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.

I gots hats...

With my first  helix knitted hat finished...

This photo shows the colors much more correctly than last week's

I immediately starting making another hat.  While I'm still fascinated with helical knitting, on my way to gathering more colors I noticed a lone skein of pretty ombre yarn that looked like it might just  be perfect for making a hat or two.  With no yarn changes, or any thinking required, I whipped up a second hat fairly quickly:

The pattern for all these hats is Benefaction Hat - a free download from Knit Picks.com

and here is a video tutorial for the Benefaction Hat.  

It might have been a little too easy - as it became a tad boring.  So I decided it was time to try helix knitting again - this time with more than two colors.  Needing some more help with that, I found this video simple and immensely helpful:

Wanting to use up some superwash wool, I gathered the colors I have and started knitting.  I wasn't so sure about the colors I put together, but as they all went round and round the whole thing took on very 1960's vibe. The decade of my childhood.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if my little brother had a striped t-shirt with these exact colors.    I have no idea if anyone else will like it, but I'm kind of diggin' the retro vibe here:

And that was it!  Three hats finished.  I'm sort of itching to start a cross stitch project, but then I see all the crochet WIPS I have hanging around in baskets...  Finish something or start something new?

As I go and contemplate that question, let me leave you a fun video of The Piano Guys.  You've very possibly seen it before, but it's so worth watching again:

~~~~~

Learning something new...

It's always exciting when you learn some thing new, isn't it?  Especially when you find out it's not as hard as you imagined.   A year or so ago I heard about helical knitting (or helix knitting) as a way to create jog-less stripes, but the videos I watched at the time did not make it look easy at all.  So I put the idea aside, figuring that it was just too complicated for the pea-sized part of my brain I've devoted to knitting.

And then recently I was watching a video where Kathryn of Crafternoon Treats talked about learning to do helical knitting.  She said it was easy and she listed some resources.  I was intrigued again, but I ended up moving on to another video before taking note of them.  Having lost track of Kathryn's video, I went looking again for one that would make sense to me.  I specifically wanted to understand how to do helical knitting with only two colors.  

Very Pink Knits has a fairly helpful tutorial for making multi-colored stripes.  But for some reason I could only sort of understand - possibly because while she showed a two- color sample, she ended up doing a tutorial with three colors.  And somehow I couldn't quite translate the information to just two colors.

So I looked some more...  

Finally, it was this video by Jen at JenACKnitwear's that made it click for me.  Oh my goodness!  It is so very simple!  I just couldn't believe that I had avoided trying this for so long.

So...  with that I was off, and now I'm about half-way finished with a hat:

Not only am I enjoying helical knitting, but I'm reminded how much I enjoy the knitting of simple hats!  And now I can do them with jog-less stripes!  I even look forward (at some point) to giving three colors a try now.  Baby steps... 

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Due to some cancellations, it turned out to be kind of a slow week here (which I've actually enjoyed after Thanksgiving week) and it ended up being a perfect time for...  cat sitting!   

After Thanksgiving, all three of our sons went on a road trip together to Florida, and among other things were able to view the SpaceX rocket launch.  We were pretty excited for them, and I was not just a little tickled that we got to care for two grand-cats.  (Yes...  I'm easily amused.)

While, now that the cats are gone and it feels good to clean house today and put things right from "cat proofing", we sure did enjoy them for the last 10 days.  When they weren't sleeping, or chasing each other, or watching birds and squirrels from a window, they were immensely curious about my yarn.  So finally I gave them some of their own to play with.

I know it looks like a fairly small tangle of yarn above, but numerous times they had that little ball of cotton yarn wrapped around the legs of several furniture pieces and under the ottoman or couch.  I couldn't believe how far they could spread a single strand of yarn!

I'm sure it could get old if I had to rewind  balls of yarn all the time, but for the last day or two (since it occurred to me to give it to them) it just made me laugh to discover all the many ways they could take a small ball of yarn and create a crazy maze with it.  It's been so long since we've had a cat - or any furry pet, I'd forgotten how entertaining and sweet they can be.

But let me be clear...  it is really good to have my house back.  lol  My sensibilities about things have changed and while sometimes I think I'd love to have a cat again, at the moment I'm realizing I'm content to just borrow them occasionally.  

But, for today, I'm happy to join my friends who have furbabies and share a few pictures of my grandcats.   😄

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