All in all, I suppose, it could have been worse. I survived my week of antibiotics (the bucket unused) and watched the swelling in my elbow diminish from the size of a tennis ball to a crab apple, then a golf ball, and finally to something resembling a rather squishy marble. There’s another swelling beside it on my forearm; but as this one is rock hard and still quite tender, I’m giving it a wary wide berth, like someone faced with a sleepy cat: start poking it and who knows how many fingers you’ll have left?
Gorse at the path’s end
Meanwhile, in other news, the hospital consultant I’ve been seeing for the growth on my vocal cords and my cough is exploring the hypothesis that I’ve got an infected sinus and chest (to go with the elbow infection on the “buy one, get two free” principle). It’s a curious twist on Groundhog Day—if a hospital consultant emerges from her burrow and sees a shadow on a scan, you get six more weeks of antibiotics.
Marsh marigolds
I also have six weeks’ worth of nasal drops to take, which makes me wish I hadn’t given up yoga thirty years ago. You see, the instructions say to stand upright, then bend over so your head is completely upside down, and start squirting, remaining in that position for at least a minute. Alas, as about the furthest I can bend these days is about at the level of a respectful Japanese bow, this is as impractical as most of the illustrations in the Kama Sutra, leaving me to wonder if there hasn’t been a mix-up at the printers’. So instead I recline on the bed with my head dangling over the edge, laboriously counting to 60, and wonder, like Theoden in The Lord of the Rings when he had to take his nose drops, how did it come to this…?
Two Swans a-swimming
TECHNICAL STUFF
This is a classic Flamborough pattern, one of the best, and a favourite of mine, which is probably why I’ve knitted it so many times. The cables and the long lines flanking the moss stich panels always remind me of gothic architecture, those long, slender columns supporting seemingly weightless arches. It’s for a work colleague, and is in Frangipani Claret yarn, a deep, rich shade the colour of, well, claret. This time I’ve decided to break the cable pattern over the fake seam stitches, i.e., with half the cable pattern either side of the fake seams.
What a gorgeous colour. If ever I get time to make myself a gansey it’s the claret I’ll go for, then I’ll look through the shade card to decide what colour I’ll pick,.
Hi Rita, it is a great colour. But then every colour I try I end up thinking is a great shade, in a sort of gansey knitter’s Stockholm syndrome…
It’s gorgeous! Where does one get all these amazing Gansey patterns? Is there a secret stash somewhere that I have no clues to?
Hi there, no secret at all! Gladys Thompson, Michael Pearson, Rae Compton and others all wrote books absolutely bursting with patterns. It’s their world – we’re all just living in it… 🙂
Glorious color and pattern!
Sympathy for the bumps and lumps.
Has the doctor even noticed the new ones yet?
Hi Tamar, I’m delighted to report that the antibiotics are shrinking the bumps and, to my unfeigned relief, the lumps, down to normal size. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’m getting there.