Seattle is approximately 2500 miles away from Pittsburgh, which works out to about half a day of flying when you take into account drives to and from airports, connections and time zone changes–a long ways away! And a really long ways away if you consider the path I took to get there. Even after I found out that I was one of the UC Success Grand Prize winners, I didn’t get excited about the 4-day, 3-night trip to Seattle that was part of the prize package because I was still sick post-hospital. Traveling? Errrr no thanks. The 3-mile Take Steps walk? I hadn’t collectively walked 3 miles in 2 months. Meals and schedules and a photo shoot and sightseeing? When you’re sick, these things=stress, anxiety, difficulty. I barely cracked the AAA books on Seattle, didn’t do the extensive research I usually do on new cities, because I knew I could only make the decision to go to Seattle at all, a day or so before leaving, if that. Am I well enough? But I think the more important question was, how utterly devastated am I going to be if I can’t go on this trip in particular–a contest I won because of my bad health, a trip I can’t take because of my bad health? I am rarely one to pull out the “it’s so unfair,” because that’s not how I think about all of this, but I may have belted out a lot of sobbing “it’s so unfair”‘s if I didn’t go.

I don’t know if I was well enough–the ill traveling was no picnic–but I went. It’s hard to describe how it felt to make it to Seattle after everything that has happened, these past few months and also these past five years. Surreal and unbelievable and shiver-inducing. I met the four other winners, from all over the country and all inspiring by the sheer fact that they too persevered and made it to Seattle. Although I had read their essays and short bios, my knowledge of their lives with or without this disease was miniscule, and yet, even though our experiences being ill vary, there’s a sense of, I know exactly what you’re going through. Now through the exchange of stories, with laughter interspersed, I can see that it was a long way to Seattle for them too.

The Westin Hotel was our home base for the four days. We were greeted with goodie bags and an itinerary that included: a photo shoot at Kerry Park, which is where the top picture was taken, a recognition dinner at the immaculate Canlis (salmon! unlimited dirty martinis!), and more recognition festivities at the Take Steps walk the following day, in Magnuson Park. Again, it’s hard to describe what it meant to take part in every activity, feeling accomplished for merely standing there–it hasn’t completely sunk in that any of it happened. Well, except that my legs still hurt from walking…

Macaron Love. I met Jessie Oleson of CakeSpy (Capitol Hill, Seattle) and she bought me a surprise macaron and I crocheted her a surprise macaron! She painted a macaron watercolor that we talked about over email the week prior.

My parents and I did a fair amount of sightseeing: ferry ride to Alki Beach, Space Needle, Monorail, Pike Place Market, original Starbucks. In addition, I hit some Alicia-must-sees: Schmancy, where the Plush You show is held every fall (I couldn’t go last year because of the usual suspects, health and money, or lack thereof), Jessie Oleson’s irresistible Cakespy, and also a quilt shop and a yarn shop. I successfully spent all of my prize money on our meals, which included a lot of seafood (yum!) and Molly Moon ice cream. And maybe maybe maybe my advanced copy of Witch Craft made some new friends.

(More pics here)

Despite the long, jam-packed days, the trip flew by and I didn’t want to leave. Luckily, health permitting, I will return in October to see my crochet babies in the Plush You show and cross some Seattle to-dos off my list (I never had coffee! Nor did I made it to a bookstore). Back in Pittsburgh, when we were riding in the car service from the airport, the driver asked what we were doing in Seattle. Here we go…. I’ve learned that you can’t get away with “I won a writing contest” without going into further detail, because people are curious. “What did you write about?” “Um…having a chronic disease and crocheting.” And of course I got the “but you look so happy and healthy” that I’m used to. But, only after a few minutes of talking, I also got this: “You have a strong will. All you can do is keep fighting, right? It’s the easiest thing in the world to give up.” Indeed.

Surprise surprise, I am better at making crochet macarons than the real-deal edible versions. Not macarOOns mind you, but the delicate French macaron, an almond-based meringue sandwich cookie. (It feels demeaning to call it a “cookie”). I have baked chocolate and pistachio macarons, but they didn’t quite turn out perfectly, the meringue tops and bottoms falling a little flat. Since making them and tasting various macarons in New York, I always meant to design a crochet version….

Not too long ago, I had a dream (the sleeping kind) that I started a macaron business and instantly became famous, the dream concluding with someone handing me one of those gigantic checks on stage. Just for making macarons. Um, I’ll take it! The day after I had this dream, a foodie friend of mine in New York City posted a video he made with another foodie friend that shows a macaron on a stand, awaiting its photo shoot, with dramatic panning in and out to a Phil Collins song. It’s brilliant and I can’t explain why, but if/when it goes viral and Phil is knocking on my friend’s door with words of praise, I’m sure well all understand. The video set off a macaron discussion between the three of us that ended with a, “now I have this dream of commissioning a series of crocheted macaron ottomans for my house.”

