FreshMD

The antidote: knitting

Post up at Mothers in Medicine on why I consider knitting the perfect antidote to medicine and parenting.

Striped

The Morehouse striped vest is off the needles.

This isn't a Sunday-best vest. It's meant to be worn Deep Cove-style, with rolled up sleeves, shirt untucked, ferns and pine needles snagged onto the back. When I knit something for a four-year-old, I fully expect it to be rolled around in.

It does work just as well worn reading Beatrix Potter in front of the fire.

The vest was a beginner-level project, knit with undyed Morehouse merino 2-ply in brown heather and soft white on 3.25 mm needles. The yarn was coarser than what I'm used to (but not itchy), and the needles smaller, and I enjoyed the change.

I've recently joined Ravelry, the online knit (and crochet) community, which allows you to organize your knitting projects, yarn stash and needles, and provides an extensive catalogue of projects shared by others. You have to apply to be invited to join, but I think that's just a manoeuvre to inflate members' sense of accomplishment and belonging. It's not like you have to mail them a swatch.

I'm feeling undecided about what to tackle next. A stuffed turtle? Some Elizabeth Zimmermann?

Or call it a season? I've been back to gardening already, we're planning our annual March-break California road trip and it feels like we're barreling towards spring.

Tunic

When our driveway is littered with cedar debris, night falls shortly after Saskia comes home from school and my slippers stay on all day, it's time to knit. The last two winters I took on adult projects. This year I'm knitting for the kids, those perfectly small and forgiving recipients.

I just finished Morehouse Farm's Child's Tunic, in their merino worsted weight natural brown heather with white trim. Merino wool is lovely because it's not itchy. I love Morehouse Farm's undyed wool: this brown heather is 65% white wool blended with 35% brown, which is black wool bleached chocolate by the New York State sun.

After placing my order in October, I waited impatiently for it to arrive. I could track its progress online, and it sat at Customs in Montreal for weeks. It didn't seem right that a small box of wool could be regarded as possible contraband, and I was so annoyed with the wait that I decided I didn't want to knit this season after all. But when the parcel arrived on my doorstep one grey, wet afternoon I forgot my resolution and cast on the first stitches before the cardboard was even in the recycling.

I so enjoy that knitting is portable, and that little bits of my travels get worked into the garment. The cast on was done while Pete's mom was visiting; the stitches were divided for the front and back while waiting for the ferry in Tsawwassen; the back was knit in the atrium of the Empress Hotel; a perfect three needle shoulder bind-off was executed in Parksville one evening while deer grazed outside the cabin; and the sleeve cuffs were finished on a Sunday afternoon at home in front of the fire.

No part of this sweater was knit at a medical conference.

Morehouse included a postcard with my order, and Ariana was enchanted when I explained the link between the sheep and her sweater. She carries the card when she wears the sweater, and it's worn and bent with her two-year-old affection. "Wool! Sheep! Sweater!"

This was an easy, beginner-level project. As always, I tweaked it a bit. I knit buttonholes and sewed on some sweet wooden apple buttons, but disliked the cluttered end result and went for a clean crocheted finish instead. I also lengthened the sleeves.

Now, Saskia wants a toque and Leif has requested a vest, scarf and slippers. I'm happy to oblige.

Tomorrow I must introduce myself

I'm at a medical conference this week.

Whenever I'm surrounded by hundreds of fellow physicians, I feel such affection for my colleagues. Everyone's so pleasant, despite looking generally fatigued and overworked. Everyone's so keen, focusing respectfully on the speakers, jotting down notes and asking well thought out questions. And everyone's so agreeable, tilting their pelvises in time to the music as the YWCA instructor - an energetic woman with a blonde bob in a track suit - shouts instructions during the aerobics breaks between speakers.

This feeling of camaraderie was only intensified when I glanced over this afternoon during a lecture on acute diverticulitis and noticed another physician knitting a sweater. She was knitting a red, adult-sized cabled sweater in the round while listening attentively to the speaker. Her needles continued to click and flash through the presentations on incontinence surgery, inguinal hernia repair and breast reconstruction.

