more of the same

I'd post a picture of my Water Turtles shawl, but what's the point. Look at the prior post and mentally add a few rows. At 481 stitches, a row is taking me a while, especially since I'm trying to limit the knitting time. Yeah, that neck thing again.

Speaking of the neck, at least they've finally figured out why it hurts all the time. When I went to the doctor for my CT scan results, I figured there would be one problem - a spur or something (not that a spur is a minor thing). Instead, I got a three page report that described all the little problems with each little bone and joint in my neck. No major problems with any of them, but lots of little problems.

Moderate degenerative disc disease. Joy. At least I know that the pain is not just in my head; it really is in my neck.

I'm going through a month of physical therapy (twice a week) to strengthen the muscles and increase mobility in my neck. And relieving the pain would be nice. Lots of stretching exercises and the therapist trying to gently remove my head from my shoulders by manually pulling it off. She hasn't managed yet, but I'm sure she'll keep trying.

The most fun is the e-stim - electrical stimulation. She attaches electrodes to either side of my neck and hooks me up to a car battery or something. (I'm pretty sure it's a bit more sophisticated than that.) Another few volts, warden, she's still twitching! (that's almost a quote from Art Buchwald)

The main downside to this whole thing is having to watch the amount of time I spend knitting. Since my work involves a lot of computer time, the stress on the neck is dedicated to that rather than my fun stuff right now. Hopefully, I'll be back in fighting form soon and able to get back into the swing of things.

Pictures of the shawl-in-progress and of my new hermit crab tank (a 20 gallon-long) will eventually appear...

Knitting at last - Water Turtles Shawl

Having more problems with my neck again. Waiting for the results on my CT scan (oh, joy). Maybe we'll finally figure out what's going on...

Haven't been able do much knitting (or much of anything else).

But I have started a shawl from my penny-dyed handspun. Went back to my Wrapped in Comfort shawl book by Alison Jeppson Hyde and have started her Water Turtles Shawl. I actually managed to only completely restart it once, which given my track record with lace is pretty good. I can actually count to 10! That's the design repeat count and I make darn sure that it comes out to 10 each time.

Alison has this pattern rated as Easy which certainly challenging enough for me right now. A big advantage to this pattern - it doesn't have a separate edging and is only a 4 row repeat so I can keep going 'til I run out of yarn. Always a good thing when dealing with handspun. I think I've got about 1200 yards, but that's assuming that I accurately measured the darn stuff when I was making it. I've certainly got enough to make a generously-sized shawl.

The color in the photos is still coming out more blue-gray than the yarn really is. It's more an olive green. I'll try to get better pictures as I progress.

Perhaps I'll be able to post more often now. I'm hoping that work has settled down a bit. We'll see.