The Local Book Store is Dead!

That title is kind of an overstatement, but still....  I realised today that an institution I have been very fond of is no longer what it used to be and I'm sad.  This has been coming for a long time and I should have realized.  Today was just the day it hit me. 

To put today in context, I need to explain something and it's special enough to put in fancy letters:

Our daughter wrote a novel and today is the official publication date!!!

 David and I are just a wee, tiny bit proud....  😊

In case anyone is reading this and doesn't know our family, I will protect our daughter's privacy by referring to her by her pseudonym, which is Ada Hoffmann.   Her book is called "The Outside". I read an advanced copy of the first couple of chapters and it was about interesting characters in an interesting Sci Fi world and crazy things were happening and I can't wait to find out what will happen next!

So this afternoon we drove over to our local version of a big book chain. 

This store happens to be a new one, part of a renovated section of a local mall.  We used to patronize their old store, which was huge, and there were lots of helpful people in there who wanted to help us find things and get ideas.  I have never forgotten a year when our youngest child was in Grade 8 and we wanted to find him some new books for his birthday.  I wandered into the old store and started browsing the "young adult" section and an employee immediately saw me and asked if she could help me find something.  I told her I was browsing for ideas and she asked a couple of questions about our son and what he'd been reading and she said "oh, if he likes those I bet he'll like...." and started pulling books off the shelves.  I chose several of them and it was a very successful birthday.  That's what book stores are supposed to be like -- a place where you can browse and get suggestions and generally share the love of books.

This new store is less than half of the size of the old one and a great deal of its space was devoted to knick-knacks and cutesy stuff, some of it relating to books and some having nothing to do with books.  It was almost like the bookshelves were afterthoughts.  We ran to the rather small Science Fiction section and looked for the H's.  Not a single copy of this novel or her previous book of short stories.  (It would have been really cool too, because she would have come right after Heinlein!!!)  I thought maybe books didn't always arrive in the stores by the official dates, or maybe we weren't looking in the right place, so we talked to a very bored clerk.  She said basically "oh yeah, I don't know if we're going to stock that".  We said "she's a local author" and she said "we usually don't stock local authors unless they reach out to us".  It was almost like she was stifling a yawn while waiting to go back to selling t-shirts.  She directed us to the little computer where we could order our copies -- just like we could have done from home. 

I'm probably being a little ridiculous about this.  We'll get our copies pretty soon and it will be exciting to read them, and that's what really matters.  I understand that Internet shopping is changing everything and it is a great convenience.  To be perfectly honest, this new book store has been open for months and I'd never been in there before.  Usually we hear about books online or from friends and order them online.  I haven't been supporting local book stores, so I'm part of the problem.  Why should I have expected that that wonderful sort of big book store I remembered would be there waiting for me when I decided to go back?  And maybe with the Internet we don't actually need that kind of great big book store anymore.  Still, I wasn't ready to walk into that store and find something so different from what I had expected.

I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too.  The online "bookstores" make it so much easier to order books by new authors that not every store might carry.  

There is still a little independent book store downtown, run by people who love to read books and help people find good books to read.  We're going to patronize it more in the future and consider ordering books through them instead of from the big names if they get a cut.  Even if their books cost a little more than books from the big box store we would like to do business with a place that offers real service and gives back to the community.

And the good news is that you can still get a copy of Ada's book no matter where you live.  You might have to go online, but it's available everywhere.

Politics (eek!)

I try not to be a very political person, but today I'm making an exception.  I want to make this a general reflection about things that have been going through my head, rather than a specific political rant.  I'm not sure if it will end up making sense to anyone except me, but I need to get this off my chest.

For anybody who reads this and doesn't know, I grew up in the U.S. but have lived in Canada for more than half my life now.  This gives me a bit of a split viewpoint as I follow recent news and provides a lot of interesting material for conversation with my Canadian husband.  History and Civics were never my best subjects in high school, but I'm finding myself able to remember things from those long-ago classes.  I don't have a comprehensive set of details filed in my brain, but I do remember some of the basic principles we talked about at length.

I particularly remember a lot of discussion about "checks and balances".  For non-Americans reading this, the U.S. federal government is divided into three branches -- legislative, executive, and judicial (i.e. Congress, President & Supreme Court).  These checks and balances consist of a lot of rules in the constitution and later amendments, spelling out rules for how these three branches work together.  That includes things that each branch is supposed to do, things each branch is forbidden to do, and ways in which the three interact in both positive and negative ways.  I just found a nice little easy-to-read overview of this at https://bensguide.gpo.gov/j-check-balance. 

Setting aside personal political feelings, I'm reflecting that we're living in "interesting times", seeing a lot of these principles being demonstrated and tested and speculated about.  The president has the right under vaguely defined sorts of circumstances to declare a state of emergency and do an end run around congress to get something done.  The current president is certainly not the first one to do this.  The president has the right to veto bills passed by congress and the congress has the right to override those vetoes if they have a strong enough majority.  (And the Congress is divided into two houses, which sometimes cooperate and sometimes fight like cat & dog.)  The president appoints Supreme Court justices but Congress has to approve those appointments and Congress can impeach justices.  The Supreme Court can "interpret" bills and consider precedents set by presidents and congress.  

The principle behind all this is to spread power evenly between a large number of people so that it's harder to have one person or a small group of people hijack everything.   One can think of it like a three-legged table; when all three legs are working well the legs provide stability and make it harder to tip the table over than if it were balanced on just a single pedestal or two legs.  Or like a responsible adult sitting down with three squabbling children and telling them "you are going to have to find a way to calm down and work things out between you".

If you look at it another way it feels like a recipe for chaos.  Anyone who has tried to get even something small done by a group of people with vastly different opinions and backgrounds knows how difficult and unpleasant this can be.  So much simpler to have a single leader or small, homogeneous group that makes the hard decisions and for everyone to follow them.  But also much more dangerous.  

