Why limit yourself to one picture, when each is as yummy as the next?
Taking pictures of these wonderful plain stockinette socks in Koigu?
Almost as fun as the knitting.
Love these heels!
Can’t wait to wear them.
Oh wait, it’s finally cool enough to wear them today!
There’s only one way to describe the Carrie: crazy. Crazy generous. Crazy surprising. Crazy happymaking. Crazy good to me. And I’m crazy glad to have made such a crazy good friend.
Get well packages are the best. Maybe I should be deathly ill and have surgery more often? Ok, definitely not. Blech. Slowly getting better is no fun either.
Four skeins of yarn, all hand-dyed goodies from Woolgirl, a place that I’m already feeling the magpie urges for. I love the top colorway, which is Union Center Whatnot Sport Yarn, in the Woolgirl colorway. Scrummy! YUMMY. Oh yes, very soon, they’ll be a pair of divine knee-highs. OH YES. MMmmMMMmmmMMMMmm. Maybe Veronik Avery’s spiral boot socks because they call for a sport/dk weight yarn. HmmmMMmmmMMMmmm. I’ll have to think about that.
And the bottom skeins? Are from Sereknity in the sweet tart colorway. As a sign of my high approval of this colorway, which consists of lime green, PINK, and lavender, I already cast on for socks! They will someday very very soon, hopefully by the end of this month, be the May Day socks. Since I’ve only gotten as far as finishing the picot hem cuff of um, sock #1, I might need to pick up my pace on that. You think?
I’m knitting the bigger size socks, but on 2.25mms. The smallest size I can stand to use… HOORAY for finding that size! These, of course, are harder to find than 2mms, but I absolutely can’t use 2mms without pain. Of course. But I’ve got them, I’m knitting with them, and oh yeah, it’s good.
Better now? Yes. Fine? No. Well? No. Getting there. Slowly. So slowly that it is an exercise in not wanting what I don’t have. It took me fifteen months to become as sick as I was, and it required the past week to really understand the level of sick that it was. Funny how that goes. Not so funny, is how sloooooooooooooooooooooooowly I’m improving. But what can you do? But to go with it. So I am.
What do I have now? The abiity to knit on the bus. The ability to smell. The ability to lie down.
What am I still? Weak. Easily tired. Sore. Laden with still-there dissolvable stitches. Stuck in stockinette land.
What have I lost? Twelve pieces of metal. Nine screws, two plates, and a wayward piece of wire that no one knew was there. Sadly, the wire can’t be blamed for my infunktionage, because I was sick for fifteen months, not a decade. Some of the screws are bloody, and there’s some infection on a couple screws and one plate - there’s nothing like visual proof, vindication even, of your very own infected metal.
I’ll never wash them. I’m not sure how long I’ll hang onto them, but for the now, they stay with me.
Because they’re pieces of me, pieces of my body, pieces of my life.
Every day for nine years nine months and four days, I felt these plates, these screws, in my upper jaw. They were always there, a part of the everyday experience. I knew they were there before I was told I had the plates.
And I kind of miss them. Up until I became sick, they didn’t hurt, they were just always there. And I still have them on the left side, but I was always aware of the right plates more. and right now, I’m aware of their absence more than I am of the presence on the left… twisted.
My smile, by the way, is broken.
I can’t smile at all. My left side never recovered from the accident and the first surgery, and I have little use of it, by which I mean, “I’m amazed people never notice, because I can’t really do much with that side at all.” Because? It’s true. Zero frown ability, a tiny bit of upward motion, little sensation, and definitely no way I can chew or smile on that side. My right side has a little more upward motion, no downward motion, and don’t talk to me about solid food.
I wish people wouldn’t say, it’ll get better, you’ll get it all back, because you don’t know that. You don’t know if it will. It never did for my left. I’m not saying I’m upset or worred or obsessed… just saying. I know the costs. I (despite my stunning impatience and crabbiness in the recent past) know how long it takes, and know how sometimes it just doesn’t gel.
