Knitting on Impulse

Would you be concerned?

So let's say you've got a son, 7 years old, and at that delightful stage where he believes his mother to be the most beautiful woman on earth and periodically declares his fervent intent to marry her when he grows up. And it is his birthday and your parents have sent him (among other things) a toy dagger/sword which he loves with the white heat of a thousand suns, a sword that is so legendary in quality and appearance that it deserves a name.

Oedipus. That's what he named it.

Either Rob needs to start sleeping with one eye open, or we should perhaps reconsider the many and varied books of Greek mythology we've purchased over the last year to slake the boy's latest obsessive thirst for knowledge.
 

Consolation

Trying to maintain a sense of humour... to stay grounded - I really hate when the daily routines are completely overthrown. Makes me feel all floaty and uncertain inside. And a misbehaving desktop from which I am extracting (byte by painful byte) a variety of very important folders that do not seem to have been included in the automatic back-up it was supposedly doing all this time.... is the height (or depth) of disruption. Contemplating the computer's replacement and resulting sweet sweet freedom from Vista is some consolation (albeit an expensive one.)

This is another consolation:

 

A wee diversion in Blueberry Skies and Pumpkin Pie. These two skeins of Summit Sock were held back for knots, fell together quite by accident, and have been inseparable for the months that followed. I've been saving them for a treat, and I rather think I deserve one at this point - besides, the Beary Surprise sweater is now too big, and the colourwork portion (in Port) too intricate for lap knitting in the fractured minutes between endless reboots. It reminds me to smile, and restores a smidge of normalcy to the day.

As for the house? I had it under control before (the Olympics) and I'll have it in my grasp again. Just not by tomorrow. Life will go on.

Discombobulated

Olympic/Paralymic mayhem: receding. (That's a heck of a lot of household disorder to... recede back into place, though.)

Personal health: improving, but...

Sleeping: still on the couch, after two weeks. (So that one of us isn't kept up all night by the cough - someone has to function around here.)

Two weeks of seated activity in lieu of dyeing:

Dyeing: has resumed. In a big way. Feels good.

Kids: home sick. Apparently the cough was contagious.

Desktop: making me crazy, in an anxious and WHY NOW-ish sort of way.

Mindless computer-fixing knitting to assuage the feeling of complete and utter time suck:

Laptop: making me slightly less crazy, in a hopeful-but-ripe-for-disappointment manner. (It was supposed to be a three photo post. Also it has eaten the last half of my post three times, now.)

Local WiFi: painfully slow, as compared to cable internet. Not complaining. Much.

Critical deadlines for computer intensive projects: many, and looming.

Number of offspring with a birthday this week: one. (The other is in two weeks.) Party: deferred due to illness.

House: disasterous.

Company coming: Thursday. Odds that the sad, sad squalor of our lives will not be widely reported and remarked upon: slim.

Feeling Better

It is a mixed blessing to know the system from within. Even though I no longer practice, I continue to be intrigued by the contrast between what an illness feels like from inside the patient and how it ranks in the stark and rigorous protocols of EBM (evidenced-based medicine). I don't know what the US system is like, but in Canada, there is a strong push to scientifically define protocols for "best practice" - to question fuzzy anecdotal thinking, conteract the insidious effects of drug company "education",  eliminate the use of antibiotic prescriptions as easy placators of the insistent cold sufferer.

The bottom line is, you can feel really really crappy and still not merit medical intervention by any scientifically objective standard, which is one of the reasons I wait... and wait... to see a physician. Because I'll feel weak and whiney and damn-I-should-have-known-better if I go in and am told my symptoms do not rank on any treatable illness checklists. But it is hard to be objective from inside a miserable body, so I took a chance and kept yesterday's appointment.

After pronouncing my chest "clear" (which means the odds of pneumonia are statistically small or at least, if there is something present, it is minor enough that wait-and-see would be a safe approach), he checked my peak flow. Following multiple admonitions to try harder, it was conceded that there was a minor reduction. 

