The Yarn Elephant in the Room...

So, y'all know I crochet, right?  And knit, yeah, I knit, too.  Anyhow, I didn't always crochet.  I didn't learn to crochet until I was pregnant with the Impertinent Daughter, despite my mom's best efforts to teach me when I was a kid.  She just couldn't understand why I wouldn't do it, especially since I would see a pattern for something, like a bag, or an afghan, or a poncho, and I would beg her to make it for me.  "Why don't I teach you to crochet and you can make it yourself," she said to entice me into learning.  

But I refused.  I just wasn't interested.  I never got beyond learning to make a double chain cord, and even that was under protest.  

Why?  Well, aside from some of the cool things Mom made, like the blankets, or the super cool poncho she made for me in fifth grade that was SO WARM, and the awesome potholders that really protected your hands from the heat, Mom also made a lot of the kind of stuff that would have me looking at it and going, "Why?  Why would someone make this??? WHY???"

WHY WOULD SOMEONE CROCHET A COVER FOR A SINGLE TOILET PAPER ROLL????  And try to make it look like a.... FAT CANDLE??

There was a lot of stuff like that, and Mom would get all excited, "Oh, this will be so decorative, so cute, I can put this on the buffet/table/tv cabinet/piano, it'll look just like decorative candles/boxes/vases/flowers/whatever."  She was seriously delighted by those things, and she would crochet them and be so happy about them.  And I would do the typical pre-teen thing and roll my eyes and sigh dramatically, so put upon by my mother's horrible lack of taste (in my advanced eleven-year-old opinion, that is).

I would look at her crochet magazines and books and think, "Why would anyone think Hey, those talcum powder  containers look naked.  I must dress them up with CROCHET, and I will make them into... TALL POODLES.  Because, yeah, that's what I think of every time I see talcum powder containers.  TALL POODLES."  

Then I would think that I should probably hide that particular magazine before Mom found it and decided our bathroom couldn't be without tall talcum powder container hiding poodles.

You have to realize, it was the seventies.  Talcum powder for grownups was perfumed and came in these tall skinny cardboard round containers.  Think Pringles can, but smaller.  Now, in our house, those cans stayed in the cabinets, because we just didn't have a lot of surfaces for them to sit on in the bathroom.  But my mom decided they had to be candles.  Or something.

Anyhow, I had no interest in learning to crochet just to do something like that.  Or to create big fluffy skirts for dolls to hide paper towel rolls.  I preferred to reap the benefits of the warm and beautiful  afghans she created over the years, or the hats she made for me.  

I was 32 and heavily pregnant with my first child when I finally decided I wanted to learn how to crochet.  I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions, and my ob-gyn gave me strict orders to get off my feet, drink plenty of water, and do nothing.

I don't "do nothing" very well.   If you want me to sit down and rest, you better give me something to do with my hands or to keep my brain busy.  A book only works if I'm not required to be social or pay attention to something.  My mom, wisely remembering  that sitting down with me for the initial lessons hadn't worked, gave me some yarn, a couple of hooks, and a book with basic instructions, along with a small booklet with simple patterns in it.  I decided to make a baby blanket, and after a while, I would call her and ask for help.  Or I would bring my project along when I went to wash clothes at her house, and sit down to ask questions, watching her hands move through the stitches and then try to emulate her movements.  

I finished that blanket shortly before my daughter was born, and it is the most crooked, wonkiest, saddest excuse of a baby blanket, but both of my kids love it and have rescued it every time I try to make it disappear.  

One blanket became two, then three, then I made a vest for my daughter, then a poncho, and the next thing I knew, I was crocheting.  And I was finding some pretty cool patterns.  And it was a great way to connect with my mom, as we commiserated over the occasional pattern that suffered from badly written instructions and required a lot of studying the pattern photos with a magnifying glass counting stitches.

She cheated and had my dad do it.  When I asked him about it, he snorted and said, "It's an interesting challenge."

I discovered something, though, as I worked through learning stitches and how to put things together.

Crocheting calmed me.

