Chitchat and the occasional in-depth analysis about fiber, knitting, spinning, crochet, cooking, feminism, self-image, and a modicum of personal blathering.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

alive, not kicking

quick version, i had a fall at bowling on the the 17th. my left tibia has a plateau fracture that was repaired on the 24th, after an emergency surgery and a followup to save my leg from compartment syndrome. i'm still in the hospital and in a lot of pain and on a lot of meds. no weight on this leg for three months minimum.

will update again when i can type better. just wanted to post a sort of granny weatherwax "i aten't dead" sort of thing. I'm in UPMC Presbyterian Hospital room g1022 for now.

a friend loaned me his laptop today but it's my first laptop experience. not as easy as it looks.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart

Today is Melissa's birthday. She would have been 44 years old.

I miss her every day. I think about her every day. I try not to spend time regretting the wasted years, regretting that we didn't make better use of the time we had... we did the best we could, just like everyone does.

But I miss her so much. Sometimes it just fills my heart up and there's no room for anything but the hurt.

Anyway, she loved this song. She liked when I played it on the flute, or sang it for her. This is about all I can manage today.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Hotels are superstitious places.

I'm doing computer stuff while listening to "The Shining" audiobook. It's hard to concentrate on the book and what I'm doing at the same time but it's a new thing, I'm just trying it out.

Went to the doctor's office today. No prognosis yet. She ordered tests. But the good news is that the doctor, a new one in the practice, is amazing. I started off by declining to be weighed. The nurse did not give me any problems with it. But when she took my blood pressure it was really high. The doctor was super nice. She listened to me. She agreed with me about my metabolism being screwed. She did not ONCE say or imply that I should lose weight. No patronizing. No talking down. She’s read Heath at Every Size and size acceptance stuff and is very much OK with it. She said she’s watched her family struggle with weight her whole life. I told her I have accepted that I’m famine-proof and she laughed. We discussed my old back injury, my vertigo, my costochondritis. She re-took my blood pressure and it was much lower. She was in the examining room with me for almost half an hour, which is pretty much unprecedented in doctoring these days. She said we'll move forward after the test results come back. She took a lot of notes, and right where I could see them, not surreptitiously at all.

I hope she never changes.

So, tonight is therapy. We'll see how that goes.

Some knitting progress. The Lovlund sweater is moving along nicely. I'm into the sleeves on the back.
P1081755

It's hard to get a sense of it but I think it's going to be pretty nice.

P1081756

I'm doing a pair of simple cabled mittens.
P1081740

Mostly because I can't find my gloves. Now I can't find my lens cap, either. Life is a challenge sometimes.

The yarn may look familiar, because it's from the Pinwheel Sweater of doomy doom, which is now happily ripped out and converted into wonderful usable yarn. I just could not make it work for me, and I'm not sorry about it. I'm also going to make a long pointy stocking cap that matches the gloves.

Started a pair of socks on new year's day. Monkey, from Knitty. Ingenious design, easy to knit.
P1081745

P1081746

P1081748

Pretty stuff. I got the yarn from a swap on Ravelry. It's Spunky Eclectic Super Sock. Another one of those luxury sock yarns that I'd never buy on my own.

It's hard to tell, but there's progress on the Hundertwalkers.
P1081742
Once I finish these, it's going to be a while before I do socks on size zeros again. Too long.

I also took some photos of some of my favorite christmas presents. I didn't get to photograph my Hines Ward steeler jersey, it's in the wash.

Here's a vase my mom got us.
vase

And a cat she got me.
cat figure

Lena got me a peruvian quena flute.

peruvian quena

You blow like a flute, but through the end, and you have to close off the end with your chin before you blow. It's different, but it sounds very nice.
quena end

The kids also got me these drums, more decorative than anything. They look nice against the new wall.
indonesian drums

Here's the wall.
accent wall complete

It needs something to hang, but what? No idea. The pictures are getting moved around and rearranged and reevaluated.
the wedding wall

That's our "wedding wall". It's now in the dining room.

Not much else. I'm in a state of transition and who knows where I'll end up.

Monday, January 07, 2008

No longer ridin' on this merry-go-round

Very fast update.

The living room and hall are painted,with a lovely accent wall. The main color is a very very pale orangey cream, best seen in this photo.
finial and photos

the accent wall is green. I don't have a photo of that yet.

The new window treatment hardware is up, and hung with improvised curtains.
curtain rod and finials

Those are actually the old curtains with the tops cut off and hung through the hems until we can get new ones. Better than nothing, our house IS back from the road, but not that far back.

The curtain rods have these awesome finials on them.
finial

And Biscuit approves.

biscuit on piano

It's been a long day. Tomorrow I have stuff to do that prevents me from going to work. So I'll try to do a better update after I'm done with all that.

chilled fig
Figment hopes you'll understand.