Well, before I go that large scale, I figured I’d finally get back to designing a realistically-sized crochet macaron. Pattern is after the jump!

Crochet Macarons

Supplies

G hook
various colors of worsted weight yarn, preferably different shades of each color per macaron
5-6mm black beads
black embroidery thread
polyester fiberfil

Instructions

With top and bottom color:

Round 1: ch 2; 6sc in 2nd ch from hook (6).
Round 2: 2sc in each sc around (12).
Round 3: 2sc, sc around (18).
Round 4: 2sc, sc, sc around (24).
Round 5: [sc2tog, sc in next 6 sc] around (21). Fasten off.

Repeat the above again so that you have the macaron top and bottom.

With cream/filling color, ch 21 and join, leaving a 12-inch tail for sewing.

Assembling

Flip the sandwich top and bottom inside out so that the “wrong” side is on the outside. With 12-inch tail of filling, sew the ridge of the 21-ch piece (the ridge is on the back of the chain) to the inner loop of the sandwich bottom piece. On the sandwich top, sew on face, positioning the eyes between the 3rd and 4th rounds, about 2 sc apart. Sew the inner loop of the sandwich top also to the ridge, stuffing with fiberfil when you have a few stitches left. Sew to close.

For some reason, I have never been a bacon person. With only a few half-baked vegetarian stints and a general love of meat, especially of the barbecue/pork varieties, I have probably had straight-up bacon about five times in my entire life. And I’m pretty sure I’ve had good, well-prepared bacon too, and yet, I feel “meh” about it. I think it’s the texture of the fat that bothers me. The few times I have prepared bacon, I find myself “trimming” away at the fat for a minute or two before realizing that if I keep doing that, over half of the bacon will be in the trash. (What is wrong with me???)

Lately I’ve been forcing myself to cook with bacon, in brussels sprouts and burger recipes, for instance. And since I have a huge sweet tooth and bacon desserts seem to still be popular, I thought I’d try to come up with my very own bacon dessert for July 4th festivities. I’m drawing heavily from my Burnt-Butter Brown-Sugar Cupcakes and throwing in some caramelized bacon to make the Burnt-Butter Brown Sugar Cupcake with Maple-Buttercream Frosting and Caramelized Bacon you see above. (Quite a mouthful!) Want to make some? Click below!

Ingredients for Caramelized Bacon

12 slices bacon
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 tbsp water
pinch cayenne

Ingredients for Cupcakes

1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups self-rising cake flour (NOT all-purpose)
4 tbsp granulated sugar
4 tbsp light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
5-6 tbsp milk

Ingredients for Frosting

6 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup caramelized bacon drippings
5 tbsp chopped caramelized bacon
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 1/4 cup powdered sugar
pinch sea salt
3 tbsp milk

First off, caramelize the bacon: preheat the oven to 375 and grease a jelly roll pan, or line it with parchment. In a small bowl, stir together the brown sugar, water and cayenne. Arrange strips of bacon in pan and cover with brown sugar mixture, flipping so they’re all coated. Cook for about 20-25 minutes, or until caramelized and a darker brown, flipping once half-way through. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly in pan. (Do not toss out the drippings!)

Meanwhile, time to burn some butter: place butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it turns a dark golden color (3-5 minutes). Take the pan off the heat and strain into a bowl (to separate from the sediment). Let the butter sit until it solidifies, but is still a little soft. (This took almost 30 minutes because it’s hot here; if hot out, put in the fridge for about 10 minutes).

When the butter is solid, yet soft, place in a food processor along with ALL cupcake ingredients except milk. Blitz! Add milk slowly and pulse till well-mixed. Divide among 12 cupcake papers and bake for 15-20 minutes.

While they are baking, finely chop up 5 tbsp of bacon. Pulse all of the frosting ingredients in the food processor except the milk. Add milk slowly and pulse till well-mixed.

When the cupcakes are cool, frost ‘em! Chop the rest of the bacon and top cupcakes with it. Thank me later? Now?

Some time in April, I signed up for “Mail Art,” an art swap organized by The Artclash Collective, which is based in Philadelphia. Participants receive four names with mailing addresses and you agree to send a piece of art (small, 2-D pieces that can easily fit into a standard envelope are the common choice, but there are no rules or restrictions) to each address that is paired with each Friday in May. You, in turn, get four pieces as well, but not from the people you’re assigned to. I chose to go the crochet route and got off the first two. And then this happened. So, the other two Mail Arts got put on the back burner, though believe you me I tried to get something off before schlepping it to the hospital. Naturally, in the hospital, even when there sure were more important things to be worrying about, I couldn’t stop fixating on the fact that I was a Mail Art flake. Sure it’s just mailing something to a complete stranger and I have a good “excuse”, but still, I said I’d do it and I didn’t and I hated this.

