Miter Migraines?

Woohoo! I've sewn up the last square. I was actually starting to enjoy the mattress stitch. Those centers are tricky, though. Did my best. That's all I can do.

Here are all six big squares. I won't sew them together until I knit all my miters and decide on the color layout. I'm worried, though. I had two - not one, but two - migraine headaches this weekend. Complete with the funky vision and flashing zigzag lights. Bad ones with the helmet headache that just won't quit, even though I took the prescription stuff. And when I look at this picture, it bothers me. The jags of color are bothering me. Should I have made the colored stripes in my miters line up? Were my migraines triggered by the colors? The patterns remind me of some of those optical illusion pictures that are usually in black and white. Will this blanket give me headaches? I'm worried!And oh . . . look at the backs. They're bad. Tons of ends to weave. Maybe the thought of that is what triggered the migraines.
I'm hope hope hoping that my Baby Surprise Jacket pattern will be in my mailbox tomorrow. I keep looking at pictures of the finished jacket and I can't wait to start it. As soon as the pattern is in my hands, I'm running to the yarn shop to pick out some fun yarn. I love having good things to look forward to. (That sentence bothers me. Not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition. Ooh - reminds me of a funny I found. A quote from Sir Winston Churchill: "From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.")

Anyway, something good to which I will look forward: I'm keeping fingers crossed for good news. Cross them with me, will you? I went for a bone scan today. I've had a dull ache in my left shoulder - clavicle - for a few weeks. As a person who's been treated for breast cancer, I'm advised to report any symptoms that last for more than a week to my doctor. I reported. She sent me for this test. Probably nothing - probably muscular. Just being safe. Breast cancer, when it recurs, can often show up in the bones. Scary for me - but absolutely crazy when I think about the fact that I had chemo, radiation, and Herceptin - 18 months of treatment. How could any little cancer cell still have been lurking? Not possible. To be safe, I had the scan. After the scan, the tech came in and said the radiologist wanted two additional films. Deep breath. Okay. Two more scans. The tech came back. The radiologist wanted x-rays of my clavicle and my ribs. I was scared. Shaking hands and wobbly legs. I asked the tech if the dr. wanted the x-rays because of something seen on the scans. "Just being thorough," she said in a sing-songy voice that she hadn't used before. Crap. I went for the x-rays. "Take a deep breath and hold it. Hold still." Impossible when my teeth were chattering and legs were shaking. One x-ray of the clavicle. One x-ray of the ribs. Wait. X-ray tech came back. The radiologist wanted another film of the ribs. At that point I was ready to throw up on the tech's shoes. I made it through the last breath-holding request, got dressed and was sent on my way with the promise that my dr. would have results in 24-48 hours.

I sat in my car in the parking lot, called my mother, and cried. I'm sure that it's just the medical professionals being thorough, but they have no idea what goes through the patient's mind. They don't realize how much they scare the crap out of a person who has already been given bad news once, and is terrified of getting bad news again.

I called my doctor's office and begged them to try to get results today. They tried, but were unable to. (There's another preposition at the end of a sentence.) The nurse told me that since I'd had a bone scan before radiation, my first scan's results will look very different from this one. She said that radiation does something that makes areas look cloudy on a scan, and they're probably being very careful when comparing this scan to the first one to be sure they don't miss anything. I felt a little better, but I'll feel much better when I hear the doctor say, "It's all good. You're fine. No worries."

Not looking for anyone to feel bad for me. I know I'll be okay. Just keep some fingers crossed - or toes. Don't cross your eyes, though. They'll get stuck that way.

Tackling The Tangled Tails

Did it!

Did this one, too!

Then I did this. I love this!

I love the pink and yellow together. I'm not a pink person, but I think these two colors are so pretty. This miter reminds me of sorbet or sherbet. I want some. Yum.

I'm Not Going To Be Able To Put This Off Much Longer

Finished the miters for the purple and cream square. Here's the progress so far:


I really need to start sewing the miters together. The only one I've sewn so far is the green and cornflower blue square at the bottom left. I hated, hated, hated sewing it up. It was tricky to line up the stripes perfectly and the centers were hard to bring together neatly. But . . . I did it. It's just that it took me FOREVER to do it and I was really stressed out throughout the process. Knitting is relaxing - it's just the finishing that no one warns you about.

I could stop knitting new squares now and finish this as a baby blanket. It seems like it would be a good size, once I crochet a border around the big rectangle. Not sure I'm ready to stop yet, though. We'll see. I might take a break to sew the miters and that will give me time to think. The EZ Baby Surprise Jacket pattern should arrive by then and I can't wait to dig into it. I some time today searching on the internet for pictures of finished BSJs and for tips, and found tons. Kelly also tipped me off to the podcasts on WEBS on which they discuss the pattern and give some help. I downloaded them and listened to a few, so I'm all ready to knit. Thanks, Kelly!

