I have my very own little down undercoat
So, remember a few months ago, when my hairstylist told me I was getting a rather largish bald patch on the left side of my head? I had my thyroid checked out, and it turned out to not be off, and my doctor thought it was probably a lack of vitamin e. A couple weeks later I started to be disturbed by the fact that my hands, which had literally almost always, summer or winter, been ice cold, were suddenly warm. This was such a sea change for me it was actually disturbing, to be sitting at my desk and noticing over and over again that my hands are warm. The vitamins appeared to be working.
So it's about two months later and I seem to be growing hair again. While I do still have a thin patch, my hair is not now and will probably never be what anyone else would call "thin." Thin hair on me is a bald guy's Fantasy Island. My hair takes a good ten minute shot of ion-charged, turbo-shot, work-it-good blow drying to get mostly dry, then the flatiron dries it out the rest of the way. But when I had long, waist-length curly hair (it was the 90s), if I let it air dry it usually took about four hours.
I have a lot of hair.
And I have always had these little wispy baby-hair type things (see my sidebar photo for an example). I have Lots. More. of These. I have asked about wearing a fringe. Last time I was in to get my hair dyed, matter of fact.
Me: Do you think I could wear bangs? A little fringe action?
The Best Hairstylist In Nashville: Absolutely not. Never speak of that again.
I have curly hair. Bangs means I'll have tweeties on the side of my head for life. I have nightmares of my mom cutting my bangs with scotch tape when I was little, and I remember the resulting curly mess on the sides. I don't know why I asked my hairstylist about them. Probably delusional.
On the knitting front, since after all this is a knitting blog, I have finally and with much perspiration, determination and some physical pain finished block 9 of the Moderne Baby Blanket. Block 9 should be known as the butt-kicking block, the one where your commitment to The Blanket is truly tested, the one where you knit and knit until your fingers fall off only to find you have completed exactly three rows. But praise the Lord, I finished it. I am telling you, I was seriously thinking about going out for pints the last night I worked on it, but that seemed like a really bad idea when I weighed the potential consequences.
So, in a pintless fit of despair, I got up Sunday morning and knitted my arse off. I mean, I counted. I sang. I distracted myself watching TiVo'd programs I missed last week. I had 12 rows to go, and I was going to make it!
Four hours later, I did. (I am not making that up.) I got up and did the Happy Dance, then turned on some Discovery Health Channel craptacular crapfest, and completely ignored that the Titans were playing because hey, it's Indy, and WE WILL NEVER WIN.
Some time later, after I watched a girl from Haiti have a huge bone growth cut out of her face, I finally decided that even watching the Titans lose had to be better than watching an operation where someone's face gets opened "like a book" (they kept saying that over and over) and they get a titanium jawbone. (She did look a lot better and could breathe again, that was good.) It was 14-10, and I got there just in time to see the Titans' Christmas Miracle.
And I knitted. I picked up the 200 stitches for block 10 and I'm telling you, I could knit this standing on my head. I worked an hour and a half tonight - five ridges! Yeah!!! The bad knitting weather has broken. Years ago I had a real, serious, bordering-on-psychologically disturbing obsession with climbing Mount Everest. Me! Y'all, I cannot go to the store without a lipstick in my purse. It was truly delusional. But I learned so much about how that mountain is climbed. First, you take a big dose of Crazy. Then you climb up and down the mountain for about a month, going a little higher each time to get acclimated so your lungs don't explode at the top. Finally, on Summit day, you climb for about fourteen hours and really, summiting is hard but you'd better hope to heaven you have enough oxygen tanks to get back down because at that altitude there isn't a person on earth who can carry you if you can't do it yourself. Knitting block 9 was my personal descending-from-the-summit moment on this piece.
Anyway, it was a good day.
My Hedera...I've done the heels of both and haven't touched them since last Monday. I have so many deadlines that the thought of knitting lace right now has the potential to send me right over the edge - a dvd project deadline, a mag deadline, a book printing deadline, Christmas gift deadlines, project deadlines.
This is why I love knitting. Because if you have 140,000 stitches ahead of you or 14, all you can do is knit the next stitch.
I'm off to knit another row or two before bed. Hope y'all are very happy today!
