Knit Two Together

Summertime.... and the livin' is easy....

It wasn't really meant to be an easy living summer. It was actually supposed to be a working summer. There are many half completed jobs around my house. Most of them were started and abandoned by the man who used to live here. Several of them have been driving me nuts for years.  Last summer was consumed by the legalities of ending a marriage and I was truly looking forward to spending this summer taking care of the many jobs that had been left incomplete. 

First I painted a lattice fence at the side of my house. I think it looks fantastic! 

I figured that I should do the same to the enormous, unstained for 8 (?) years, back fence. The stain even went on sale - surely a sign that I should get started!

   


And then there was what I called the "Gnome Hatch Excavation".

The former man of the house has a bit of a gnome fetish. The summer before last he spent many many evenings digging a cliff into the side of the hill. I must have been watching too much LOST at the time, and the excavation which he claimed to be in preparation for a new retaining wall, was immediately labelled as his search for the secret hatchway to the world of gnomes. Regardless of it's actual purpose (cough avoidthewife cough), the excavation was left incomplete and I've lived with an impossible to maintain dirt cliff/weed pile for two summers. It had to go! By far the least expensive way to deal with it was to simply replace the grassy knoll. Thanks to some fortunate connections I was able to get a guy with a bobcat to come and re-grade the slope for me. The plan was for him to flatten and extend the slope to make it reasonable to mow, and for me to sod it over. 

That was the plan.

About a month ago I pulled a couple of ligaments on the left side of my SI joint. I've done this before. Usually it happens in yoga when I push too deeply into a twisting stretch and discover that my own muscles can overpower my joints. The SI joint pain was killing me, and it kept slipping out of place so I took some time off yoga, went to my chiropractor/sports med guy (whom I've known for 17 years), and followed his directions. Warm up, do a series of mad cat/child's pose stretches, ice ice ice ice ice ice.... until my butt nearly froze off. Things started to feel pretty good, so I went back to yoga and did one very very gentle, pre-beginner level class... just to see. I was sore, and there were some things I didn't try because they hurt, but I made it through the class. Now believing myself to be on the road to recovery, I went back a few days later - same plan - just take it real slow and easy, no pushing.

Tai chi warm up.... nice and gentle... not bad.... but I can feel the stiffness in my lower back....

Sun salutations.... stretch up.... breath in.... swan dive into a forward fold.... shooting pain burning like liquid fire down my left leg!

I kept going, very very slowly and very gently, but every forward fold was absolute agony and I couldn't even attempt a low crocodile. (This in a woman who can easily touch the backs of her hands to the floor by her heels, and routinely does a full up-dog extension). Something was very very wrong. I left the class, trying not to cry until I crawled into my car. It was the most unbelievable, nauseating, searing pain, that just kept coming in waves. If I moved at all my back spasmed and created a fresh wave of agony on my whole left side. I spent the whole night with ice packs and as much advil as I could stomach.

By morning my left baby toe was numb. By afternoon the next toe was numb too. The next day there was a numb strip down the outside of my calf as well. This was definitely not good; I've never gone numb with an SI joint pull before. Scared, I went back to the doctor. The look on his face when I told him about my numb toes said it all. He checked me over, very gently and very carefully. 

Slipped disc at L5.

Average healing time: 6 months +

Stop doing everything. No lifting or turning, and definitely no lifting and turning, no bending over, no carrying more than my purse and absolutely no going to the gym. NO YOGA. No RPM. No treadmill. No painting the fence. No laying sod. No vacuuming. No mowing the lawn. Just NO. 

Because if I push this, and turn the bulging disc into a prolapsed disc, and put pressure on the motor nerve instead of just the sensory nerve, that can mean surgery and possibly permanent neural damage. Instead what I must do three times a day is warm up, do that series of mad cat/child's pose stretches for my still inflamed SI joint, and then add a series of crocodiles to attempt to push the disc back into place, and then ice for 2o minutes.  

