When lice is nice

Disclaimer: for God's sake...do not click on the link if you are squeamish or eating. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Some years ago, and yet not long enough because the thought of it still makes me itch, I took care of a patient with Norwegian Scabies. Now there isn't anything special about the mites that cause this, except to say the level of infestation is monumental. The disease was identified in Norway--hence the name. While a relatively healthy person may have scabies with a handful of mites present to cause a bit of misery, someone with Norwegian Scabies is host to hundreds of thousands of mites.

No lie.

Can you see why this patient would be unforgettable?

I thought about that patient today as I was knitting on my hat and executing a beautiful lice stitch pattern common in Norway. One thought led to another and pretty soon I was thinking about the homeless patient who landed in our ICU to die of a secondary and overwhelming bacteremia and fungemia. Sad. I was not thinking of the mites per se as to do so invites nightmares. I will not forget what that infection looked like though, and in my 27 years of nursing, I've never seen the likes of something like this. May I never see it again (Amen).

Back to the lice stitch...I find myself wishing I'd held the white yarn in my left hand instead of the right as I've read this would have made the white lice stitches more dominant instead of receding into the red. Live and learn. Since I'm sort of new to this color knitting stuff, I thought I'd share that here so you can learn by my trials. I'm done with the hat portion of the cap and now doing decreasing rounds with a scattering of lice stitches. So, if you want the predominant yarn, in this case the red, to dominate, carry it in your left hand. If you want the other yarn, in my case the white, to dominate, carry that yarn in the left hand and the red in the right. According to several sources, one should not change the hand you carry your yarn in for the project. If it's something that you'll put down and pick back up later, you may want to do like me and make a note of which hand carried each yarn.

If you linked to that photo...sorry.