It's All about Heart!

Perhaps you’ve been wondering what has happened to my knitting in the midst of all this. It may sound that my husband’s health has taken over my life, and to be truthful, it has. However, what keeps me calm is my knitting. I cannot imagine going anywhere without it. It has become my 3rd arm.

With the exciting, yet fearful news that W. will be undergoing a stem cell transplant, we have been swept up in a whirlwind of appointments: lab tests, x-rays and scans, nutrition classes to learn how to prevent food borne infections, biopsies, blood evaluations for every virus known to man. I’m not kidding when I tell you since last Wed to next week, we have over 20 medical appointments! With this always comes the “Sit and wait” time and I try to relax to knit a portable project and this time it is Vanilla Socks. Vanilla socks, in knitting lingo usually means knitting a basic sock pattern, however, this time I really am knitting some Vanilla socks, an off-white elastic cotton I found in my stash that I needed to do something with.

I was browsing through Michaels Crafts, my favorite store, and came across a book called Socks from the Toe Up, by Wendy Johnson. She is a well-known, at least to the knitting and sock making world, who first developed this technique of making socks. The book had a variety of patterns from plain socks, using different cast-ons, different heel techniques and bind-offs, to beautiful lace and textured patterns.

I had never tried a textured pattern before and found one I thought simple enough to do without too much concentration…..a heart pattern.

The yarn is a cotton yarn, spun in boucle fashion with a strand of lycra, that makes it stretch. With summer coming, cotton is breathable and I wanted to try to knit a well-fitting sock that would hug my foot without being too tight. This is my experiment and it is going well so far.

It certainly has sparked the interest of many fellow “waiters” at City of Hope. It’s amazing how easy it is to start a conversation with strangers there. The fact that we are all going through some kind of cancer or health situation binds us all together in many ways. Anywhere we go there in the City of Hope, there is tremendous compassion and support, among the staff and fellow patients and caregivers. All hospitals should be this way.