I remember some discussions about politics with my parents many years ago, agreeing that the ideal form of government might be a benevolent dictator -- someone wise enough to take all the hard decisions off of our hands and save everyone else the hard work of those messy decisions.  But the conversation went on to the obvious question: where do we find one of those? And if we miraculously found the perfect parental figure to lead us all in a perfect way, what happens when he or she dies or wants to retire?  

I'm thinking that the current state of the U.S. is a perfect example of this whole dilemma.  The government is looking like a jigsaw puzzle that just won't fit together into a whole.  Different individuals and groups within it have very different ideas of what is right and what should be done -- not just about immigration but about many other things as well.  It's chaos and it's hard to watch.  We all wish for wisdom and unity in high places.  Although if we examined that wish we would almost certainly find that we have widely different opinions about what wisdom (or even unity) would mean at the present time.

I'm kind of meandering towards a point here.  When power is shared between many people, it can be very messy and inefficient and frustrating and nobody may get exactly what they want.  But when power is concentrated in one person or one small homogeneous group, the risks are obvious.  So as upset as I am to see my country of birth floundering around and in-fighting as they are right now I will take it over the other options.  And I suddenly realised that I've run right back to Winston Churchill, who said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

David and I just happened to finish watching the Ken Burns documentary about the Roosevelts and I was fascinated with FDR's time -- the depression and World War 2 and all of the changes and disagreements in those times. We are living in "interesting times" right now, but there have been interesting times before and there will be again and as long as we have the right to interact and discuss we'll get through it.   History is an extremely messy process and I don't see a way around that.

If anyone reading this doesn't like what I've written, that's OK.  That's what life is about.  We all see it in smaller scales -- in families, workplaces, churches, local organizations, etc.  Sometimes the fighting and disagreements are very hard to take, but they seem to be a necessary part of life.  The most we can hope for is to manage it with some degree of courtesy towards the other points of view.  If you know me personally I'd be happy to talk.  If you've just stumbled onto this page there's a limit to how much online arguing I can manage at the moment, but you still have the right to disagree.

OK, it's time to move from generalities to the current situation.  I've got Trump's speech recording right now and I need to be a big girl and turn on the DVR and watch it from the beginning and find out what is going to happen next in this great drama.  And then try to take deep breaths afterwards as the commentators argue about what it all means and what might happen next.  And remind myself that although North America is going through an extremely difficult time right now  the system is flexible enough that we're not stuck here.  There is potential for compromise and for corrections. 

I Grow Old

I am turning 60 today. For the last week a line from a poem has been going through my head:

“I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

Not sure exactly what that means, but I like it. I take it as permission to stop worrying about conventions and how others might think I should think or dress or act. 

But today I’m thinking more serious thoughts too. Quite frankly, I don’t want to be 60. I didn’t like turning 50 and I dealt with that by not thinking about it much.  Today I really don’t like turning 60 and I’m making myself think about it.  It’s not really fear of death; I believe God will take care of me when I die. But it is a fear of becoming old and sick. It’s a fear of becoming useless and helpless.  Even more than that, it's regret about how much of my life has gone past and how many things there are that I would like to go back and change.  We don't get do-overs.

I often have music running through my head. Sometimes it’s random but sometimes it’s there to tell me something. Today it’s a song we sang in the church in Pittsburgh where David and I were married. I don’t remember all of it, but I remember these three lines:

     “For our life together we celebrate”

     “For the joy and for the pain we celebrate”

     “Celebrate the whole of it”

There is certainly a lot to celebrate about my life so far. I have not experienced the kind of pain and poverty that so many people in the world suffer from. I had good, supportive parents who made sure I got the good education which led to my career.  My husband and I will be celebrating our 35^th wedding anniversary in January. We have three interesting, creative children. And as of just yesterday we have an empty nest!   We belong to a wonderful church community and we have some wonderful friends.  I have done some worthwhile things – teaching, music, and at least some aspects of my parenting.

Still, like every single person in the world my life has included its share of pain. I am experiencing chronic physical pain at the moment and there has been pain in relationships and in my career.  Some of that pain has been of the "shit happens" variety, but  I am also very aware of ways in which I have caused or contributed to some of my own pain and given pain to others.   There is so much I would like to go back and fix. I can celebrate the joy but I don’t feel able to celebrate the pain and my first response is to rebel against this stupid “earworm”.

So I’m focusing on the third line of that song: “Celebrate the whole of it”. It is difficult to see my life so far as a whole instead of a tangle of details, let alone to celebrate it that way.  My decision for today is to take a leap of faith into that line and believe that my life so far, while imperfect, has overall been worth living and worth celebrating.   Instead of mentally replaying all of my failures I’m going to try remember that everyone (not just me) is imperfect and probably trying their best. I’m going to try to remember all of the good things in my life and the fact that God loves me no matter what.  

To celebrate this birthday (and perhaps to rebel against it just a little) I'm going out with my husband and one of my kids to see "Mary Poppins Returns".  Nobody is too old for Mary Poppins!  I loved her when I saw the first movie at the age of 5 and I loved her when I read the books and I can't wait to see this new chapter.  

When I was just about to finish this I got a wonderful text message from my wonderful sister:

                   "Happy Birthday!!! Can't believe one of us is 60!  Thank God it's you!"

I am very thankful for a sister who can make me laugh.  Nothing is as scary or horrible when you find a way to laugh at it.

Another Spritz Cookie Fail!

My mother was a great cook.  When I was a kid she let my sister and me help her, but she never wanted to give up complete control.  She wanted to be near the kitchen to hover and make sure we were doing everything just right.  One thing she made that I really loved was chocolate spritz cookies -- a soft cookie dough pressed through a cookie press to make little shapes.  She made these every year without fail at Christmas time and I loved helping her with them.