So I figured that along with whatever I managed to make and send once home and a little healthier, I would include something written on the hospital menus I was collecting. I hoarded every thing that was left in my room, “treasures” as I refer to anything I happen upon in life, in general. I contemplated making two collages for Mail Art, as I had found a bright red plastic tag on the floor that reads “Fire Door 20″ on it, a few tourniquets left on my bed, the IV kit wrappers, though some of these seem a bit morbid and scary for sending-art-to-a-stranger purposes. I decide to stick with crochet as the “art,” in particular these flat Safety Cone magnets, and the menu as the sorry-this-is-late note. On each menu are my name, room number and either the box for “full fluid” (juice, pudding, jello, broth) or “soft regular” (mashed potatoes, chicken, rice, fruit, pasta) checked. Those little checked-off boxes speak volumes, no? Like Hemingway’s six-word-story, his self-proclaimed best work. “Kachmar. Infil 506. Full Fluid.” I can’t remember exactly what I wrote on the menus, but just a short something that probably nonchalantly began, “So, I just spent 10 days in the hospital and that is why your Mail Art is late….”

Around the same time, still in the hospital, I make another decision, much more life-altering than the devising of a mailable art project, but also one of setting things in motion, of traveling. During a crying meltdown, I say something to the effect of, “I can’t do this anymore. I want to go home” to my dad. Not home in the sense of getting out of the hospital, that’s a given. Home, meaning Pittsburgh. Home, meaning a place where I will feel more supported, less alone as I endure the very-much-alone state of existence that is poor health, more watched over, less helpless when I get bills and blood lab results. Home.

On the tenth day, I get discharged, the same day I start “promoting” the UC Success essay contest, after a long night of typing, often with one or two undamaged fingers, as my right hand has gone from being painful to being numb back to being painful, the site of the IV bleeding and leaking. Maybe because I keep trying to crochet and hold a pen and write emails with it? Hmm. Am I willing to get the Tethered post written at the expense of another bad IV insertion? To have to listen to a nurse say, “This is going to hurt. Don’t look. God I hate to stick it to you.” I consider asking my dad to type as I dictate, thinking of course of my beloved blind writers, Borges and Milton. But no, I still have a finger or two and a mind and that’s all I need. I keep typing, re-reading the original essay and deciphering my hospital notebook scribbles. The irony of that first line of my essay, “How can they do this to my hands?” The irony…

A college friend of mine, Elena, who now lives in Korea and I haven’t seen in 2 years, comes to my room as I am zippering up bags, eating my last hospital dinner. “Oh God Elena, of course we meet like this, of course!” We only became friends during the last semester or so of school, having previously thought that the other was “normal” and therefore, not “worth” being friends with. When we realize that “normal” is not a word to describe either of us, we become friends and regret all those lost weeks we could have been such. But ever since, we have rarely done anything normal together. Adventures with Alicia, taking her to “Name Night” at a bar, on the ONE day she happened to be in town and it was HER name (drink for free), introducing her to the beautiful wonder that is Canstruction, the nights spent running around New York City till 4am that don’t feel real at the time. So this place of reconnecting felt…appropriate.

Dad, Elena and I ride through my favorite Brooklyn neighborhoods back to Manhattan, windows opened on a sunny early evening, the mere ability to feel “weather” indescribable after ten days not being able to do so. The simple acts of putting on sunglasses and buckling a seatbelt, of looking at garbage cans overflowing and someone dropping their newspaper. And then the Brooklyn Bridge, that breathtaking mass of steel that never fails to tug on my heart every time I see it. Outside my apartment they are filming something, movie set apparatuses and artificial lights strewn about. I look at it all, not mad; on the contrary, happy that I am looking at it, at all. But I’m sure I look mad: sick, worn out, tired, bruised, bandaged, hospital bracelet on because I forgot to cut it off, spirit a little more defeated than before. A movie set guy says, “Welcome home. We’ll be outta here soon.” Thank you, and me too. And cut…

The stairs take too long to climb, the written-in-marker “breathe the air” on one of the wall landings again feeling like a cruel joke. Every time I can’t walk well, can’t breathe, can’t make it to the top without sitting down, those words, probably written by an artist when Tribeca was cheap and filled with artists. I can’t breathe the air. When no one is around in my apartment, I put my head down and cry at my desk. I cry in the shower. Because of everything. Because I am in my apartment, I am at my desk, I am in the shower. But with the hospital doctors’ words, if such and such happens, you have to come back, never far from my thoughts. I don’t want to go back there. I can’t go back there. It’s never over, I will never ever win. I try opening the window and I can’t, my arm muscles tearing because of disuse. I have to ask my dad to do it, so I can climb outside onto the fire escape and see how much my plants have grown. Marigolds, basil, morning glories, an amaryllis I thought was dead, but was only dormant and now stands 8 inches high. I nap a lot, waves of exhaustion hitting me with a force that no buck-up mentality can override. I’m not better. And I do not look it, nor do I feel it.

