Random Notes

After the SIL shawl sat in a time-out for a little over a week, I am once again knitting on it. I have 20 rows until it’s done. Why this is being the mother of all shawls is beyond me. It’s not the pattern, it’s me. Somehow I can’t count to 24. I also keep blowing the double central decreases. Why I don’t know. The knitting is not hard to read, I just can’t seem to shake the sense of doom I get each time I pick up this shawl.

The Skipper seems to think I have other things on my mind. I went to my oncologist last week and found out that my bone marrow is not making platelets so I have a low volume of platelets. It’s called thrombocytopenia. Why the marrow is not making platelets may be a combo of the radiation treatments and the cancer med I am on. Or it could be that my spleen is destroying them. While they can’t take me off the cancer med, they did pull me off the nsaid they had me on for the pain in my bones. It’s a shame because the nsaid was working pretty well. At the moment, they won’t even let me take a simple aspirin or Tylenol. Still I knit and sketch new designs and dither over the designs I have completed.

I used to like to have a span of time between completing a design and writing it up in good pattern form. It gave me some distance on the design so that when I returned to it again it was with fresh eyes. But these latest designs are sitting and sitting. Every time I think of picking up my notes and writing them up in pattern form something crops up and I have to put it off. This weekend I am locking myself in my work room and getting at least one of the patterns typed up. I also need to take some pictures for the tutorial that will be included in the patter regarding ribbon work on the bonnet. The ribbon work is simple enough, but not many people today know how to hand-sew things neatly. Once hand-sewing skills were the norm, now they are not. I have a friend who tosses a shirt if it looses a button. She owns no needle and thread and wouldn’t know where to start to even try and attach it. How things have changed.

Yarn Rascal still has his eyes on the prized Shetland wool package that is hanging from the closet ceiling out of his reach. I may not be able to hold him at bay much longer. When he breaks into the yarn vault he now stands on his hind legs and howls at the package. Usually this is around the 2 am time of night. I almost broke the package open and gave him a cake of wool last night as he just wouldn’t settle down. But if I do that now, he will just want another one when I start working with it and I only bought one extra for him. I didn’t think it would take me this long to get the Shetland Shawl up and running.

All things in the yard are normal. The buck now has a little harem of does with him. Hank still visits the pond. I haven’t seen the coyote or the mountain lion, but if the deer and the Great Blue Heron are around it’s a pretty good sign that the coyote and the mountain lion aren’t in the area. Oh yes, and the skunks haven’t gone into hibernation yet. Don’t even ask how I know this.