Today I remembered something I haven't thought about for decades: an occasion when Mom let me make spritz cookie dough without her help.  I must have been 10 or 11.  It was my turn the next day to bring a snack to a Camp Fire Girl meeting and I convinced her that I could make spritz cookie dough all by myself while she was working and then we could shape and bake the cookies later.  I proudly melted the chocolate and mixed up the dough on my own and set it aside to bake with her that evening.  I felt very proud of myself.

However, when it was time to shape the cookies after dinner we ran into some trouble; the dough wouldn't go smoothly through the cookie press.  Turns out I hadn't melted the chocolate squares quite carefully enough and there were little bits of unmelted chocolate in the dough -- pretty tiny chunks, but not big enough to fit through the little holes in the cookie press disks.  We ended up just shaping the dough by hand into little circles instead and the world went on turning, but in my memory she really gave me a hard time for that mistake.  The first time she trusted me to do a baking chore by myself and I had blown it!  I hadn't thought about that day in decades until today.

I am now quite a few years older than my mother was on the occasion of my memorable Spritz cookie fail.  I am also on some fairly strong pain pills while waiting for a back problem to be fixed.  They work, but they also make me kind of sleepy and absent-minded and lead to silly mistakes.  Still, Christmas isn't Christmas without cookies and today I decided it was the perfect days to make chocolate Spritz cookies.  I mixed up the dough and put it into the cookie press, thinking how nice it was to use the old favorite cookie recipes I remembered from childhood.  And then something else happened that I remembered from childhood: the dough had trouble fitting through the cookie press disks -- tiny little chunks of unmelted chocolate exactly like all those years ago!  I had forgotten to stir the chocolate carefully to make sure it was completely melted before I mixed it into the dough.  I was really mad at myself but started to see the funny side to it too.  Just when we think we're finally grown up we find ourselves regressing to childhood mistakes.  Nobody really grows up; we just like to think we do....

I managed to get a lot of the dough through the press, but many of the cookies are kind of "freckled" or misshapen.  Some bits of the dough wouldn't go through at all and I had to fish those bits out and make little circles by hand.   And you know what?  They aren't beautiful but they still taste good.  Life goes on and we'll have some nice cookies for Christmas.  I guess that's a double lesson from Mom -- strive for the best, but learn from your mistakes and improvise when you have to!

Here's wishing everyone a happy holiday free from cookie disasters, but also a sense of humor to get through the little things that sometimes go wrong.

A BSJ for Baby G

I am all done making the big scarves, mittens and hats for the Seafarers (using big fat yarn and big fat needles).  It was fun and felt rewarding, but after that I felt ready for a smaller project with smaller needles and yarn.

And what better than a baby sweater? This sweater is for Baby G, the daughter of a family friend.  I used the "Baby Surprise Jacket" pattern, by the famous and clever knitting designer Elizabeth Zimmermann.  I have made several of these and it's a pattern I always enjoy coming back to.  The sweaters are fun to make and the finished products are cute.

The "surprise" referred to in the title of this pattern is the fact that the pattern works even though it seems to make no sense at all while you're knitting it.  It's an exercise in faith.  You knit back and forth for 96 rows, making increases and decreases as directed, and it looks like a bunchy old rag.  Then you follow the directions and make a few folds and add a couple of little seams and -- surprise! -- you have a a baby sweater.  It never ceases to amaze me.

Since Baby G's mother is a physicist, I thought she would enjoy an illustration of how this sweater came together.  I have knitted this sweater with variegated yarn many times, but I thought this time I'd make it with four colors of yarn in stripes to make the construction a little clearer.  I like the way it came out.  (Thanks to my husband for taking me yarn shopping and helping me pick out the colors.  I would have gravitated towards bright colors and I think the result would have been a bit garish.  He has a better color sense than I do.  So much for gender stereotypes....)

I changed colors every 8 rows, which means that those 96 rows produced 12 stripes.  I told myself I would take a picture after finishing every stripe and I managed to remember 11 out of 12 times, which is pretty good.   The pictures were taken on a pair of regular-sized placemats, to give you an idea of the scale.


Stripe 1:

Stripe 2:

Stripe 3:

Stripe 4:

Stripe 5:

Stripe 6:

Stripe 7:

Stripe 8: (multiple increases in this stripe are are making a little ruffle at the top so the work no longer sits flat)

Stripe 9: (the ruffles are more noticeable now that there is more fabric on top of the increases)

(forgot to take a picture after stripe 10...)

Stripe 11: (Stripe 10 involved some back-and-forth knitting on the back of the sweater to provide extra space for the diaper bulge.  And you can see that at this point it's really impossible to lay the work out flat.)

Stripe 12 (This is the finished sweater before seaming.)

At this point, my husband suggested that I had knitted a "thnead".  (If you don't know what a thnead is, you need to review your Doctor Seuss.)

But now comes the magical folding step, which needs a video to do it justice:

 

After that, all I had to do was sew up the shoulder seams and add the buttons and it was done!:

 And a view from the back:

Then there was leftover yarn and I couldn't just let that go to waste.  I thought a garter stitch hat with some of the same colors would be a good choice to go with the garter stitch sweater:

I like how it came out, but when it was done I wasn't sure how well it would fit.  Since I had plenty of yarn left, I added a good old stretchy ribbed hat, which is a pretty safe bet.  And I learned a new skill for that: how to change colors in ribbing without those ugly "purl bumps".  Here is a link to the web page where I found this clever trick.  Here's how it looks:

A little odd looking without a head in it, but it will stretch to fit a range of head sizes.

With the little bit  of yarn I still had left over I made striped tube socks, using the same rib+stripe trick: 

And then I added a second pair of tube socks with fingering-weight yarn as well:

I made some DK-weight tube socks for Baby G earlier (in between fingering and worsted weight) and her mom said they worked very well and requested more.  So now she will have a pair in each of three weights of yarn and she can tell me which weight she likes best and I can make a few more in that weight. 

