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: