16 October 2011: My next Etsy project for “A” will be made from Cotton Ease Seaspray yarn, and will be a shawl 5 feet square. Garter stitch (knit every row), using 6mm needles and 60 inch cable. The needle tips are interchangeable; they can be screwed onto and off of longer plastic cable, which allows for larger projects. I got the yarn from Georganne (my Yarn Lady!) at http://www.banyantreeyarns.com, and the supplies from http://www.p2tog.com, which sells not only yarn, but accessories as well.
This is a LOT of yarn...
This is the first time I’ll be using interchangeable needle tips, so I had to start a conversation with the owner, Shiela Dixon, on Etsy, for pointers. She’s fabulous! Stay tuned for my interview with her in an upcoming post!
Hopefully, “A” will love the shawl!
17 November 2011: I managed to untangle the thing and it’s coming along nicely. I had to restart it three times.
4 December 2011: Here are some new pictures, with stitch markers made by Shiela Dixon.
27 December 2011: The shawl is slowly growing. Because I’m really sick now with what we suspect is shunt overdrainage (low intracranial pressure), there are very few days when I feel like knitting, so it’s coming along more slowly than I would like. I’ll get there. I’m scheduled to have ICP monitoring done in January, and I’m going to take this to the hospital with me to work on it. I’ve been picking the brains (ha-ha…) of people I know on Facebook who have had this procedure done because I’ve never had it, and they say it is not painful (the monitor is placed under a general anesthetic), but when it is in for 48 hours, it gets very boring, especially in the cases where the patient isn’t allowed to move around much. So, for sure I’m taking knitting to the hospital, and my Kindle as well. If the ward allows it, I’ll take my laptop so I can watch movies on it. With luck, they may even let me have internet. When my friend Alexa (aleha ha-shalom) was in hospital and had ICP monitoring as part of her treatment, she had internet and updated it constantly. Whether or not Internet is allowed on the ward depends on the hospital, the ward, and what’s going on in the ward; if wireless would interfere with any equipment (such as telemetry for epilepsy), then it’s probably not allowed. It would be particularly helpful to have Internet because Google Calendar is how I keep track of how much medication I take. However, my backup plan is to get a nice journal from Paperchase.
My pre-operative appointment is this Thursday, December 29, at the ungodly hour of 0815h. Can I persuade my husband to take us to McDonalds for ten cups of coffee or tea breakfast? If we don’t get a date for the surgery within 2 weeks after that, when we’re to phone my neurosurgeon’s nurse, arrive at their homes with torches and pitchforks and a lynch mob, and start bugging her.
18 January 2012: We have heard nothing from the neurosurgeon. Today while knitting the shawl, I’m reviewing simple algebraic equations and watching a video about them on Khan Academy.
10 February 2012: Posts tend to cross over, so here’s the latest: I have a date for my surgery (17 February), and I took a picture of the Seaspray Shawl on 7 February.
It's getting longer!
Would anyone be interested in buying a copy of this shawl from my Etsy shop? I’ll gladly make another once this one (a custom order) is finished. Lion Brand Cotton Ease yarn is so pleasant to work with and comes in 22 colours!
15 February 2012: The replacement cables have arrived!