Briefly for those of you who aren't familiar with yoga poses: Mad Cat: kneel on all 4s, then squeeze your abs and hump your back up like a cat does when it's mad. Return to neutral. Repeat 10 times. Child's Pose: from all 4s, knees apart and big toes touching, push your bum back and down letting your arms stretch out in front or placing them at your side. Little kids often fall asleep like this - bum high, legs tucked under and arms out or down. These poses open the spinal joints promoting forward flexibility.  Crocodile: lie on your belly with tops of your feet on the floor; place your palms flat close to your shoulders; gently press your shoulders up while leaving your lower body still. Work towards having elbows on floor with chin resting lightly in palms. Progress to Upward Facing Dog by pressing all the way up and lifting your thighs off the ground as well. These poses close the spinal joints and also promote spinal flexibility. 

I've been really quite bummed out about it. Readers who know me personally understand what a goal-oriented person I am. I can call myself Type A, and know that it's both a strength and a weakness. It's very hard for me to give up my plans, and even harder for me to know I have to continue to live with this stuff for months longer. Not only that, but I can't do most of the things that need to be done on a regular basis around the house. Fortunately I have kids to help with that, but they're kids, and even with me nagging they don't do the job quite as well as I do. Not excited about the nagging either. He-who-dug-for-gnomes is going to come lay the sod for me, which I appreciate. #1 Son will be back from cadet camp at the beginning of August, and will do the fence, which I also appreciate. Frog will come and hook up my new outdoor faucet so that I can actually water the sod. The rest of the stuff will likely just have to wait.

I'm trying to look at it as an opportunity rather than a loss. I have many skills and talents, but doing nothing really isn't one of them, and sitting there on ice looking at the job I want to be doing is making me a little testy. My big accomplishment this summer is going to be healing. It may turn out to be the most challenging thing I've ever done. 

 

Happy Father's Day

My Dad, George Davidson, with baby Kevin and 3 year old Sean, spring 1998. He was a very proud Grampa! 

I love you Dad. 

New Yarns... new plans

I've been blessed by the yarn fairies in recent weeks, and realized I hadn't shared my good fortune.

A while ago I commented on my friend Marnie's blog - Gingersnaps with Tea - and she responded by sending me a lovely gift of sock yarn. The day it arrived happened to be one of "those" days, in the middle of one of "those" weeks. I'd been feeling both run down and blue, and altogether quite done in. Then I opened this bit of delight:

From MeanBean, this is "Broad Bean" Exclusively for Woolgirl Alice Sock Club Members. There is a really lovely zippered project bag featuring Alice and the Mad Hatter's tea party. Inside are two skeins of Shibui Knits Sock in colour 7347, which is a mix of light creamy taupy browns and pale blue. There was also a very pretty beaded stitch marker. I've never knit with Shibui sock yarn, and am quite looking forward to making something nice with this. It is so soft and lovely, both in hand and in colour, that I may go with a scarf pattern instead of socks...  Thank you Marnie, you are wonderful and thoughtful and generous!

Then just this week, and despite rotating national postal strikes, another package arrived in the mail. This one from the Guerilla Knitter herself. Last time I wrote, I was pining for a simple, lightweight cardigan. Several suggestions appeared in the comments, all of which were lovely in their own ways, but none really worked with my stash. Then I opened the mail and found this:

Three skeins of Americo Yarns: Cotton Flame in colour #K224. This picture is fairly true to colour - it's a soft mid grey-blue. It just happens to be the perfect amount of yarn for a perfect light summer cardigan. I'll be casting on Amiga this weekend.  Thank you Beryl - you have a generous heart and I'm blessed by your friendship.

 

 

 

Just because I have the close ups, and I know you want another look at these beautiful yarns...

 

Now, it's time to find some needles....

What to do?

I've been working my old lady hands pretty hard lately and haven't really been knitting. I finished the Sunrise shawl a while ago, and gave it to a friend for her birthday.

I've sort of been kinda knitting a row here and there on the neverending green Lost socks.

