I have made some great progress on knitted things in the last couple of weeks, and I wanted to wait until the items in question were properly blocked, but it looks like that might not happen now for at least a few more weeks. I had good intentions, as I usually do, but as I finished these projects a few things happened to cause the delay.
First, a couple of weeks ago I got sick with a brutal summer cold. I always seem to get sick during warm weather and it's terribly frustrating. This time the cold rendered me unable to do much of anything except read for several days, so blocking anything was out of the question (since I barely had the energy to dress myself… yay sweatpants!).
However, even though I was far from recovered, last Saturday the Enabler and I decided to drive out to my hometown for their annual Sunflower Festival. The activities I enjoy most at the festival are all fairly low impact, such as watching the parade, attending the quilt show, and my favourite, stuffing myself with the delicious eats at the Mennonite food buffet. All of that was accomplished, but on the drive there, the simple act of reaching behind me into the backseat from the front passenger seat to collect the tissue box would seal my fate. I had to reach quite far and I was not successful in my quest, which didn't stop me from trying just a bit harder… until I felt something in my neck pop accompanied by a sharp twinge of pain.
I gave up and didn't think anything of it at the time as the pain went away and I was still concentrating on recovering from my cold. But come Monday evening, the left side of my neck and down into my shoulder started to hurt quite a bit. I figured it would feel better by the next morning but it didn't. It continued to worsen until Wednesday night when I couldn't fall asleep due to the pain, and my whole left arm was tingling. I finally fell asleep thanks to some painkillers and sleep aids, but I had finally realized that something was actually wrong and that I had to do something about it the next day. The next morning I could barely move my head or do much of anything at all, so we went to the minor injury clinic to get it checked out. Many hours later I was told by the doctor that I had suffered a pinched nerve, prescribed me some painkillers, and referred me to get some physiotherapy.
Which brings me to today. After one session of physiotherapy (and likely many more to come) and a constant stream of painkillers, I can move enough to function (at least until the painkillers wear off). Unfortunately I can't move well enough to do the stretching, bending, and crouching necessary to properly block my completed items and I don't want to risk injuring myself further.
So here they are, the completed Juneberry Triangle...
And my completed Starfish Stole.
Remember back in November, in this post where I described the follies of crochet and how it made me delusional… Well looking back now it's laughable that I even entertained the notion that I could get this thing done in less than a month. To be fair, it has had long periods of hibernation between then and when it actually was completed, but it took a fairly considerable amount of time and concentrated effort to finish.
I promise better pictures of both of these things once I am recovered and I can block them to show them off in all their glory. It'll be worth it.
The tour de fleece was also during the month of July, which ended last weekend. Again, due to my illness in the last week of the tour de fleece, I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have hoped. I did get one completed skein of yarn, which is my second attempt at chain plying. I found this video extremely helpful in learning how to chain ply and establishing a rhythm which made it go much more smoothly this time.
I have a lot more of this fibre (sweet georgia panda) to spin up which I want to spin and ply in the same way. When it's all done I should have enough to knit a worsted weight shawl, so I'm pretty excited about it! Sadly I think the spinning will be put on hold for a time, at least until I start to recover somewhat.
Thankfully I can still knit (again, at least until the painkillers wear off). And I finally found the perfect pattern for the crazy gorgeous yarn that I bought last summer which prompted the need for the yarn diet. This yarn has been a weight around my neck ever since I bought it, but I really wanted to find the pattern that would do it justice. The irony is that every pattern written for this yarn is a one-skein project because who is crazy enough to buy two of them? And of course I bought two of them because, to quote myself, "what if I need two of them??" I'm not going to lie, it made pattern shopping a bit difficult. I decided I wanted something fairly simple to really let the yarn shine since the yarn itself is so beautiful, but not plain either. I thought about knitting another Clapotis, but then I realized that the mohair content in the yarn would probably make dropping the stitches rather painful.
And then, all of a sudden, there it was… Avalon. The right yardage, the right weight, the right aesthetic.
I've only just started knitting it so there's not much to show yet… but I think it's going to be just lovely. I guess I did need two of them after all.
