Another bump in the road

Just when you think everything is fine and dandy, something happens to mess up the apple cart! Yes, I have been missing as of late. My 93 year old father caught a bug and things have not been quite the same since. Noro virus is the culprit. After he caught the virus during a terrible outbreak at his assisted living home, he became dehydrated and weak. He fell and was so tangled up in his walker that three CNA's needed to call 911. Needless to say he was taken to the hospital, given fluids and was released back home. He was home approximately 2 hours when he fell for a second time. The next day his doctor sent him back to the hospital because he was so weak. Three days later he was sent to rehab. He is going to lose the tips of two of his fingers on his right hand. He has dry gangrene due to the crushing walker incident. Provided he does not get them infected, the tips should just fall off themselves. It's a ghastly site to behold. My heart aches for him and his progress has been severely hampered by these poor fingers. He's been in rehab now five weeks. Five weeks in a wheel chair. Five weeks of being very dependent. He can walk with his walker, but since he is a fall risk he's restricted. He was given clearance to go from wheel chair to toilet, but fell on Sunday. I really want to get him back home....hopefully the day will come soon, sooner than later...I hope. In the meantime, I've been visiting him everyday. Besides that and taking care of my family I have not been able to do much else. I've pretty much just put my blogging on hold.

Knitting wise I did manage to finish the Lover's Knot blanket in time to give it to my son and his wife on Easter. I was so SICK of it by the end that I was so happy to see it go to it's new home. I embroidered a label. I copied the idea and saying from Rachael. I did write to her for permission first though :)

Keep in mind when looking at the label that it was embroidered by a knitter. I flunked embroidery. It really is a very poor attempt, but the sentiment is there. The piece of fabric is scrap of raw silk that my birth father who was in the navy brought back from Japan after WWII. ( Just to clarify: I never knew him (just all the legends about him) as he passed away when I was 5 months old. The only father I have know is my 93 year old father....I can't even say "step-father" as he has been my Dad since I was 2 years old :) )

Then my next project was a commissioned one! My friend's grandson lost his blanket that I had made for him about five years ago. He has autism and was very, very attached to his blankie,. My friend bought the yarn...he picked it out and I knit it up for him. It's nothing fancy,

but it is soft, very soft. It really made me feel good to know that he loved the original blanket so much that he was very upset when he lost it. They left it behind in a hotel room by mistake and the management didn't even think to save it, but threw it out instead...IMAGINE the thoughtlessness. Now Parker is happy...he has his new blankie :)

I will try to play catch up with my blogging once again, but I may not be too successful at it until Dad get's out of rehab and I feel I no longer need to visit him everyday. It certainly take up any spare time I may have. My knitting has suffered lately as well as my blogging. I'm not really inspired at all to start a new project. The only thing on my needles right now is a baby prayer blanket. That is all I can handle at the moment. Hopefully things will change soon.....maybe once I start visiting blogs again I will feel the need to start another project.


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A cabling necessity

Since I have been working very diligently on my Lover's Knot blanket, I've found to my dismay that many a times my trusty cable needle has become among the missing.  Guess what? On the weekend of Feb 5-7, my knitting calendar pages for that weekend was a pattern that quite possibly would be the answer to my problem.

"Marlyn's Handy Hooker' worked up fast and in no time I thought I had a solution,....but I really wasn't all that crazy about it when I tried it on.

The thought of someone actually seeing me with this thing around my neck made me pick up my crochet hook to try another design...one not so odd looking. Don't get me wrong, it most certainly would do the job it was intended for quite well.

Here is what I came up with:

 I really like this one better on:

 Now I make sure I wear my cable needle pendant when working on my cable blanket. Just a couple more diversions. Now I just have to get going and finish it....I'm getting there slowly :)

happy knitting :)

More neglected dishcloths

I have been very neglectful in showing you the rest of the dishcloths I knit last September - give or take a little bit.

As you probably already know I love trying new patterns, especially dishcloths. They are wonderful to use not only as dishcloths, but washcloths as well. Even more important they make good gifts and are wonderful to have a bunch ready made in case an occasion turns up.

Like this one:

This is the gift package I made up for my daughter-in-law's shower back in October. I wanted her to have another package to open up beside the crockpot and super duper crock-pot cookbook
I gave to her. She was thrilled to open up this package. She loves my dishcolths :)  In addition to my circle cloths I added a few new ones.

Playful Plaid by Solmama:

and Slippery Zig Zag:

which looks great on both sides, here's the back:

For quite some time I have been wanting to try some of Solmama's patterns. I was not satisfied after the first two, so I had to keep trying them. The next one I tried was the Greek Key cloth:

and the Harmonic Mosaic Cloth:

She still has more that I haven't tried, so be sure and check her blog out.

Knitting all of these mosaic slipped stitch cloth then inspired me to try a couple more slipped stitched cloths of my own:

I really had fun knitting these. I do love my slip stitch cloths!



Then last but not least is also another one that I've seen around for a long time, but had never tried until recently....the Chinese Waves cloth:

Now you can see I really was busy back then even though I wasn't blogging regularly!

Happy Knitting :)