I've even been spinning  a few yards at a time on my drop spindle, which is cool.

But I need a new project. Something fun that will overcome these knitting blahs.

I want a lightweight cardigan that I can throw on in chilly mornings or evenings, that looks pretty enough to wear out in public, but that isn't so complicated that I'll never finish.

The stash has some KP Andean Silk in chocolate brown - lovely, worsted weight - and enough for a cardigan. There's also a pile of Patons Classic Wool in a light grey - but that just feels like winter to me. KP has a sale on... unless Canada Post goes on strike which would make ordering yarn kinda pointless.

I dunno. But about 25 knitters a day read this blog - or drop in from Ravelry to check out my free patterns. (Which, by the way, I'd love know know if you actually knit anything with them.) I wonder if anyone out there has an idea for a cardigan with a little interest and a lot of style. I'd love to hear your ideas.

 

Old Lady Hands

My middle son has recently become fond of pointing out my hands. He looks at them, shakes his head, and comments, "Mom, you have old lady hands." I smile, look at my hands, and see my mother's as I remember having the same thought about hers.

I loved my mother's hands. There wasn't anything particularly pretty about them. Like mine, they had faded freckles, the faint scars of knife and grater nicks, a tracing of dark veins across the back, and tendons that moved like second fingers beneath softly wrinkled skin. My mother's hands were strong. She was raised on a farm, learned to cook by feeding threshing crews in the depression, and fed a family on food she bought in bulk from farmers, then peeled, blanched and froze herself. I grew up watching those hands knead bread dough and fashion loaves in movements so quick I couldn't quite follow along. Her hands cleaned, cooked, baked, washed, and soothed all day, every day. I remember the strength in her hands. Mom golfed too - and had a vise grip that felt like it could stack your knuckles up on top of each other effortlessly as she continued her conversation without missing a beat and told you to STOP now, without a single word. I smile again, knowing that I do the same thing when my children misbehave.

I look at my own hands and can see the age there. The skin is not so elastic and smooth as it once was, and I suppose that is what my son notices, but these hands are strong. My own hands have cradled the delicate lives of my tiny newborns and soothed their hurts, body and soul, throughout those lives. At 10 these hands, chubbier and less sure, learned to throw a loop around a needle and create fabric from sticks and string. My mother's hands taught me that. I quickly surpassed her skill though because, for her, knitting was a task to be completed as effeciently as possible but for me it was a creative pleasure to be savoured. It didn't take long before my hands knit for hers. Still, I do have the last thing she did knit - an acrylic cardigan made for my father. My hands can do all that my mother's hands could do. They have baked, cooked, cleaned, sewed, knitted, washed, swept, vacuumed, wiped, and soothed since childhood.

I look at my fingers. Short and stubby, bereft now of their acrylic nails, they are my father's fingers. So much of what his hands could do, mine have done. Drywall and mud, cutting in and painting, hammering, sawing, building, fixing, mowing lawns and trimming branches. My dad taught me to re-finish furniture when I was a teen. I loved to reveal the beautiful wood buried beneath layers of paint and spent hours in the garage hand-sanding a piece to satin smoothness. I learned to splice wires when I learned to cut the lawn with his electric mower, and cut the power cord in the process. Dad taught me to paint with him. I remember the cramps in my hands from holding a 4" brush just so and carefully cutting in for him to save him from climbing the ladder. Working with my Dad; watching his craftsman hands smoothing plaster with three strokes of his broadknife, sanding, rolling a coat of paint on a wall, hanging wall paper or whatever it was are some of my happiest memories. He taught me the pride of a job well done, and gave my hands new and lifelong skills. Remembering his hands holding my newborns with such gentleness makes my breath catch in my throat. I wonder if they remember holding his hands as they took their first steps.

Mom and Dad never saw my hands on the wheel of a race car, or grinding out welds with sparks flying. I like to think Dad would have been impressed when my hands learned to use a wet saw and to set tiles. Mom would have relished the cozy handknits my hands would have made for her and would have watched, with some pride, as my hands prepared a delicious meal.

