant.  Well, pregnant plus chills and body aches, but no fever.  It is the chills with no fever that is most baffling to me.  If I didn't take Tylenol every four hours, I strongly suspect I would have died days ago.

How sick am I?  Well, many times over the last few days I have collapsed onto the couch and realized I am TOO SICK TO KNIT!  That, my friends, just ain't right.  That is also the reason I have very little to show you.



I did get my first afghan square blocked.  As I was pinning it into place, I realized that I didn't take ANY notes while I was knitting it, which is going to make writing up the pattern awfully interesting.  I think I will end up knitting a second square the same to make sure I get the directions correct.



The skein of Paradise homespun has a new buddy.



And I finished my second pair of the Lithuanian socks.

The only thing that bugs me about this pattern is the jog.  For the second sock, I thought I would try Meg Swanson's tricks to hide a jog, but I was unenthused by the results.



Sock #1 with typical jog.



Sock #2 - "unjogged"   

It just doesn't seem like much of an improvement.  I'm going to research the topic a little more, and if I come up with anything better, I'll share it.

My current state of being is freezing and nauseated, so it must be time for more Tylenol.  Stay tuned to see if I pull through.

Buh-bye

ES moved her stuff out Thursday, should be flying home today.  And that's all I have to say about that.



Have you seen this little square?  You pass it along to bloggers you enjoy.  It has been popping up on blogs for awhile now and I was getting jealous and then the fabulous Kate awarded one to me. Yay!!

I am supposed to pass it on to 10 of my favorite blogs, which is hard because I read a lot of blogs that everybody reads like the Harlot and Franklin.  But here are a few blogs you might not have found that I always read:

Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper
Indexed
JC Handmade
Knitty Banter
Random Knits
Skeins and Beans
Sock Lady Spins
Stranded on Fair Isle
T-town Knitiot
Tales from the Den of Chaos
Two Pointy Sticks
Knoobie Knitter

Yeah, I know that's 12.  Sue me.

The handspun slippers are all knitted, but I'm going to sew some slipper bottoms onto them before I take the final picture.  I have also finished the Eve's Rib Hat.



Here's a fuzzy picture of the top decreases.  (Hey, you try to take a picture of the top of your own head!)



I need to scribble this pattern down somewhere before I forget how I did it - it was somewhat convoluted. 

Now I'm working on a charity project that Kim has organized.  Everyone who is helping out got a skein of this gorgeous stuff to work with.



This is a gigantoid skein of Briar Rose yarn.  My info packet doesn't tell me the name of the colorway - I think it might be a special dyelot for this project.  It is a heavy worsted with insane yardage, so it wound up into four yarn cakes.



We are supposed to design and knit four 8" x 8" afghan squares.  You can make four of the same design, two different designs, etc.  I am going to try to come up with a unique design for each.  I knitted up square #1 yesterday, but it isn't blocked yet.



My understanding is that the afghan will be assembled and then there will be a random drawing from all of the people who donate to the Lodge House through this project.  (The Lodge House provides temporary housing to cancer patients who live far away from their treatment centers.)  If you want more info, this is the site to check out.

One last picture:



Oh yeah!

Getaway!!

Really quick to get it out of the way, I did have to be the robo-bitch and tell ES's family I can't take care of her anymore.  (If you are keeping score, today is hospital day #10)  My announcement was met with total disbelief, followed quickly by anger and resentment.  I have been declared just as mean as the previous host family and am now persona non gratis, but I have decided I'm fine with that.  It was going to end ugly no matter what, but at least I stood up for myself and did the right thing for my family.   She will head back to Italy once she is out of the hospital and I assume somebody will come around to collect her stuff. ( I am currently getting the silent treatment, so I will be the last to know the details)

Enough about that - let's talk about happy stuff!!  Thanks to KTMay and the fab knitting retreat she organized, I actually have some happy stuff to share.

