Lace! Argh….SO pretty…SO frustrating. First, it’s knitting on fingering weight which is very fine yarn. Second, the instructions are complex. I made it to Row 15…five or six times! My problem isn’t so much staying on the row. I have that figured out. My problem came when I had to start the row with a short sequence of four stitches, then there was a sequence of thirteen stitches that I had to repeat five times across the row, then end the row with a different sequence on the last four stitches. I constantly lost track of where I was about the middle of the fourth sequence on the fifteenth row. After tearing it out umpteen times and getting frustrated, I decided…if it isn’t fun to knit, don’t knit it. This is how I got burned out on counted cross stitch. I started trying more and more difficult patterns till it wasn’t fun anymore and I quit. I don’t want to quit knitting so I’ll knit what I love, not what frustrates the bejeebers out of me!
I did finish the little hat with the cables. And I sewed the sweet little flower buttons on the baby sweater. And…I learned I DON’T like complicated lace patterns. So, the day was not a total loss. We awoke to a mix of rain and snow so I drove to the bakery in our little town and got donuts to go with our morning hot beverages. They didn’t have pepperoni rolls, so I got meatball rolls for our supper. They were pretty good!
Today is March 10th. On this day nine years ago, Mr. Virgo and I had just purchased a Ford Expedition because the Toyota was costing us $1000 every time we turned around. We wanted a newer, more powerful vehicle to tow the camper we were excitedly talking about. Mr. Virgo came home that night and put his briefcase on one of the kitchen chairs and winced. I asked him what was wrong and he said he had tweaked his shoulder that morning getting the heavy briefcase out of the car and it was still hurting him.
He looked tired…but he always looked tired. It was a Sunday night at the tail end of a busy ski season…the start to his two days off. I set out his supper and gave him a couple ibuprofen for his shoulder. We watched a little TV and called it a night…not knowing what was looming ahead of us. I had already experienced two nights with terrifying dreams that week that I awoke and he was lying cold and dead beside me in bed. My fight or flight response was at the ready…just beneath the surface of my awareness…hyper-vigilant.
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“Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.”
Jeremiah 33:3 ESV