The Knitting Curmudgeon has produced the winning entry for the 2006 Bad Taste in Knitting Prize (scroll down her Blog a bit to see it). We’re not even going to interview any more candidates. I propose to nominate the Curmudgeon for a Lifetime Service Award for finding it.

Medical

At my previous orthopedic appt in November, apart from losing my knitting, I was disappointed to be sent away with a come-back-in-four-weeks. Yesterday, to my astonishment, I was discharged. I’m finished; cured. The arm is not as strong or as mobile as it’s going to be (I hope) but it’s doing very nicely. I could see the improvement in the xrays myself. If it were a leg bone, he said, I’d now be walking on it.

For the last eight weeks, after two weeks in plaster, I have been wearing a plastic carapace on my upper arm. Now I’m not. Its removal has increased the comfort and usefulness of the arm no end. He didn’t prescribe physiotherapy – he seemed to think the normal activities of life would gradually take care of things. I’ll make some effort, anyway, to swing the arm around a bit. I can’t comfortably raise it even to shoulder height yet. I can fix up physiotherapy locally if I think I need it, he said – the new Infirmary is a long way away.

So we’ll go to Strathardle tomorrow; the Blog should resume on Tuesday. Discomfort on changing gear, as experienced on the way to the supermarket on Wednesday, is muscular, the nice man said. Gear-changing can’t hurt the bone. My husband was worried about that.

Knitting

I didn’t get as much sock done yesterday as I might have hoped. I was there a long time, but one keeps getting called to move on, from the Initial Waiting Room to the Xray Waiting Room to the Waiting to See an Actual Doctor Waiting Room, with consequent interruption to the smooth onward flow.

But I’m somewhat forrader with the Calcutta Cup sweater, and satisfied, if not overwhelmed with delight, at the current state of things. I will proceed like this, with the pattern distinctly visible, and only small changes as we go along in the colours of pattern and background.

Before and After





This is the fun part of knitting a Fair Isle jumper, just going peacefully round and round. The underarm and more Decisions will arrive all too soon.

Kate, thanks for your comment. Meg recommends using sleeves as a sort of swatch – she claims not to do proper swatches, herself, which is rather endearing. I can’t do that here, since the sleeves are going to be done top-down. I’ll keep on worrying about the size. And the neck. Getting that right is rather important.