A few days ago, I put my hand down the side of my seat in the car and then yanked my hand back and hissed. Kidlet asked me if I’d scratched myself on the broken plastic guide thingy for the seatbelt, but I hadn’t – what I’d done was turn the plastic knob to adjust the seat back, and just as my wrist hit a certain position, my entire right hand felt like it was stuck in an electrical socket. That was the biggest of the red flags I’ve been getting over the past couple of months. There’s a tightness and mild loss of sensation running down my right forearm from the elbow to the wrist, tingling in both of my hands, and tightness in my shoulders. More than once in the past few weeks, I’ve dropped something because my right hand has suddenly lost sensation. I know all the signs. Irony? Part of the reason I’m experiencing these symptoms is because I work on people who have these same problems.
I’m doing the best I know how to – stretching, icing, and resting my hands and arms. I haven’t knit or crocheted much in the past several weeks, and when I do, I try to stop every 15 minutes. My workload has eased – the primary at work was out sick for a while, but is back now – so if I keep stretching and icing and resting I should be back to normal in a few weeks. It does foul up my plans to get a bunch of knit/crochet design stuff done in time for the autumn rush, like doing symbol charts and schematics with VectorDesigner, as working on the computer is another activity I have to restrict. I have taken up paddleboarding, but I’ve been careful with that too and it’s good for my shoulders and my balance, so I think I’m okay with doing it once per week (and probably skipping it this week as there’s a shark warning today). If I take care of myself now, I’ll mend faster. I really hope so – because just about everything I do for fun involves the use of my hands. I’ve been reading more, so I have that, at least.
If I seem fairly calm about the situation, it may be because I just paid for kidlet’s airplane tickets home for Christmas. OUCH. Now, that really stung. Next year, I’ll buy them by June 1 at the latest. I also bought my return ticket home – I’ll be going to her college campus with her and I’d booked those tickets over a month ago, but because I’ll be heading to Portland afterwards and flying home from there, I thought I’d wait until I was sure I could take the time to spend a weekend in PDX. If you know of anything going on in PDX this September that you think I’d be interested in, please let me know!
* “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings” as my grandmother used to say
Yes, I was a happy, adorable baby – perhaps the lovingly crocheted baby dress wasn’t the main reason, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
The dress was passed on to my mother by the original owner, and when I outgrew it the dress was passed on to a newer baby, and so I don’t have anything besides these photos to work from. It looks fairly simple – probably started from the yoke in a pattern of chevrons and eyelets with increases built into the chevrons. I think it’s quite likely I could find this pattern or one very much like it in a vintage pattern book or pamphlet if I didn’t feel like working it out for myself, but I have no need for a baby dress at this time, so it can wait.
caoutchouc on the knithappens.com Virtual SNB forum – I can’t seem to log in to the forum, which is why I haven’t gotten back to you – I charted out the increases and I am working on the chart for the decreases.
I’m having some trouble with the stitch legend; the gray squares are the ‘no stitch’ but the legend shows a blank square. I’m also not understanding why the legend has two listings for knit.
The Matilda knit cloche hat pattern is available in the July/August 2008 issue of Frankie magazine!
Australian readers, I do have some kits for sale in my Etsy shop, and the kit includes the Tillie brim option and the Rosie crochet flower pattern.
I have not gotten my copy of the magazine yet, so I’m not sure if it mentions that the cloche hat in the photo has two rows of trim covering the seam, not just one as the pattern calls for.
Blueberry Lemonade
5 cups water
3/4 cup turbinado sugar
1/2 cup light agave nectar
2 1/2 cups lemon/lime/calamansi juice (I’m working with a heap of assorted citrus)
what was supposed to be 1/2 pint fresh blueberries, but I ate some
(bought them at the co-op – expensive! But sweet and flavorful)
Half the water in a small pot with the sugar and blueberries, brought
to boil and then simmered until the blueberries started to pop. Mashed
the blueberries and then added the zest from one lemon to the mix and
let it cool, then strained out the blueberries. Mixed all together and served over ice, garnished with a few more blueberries. It’s a really pretty bright pinky-purple, and I can taste
blueberry, but not as strongly as I’d like to. Next time I think I’ll use frozen blueberries and blend them up with the immersible blender and leave them in the lemonade. I might also use about 1/2 cup – 3/4 cup agave nectar and leave out the sugar (agave nectar is sweeter than cane sugar). I was a little concerned about the taste of the agave, but the light version is very mild.
Yes, yes, I could try making mango lemonade… :P
I used this metric conversion table to figure out the metric version of the recipe, but I did guess a bit at the weights:
1.25 liters water
170 grams turbinado sugar (I don’t know if this goes by another
name overseas – I also see it called raw sugar, although it’s been
processed and isn’t truly raw).
125 ml light agave nectar
560 ml lemon or other tart/sour citrus juice
224 ml blueberries
