Knits

My life has been incredibly crazy the last week. Not the usual too much work sort of crazy, but having to do everything I was going to have to do over the next six weeks got compressed into a week or less.

I’ve let many people know already, but there’s a few out there who don’t know why my life has become a Ricky Martin song (except his song is about fun crazy times and my life is not about fun crazy times right now).

Five and a half years ago at the age of 25 my sister was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. It’s been a big battle the last five and a half years. Much of why I took up knitting was to provide her with an assortment of hats to cover her head. My initial efforts were pretty awful — too big, too small, came undone — but she wore them anyway and a few of them she has worn constantly and gets compliments. In fact the modified Kittyville hat I made her was complimented on by a woman who sells knitted items at the weekly farmer’s market. My sister replied that I made it for her and the woman refused to believe it. She insisted that it was machine made. Cow. I’ve improved and provided her with more hats over the last couple of years.

Anyway, she’s losing the battle now. She is terminally ill and I am returning to the US to be with her for a couple of weeks or longer. It’s been a very tough week dealing with this news and having to also get the following done:

• Retrieve my passport from the Home Office which was sent off the same day I found out I needed to return home (stupid time zones)
• Barring the above didn’t happen, I prepared to go to London to the US Embassy to get an emergency passport
• Pack my entire flat (note I am usually incredibly anal retentive about packing making lists of box contents and carefully labelling and numbering boxes)
• Arrange for my items to be moved into storage and then, at some point, moved north
• Oh yeah, find a place to live up north
• Get quotes and hope the movers could do the job ASAP
• Try and not leave my work totally in the lurch as they are an amazing group of people — I am so fortunate to have landed where I have in my employment
• Arrange for my cat to be taken care of while I’m gone
• Book airline tickets
• Gather a variety of paperwork proving I have a life here in the UK should I have to leave on an emergency passport (they’ll get you out of some place, but not necessarily back in)
• Get more boxes in
• Letting the estate agents come and show off the flat to prospective renters (I had tidied it all up for the first viewing and then got the news so it then turned into a box warehouse)

I’m sure there’s plenty I’ve forgotten. The first few days (and even a bit now) I was forgetting to actually fully take of myself - I wasn’t eating enough even when I could feel the hunger pains because there was just too much to do.

This is one of those times in life where I’ve got so much on my plate right now and somehow I am managing to get it done. I’ll look back at this time both as one of complete sadness at what is happening in my family right now and with awe at how well I’m actually handling things. When life throws you this much shit at once, you just have to suck it up and get it done.

So that’s where I am right now. Even though I have suddenly had to shell out an enormous amount of money in a very short amount of time, I did order some a single set of those ugly ass Harmony DPNs since I don’t have any wooden needles in the size I need for the airplane. I wish they’d make a non-ugly set because I do like the length and pointiness of the KP DPNs.

I have one request from all of you. Okay actually I have two. First if you can spare any strength for me and my family, I’d appreciate if you sent it our way; this is really, really tough. The second is, is there someone out there willing to knit my sister a Kittyville hat minus the ear muffs/tassles (so essentially a stockinette cap w/ ears) in either a grey or lime green colour? She asked me for one, but I don’t have the yarn to do it. It feels like cheating, but I know she’d love one.

* I am not actually listening to Ricky Martin nor have I heard him in dogs years although I am not opposed to listening to that song although Shake your Bon Bon or whatever it was is just too much.