Credit for the tube sock idea: "Genevieve's Tube Socks" from Ravelry, created by one of my favorite knitting podcasters.  The idea is that for a baby who is growing rapidly and not walking yet there's no real reason for shaping a heel into a sock and a simple tube is good enough.  They are also knit in ribbing, so they're really stretchy and won't fall off so easily and will fit the baby through a few growth spurts.  I wish I had heard about these when my kids were small!  They could kick off socks in the blink of an eye.  The design made the socks 11" long and I couldn't quite picture shoving a baby's foot into a sock that long, so I made them a bit shorter (7-8"). 

Finally, here is a picture of everything together:

I hope Baby G and her family enjoy these.  I certainly enjoyed knitting them.

For fellow knitters, I will soon have notes about these projects on Ravelry (marglamb).

MORE Seafarer Knitting

The deadline for the Seafarer contributions was farther in the future than I had thought, so I have continued to knit for them.  One could say that I got just a bit carried away, but it was fun and I hope the things I made will be useful.  It has been a nice project to distract me from my back and sciatic pain, and the items I made were simple enough that I could handle them in spite of the painkillers dulling my mind.

After I made the items I posted about before I was out of chunky weight yarn (#6), but I remembered reading that if you hold two strands of worsted (#4) together it comes out about the same as chunky.  I had a LOT of small balls of leftover worsted as well as several balls of cheap black & white worsted that I bought on sale a while ago thinking they'd eventually be useful -- and they were!

I made one additional scarf with some of the leftovers.  Here are my three completed scarves:

This new scarf was a nice simple project that helped me get used to knitting with two strands held together.  It's not very hard except that it means two balls of yarn at a time to keep track of instead of one, which is occasionally annoying.  But I liked the way the fabric turned out -- thick and cushy and warm just like the chunky yarn.

Even though the new one (the one in the middle) was narrower than the others, it took a lot of yarn to make a stripe and it used up my biggest balls of leftovers.  I decided that another scarf would have to have narrower stripes, which would mean a LOT of ends to weave in on the edges, so that was the last scarf.  Mittens are fussy enough without having to worry about stripes (as I learned with a previous project this fall!).  So I made lots of hats.

I started out with a hat that combined one strand each of two colors:

I was happy with the look of that -- almost like a variegated yarn.  And it was nice and plushy and warm just like the chunky weight hats had been.   It did mean having two balls of yarn bouncing around in my lap instead, but I had done that before with other kinds of projects.

After this hat, I didn't have enough yarn of any colors except black and white to knit even one strand of a whole hat.  (I have little kitchen scale that also is a big help for measuring yarn.  I had no leftover balls that weighed half as much as the hat I just finished, which answered that question easily.)  So I experimented with all sorts of stripes -- fat ones and skinny ones, sometimes in combination with two colors together.   Here are the results:


With stripes of double-stranded colors I was sometimes holding four  balls of yarn in my lap, which meant a significant amount of effort fighting tangles.

One nice benefit of all of these hats is that I became much more comfortable making jogless stripes.  (For non knitters: when you knit in a round you're actually working in a spiral, so when you switch colors you get a funny little "jog" unless you take special pains to avoid it.)  I found this page from the TECHknitting web site to be a real help.

With the bottom right hat I used a different technique -- helix stripes -- to make really skinny stripes.  (another page from TECHknitting).   That's a clever technique that I enjoy, but OMG I had SIX balls of yarn bouncing around at once and there was a lot of time devoted to un-tangling and tangle prevention!  I think from now on I'll reserve helix stripes for times when I'm not also double stranding!

That's the end of what I made for the Seafarers this year, but my donation will include yet another hat.  I made this hat two years ago when I was loom knitting with one hand after my surgery.  For some reason this hat got left out of that donation and I found it recently when I was organizing my yarn.  Here it is:

I enjoyed this hat marathon and I learned another interesting technique while I was doing it.  I ran through almost all of my worsted-weight scraps and wanted to make a few more hats.  I remembered from my reading that three strands of DK weight yarn is approximately the same weight as one strand of chunky. The idea of three skeins of each color going at once was kind of off-putting, but it turns out there's a really cool trick.  For some reason it's called "Navajo chaining" and it works like magic -- only one ball of yarn for each color in your lap and you get three strands at once.  I don't have a link to share for this technique because I had heard of it a while ago and had been meaning to try it, so I didn't have to look it up.  It was actually kind of fun to do.  I have a lot of DK scraps left and I will probably do a lot of Navajo chaining for some Seafarer projects next year!  I ended by making two hats using Navajo chaining.  I am writing this a couple of days after finishing all the hats and I honestly can't remember which hats were made with Navajo chaining and I can't actually tell from a quick look over the hats.  That is an interesting confirmation that knitting with two or three strands together really is equivalent to one strand of a fatter yarn!

Here is a group portrait of all this year's Seafarer projects:

It was a lot of fun to do and I hope these items help keep some people warm on the high seas this winter and beyond.

Now I will go back to much more delicate knitting.  I have been knitting for the baby of a family friend and she is growing like a weed and needs another hat and sweater.  I haven't been blogging about the baby knitting -- just posting on Ravelry -- but I'm enjoying writing about my knitting here so I'll try to start putting all my projects here from now on.

Seafarer Knitting

In just about 10 days I have managed to knit quite a lot for the Seafarer's collection.  I have enjoyed having something like this to do while I'm housebound.  Even if I can't go out much physically it's a way to contribute something to the world.

The grand total (out of 3 Caron Chunky Cakes) is 2 hats, 2 pairs of mittens and 2 scarves.  That feels like a ridiculous amount to have knit in just over a week, but I have a lot of time on my hands and these are fairly simple items made with really big yarn.  I have never actually knit with such big yarn or with such big needles before.  In knitting lingo, I used super bulky (size 6) yarn and 8 mm needles and got 10-11 stitches to 4 inches.  Compared to knitting socks with 2 mm needles and 8-9 stitches to the inch, this was quite a switch. 