A couple days later, follow-up doctor’s appointment made and moving-to Pittsburgh plans set in motion, I take my first real walk in three weeks, outside. My mom has called me with the news that the first issue of a yarn magazine I’m in has hit the glossy racks. Crochet Today, July/August, Stitchy S’mores. She reads excerpts to me, like where editor Brett Bara writes that my designs might just be her “favorite amigurumi ever.” I can’t wait until my issue comes in the mail, so I set out to pick one up at my neighborhood Barnes and Noble. Slowly but surely, I get there. Talk about coming full circle (again!): I designed a frowning marshmallow on a stick and a frowning s’more way back in the beginning of my crochet days, when I was really sick, and sick of all the smiling plush I’d see on Etsy. And, of course, I wrote about these in the essay.

The following week, I’m sitting in the doctor office lobby for, what, the 30th time in 5 years? The memories. The number of things I have crocheted, knitted, read, written while sitting here, the mindless television in the background, the other people who are always older than me, the gurgling of the water cooler, the sound of my nurse’s voice and her repeated “You’re pale again” as she straps on the blood pressure cuff, the vials of blood and the bandaids that later hurt, the phlebotomist I only had one time, who said, “Your face says you’ve done this too many times,” my facial expression I imagine saying exactly that. “I have.” I feel it every time and yet, don’t feel it at all. The tempest in my mind/Doth from my senses take all feeling.

I sit down in his office with my parents and he says, “Do you know that you were on the threshold?” It should hit me like a ton of bricks, the slightly poetic way of phrasing it like that. I smile a little, which is sick in hindsight. He says, “Ah, smiling, right,” so I undo the smile, look down, and say, “I know.” We go over my options, mom taking notes, and I tell him my New York-exit plan, which is essentially me finally listening to him after all these years, prioritizing health. But let’s face it, now I don’t have a choice: I have an immune system that cannot properly fight off infections but that could and would destroy my body if left to its own devices, that cannot properly respond to the powerful corticosteroids that try to eradicate inflammation, these corticosteroids all the while further suppressing my immune system. You know, the one that cannot afford to be suppressed. He says, “We could almost label you as steroid-resistant” and I say, “Quite an accomplishment.” (Steroid-resistance is somewhat rare). And yet, he is confident that a simple change in lifestyle (read: decrease in stress and work blah blah blah) could do medical wonders for me. I’m skeptical.

I give him the magazine, I tell him about the contest. Looking at my parents, “She’s very talented.” Looking at me, “You’re gonna be famous. When are you going to make me something?” I promise a double-sided (happy/sad) crochet colon if I win the contest, and some kind of book dedication or speech if the occasion ever arises. “Call me, you can always call me. And you can send me things here.” He mentions an old patient who sends him postcards from far-off places and I hope I can be that kind of patient some day, the one who doesn’t make doctor appointments, who writes postcards from far-off places instead. Goodbyes for now, thank you’s for ever. Shivers as I walk past the ER, warmth as I think about going home.

I’ve been in Pittsburgh for just over ten days, days still dotted by naps and feeling crappy and pills, but making progress in the healing direction. When I’m not “busy” being sick and sleepy, I’m back to, well, trying to do everything. Pittsburgh is like a new frontier to explore and comfortably familiar at the same time. Cleaning out my room, tossing old childhood things, reading the journals I kept religiously from the time I was 6. Diving head first into the DIY/craft scene, gardening, cooking, berry-picking, crocheting, making lists, painting my nails with ease. Not covering up one eye.

Two days ago, via FedEx: “Your entry has been deemed a Grand Prize winner.” I win the contest, those three little paragraphs that attempted to sum up so much back and forth, the ups and downs, the sometimes traumatic and sometimes celebratory nature of these 5+ years, the roller coaster ride consisting of both excitement and terror that always ends in stillness and numbness. A frowning marshmallow, a safety cone, a silver-lined cloud. Simple constructions. Complex meanings, to me at least. The contest feels like the perfect culmination, it and the hospital prompting me to finally honestly write more about everything here, rather than in a journal, or worse, keeping the thoughts hostage in my head.

In addition to that glorious piece of mail, I received another forwarded from New York: a hand-written letter with splatters of art from one of my post-hospital Mail Art recipients. Some excerpts from his letter:

dear Alicia–your safety cone arrived safely (!) here in Philadelphia on Wednesday…your knitted art was a fun surprise…collage seems to be the most popular form of mail art and the other 2 pieces I got were cut/glued collections of paper. And don’t get me wrong, they were great but I never expected to get something made of a magnet and threads. The photo of the “congregation of cones” you included was very cute.The hospital menu reminded me of my own (5 day) stay in a hospital…I’m vegan and the food prep people would never seem to get the “no eggs, dairy, or meat” request right. The food cart worker was a little church lady with a hairnet. She’d hum loudly as she walked down the hall. I’d hear her loudening hum and would be gripped with fear wondering, “what food I can’t/won’t eat is about to arrive?” I hope the net result of your 10 day hospital stay was positive.

I am stunned and elated, the letter concluding with a penpal/artpal request and this amazing sentence: “I hope you have a good summer full of beautiful sight, sound, and creativity.”

That is exactly what I want.

Celebrating UC Success is designed to recognize people whose lives are impacted by ulcerative colitis (UC). This year’s program encourages UC patients to creatively express their personal experiences as they pertain to overcoming the challenges of their condition. We encourage patients to describe how this creative expression has influenced and/or impacted their lives. We are asking you, the UC patient, to “Express How UC Success.”

Click here for the contest page where you can read all 10 essays and vote (you can vote once per day!) now until June 16th.

My plan for elaborating involved telling the longer version of how I started crocheting years ago when very housebound and/or bedridden, how I opened my little eternalsunshine Etsy shop (a name I chose because of the Alexander Pope poem, the movie and because it was tongue-in-cheek–I was in debilitating pain, a giant ball of misery–that’s my sense of humor). And the great opportunities and people it has led me to, especially over the last 12 months or so.

Leading up to this latest bout, I had 18 months of back-to-back flare-ups and prednisone runs. I waited to call the doctor this time, longer than I normally do, to try to weather the storm on my own, which people do manage to do. (But then again I’m on the severe end, so this is not a reality). Even when I emerge from denial, I am still resolved not to call. For 2 days, as I attempt to stay on top of my work and my life, at the forefront of my mind is the thought, there is only one possible ending to this if I do nothing. I’m not sure I fully grasp that sometimes…. But regardless, I still debate what to do as if there really is an option. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because this is when my in-the-moment self actually considers the future, in the sense of I don’t know if I can do this for another day, I don’t know if I have the will. Because there will always be another bout due to the chronic nature, I get through one only to be faced with yet another–I feel as though I am committing to all of them every time.

I call. I start on the meds. I don’t get better. I make the even more difficult call where I am given so many days before “surrendering” as I call it, i.e. going to the hospital. “You have 2 days. Saturday. I’m not telling you a specific time.” Despite the absolute system-wide body deterioration that is taking place, I can’t face it and want to wait till Monday, to avoid a weekend ER (I mean, would you want to sit in a crowded ER when you are running to the bathroom 20+ times a day? The logistics are…um…really shitty!). And no matter how stupid it sounds, I wanted to attempt to complete outstanding work, write emails alerting certain people I will soon be MIA, get things together as best I can. So I knit slippers for a magazine and make pancakes for dinner and hold onto everything I love to do as long as I humanly can because the next day I won’t be able to. Monday morning I stare at the ceiling, feeling like death and trying to mentally prepare for an indeterminate amount of life-saving hellishness that isn’t possible to mentally prepare for, that will not be pretty. I pack two bags of random toiletries, more books than shirts, Ernie, Safety Cone.

My doctor takes one look at me in the ER and says, “you’re a tough cookie, but you should have come in sooner.” That is our now 5-year relationship in a nutshell: he knows me better than I wish he did, he sees through my game face that I thought was impenetrable, he always balances a compliment (“you’re very talented”) with admonishing (“you have to get a handle on work and stress now, even if it means cutting out things”). The last time I was in his office, he said to me: “I used to be like you, when I went to med school. I looked at things like you do, but I knew I had to stop if I wanted to be a good doctor. You look at the world too emotionally, you should try covering up one eye (motions to eye). I laughed and replied, “But I’m a woman and a writer right off the bat. That’s what I do. I can’t change, I don’t want to.”

I’m currently going on day 10 of this hospitalization, having been tethered to IV bags with no food for the first 30 hours, then allowed only apple juice, broth, the occasional pudding cup for another 2 days. My brain was already blitzed from dehydration, blood loss and disease, the starvation period the final straw that makes me feel like I’m gonna lose it. Except I have no energy to lose it, to cry too much in that state. I had only been hospitalized one other time and I remember finding that so incredibly frustrating, that I could not expend the energy on expressing sadness and pain, that I had even lost that ability on top of everything else. One really loses a sense of identity here, reduced to being a mere body, no longer a person in any kind of normal way: I don’t take showers, I haven’t heard a car horn or a bird, I haven’t seen the sun except when it reflects on this one hallway window around 5pm.

When I was in the truly horrific throes of illness back in those days, when there was no let-up, no hour of peace at home, I remember thinking, if I make it through this, if I can actually survive this, I hope I emerge with the overall very basic thought of, “it was worth it.” That in some motivational-speaker-y way I could say those words to a thousand people sick like me and not be lying. Beyond a doubt, worth fighting, don’t ever give up. There was a longing, buried deep beneath the various layers of agony that wanted to get there so badly. But all I knew at that time was that I was not there. What I realized this time in the hospital, 5 years later, is that it was never about convincing anybody else of sustaining that drive to keep fighting, it was always about convincing myself. How can you spread some kind of motivational message without owning it first? I didn’t have it then, I don’t have it now, but I think I’m closer.

It was with such ambivalence that I wrote the contest colitis essay, as I look at so much of what I do since getting sick and think, I started doing this after I got sick, because I got sick, while being sick. I look at my little crochet wonderland and think about how it grew out of such a horrible, life-stripping, and devastating time. Everyone sees these little characters, with smiles or frowns, reads the little stories, and they have a positive reaction. I do as well, but every time I look at them, I also think about how I felt so ill at the time, that I sometimes cried while crocheting them or hobbled to the post office to mail them. And yet, there it is, something lovely and meaningful materializing out of something so awful. That disconnect leaves me so unsettled, maybe because it feels so particularly ridiculous to be crocheting a smiling clementine or ice cream cone when my digestive system is trying to commit suicide. (Then again, when I was trying to breathe my way through a painful hour-long IV, tears streaming down my cheeks, I did look over at little Safety Cone and laugh, thinking I am in so much effing pain and you are still so effing cute, just sitting there and smiling, and isn’t this all so crazy?)

This hospital stay has been downright brutal at times, on both physical and emotional levels, and right from the get-go: listening to my doctor say things like, “we have to put out this fire and then we’ll talk about your future”; getting a shot of morphine for the first time that I had a horrible reaction to, like someone giving me “Indian burns” all over the top half of my body, losing the ability to breathe, all in 10 seconds; the bruising blood-taking; undergoing so many painful IV insertions because of collapsed veins and painful infusions that make me cry for 20 minutes straight, the feeling of fire traveling through my veins; my fingertips wounded by 4-times-daily glucose testing needle pricks; my hands getting achy and numb; chest pains and other side effects from prednisone doses three times the already high dose I’m used to. I anticipated some, but definitely not all of the above difficulties.

My goals for myself while in here (come on, of course I made a to-do list as soon as my hands functioned), beyond getting better of course, were to finish reading a book, to write, to secretly paint my nails in the bathroom, to crochet. That’s it. Very personal, individual activities. But strangely enough, this has been such a social stay. Friends and loved ones visited and brought me things, ranging from vegan cookies to books to crosswords to magazines to music to cards from my mom’s third grade class to a sun dress to an entire safety cone full of goodies, but most important have been the conversations, the carrying on of some kind of normal activity. Just talking. (And have I mentioned the amazing fact that my dad has been here the entire time? Yep. And I have been channeling my mom’s you-have-to-make-your-body-disappear mind/breathing technique that she used all too many times in her own horridly ill months).

Additionally though, I have gotten to know so many nurses and staff members who inquire about my crocheting, which inevitably leads to their own craft stories and connections. A general opening up and sharing of life tales, an “are we still friends?” after the bad IVs, a baby blanket request, a “you are totally gonna have twins one day and I want you to call me when you do,” a discussion of Browning poems and a $10 dress shop in Harlem in the same breath, a shawl request, a bbq invitation, a “you are my favorite patient, everyone wants to be in your room.” What bright anecdotal spots, little silver linings I never could have imagined in this sun-less place. I look forward to seeing what happens when I finally tie the laces of my sneakers again and walk out the door.

When it isn’t people who keep me going, it’s words. I repeated the Moroccan proverb, “The world has not promised anything to anyone” to myself a lot after my initial diagnosis. I had to give up jobs, an entire career of teaching that I dearly loved, a life independent of healthcare woes, miss out on countless social things. I had to say “no” more than “yes.” But I tried to tell myself that none of those things were ever mine to have, none promised or not promised in the first place, and yet it’s no easy proverb to abide by, no matter how many times repeated.

I’ve since added a longer, more apropos quote to my brain’s stockpile, from Kahlil Gibran: “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” If I have to be sick, the only consolation is the potential that I will learn from it, that I will be stronger for it, that I will somehow do better things with my life than if I had the ease of having one marked by good health, that I will meet amazing people and get to listen to their stories. Which is all to say, I hope I will ultimately gain something so immeasurably great that I will not harbor profound regret and bitterness for what I have lost and will continue to lose.

For better or worse, there’s nothing more motivating than hearing “I bet you can’t do that” when you’re trying to achieve something. I came across the endeavor known as One Million Giraffes from a fellow determined and creative soul (and friend) by the name of Ashley Albert, of kids’ rock band The Jimmies fame.

The mission of One Million Giraffes begins:

“My friend, Jørgen, doesn’t believe I can collect one million giraffes by 2011. I’m gonna prove him wrong, but I need your help. You can create your giraffes in any way you like, but not on a computer and no store bought objects.”

The tally as of today is 808,224! And further:

“There are people all over the world drawing giraffes right now. Isn’t that cool? I think it’s really, really cool. I think it’s very interesting to see how many giraffes I will get, but it’s even more interesting and fun to just sit back and look at all the amazing giraffes that are pouring in. Have you looked in the gallery? There’s some really amazing stuff in there. So, if you think this is only about reaching a million you’ve kind of missed the point of the project. It doesn’t matter if I make to a million. I really, really want to, and I’m still working hard towards that goal, but at this point it’s just fun to see people all over the world turning off their TVs, putting their computers away and sitting down to creating giraffes. Old school style. People spend too much time being digital. They should try be analog, being human and creating something real for a change. Most people love it when they try it. I get emails from people all over the world saying that they’ve rediscovered drawing! Families are sitting down in the living room and acting like families. I have hundred of emails from mums and dads saying that they sat down with their kids and had a blast drawing giraffes. People are actually having giraffe parties! Do you realize how cool that is? Please join in on the fun.”

I love this project for a number of reasons: it’s a little silly, it involves creating with one’s hands in some way and it’s about aiming for a goal no matter how unreachable it seems. Those are pretty much three of my favorite things! From legos to foil to fruit to buttons, there’s quite the variety of mediums! And, of course, there are a lot of sketches and drawings. All you have to do is upload a photo of your giraffe. I decided to design a little 2-D crochet giraffe and I’m posting the simple pattern here, so that if you happen to be a crocheter and want to contribute to One Million Giraffes, go ahead and whip up one of these guys.

The pattern is after the jump!

Supplies

f or g hook
worsted weight yarn in two colors
bead and embroidery thread (optional)

Directions

With main color:
Ch 7, sc across, ch 1 turn
sc across, ch 1 turn
*sc 2, ch 1 turn*
repeat between * * two more times, except don’t turn on the last one
Sc up the inside of this “leg” until you hit the 2nd row; sc across, ch 1 turn.
repeat between * * three more times. Finish off.

With main color:
Join at top right corner of the first row (free loops) and repeat between * * 6 times.
2sc in each (4sc)
ch 6 and join to first ch. This is the ear. Make sure it’s on the right side and the neck is to the left of it. Sk a sc, sc in next 2 sc.
In the last sc: dc, dc, hdc.
Sl into next row and all the way around giraffe until you hit the bottom of the ear. Finish off.

With contrast color:
Join at the base of the neck: ch 4, sl in next; repeat this till you hit the ear. Sl behind the ear but not through the giraffe to carry the yarn through. (Ch 2, sl in next) twice, on top of the head. Finish off.

With contrast color:
Join at the top of the right leg, ch 7 (tail) and finish off.

Sew on a bead if you like! Take a picture and submit to One Million Giraffes.

Join

…who taught me how to bake from scratch, who made a lot of our clothes…

…who made all of our Halloween costumes…

…even the ones we regretted then (ahem, me) or would regret later (ahem, Lianna)…

…and continues to do more for me than I could ever fit into one blog post or a hundred…

Um, where did April go? April was a cruel month in some ways, staying true to the T.S. Eliot poem, but let’s focus on the positive. When everything seemed to be going wrong (was going wrong), my parents decided to schedule an Easter vacation. Destination? Carolina Beach, N.C. Sign. Me. Up. During a tear-filled phone call the night before I was supposed to leave, my mom said, “Just make sure you get on the plane and we’ll make everything better.” Sounds good to me!

I leave really early the following day, so that even after a subway malfunction, I still manage to get through security two full hours before take-off. I plop down in a seat, realize to my dismay that LaGuardia doesn’t have wi-fi (doh!) and succumb to the effects of severe sleep deprivation. I wake up 15 minutes before take-off and still see everyone sitting at the gate, no movement. The take-off time has been pushed back 15 minutes. I wander off to go look at the snack and magazine selection, pondering coffee but concluding I’d rather pass out on the plane too because there’s no way I have the energy to work through Proust or book proposals. And then I hear my name–I’m being paged! “Passenger Kachmar, please come to Gate 4,” but my last name was butchered enough so I wasn’t sure if they were really paging me. She repeats it. Oh. I’m at the wrong gate. (It was glarey, for the record). Oh no. I run to the gate and am met with a stern, “Didn’t you hear us paging you all those times?” The plane is ready to take off. “No, I…er…fell asleep and then went to get snacks.” Oh dear…

Leave it to me to arrive at the airport the full two hours ahead and still almost miss my flight. My lack of travel skills continues to amaze me; I really don’t know how I do it! This almost tops when [I thought] I threw away my customs form in Mexico (but later found it when back in NYC) and almost wasn’t allowed back into the States, OR when I went to the airport a day LATE at Thanksgiving and the USAirways guy said, “Um, your flight left yesterday.” Anyway, I did make it, and even though I had to a) do work b) do taxes and c) think about health stuff, it was all very lovely and sunny and enjoyable. More pictures here.

I just got back from another escape, this time to Pittsburgh, where I finally ventured to The Mattress Factory, a contemporary art museum where a HS friend of mine works. But not without a bump in road, of course: I have wanted to go to The Mattress Factory FOREVER, so of course 5 minutes before leaving, I get a terrible migraine. I sleep for 30 minutes and rally, determined to go, despite the blade through my head. What’s particularly funny is that the current exhibit is called, “Nothing is impossible.” The description reads: “If we consider that nothing is impossible and that anything can happen, how would we live differently? What could we envision? Where could we be? What can we hope for?” Yes, nothing is impossible indeed, I felt like I had waited my entire life before paying a visit to this museum and then I get a migraine. Envision? I see flashy lights and holograms. Hope for? Make it stop!!! Somehow I made it through a lot of audio and visual stimulation, including 3-D-glasses-wearing (kill me) and still managed to enjoy the place.

On the same street as The Mattress Factory is a row of writer residency houses, courtesy of City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, each with some kind of work of art on the facade. (It reminded me, not visually but just concept-wise, of one of my favorite children’s books, The Big Orange Splot). “House Poem,” seen above, was the first house, and was the home of Huang Xiang, an exiled Chinese writer who was jailed many times for writing. For someone who occasionally complains about writing and their accompanying deadlines, it really made me think: what if I were not allowed to write? What if my life were threatened just for the act of writing? I can’t imagine…

While at home, my parents and I participated in Art All Night, an 18-hour long open, un-juried art show that took place at Iron City Brewery. And as if that weren’t enough creativity for the weekend, I finally got to do something I’ve wanted to do for about a year now: have a baking/cooking afternoon with my extended family, particularly my little cousin Joey who loves to cook and bake with his super duper cook/baker/crafter/jane-of-all-trades mom. On the menu: bread pudding, bacon pine cone cheese balls, pecan rolls, cinnamon raisin rolls and a baked Alaska. Gulp! My extended family is quite large and everyone cooks and bakes from scratch, but usually we arrive at whatever holiday dinner or party with the dishes in hand–we eat together, but we don’t cook or bake together. I thought it would be fun to do both!

When I awoke from the resulting food coma at home, I went looking through my “work desk” in the basement, where I did lots of art projects as a kid. I found pages and pages of hand-copied notes: recipes for bread dough, craft books to buy, lists of projects I wanted to make, instructions for a papier mache sculpture. You name it…. I came upon this list of projects, which my sister totally DEFACED with the word “dork” written over and over. She even adds a definition entry of dork. “Dork: doork, adj; Alicia, one having the characteristics of Alicia.” I think I’ll send her copies of the craft book coming out (it’s basically done!!!), or my magazine design work (coming soon!!!) with a copy of this and the message: “The dorkiness paid off, now didn’t it?”

Lastly, while I was in Pittsburgh, an event known as Veggie Conquest, a vegan baking/cooking competition was going on a few blocks away from my NYC apartment. I participated at the last one as an amateur chef, where we were instructed to make cranberry desserts. It was intense, but fun! This time around, I had the esteemed privilege of being a “sponsor,” which in my case means I donated some smiling crochet vegetables (arguably, some fruits, a bulb and a tuber also). Our Hen House put together a nice video of the event, and you see all the above crocheted items in attendance.

“‘Do you know, master book-lover,’ he asked me, ‘this line of Paul Desjardins?’

Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.

‘Is not that a fine rendering of a moment like this? May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I am doing, by looking up to the sky.’”

-Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

Bachelard, the French philosopher and Sorbonne professor known for his constructivist epistemology and history of science studies (are you excited yet?) once started a lecture with the following:

“On your way here, did you look only straight ahead of you, or did you look up at the sky, and at the left of you, and at the right, and behind you?”*

In general, do I? I think so. Do you? I hope so. The above quote is like the question version of that “the journey is the destination” saying, even if that destination is a an eye-opening philosophical lecture by Bachelard. I found this leaf on an expansive church lawn, covered with leaves and pine cones, here in North Carolina. Some wear and tear around the edges, brown with age, but in tact and unbroken.

*

(Note to self: this would be fun(ny) to illustrate using his Non-Euclidean geometry meets Euclidean geometry ideas and all that parallel postulate goodness that I fell in love with in high school; could make a really brilliant and nerdy art piece).