Whine but no cheese...

Some of you may have heard I had a root canal back in Nov and enjoyed the nitrous oxide and valium while having 1/2 the civilized world climbing into my mouth. heh. It was almost fun - I got to get high **legally**! Well, Tues I went to my long time dentist (really - 20 yrs) for the first crown fitting. Now, this man KNOWS that I have panic attacks and that I need nitrous and valium and headphones and a bit more time than most so the various drugs actually start to work.

I took 20mg of valium before the visit so I was doing OK when I got there. Got into the chair and the dentist was in a hell of a hurry. He popped the hose over my nose for the nitrous and wanted to start right in grinding off that tooth. I tried to tell him I was not having any reaction yet to the nitrous and that I needed more time, but he started grinding away.

In short, I had a panic attack. Bit his hand, scrambled out of the chair trailing hoses and drills, scuttled across floor on hands and knees trying to escape. Sande had left the building and only the 300 lb gorilla was home. Then I had an asthma attack brought on by the panic attack and it was touch and go for a while. Oh, did I mention that I wet myself? Yeah, that too.

And what did my dentist have to say? "Come on, only a bit left to go." I told him I *had* to have a few mins to let the nitrous work, that the adrenaline from the panic had burned off all the valium and I was still on the edge of panic. I was allowed 60 seconds and then he pried open my mouth to start grinding some more. Yeah, more panic. This time I didn't bite him, but whatever he had in my mouth cut into my gums and the roof of my mouth. The arms of the chair bruised me up a lot, too. I was not at the top of my game yesterday, to say the least. I still feel pretty drained and fuzzy from the aftermath of the adrenaline. I'm supposed to go back in 3 weeks for the real crown. I don't know if I can..

Recent Socks

OK, this time I added the photos first, hoping to get them inside the text. That didn't happen, so I better do some reading up on blogging so I can make posts that look as nicely laid out as everyone else's. This sock is from a new-to-me sock yarn and it's been so long since I wound the yarn I can't even find the ball bands. Bad Sande. Anyway, the cuffs are Horseshoe Lace


done on US3 (3.25mm) needles. My shoes have a high heel, so I've learned to leave a few rows of plain knitting between bottom of lace and beginning of heel flap. I've come to find that a plain garter stitch heel flap wears better and looks better longer on my socks than any of the slipped stitch heels. I like that Dutch square heel, so that's what I use on all of my socks (for a long time now). Since this is "regular" fingering wt sock yarn, I did change needles - size 0 for the heel flap and then up to size 1s for the foot. I used my brand new KnitPicks Classic circulars for these and the glare from the needles almost blinded me. :) That was the only thing I didn't like; I loved the points and the cables.
And here is the other pair of socks I finished in October - I call these slouch socks and, believe it or not, I made up the "pattern" myself. Just tonight I was cruising thru back issues of MagKnit online and found a very similar sock (well, the cuffs were similar) in the April 2006 issue. Honest, I didn't copy that pattern. :) Just a serendipitous accident. This yarn is KnitPicks Parade in the Gumball colorway. All I did to make the "slouch" cuff was to knit the color stripes and purl the spotted stripes, then turned the whole sock inside out on the needles to do heel and foot. These socks were knit on 3.25mm needles except for the heel flap. I did them on a smaller needle.

I tried something new on this sock, too. When I knit across for the first row of the heel flap, I did a wrap and turn with the next st (on the instep needle) on both ends of the flap. Then, after the flap was finished and I picked up the gusset sts, I knit that wrap with the first (and last) instep stitch. This is yet another "invisible" gusset corner and much, much easier than my previous method of picking up a st in the row below on first (and last) instep st. Try it, you may like it, too. :)
There doesn't seem to be any way to rearrange the photos once they are in the text/compose box. I'd sure appreciate one of you experienced bloggers letting me in on the secret of wrapping the text around the photos. And how to add buttons to the side bar of the blog. I'm sure there are other things I need to know, too, so all advice greatly appreciated.

spindlitis ornament exchange

Hi, again. Last year (or perhaps the year before) some of us on spindlitis (a yahoo group) decided to use Easter Egg dye on our handspun and make something of it. Well, I got as far as the dyeing and spinning, but never made anything from that lovely yarn until this year, when the spindlitis group had an ornament exchange from our handspun. Teri Pittman, list owner, graciously allowed me to participate, even tho I'm a wheel spinner and only demo briefly on spindles when out in public. These tiny mittens and socks are from the Interweave Press book Christmas


Stockings, way in the back. Actually, they
are just "regular" mittens and socks done on 24 sts around. This last photo is to show the difference in size between the mini-sock and one to fit my foot. It's just a trick of the camera that the colors look the same - they are really quite different.

First time out

Well, here I go with my very first post on my brand new blog. I like reading other people's blogs; here's hoping my blog will be interesting enough that others will like it. I'm still reading the help as I go, so this post won't have any fun stuff in it.

I'm going to try to make this blog comfortable to read. I know I get very frustrated at "artsy" blogs with tiny fonts and low contrast between background and text. If I can't read it, I'm gonna harbor evil feelings towards the person who made it like that... grin Gonna have to learn some tags, I guess, so I can insert smileys and really annoy folks.

That pretty girl above is my darling Cherry Cherry. She was barely 2 in that photo; pushing 13 now. I'm doing this first post from the laptop, so not many photos here. That will change on later posts. Heh.

If you're a blogger and have suggestions, please do let me know. sandeleh AT sbcglobal DOT net is the email address. (and is it really necessary to spell out email addresses?)