The retreat was about 20 minutes from my house at a retreat center called Widewater.  Nothing fancy, but absolutely perfect for our needs.  The retreat was 2 nights, but I only slept there Saturday night, so my actual retreat time was just over 24 hours.  That turned out to be perfect - I don't know if I could have handled the brick-like firm beds two nights in a row.  (The best description I heard was "concrete foam")

We had a gigantoid conference room all to ourselves with lots of big round tables.  There were nice dining room chairs to sit in, but next time I'll bring my own comfy fold-out.  The room had huge picture windows looking out over some woods and a frozen pond. 

Everyone spread out and knitted like fiends.  Extreme project infidelity seemed to be the trend - I think that Patty had seven different socks going at one time.  I am monogamous by nature, so I started out by finishing my weird little lace strip.



Day one I wore it as a neckerchief and Karen snapped this picture.  Day two I was suffering from the lack of conditioner, mousse, and a blow dryer, so I used it as a hairband.  This was much cuter, so it is inevitable that I don't have a picture of it.

We ate a lovely lunch the center prepared for us, and then I had a chair massage.  It was fabulous and my charming masseuse told me he lowered my shoulders by a good three inches.  I couldn't let all this newfound peace and mobility go to waste, so I retrieved my spinning wheel from the car and settled down in front of the fireplace.

I have some beautiful superwash merino roving that I bought from Cris and Hillary Godfrey.  (I think I found them through Lime & Violet - those girls are always getting me in trouble)  I had two gorgeous colorways with me, but "Primary" was the one that was begging to be spun.  A few hours of dedicated spinning later, I had this:



I spun this from the fold to get it really fine and I was very happy with the uniformity I achieved.   The cool thing is that I have 8 oz of this wool, so I will have 4 skeins total to make something cool.  Wish you could feel it.  SO soft!!

I switched back to knitting, but the handspun trend continued.  I had brought one of my two balls of Unique Sheep Paradise yarn and I whipped up a little slipper sock.



I'm going to sew some slipper bottoms on these so I can wear them around the house.  I just love how the colors shift.



Sheer madness had made me leave the second skein of this yarn at home, so I scrambled for one last project to finish out the retreat.  I had more yarn out in the car, but it was also 8 degrees out with horizontal snowfall, so I opted to stick to what I could rummage in my knitting bag.  Partial skeins from my dad's basketweave vest + an announcement that the local chemo cap drive has run completely dry led to me casting on this:



I lifted this rib stitch off of a scarf pattern that was handed out at the retreat.  It was written to be worked back and forth, but it wasn't too hard to convert it for in the round.  I am wildly improvising the decreases at the top, so I don't know how it will all end up.  The scarf pattern called this Eve's Rib.  I am itching to use it for a sweater, but the row gauge is dismal.  It is nearly as compact as garter stitch, so it takes a zillion rows per inch.  I have promised Karen to write up a general recipe when I'm done, so watch this space.

Close up of super-cool rib.

Well, it is now after 10am and I haven't had breakfast or showered yet, so I guess I better hop to it.  Next up is a super cool design project that Kniterella invited me to join.  Wait until you see the yarn I get to play with!!!

Spoke Too Soon

Turns out the snow day on Friday was the last happy news I would get in quite awhile.  The vague upper abdominal pain that the exchange student (known hereafter as "ES") had been having got more intense.  Her doctor sent us to get some blood work and once he reviewed the results, he put her back into the hospital.

I was there with her until after 10pm Friday night.  Drove the 40 minutes home, collapsed into bed, and then was awoken at 3:30 am by a phone call from ES's nurse to let me know that she was now vomiting blood.  ES was understandably freaked, so I got dressed and headed back to the hospital.  When her doctor came in around 8:30, he was not happy with her blood pressure and decided to go down her throat with a scope to see where the bleeding was coming from.  This requires general anesthesia and a surgery consent, so we had to call her poor terrified Mom in Italy and get verbal consent over the phone.

The procedure was quick and uneventful, and the doctor found that she had the worst gastritis he had ever seen.  (Picture the normally pink and smooth lining of your stomach red, raw and bleeding.)  We aren't sure why she got it, it may have been a combo of some meds she was taking.  They put her in the ICU and gave her morphine for pain and also some blood.