This was a good way to create a lot of useful objects so fast, but after doing it I'm not sure I'd want such thick items myself.  The mittens in particular feel a bit clumsy.  Maybe on the windy deck of a ship on a cold ocean the warmth will be worth it.

Caron Chunky Cakes are multi-colored and I like the combination of colors in this one (and in others I saw in the store) but I wish they changed colors more frequently.  It's OK for the scarfs and is probably very pretty for blankets, but a hat didn't take enough yarn to have all five colors on it, and the mittens look kind of silly and don't match.  Still, they will be warm and cozy and I hope the recipients enjoy them.

I intend to make Seafarer knitting an annual thing, but I think if I use super bulky yarn again I will look elsewhere (probably by mail) and buy several colors separately so I can choose how to stripe them.  Or just make solid color stuff. 

I hope these items make a few seafarers' lives a little easier.  I'm almost totally shut in at the moment and it's good to know that I can make some things that will help people far away from people.  It reminds me that I'm still part of the big world.

(If any knitters want details, I will be posting this stuff on Ravelry soon.  My Ravelry id is marglamb.)

This Is My Brain On Drugs

For young ones who might not recognise the reference, "This Is Your Brain on Drugs" was the slogan for a series of anti-drug commercials from back in the 80s, suggesting that illegal drugs will scramble your brain.

While I'm waiting for treatment for the pinched nerve(s) in my back, I am taking some powerful medication (prescribed by my doctor) and it is indeed scrambling my brain.  That's one of the reasons I'm on sick leave; you wouldn't want to hear me try to teach through this haze!  Today I thought I'd share one an example of how this is affecting me.


First, I need to establish that I am an experienced and competent knitter.  Knitting has been a hobby for most of my life.  I can make socks that actually look nice and fit people's feet, and sweaters that people really do wear and enjoy, even when I'm not around.  I can even do "stranded knitting", which means juggling multiple balls of yarn of different colors to make pictures in the knitted fabric.

So when my back started acting up I thought "at least I have a hobby I love that I can do while sitting on my recliner".  And it's true; knitting has been a comfort at this time.  But it has also reinforced just how much the pills are slowing me down.


Recently I saw an item in our church bulletin about collecting things for people in the Merchant Marine.  One of the things they were looking for was knitted hats, mittens and scarves.  Apparently many people working on ships are not well-paid and are in great need of such items when they sail through cold regions of the ocean.  That sounded like a wonderful way to help others at a time when I am stuck at home and not able to do much.  Normally this sort of item is quite easy for me to knit up quickly.

Yesterday David drove me to Michaels to pick up some yarn.  I was looking for some thick yarn in order to make some warm items in a hurry, since the deadline is only a few weeks off.  Luckily they had some BIG cakes of chunky yarn at a reasonable price.

These things are huge -- more than half a pound of yarn each.  The yarn is of the "super bulky" variety, meaning you have to use big needles and you get about 3 stitches per inch.  Perfect for making nice warm stuff in a hurry.  I thought that one cake was probably enough for a hat/mittens/scarf set but decided to buy two.  And then I noticed they were having a "buy 2, get1 free" so I took home 3 cakes.  If I can't use up all three by the deadline I can make more for next year.

This was yesterday morning.  That afternoon I cast on a simple hat -- really just a tube that comes together at the top.  No complicated shaping.  And by the evening I had finished a large-sized adult hat and was feeling pretty pleased with myself:

A nice basic warm hat for someone in need to warmth.  I felt pretty good about that.

This morning right after breakfast I followed up by making a mitten:

I polished that off in just a couple of hours and was extremely pleased with myself.  Mittens are obviously more complicated in shape than hats and so they take more fiddling.  I have a favorite generic mitten pattern that tells you how to make a mitten to fit a particular hand using any kind of yarn.  This was thicker yarn than I had used before and I was aiming for a large adult male hand so I had to estimate up a little from my own hand size.  But I got it all to work and was happy with the result.  I even took careful notes so that I could make a second mitten to match the first.

I took some time off knitting and then picked up my yarn and needles in the later afternoon to make the second mitten.  Now comes the problem.  By this time of the day I've got a lot of pain medication in my system and my brain is mush.  I referred to my notes from the morning and cast on and nothing went right.  I ripped out the first attempt and tried again.  Still it didn't work and I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong.  After several attempts to get more than a few inches of a mitten done without error I gave up in disgust.   After dinner I felt like knitting again but decided to start a scarf instead of trying anything more complicated.  That turned out to be a good decision.  A scarf is basically just a flat rectangle, so no shaping involved.  I chose an extremely simple stitch and got more than a foot of scarf done:

Lesson learned!  While I'm on these pain medications I need to work on simple projects in the evening and save the more interesting stuff for earlier in the day. 

Please don't misunderstand; I am very grateful for these pain pills.  Without them I was spending my time huddled up in a ball and crying with pain.  I will continue taking them faithfully until I get up to the front of the queue for treatment that can actually fix the problem.  But it is a very frustrating process.

Hat & Mittens & Church

Since starting my sick leave I have been devoting a lot of time to knitting.  I just finished a project that I've been meaning to do for ages: a hat and matching pair of mittens.  This is just in time because my favorite hat & mittens got lost at the end of last winter.  But I'd been meaning to make these anyway and it was fun to do.  Here they are:

Working on them helped pass the time as I'm needing to be pretty sedentary because of my back.  I've got lots of yarn left over and am planning to follow these things with a scarf. 

If you're a knitter and want to know about yarn and patterns, I'm marglamb on Ravelry (link).

My pain is less awful since I went on sick leave.  Being quiet really has helped.  But the pain is still a real issue.  I still need to be careful where & how I move and sit and still take the pain pills which make me tired and fuzzy. 

I went to church for the first time in quite a while.  It was really wonderful to be back after so long away!  I stayed away because sitting still in a church pews is torture for people with this kind of back issue -- even worse than most hard, straight chairs.  But our church is very understanding and our pastor encouraged me to feel free to move around and do whatever I needed to to be comfortable.  So I spent part of the service lying down on my yoga mat in the "prayer room" next to the sanctuary.  During another part of the service I stood up and stretched in the hall -- and ran into some old friends who were visiting from our of town with their new baby, who I hadn't gotten to meet yet.  That was a real treat!  And for more of the service I was able to get comfortable sitting sideways on a pew.  It was really good to be back, even if it required some creativity to keep from hurting myself.

Going to church was part of accepting that this back thing is a long-term issue and not just a short illness.  I can't live a completely normal life until it is resolved, but at least I can figure out some ways to do things that are important to me. 

OUCH!

Warning: This turned into a rather long post about my current health status.  You don't have to wade through it all.  Here is an executive summary: I am having serious back problems, I'm on sick leave, it's miserable but it can eventually be treated and fixed.  And in the meantime I'm miserable and grumpy but relieved to be off work for the duration.

I’ve had back pain on and off for years but it has always been manageable until recently. It started to get worse in the spring and I had an MRI, which showed two displaced vertebrae and some mild stenosis. My physio explained to me that both of these things can pinch the nerves around your back, which causes severe pain. My doctor’s office agreed to refer me to KOPI (local pain clinic), where I’m told they have some treatments that can really help this sort of pain, basically by convincing your nerves to shut up. So the outlook is hopeful but the waiting time is 3-6 months.

In July it suddenly escalated to the point where I was in excruciating pain all the time and could hardly walk. I called our doctor, who was unfortunately out of town, and I got an appointment with his locum. The nice young locum listened to my description of the pain and gave me some pills. He gave me a note for Queen’s telling them that I needed to do a lot of my work at home where I could be more comfortable. The pills took the pain from excruciating to only just bearable and the thought of 3-6 months was still pretty difficult. In computer geek terminology, it’s a FIFO (“first-in-first-out”) queue instead of a priority queue. People who hurt worse don’t get in faster. Even with the pills there is a lot of pain and, walking is difficult and so is standing and so is sitting in a regular chair. Something as simple as walking around the block or spending half an hour in an office chair is awful. The only way I’m even moderately comfortable is lying down or sitting in a recliner. And the pills cloud my mind so that mental tasks take twice as long as they should.

It was hard to face the start of school in this shape, especially with a half-mile walk between office and classroom and more walking to get to and from the bus. I explained my predicament to my students and held office hours right after class and then went home and managed everything else by e-mail – siting in my recliner with my laptop. It was really rough, not just because of the pain but because the pills made me so sleepy and forgetful. I felt like I was only barely keeping up and I knew the semester would get busier as it went along.

As I was getting more and more discouraged and miserable last week, my doctor’s office called. The real doctor was back and wanted to know how I was and if I’d like an appointment. Yes, please! He took me much more seriously. He examined me and discovered I have no reflexes in my left leg, which concerned him and scared me. He said “I’m surprised you’re still working” and said that besides the cognitive issues he worried a lot about my walking around campus in the colder weather that’s coming, where the sidewalks are often quite slippery. He referred me to a neurosurgeon, which really scared me until he said “don’t worry, nobody does back surgery any more!” and explained that the neurosurgeon was still the best person to evaluate my condition and make recommendations. He said he hardly ever referred patients to neurosurgeons but it was what I needed. That doctor will be able to see me much sooner than the pain clinic – “only” 1-2 months.

I went home and thought about all this for about 2 seconds and then sent a note to my department head explaining my situation and asking for sick leave. I expected guilt trips and stories about how “everybody has back pain now and then” and how there was no extra professor who could cover my course. But he was very kind and agreed right away that I needed sick leave. He has arranged for a visiting professor to teach my fall course and is also looking for someone to teach my winter course as well since it’s unlikely this will all be resolved before January.

I am at home full-time now and finding I feel much better already from being able to rest and stay in a more comfortable environment. And probably not from worrying about keeping up at work. The pain is still there but it’s bearable when I take it easy and take my pills. I’m still in the process of handing over course material to the new professor, but that will be done within a few more days and then I can rest as much as I need to and the mental fog won’t be such a difficult issue. I have never had to take a long leave from work before and the “Protestant work ethic” inside of me is trying to make me feel guilty, but I just feel grateful. I am enjoying not hurting nearly as much as I had been hurting when I had to be out and about.

I appreciate all the people who have been asking after me and praying for me. It’s not great, but it’s bearable and I have assurances that I will eventually get better. David is taking wonderful care of me. Things could be a lot worse. I’m just praying for patience and for an eventual resolution to all of this that gets me back to a fairly normal life. 

I am trying to practice gratitude.  I am thankful for:

• My recliner
• The pain pills
• My husband and daughter who put up with my complaining about the pain and who help me do things
• The dinners my husband cooks for us in spite of being very busy at his job
• My department head who understood
• Sick leave policy at Queen's.  Some people lose their job when they are sick for a long time
• Knitting
• Books
• Netflix 
• Music to listen to
• Friends who have e-mailed to tell me they miss me from work/church/choir.  I miss you too!

Halloween Weather

I don't have any Tuesday classes, so I worked at home today, tucked up cozy inside our house.  I heard a bit of wind but didn't realize how bad it was until I went out around 3.  The sky was blue and fairly clear in the city, but there were darker skies over Lake Ontario and the wind was really something.  I had to drive down King Street, right along the lake, and I've never seen it like that in the 33 years I've lived in Kingston.  It's not common to see many whitecaps there, but today it looked more like the ocean, or at least a big bay, than a lake.  Great weather for today's holiday, as long as it doesn't blow the younger trick-or-treaters right off of their feet.

