Mothlady

Knitter's revenge and other Christmas presents

I hope you all have enjoyed the holidays. I was still tired after my hospital visit, so I decided to take it easy this year. I wanted to knit socks for mom, so I started the Pomatomus socks with Fleece Artist merino in the colourway Burgundy. It's a wonderful pattern, now I know what all the excitement is about.

I got this far with the first sock when I began to worry that it might not be ideal for mom. You see, she had a bad allergic reaction to a dressing on her leg and it's still bothering her, so the long cuff might irritate the wound. I was also afraid that I might run out of yarn (again!).

I knew she liked the Fuzzyfeet slippers I gave her last Christmas, so much so that she had darned them several times. Being my boring, repetitive self I decided to make her new ones. The floors are quite chilly at her place, so she wears slippers all the time.

Last time they felted almost too much, so I made the cuff 6 inches long (the pattern suggests 3 inches) and the instep even longer this time. Despite all this I giggled hysterically when I took the slippers out of the washing machine: they looked like they would fit a five year old. Severe stretching and tugging ensued, and they turned out quite nice after I'd let them dry on my feet.

The yarn is from stash, some leftover Alaska in green and red.

Back in October Twig asked what my mom was going to do with the Fleece Artist yarn I gave her. Well, now we know :)

I had to use a flash, so the colours are a bit off. The feel of this yarn is wonderful, and the socks are surprisingly warm despite the thinness of the yarn. Thanks, mom!

Here's a long story. Back in summer I bought some cotton-acrylic yarn although I normally wouldn't touch it (I prefer wool). But it was cheap and it reminded me of linen, so I decided to give it a try.

I finished the body of the sweater and it looked okay. The neckline was even stylish. (The pattern can be found here.) So far so good, although the shiny yarn was beginning to get on my nerves. And it always got snagged on my nails and needles.

When I started the sleeves, I began to doubt.

Roadkill octopuses. What on earth was I thinking when I bought this yarn? Still I plugged along. I finished the sleeves and sewed the seams. This is how they looked like.

Nice holes, baby. I got furious and frogged the whole thing.

Here it is in its shiny fugly glory.

But I wasn't done with this yarn just yet. I wanted my revenge. And what's a knitter's revenge? Crochet.

I decided to crochet a thick blanket and toss it on the bathroom floor. That would be my sweet revenge, poetic justice. Because, frankly speaking, this yarn was so horrible that it was only fitting to have it under your feet. No-one would like it. No-one would even touch this thing.

Oh... I see.

Let's just say she got to pick her Christmas present this year.

I also got myself a Christmas present, a swift and a ball winder.

It may be second-hand and old, but boy is this thing fast!

I may have gotten a bit carried away with my new toy.

Tee-hee.

December

"One kind word can warm three winter months." Japanese proverb

Thank you for your comments regarding my last post. I truly appreciate them (even though I don't say it often enough).

I love the winter months, partly because I can use all my woolly garments, but in recent years we haven't had any snow before the end of December or sometimes as late as in January. This winter is no exception, we've had a steady temperature of 5-7 C (41-45 F) and lots of rain. Yesterday I saw a girl who must have been on her way to clubbing with friends. A short fake fur coat, jeans and... Well. Gold sandals. I think she had some sort of socks (which must have been soaking wet because of the rain), but still: gold sandals in a December puddle. Now I've seen everything.

Twig asked what Alice Starmore project I'm considering, and to tell you the truth I've done more than just considered it.

 

(I've finally figured out how to centre pictures and text, hurray!)

This is Aranmor from Aran Knitting. I must have done at least ten swatches before I decided what to do. St. Brigid or Cromarty (that's Rachael's beautiful version of it) would have been my first choices, but I couldn't do them with this yarn. I still might run into trouble with Aranmor because the yarn I'm using is thicker, so I'll be doing the smallest size to get the size I want. Simple, eh? Not really. I'm already having nightmares about a miniature/gigantic/hunchbacked sweater. So it's still very touch-and-go at the moment. I've just switched to larger needles, and it will take a while to see the actual size when the cables start pulling it together. The yarn I'm using is a very dark violet (and a PITA to photograph!), so the cables won't be very prominent. For example, Wendy's white version has very prominent cablework, which I'm trying to avoid because I don't want to look like the Michelin Man when wearing this sweater :)

Oh, and there's this too: I've got exactly 1.2 kilos of this Scottish yarn. It should be enough but you never know, especially when I'm fiddling with the sizes. But I'm having a lot of fun knitting this thing, it's like doing a jigsaw puzzle. At the moment I have six charts I'm working on and just when you think there's no sense in it and you must have done something wrong, you can see the real pattern emerge. It doesn't help much that the colour is so dark, and because I knit in the evenings I can't see any mistakes until the next day.

When things go badly wrong, AKA The Hospital Saga

Yeah, my MS is back with a vengeance. And as a result, all kinds of things happened.