So it's about two months later and I seem to be growing hair again. While I do still have a thin patch, my hair is not now and will probably never be what anyone else would call "thin." Thin hair on me is a bald guy's Fantasy Island. My hair takes a good ten minute shot of ion-charged, turbo-shot, work-it-good blow drying to get mostly dry, then the flatiron dries it out the rest of the way. But when I had long, waist-length curly hair (it was the 90s), if I let it air dry it usually took about four hours.
I have a lot of hair.
And I have always had these little wispy baby-hair type things (see my sidebar photo for an example). I have Lots. More. of These. I have asked about wearing a fringe. Last time I was in to get my hair dyed, matter of fact.
Me: Do you think I could wear bangs? A little fringe action?
The Best Hairstylist In Nashville: Absolutely not. Never speak of that again.
I have curly hair. Bangs means I'll have tweeties on the side of my head for life. I have nightmares of my mom cutting my bangs with scotch tape when I was little, and I remember the resulting curly mess on the sides. I don't know why I asked my hairstylist about them. Probably delusional.
On the knitting front, since after all this is a knitting blog, I have finally and with much perspiration, determination and some physical pain finished block 9 of the Moderne Baby Blanket. Block 9 should be known as the butt-kicking block, the one where your commitment to The Blanket is truly tested, the one where you knit and knit until your fingers fall off only to find you have completed exactly three rows. But praise the Lord, I finished it. I am telling you, I was seriously thinking about going out for pints the last night I worked on it, but that seemed like a really bad idea when I weighed the potential consequences.
So, in a pintless fit of despair, I got up Sunday morning and knitted my arse off. I mean, I counted. I sang. I distracted myself watching TiVo'd programs I missed last week. I had 12 rows to go, and I was going to make it!
Four hours later, I did. (I am not making that up.) I got up and did the Happy Dance, then turned on some Discovery Health Channel craptacular crapfest, and completely ignored that the Titans were playing because hey, it's Indy, and WE WILL NEVER WIN.
Some time later, after I watched a girl from Haiti have a huge bone growth cut out of her face, I finally decided that even watching the Titans lose had to be better than watching an operation where someone's face gets opened "like a book" (they kept saying that over and over) and they get a titanium jawbone. (She did look a lot better and could breathe again, that was good.) It was 14-10, and I got there just in time to see the Titans' Christmas Miracle.
And I knitted. I picked up the 200 stitches for block 10 and I'm telling you, I could knit this standing on my head. I worked an hour and a half tonight - five ridges! Yeah!!! The bad knitting weather has broken. Years ago I had a real, serious, bordering-on-psychologically disturbing obsession with climbing Mount Everest. Me! Y'all, I cannot go to the store without a lipstick in my purse. It was truly delusional. But I learned so much about how that mountain is climbed. First, you take a big dose of Crazy. Then you climb up and down the mountain for about a month, going a little higher each time to get acclimated so your lungs don't explode at the top. Finally, on Summit day, you climb for about fourteen hours and really, summiting is hard but you'd better hope to heaven you have enough oxygen tanks to get back down because at that altitude there isn't a person on earth who can carry you if you can't do it yourself. Knitting block 9 was my personal descending-from-the-summit moment on this piece.
Anyway, it was a good day.
My Hedera...I've done the heels of both and haven't touched them since last Monday. I have so many deadlines that the thought of knitting lace right now has the potential to send me right over the edge - a dvd project deadline, a mag deadline, a book printing deadline, Christmas gift deadlines, project deadlines.
This is why I love knitting. Because if you have 140,000 stitches ahead of you or 14, all you can do is knit the next stitch.
I'm off to knit another row or two before bed. Hope y'all are very happy today!
posted by Jen at 10:29 PM
4 Comments:
yay knitting, health, and football!
Great post!
wow. what a truly beautiful expression of the tao of knitting: whether you have 140,000 or 14 stitches looming ahead of you, all you can do is knit the next stitch.
I think that's why I knit so much when my husband was killed. One stitch at a time.
I'm glad your hair is better- a lot of things can do that- when I was on steroids last year I lost about a third of my hair, and it's mostly back now... but hormones, stress, vitamins, etc... they'll all affect it.
Can't wait to see some photos of the knitting!
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