Reflectionary

Swift Winding

In my ongoing effort to reduce certain kinds of activity to accommodate my diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis, I am looking for a ball-winder, to turn skeins of yarn into tidy balls, ready for knitting. I seem to be able to knit as long as I don't do it for too long a stretch, and I currently have three (or maybe four, if I can find that Gryffindor hat) projects going on different size needles.

A stubborn person who also enjoys touching yarn, I have for many years tormented members of my family, forcing them to help me wind balls of yarn by hand. I have used chairs, too, but they cannot talk back and apparently I like that part of the process, too.

Pure Luck would have willingly given me a ball winder for Christmas last year or the year before, but I really couldn't tell him exactly what I wanted or where to find this vague item. I foresaw this as another kind of family activity, since I am technically less-than-ept. This may just be a new way to torture family members, not sure, but I really need one. At this point, anything that will facilitate my knitting obsession practice is welcome. Knitting is calming at a time when I've basically been prescribed stress reduction. But winding balls of yarn by hand? Not so calming.

On the Internet I see everything from $25 plastic versions to $200 umbrella swifts. Knitters, can you help me? Any thoughts, suggestions, recommendations? All input appreciated!

P.S. If you read this far...

I am nearing comment #1000 on this blog. It's not very many compared to the vast number I received at Set Free, but it's a milestone and I like to mark them. If you are Commenter #1000, there will be a little prize in it for you!

Off My Conscience

Last fall I offered up a pair of hand-knit socks in the auction at Main Street Church. A wonderful church member won them, and after some consultation about colors, I purchased some beautiful ArtYarns Ultramerino while on my post-Christmas trip to the Gulf Coast. In the post-holiday frenzy of school-themed mitten and scarf-knitting, I delayed starting the socks until February. At the end of the month, I had a flare of tendinitis, then by the end of March I was deep into a flare of RA, though I did not yet know what the heck was the problem with my sore, stiff, swollen fingers (and toes, but while stiff toes are irritating, they really cannot be blamed for messing with my knitting, can they?).

Those socks have been on my conscience, and as soon as I had a little relief from stiffness, I picked them up again, knitting a little bit at a time.

I carried a big bag of knitting possibilities with me to the Conference Annual Meeting, a see-through bag from that Gulf Coast yarn shop. I had the socks, one completed and the other needing only the toe to join its mate. I sat outside with my friend, Wise Cellist, and began the decrease. But first she ooh-ed and ah-ed with me over the other yarn in my bag, the Brown Sugar sock yarn from Yarn Pirate and the other ArtYarns colorway from my December shopping spree. It's good to have a friend who understands the knitting, both technically (she offered to "read" the first toe for me when I couldn't remember if I had followed the pattern, isn't she awesome?) and spiritually. Knitting is contemplative and transcendent and creative and purposeful (mostly), and I love it.

During the first Plenary, I grafted the toe and wove in the ends. Such a feeling of satisfaction and relief! (I'll post pictures after I block them.)

Which relief was followed almost immediately by the joy of casting on some very sweet Koigu yarn (lavenders and blues) purchased at Quarterstitch in New Orleans, just before the RevGalBlogPals' Big Event. I think these may be for my feet, because those sore toes deserve a treat, don't they?

From Under the Cork Tree

One of the symptoms of my still-not-finally-diagnosed-but-most-likely-rheumatoid inflammatory arthritis is fatigue. I find it particularly frustrating because after working so hard over the past year to get in better shape, and being so much lighter, it stinks to be exhausted by doing almost nothing.

Because I spent a large portion of my mid-thirties experiencing and recovering from a major depression, I associate time on the couch with that period of hopelessness, so just lying down to take a nap sometimes feels like an echo of despair.

I have a hard time understanding self-care unless it involves *doing* something for myself. I'm great at making appointments for therapy or massage or foot reflexology or coffee with a friend. I'm not so great at just sitting quietly and smelling the flowers.

I tried doing a little knitting earlier in the week.

I may need to explain about the knitting. It means a lot to me. It's creative and useful. It's soothing and meditative.

I own a lot of yarn: maybe not as much as some people, I won't claim to have a stash of Yarn Harlot proportions, but I do own a lot of yarn, some of it purchased with particular projects in mind that now seem impossibly far away.

There have been days when I've considered splitting up my stash and sending it off to various blogging knitters I love.

That's when I know despair is getting the better of me.

So, as I was saying, I tried to do a little knitting earlier in the week. There is a pair of socks, you see, that a parishioner at Main Street Church bid on and won in an auction last fall, and she agreed they could wait until I had finished my Christmas projects, and I began them in the winter and was just past turning the heel of the second sock when the pain in my fingers grew to be too much and besides that they began to swell.

Those socks went on the cruise with me at the end of March, and I could not work on them then, and until this week, the socks sat in their Ziploc bag, unchanged. Last weekend I picked up the unfinished sock and discovered, to my horror, that stitches had fallen off the needle. I put them back where they belonged, and that fifteen minutes of effort felt like hours. Monday evening, I picked up the sock again, and eventually accomplished two rounds of knitting.

If you're not a knitter, let's just say that is a pretty lame amount of progress, a quarter of an inch at best.

I'm under no pressure from anyone else, I'm very clear about that. The pressure all comes from me. I like to be in the middle of the ring, not under the cork tree.

But that is where I find myself.

(Image from "The Story of Ferdinand," by Munro Leaf, with illustrations by the great Robert Lawson.)

An old-fashioned diagnosis

I was sitting on the table at the chiropractor's office, telling him a story about an old ailment.

When my daughter was an infant, I told him, I had De Quervain's Tendon Synovitis.

He looked--well, I'm not sure of the right word. Puzzled wasn't quite it, nor was perplexed.  I wish I could say nonplussed, because how often is that the right word? But those are all too strong. He allowed a small smile to cross his face and said, "That's an old-fashioned diagnosis."

Yes, I am the queen of the whimsical ailments.

(Ask me about the time I had vestibular neuronitis, for instance. Or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Or Hepatitis A when I was 10, and for no apparent reason. Or measles, after getting the vaccine. You now know my complete history. In reverse.)

Friends at the Big Event may have noticed the way I picked up and put down my knitting, though I attempted to mask my frustration. After all, a cruise ship is no place to be making the worst of things. I had sun and water and friends and food and drink without end. Who really needed knitting?

But my hands and wrists have been a problem since the end of February, and while my back injury, which apparently was separate, appears to have improved greatly, these necessary helpers have not. I saw my primary care physician today, and she announced her diagnosis.

Sigh.

De Quervain's.

There are a number of things we can try to take care of it; I have wrist guards for night-time wear and Aleve has been recommended in place of Advil, we did blood work to be sure there is no thyroid component, and I will see the sports medicine doctor in two weeks for possible injections into the sheath of the tendons.

Still with me? Because that one almost put me under.

In closing, I would like to mention that this condition is also known as--

wait for it--

Mother's Wrist.