Almost busted my A$$

And I mean that literally.

After some weeks of pain and some self-diagnosis I finally visited the doctor earlier this week and determined that while I have not broken anything I have definitely bruised my tailbone (coccydynia is the technical term, in case you care).

Basically I have damaged the soft tissue over and around the bottom of my spine. Nobody can tell me how this happened, or what I should do to avoid doing again. Treatment consists of staying off my tailbone as much as possible and applying ice. Taking anti-inflammatory drugs would help with the pain but I can't take those.

The doctor said if it wasn't better in a couple of months to come back, so we're not looking for a short term fix here.

"Trying to stay off your coccyx" sounds all well and good unless you live in the suburbs and work at a desk job. I need to get one of those cushions with a cutout where the coccyx is, but I haven't done that yet.

Sounds like fun, huh?

Needless to say I'm not getting too much knitting done these days.

Out with the old, in with the...

...nothing.

Life with a family of four in 1,000 square feet is crowded at the best of times. Add in the fact that more than half the family members are pack rats, and it can get ugly.

We are attempting to do something about this. We had a yard sale this morning and we are really trying to get rid of stuff that we no longer need or use.

It feels good to find new homes for things we no longer use, and make better use of what we have because we can get to it (I found a bunch of the kids' games that had been "missing" for a while because the cupboard they were in was completely blocked by stuff).

And while I'm not ready to attempt to go 90 days without buying anything new (I stumbled across a blog of someone who was doing that) I'm definitely working to use up what we have before buying more, whether it be food, toiletries, yarn or fabric.

Punkin and I found five lengths of cloth that she liked here in my boxes of fabric and tomorrow we are going to the store to buy some sewing patterns (Jo-Ann's is having a sale) and make her some new clothes with fabric that's been sitting around for years. I don't know where I'm going to get the time to sew, but I'll do my best.

As the Italian likes to say, "our house weighs less now". It's good.

Knitting update

Hold onto your socks everyone, there's actual knitting content in this here post!



Ene's Shawl by Nancy Bush from Scarf Style. I took a class with Nancy at Stitches and liked the style of the Estonian lace garments she showed us. I was intrigued by the fact that they weren't knit out of superfine yarns - the yarns used were closer to fingering weight than pace weight. I tend to veer toward extremes and have worked with some very fine yarn (although never with cobweb weight, yet) and I wanted to do something a little more moderate.

Yarn used: Jaggerspun 2/8 wool in color maize. I used to do a lot of felting of items that I machine knit, and I have a bunch of cones of this yarn sitting around. I haven't been doing as much machine knitting lately (I don't have big chunks of time available) so I wanted to use some of this yarn for hand knitting. I skeined the yarn onto my niddy-noddy and prewashed it to remove the spinning oil. It bloomed a fair amount in that first wash, and I expect it to bloom more when I was the finished garment.

Needles: size 6 Boye interchangeable aluminum. These have been my workhorse needles for a long time, and while they have their flaws (the cable is stiff, the join isn't great) they usually do the trick. I discovered partway into this project that one of the needles had a rough spot right at the join so I used some very fine grade sandpaper to gently smooth the rough spot and it worked much better.

I'm glad I snapped this progress picture when I did (yesterday morning) because I am now almost done. I just have to graft/bind off the last 16 stitches then it is ready for washing and blocking. This is the first time I have knit a bottom up shawl and it was fun to have the rows go faster and faster as I went along. I started this less than month ago (probably on July 5th or 6th) and it is basically done. July was a pretty bad month and I guess I really worked on this to try to work out some of my stress and fatigue. Who knew how productive stress would make me!

I'm not sure yet who will be the recipient of this garment. In choosing the color I tried to reach outside my normal tendencies in lace knitting (black, grey, white) and I'm not sure how much I would actually wear this color. On the other hand, many of my knitted lace objects are so fine that I'm wary of damaging them and they don't actually get worn that much. I think this would be a very wearable, functional garment. However, Punkin has asked me numerous times to knit her a shawl, and this might be a good match for her - not too big, not too delicate, and a happy, cheerful color. I don't know.

What's next? I don't know yet. I love knitting lace and would be happy to start another project, but I have many unfinished things that I should wrap up. I may try to finish my Ribby Cardi (just needs a zipper) and make some progress on Buddy's Fair Isle cardigan before starting something new.

I realized that I haven't documented our trip to Boston and I don't think I have the brains or energy to do so in a logical, rational way, but I have some photos to share:





Close to the end of our trip we went with the kids and the Italian's aunt (who recently retired after teaching elementary school for 30 years) to Drumlin Farm and we had a wonderful time. We wanted to go on an outing and do something outdoors but this was toward the end of our trip and we were getting tired so we wanted to do something local and modest in scale. Drumlin Farm was perfect. The kids got to see and pet some animals, go on a hay ride, run around outside, and it didn't take all day. It wasn't particularly crowded so the grownups got to enjoy each other's company without being too stressed about losing track of the kids, and the weather was perfect.

The kids were particularly entranced by the pigs, as you can see from the photos above. There were a number of pigs, both big and small, but the one that they couldn't tear themselves away from was the 600 lb. mother pig that was happily sleeping the day away. I think they were awed by her size!