Accepting Your Prayers

The Christmas knitting continues. I managed to get a knitting injury just as I'm heading down the home stretch. I've been working on a hat for my dad on 16" needles for the past 24 hours or so, and especially since I knit a hat over the weekend, I'm having a mild aching in the forearm of my left arm. I guess the best thing to do is take break from the hat and work on regular needles for a while.

Here are my Christmas projects thus far:

This is the sweater I'm knitting for my neice

- The School Spirit Sweater. I'm making it out of Karabella 8. I got it this far about three weeks ago and it has sat until now. I need to get back on this and get it finished, which shouldn't take too long.

Next up are the Cowgirl Slipper socks from the current issue of IK that I'm making for my sister-in-law. I have one completed (it only took 24 hours - nice quick knit). I'm making them out of Plymouth Encore so they're machine washable.

Finally, here's the culprit - my dad's hat. I love the way it's turning out, though. It's really soft and the suble gradations of color are really nice. I think he migh actually wear it.

I've had a pretty tough week so far. My mom has been moderately ill for about 9 months and acutely ill for about 2 weeks. She had blood drawn and the results were troubling - 50% chance of leukemia. Needless to say, we were all pretty upset around here. Especially with it being Christmas and all.

Bad news travels fast in my big Irish family and it made its way all the way from California to Rhode Island, to Massachusetts and back to Los Angeles, where it turns out my cousin in married to a blood specialist. He examined her results and made a much more sensible diagnosis. He said it's definitely not leukemia. It's related to the fact that she smoked for 30 years (even though she quit over 20 years ago) and it's asthmatic bronchitis. It explains all of her symptoms, including the fact that she's been sick for almost a year - it's been festering since a cold she had last winter! It has been suppressing her immune system all this time. We're still not out of the woods, but it definitely makes more sense than cancer. Anyway, if it's your thing, please pray that my mom will be OK.