Etherknitter:

My work includes a significant amount of orthopedic anesthesia. The fit patients often have an aura of disbelief surrounding them. How can the fitness quest be connected to malfunctions that need surgery? The contradiction is too big for immediate comprehension.

I tell them,"You have a choice. You can either wear it out, or you can rust it out." Humans are still beta versions with no middle ground on this. Knees. Hips. Ankles. Shoulders. Thumbs, for heaven's sake!

I found a birthday card some time ago that I love too much to send. I scanned it in. Click to read.

Mr. Etherknitter and I live by this.

So what does a random, twitchy knitter do while her husband is having rotator cuff surgery?

First she knits. A sock, of course. Gary (of the long-stalled vest) asked for socks. It is the least I can do to make up for the Straker vest debacle. (Yarn is DyeDreams BFL, colorway eggplant.) Then she plays WhirlyWord on her iPhone.

Lunch is a brief diversion. She paces. More time has passed than the surgery was booked for, which often means conversion from arthroscopic repair to open incision repair. She hopes she is wrong.

The computers in the waiting room beckon. She sits down to Ravelry, and sorts through her queue, her favorites. A written list of all shawl aspirations seems like a good idea.

The left column is MUST KNIT NOW. The right column is on reserve for the future. The small list on the left is an incomplete assembly of sweaters that MUST BE KNIT NOW.

Sobering, that.

Finally, the husband is ready to go home. He is an advertisement for block anesthesia (numb up just the shoulder, not the brain). He has no narcotics to make him throw up. (Yet. Wait til the block wears off.) He has no general anesthesia to make him feel zorked. (Yes, we use that term. I am working on getting it included in the next edition of Dorland's Medical Dictionary.)

He is slam-dunked into bed so that the ice-cuff can do its job of decreasing swelling. I will be his cook, nurse, laundress, and cheerleader for the next few weeks.

Maybe lots of knitting will happen. Sure needs to, from the looks of things on that list.

(Shoulder to the right of the picture, rest of man on the left.)

I amble from one knitting station to another. Summer means project migration from warm areas of the house to airy, cooler parts. Finishing is secondary to process, has been for several months. Huge WIPS teach me that.

Featherduster shawl is almost done. I am binding off. I would say I have been binding off for a month, but that is only partly true. The Three Bears visited my knitting: "the bind-off is TOO TIGHT". "Nonono, the bind-off is TOO LOOSE". My knitting friends watched and said, "the bind-off is JUST right. Keep on." After said friends helped me undo tinking glitches in silk/mohair, blocking will not be far behind. (I don't think S/M stands just for silk/mohair in this case.) So much time was spent in the knitting, I knew the finishing had to be good.

Volt is shown, 70% done. Good thing I like st st.

Massachusetts Sheep and Wool came once more. Weather cooperated, the gathering of the clans happened. Manise and I coenabled each other with Alice Field's able assistance. We are splitting (yes, I know there is a theme here, but I am helpless in its clutches) an exquisite black Cormo/merino X. Alice raises amazing fleeces. (Picture at the end of wool shots, displayed with ruler.)

My fleece lust was tempered not at all by the Morro Fleece Works box that arrived last week. Dick and Gretchen Regnery (Whitefish Bay Farm) produce fine Corriedale fleeces every year. What poofed out of the opened box was spinner's paradise. I grabbed a short piece, compelled to spindle spin a sample to see what it would become. I was so excited, that I forgot to ply it, so what you see is a little skein of singles next to a piece of the roving. Yum.

The garden is a mess, but it is a beautiful mess. All my clematises died to the ground during this difficult winter. That includes the Class II group, which blooms on old wood. I have few blooms, but the plants are resprouting from the roots, as they should. The only flowers are from Alionushka, which spends each winter in the garage, and each summer in a container on the deck.