ER trip and helical knitting - again...

This week I only knit on one item (a hat, of course) and couldn't manage to finish it.  

Actually, my plan was to finish it last night, but about 6 1/2 hours ended up being spent in the ER - from around 6pm - 12:30 am.  I realize (unfortunately, from experience) that that is not all that long of a stay in the ER, so I was thankful it wasn't longer.

All is well, but it turns out Hub had a kidney stone, that may or may not still be in there.  Sitting in the waiting room, within a minute or so of asking for prayer from our small group at church, and getting text responses, the nausea and pain dissipated for him, and he's felt fine since.  I believe in both the power of prayer, and the power of endorphins.  And the human body doing the things it was created to do.  Since no medical person had gotten their hands on him up to that point, our Creator gets credit for all of it.  Fortunately, even though Hub was feeling much better by the time they got him into a room, him telling them he felt better didn't keep the ER doctor from ordering images.  

Interestingly, while the CT scan showed the small offending kidney stone on the side that was hurting, it also showed a large stone in the kidney on the other side.  He was told this large stone had probably been there for years, and this isn't exactly uncommon.  Evidently nothing is done about something like that unless it creates trouble at some point.  I guess time will tell on that.  Meanwhile, he's armed with pain meds should the smaller kidney stone still be in there and cause him pain as it makes its way out.  I did pack my knitting, but the chair I had to sit in was so uncomfortable, and I got so cold, I wasn't in the mood.  It was pretty wonderful when the nurse brought me a heated blanket, though.  

We were so glad we stopped at the hospital that is five minutes from our house, rather than drive 25 minutes north where we historically have gone.  Not having to worry about "being in network" is a great aspect of Traditional Medicare.  The ER got busier the longer we were there, and the time passed slowly, but the staff was great.  Hub's nurse was a very friendly retired E-7 Army Sergeant who had been in some dangerous places in her twenty-year career.  He seemed to make her evening when he thanked her for her service, asked her about her experience, and from there on called her Sergeant Kim.

So, that was last night.  I'll, no doubt, finish my hat later today.  I started this one with a double brim again, and decided I wanted striping of some sort above the brim, and to my delight I rediscovered my love for helical knitting.

Yarns are Lion Brand Basic Stitch in Taupe Heather and 

Premier Everyday yarn in Chinchilla

If you're not familiar with helical knitting, you are missing something that is super simple and super satisfying.  It's more fun with multiple colors, but even with just two colors as I am working with here, helical knitting provides just enough interest in the knitting process, and a pretty narrow stripe pattern without continuous joins or jogs. 

If you're new to helical knitting, there are lots of short videos online showing how to make the color changes, but here is a video that is fairly indepth for anyone wanting to understand how knitting this way works:

You can skip to 6:00 minutes in for a demonstration of how to actually start (and continue) helical knitting.

And that's all for today!  Another week and a half of hat knitting and I'll be happy to put this endeavor to rest.