Knit One, Patella Two

It has been a long time since I had two good-looking young men eyeing my legs so intently.

Obviously, if your legs looked as good as this, the same two young men (or very similar ones, depending on where you live) would be looking at your legs, too. And calling their friends over to have a gander as well.

Apparently, I am a Loose Woman.





















Or at least my kneecaps are loose. This is my right kneecap, and, apparently, I have inflicted some damage upon the suspension system. The sock helps it feel better. The big navy-blue ugly thing strangles my knee and is supposed to make it better at some point in the future.

I really wish I could say that I was wrassling a 15-foot alligator, or wrangling cattle, or at very least capturing a snarling junkyard dog, when I tore my tendon. It would be nice to have an adventurous work-related story to accompany this.
But I shall not tell a lie.

Somehow, I managed to inflict a relatively minor tendon tear upon myself while I was ... uh ... ahem ... getting up off the floor of my office, where I was sorting out some old adoption files because there was no room on top of my desk.

But wait ... they were highly venomous and dangerous files, okay? Yes, that's it. Venomous Australian files that even Steve Erwin is afraid to touch. Rare ... endangered ... deadly Australian venomous files.

There. Now I feel better.

Back to the young men who were admiring my legs. Apparently, attractive young men in the medical profession these days use smooth pick-up lines like this when they find a woman with loose patellas:

"Relax your leg a bit, and I'm going to manipulate your patella just a little. Let me know if it hurts..."

(wiggle wiggle ouch ouch)

"Hm. Wow. It's going all over the place. Excuse me..."

(sticking head of of exam room door)

"Hey, Jim, come have a look at these patellas!"

At this point I am feeling just a little uneasy, as I had not planned on a menage a trois. I had not even planned on a menage a un. Besides, I am wearing my plain blue Hanes Her Way underwear.

"Whoa! We don't see patellas like that too often!"

And, before I knew it, I found myself set up with a large number of physical therapy dates with these two young men, who are either S&M fetishists or who were trained by the Spanish Inquisition. I can tell you that by the time they were through with our first date, I was ready to confess to witchcraft, or at least to worshipping the Knitting Goddess and the Yarn Fairy.

On the bright side, they did admire my variegated socks (see foot in above picture), and I was able to knit a bit on my current green sock (below) on the ten-minute breaks between torture sessions:






















This is a cotton-wool sock in a forest-green ragg yarn from Socka which has been marinating in my stash for ages. Don't get too excited. It is just a plain ribbed crew sock, but it is good company and it follows me around agreeably wherever I go and waits politely when I have to put it away for awhile.

Ever notice that "sock" rhymes with "Doc?" I have a strong association with socks and doctors. Maybe it's just because I always happen to have a sock-in-progress in my bag, but chances are, if I am waiting for a medical appointment or sitting at a hospital bedside, I have a sock going. My elderly Dad's cardiologist has to be reminded that you can knit things other than socks, and that sock-making is not my actual career. Once, when he was delayed by an emergency surgery, he apologized for being late (he is a very poliite doctor), and asked me how long we'd been waiting. I held up the sock I was working on that day and said, "Oh, about half a cuff."

I truly do not understand people who fail to bring a sock, or at very least a book or magazine of their own, along to doctor's appointments. They know they are going to have to wait, and wait some more, but most people sit there either staring into space or flipping through old copies of magazines like "Forbes" and "Golf Illustrated," which just serve as annoying reminders that the doctor makes a helluva lot more money than you do.

And I completely fail to comprehend the occasional person in the waiting room who stares at my knitting for several minutes and then proclaims, "I wish I had the time to do stuff like that."

To which I always say, "Well, you do. You're sitting here, aren't you?"

So it was a pleasure today to see a woman in the waiting room with an Amish knitting loom fully deployed across her lap, cranking away at a full-sized striped afghan and doing quite a nice job of it.

I pulled out my sock and said, "That's a beautiful afghan ... been waiting long?"

She held up the loom and spread her thumb and index finger against the fabic.

"Oh, about an inch and a half," she said.

--Mambocat