Religious idiots let daughter die...in Wisconsin!

Wowsers - Wisconsin has this crazy, archaic law. So if you're deluded enough to think that the imaginary magic man in the sky will help your children through direct "divine" intervention, you can let them slowly die horribly...and that's okay.

I thought this was 2008. I thought we, as a society, had agreed to protect our children.

I have ranted about this elsewhere, and I think I'm just sad and burnt out now. Just....damn. If I believed in hell, I sure know who'd be going.

6 - 8" of spring

Blargh! Snow again! I suppose all the Easter eggs need to stay white so we can hide them in the snow. It's so nice to have an extra hour of daylight so we can stare at the snow longer.

Can you tell that I am sick of winter?

I'm also sick of studying and anticipating the neonatal boards...everything else is piling up on my desk. The review book puts me instantly to sleep (good to remember if I ever have insomnia again). And of course, stuff keeps cropping up that simple must be done right now.

Thank goodness this is my last on-call weekend before the boards: I've had 6 admissions. Sometimes the NICU feels like a Roach Motel: they check in, and they don't check out. Since your average 34-weeker stays a week or so, 6 admissions can really fill the place up for a while! I did discharge one today, but I'm still up 5! Tomorrow I get to hand it all off. Ahhhhh.

Ravelry as enabler (no, really?!?)

Blackberry hills, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

Getting all (ha!) my stash into Ravelry has enabled me to wallow in my yarn, revel in it, and find stuff I forgot I had! Ican do this for hours and hours....I've got my the preschooler fetching me yarn. She counts, she practices her colors: it's educational, right?

Speaking of education, there's a referendum here in La Crosse about whether to spend more money on the schools. The school buildings themselves, mind you. Like the one with the 69-year-old boiler. I can't believe there are those out there who would begrudge a small (about $55 per $100,000 house value) tax increase to make safety updates on the schools. It's more involved that that, but essentially the opposition comes across as saying something on the order of, "I want good schools but I don't want to pay for it." DUH. End rant.

On another front, I tried to slice off the tip of my left thumb while cooking dinner Saturday evening. I have a nasty flap thing going on, and tomorrow morning's scrubbing in the NICU is going to be interesting to say the least. I'm thinking Steri-strips and a Tegederm. Right now I am making do with knuckle BandAids (because all the fingertip ones were already gone, I wonder why?).

Might buy a fishtank, been kicking it around. Photos later if so.

Ouch! This learning thing hurts!

Ow ow owie ow ow!

I'm at Neonatal Board Review at the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza in Chicago.

Literally 9 - 10 hours per day of lectures on neonatal topics, meant to prepare me (and my fellow neos) for The Boards, which will be on April 7th. We ought to know this stuff - it's review. I think of it as a wake up call and refresher.

I don't feel very refreshed though, after SITTING for 9 hours straight.

I have been getting a lot of knitting done though. But my back hurts!

Two and half more days, then a nice 5-hour train ride back home again! Ow!

I think this hotel should lend their chairs to the CIA as a torture device.

Well golly gee, Ravelry is the best!

A-ha! After my no-help Berroco answer (see previous post), I checked out the sweater on Ravelry. And, lo and behold, someone made Sanpoku in Comfort, just like me!

Turn out I sewed the fronts on 90 degrees wrong. Thus the curling problem. Oh, the edges will still curl, but different edges. :-)

I wonder when I will finally feel like picking out the seams and resewing it the right way.

The Dreaded Stockinette Curl

sanpoku2, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

Okay, so I knit Berroco's "Sanpoku," substituting Comfort for the Touche (or Ultra Alpaca) specified in the pattern. See their pattern photos here: http://www.berroco.com/255.262/262/262_sanpoku_touche_pv.html

Look how their edges curl on the front: completely counter to how stockinette naturally curls. To see how stockinette naturally curls, look at my sweater photo.

So I email Berroco:

" I have recently knit Sanpoku, substituting Comfort. Now that it is done, I cannot see how you got the panels to curl inward at the top -
this is counter to how stockinette curls, and mine curls outward. Even with blocking, I don't see how you got the piece to hang the way it does. Any tricks?"

And here is the answer I (quickly) got:

"Hi Catherine,
Sorry no tricks. Comfort is nylon/acrylic. It's not going to
block, you shouldn't iron it, it just makes it limp. The Touche is
cotton/rayon so it act totally different."

Evidently cotton/rayon Touche curls toward the purl side at the bound-off edge. I think not. I can believe blocking it so hard that you get it to lay flat. But I don't see how to get it to drape that way. I'm double-hosed because you can't iron Comfort (unless you want to "kill" it).

I wonder if they sewed it down.

I've put my head together with Judy, the owner of my LYS, Baskets of Yarn, in Onalaska, WI (www.basketsofyarn.net). She thought of using a more elastic cast-on and bind-off, or putting a crochet edge on the bound-off edge...or tacking it down to the inside. Once I stop being so mad at the sweater, I'll think about which of these to attack first (NOT the one that involves taking the sweater apart, thank you).

Bad bionic blogger. No biscuit.

Okay, so I have failed to post. I have unwittingly deleted photos from Flickr which were on my blog. And I have only, today, found out that I have comments on my blog, some of them months old.

Duh.

So: Visian ICL. I am now bionic. I have implanted lenses under my irises...and I can see! I was about, oh, say, 20/600 before the surgery, and worse -9 to -9.5 contacts. Now I'm 20/20 with both eyes. Huzzah! There is much rejoicing (and I may have to eat the minstrals).

I am still learning not to grab my pager or alarm clock and set it on my nose to read it in the middle of the night. I then go, "Why is it so blurry??" Old habits die hard.