But for now? It amuses me that my smile is broken.
You know you’re finally feeling better when you spend time you really should be sleeping being all excited by the prospect of a brown turtleneck sweater, raglan sleeves, ribbed edges, and ribbed sides for shaping. And you didn’t even see it in a magazine. You made it all up by yourself! On a day so hot that the ac was turned on!
As good as new by Monday? Not so much. As good as new by Thursday…. Well, not really, either. But finally feeling better.
I had terrible pain, especially Tuesday and Wednesday. Ever have braces? Then you’ll understand what I mean when I say it felt like I had newly tightened braces right up in my jaw. And a finely honed sense of CRANKY to match.
Eating has been comical. By comical I mean, well…. maybe not that either. The “good” side to eat on is the right side. The left side… well, there’s a reason I eat on the right. With both sides not chewing very well, eating was awkward but tolerable until Tuesday when it became awkward and PAINFUL AS ALL HECK.
Except possibly less restrained, you understand.
Right now I do finally feel better. Really.
I no longer wish to kill the nearest sentinent being, even if it’s teaboy. Teaboy? Yes. The Picasso. The Picasso who is very lucky to be alive after he knocked tea over and soaked through not only the Vogue Knitting spring issue I bought on my birthday but the summer Interweave Knits I got the day of the surgery and of course, found five things I wanted to knit. I…. I was not very happy with him.
Especially when I didn’t find out about it until the next morning and shall we say the magazines are still a finely honed combination of crispy and soggy? Still? And this happened Tuesday? And I’m still kind of pissy about it?
Ahem.
Why couldn’t he have soaked through the Knitter’s magazines instead? Why did I just admit to everyone I owned even um, a plural amount of that magazine?
Ahem.
It hurts to sneeze. It hurts to cough. It hurts to talk. It hurts to eat. It hurts to drink. It hurts to lie down. It hurts to sit up. It hurts to scratch my nose. It hurts. It just plain hurts.
And it hurts to laugh. But laugh I have, through the many comments you wonderful people left me, through the many bad jokes and funny stories Matt has sent me, including this one!
I feel like I should share with you what is arguably the biggest accomplishment of this past week:
Because, dude. EXACTLY.
PS: don’t forget you’ve one 24 more standard hours (whoops, sorry, too much Babylon 5 this past week) to enter my contest!
While yesterday was prolific in terms of emails back and forth, today is much quieter as my chief activities have consisted of taking narcotics ahead of the pain (well controlled, insofar as my chief complaint is soreness) and sleeping. A lot. I’m satisfied with my progress, at least when I’m awake enough to think about it. Thank you everyone for their thoughts and emails. And now back to sleep! To dream of knitting.
I’m at Gramma’s. Made it through the whole thing OK I think. Feels like someone poked metal up my nose, heh. And I have the screws and the crusty looking plates. Tired and very sore and thirsty.
Pain pain pain bad migraine type pain pain pain pain.
But I’m ok.
Anyway. Lots of Fentanyl and Lortab and that feeling as if I’ve had an Egyptian mummification. More pain meds soon. Soup first, if I can choke it down.
Just for what it’s worth, don’t blow your nose postop. The level of pain from that is astounding. I had to blow it because fresh blood was clogging up my nasal passages, but still. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah pain.
I’m very impressed with the amount (and size!) of huge globbles of infection and blood that are leaving. Amazing how much was/is in there. Gross, annoying, nauseating, but amazing. With rivers of blood from my nose every now and then for the entertainment value. I even accidentally ruined a mug of tea with blood from the mouth a little bit ago. Sexy!
I hadn’t thought about the fact I’d basically be instantly acutely sick after the removal but it makes sense I think, and hopefully this is a good thing. Painful and bloody but worth it if it means it all goes away. It’s nice, in a yucky way, that the infection is finally able to escape.