I was impressed on two levels. First, that she can presumably absorb the information presented without taking any notes. And second, that she can do cables while listening to rapid-fire presentations on the latest medical research. I can't do either. She did look to be in her fifties; perhaps in twenty years I'll have evolved to her state.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo, taken with my PDA. I snapped it surreptitiously, because one thing weirder than a doctor knitting her way through a conference is another doctor photographing her handiwork during the 'nutrition break.'

Virus doilies

Reader Rosa recently alerted me to these virus doilies by Laura Splan, a New York-based mixed media artist and phlebotomist.

 
 

Clockwise from top left: HIV, Herpes, Influenza, SARS.

The doilies are computerized machine embroidered lace mounted on black velvet, based on digital images of the viruses.

When I turned thirty my Oma, the giver of unusual gifts, gave me thirteen crocheted doilies. I'm going to have to take a closer look at those; maybe the gift was more complex than I realized.

Splan says in her statement:

My work explores perceptions of beauty and horror, comfort and discomfort. I use anatomical and medical imagery as a point of departure to explore these dualities and our ambivalence towards the human body . . . I often combine scientific images and materials with more domestic or familiar ones. The . . . design of a doily lends a sort of relief in its familiarity and pleasing pattern. This juxtaposition creates a response that fluctuates between seduction and repulsion, comfort and alienation.

Her website features a number of other interesting medical projects. Check out the latch-hooked Prozac, Thorazine, Zoloft pillows. Splan explains, "These soft, oversized anti-psychotics and anti-depressants provide a different kind of comfort than their prescription counterparts."

Or the Blood Scarf, which "depicts a scarf knit out of clear vinyl tubing. An intravenous device emerging out of the user's hand fills the scarf with blood. The implied narrative is a paradoxical one in which the device keeps the user warm with their blood while at the same time draining their blood drip by drip."

 

Makes my own fall plans to knit a vest for Leif seem rather dull.

Vest

This will be the last knitting post of the season, as I switch to gardening with the spring time change. If this pleases you, because you're dismissive of knitting, I'd like to point out that the winner of the Canadian Blog Awards 2007 - Best Blog was Yarn Harlot. What a great name. I'll bet the College would pen me a letter within a week if I started calling myself Medical Harlot.

Last year I ordered RYC Classic Weekend by Rowan. The book is gorgeous, practically a coffee table book, packed with photos of women in ponchos meeting at abandoned bus stations, and picnicking on tea and pears on windswept beaches bundled in Fair Isle cardigans.

I picked the Nessie vest.

*Photo from Laughing Hens

The model is wearing her vest over her pajamas. She is playing Scrabble on a Saturday morning in her weekend getaway cabin with her girlfriend, who is similarly dressed in a knit garment over pajamas. They look happy and refreshed. The scene is not one with which I am personally familiar.

*Photo from Laughing Hens

I used Mission Falls 1824 wool in Oatmeal, which I ordered from Camilla Valley Farm. I started this vest when I was still nursing Ariana, so I had to estimate my post-lactating bust size. I realize now that I was optimistic. Other than that, I enjoyed the project. 

I finished the vest last month, and promptly wore it five days in a row. It's versatile - I've paired it with a t-shirt and jeans, and a blouse and dress pants. I have yet to wear it with pajamas.

Salvaged

Six years ago a friend convinced me to take a knitting course with her at Knitwear Architects in Yaletown. The evening classes were taught in a converted warehouse by a heterosexual black volleyball player named Steve. Cotton, silk and linen yarns of every colour lined the brick walls. It was very pleasant.

I took a second course a few months later, and selected a sand-coloured cotton yarn with which to knit a sweater for Saskia. The store didn't have enough of the yarn in stock, but sold me what they had and told me to return in a few weeks to pick up the remainder.

