Dead Stop

Last week I pulled the right trapezius muscle in my shoulder while walking my dogs. The smaller one saw a quail family and wanted to eat it and jerked my arm harder than I thought possible. This has rendered me basically useless. I haven't been able to knit, sew, or really use the computer at all. I missed a couple of days of work because most of what I do all day involves the use of the computer and it just hurt too much. I'm still not 100%, but the muscle relaxants prescribed by the doctor along with heat packs and pain killers have been slowly helping me heal.

This has been driving me absolutely insane, of course. I hate not doing things. I don't even like watching TV usually unless I'm also working on something. But that's been my week. When I take the muscle relaxant I can't even read much because I just fall asleep. In other words, I have been soooo bored and all I want is for my shoulder to get better so I can do things that I like to do again!

But in the meantime... Here is a picture of the shawl I'm working on. Or will be working on again once my shoulder heals.

The pattern in Zilver and it's free on Ravelry. It's a fairly simple pattern and easy to memorize, which I like. It's a nice project to work on when I just want to relax. I love it so far! I might even be finished if it weren't for my shoulder! I chose a free pattern for my first shawl just in case I didn't like knitting it. But! I've found I like knitting shawls so far. I definitely see more in my future.

You may be wondering how I managed to type all this out if typing is agony. ONE HANDED. Yes, this was all painstakingly and slowly typed out with my left hand. Here's hoping there's only a few more days of this and then I can get back to doing thing with both hands. That will be a wonderful day...

Knitting, knitting, knitting...

Craft-wise, that's all I've been doing lately. But I've also been reading a lot of books. And thinking about trying to find balance between all the things I like to do instead of obsessively doing just one and neglecting all the others for large chunks of time. Not that I've actually figured out how to do that, but I've been thinking about it...

I'm making a sweater for Mario. I don't know if he'll like it or wear it, but he picked out the pattern and the color. I chose an acrylic yarn to make him more likely to wear it. Things I know about Mario: (1) if an article of clothing is too expensive, he won't want to wear it for fear of ruining it and (2) if he has to hand wash it, it won't get washed. So acrylic seemed the best way to go. If anyone is curious, it's Lion Brand Heartland in Black Canyon. The pictures aren't great (it's really hard to photograph black, I'm finding). It's really just black with some gray flecks in it. It looks much better in person, trust me!

The pattern is from Knits Men Want. I think the title of the book is cheesey, but it was one of the few patterns I found that he actually liked. I showed him so many pictures of Ravelry! But this was THE ONE. So I bought the book and went to work.

I'm just about to put split the sleeves off on some scrap yarn and continue the torso. Exciting! The miles and miles of stockinette may not be incredibly entertaining, but it is meditative. Very enjoyable at the end of a long day. And it's helping me get faster with my continental knitting.

Other things that are difficult about sweater photography... I can't spread it out because my cable is too short :(

My goal is to have this be a wearable sweater by the end of the summer. The end of the summer in Tucson, of course, is pretty much mid-October, though, so I have plenty of time. I've made really good progress so far, so I'm very optimistic!

I'm also knitting a shawl, which is more interesting to look at. But I'll save that for another post :)