Before

As an amusing side note I'll tell you this first: I started taking ephedrine for the MS fatigue. This is not some sissy pseudoephedrine we're talking about here, this is the stuff that athletes take to enhance their performance. I had heard good things about it from other MS patients, so I was eager to test it. The effect was indeed fairly rapid: I was alert, I could think straight and for the first time in weeks I felt alive. Okay, I admit I got heart palpitations, hand tremors and my better leg started to tap dance, but who cares? I felt good, I could work, I could knit, I almost blogged. Did I mention this stuff is related to amphetamine? LOL. I did a bunch of mental notes like "remember to save some of this stuff for Christmas, re: Christmas mania and knitting", although I was afraid I might end up like Beavis in his Cornholio phase. "I am Cornholio..." But I digress.

But pretty soon I noticed the drug lost its effect, and in fact I was even more tired after taking the pill. I soon found out the reason for this.

My MS relapse was so bad that my neurologist suggested I would check into a hospital for the corticosteroid treatment, which was okay by me because I only had to spend the days there and I could go home for the night. They needed to do some lab tests before I went to the hospital, so a vampire dressed as a nurse punctured three holes in my arms before she could draw enough blood, so I had massive bruises on both arms. The next day I got a call: my blood sugar was 11.5 mmol/l. (It should be less than 6.) This was a new record for me, especially considering I hadn't eaten anything. So my type 2 diabetes (so far treated by diet) was acting up on top of everything else, and that and MS together were making me really tired. But that was just the beginning.

During

So I checked into the hospital which is supposed to be rated as number one in this country. (We'll come back to this later.)

The bulge on the right side of my hand is the intravenous cannula I had for three days. (The half-finished scarf under it is the Besotted scarf.)

I got the first dose of cortisone and everything seemed to be fine, except I was so sleepy I dozed off while waiting for the fluid to drip into my vein. On the second day they checked my blood sugar as a routine measure and it was 23! Cortisone can cause the blood sugar to rise so it was no surprise, but 23 was way too much. Anything above 15 is considered hyperglycemia, so I was passed over to the endocrinology department. This was when things started to go wrong.

They took one blood test and told me to go home for the night, when in fact I should have been given insulin. But the neurologist wanted the endocrinologist to do it, and the endocrinologist thought that the neurologist had done it. So, no insulin at all for me.

The next day I got the third and last dose of cortisone and my blood sugar was a staggering 27. I was feeling of course rather poorly, so they decided to give me six units of insulin. But at the last minute the nurse decided to give only four units because I was a first-timer. Of course it didn't help much because, as the doctor told the nurse, I really should have been given six units. Right. By this time I didn't pay much attention to them because I was so sleepy and dizzy, and I was discharged from the hospital. The only advice I was given was that I should keep a healthy diet. Diet? I was so ill that I couldn't even think of eating! Oh, and did I mention they erased all my info from their superduper computer on the first day? Apparently some secretary had been too eager in pressing the 'yes' key, so everywhere I went I got a blank stare and the words: "Umm,  you don't exist in this country." Yeah, right. They had of course the paper file too, but after it was lost in the hospital mail room the nurse asked me what my cortisone dosage was. As you can see, I was in really good hands.

After

When I got home I was so ill that I knew I needed more than just a diet to get healthy again. I called my doctor who told me to contact a nurse specialized in diabetes. Unfortunately none was available, so I ended up with one who knew next to nothing about diabetes. When I then went to see her on a Friday, she told me that I was supposed to learn how to inject insulin during the weekend - unsupervised. When I told her I would do no such thing, she still insisted on showing me how incredibly easy it was to check your blood sugar with a glucose meter. The thingy had twelve lancets which you use to puncture the skin of the finger, and after using all twelve of them the nurse hadn't been able to prick a hole in my finger. And I was supposed to check my blood sugar with it to decide how much insulin I needed? Uh-huh.

I then started taking diabetes medicine and it took some time to take effect. To tell you the truth I can't remember much about those couple of weeks. When your blood sugar is high enough, you feel awful. Really awful. Awful as in I'm-not-sure-if-I'm-going-to-live-through-this. Awful as in I-never-want-to-knit-again. I turned into a human camel, I couldn't stop drinking water. The scariest part was that I couldn't see. Blurred vision is one symptom of high blood sugar, so when I started knitting again I had to do it mostly by feel. My SO knew the worst was over when he came home and found me playing in an online poker tournament. (600+ players, and guess who won? Woohoo!) I knew the worst was over when I got an uncontrollable urge to start an Alice Starmore project.

I'm still recuperating and I have my good days and bad days, but I'm definitely getting better. The MS relapse is gone and I'm popping diabetes medicine, hoping it's enough. My doctor told me that this "very capable nurse" would call me when it was time to check my blood sugar levels again (as in once a week). Yeah, you guessed right. I'm still waiting for that call. Three cheers to our health care system.