After completing the back of the sweater, a fairly complicated pattern with cables and baubles, I returned for the rest of the yarn, only to discover that Knitwear Architects had gone out of business in the interim. Many desperate phone calls and emails later, I was no closer to obtaining a matching yarn to complete the garment.

And so, every time I rummage through my stash of knitting sundries, I come across this:

The sight of this piece of fabric ignites all sorts of emotions that run counter to the spirit of knitting, deeply negative feelings, including the urge to inflict injury with a knitting needle. I can't complete the sweater without the exact match of yarn, and I won't unravel all those baubles and cables. So each time I seethe, refold it, and pack it away until the next encounter.

The other day Saskia caught sight of it and exclaimed reverently, "Whoa! That's the best doll blanket ever!" And so I unraveled the waistband, crocheted an edging on it, and gave it to her.

I feel a little less rage when I see the piece of knitting in its new context:

The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art

The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art is an on-line showcase for anatomically correct fabric brain creations. Knitting, quilting and crocheting are a few of the featured techniques.

Karen Norberg, psychiatrist, designed and created the knitted brain, above. It is currently housed at the Boston Museum of Science.

Marjorie Taylor, developmental psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, is the artist responsible for the quilted brains, below.

Unfortunately, the Museum has not had any new pieces added since October 2006. Is this for lack of artists in the field? Or have Norberg and Taylor taken a hiatus to cable-knit the sympathetic nervous system on size 0 needles?

I'll be finishing up a knitting project this week, and in the market for a new one. I hadn't considered a ganglion, and I don't know that the museum's curator would deem it acceptable, but I wouldn't mind adding 'Contributor to the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art' to my CV. Who knows what doors that could open.

I'm often asked to advise medical school applicants, and from now on I think I'll direct them to the Museum's site. Admissions committees look for well-rounded individuals who are proficient in the arts as well as sciences, with unusual interests that make for good interview topics. If knitting brains doesn't fill those criteria, I don't know what does.

Knitted Anatomy

I realize knitting seems a strange hobby for a doctor, more unusual than playing the harpsichord or growing prize-winning bonsai. But I've found a knitting project that would fit a physician like a surgeon's glove: a knitted uterus.

MK Carroll designed and photographed this uterus. She explains, "It's not completely anatomically accurate. I've taken a few liberties with the general shape and scale, as well as leaving out the ligaments connected to the ovaries. And, of course, the human uterus is not normally bubblegum pink."

Is it just me, or does that uterus look gravid? Maybe there's a little knit fetus in there, with a cabled umbilical cord.

That's a beginner project. Here's the entire digestive system:

This was designed and photographed by arrmatie.

What do you do with that? Give it to your gastroenterologist for Christmas? Let your kids cuddle with it? Set it out on your coffee table for a conversation starter?

Thanks to the Internet, there's a pattern out there for every, and I do mean every, piece of human anatomy. I can't be more specific or I'll attract the wrong kind of traffic.

Maybe I'll do up some angora CD4 cells to go with that HIV Plushie. 

Berkshire pullover

I finished last year's Christmas present for Pete this week.

It's the Berkshire pullover from Melanie Falick's book Weekend Knitting: 50 Unique Projects and Ideas. I'm guessing the "weekend" in the title refers to pre-children weekends, the ones where you can sleep until ten, meet friends for brunch at Sophie's Cosmic Cafe, spend the afternoon reading the paper, and then do dinner and a show. You could use one of those weekends of leisure to be productive and make turtleneck egg cozies or a lap blanket. If you have children, disregard the "weekend" part of the title.

The wool is Morehouse merino, bulky weight. It's undyed, from black sheep grazing in the Hudson River Valley of New York state, faded to a chocolate brown by the sun. There are bits of straw stuck to the fibres, and it smells like farm country in all the right ways.

I usually knit for my kids, who are very forgiving of imperfect fit. Unfortunately, an ill-fitting hand knitted garment on a grown man does not look charming, it looks pathetic. So I had to custom size this sweater, and ended up rewriting the entire pattern.

I'm pleased with the end result. And equally pleased to be done with it.