Update Report, Plus a Dose of Stupidity

Knitting time has been scarce here, for a number of reasons, none of them happy. I'm spending all too much time helping out other people... and I'm not complaining because it's any kind of burden on me, but because there are altogether too many people having bad things happen to them right now.

I have been working a bit on the Bleeding Hearts Stole, which is going nicely, but slowly. The main motif calls for patterning on both sides, so there's no nice resting purl rows. This isn't really a problem because the pattern is so geometrical that it's easy enough to follow without getting confused, except that you have to remember that on one side you end the motif with one kind of decrease and on the other side you end with it's opposite, which keeps it from being truly mindless. Here's a progress shot:

And here's a close-up:

It's hard to photograph this yarn, but it's really nice in person. It brings out my latent inner Goth ;) I'm knitting this on size 4 needles, as called for in the pattern, because I think the yarn, yardage-wise, is about the same as that used in the original pattern. However, it seems a bit thick. I wonder if I should be using 5's instead? Maybe it will block out...

I'm also working on a sock pattern for my Smooshy socks. I started working on it on the bit of sock that I had already started, then I realized that I had to rip it out and restart it to really get the pattern to pop. If it works out the way I envision it, it will be really nice. Hopefully I'll have some good progress to show you in the next day or two. We're due for another ice storm tomorrow that I suspect will close the schools, so I don't know how much knitting I'll get done.

Now for the Stupid Human Trick confession. The other night I ran into a friend at a meeting at school. She mentioned that she was going in for a lumpectomy today. Her doctor had found a lump in her breast that turned out to be 4 cm and tested at a Stage 3 after the biopsy. She expected to find out more by Monday, after the pathology report came back. I offered to take her son, A., after school today in case things got busy at the hospital and no one would be around to get him after school. She said that she had told A. that she was going in for a minor procedure, but that he didn't know the exact nature of what was going on. At this point, several other friends came over and she repeated all the information for them, too.

So I called her partner today to repeat my offer to take A., and to see if they needed any meals, and to let her know that I would always be willing to help out if it should turn out that C. needed chemo or radiation. "Oh," said M., "she told me that the biopsy came back negative, but they just wanted to get it out of her anyway." Ack! C. told a bunch of us about the Stage 3 diagnosis, and also that she hadn't told her son, but she didn't mention that she hadn't told her partner! What a terrible way to find out! I felt awful.