Capitalism - Feudalism without the King
Tax the Rich

   

Knitting Friday, alas there's little of that

 

We're in a death watch here which is playing out more like the Bataan Death March; terrible and long.

 

Sherwin Nuland died on Monday. He was an MD who wrote How We Die, which he wrote to explain that outside of a fast death (dropping dead of a heart attack, etc.) there is no death with dignity. We might place a wall between us and a loved one (hospital, nursing home, hospice home) so we only have to occasionally see the degeneration of the body but degenerate it does. And I'm watching it at ground zero thinking, as so many people do, we give an end to dying animals more humanely. But this is not the time to write the big thoughts. I'm strung taut emotionally like a brittle clothes line.

If anyone is in the hospice situation, especially as a caregiver, an Hawaii hospice program, Kokua Mau, has an excellent end-of-life website:

http://kokuamau.org/resources/last-stages-life 

which is right on re: what happens during this stage and how to deal with it.

But I won't put everyone into my cup of sorrows, so I'll end with a pattern I'm fiddling with: 

http://www.elann.com/commerce.web/product_freepatterns.aspx?featuredID=127902

It's an Elann Coin Lace and Cable shawl and you must do a simple registration to get to this free pattern.

You may remember that the hospice social worker wore a Aran style tunic a few months ago and I've been trying to reconstruct it since then. I just wandered upon the Coin and Cable pattern, never thinking I could use it but I decided to make an elaborate swatch, starting at the neck and working to below the armhole. Well, I'm now 12" below the armhole and though I'm only using cheap yarn (just OK acrylic), I'm going to finish another inch a make this swatch into a top. This pattern knits up thick and elastic. Unless you hear my screams when I try on this "swatch" of: What was I thinking!, I may have found my pattern.

More later. See you soon. Happy knitting.