It was the pits, and has left me feeling very worn and frazzled.

When I was sitting in the doctor’s office, I was knitting a sock. There I was, with the erky drops in my eyes so they could do the tests- feeling freaked out from all the awfullizing I had been doing over being scared sideways by the weirdness going on with my eye -  and the best way to keep myself from falling completely apart was to knit knit knit my sockie.

Photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright.

For me, sitting still, freaking out, is not a good thing, so even though I couldn’t see, I could still knit, and be comforted by the knitting.

A lady who was sitting beside me in the waiting room started chatting with me about knitting and handwork.

She had never seen self-striping yarn before, so was inspired to go out and buy some after seeing my sock.

Also, she said that her hands really hurt when she knits, so I suggested the fingerless craft gloves that give support to aching hands.

She was delighted to learn about them and those are on her shopping list now, too.

She got called in, and another lady sat down beside me.

The second lady started chatting with me about my sockies, and was also very excited about self-striping yarn.

(She’s going yarn shopping, too….)

Lady #2 told me that she’s so pleased to see a huge revival in crafting, and I agreed.

She then said that there is one craft that she doesn’t think will be revived.

Immediately, I thought… she’s going to say- tatting…..

She said that her mother-in-law had done something that she’d never seen anyone else do, an unusual thing called, tatting.

I grinned, and told her that I love tatting. She was pretty amazed.

I pulled up the cuff of my jeans, and showed her the cuff of my sock:

Photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright.

She liked the tatted flowers a lot!

Then, she asked me about an odd thing that she’d been given from her mother-in-law’s estate.

No one knew what it was, so they gave it to her.

It’s a ‘U’ shaped wire thing with a little clip on it.

Oh! That’s a hairpin lace loom! and then described how it works.

She was enchanted and said that once the eye drops had worn off, she was going to go dig it out and get started with it. She’s going to the library to take books out on hairpin lace. Neat!

Eventually, it was my turn to see the doctor and get the good and less than good news (ick on what happened in my eye, and whew that things will get better. He said ’should’, but I say ‘WILL’.  AND, I also refuse to think that it could happen again. Been there, done this, don’t intend to ever do it again.

Anyhow, they said that they are going to keep an eye on me.

Which immediately set off a series of metaphoric images for me….  I thought…

hmmmm……  ‘keeping an eye on me’…….

So, after I came home and slept for 4 hours,

I went out to the workshop, and cut some pieces of branch off a piece of discarded firewood.

I was inspired by the buttons I made with a branch from my daughter and son-in-law’s house. So, it was natural to still be thinking about using slices of upcycled branches to work with.  The photo makes it look much larger. It’s actually only 1 1/2 inches wide.

Photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright.

I drew an eye on it, and then burned it, painted it, varnished it and glued a pin back on it/

Photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright.

While I was making it, I was visualizing healing and re-generation, and all kinds of good things.

So, fingers crossed for good health for all of us!  We’ll keep an eye on that, okay?

Post from: Hankering for Yarn