I left the hospital about 3:30 pm, went home and showered, and then made spinach and artichoke dip for the first time ever.  (Thank heavens for the Food Network website!)  Then we left for oldest daughters basketball game, where they were honoring all the senior players.  Daughter got to start the game and played really well, so that was a thrill.  Then we had an after-game party for the team to attend (hence the dip).  Home about eleven, went into a coma, slept until 11 am Sunday.

Basketball game for younger daughter at 2:00, then a frantic rush to the grocery store for our weekly provisions.  4:20,  I'm at the airport to pick up ES's mom AND dad.  (Of note, Mom and Dad are divorced and Mom has remarried.  Um, awkward!)  Drove parents to hospital, where the nurses had blessedly moved ES into a double room so that both parents could stay with her.  Got them settled and made it home for three-quarters of the Super Bowl.  Then I remembered that it was Feb 3rd and I hadn't paid the first-of-the-month bills yet.  (Can't imagine how I got distracted)  Another hour of paperwork before I can get to bed.

Up at 6:15 the next morning to get the kids off to school and discover that hubby has high fever, shaking chills, and cough from hell.  Call his office manager to let her know he can't come to work, stuff him full of Motrin and take off for hospital rounds.  (Oooops, forgot to mention, it isn't my week to make rounds, but my office manager called me mid-Super Bowl to tell me one of my partners is in the hospital and I have to step in.)  Rush from hospital to my previously scheduled OB/GYN appointment, and find that my blood pressure is 160/100.  (Non-medical readers: this is really high and not good.)

My OB/GYN is highly displeased with me and says if my blood pressure can't be addressed PDQ, he will have to take me off birth control pills.  (Oh yeah, that's what I need now, an unplanned pregnancy at the age of 38!)  So I call my primary care doctor who calls in a blood pressure pill right away and says he has to see me in the office on Friday.

Now, it's Wednesday.  The Tamiflu I started hubby on Monday night has worked wonders and he is back to work.  I took younger daughter to school this morning after a dentist appointment to replace a filling, and older daughter is home from school sick with some variant of the viral sore throat that knocked her sister down last week.  ES is still in the hospital, parents at bedside.  She is still requiring pain medicine and cannot tolerate any food, so they have placed a permanent IV line to give her intravenous nutrition.  There was wild talk about her leaving the hospital with a little pump to continue the TPN at home until her gut heals, but she has been running fevers for the past 2 days, so discharge is on-hold for now.  Her Dad has to fly back to Italy on Sunday, but her mom has decided to stay and take care of her until she is over all of this.

The crazy thing is that ES is still bound and determined to stay here and finish the school year.  I think this is denial of the highest order, but I guess when you have fought serious illness for as many years as she has, denial becomes one of the tools you need to get from day to day.  I have not had the opportunity to speak to her parents alone about this, but I have no intention of letting her mom leave her behind this time.  She is a sick little cookie and she needs to be with her own family and see her own doctors.  I am hoping her Mom will see eye to eye with me, but I am prepared to be robo-bitch if I have to - this is just way more crazy than we signed on for.

Oh, so anyway, the socks are done.



This is not a great picture, but bear in mind that I finished these in the Meijer parking lot last night while younger daughter ran in for gift bags and tissue paper.  They were delivered to the birthday girl in the hospital soon after.

I like this crazy little stripe plan I cooked up and I bet I'll make another pair of these.  Maybe I'll frog this sock and use the yarn - that would be pretty, right?

Meanwhile, I was caught at a basketball game last night without anything to knit, so I noodled around and ended up with a narrow lacy band out of the very last bits of my rainbow yarn.



Depending on how long the yarn holds out, this will either be a little scarf or a hairband.  Next up is socks for me out of my yummy green and blue homespun that is still hanging from the basement rafters.

It is 3 days until the Insanknitty knitting retreat in Grand Rapids and I have never been so in need of a mental health break.   Hubby will have to keep this boat afloat without me for 24 hours, because I have resolved that NOTHING will stop me from going.  And I might leave my cellphone at home and take my spinning wheel instead!

Somebody Up There Likes Me

Snow day, baby!  It is after 10 am and all of the children are still sleeping.   Bliss!!