Mom used to make all our clothes, so my sisters and I all learned the basics of sewing, many times under protest as well.  I don't know about my sisters, but while Mom taught me how to embroider, and how to put seams together, and how to pin a pattern together, it was my DAD who taught me how to sew on buttons, and how to hem pants, and how to stay-stitch.  Because he learned how from his grandmother, and from the Marine Corps.

The takeaway from that is... sewing does NOT calm me.  I am really really good at embroidery, but I hate it.  It makes me feel like my nerves are all crawling, like I could fly apart.  It's frustrating and I get very, very snarly while I'm doing it.  The same with machine sewing, sometimes.

But crocheting?  It's so... zen.  It relaxes me and calms me down.  So does knitting.  It's very peaceful and I think it's because it has enough repetitive motion to soothe me while engaging my brain because I have to think ahead about the stitches, but it's no big deal, because I can take my time.  It's almost like meditation, in a way.

Where am I going with this?

Well, like many crafters, I have a Pinterest.  And I pin both crochet patterns and knitting patterns, some that I intend to make, and others that intrigue me and I might try.

And, you know, there are a lot of great patterns out there.  There really are.  They're awesome, and you should check them out.

But in the last couple of years, it seems those... really awful patterns that I thought had died an undignified death in the seventies, buried under the weight of National Geographic magazines and Reader's Digest novels in the attics of elderly women... have been making a reappearance in online journals and sites.  I'm ... kinda horrified.  I actually came across a blog where virtues of the horrible fake candle talcum can cover were being enthusiastically extolled.  I just... WHY???

There is a reason I tell younger friends, "You know how you like to call the seventies retro?  I like to call it thank God I don't live there anymore."  

Because, trust me, no one needs to crochet individual covers for each roll of toilet paper in their house.  For reals.

Round and round she goes...

I am trying my hand at knitting on circular needles. It took me three or four tries, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. First, I was doing it backwards (because the illustration in the book I was using for reference was... well... fershmeckled), then it ended up with odd ridges in it. Considering I'm doing stockinette stitch, that should not have happened. So it was rip, rip, rip and start over. Now it's going along nicely, and I'm kind of amazed, to tell you the truth.

It's funny that I find knitting more soothing than crochet. I've often said that crochet is my tranquilizer. Any time that I've felt stressed or nervous, I would crochet to calm down. Now knitting is taking that place. I think it's because I can knit and read at the same time, whereas I can't do that with crochet unless I'm, say, making an afghan where I'm using the same stitch over and over, and even then, I have to look to make sure I'm hooking into the right loop.

Right now, I'm working on a scarf in the Impertinent Daughter's school colors. My friend, the Tall Blonde, has more or less commissioned me (actually, it's more of a dare, but she used the word "commission" so I'll run with that) to make scarves for her daughters, son, and herself, plus my daughter and son, in time for the high school soccer season in November. Don't know if I'll have that many made in time, but I'll give it a good try. Her idea is that the other kids will see those scarves, or their parents will, and they'll want some, too. Then they'll ask her where she got them, and she'll either point at me (if I'm sitting there, which let's face it, I probably will. Miss my daughter's soccer games? Not willingly!) or tell them it was me, and I will find myself with orders to make scarves, which I can hopefully charge them for, and make some extra money on the side.

*chuckles*

I love her to pieces, but I don't know if my skills match up to her ambitions, at least not yet! But I will give it a good ol'' college try! When she enthused that I could make them with soccer balls worked into the design on the ends, I said, "Wait, whoa, I'm still working on learning how to do stripes, let's not have me doing designs yet!!"

I'm using the school colors pattern from Charmed Knits, which is going along well. And thank goodness I learned how to pick up dropped stitches with a crochet needle, or I'd be in tears now!!

In other news, the Husbandly One and I are gearing up for school to start next week, and worrying over the Impossible Son. I know I've mentioned his tummy troubles before, his complaints of stomach aches, and constant throat clearing, and all that stuff. We've worried that he has appendicitis, or an ulcer, and he's been to the doctor numerous times about it. He's complained of sore throats a lot, too, with no fever or other symptoms. He coughs and gags a lot, like my dad did all his life, throws up when he gets really upset, and we've been at our wit's end at times, trying to figure it out.

