Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Land of the Living

I am alive. Thanks to all of you who sent me concerned e-mails this past week, wondering where my blog updates were! People actually read this?!? How fabulous. For me, of course.

Taking a page out of my girl Pioneer Woman's book, I am going to Keep It Real and tell and show you what was ailing me this week.

It started out as a small bug bite (we think) on my left eyelid. It turned into this.

Ok, let's just get the obvious over with, shall we? This is the worst picture of me ever taken. Hands down. I took it myself. I hadn't showered in over 24 hours, I wasn't wearing makeup (duh) and my eye looks like...well, like THAT. So just so we're all on the same page, I realize that I look like a friggin train wreck in this picture.

Anyway back to feeling sorry for me. After several trips to various doctors, and several prescriptions for numerous antibiotics, it's been determined that what that nasty ass growth on my eye is is a STAPH INFECTION. Go ahead and vomit now. I won't judge. That is some nasty stuff, and I don't know how I got it, let alone how it got on my eyelid, but there you have it. My eye got progressively puffier, redder and harder (more hard?) as the week went on. I finally had to have that sumbitch cut opened and drained, and since then, it's been getting better.

Now, the bad news about having a staph infection in your eyelid (actually, there are a lot of bad newses about it, but the obvious one, as it pertains to me) is that I couldn't knit. Dear God. Of all the minor injuries that I could have gotten that would have rendered me unable to work, I had to get one that made it impossible to knit also. I mean, I couldn't drive, I couldn't read, I couldn't knit. I could barely walk around without bumping into stuff. My depth perception was all messed up! And I was knitting the Sunday Market Shawl, and I didn't want to mess that beauty up.

The good news is that my eye was so much better today, that I was finally able to get some knitting done AND I finished the shawl! All is not lost.

Details: Sunday Market Shawl (pattern here) Knit with 2 balls of Lang Silk Dream (50% merino, 50% silk) color #32 (or is that the dye lot? I can't tell really). Anyway it's a nice rust color. And this yarn was really nice to work with. Size 10 needles.

Verdict: This was a really easy knit. A bit boring, even. Very suitable for a beginner. It was a bit tedious undoing all those ladders at the end, but once I got into it, it was OK. Here are some before and after pictures.

After it was all finished being knit, but before I cast off and started unraveling.

And after I finished unraveling all the little ladders. Here's a close up.



I love the way it looks! I still need to block it, and I am hoping it will stretch out a bit when I do, because it's a wee bit small for a shawl. Word on the Rav is that this thing stretches out a lot during blocking, so that's good.

So that's what's been new with me, and I have about, oh, 4 or 5 blogs in my head that I need to get down here. So, tomorrow I am back to the Land of the Living. Check back for another update about what I did last weekend. Oh, and for the record, I am giving myself a one week break from the Christmas knitting deadline, due to aforementioned injury.

See you tomorrow!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whoa there Cappy. That is some shiner. Looks like you got drunk and fell down in your graceful style!!! Hope it gets better. Staph is nothing to mess with. Take care of yourself.

Moe

Anonymous said...

what a beauty! am glad to see you back in action.

Suna Kendall said...

Oh gosh, that is BAD. I didn't miss you 'cause I don't expect people to post every day, but I was happy to see you today.

I have BTDT with the staph infection. What happened to your eye happened to my ear when my kids were little. Now, there isn't much skin and tissue to swell on the outer ear. Nontheless, it became twice as big as the other one. All the nurses in the doctor's office turned out to look at it and go "ewww" so I think that kind of thing is rare. Take care--staph is scary.

Anonymous said...

Caps, glad to see you back in the land of the living; sorry about the Staph infection (ugh); love the knitting, I really have to get back into it, oh and thanks for getting me hooked on the Pioneer Woman!!

Gurlbrit

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness, you poor thing, that looks nasty. And not even being able to knit {{hugs}}. I'm glad to hear you're recovering from it.