Well That Was Interesting

'Nigh on a full month since my last post! 'A month wherein so much knitting was done immediately on the heels of racing to finish Shearer over the 7 weeks prior to that, my right hand put on an anti-knitting protest last week...puffing up my middle finger, which I use to "throw" the yarn, into a bruised, throbbing, sausage-like, appendage.

In concert with that, tension knots the size of oranges sprang up either side of my spine across my upper back while my long time sciatica joined in the "chorus" to make even the act of sitting unpleasant. It was a full on mutiny. My body against the yarn.

Interestingly, as I hobbled about bemoaning my various aches and pains this clear correlation didn't even occur to me. The first to suggest a causal relationship was Darling Daughter. When she raised it I utterly dismissed the suggestion - with a bit of annoyance if I'm being honest - how dare she? I told My Beloved of her bold suggestion. His helpful reply was "...of course its the knitting!"

"Humph! What to they know?!" I thought.

(Number One Son's only response after listening to my troubles was to grunt "bummer" through a knowing grin - he and I share an inability to recognize when enough is enough.)

'Forced to set needles aside by the "sausage", over subsequent days and evenings, I felt adrift. The whole family kept remarking how strange it was to see me with empty hands.

Eventually I dedicated usual knitting time to stretching exercises that I know alleviate the back problems and my finger got better with each non-knitting day that passed. Perhaps the girl and her father had a point...

I would have loved to have posted the details of my terrible "plight". I know you would have commiserated where my family didn't.

The thing was though , our area, one of the hardest hit during the ice storm (no power between the 21st and 27th) saw our big maple lose three big limbs. When one of those fell it took out our phone, Internet and television service and that wasn't restored until the 1st.  When it was, my computer was plagued with a virus that had me further off line until yesterday.

I have to be honest, we were away for most of the power outage. Once the full extent of the damage had played itself out around our house and we'd seen to it our elderly neighbours had been picked up by family and taken to warmth, we drained the water from our system to guard against freezing, locked the door, crossed our fingers and drove, on schedule to NYC for a fantastic Christmas in Manhattan.

My "suffering" was therefore essentially confined to not being able to knit during my favourite knitting week of the year - that between Christmas and New Years - versus not having heat or light over Christmas. The time we did spend here after the power went out was largely mitigated by gas fireplace, gas stove, gas water heater and lots of practice doing "without" at the cottage. ( A houseful of wool knits to don against the chill doesn't hurt either!) It is not lost on me how really fortunate we were!

Now with all that behind us and piles and piles of branches strewn alongside the roads in our neighbourhood, I'm looking forward to sharing a few FO's with you. I'll also be working up a year end summary and plans for 2014. I've been swatching and of course dreaming of a project for the Olympics. I want to catch up with your blogs and update my Ravelry page.

I'm optimistic about the 2014 knitting year! I hope you are too. Thanks for dropping by!