Friday 16 October 2009

Back (literally)

I'm back home after a really rather nice few days in hospital. Praise be for company healthcare. This was my room.
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Ensuite bathroom with wet room type shower. Room service (seriously - room service). Deluxe dining with lots of choices of things like guinea fowl or sea bass plus puddings. There was a wine menu too but I left that alone. Seriously, there was. The staff were lovely and my care was excellent. The operation itself went perfectly and I was standing up within an hour of coming back from the recovery room. Baby steps but am fine pottering around. Journey home this morning was a bit hardcore - only 30 mins in a taxi but conked out as soon as got home for a 90 min nap. Bed rest with occasional pottering for the next week then stitches out and a few longer walks.

I did look pretty bionic while in hospital. I had this very funky watch thing that let me control my pain killers.
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I just pressed the black button on the left whenever it started hurting or I was planning to get up. 5-10 mins later eveything was rosy again. Very clever and it has a little brake on it so you can't overdose.

Despite all the devices plugged into me I have been able to get a move on with my Kauni and it is now a very nice 13 inches so time to be thinking about arms. There are some options....
1. Even though am going bottom up do arms top down. This means you start with the right colour combo even though it may diverge towards the cuff so you get nearly but not quite the same ones.
2. Do arms as one piece of fabric but do a steek between them so once you're done you cut them in two lengthwise and have two sleeves, which them need to be stitched into position. If done top down then should still start with roughly the right colours.
3. Do arms as would normally for a bottom up raglan (if indeed it is a raglan). Cast on cuff, knit arm, do second, then join two arms and body in the round and bodge the colour combo where they meet. Maybe with some icord or something.
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I think I like option 3 least. I would prefer the colours to match at the armholes. If I were to do option 1, which I think I prefer, then I'd have to be careful as knitting down on the stitches would throw the pattern off by half a stitch or something. I seem to remember reading this in an EZ book. I'll need to experiment. Option 2 would really only seem to be a good idea with a drop shoulder jumper and I'm not anal about colours matching everywhere so I think I'll see what I can do with 1.

I had some great visitors come and see my in hospital but it is nice to be back. Gifts like flowers and chocolate were very welcome but it was the ones where people had really put a lot of thought into it that counted. So when I saw what Mead and Dann had brought me as a get well present I knew I had to share.
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I must look like someone who would wear this kind of thing since my colleagues want to get me a 'nobody knows I'm a lesbian' t-shirt in the same style. Aren't they all thoughtful! I can wear it in bed. And yes, Pooch does sleep on my left.

Speaking of the Poochnurser, he is well. He has been working from home today to make sure I was ok. He was muttering about his monitor not being big enough for what he was doing and sure enough, after some thumps and scraping of furniture, I found him like this.
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That's a 42" tv he's using as a monitor. Insane. But then he's been lovely since this whole back thing kicked off and is very pleased to have me back so I guess if he wants to be mental then who am I to stop him?