One last thing before I go...

When next I blog, it shall be from Kansas. The humidity will make my hair come to life and look akin to something the Yarn Harlot is always going on about. Oh bother. But, I will be with some old friends who love knitting as much as I do, which I sort of miss. I guess that's the kick in the arse to get me to go to the SnB in SLC when I get back.

So, yeah, the FO's. On the left we have The Pinkies. They fit me mum perfectly (of course, she's the model). Though I've not said who the recipient is and she hasn't mentioned anything other than the fact that she *loves* them, I think she knows that it's pretty much hers. And yet I'm not sure if I should wait until Christmas or just go "Oh here, take them already". Ah well.

Then came the sleeves. I finished them and started to give them a nice bath in cold water and Woolite. They took to it well, though the dye...didn't. But, to the delight of the Kit, they remain the same lovely color and though I don't have any 'after' pictures of blocking, here's my very first blocking attempt ever. Next time, I'm not putting a damp towel under them. (Please forgive the shoddy pictures, my camera is a tad finicky at times. Also, forced perspective means that the sleeves look off, but they really are pretty much similar length.)



Okay, I'm headin' off (ooh, found my Vogue Knitting, yay...lousy losing things in the scanner, I'll show it! *muttergrumbleshakesfist*). I'll have long-car-trip pictures soon.

P.S. Hey, SP: I'm already using your wonderful stitchmarkers for the body of Rogue. ;) They're a delight, thank you again!

Long post of gushy happiness!

Night before last, around 1am, I was still online, chatting with Red when the power died completely. I was suddenly bathed in darkness, in mid-stitch on my Rogue sleeves. Suddenly all the repressed thoughts and memories of the movie The Grudge fight to come to the surface. But instead, I just check to see what's going on. Oh, look, there are people over there...oh, right, they were going to work on the power through the night. Nice. So, I head back into my room and by feel, I find my lighter and the tea lights that I keep for my oil-burner. I lit 5 of them and with that, I got ready for bed. But, I didn't want to leave my Rogue in that position. I was almost done with the decreases! So, I grabbed the tealights, but them all on my nightstand and finished up the two rows. Heh, silly. But, I have great news...I finished the sleeves for the Rogue!

And now...the Mystery Stole. I knew it would get hairy soon. I guess I'd better learn how to do lifelines (um, how hard can that be? Bah, silly Kit). Phew, 81 inches...that will make for a beautiful drapey thing. I mean, 7 feet of beautiful stole love! I don't think many people will be ready for Clue 4 when it comes next week, I know I won't.

Now, despite the power outage of the night before, yesterday was Good Karma Love day. I'm not entirely sure what happened. Everyone else seemed to have a miserable day yesterday, but I had an absolutely fantastic day! It started off with going to Suncoast and buying my friend Red a Predator plush (from AvP, she LOVES the Predator) and some DragonFire gum. Happy birthday, Red! My dad came along because he had to pick up his pants he'd ordered from Mr. Mac's. So we were walking along and I pointed out Spirited Away. He picked it up and said "You've got this, don't you?" "Hmm? No, not yet, though I plan on buying it sometime, I just never have gotten around to it." (nevermind that I have bought it for other people, ahem). And so he said "Well, since it's going to be your birthday soon and I like it too, I'll get it for you." Oh dear, my dad...he's such a darling, I love him.

So, then I get home and it'd been a few days since I checked the mail...if we never got any of the junk mail and the coupons, it wouldn't get so bad. And I noticed the keys to the package mailboxes were both missing. But I didn't think anything ove it because I didn't see it in the mail. It wasn't until I came back inside and sorted through the mail that I found that one of the package mailbox keys was right there. I tried not to get my hopes up, but...well, I pranced right back to the box and with a little fiddling, I opened it. Heeheehee...and dashed that box right back to my room! It wasn't until I started opening it that I decided I'd better document my SP's wonderful gift.

I got a beautiful card (that I failed to photograph, for shame!) that wished me a happy birthday (you have such lovely handwriting, SP. Ever thought of working in the medical field? You'd be adored) And a little PS post-it apologizing for only having bought one skein of KnitPicks Vineyard socks. Don't worry about it, I know just what to do with it. ;) Anyways, I began to open and the first thing I see is some Color Your Own 100g of Merino yarn from Knitpicks. It came with some awesome Koolaid colors (blue, purple, red, and yellow).It also came with some awesome Knitty instructions on how to do the whole thing properly. There was much exciting squeakings. But wait, there's more!

I finally decided to do this all properly and lay out everything I found in that box, sans the paper. I think I went into a knitting version of ferret shock. I was squeaking and giggling as my dad sat and waited for me to finish up loving my SP.





I just love everything. Dragon stickers, yay! Itty bitty little #1 sock knitting needles of high class and quality. The stitch markers are beautiful (did you make them yourself, SP?)! If you can't see it in the picture, the charms say "Create", "Believe", "Laugh", and "Live". Gorgeous! And the book looks incredibly exciting. Everything just made my day super. I hope Karma doesn't come and go "Hey, you greedy thing, share some goodness with everyone else!" and take the good stuff away, because I'm so on a high. Thank you so much!!! ^____^d

And now I need to figure out how to spoil MY SP rotten. Lawrence has some AWESOME stores downtown that I think I should use to put things together. Trinket candles come to mind. Hemp yarn like crazy (Lawrence is a crazy granola hippy college town like no other) and who knows what else. ^___^

*so happy*

Medical Knitting

When I think back to nursing school, I wish desperately that I had started knitting then. It would have been such a great relief to have something to do with my hands that wasn't madly jotting notes or chewing the corners of my nails. I didn't start until I saw a classmate with a fun fur scarf. I had to have one.

But this isn't a post about knitting today. I thought I would share a little of who I am and what lead up to this crazy girl known as Kirstin who has self-dubbed herself as Kit.

I've had two kidney transplants. It started when I was born with Medullary Cystic Disease, a disorder that isn't so common in the States but is pretty normal in Europe. My first was when I was 5, almost 6 years old. I have a pretty scar that almost dissects me neatly in half from under the xyphoid process to just above where my bladder is. When you're operating on a teeny little 6 year old in the early 80's, I guess you needed a lot of room to work. My mom was the donor and everything went really spiffy...for sixteen years. Cyclosporine and prednisone were a mad nightmare but they had nothing better. If you see me in person you will notice that I am short. This is not genetic, this is sixteen years of prednisone working at me. My hand is a medium in gloves, but my fingers are so short there's still lots of room for extra finger in the tips when I wear them. But I've seen worse. At least while I took the stuff, my hair was good and thick. I let it grow long.

I was also fortunate enough to move from Tooele, Utah to Argenthal, Germany. Can we say "Culture Shock"? But it was the best thing for me. The doctors there were really into holistic medicine. They cleared a UTI that antibiotics couldn't touch with the lavish use of orange and grapefruit juice. Imagine that. The doctor also lowered my prednisone to frighteningly low doses (well, frightening for american doctors anyways). And it showed when I moved back to the States, to Kansas, and went to Camp Chimer, a camp for kidney/dialysis patients. I towered over those kids. Seven years in Germany and I was multi-cultural, taller than the average prednisone junkie, and not very socially adjusted. Ah well.

I graduated high school and went into KU with the full expectation that I would be a nurse. But, I got sidetracked. My mom contracted Hepatitis C when she had me due to the fact that she lost a great deal of blood and needed infusions. But they didn't really screen blood in 1978, yannow. So that's how she got it. And then when I got her kidney, I didn't get the virus but I do have the antibodies so that I show up as positive when I get tested. Mom was convinced that would bar me from any job as a nurse. So I decided to become a med tech. I went to school and that's when the old kidney began to do me no good at all. The toxins built up, my brain no longer functioned like it should, and I was flunked out. This is also when I first learned that educators in the medical field are a bunch of unforgiving harpies. Hmm.

So, I was on the donor list for a kidney for a full year. I still went to school just to get a degree...ANY degree. In fact, I was taking my favorite class ever, Myths, Legends, and Folklore of Korea, Japan, and China (for my non-Western Civ credit) and was about to go to an exam when I was called by the nurse at the nephrology office telling me that I would need to come in for a catheter to be placed for dialysis. Otherwise I'd have two weeks to live. Oh yeah, I knew it. I know what it feels like to die. It's cold, very cold. My extremities were never warm despite hot baths and snuggling a space heater going full-blast. And my thinking was really fuzzy, too. Anyways, I was really upset and though I took that exam (yes, I passed), dialysis was really a nightmare. My friends did their best to cheer me up, but I was distraught. I was also up till 1am. I crawled into bed that night and didn't think another thing about it.

4:30am the next morning, the kidney was ready. The doctor called me and only me (if you know much about transplants, they usually call a few possible candidates and pick one from who matched the organ the closest) because he couldn't get my name out of his head. Hello divine inspiration. The kidney was harvested at 7am. I was in the OR at 1:30pm and everything since has been just incredible. I got my BS in Human Biology, I got my CNA at Johnson County Community College, and then went through and survived the nightmare that is LPN school.

It's been 4 years since that transplant. I have yet had an issue with this kidney. I had so much energy after my transplant that my healing body had a hard time keeping up. I think I channeled the young girl whose kidney this was for a while.

You can see why I want to be a nurse. I met so many good ones and a few bad ones (nothing's perfect) that I wanted to be one, too. It was a decision I made early on. And do you know where I want to work once I get my RN? A dialysis clinic. ;) Or a cancer center, gotta have alternatives just in case it doesn't work out, you know.

And if you read all that, you get a treat! Look, Aunt Lea is holding Pinkie's Bride which has since joined Pinkie in the Finished Object basket.

Terrence Durrant?

I would like firstly to apologize for not being around. It's been a little whirly swirly crazy around here. My parents and younger brother are here for a visit and I'm so happy. I really love them and love having them around. My sister, however, is still trying to reconcile herself to some injuries sustained during the rough time of puberty when both my parents and she had some nasty things to say to and about one another. So things are tense when she's around. But otherwise, it's happy time and I have measured Pinkie on her and Pinkie's Bride has also been tried, measured, and found fitting. I'm almost done with P'sB, pictures are forthcoming.

I've done a lot of shifts at work and P'sB was there with me, and it was quite nice.

And here is my offering of Clue 1 from the Mystery Stole. They really come up with some STRANGE names for these nursing workbooks, don't you think? Anyways, due to some chronic confusion over the pattern (try as I might, I seemed always to have a stitch left over...it created a frustrated Kit who would mutter "I have frogged and knit this THREE TIMES already, it'll just have to look like madness because it IS madness in bloody lace-weight alpaca!"), it's not quite what it ought. But, I think I will frog our poor Mystery and reknit it again sometime this week. But I think I will pay the Rogue a bit of a visit. I do want the sleeves finished before I head off for Kansas on Monday. Hurrah for Kansas and the Yarn Barn and the new LYS of which I've heard only whispers of rumors.

Ever get one of those shirts that has beads and sequins on it? Ever find it demmed annoying? I know I do, particularly when I knit and it feels like I'm wearing sandpaper. Well! I don't know about the rest of you, but I think I just improved the lousy thing. Someone seriously went a bit off the deep-end with these ridiculous beads. And I went off the deep end removing the silly things. But now I think I can knit easier with this shirt. And I may get another one at Kohls, they are kind of fun to wear.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for next time when I have pictures of Pinkie's Bride attending the Robertson Round-Up otherwise known as the Robertson-oh-my-gosh-there-are-SEVENTY-EIGHT-OF-US???? I think my uncles and aunts need to STOP. Just because the patriarch and matriarch had 12 children does NOT mean they have to beat that.

Ugh, I wish Rogue was already finished...then I would not have gotten so cold out last night and I would not have a sore throat now. *whine*

*ahem*

I know this doesn't matter to a lot of people, but it may matter to some...I'm turning 27 on the 23rd of June. Shh. Gunna party like a crazy--oh who am I kidding. I'm going to just invite a bunch of my friends in Kansas ('cuz that's where I'm gonna BE, yo!) out for sushi. Family, too. We're going to chat and indulge and enjoy. *nods* It will be verah nice, yes. I'll have pictures.

If knitting is a madness...

...at least I'm working at the right place. I'm not kidding either. I decided last night to go along with the Mystery Stole-Along. It sounded intriguing and I've got all the supplies already. Finally, something I can do with the Alpaca Cloud that's been sitting in my dresser going "But you loved me! You even brought me to your LYS so I could be delicately wound with care! What happened? *sob*". Highly irritating when yarn gets blubbery on you, y'know. It's amusing, though. My stash is so small, I feel a little self-conscious about it. All my natural fibers in one drawer (well, with some eyelash yarn because I figure I'd better treat it nice, it will make fun edging for something) and all my acrylics shoved and stuffed and stomped into a plastic storage container. I treat them less nice.

The Rogue didn't get much attention on Wednesday since I had to work from 2:30pm to 11pm. I just can't knit much when it's late and I'm tired. Ironic, I know, because that's also when I get the most time to knit because I'm a little night owl. Ah well, I'm done with the Aran part of it, so now it's straight stockinette. That's okay with me at the moment because with all the studying I've got ahead of me, stockinette's a nice background activity, as long as I don't kill my wrists over it. Carpal Tunnel is not my friend, no sir.

Also, I have a little HTML goodie for you guys. If you look on the side bar and scroll down almost all the way to the end (note to self: clean up side bar), you'll see a fun little banner for my knit blog. Feel free to partake of the friendly HTML down below, copy and paste and all that good stuff and put it up on your blog. Huzzah for banners!

And I leave you with my own personal horoscope today: Tie up loose ends before they become snarled. The stars will smile on your efforts. I feel that they're talking about getting Rogue done before the Mystery Stole. Ha ha ha, I laugh in the face of the stars!

*trundles off for breakfast and a wrist brace*

The Pokey Little Knitter

Here's the efforts of Day 4:


I'm really not a fast knitter. I have so many other obligations, like RN school and work. I wish I could get paid as much for knitting as I do for shoving pills at people, but oh well. I'm still in a growing phase.

For once, I am glad that an anime I download is dubbed into English. I watch Earth Girl Arjuna in english as I read the chart and knit. It's nice. And the dubbing isn't horrendous either like it tends to be.

Still no pictures of the Wookie, I guess you'll just have to be surprised or something. Heh.