Well, our doctor sent us to a pediatric gastroenterologist back in May, and she put him on Prevacid, which did a huge amount of good for him. That and we kept a "tummy log" which we found very revealing. Sometimes, Mr. Manzie would go through these... non-stop eating binges, especially after dinner, where he would ask for grapes, then for cheese, then for toast, then for frozen peas, etc., etc. And we'd say, "But... you just had dinner!!" And he'd say, "I'm still hungry!!"

I was beginning to think he had a hollow leg or something, because the child does not have an extra ounce of fat on him! He's 4 feet 2 inches tall, and weighs 58 pounds, fer gossakes! But, as we kept the tummy log, and he would complain of his tummy hurting before he started asking for all the food, I finally had a light bulb go off in my head. "Are you asking for this because your tummy hurts?" I asked one night.

"Yes," he said, eyes wide.

"Are you hoping if you put enough food in your tummy, it'll stop hurting?"

"Yes," he said uncomfortably.

"Does it work?" I asked, getting down on my knees so we could see eye to eye. And I waited for the answer as he stared at me sadly.

"No," he finally said. "Not always. Sometimes it does, but... most of the time, no."

That was a huge revelation, and one I passed on to the doctor when we saw her again last week. He spent 6 weeks on the Prevacid, and 6 weeks off, and if we hadn't already known there was a problem before, the 6 weeks off would have confirmed it. Because it was as if those tummy troubles came back with a vengeance. With the added bonus of some of the most atrocious breath ever. *grimaces*

End result? He's going to have an upper endoscopy to take a look at his esophagus, stomach, and small intestine. This Friday.

Thanks to everything my dad went through for his cancer, I know what an endoscopy is, and what Mr. Impossible will be going through. However, there is a small, shaking part of me that is curled up in a terrified little ball, because this is my baby. The rational adult knows that this is necessary, because we really need to know what's going on inside his tummy, especially given that he's been having so much trouble for the last three years, and he is the spitting image of his Grand-Daddy.

Just knowing that keeps me from freaking out too much. I listened to my dad do everything my son is doing for years. Coughing and gagging when he was upset. Constantly clearing his throat. Eating the kinds of things that would fill his stomach (and probably make it stop hurting) before he went to bed, like bread and milk. And my dad got esophageal cancer when he was 78.

His mother died of what they thought at the time was "tuberculosis of the throat" at the age of 25, back in 1928, when he was five years old. We're now pretty sure she had the same cancer as my dad.

You bet I want to know what's going on in Mr. Impossible's tummy!!

They'll take biopsies while they're in there, too.

Does it tell you how upset I am that just writing this, I want to faint? Both the kids are sound asleep right now. I want to have my complete freak-out and meltdown over and done with before they wake up. I've put it off for six days now and finally have a moment to myself with no witnesses (except for you guys) to get it over with, so I can be brave, and cheerful, and upbeat for my son for the next five days.

Yay me.

I feel just like I did when the Impertinent Daughter was seven days old, and we were at the doctor's for her first shots. They had taken her from me and laid her on the treatment bed and given her her shots, and she, of course, being an infant, had started screaming. And I remember feeling utterly panic-stricken, wanting to both faint, and snatch her up to run away with her at the same time. The Blonde Sister, who worked for that doctor, stood next to me and patted my arm. She knew what I was going through, and told me the first time was always the hardest.

I feel like that right now. And I am sure that on Friday, I will be sitting in the parents' waiting room at the hospital, knitting for dear life and wanting to both faint, and run in to snatch up my son and run away with him. I think one of the hardest things about being a parent is knowing you have to trust utter strangers to take care of your child in what they reassuringly tell you is safe and controlled, but you know in your heart is utterly and terrifyingly dangerous, but it has to be done anyway. All of this, while you're sitting ten feet away in another room. Knowing that until he's sedated and out of it, that he's scared and wants you there... and you can't be. This is one of the really big, low dips in the rollercoaster of parenthood. I hate it. I just have to keep reminding myself that the rollercoaster will be going back up soon, and truly, that is all that gets me through these moments.

I hate fear. I'll get through it, but oh, man, oh, man, I hate the fear.

He's such a brave little man. In some ways, much braver than his sister. My heart of hearts knows he'll be fine. I just wish I could get the paranoid part of me to believe that, too.