Yes son, I have old lady hands. I earned them, and I'm very proud of them.

A little crafty

My daughter and I sat together the other night and made these.

          

Simple but pretty little stitch markers made from some beads and the semi-precious stones from a broken chakra bracelet I wore out. Perhaps they'll bring good knitting karma?

(oh, and about those pictures. I suck at Paint. I can open the program and that's about as far as I get. Inevitably the image is ginormous, far too big to actually work with, and I don't know how to make it small enough that I can see what I'm doing so that I could just crop the image so you can see bigger stitchmarkers and less table. I spent a frustrating hour getting to exactly the same place I did the last time I spent a frustrating hour dealing with this non-intuitive pain-in-the-arse program. )

(I hope my grousing about the stupid paint program doesn't cancel out the knitting karma.)

Thinking spring

Still winter

 

 

 

 

 

Hoar Frost is that pretty white coating of ice crystals that forms when dew or fog freezes on the branches. It's really quite lovely. I think that the sight of sparkling white branches against a bright blue sky is one of the most beautiful sights in winter. 

I took this picture this afternoon. For the record, it's March 25, 2011. I haven't done anything other than upload it. The absence of colour is accurate.

This is spring.

Everything is covered with frost, the sky and ground are the same dull grey colour, and it's been like this every day for a solid week.

There's only one thing to do. 

Snowy Sunday

Today is dull and grey and chilly. There's been a snowfall warning for the last couple of days, which thankfully hasn't yet resulted in more than a few centimetres. Friday though, was bright and sunny and warm enough that the melting snow was creating running streams through the gutters. Frog and I took our dogs for a walk down in the park. The chickadees are flitting about all over the place, and I saw a pileated woodpecker. Not that long ago I saw a blue-jay, and a jeuvenile eagle. I've seen flocks of cedar waxwings laying devastation to leftover crabapple trees. The hares are starting to turn brown again and the whole neighbourhood is starting to smell vaguely of poop. (Come on... You know that special spring smell... when all the dog poop starts to melt out of the yards after being frozen in all winter) No robins yet, but spring is on the way. 

Here's proof

Baby pussy willows, still in their jackets, but just waiting to come out. 

 

March is a challenging month for me. The school year has a rhythm to it, and March is a crescendo. I had a stomach flu that took me out for a while early in the month and put me behind schedule, then everything started to pile up. Anyway, it's been a month of very long hours, nights and weekends, and I'm exhausted. 

I managed to finish a sock (just for you Bryony). 

This is Cider Moon Icicle (sorry, no link cuz you can't get it anymore) in "Lost".... all sorts of beautiful jungle greens.

This yarn is dyed in very short segments and I think it's the first time in a very long time that I've used a skein of hand-dyed yarn that didn't pool. I love that it looks like all the shadows and shades in the forest.

This yarn did not want to be a fancy sock. I think it was rather reluctant to be a sock at all. 

72 stitches on 2 x 2.0mm KP circulars

2x2 rib, with a mistake that makes 1 rib of 4knits appear exactly opposite 1 rib of 4 purls.I've cleverly disguised them as a "design feature" but placing the 4K front and centre all the way down the leg/foot, and the 4P down the back of the leg. You can't even see it with this picture, but I'll show it to you when I finish the pair.

Somehow I accidentally knit in a yarn over on the sole - see the hole - and couldn't  be bothered to fix it. When the other one's done I'll just weave it closed on the inside.

Speaking of the other one, I'm going to donate most of the remainder of this dreary day to green.

mmmm bacon day

Today is International Women's Day.

It is also Fat Tuesday.

It is not International Fat Women's Day (but I have no doubt there is a card company out there who'd love to make that a holiday and is willing to work with the flower people and the diet people to make that happen)

I think we should celebrate these two special events together!

How does crispy bacon, dipped in molten dark chocolate, with a glass of wine sound?