Matching the Floor Tiles

As part of the final phase of being assessed as a kidney donor for my mom, I had two days of hospital test in Vancouver to attend. A lot of these tests involve a lot of waiting: waiting for reactions, waiting to have blood drawn at specific times, waiting with IVs in your arm, waiting for scans (usually with a full bladder) and waiting to talk to doctors, specialists, surgeons...

Knowing that this was coming up, I decided to make sure I had a project to work on in the waiting rooms that wasn't too difficult and that I could work on without a pattern. I decided that it would be nice to have another pair of fingerless mitts, and that it would be nice to work them in crochet for a change.

I started working on them a couple of weekends ago, after doing a quick canvass of my G+ followers for ideas and trawling Ravelry for an afternoon for patterns. I eventually settled on this pattern that I'd seen in my G+ feed a while back. It's in Korean, but there are a couple of good symbolized patterns there, which is my preferred type of crochet patterns.

I worked the cuff in knitted 1x1 rib, then switched to a crochet hook. I had a couple of false starts while trying to figure out which colour I wanted as the main colour and which would be the contrast colour, and I also went up a hook size to get puffier-looking stitches, but I finally came up with something I liked.

Yesterday, as I sat in the waiting room with an IV in my arm, I thought about how good it felt to crochet after so long... such a nice break from the needles. I learned to crochet as a little girl, well before I learned to knit, and the feeling of the hook in my hand was comforting and familiar as I sat there alone in the hospital. I worked on this mitt for a while, then stopped to give my arm a break and to take a few photos. It's only now that I realize how much they matched the linoleum floor in the waiting room:

I plan to work the thumb and the top cuff in white to match the knitted 1x1 rib of the bottom cuff. It's surprisingly warm, despite the fact that it's somewhat piece-y, and I look forward to wearing them while holding a nice warm cup of tea or coffee...

It was my mom that taught me to crochet, and from whom I inherited my love and appreciation of handmade things, homemade food, and vintage items. Interesting, then, that I unconsciously chose to go back to my first craft as I go through this process. My mom passed a lot of things down to me, and those things are huge part of who I am and how I view the world. She's given me a lot.

I'm hoping that, if all goes well, this can be a way for me to give something back to her. Whatever happens, I think that this whole process is teaching me to accept that what will be, will be. No amount of worrying can make the outcome different. I can only hope for the best, and try to use what I have.

And what I have is what my mom gave me: a healthy body and a love of yarn. Thanks, Mom.