Knitting

Hook, Line and Sinker

It’s that time of year again for me. Col­lege Foot­ball Sat­ur­days, fresh apple cider and hot donuts, and fall TV sea­son pre­mieres. Oh, and knit­ting. For some rea­son, I tend to pick up the “sticks” (aka knit­ting nee­dles) and a fresh “batch” of yarn around this time of the year.

This year, instead of sticks I’ve picked up the “hooker.”

Uh … I didn’t say A hooker … I said THE “hooker.” As in a cro­chet needle.

Geesh. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Cro­chet­ing always reminds me of my Grandma Rose. In the years that she lived with us, and for decades after, I can’t recall a time where she didn’t have her cro­chet nee­dles and ball of yarn inside her bag. She’d pull it out at var­i­ous times; many times just to keep her hands busy.

Grandma had told me that she picked up cro­chet­ing to help with her debil­i­tat­ing arthri­tis; that it helped loosen her joints, which I can clearly remem­ber look­ing incred­i­bly swollen and mis­shapen. While I believe that she took up the craft for that very rea­son, I also believe that she con­tin­ued to do so because cre­at­ing some­thing was incred­i­bly sat­is­fy­ing. (I can’t tell you how many the heir­loom table­cloths she made for every one of her chil­dren and grand­chil­dren!) That, and the repet­i­tive activ­ity of pulling yarn through slip­knot after slip­knot was espe­cially soothing.

That’s the rea­son I’ve enjoyed knit­ting and cro­chet­ing. The sim­ple notion that con­tin­u­ously “pick­ing” or “hook­ing” or “throw­ing” yarn over nee­dles to pro­duce a piece of art is calm­ing. It’s a way for me to relieve some stress and yet still feel ful­filled that I’ve actu­ally made some­thing out of a skein of yarn.

Yet, while I love to knit and cro­chet, I only do so with an end project in mind. Oth­er­wise I’d be mak­ing waay too many cup cozies or pot hold­ers than any one of my fam­ily and friends would ever need. (Yikes!) So with the recent news within our cir­cle of family/​friends, it should come to no sur­prise as to what kind of project I’m cur­rently work­ing on.

After five years of knitting/​crocheting hats & booties or blan­kets for var­i­ous fam­ily mem­bers or friends, you would think that I’d be able to for­get about my own issues and focus on the project at hand. And many times I can … In fact doing such projects and keep­ing such a blog is a very per­sonal form of ther­apy for me. But there are those moments in the midst of mak­ing such cre­ations where my child­less sit­u­a­tion hits me square in the chest.

But then my thoughts some­how switch to the very good friend of mine; the one that taught me to knit. And I remem­ber how lucky I am in other aspects of my life.

Or, like last Thurs­day on the bus ride home, I remem­ber my Grandma Rose; who taught me the basics of cro­chet­ing years and years ago. I remem­ber each piece she’s ever cre­ated espe­cially for me. And how much they mean to me; now even more since her recent passing.

And I remem­ber that what I’m cur­rently mak­ing is meant to bring up these emo­tions. Because feel­ing such sad­ness reminds me the impor­tance that Hubby and I had placed on try­ing to have our own child … and exactly how strong our love is to have sur­vived every­thing we’ve gone through.

Shades of Turquoise

Besides catch­ing a movie on Fri­day night and going to the Lion’s game today, I’ve not been out of the house much this week­end. Truth be told, I had piles of laun­dry to do and a house that (still) needs a lot of pol­ish­ing up. But really, the rea­son we spent most of the week­end at home was:

  1. The weather’s been incred­i­bly crappy out­side. It has been rain­ing, what seems to be non-​​stop, since Fri­day night. And …
  2. I’ve been sit­ting in front of my com­puter work­ing on a spe­cial secret project (details forth­com­ing in a later post).

In fact, I’m still work­ing on said project while doing a load of laun­dry and writ­ing this post. Talk about multi-​​tasking …

Another hand-knit Hat & Booties gift set

Another hand-​​knit Hat & Booties gift set to mail …

Any­way, the com­bi­na­tion of such yucky weather and lis­ten­ing to nice, jazzy music (read: Sade, EBTG, Julia Ford­ham, etc) has got me feel­ing a lit­tle melan­choly. Not the waves of depres­sion that I felt last week (and the week before). Just an over­all sense of cheer­less­ness (is that even a word?!).

I’m sure part of the rea­son is because we just got word this past Fri­day of yet another joy­ful deliv­ery into this world. Our good friends in Ore­gon wel­comed their son, Matthew Elliot this past Thurs­day … and he looks absolutely adorable. Believe me, I couldn’t be more happy for the two of them. And yet …

As if hav­ing two birth announce­ments within two weeks was’t enough to throw me over the edge … the return of the miss­ing punc­tu­a­tion mark (read: period) from months of Lupron Ther­apy cer­tainly did.

After I had stopped the injec­tions back in mid-​​June, I thought that maybe the magic of Lupron might just have “jump-​​started” my female bits.* And because I also expected that my cycle would return by mid-​​August and it was already near­ing mid-​​September … part of me thought maybe … just maybe … I could have finally got­ten knocked up.

But obvi­ously Mother Nature (and God) once again had other plans.

Hence the shades of green and blue I’ve been emot­ing for the past few weeks. Because of that, I’ve decided that turquoise is prob­a­bly my new favorite color. A nice bril­liant bluish-​​green color that reflects my mood.

The most recent place I’ve seen such a beau­ti­ful shade of turquoise was the lakes in Canada’s Banff National Park. Now if you’re famil­iar with this Cana­dian National Park, you’ll know that it’s located within the Cana­dian Rock­ies. The bod­ies of water within this park are pri­mar­ily formed by the melt­ing of glac­i­ers. And the bril­liant hue of turquoise comes from the mix­ture of glacier-​​made lake water and glacial rock flour (rock sed­i­ment that has been ground by the move­ment of a glacier).

Beautiful Turquoise Moraine Lake in Canada's Banff Nat'l Park

Beau­ti­ful Turquoise Moraine Lake in Canada’s Banff National Park

Yes. It’s the per­fect color for how I’m feel­ing. Green with envy for what I want, mixed with blue for the sad­ness that comes with what I don’t have. Glacial for those cold emo­tions I’ve had for oth­ers, mixed with rocky sed­i­ment (sen­ti­ment?) for the way my rela­tion­ships with oth­ers have been lately.

The fact is, I’m still reel­ing from the events of these past weeks. And it seems like every time I try to float to the top to catch my breath … yet another event hap­pens that pushes me back under water.

So for­give me for once again, being down­cast. I am try­ing to shake this feel­ing of sor­row. And one day, hope­fully sooner than later, these shades of turquoise will fade.

* As Lupron would while using it short term prior to an IVF cycle, or even “plain old” medicated-​​cycles, for that matter.

Penance Purls

In the years since my failed IVF attempt and the end of pur­su­ing fur­ther infer­til­ity treat­ment, I learned to knit. A good friend of mine, who also hap­pens to be a co-​​worker, taught me the basics of knit­ting dur­ing our lunch hours. And as I learned to knit, I found that it was a great way to dis­tract me from the empti­ness of infer­til­ity. Knit­ting gave me a pur­pose; it gave me some­thing to work towards. Each knit and purl stitch I made got me closer to com­plet­ing a project. And once fin­ished, I felt as if I’ve put every effort I could into craft­ing some­thing unique. I felt as if I’ve given birth, so to speak, to the sweater or hat or purse that I’ve made.

In the knit /​ cro­chet world, there is such a thing called a prayer shawl. The idea behind craft­ing this type of shawl is to give it to some­one in need of prayer. Some­one per­haps, who is going through a dif­fi­cult time in life in which prayers are needed. That is because with every stitch that is knit­ted or purled (or cro­cheted), the per­son cre­at­ing this art­work is lit­er­ally say­ing a prayer for the receiver of such a gift.

The best way I can describe it (in my Catholic-​​school upbring­ing) is that it’s much like say­ing the rosary, but at the end of the prayers, you actu­ally have some­thing to show for all that you’ve done. And the best part of it is that you have the oppor­tu­nity to give such a gift to the per­son you’ve made it for, know­ing that you’ve sent good vibes /​ well-​​wishes (or what­ever word you’d like to replace “prayer” with) to a per­son who is in most need of such sentiments.

I, myself, have never made such a shawl. Instead, I’ve made other thing like chemo caps for kids or pre­mie hats for the babies in the NICU. What started out as a hobby for many of us at work, soon turned into a project last Christ­mas to make as many knit­ted or cro­cheted caps and hats for the chil­dren at a local hos­pi­tal. For me, it was a way of hon­or­ing my nephew, Liam, who spent his whole 4 months of life in that par­tic­u­lar hospital’s NICU.

When my SIL announced she was preg­nant with Liam, the bot­tom dropped out beneath me. By then, I had spent ten years try­ing to get preg­nant and had one (and only one) failed IVF attempt behind me. It had been two and a half years, at that time, since Hubby & I stopped actively try­ing. And as a first (or sec­ond, I can never get it right) gen­er­a­tion Catholic Filipino-​​American girl, I worked very hard at sti­fling the sad­ness, hurt and anger so that I could save face. But the thought that my SIL (who, by the way, is the same age as I am) was able to get preg­nant within five months of get­ting mar­ried com­pletely and utterly dev­as­tated me. And when my SIL found out at 24 weeks that Liam would most likely be born with some con­gen­i­tal imper­fec­tions, well … I guess you could say that I felt guilty (darn Catholic in me!), as if my jeal­ousy and thoughts of ill-​​will were the rea­son behind such a dif­fi­cult pregnancy.

So what does all this have to do with knit­ting and the “prayer shawl” (besides the obvi­ous rea­son for mak­ing caps and hats for the babies and kids in the hos­pi­tal)? Well, dur­ing my SIL’s 2nd trimester with Liam, I knew that I had to come to terms with this preg­nancy. While I knew my feel­ings of long­ing for my own preg­nancy would never be fully resolved before Liam’s birth, I still felt as if I needed to do some­thing to make sure that Liam (and sub­se­quently, my SIL) knew that I would love him with every fiber of my being … despite the sad­ness I felt for myself.

And thus, the “Ther­a­peu­tic Baby Blan­ket” project began. Much like the prayer shawl con­cept, I crafted this blan­ket with an image of Liam in my mind. With every knit stitch I made, I wished love and hap­pi­ness for every sin­gle day of his life. And with every purl stitch I made, I wished for for­give­ness from both Liam and his mom for any ill-​​will I ever thought. I put my heart and soul into this blan­ket and its match­ing hat and booties. And because Liam came much ear­lier (by 9 weeks) than expected, I can remem­ber rush­ing to fin­ish this mas­sive blan­ket in time for the baby shower (the sucker mea­sured 4 ft x 4 ft!) , which sub­se­quently turned into a “Wel­come Liam” party instead. What makes me a lit­tle heart­bro­ken is that Liam was never able to come home from the hos­pi­tal and actu­ally use the blan­ket. Regard­less though … I have to say that doing that blan­ket was simul­ta­ne­ously the hard­est and sim­plest knit project I have ever done.

Now … in a lit­tle more than one week’s time, my SIL is sched­uled to deliver (by c-​​section) a baby girl. For rea­sons that are hers and her husband’s alone, the two of them decided to start try­ing imme­di­ately after Liam passed away last Sep­tem­ber. By end of Decem­ber, she was once again preg­nant. And while their new still dev­as­tated me (I mean, really … how can she get to be preg­nant twice in one year and I can’t even get a frackin’ pos­i­tive preg­nancy test?!), this time my feet man­aged to stay firmly planted on solid ground.

I can’t say that I han­dled this preg­nancy any bet­ter or worse that I did with my SIL’s preg­nancy with Liam. There are days where I still feel incred­i­bly weary and down­trod­den. And yes, there are days where I frankly don’t think things are fair. How­ever, I do know that I’m not as heart­bro­ken and dev­as­tated as I was the first time around. I’d like to think that knit­ting Liam’s baby blan­ket had a part in reel­ing back some of those emotions.

It was only nat­ural for me to want to knit some­thing for this preg­nancy as well. Because yes, the good (?!) Catholic girl in me still felt hor­ri­ble about feel­ing sorry for myself. And, at times, suc­cumb­ing to jeal­ousy. So with yarn pur­chased from both here in Ann Arbor and in San Diego, I started to knit my next project while on vaca­tion in California.

I’ve poured my heart and soul into this project, offi­cially known as the “Ther­a­peu­tic Baby Sweater.” And just like the blan­ket, I’ve pro­jected my love and hap­pi­ness with each knit stitch. And with every purl stitch … well, it’s as if I’m try­ing to make amends for every bit of sor­row and jeal­ousy I’ve felt in these past 9 months. A penance, if you will, for the sins I’ve committed.

My only hope is that when­ever my SIL dresses her baby girl in this sweater that she knows, despite my actions (or lack thereof), that I love her baby girl with all my heart. That I am truly and hon­estly happy for her. And that despite the hard­ships endured over the past 18 months, she truly deserves this happiness.

Not Stirred or Shaken … Just Chilled

This morn­ing I’m tak­ing a lit­tle time for myself. I woke up just a tad later than I usu­ally do for work. And I’m doing it because it’s offi­cially my sched­uled day off from work. Not one of those days I had to call my boss in the morn­ing and let her know that I wasn’t com­ing in because of my Dad or because I was wait­ing for a ser­vice man to repair our fur­nace.

Nope. Today was a day that I offi­cially sched­uled off because of a pre­vi­ously arranged doctor’s appoint­ment. And for once, that appoint­ment had noth­ing to do with the “nether regions” of my body.

So today, before I make an appear­ance at the hos­pi­tal, I’ve decided to stop by my local café and chill. Catch up on some blogs. Do a lit­tle knit­ting. Do more research on find­ing that new OB-​​Gyn I need. And hey … maybe read the paper and catch up on some local (damn Kwame … ) and national (and now the ex-​​NY gov­er­nor?!) news.

Because to tell you the truth … I’m feel­ing just a lit­tle anx­ious. And exhausted. And I want to take a moment to sip my Lep­rechaun Latte and enjoy the sounds and smells of my favorite café.

Twas the Week After Christmas

So it’s been a cou­ple of weeks since I last posted. But believe me, it’s only because the past weeks have been hec­tic, espe­cially with the hol­i­days. I mean, it’s gotta tell you some­thing about my gen­eral lack of time (or energy) if Hubby & I didn’t even bother to send out any Christ­mas cards, let alone put up our Christ­mas tree, this year. How­ever, unlike last year (when I didn’t even want to cel­e­brate the sea­son), it’s more because I sim­ply ran out of time.

A Pic­ture of all the hats I made

The weeks lead­ing up to Christ­mas was spent try­ing to get some shop­ping done amidst try­ing to orga­nize all of the knit­ted and cro­cheted hats my co-​​workers and I made for for pre­mie babies and chemo kids. If you can believe it, we donated over one hundred-​​twenty hats to the local hos­pi­tal… the very one my nephew, Liam, spent all his days at. I invited my SIL along to drop of the hats at the hos­pi­tal on the Fri­day before Christ­mas. We vis­ited the NICU and deliv­ered the hats along with a sweet treat for the nurses that my SIL brought. After all, the whole mean­ing behind mak­ing the pre­mie caps was to honor my nephew. I hope that we did him jus­tice. And I truly hope that it helped my SIL to start clos­ing this sad chap­ter in her life. At least that was my intent when I invited her that day. In any case, this project of mine cer­tainly kept me busy enough … but it truly helped me get into the giv­ing spirit of which is Christmas.

Aren’t we cute?

Hubby & I man­aged to spend the week­end before Christ­mas wrapped up in our own lit­tle “bub­ble.” And while the major­ity of it was spent buy­ing those last minute gifts and then box­ing and wrap­ping every sin­gle one of those presents, we still man­aged to find time to spend pre­cious time to cel­e­brate Christ­mas and exchange our gifts together. Every year, that pre­cious time together is all impor­tant for the two of us. Espe­cially (as I men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post) since we know that the next few days is going to be spent with family.

This year, instead of our usual Christ­mas Eve mad­ness (both of our fam­i­lies tend to cel­e­brate the Eve instead of the Day), my in-​​laws planned on doing lunch on Christ­mas Day so we weren’t feel­ing so rushed. And my side was plan­ning on going to mid­night mass on the Eve and then open gifts after­wards. How­ever as usual, my side decided to change things at the last minute (or at least not tell me until the last minute) and cel­e­brate lunch on Christ­mas Day instead.

And Tyler just LOVES his gifts

And with that said, I do have to thank God that my in-​​laws are pretty acco­mo­dat­ing; because they did, at the last minute, change their cel­e­bra­tion to din­ner­time. It was a low-​​key event at their house this year, as many of his fam­ily that live in our area was out of town. But nonethe­less, it’s always fun watch­ing my nephew, Tyler, get­ting excited as he opens his gifts. Lucky boy this year got a PS2 from Santa with some new games and toys from us. Since his old Game­Cube no longer make new games, he was so happy to get a new sys­tem with new games that he didn’t want to let go of them despite the fact that he was get­ting tired.

My Dad’s side of my Family

My side of the fam­ily spent lunch time on Christ­mas Day at my Aunt’s house. I have to say that I was really look­ing for­ward to it because it was going to be the first time in a long time that all of my Dad’t broth­ers and sis­ters (along with many, but not all, of their kids) were going to be together in the same room. I have to hon­estly give props to my younger cousins for putting this together as (know­ing how lov­ingly dys­func­tional my fam­ily can be) none of this would have been planned with­out them. And I also have to give credit to my older cousin who came up with the idea to put together a photo album of all of the cousins through­out the year to present as a Christ­mas gift to our grand­mother. It turned out to be a hit with not only my grand­mother, but with all our par­ents, who didn’t know we were putting it together.

The photo col­lage on the front of my Grandmother’s Gift

So that’s the story of our Christ­mas this year. I hon­estly had a won­der­ful time this year, as com­pared to last year. And spend­ing time with my cousins was prob­a­bly the high­light of the hol­i­day. That, and of course, the won­der­fully awe­some gifts that my dear Hubby got me.

To see more pic­tures of our hol­i­days, check out my album:

Christ­mas 2007

Look What This Nut Has Done …

Meet “New­bie,” the squir­rel that
“hangs out” in front of my work space

Those darn Nee­dle Nuts at work … can’t ever keep them quiet. Wait. What am I blab­bing about?! I am one of those Nee­dle nuts.

To date, I now have two and a half boxes full of hats. I am com­pletely over­whelmed by the response we’ve got­ten. We’ve knit­ted and cro­cheted so many unique and beau­ti­ful hats that I couldn’t keep them hid­den inside the boxes. So instead of doing work yes­ter­day (hey, like I can focus the day before I leave for a week’s vaca­tion), a few co-​​workers and I had fun dress­ing up our plush toys. And what a fash­ion show they’ve put on!

It all started by
dress­ing “Elmo”

Last week­end I stopped by my local yarn shop to pick up some more yarn and nee­dles. (Like I need an excuse to go in and “touchy-​​feely” the cool fibers they’ve got there. But I digress …)

“May the Force
be with You”

I ended up talk­ing with Brid­get, the owner of the shop. She, along with another yarn shop owner, had started a group that knits (or cre­ates other fiber arts) for local can­cer char­i­ties. Any­way, I ended up telling her about the project we were doing at work and my per­sonal rea­sons for specif­i­cally mak­ing pre­emie hats. She was so touched by the story of my nephew, that she donated quite a few balls of scrap yarn (and a cou­ple skeins) for us to make more hats. Again, I am over­whelmed with everyone’s generosity.

And now, to top it off … a fel­low co-​​worker man­aged to “re-​​teach” me to cro­chet (my grand­mother taught me many moons ago, but I for­got). So now I get to whip out even more pre­emie hats and chemo caps! Oh my, even more of an excuse to hit the yarn shops again!

This isn’t even a third of what we have created!

Needle Nut

I have been a lit­tle busy lately. Prob­a­bly a good thing, as I do need to keep myself busy oth­er­wise I will start to over­an­a­lyze things like I typ­i­cally do. And then, well … that just gets me in trou­ble. (I swear, there is some­thing to be said about think­ing “too much.”) How­ever, this time around, I’m keep­ing myself busy is for a good cause.

My Newest “Nephew” Jakobi

Last year, a co-​​worker and I read an arti­cle in our work newslet­ter that talked about a cou­ple of other employ­ees in another one of our offices who knit­ted and cro­cheted quite a few baby hats and donated them to a local hospital’s Neona­tal and Spe­cial Care Nurs­ery units. Since the two of us knit, we thought that the fol­low­ing year we would try and do the same thing.

And over the course of the year, we did for­get about it. It wasn’t until the most recent events con­cern­ing my nephew, Liam, that I once again remem­bered our plan. Since we had quite a few knit­ters and cro­cheters in our office, we decided to include them in our plans as well. We also thought that instead of lim­it­ing our project to pre­mie and new­born hats, we would extend it to chemo caps for those kids in the Pedi­atric Oncol­ogy floors.

Since pre­sent­ing this idea to our other co-​​workers a few weeks ago, we have received an over­whelm­ingly warm response. We had such a great response that we’ve even des­ig­nated our lunch time on Mon­days to work on our projects and to get tips or exchange pat­terns for dif­fer­ent designs. (We’re a pretty big group in our cafe­te­ria that our group has been given the nick­name “Nee­dle Nuts.”) And as of this past week, we have well over 20 knit­ted or cro­cheted pre­mie hats and chemo caps in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent col­ors and styles. It’s been like Christ­mas for me every day, as there is always a new item added to the box next to my desk.

“The Ther­a­peu­tic Blan­ket Project”

Doing this project has become ther­a­peu­tic for me… espe­cially given the fact that I’m actu­ally knit­ting hats for babies that won’t ever be my own. I always thought it was ironic that I was a knit­ter. After all, there’s a com­mon mis­nomer that knit­ters were either grand­moth­ers or moth­ers who would knit things for babies or young chil­dren. And here I was, the child­less wonder.

I started knit­ting a few years ago sim­ply as a diver­sion. And when I found out that my SIL was preg­nant, I knew that I was going to knit a blan­ket and hat & booties for this child, even though I knew it would just about kill me. But I fin­ished that project (unof­fi­cially known as the “ther­a­peu­tic blan­ket project”), and I felt really good about doing it too. (It’s just too bad that Liam never got to use them.) After that, I went on to knit a new­born hat this sum­mer for my cousin in Cal­gary who was due in September.

And now … I’m head­ing up our hol­i­day nee­dle craft project at work. To be doing that is a big step for me. For so long I felt so down on myself (and there are still quite a few days that I do) and quite hon­estly, clin­i­cally depressed. Every lit­er­a­ture I ever read about try­ing to snap out of depres­sion was to do some­thing for oth­ers; the the­ory being that if you helped oth­ers less for­tu­nate, you wouldn’t feel so down on your­self. And it’s a really good the­ory. How­ever, try telling that to some­one who could barely take care of her­self, let alone help some­one else out. Nearly next to impos­si­ble, I tell you.

But now that I have a lit­tle more energy, I do feel that I am able to help oth­ers out a lit­tle more. And that’s a good thing … for this Nee­dle Nut.


The Box of Hats Thus Far

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