In which all is revealed

All right, I guess I'm done being mysterious.

It's been a couple of good days for knitting. Last night's TV marathon really paid off in knitting time, and I made it through the first chart's repeats. I had thought I would have some knitting time waiting at my doctor's office yesterday, but things didn't work out quite as planned. I headed in for an 8am routine blood work appointment (for a physical), figuring that I'd also get the x-rays I needed for the follow-up on last year's back surgery. Of course, I forgot the x-ray orders, but Rick kindly agreed to drop them by on the way to work. Then, as I was about to get stuck, the technician asked me if I had fasted that morning. Of course, since no-one had told me to, I hadn't (believe me, there is no fasting chez Ahlers unless I've been told to do so). So the whole appointment was for naught, I told Rick not to worry about the orders, rescheduled for today, and headed off to do my Thanksgiving shopping (the only good thing here being that I got to the store early enough that they weren't out of sage yet -- whoo-hoo! livin' large). So, no knitting time.

This morning, it was back for a later (and hungrier) appointment, x-ray orders in hand. I should say here that I am often not fond of getting blood drawn. It turns out I have very small veins, and the ones I do have, have a tendency to collapse. This means that hospital stays are hideous, since the only place they can ever put an IV is in the vein that runs along the bone on the outside of my wrist. (I'm still paying for this one from the back thing -- they put it in there, and I got phlebitis, which let me tell you HURTS; that spot still bugs me when I knit sometimes, sigh.) So this morning's tech was no different -- she poked and prodded, had me pump little squeezy balls, checked both arms, looked at me, looked at my arms again, and finally agreed with what I'd said to start with, which was that she'd need a very very small needle to get the job done. All that aside, she did a good job and only went through the vein in one place (where I have a nice little blackberry colored bruise to show for it -- this is why we do this on my right arm, as I am left-handed). All I can say it's that it's a darned good thing that I have no aspirations to become an intravenous drug user, because it would never work.

Then it was off to x-rays. Those went smoothly, and I headed home (hence the lack of knitting time). I have to say here that it is disconcerting in the extreme to look at an x-ray of your spine and see screws in it. I'm talking real, live, threaded screws (I don't know why I find this particularly weird, to see them looking just like regular hardware store screws -- altho' these are titanium). It just feels like, at any moment, something might come unthreaded with an ungodly SPROING (shades of Kauni here), and I'll end up on the floor with strange metal pieces falling from my back. It hasn't happened yet, but whenever I try to do something I haven't done since the surgery (you should have seen me when I did my first backbend in yoga!), the fear is there.

I did, however, comfort myself with handknits. I wore my new socks for the x-rays.
I found them comforting (yesterday, I was wearing other handknitted socks AND Kauni; it's so nice to now have enough of my own knitting to be able to wear something I made even through rescheduling messes).

So, this is all by way of saying that, while I did get a lot done, I'd wanted to be able to show you two of the motifs on this thing that I am knitting when I Revealed All, but I can't. However, I promised a reveal today, and a reveal you shall have. (all this drama for such a small thing)

I (and the wonderfully friendly and supportive Rachael) am test knitting Simurgh for Anne Hanson (check the link on the name for the full story -- I love it). I love this stole and this yarn with the flaming passion of a thousand white-hot suns, truly, madly, deeply, but it's amazingly hard to photograph, as it mostly just sits there looking crumpled, and not giving any sense of how gorgeous the yarn is, and how perfect the feather motifs are (Anne designed this one and the faroese version, which I adore equally -- I'm a bit of a slut that way -- for the new Raven colorways at Blue Moon). So, with that in mind, here are a few pictures:
The first one is from yesterday; I included it because I think the color is more accurately represented on that one. The next two are from today. I've finished three repeats of the bigger feather motif, and pinned it out loosely to try to show it a bit -- without pinning, it tends to look like a puckery lump. I can't wait to see what this baby looks like all blocked out.

So there it is. I'm thrilled Anne's letting me do this one. I love all of her designs (there is a bee stole in my future, and some acorn socks as soon as I can afford them), but this one is just exactly right for me. I am such a fan of all corbae. I have to be one of the most magpie-brained people I know -- you know, the brain is thinking along on one train of thought and then it says, "ooh, look, shiny object!" and goes darting off in another direction to grab something to take home to its nest. It amazes me what I find in there sometimes, and believe me, this is not to say that I have some amazing brain. Most of what's in there is the mental equivalent of a bottle cap or a gum wrapper -- there are very few diamond bracelets to be found. But knitting a shawl that's inspired by ravens, now that is cool.