The Answer to Your Dreams?

Two weeks ago I started work on a new felted bag. The base and body is Lion Brand^® Fishermen's Wool from Jo-Ann's. About two inches up from the base I added a strand of Karabella Silky Tape in Spring Green. This yard, made of silk, viscose and rayon, is hand dyed in a yummy range of greens and browns, with a little glitter to add interest.

But I digress. After adding the Silky Tape to the project on Tuesday of last week, I knitted for a day before noticing my hands were itching. All day Thursday my hands itched. When I picked up the Jazzman on Thursday evening to head for NC, my knuckles on both hands were red and inflamed. By Friday morning, I was in bad shape. We ran into a drugstore in Beckley before resuming our drive, and picked up some Benadryl, plus a non-drowsy antihistamine, and some cortisone cream.

On Friday afternoon as we were sitting on the front porch of the cottage, I was dying to knit, despite, the itching, so put on some non-latex rubber gloves and tried to add a few rows to the project. Nope. The non-latex gloves don't have any elasticity to them, so the tips of the fingers hang off and keep getting knitted into the pattern!

While wearing the gloves, I didn't really feel the itching, but once I took them off, I was itching again. And that night the itching and redness was worse.

On Saturday and Sunday the itching and redness and swelling kept getting worse, and I could hardly not keep myself from scratching. By Monday evening, back in Youngstown and attending a friend's Memorial Day party, I began notice spots elsewhere—on my forearms, on my wrist.

Tuesday I went to the dermatologist, who prescribed Doxepin to ease the itching. Holy Mother of Naps! I couldn't stay awake on Wednesday. When I visited my internist Wednesday morning for a followup to an earlier appointment, she was surprised I had driven to her office on the Doxepin.

And the dreams. Oh. My. God. Wild and crazy, frenetic, busy, exhausting dreams. I remember when I went on Paxil eight or so years ago. When I was trying to wean off the Paxil, I hated going to sleep because I knew the dreams were going to begin and I was going to be exhausted when I woke up.

So the bottom line of this long, drawn-out story? The dermatologist thinks the itching has nothing to do with the yarn, so I continued working on the bag last night. We'll see if the itching picks up tomorrow. And I'm going to cut my dose of the Doxepin in half tonight and tomorrow because I just can't stand the fatigue—life is too short to be so tired.

And the funny story of the day? I pointed out a raised place at the base of my thumb to the dermatologist to ask if that should be zapped. "Nah," he said, "that's just like a barnacle on an old ship." Excuuuuse me? I'm almost 60, not almost 90!!!

We'll give this boy an F in bedside manner this week.

And for the knitters in the audience, here are a couple of pics.

This is the Silky Tape in Spring Green.






And this is the Work In Progress bag, in poor lighting so you can't see how fabulous the yarns are together. Once I finish the bag—oh, and find my camera—I'll post a finished pic.

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Updated at 10:39 a.m.

So, you wanted to know what the dreams were, didn't you.

The first morning, I dreamed I was still with my second husband. (Refresher: Montgomery Village, MD; 48 to my 33 when we married; daughter who told him lies about me and he believed them and didn't ask me to confirm or deny—i.e. guilty until proven innocent; would get severely depressed and not speak to me for five days at a time.) In my dream, he had decided I was moving out of his house so he brought in movers and packers to get all of my stuff out of his space and I had no idea where I was going.

This morning, I was on a group tour with my mother. (Note: this would never happen.) We needed to pack up to go to the next stop on the tour, and I was finding way too many things that needed to go back into my bag, including four New Yorker magazines!

These dreams have wayyy too much detail and wayyy too many old painful emotions!