Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Fuzzy Hats

Winter has finally hit Toronto, and it's almost a relief. Ice rain? Well, at least it's cold out, I guess.










I am celebrating the arrival of the cold and wind and snow by knitting a hat. I am also celebrating getting home from work, taking a lunch break, and watching the traffic report in the morning by knitting a hat. I'm planning to head down to Windsor to visit my family this weekend, and I'd like to give my mum as many hats as I can have ready by then.

Progress, however, is slow ever since I started with a thin, fuzzy acrylic. First, I tried to do a little butterfly-type stitch to make it a bit more interesting. But I was nearing the end of the hat when I realised that

1 - the number of cast on stitches was too high, meaning the hat would be too big. And,

2 - I was screwing up the butterfly stitch, increasing by about 7 stitches every few rounds, making the hat mushroom-like and even bigger.

So, it's been painstakingly frogged and all the little fuzzy mind-melded bits pulled apart and the one big ball is now about five smaller, broken-ended balls. Thankfully, the end is near again.

Coming up, I've got some nice, chunky, solid yarn on big needles. For my sanity.

In chemo-news, it turns out that my mum's body is short on white blood cells, so she's started a series of self-administered injections of neupogen. Hopefully, this will increase the number of white blood cells her body is making, and she can continue with the chemo. Unfortunately, the injections come with their own set of side effects, including bone pain.

Cancer sucks.

Back to knitting.

2 comments:

JRS said...

I'm catching up on my blog reading from all the holiday craziness, and I just found out about your mom! I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm glad to hear that she's doing well with her chemo though. My mom also had to give herself the neuprogen shots and they did help. Best of luck to her, and to you too. If you ever need someone to vent to, feel free, I have an idea what you're going through!

charlotte said...

Hey, I've been there with a pattern/yarn/misreading not working. I hope the next project is a little more rewarding. Have a nice time at home. I hope that your Mom keeps her spirits up.