I want to be starting something. (also shoulder update buried rather deep in)

It is knitting that has saved my sanity this time.

Too many of the things I often rely on--swimming, drinking, you get the idea--are verboten these days, so it is so very lucky that I took up knitting back in February. The knitting did not get much press at the time, because I started knitting the same weekend our house was overrun with gypsies, and after that, what kind of story does knitting make?

At that time it made a knit, knit, knit, knit, knit kind of story, because it took me a while to learn to purl. But then the story went scarf, scarf, scarf, scarf, as I made one for the PP, one for myself, one for my dad, another one for the PP, another one for myself, one for a friend, another one for myself. Or maybe it was more like scarf, scarf, scarf, hat, because I did make a hat for the PP, too. Alack and alas, all this happened too late in the spring for him to really wear them, but he was a Boy Scout growing up, and he likes to be prepared.

Then I thought SHAWL, so I picked out a pattern, ordered some yarn, dealt with some ridiculousness around the order, and finally got the yarn. By then, though, I was working on a sweater, better known as the Start Wearing Purple Sweater. Presently, however, it is the Don't Start Wearing Purple Yet Sweater Bits, but the point is I have not yet started on the shawl.

Plus then some other things happened, like I picked up a knitting magazine and found a pattern for an actual summer knitted garment that now I am making. Plus I tried out a hat pattern I was eager to do, had fit of fits trying to achieve gauge (live and learn). Also other things I do not want to detail here for now.

But the point is that although the shawl remains unstarted, the hat is now finished (I look smashing, if a bit hot, in it). Also, the Sweater Bits are drying from their blocking baptism in the kitchen. And perhaps tomorrow I will sew them up.

The PP has been wondering why I have had all these almost finished knitting projects with little stringy tails hanging off them, waiting to be finished. "Because that takes sewing," I said. "And what I like is knitting."

But today, because it was the kind of day when things don't exactly go according to plan, I have been sewing. As I said, the hat is done. I have even secured some safety pins and added them to my notions bag.

Aha! And even the notions bag is exciting, because I BOUGHT IT TODAY. Do you know what that means? I WENT TO A STORE. It was so exciting. I even dressed myself first. I bought toothpaste while I was there.

The real reason I was at the store, though, is that I was getting my pain and nausea meds refilled, from new scrips from my shoulder doc.

More exciting than all this, though, is that I got my stitches out (no more dressings on the left shoulder!!!!!) and the doc says they look great. Plus he moved my arm around and said I am making good progress on my physical therapy. He told me that during the surgery he had a good look around in there, and saw that there is a small, but not dangerous, tear in my labrum. That, he said, might have been causing the pain I was feeling, but it is not a condition that will worsen with use. He confirmed that there are no tears in the rotator cuff and that the tendons look good. He did find some "debris," which he removed during the flushing out of the joint. This included not just some stuff that was a product of the infection, but also some material that he himself debrided from the bursa, and which may have been irritating the labrum and/or other parts of the shoulder. In short, he thinks that it is very likely that the pain I was experiencing will not recur. AS LONG AS I DO MY ROTATOR CUFF EXERCISES REGULARLY.

All that remains now is to get the antibiotic regime completed and get the PICC line out. Once that happens, and the incision point for the PICC heals, I can GET BACK IN THE WATER!!!!!!! The shoulder doc wants me to start swimming again as soon as I can, to regain the strength in and around the shoulders, so that the joints do not weaken further.

But the best part about all this is that the prospect of getting back in the pool in a few weeks does not seem like an eternity. It would have, in the past. I know that part of what makes me more calm about that timeframe is the HELLISH PAIN I have gone through in the last couple of weeks. But another part is the knitting, which I now dearly love, which gives me something else to be excited about, which produces soft pretty things from the work, and which is rather meditative in the process.

I have started several new projects, and although I was going to start yet another one tonight, I backed off that, because it requires a cast-on technique I am less comfortable with, and I did so much physical therapy tonight that I was pretty sore until I took an extra pain pill. So tonight it is the easy new project--seed stitch, seed stitch, seed stitch. But that is fine: I love seed stitch, and I love the process.

Thank you, Knitting.