Tuesday, January 17, 2006

knitting and a fat lip

The Second Sock is finished!!! Delivery of the finished pair will occur tomorrow. I forgot to bring my camera/pictures to work (a.k.a. internet connection point) today, but I'll try to remember tomorrow and edit this with pictures of the socks and my new project...
here are the socks!! nices stripes that line up - yay!
The new project is a Hermione hat, as seen in the third Harry Potter movie. Alison just made one, too, and I think that sort of inspired me. Mom also inspired me in that she got me the yarn I'm using, she helped me rip up the sweater that the yarn was knit into, and she said it would make a great hat and scarf. I always think that if it started as a sweater, it can be knit back into a sweater...but that's never true. Mom has pretty good sense, so I'm going with the hat, scarf, and mittens, too. I started thinking about making an outdoors-accessory set during Christmas break, but it was was incredibly warm then, so I decided not to...but then it got cold again...and then warm again. I finally decided that since the gauge is all screwed up (probably) on my other projects, I'd go with this - make something for myself that's small and fast, so over the long weekend I started. It is SO FUN!!
a tweedy hat for me! the tweed makes the cables and bobbles not show up so well...too bad
The goal with the hat is to make it per the pattern (I lucked out - my yarn knits to the same gauge as the written pattern with only one needle size decrease) and then add ear flaps starting from under the ribbing. Then I'm going to make mittens...and then a scarf with the same cable and bobble patterning. I do hope I have enough yarn for all of that. I think I will. I hope.

edit 6:24p.m.
Um...yeah, maybe I should make some sort of comment about why "and a fat lip" is in the title of this post, huh? I forget fast...

I went to the dentist today to get a filling redone. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not at all painful. A little background on dentists and me...I went to the dentist A LOT. You know that you went to the dentist a lot growing up when he sends you birthday cards when you're in your twenties (it also happens that the University of Michigan vs. Michigan State University football game is often close to my birthday...and Dr. Ellens went to U of M and I of course went to MSU...and Dr. Ellens likes to make a few snide remarks about my school in his birthday card). I've had lots of fillings done, not because I don't brush my teeth (and probably not because I like candy) but because it's genetic - Mom and Dad are also visiting Dr. Ellens a lot and giving him lots of money (thus the funds for sending birthday cards/rivalry mail to patients). Dr. Ellens took care of my teeth for the first 21 years of my life, and then...I had to move to Pittsburgh where I am fortunate enough to have dental insurance. However, when I went to my new dentist, I realized how incredibly frightening it is to go to a new medical professional - the office was very different from Dr. Ellens', nothing went the way I was used to... Granted this was a university dental school, and the people working on me were students, but STILL!! Even when I asked for things that would make my visit more normal, it was impossible to get. And then was the kicker...the dentist-in-training told me I needed to have one of my old fillings redone and a new cavity in a separate tooth filled AND two other teeth drilled and filled.

The fateful day of my 4-tooth-drill didn't go nearly as well as planned. First, I was late for my appointment due to some lab thing not going quite right. That meant the guy didn't have time to do all four teeth, so I only had to get two mutilated. And good thing, too - because this was the MOST painful experience ever in my life. Not that I've experienced much pain, but this was B.A.D. The first mouth-numbing injection didn't work. So I got another one. That one also didn't work very well, because I could feel everything the guy was doing as he drilled my teeth apart. Aagh. I thought I was going to cry and die. I began to wonder if Dr. Ellens had some special talent, if every other dentist in the world made it hurt so bad - that would explain why people hate doing to the dentist so very much.

I got myself out of that dental office real fast after that - never rescheduled to get the other two teeth worked on, because I could not go throught that horror again. I decided that if worse came to worse I'd have Dr. Ellens do the work some time when I was back in Grand Rapids. The new dental office I got in Pittsburgh seemed great - and the dentist there couldn't figure out what it was that the previous guy had thought was wrong with my other two teeth (now THAT was a bit annoying. Not, that's an understatement).

All that to say that today when I got to the dentist for my first drilling since the terriblehorribleawful experience, I wasn't too sure what I was getting myself into, but I was prepared for the worst. BUT!! Lo and behold, this was not bad at all. As usual, the worst part was the actual injection of the anaesthesia into my cheek. (That was even worse than the fact that it cost me six times as much as I had expected thanks to some miscommunication and lack of coverage by the beautific dental insurance company...) That left me with a big, fat lip the rest of the afternoon and is forcing me to eat soup for a while. In the midst of my awaiting my doom, waiting for the anaesthesia to kick in, waiting for the dentist to finish with another patient...I got some respite with my knitting. Oh, it was lovely to sit and think about the cables and bobbles and how many rounds I have left on the hat and NOT think about drilling noises and nerves under enamel and other awful dentisty stuff.

It's over. It hurts a little, but it's certainly NOT bad. And I knit. My dentist thought it was really crazy when I asked if I could knit instead of read the magazine he offered.

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