Blessed and Messed

I forget whether I frogged that stupid cowl back to the slip knot five times or six now, but I think I’ve got it. Also, cables draw the edges in, and this thing has three of them, one of which is a “double wide,” so I cast on and did the button band with 60 stitches. Then I increased four stitches on each cable on the setup row (that’s the row where you knit what will be cable and purl what will be the background), for a total of 72 stitches. I’ve done one and a half of the cable repeats, and adding in stitches into each cable worked like a charm. That was just the right amount of stitches to add to keep the sides parallel, even though the cable scrunches it. I will remove those 12 stitches in the last row before the buttonhole band.

Another thing I’m going to do is get some 3/4-inch plain buttons, and when I sew on the big buttons, I will sew through to the 3/4-inch buttons so there will be buttons on both sides. The smaller buttons will act as reinforcements and help stabilize the 2-inch buttons. I have the pattern basically written except for the two rows that create the button holes.

This is really not the yarn for cables; cables need a solid color that doesn’t compete for detail, but never mind. This is just really a proof of pattern piece. I may make a concentrated effort to finish it and contribute it to the Christmas auction of that Sekret Klub my mom used to belong to. Our dear friend CK still goes to meetings. I bet she’d take it. Proceeds go to their scholarship fund. Good cause.

One of the things I’m looking forward to now that I’m done with chemo is having my sleep cycles settle back down again. I knock back 100 mg of prednisone, bounce off the walls for two days straight while my brain goes about 90 mph in second gear, and then I crash, burn, and sleep like the dead for about 12-14 hours. My days and nights get all cattywompus and it takes weeks to sort them out again. Before, I didn’t even bother to try to deal with it because I knew there was another cycle coming, but now I can finally level out and be able to stay on an even keel for more than one week out of four. Part of the problem with erratic sleep cycles is that I sleep through when I’m supposed to take my meds. The whole point of taking medications at the times you are supposed to take them is so that you maintain steady levels of the medication in your bloodstream. If I take them late, that causes my blood levels to fluctuate, and that creates problems as well. I don’t usually like regimentation (rather atypical for ASD), but I’m determined to get back on a strict schedule, which is why God gave us alarm clocks.

Another thing I’m looking forward to is having more than three working brain cells at any given time. Past experience tells me that I might be able to get as many as six or eight brain cells back up and working, given time and lots of tuna. Goals. I haz ’em.

In other news, my hair is just now getting long enough that I’ve been waking up with some serious bedhead. We’re talking world class sticky-outy hair. That’s another thing I’m looking forward to. My hair growing out. My hair is so fine, even completely “grey” as it is, that it has to be at least four or five inches long before it has any kind of weight at all, never mind enough to make it hang down.

What’s even more fun is that when I run a brush through it to try to get it to lie down, that gives it a static charge and makes me look like a partially blown dandelion. Sigh.