I stopped by the Olympic Harbour (the site of the sailing events for the Montreal Olympics in 1967) and walked over the lake.  First, past the protected part with a lot of fancy big boats in drydock:

 but then closer to the open lake:

and since a still picture really couldn't capture the scene I took a short video:

It still can't really convey the feeling of the wind and the spray, but it will give you the idea.

And on my way out, my inner geek couldn't help notice this nice boat with the name of one of my very favorite Sci-Fi TV shows on it.  Can't stop the signal!

When I got home I looked up the official Kingston weather and it said the temperature at 3 p.m. was "9 C, feels like 4" (translates to 48 F, windchill 39), winds 46 km/h (28 mph) with gusts to 61 km/h (37 mph).  Fun to experience for a little while, but I'm very content to be back in our nice cozy house now.

Happy Halloween!

Julie Payette

Canada's 29th Governor General, Julie Payette, was sworn in yesterday.  If someone's reading this from outside Canada and wondering what a Governor General is, she's the Queen's official representative in Canada.  (More details here if you're interested.)  This is always a big occasion, with lots of pomp and ceremony, but our family is especially interested this time because we had a small but memorable encounter with Julie many years ago that is a special memory for us.  I thought today was a good day to share it here.

When our daughter Carolyn was little she was enthralled with outer space. It started when she would draw the common sort of childhood crayon pictures containing houses and trees and a sun up in the sky. She started asking us what else could put in the sky and we suggested clouds or the moon and she demanded even more ideas. So David started telling her about stars and planets and she was fascinated. In no time at all she could list all nine planets (yes, Pluto was a planet back then!) in their correct order going out from the sun. She devoured all of the astronomy books in the children's section of the library. She could tell you which planet had rings and which had the big red spot and which ones had moons and all sorts of other fun facts. And she told everyone that she was going to be an astronaut someday.

When Carolyn was 6 or 7, there was big news: Julie Payette, a real-live astronaut, was going to visit Queen's University and her visit would include a talk for the general public. We marked it on our calendar and waited with great anticipation. David graciously allowed me to be the parental escort and he stayed home with Valerie and Ian, who were not old enough to appreciate the event.   Carolyn put on her favorite dress and we arrived quite early to make sure we got good seats. As it happened, we were some of the first people there and had our choice of seats in the large hall. Carolyn decided she wanted to sit in the very first row to make sure she wouldn't have any tall grown-ups in front of her, so we ended up right under Julie's nose as she spoke.

Julie was cute and funny and informative and a truly wonderful speaker. She told us a lot about the space program and also about her history and how she came to be an astronaut. She was inspirational and interesting and also a lot of fun. She showed us beautiful pictures of space and the space shuttle. She talked about learning to fly a plane. And especially for the children in the audience, she told us how you go to the bathroom in space. (The key point was “there are some things you DO NOT want floating around in zero gravity!”) She managed to be very informative and still quite cool and accessible to a small space-struck child.

At the end of the talk, Julie invited questions. Carolyn's little hand went up in the air and Julie actually called on her. Carolyn's question was “what do you do with trash in the Space Shuttle?”. The answer was that some of it is packed up to take back to earth and some is dropped out into space to burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere. Carolyn was delighted.

When the talk was over, Julie stood at the side of the big room and chatted with people and signed autographs. I wanted to take Carolyn over to meet her, but the crowd and the noise was too much for her. It was a pretty overwhelming experience for a small child. But she came home happy, with a memory to last all her life. 

But the story isn't quite over. The next day David was working hard in his office in the Computing department and heard a bit of a commotion down the hall. Someone walked by and said “Julie Payette is in the lounge!”. Julie is an engineer and had given a talk for the Electrical Engineering department in the adjoining building, and had wandered over to visit with the Computing people too. David went to the lounge and saw that she was chatting happily with profs and students and autographing photos for them. He waited his turn and then said “Could you sign a picture for my little daughter Carolyn? She heard you speak last night and she wants to be an astronaut.” Julie smiled and said “did she sit way up in front? She asked a very good question.” She signed a picture and wrote “For Carolyn, may all your dreams come true. Ad Astra!”

When David arrived home that night Carolyn was absolutely thrilled with her surprise. We found a frame for that special picture and it hung in her room until the day she moved out of our house as a young adult. I think she has it in her apartment now. Her encounter with a real astronaut remains a very special memory – for her and also for me.

Carolyn didn't end up being an astronaut, but she has had great success in a different kind of scientific career. She also writes speculative fiction on the side, some of it involving space travel. She will be launching her first book later this month. Ad Astra, Carolyn! And thank you, Julie!

Pick Up Your Pallet And...

... stop babying your left hand.

I had my post-op check-up yesterday and this is essentially the advice I got.  Things are healing nicely and I should go ahead and use both of my hands normally as much as possible. Yay!  The visit was well timed because it came after a few days of my left hand feeling much better and my wondering how much it was safe to try to use it.

I have stretching exercises to do several times a day.  But when I described the skills I was especially anxious to have back (touch-typing with two hands and piano playing) they said those things were excellent therapy and I should go ahead and do them too.  Typing this blog is quick and easy compared with the one-handed hunt and peck I've doing since the surgery.  The exercises are pretty easy too.  I was worried that I might have a really sore hand by the end of the day but my hand actually feels better.  A little tired and sore at times, but not as much as on Monday.

Piano takes more strength in the fingers and I'm being a little cautious still.  I sat down yesterday and played a simple little Mozart piece and enjoyed it very much but my hand was tired.  I think I'll keep doing just a little bit of piano every day until it gets easier.  It may take a while to work up to playing for a whole church service, but now that I know that it really will happen it's much easier to be patient.  I have been thinking for a long time about buying a new piano, since the one we've got is pretty old and has a lot of issues, and David and I have decided that's off the burner and we'll make it happen soon :-)

Remember Dr. A (who originally met with me and gave me a reassuring diagnosis) and Dr. B (who actually did the surgery and scared me to death with the possibility of malignancy and loss of use of my thumb)?  Yesterday, I met with another member of the team, Dr. C, who basically said Dr. A was right and confirmed that a very thorough biopsy found absolutely nothing scary.  Whew!

