They Go Together Like...

Sometimes, you're moving through life, and your brain makes the weirdest connections. The colour orange makes me think of New Orleans. The smell of hay makes me think of elephants. The words "brussels sprouts" go with the words "stomach flu." When wiping down the counters in the kitchen after dinner, I sing a version of this song in my head, with the words, "It's the final wipe doooowwwnn..." I can go into why these things match up (though, you can probably figure out the last one), but let's just say that our brains associate things together for various reasons.

I'm part of a study of living kidney donors that will collect information on the health of donors pre and post-donation. I'm still not technically a donor yet, but I agreed to be part of the study regardless, either as a donor or as part of the control group (i.e. people who are fit enough to donate but, for whatever reason, are not donating). This study will follow me over the next five years to see how I am doing.

One of the things I have to do is to take my blood pressure a bunch of times, since blood pressure is one of the key indications of kidney function. If you've read my other blog, you'll know I am no stranger to taking my blood pressure, so it comes naturally to me to sit down and strap on a cuff and decipher the numbers. It's almost as natural to me as my yarn hobby.

So, maybe it might not be so strange for you to know that, as I was getting ready to take these photos this morning, I noticed that my new coffee mitts match quite nicely with my blood pressure machine.

Ok, maybe that is a bit strange, but you can't control when these connections are made in your brain:

Anyway, I finished these coffee mitts while I was home visiting my family in Winnipeg, and it's only now that I'm getting around to enjoying them. I used the crochet chart found on this website, and knitted 1x1 ribbing on the upper and lower cuffs and the thumb.

I learned a lot while making these:

1. My crochet tension is way looser than my knitting tension
2. I prefer to wing it when it comes to crochet, rather than strictly following a pattern (probably because of my wonky tension).
3. If I'm making a pair of things, I can make perfect, stretchy ribbing in one item, but usually end up with really crappy, tightly bound-off ribbing on the other. I discovered this even after I ripped out the ribbing and did it over again. First one: great. Second one: meh.

But they do exactly what they are supposed to do: they're nice to wear on a cool day when I'm putzing around the house and when I need a little bit of comfy warmth on my hands.

Now that my brain has tied these mitts together with my blood pressure machine, maybe that means that their soft, cushy comfort will trigger me to relax enough to get a nice, normal reading. That's not such a bad connection. "Mitts" go together with "blood pressure."

Like a wink and a smile: