What Would We Do Without Our Knitting?

It's been a stressful week. Mr. Pug is temporarily in the hospital while his intrepid team of physicians figures out what's making his heart slow down to the pace of a lemon. So far we've heard multiple theories, each with a different solution, but no consensus. Sounds like I'll be picking him up today and then we'll wait for someone to bring us into the loop, with some future action to be identified later.


In case I sound like I'm complaining, I'm not. I'm grateful that (a) we have access to all these specialists and tests and (b) he has insurance to pay for it. We're among the very lucky ones these days.


But it's a lot of Hurry Up and Wait. And thank goodness I have my ubiquitous knitting, which is great for passing the time and starting conversations with strangers.


On Wednesday, we sped to the emergency room, at the primary care physician's directions. Sped there so we could ... wait. And wait. The triage process at this particular hospital works very well--I was really impressed--and we were obviously among the less urgent among the broken limbs and the acute head injuries and the who-knows-what that resulted in a young mother dying while we were there. 


I, of course, was the only person among the 75 or so people in the room who had brought my knitting. (Well, I had a book, too, but never had to break it out.) 


I was carrying the ever-present mindless knitting, in this case a Koigu multidirectional scarf. I knit, and I knit, mostly only peripherally aware of the drama going on around me.


(Sample:  A young man who was probably challenged in some way since the EMTs kept talking about his "caregiver," was talking on the phone to someone in a very loud voice explaining that he had been beaten up by his roommate. "I'm unconscious and dizzy," he repeated over and over. Well, not exactly.)


At midnight we were told that Mr. Pug would be admitted and I went home. I still had to take care of the dogs and get enough sleep to get to work the following day. 


But about 11 pm, I looked at my scarf for the first time since we'd gotten there. 


Now talk about mindless knitting. The multidirectional scarf is one of the simplest patterns known to man (at least once someone fixed Iris Schreier's original pattern and made it knittable) and I've made several of them--less than 20 but more than 10. You simply cannot make a mistake with this puppy and it ends up looking like  you did something magical because of the short rowing.


So, imagine my surprise when one of the hospital personnel, who said he was a crocheter, asked to look at the scarf and I proudly held it up and ... it looked like the letter "V" instead of the letter "I." 


Somewhere between 4 pm and 11 pm, I'd just kept short rowing off the wrong side of the damned thing and now I had rather odd looking jabot or cravat. 


But you know me. I wasn't about to admit that the fricking thing was a total disaster!  And this kid didn't know any better--after he's a crocheter, not a knitter! 


"Beautiful," said he. "I wish I could do that. It looks amazing."


"Oh, thanks," said I, thinking that "amazing" wasn't exactly the word I would have used--"spec-crapular" was more what I had in mind. "It's easy--you could learn to do this in a heartbeat!"


The minute he left the room I frogged down about 12 inches. Now it looks like a scarf again.


Thank goodness I had my knitting so I had something to do--INCORRECTLY, but I did it.