The Heart

Before we left for dh's surgery, I wanted to find something to knit for the surgeon as a thank you gift. What the heck to knit for a man in the middle of a California Summer? I searched ravelry.com for heart motif scarves. I repeat: in the middle of a California Summer? No. I searched for a heart pillow. Eureka! I found an anatomically correct heart pillow. I love Ravelry! It took me seconds to find out that the pattern was in the Winter 2006/2007 issue of "knit.1" Sigh, how am I going to find that?? I sent emails to a couple of lys owners whom I'd met. Voila! Allison @ Fibers Grass Valley had the mag, and was willing to pick out supplies needed and have the "kit" shipped to my sister's house where we'd be staying in California. How'd I find Fibers? I checked out an ad on ravelry, of course. Hey Allison, Jess & Casey--it works!!

Sorry, I digress.

I started working on the heart as soon as we arrived in California, just 4 days before dh's surgery. I really didn't get as much time to knit as I thought I would, since so much of my time was taken up with dh's surgery & recovery. And then the volunteer knitting inspiration that hit me when we were in the Pre-Op process (see the other entries). I finished the heart, and we presented it to Dr. Reitz & his nurse, Sophia Loo, the day before we came home. When we presented the Igloo cooler to the doctor, he said "They used to use these things for heart transplants. Now they use these Tupperware things--they're a little bigger." I had to laugh & told him he actually needed to open it. His initial reaction was "What's this?" They were pretty surprised by the heart. I'm sure they've never gotten one of those before! ....If you're wondering what the white part is on the aorta, that's my rendering of the dacron graft they used to repair dh's aneurysm. Sophia had described it as looking like "an off-white Slinky" (I asked!). It's i-cord, sewn on there in a spiral.

Sarah, who's writing the article about the inspiration, and our whole exerience at Stanford, asked what the size of a real heart is in comparison to the model. A real one is about 50% of the pillow size, but Dr. R. added, he has seen hearts that were that big before (enlarged heart = not a good thing).


Prelude to a heart:

Fibers forgot to wind the Cascade 220 into balls for me, so I enlisted dh (before the surgery, of course!) into being my swift while I balled the yarn. This is his yarn dance:

KnitWit @ Stanford

 

 

 

 

This will be a pretty brief post since I still have to finish a post on the other sitem and I'm really tired. Donovan & I met with the KnitWit @ Stanford on Tuesday to brainstorm ideas and sketch out a plan of action for trying to start the waiting room yarn idea. Thanks Lourdes, for gathering people to come talk to us! Everyone brought great ideas to the meeting, and it was nice to meet the faces behind emails.

Donovan found the quote on the floor, right where we were meeting. I thought it was really fitting and inspiring. The other photo is a view of the Hoover Tower from an perspective that I've never seen before--it's from the Engineering Building.

Today I got the call from Angela from Guest Services, who has the power to get approval for implementation of our ideas. She asked me to forward the outline of the project to her so that she can clearly present it to the "powers that be" who make decisions on these types of things. I'll beef up the outline, add in some vignettes of my encounters with knitters during my time here, and also add in info from the link that one of the KnitWitters sent me. Heck, I'll even offer to present the idea myself, via Skype or something. Angela said the process is a slow one, but I'm just happy that it's not dead in the water already. I'm patient. Maybe by the time that Donovan & I come back next year for his 1-year re-check, the project can get going.

I also met with Beth Elliot from Green Planet Yarn today. She has a lovely store, and she is wonderful!! She's got ALL the colors of Lamb's Pride Worsted! Plus many other yarns, and for each area, she's got a little writeup of the company or the yarn so that the customers can understand why she chooses to carry that yarn, certain types of needles, etc. Beth is a retired Stanford employee, and she's got some connections there, too.

In order to keep things moving in the right direction with the idea, we're soliciting name suggestions from the KnitWitters (or if you're reading this and have an idea, let me know & I'll add it to the list!), we'll vote on a name next week, and I'll start either a yahoo or a google group (Beth said the google groups aren't bad, either) some time after I get back to Hawaii.

Thank you everyone who's seen my blog or my emails, and wants to help out with the project!! I think Stanford is going to be surprised at our organized plans!

It's Alive!!

My last post about what's now being called "waiting room knitting" has given my idea a life of it's own!

On Monday, when I had planned to contact the Stanford Auxiliary folks, I got a comment from Sara from the Stanford Hospital communications office. She thought I had a great idea and wanted to do a story on it. At the same time, my husband was being released from the hospital, so I hadn't had time to call the Auxiliary office at all. When I spoke to Sara I had to ask her to wait on the article until I'd had a chance to call them. Around the same time I also got a ravelry message from phydeaux (aka Brenda), with some leads to Erin at Bobbins Nest Studio and also to the Knitwit @ Stanford group. I called Erin on Tuesday as well as left a message at Stanford Auxiliary. I also sent an email and the link to the post to Lourdes @ Knitwits. Erin immediately wanted to be involved with the project. Lourdes emailed me back and thought there would be interest from the group to be involved as well. Ok! Only one piece is missing from the puzzle...I had to wait until Wednesday to hear from Sara C. at the Auxiliary.

On Wednesday I got the call, and Sara C. said that she also thought waiting room knitting is a good idea. She has to to talk to a sister program at the hospital to see how it would work, and she's going to get back to me. I gave her the blog address, too. Lourdes contacted a few Knitwit members who gave feedback, and we are all going to try to meet next week to throw out some more ideas. In addition, Lourdes sent me a link to an LYS that I hadn't heard of: Amazing Yarns.

I got to Amazing Yarn today, and I cannot believe I grew up in this area, and had no idea what a charming neighborhood exists in Redwood City on the drive to this shop! It really IS an amazing shop, and the owner, Andrea, is also wonderful. I did a little stash enhancement, and while we were winding balls in the industrial size ball-winder, I told Andrea about my waiting room knitting idea. She liked it, and said she'd like to be involved as well. She also will share whatever information we come up with with the knitting groups and guilds who meet in her home/shop on a regular basis.

This was supposed to be a short post about what's happened, but so much has happened! Can you believe it??