M. slept until 4 PM today. I tried to wake him up several times without success. After he was up for a few hours, he ate a bowl of cereal. A few minutes later, he said, "What was that? Was that my dinner?" Geez. I have no idea. This isn't covered in the Mommy Manual. I told him it was whatever he wanted it to be. "Good," he said, and walked away with a bag of Smartfood popcorn. I'm such a good mother. Gulp.

Look At Me Go

Four more miters knit! I've been able to do two miters a day. This won't be a square - I just got bored with knitting the same colors and wanted to move on to a new set. The green and turquoise were M's choice and I really like them. The colors look so much better in person than they do on my monitor. The purple and cream are okay. Now I have to knit 2 more miters in each of the colorways. Casting on . . .

M-M-Miters

Here are some of the latest miters - unblocked:

Thanks for asking, Sheila. You gave me a push to get the picture up here. As soon as I finish my second baby kimono, I'll spend my knitting time alternating between the miters and this:

It's the tie-front cardigan from Knitting Beyond Scarves by Melissa Leapman. I'm finally getting brave enough to knit a sweater that will fit me. I crocheted a sweater once, and it ended up with elephant trunk sleeves. Such a shame. This time, I'm trying to do everything right. I bought the exact yarn called for in the pattern (Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Brush - Color 1710 a pretty, deep blue) and I even knit a gauge swatch. Imagine that. It's hard for me to force myself to swatch. I just want to get to the knitting project. I think, think, that my gauge is correct. I hope I'm not lying to myself. I want this sweater to fit me.

Here's a picture of the project a little closer up.

I love it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll continue to love as I knit. I find myself very tense as I knit it. That must be because I so want it to come out right and fit me. I usually knit things where gauge is not super-important and size doesn't matter or the intended wearer can grow into it. I'm going to think positively, take a deep breath - or several - and keep knitting.

Mitering Madness . . . Mitering Happiness

I can't believe I ever said "Ugh" about having to knit 79 more miters for the mitered square blanket. I love them! Love. Love. Love. They're beautiful and addictive and here they are.



Slow but steady progress. Love.

Betty, please.

My family and I have been holding our closed fists to our mouths on and off for nearly 27 years saying, "Betty, please. Betty, pick up." Pretending to speak into a microphone the words from an episode of Laverne and Shirley that we'd only seen ONCE. In the many years that have gone by since watching that show, I've never spoken to one person outside of my immediate family who'd seen the Betty, please episode. I'd come to believe that we never actually saw it. Maybe we're all crazy and we made it up together in an attempt to entertain ourselves. Now I have the video evidence that proves we're not crazy. We're just wacky and silly. Last night was the night when everything came together at the right place, at the right time, and led me to the video clip I'd been thinking about and laughing about, for years and years. Thanks to the invention of You Tube and to a fan of old sit-coms, the all-time greatest episode of Laverne and Shirley (dang! You Tube removed it!) is on the screen in front of me. I snorted more than once as I laughed, which for me is the true measure of comedy. It makes me snort. (Please click on the link so that you can watch it and snort, too. I don't want you to feel left out.)

I immediately called my parents and both of my sisters to tell them of the great find, and I emailed the link so that each of them could watch it. I listened on the phone as one of my sisters watched it and laughed, bringing back the memories of our summer of 1981 car trip to Indiana. At every restaurant we visited on the way there and back, one of us would start with the "Betty, please" after a waitress would take our order. You would have thought we would quickly get sick of it, but we didn't. We'd laugh and laugh some more.

This Laverne and Shirley episode was first aired on May 6, 1980. (I didn't always know that fact. My googling turned that up last night.) Laverne and Shirley were working in a diner, with Laverne as the cook, and Shirley as the lone waitress. Rather than call for Shirley when an order is ready, Laverne thinks the name Betty is more dinery and calls, "Betty, please" into the microphone above the grill. It's so silly and hysterically funny. Another great quote from Laverne, after she pours way too much pancake batter onto the grill and it surrounds the other food that's cooking: "Attention. Attention. Lucky lucky! For the next 10 minutes everything comes with pancakes."

I wish I could have watched my father's face as he watched Laverne and Shirley come back to life on his computer screen. I'd love to hear him laugh and to see his face as he stretches out his face and curls his lips around his teeth to try to stop himself from laughing too hard. My mother gets the giggles. My other sister laughs so hard, she cries. Love when she does that.

So this silly episode of an old sit-com not only brings back the laughter brought on by a funny show, but it wakes up the love I have for my family and all of the snortin' good times we've spent together. I'm a lucky girl.

Now how about some knitting?

I finished 2 more of the MDK ballband dishcloths. Promise I'll stop showing these now. That's all. Unless there's a really good one . . .

Here's the first of my miters for the MDK mitered square blanket. Really simple to knit. The whole blanket looks intimidating, but when I read the pattern, I realized it's pretty easy. Now . . . 79 more miters to go. Ugh.