Preemie Hats

A HUGE "Thank You" to the knitters at Fibre Space who worked with Project Knitwell to produce these wonderful caps that will be donated to the MedStar Georgetown University Hospital NICU where I work:


Aren't they amazing???

Carol Caparosa and her wonderful volunteers run Project Knitwell-- a program that uses knitting as therapy-- for patients and their families, for parents of hospitalized infants and children, and for the nurses who care for them. I've participated in several of the nursing "sit and knits", and really wish that my schedule allowed me to spend more time with them. I have been fortunate enough to be able to help some of "our moms" with projects they've been working on. Carol meets with "our moms" to teach them to knit simple caps and other projects for their babies during the long hours they spend in hospital. As they progress to more complicated projects, Carol has been kind enough to use me as a resource. I love helping them to learn to read patterns and show new stitches and techniques.

Carol's focus on knitting as therapy has helped me, as I went through a difficult time recently with the death of one of my patients. I found myself unable to focus on anything, so picked up the needles and started knitting. I was good on theory, but had forgotten the reality of knitting as therapy.

Fibre Space is a wonderful knit and crochet shop in Alexandria. Fantastic yarn and really great people. Fibre Space has partnered with Project Knitwell to provide resources and an opportunity for Alexandria area knitters to do some outreach. What a wonderful partnership!

Stash Diving and Getting Back on the Needles

I went through a really dry spell for a pretty long time. After my Mom died, I just found it really hard to focus on knitting, and especially focusing on identifying a pattern, a technique and a yarn to "get going" on.

Following that loss was the closing of my home away from home-- Knit Happens in Alexandria, where I found inspiration and friendship with kindred spirits and souls. These women, and the occasional man, supported each other through our life experiences-- weddings, deaths, kids growing up... and I really miss them. Yes, I know there are other LYS around-- and we have some terrific ones in the area. Taking nothing away from them, it's not the same.

Through Facebook and blog-dom, we keep in touch-- albeit somewhat sporadically. We've moved to different areas of the country and world.

Elspeth inspires me. She knits all the time-- or must knit all the time, based on the amount of amazing stuff she keeps producing. She knit this really cool cowl, and I headed for the basement-- one of the several areas that house way too much yarn accumulated over several years.

I finished it this morning--- just need to weave in ends and block.

So I'm stash diving, and planning more projects. I'm getting back into the groove of having something besides a half-done sock in progress at any given time.

We'll see how it goes.

Beauty

Another reason I love Trader Joe's

9 bucks worth of flowers. Priceless.

We Carry On

It's been an interesting month. I dealt with some very draining situations at work. There are great joys in my job, but also overwhelming sadness at times.

I am usually able to compartmentalize-- keeping work at work, and not bringing my day home with me. Usually.

Sometimes I get very close to a family and it's not so easy to get over the overwhelming sadness. I had one of those a couple of weeks ago. I'd been present at the baby's birth, and was with the family through his too short life, and was with them when he died five weeks later. I found myself at home-- too sad to do much, but needing to do something to center on and work through it all.

I made this prayer shawl for the baby's mother. It calmed me and gave me a purpose and focus.

Prayer shawls have two purposes --or in Portia's words, (as with the quality of mercy) "are twice blest-- they bless those who give and those who receive."

I sewed small charms into it-- symbols of the baby's short life, and of hope and peace.

I hope she finds small comfort in it.