They also found a piece of stray wire in there that may have been a factor. Unknown how much of a factor it was and why it was “stray”. They were surprised by it because it didn’t show up on xray. Broken off? I really don’t know. But I have it, along with everything else they removed.
The surgeon put me on a short megadose cycle of antibiotics, big amounts of germ fighting goodness for four days. The next few days are bound to be dramatic. But the surgeon said I should really feel better by Monday in many ways. I sure hope he’s right!
Because I’m ready.
Today’s the big day. I’m finally having my surgery. While it was only two weeks ago that the surgery was scheduled, I’ve been sick for one year, two months, two weeks, and six days. Not that I was counting.
I sincerely hope that, one month from today, I will be absolutely tiptop. But that’s later. For now, for today, the surgery to remove the infected metal plates in my upper jaw. It’s the first step to getting better.
And what better reason than that for having a contest!
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s the nearly invisible SUPERMEOW! Where does the SUPERMEOW end and the sofa begin? That’s the SUPERMEOW talent!
Matisse the SUPERMEOW is good at many things, including sneezing, being cute, and sleeping in his bowl, but is not good at coming up with haikus. Won’t you help him out?
SUPERMEOW is open to anything, anything at all! Except! SUPERMEOW needs the haiku to include the word SUPERMEOW. And at least one of the following words: sneeze, bowl, smores, toaster, attitude, whine, hair, divine, sofa, white, and/or bowl.
Bonus points if you’re funny.
Prizes? Right here! Don’t want any prizes? Leave a comment anyway. Don’t you want to cheer me up? I know you do!
How to enter? Easy! Leave a comment in which you compose a haiku.
Unlimited entries! Yep. That’s right. The more you haiku, the better chance you have of winning something! One haiku per comment, please!
The contest will run until Friday May 11 at 8:30 AM. Judging will take as long as it takes me to harass my coworkers and the gramma and the catchen into reviewing all the haikus.
Prizes, both awarded and random, will (hopefully) be announced Monday May 14.
Have fun!
Today is the day before the surgery, and I’ll not be near a computer and will have iffy signal on Benkei for the next few days. All the same, I plan to have a contest announced tomorrow, and I hope that everyone has fun with it and enters early and often for it. And I know that the most important thing about a contest is the prize. Or prizes, as the case is here.
So, to whet your appetites, I have ready the following:
A portable radio! I’ve heard that there are people out there who don’t listen to CDs. I’m not one of these people, though… so hey.
Two ounces of Cherry Tree Hill dyed roving.
A skein of hand dyed handspun yarn from Colorado Sandstone Ranch.
A passel of needles in various materials and sizes.
Enough of this lovely yarn to make a Clapotis.
Two lucky people will get plenty of yarn to make this bag:
And the yarncakes pictured above is what they can choose from.
Also!
You could win some hand dyed yarn. Like the one above. Or like this one below:
Winner’s choice, I’ll do custom just for you.
And that’s not all…
I’ll offer the opportunity to do a magazine review with me, any magazine of your choice, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, Vogue, Knitty, Magknits. This will require your using AIM or YIM with me.
Bucket hat kits will also be awarded, and if anyone wants, I could put together some button kits too!
Are these enough prizes to whet your appetite? I hope so! The contest will be announced tomorrow.
I’ve barely been knitting the last two weeks. Never mind reading blogs, keeping up with the world, doing everything on gramma’s checklists she makes for me, performing every duty the catchen want me to do…
All I’ve managed to do every day is sleep, at least ten hours, and nap at work at least a hour a day most days, and get sick a lot. You don’t want to know the details, just that um, I am not good friends with my digestive system. I hate the way medications mess with my body.
I’ve accomplished a few things though. With Tiphanie’s assistance, I’ve chosen a few projects to cast on for, because I am one of those weird knitters who find casting on to be the least fun aspect of any project.
And so I’ve started a few things.
And will someday finish them…
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