Happy New Year! I know it's belated, but I decided that February 1 would be my mulligan on the New Year. 2013 didn't exactly start well for me. I'll put more about that at the bottom. It was pretty nasty.
The title of this post has a double meaning. The first relates to the health problems I experienced at the beginning of the year, which knocked me on my ass and literally put me out of commission. The second meaning relates to my latest commission and having finished it just in the nick of time.
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| Emily: 1; PB&J: 0 |
Before I get into the commissions, I do want to celebrate the fact that I finally finished my
PB&J socks. They had been on the needles for over a year. I finished one sock over Thanksgiving, then promptly started on the second. Being sick for the first few weeks of the new year really helped me get the socks finished. I'm extremely happy with the way they turned out, but I'm a little disappointed with the yarn. It stretched way too easily when I first wore them (even after blocking) and I'm a little nervous that they won't shrink back into shape. I might have to run some elastic through the cuff if they don't tighten up.
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| Take home hat & ladybug. |
After finishing the socks, I immediately delved into a commission for a friend. One of the girls I worked with at USCIS was expecting a baby and had asked me to recreate some things that she found online. After negotiating some of the patterns (the ones she found were crocheted, so I proffered some knitted versions), and having her pick out the yarn, I was ready to get started. She basically wanted an array of hats, including a "take home" hat for when they went home from the hospital. Since I didn't get these going until I got out of the hospital, it only gave me about three weeks to get everything done. Thankfully, baby knitting is quick and easy because the items are so tiny. I still have one hat to go, but it is less of a critical item as I'm having trouble finding the right shade of orange (it's a hat in school colors...Gator colors).
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| Owl Hat |
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| Bunny Hat |
For now, I've decided to get started on the
Beverly Cardigan kit I ordered from
KnitPicks in the fall. It's alpaca lace, which was a little daunting at first, but it's held double, which makes it go faster. It's going to be so soft and warm. I'm still only about 1/8 of the way there, but I think I'll probably get it finished soon.
Of course, I've put my Yankees sweater out of sight and out of mind. I know where it is, but I don't look at it much so it's not getting the attention it needs. Maybe once baseball season starts again.....
My January:
On Dec 28, I wound up in the ER with back pain and vomiting. Hooray. Another kidney stone. This one was only 8mm (the one I had last year was 2cm), but still huge given that the average diameter of the ureter is about 4mm. I wound up needing to get it surgically removed. But when the doctor went up to get it, it was nowhere to be found. But there was a lot of swelling and infection, so he put a stent in. The next day, I experienced the worst pain I've ever had. I battled with it through the first weekend of January, until Monday when my mom finally insisted on taking me back to the ER. Of course, it was the busiest day the ER had ever had because of the massive flu outbreak, but I finally made it into an ER bed and, after 8 hours, a CT scan. Turns out the stone had gone back up into my kidney, but had dropped back down and was pushing on the stent. Talk about PAIN! They weren't going to be able to do anything about it until the following Wednesday, so I was admitted to the hospital so they could manage the pain with weapons-grade painkillers. They did the sound wave treatment on Wednesday evening, then I had the stent removed the following Friday. I'm not 100% sure that the stone is gone. I need to figure out a time to get back to my urologist and demand an x-ray. That whole experience decimated my paid time off. Then, to add insult to injury, I wound up having a really bad cold toward the end of the month that took me out of commission for a few days. Hence, February 1 was my New Year redo.