I got a label: "bronchitis"... which I know perfectly well that studies have shown to be overwhelmingly viral in origin. And then a little inter-physician courtesy... "I guess there could be a secondary bacterial component"... pure fuzzy conjecture, giving me a face-saving option to go for antibiotics. Which I did. He asked my preference, I named it, he wrote the script, and I went home and took it, feeling a little ashamed of myself, but undeniably relieved.

This morning, I feel like a new woman. Still a bit of a nuisance cough, but the night sweats, the paralyzing fatigue and brain fog, the foul crud, the feeling that someone is sitting on my chest.... all gone.

What does that mean? Either I am a hypochondriac with a high degree of susceptibility to the placebo effect... or the checklists have their limitations.

I'm just glad to be feeling better.

So.... needless to say, I didn't get any dyeing done in the last week, but I've got Rob labouring away today at the skeiner to make up some sampler packs, and I will try to put up a few of those over the weekend. And then get back on track with, well... everything. I've been going through email, trying to catch stuff I missed between Olympics and illness, but if you sent me a message somewhere in there that I seemingly blew off, it would sure be great if you would be so kind as to jog my memory! (I'm 99.9% sure all the orders have gone out, but I sometimes set queries aside until my brain was functioning well enough to answer and then... forgot.)

In other news, the sun is shining:

And despite the best excavatory efforts of the dog, my bulbs are coming up:

So life is good.  

Brief Pause For Unwellification

As in... coughing up crud for ten days and getting steadily worse, needing a nap after 15 min at the computer, with resultant steep decline in productivity. Fingers crossed it turns the corner before Thursday, so I can cancel the doctor's appointment and save myself the inevitable humiliation of being told it is "nothing".  (Because when one is/was a doctor, it feels really lame to waste public health care dollars on something that one ought to have known all along was nothing.)

Back soon. Maybe even with knitting. And Paralympic photos courtesy of hubby who is blessedly well and chaperoning school field trips to alpine events.

Eye Candy Friday: Olympic Bobsleigh Edition

Men in tights.  Don't say I didn't warn you!

The Swiss and the Czechs demonstrated the "grim and burly" esthetic to perfection (though the grim part might have been circumstantial):

Like their driving, the German physiques were impeccable:

and Croatia acquitted themselves rather handsomely:

The Italian speedsuits left perhaps too little to the imagination:

And I know I'm biased, but I'm pretty partial to our Canadian boys:

Happy Friday! 
  
   

Sampler Shawl

I promised a mini-shawl pattern waaaaay back when the first fingering sampler packs came out, and I've been working on it, truly I have. 

I generated a multitude of promising ideas, and whipped up all manner of possibilities by the seat of my pants, thereby creating a sizeable pile of partial shawls and abandoned swatches. Finally, I did what I ought to have done in the first place, and set down the baseline requirements: dimensions to optimally combine efficient use of yardage with practical wearability, undulating lines to maximize the dramatic effect of colour changes, intuitive internal logic, and flexibility in yarn requirement (ie. short pattern repeat to allow every scrap of yarn to be used and bind off on any given row). I gave angst-ridden artsy brain the day off, put math brain in gear, and had a viable algorithm in a surprisingly short time.

It is very cute and wearable as is, and I expect will improve considerably with blocking... I think this is the one!

The shawl used up a 6 x 60 yd fingering weight sampler pack, and would also be ideal for a single 100 gm skein of just about any fingering weight yarn, though I suspect it would also be lovely in a larger, 2 skein version. The garter stitch construction and strong graphic lines would be particularly effective for highly variegated yarns.

I'll block it over the next couple of days, and I hope to have at least a beta version of the pattern ready by next week (not to mention some more sampler packs) but that will depend on the state of this sinus headache, which is seriously inhibiting focused computer work. (You know the kind - every time you cough, your eyeballs want to pop right out of their sockets, and you feel all dizzy and foggy like there isn't enough room for your brain? SO not what I needed for getting back up to speed this week.)

Speaking of computer sessions, I have got a nice selection of laceweight reskeined and ready to go, so I will try to photograph and upload them tomorrow... and try out the new newsletter program (just so's you know to expect something that looks a little different).