After that, I was handed over to an OT who taught me my stretching exercises.  When we were done I asked her if it was OK for me to drive.  We have good bus service here but still with David away at the moment it has been a huge pain not to use the car.  She said she thought it was fine but they're really supposed to let a doctor make that determination.  We went out in the hall looking for Dr. C, but he had just gone into an examination room with another patient and she spotted another doctor I'd never met and asked him if he'd talk with me for a minute.  Let's call him Dr. D.  Here's a summary of our conversation:

• Dr. D, looking at my hand: So what did you have done here?
• me: short summary
• Dr. D: About four weeks ago?  I did that!
• me, looking puzzled: You did my surgery?
• Dr. D: Yes, I was working with Dr. B.

That was a fun coincidence.  I had no idea that a second doctor had assisted, since I was asleep before anybody but the anesthesiologists entered the OR.  Dr. D was fairly young looking and I'm guessing he's a resident.  He had a good teacher and did a good job.   I told him I was glad I got to meet him and thanked him for fixing my hand.  And then he confirmed I could drive and I went home very happy.

I took the bus to this appointment and got home on the bus, but later I did an errand with the car and I felt like a kid on the last day of school!  I have always said that I appreciate living in a city where I don't have to be totally dependent on our car and I try to take public transportation to save energy when I can.  But being able to hop in the car and go directly where I wanted to go without worrying about bus schedules or roundabout routes is truly wonderful!!!  I hope I remember to appreciate it for a while at least instead of taking it totally for granted....

Life With One Hand

Today I thought I would write a post with reflections about living one-handed.  It has been two and a half weeks since my surgery and I've got another week and a half to go before I meet with the surgeon again. My instructions up until that time are to avoid any "weight-bearing activity".

My hand is sore but not really painful -- more of a nuisance then a big problem. But if I try to do anything at all with it it sends me very definite messages to stop immediately! So I'm really okay but for the time being I can't use my left hand at all. 

My first observation is that being one-handed is a real pain in the neck!  There are lot of things that I would like to do or need to do that I'm unable to do, or that I can't do without help. And that's frustrating. There other things that I can still do but which take much longer than they normally would, and sometimes doing one of those things for very long makes my right arm or hand sore and I have to stop and rest it. The last thing I want to do is to get a repetitive strain injury on the right side so that I can't use either hand!!!  It is often hard not to be grumpy, as my husband and son can verify :)

But I should follow by saying that I have a lot to be thankful for as well. My surgery was on my left hand and I am right-handed. There are many things I can do easily with my right hand that I can't do it all with my left hand: writing, using scissors, etc. Plus there many others that I'd normally do with both hands that can manage with my right hand alone even though it's slower and more awkward -- like getting dressed or making a sandwich.

Another thing that I had not  thought about ahead of time is that losing the use of a hand is not as serious as losing the use of a whole arm. There are lots of things you can do with an arm even when the attached hand is not useful: moving inside doors around, holding things down while your right hand does something with them, shoving stuff with your elbow, leaning on something to keep your balance, etc.

And really if I had to make a choice I would rather have a hand out of commission that a foot.  It would be awful to need help just to get from one place to another. Right now I'm very grateful to be able to take walks around the neighborhood because it clears my mind and distracts me from irritation with my hand. I'm happy that moving around inside the house is not an issue at all. I don't have to ask for help every time I want to get to a different room or move across the room. I don't need help going to the bathroom or showering -- those are really important!.  When I need help from a family member or just want to talk to them it's easy to find them and get to where they can hear me.

So I'm doing my best to be a Pollyanna about how things could be a lot worse and it's certainly true. However, not being able to use a hand, even my left hand, is an incredible nuisance. My job is done almost totally at a keyboard and even though it's summer right now I have quite a bit of course planning and email communication to be done before September. And yes, it's quite possible to type with just one hand but it's much slower than two-handed touch typing and I make a lot more mistakes and my right shoulder gets tired so I have to take a lot of breaks.  I haven't invested in dictation software for my computer because it's expensive and not a lot of help with computer code and technical terms.  However, I have a nice free dictation tool on my phone and I'm composing a lot of this blog post with that.  As my husband pointed out, this is pretty "meta": dictating about dictating!

When I'm not typing two of my favorite things to do are playing the piano and knitting. The piano is obviously completely out and even after I regain some use of my hand it may be a long time before I get back to where I was. The best way I  have found to cope with that is to be diligent about reminding myself that I can move all my fingers in spite of being warned about that thumb tendon. I do expect to get back to the point where I can play the piano and organ at church again and my dream of working as an accompanist after I retire from my teaching job is still quite possible.

Knitting will probably come back sooner but it still may be a while.  Knitting is something that makes a great difference to my mental state; whenever I'm nervous or unhappy or worried sitting down and knitting helps a whole lot. We often spend time after dinner in front of the TV and I've always got a knitting project handy to go with that. I've discovered lately that I have lost my ability to sit quietly with my hands folded and just watch something.  A couple of crabby days after my surgery David very kindly drove me to Michaels so that I could buy a knitting loom - probably just as important to his sanity at that point as to mine! It took me a little while to figure out how to use it and originally I needed to weigh the thing down on my lap with my left arm as I knitted with my right hand but I have progressed to the point where I don't need my right arm at all. I'm still sticking with very simple stuff and it's not as creative as some of the fancy kinds of knitting that I like to do, but it feeds that part of me that likes the feel of the yarn and needs to be making something. By the time my hand recovers I'm going to have a big pile of nice warm hats for charity. That's a good feeling to have something productive come out of this time when there are so many things I can't do.  Here is a picture of the almost-5 hats I have made so far since the surgery: