Hanging On Til Friday

We went to the Spine Institute Tuesday. Apparently, Mom’s MRI showed a disk protrusion between her second and third lumbar vertebrae (L2-L3) which was pinching the nerve and the pain specialist thinks that is the cause of her pain. (At age 96, she is not a surgical candidate.) So, on the 9th, which is Friday week, she will have a nerve block to that nerve under sedation. I’m hoping this is the spot and she gets good pain relief. I’m also hoping that she is a candidate for a TENS unit, because nerve blocks are only temporary. Her pain will recur and require another session of sedation and a nerve injection.

In the knitting knews, I mentioned I got some Malabrigo Worsted in the colorway “Indigo,” all of which is now caked up.

I have no self discipline apparently, because my resolve not to start a new shawl until I finish one of the four I’m working on lasted about two days. I’ve since written a pattern, put about a day’s work into it, frogged it, re-written the pattern, and restarted it.

This was the original pattern and, as you can see, I got pretty far along on it. But I didn’t like the way the increases were working. The middle and bottom “rays” were starting to curve downward, and ça ne se fait pas. So I frogged that sucker and recaked the yarn, dropped back and punted.

The new pattern keeps the Turkish cast on (as tricky and fiddly as it is, I prefer it to using a garter tab) as well as the sl1 wyif, k1 edging, but instead of the lattice lace, I used more of a “ladder” lace worked over 5 stitches (RS: p2tog, yo, k1, yo, p2tog; WS: k2, p1, k2.) The lattice lace is worked over 4 stitches and I don’t like 4’s. This “ladder” lace is worked over 5 stitches. It is the center part of a “ray” that is worked over 9 stitches.

I like 3’s and 9’s a lot better than I like 4’s. (I’m on the spectrum; I’m allowed to be quirky.)

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Old pattern on the left, with four-stitch rays, versus new “ray” pattern with 9 stitches.

I haven’t decided whether I’ll put the band of stockinette stitch at intervals or not. I’m calling this shawl “Smuggler’s Moon” — smugglers like the dark of the moon, preferring to carry out their clandestine activities when the lack of moonlight makes them more difficult to spot.

The Malabrigo Worsted is a single-ply yarn, and it is a dream to work with. I’ll be interested to see how it blocks up. I’m trying to shoehorn a felt pressing mat into the budget to use for blocking things knitted with acrylic yarn. The acrylic items I’ve blocked before (baby clothes) were small and I could use an ironing board with them, but for large items like shawls, I’m going to need my banquet table, which is hard plastic, and I need a felt pressing pad to put over it to protect it from the heat.

This afternoon, my friend KC and I are going over to Mom’s and spend the afternoon chatting with her and knitting. My mom is pretty much housebound as she can’t drive because there’s no way she could get her walker in and out of the car by herself, and being on her feet exacerbates her pain. She’s ok as long as she’s sitting, reclining, or lying flat, but when she gets up and walks about, her pain really kicks in. She’s not into reading. She doesn’t watch anything on TV but sports or game shows (she has trouble following dialog because of her hearing loss), and bless her, she’s bored silly. So my friend and I are going over to keep her company for the afternoon.

I usually get my bread in boules rather than the usual square loaves, and boule slices are hemicircular and much wider than slices from a square loaf. They wouldn’t fit in the toaster I had, so I got this long-slot toaster for Christmas.

The loaf these slices came from were smaller than the standard bakery loaf. A bit of toaster overkill . . . This toast and some chicken salad became a delightful sandwich for last night’s supper.