Nice Guys Don't Finish Last

One of the things that fascinated me most about our behind-the-scenes view of the Olympics was the opportunity to observe the personalities. 

Four man bobsleigh would, at first glance, appear to be all about testosterone and adrenaline - lots of manly shouting and hype at the start, enormous bulging muscles (I might have an eye candy Friday devoted to that) propelling the sled down that first sprint - one could easily assume the sport is driven by aggression and glory.

And yet, the three teams who stood on the podium were piloted by three remarkably similar men: Steve Holcomb (far right) of the US,

the legendary Andre Lange of Germany,

and Canada's own Lyndon Rush. 

 
  
All three are extremely low key, affable, baby-faced teddy-bear types; beloved by their team-mates for their selflessness and leadership qualities. Like many competitors, all three had disappointing runs at various points in the two and four man competitions, but what set them apart was their reaction. Although disappointed, they didn't get angry, throw equipment or yell at the track crew; didn't blame the weather, the track, the circumstances, or anything else external. What they did do was to carefully analyze what went wrong, make a plan, stay focused, and carry it out.

It paid off:

The Paralympic Torch

I still haven't finished the Olympic storytelling, but our computer was acting up for the last several days - crashing every 10 minutes, which wasn't conducive to the longer task of photo formatting and blogging. Now that THAT is sorted... I'm going to interrupt the Olympic narrative for this morning's Paralympic happenings:

The Paralympic torch relay is considerably shorter than its Olympic counterpart, and the torch was lit this morning from a sacred ceremonial fire, "gifted" to the community by the local Squamish and Lil'wat nations. The ceremony took place at the Squamish Lil'wat cultural centre (as it happens, just a couple of blocks from our home.)

After some traditional singing, drumming, and dancing, the fire was blessed by a Lil'wat elder:

 
 
  and the torch was lit:

It was handed off twice,

before being deposited in a safety lantern for the trip up Blackcomb mountain, across the Peak to Peak Gondola, and down Whistler mountain to the Village.

To be honest, I wasn't sure I had the emotional capacity left to be moved by yet another ceremony... but I was. This one was far more intimate than the tens of thousands that greeted the Olympic torch - and all the more special because of the connection I've had over the last couple of years with various elders and members of the Squamish and Lil'wat nations. The opportunity to integrate our local First Nations as proud hosts and citizens, and to begin to understand and incorporate their history and tradition and connection with the land into our community consciousness, has been one of the very best legacies of the Games. 

Perhaps I'll write more about that another day - relations with First Nations communities and the fallout from colonialism has been a passion of mine for decades, and the things that happened in and as a result of the Olympic bid and games here in Whistler and Vancouver are simply breathtaking in terms of the nature and scope of genuine good-will and healing.

   

Irrepressible: Japanese Women's Bobsleigh

Their national bobsleigh program clearly wasn't blessed with abundant funding and support, but their hearts were enormous, and they won ours completely.  The Japanese women set a decisive (albeit unofficial) record for the most crashes in training. Any way you do it, flying down a track on your head at 140 km/h is frightening and painful. It's part of the sport of bobsleigh... at any track... but to do it more than once has reduced some pretty tough men to tears and caused them to withdraw from competition. The Japanese girls dusted themselves off and stood up smiling, every. single. time. Petite, girly, irrepressibly optimistic ... and tough as nails.

Anticipating a rough ride, they used a temporary cowling in training:

and had to make a few repairs along the way:

Things were so shaky, the FIBT (international governing body for the sport) told them they really didn't have the required skill to compete, but if they insisted, they'd have to sign a waiver. Which they did without hesitation, and proceeded to lay down four successful runs in competition, proudly displaying their sled in all its glory.

After every run, they exchanged high fives:

and accepted the wild cheers of the crowd with much bowing and unbridled enthusiasm:

 

The Olympics isn't just about determining the best in the world - at its heart, it's about testing the limits of the human spirit, overcoming overwhelming odds, finding the best that is in you and doing it with grace and style. Manami Hino and Konomi Asazu qualified on all counts.