Bitter-sweetness

Good morning, everyone...your Knit Tips Tuesday is all about reaping the benefits of circular needles:

http://www.examiner.com/knitting-in-chicago/knit-tips-tuesday-circular-needles

To my new readers, thanks for joining me!  If you would like to subscribe to the examiner.com page, where the articles are just sent to your email inbox automatically, all you have to do is click on my name near the article and you will see another button that says "subscribe."

This week may be a "slow knitting news" week, mostly because I'm taking a two-day road trip.  Either way, I hope everyone is knitting away as I am, and if there IS anything that is newsworthy, I'm happy to pull over to a truck stop, load up on coffee, and write about it.

Today is kind of a bummer...two years ago today, I was with CJ's mom in the hospital, finally realizing that no magic liver and pig valve was going to just show up at the door of the cardiac unit for him.  Saying goodbye to CJ was so, so hard...I pushed him away for twenty years, including the five when he followed me around in high school.  Right when I stopped pushing him away, he died.  The good news, though, is that he died happy and surrounded by the people closest to him.

I did a lot of knitting in those nineteen days in the hospital...I made a scarf for my former tenant that looked like an homage to the Detroit Redwings, only cuter...but it still broke my heart to actually make a Redwings scarf for a Redwings fan.  I also made a lacy dark-blue scarf for her roommate using yarn I purchased in Paris, a pink scarf which was ultimately given to one of the nurses, and a manly-scarf that I only recently gave away.  I'm sorry, but I'm a scarf girl.

Anyway, knitting and the companionship of CJ's mother was really the only thing that got me through the hospital stay, and they are both mainstays in my life two years later.

Today, I also have to say goodbye to my other crop of favorite knitters, so while I'm looking forward, I can't help but also look back on this day.  I'm wearing his Back to the Future tee shirt in his honor.  That, and of course I married his best friend.

Thank you all for being in my life.  Think happy thoughts to me on my road-trip!