Sit back and hear this tale of foolishness followed by pointlessness.
My DH had a nonstick roasting pan. When the coating started flaking off, I objected to continuing to use it, and threw it out. We had intended to replace it, but couldn't find a good, cheap roasting pan. We have an expensive, non-non-stick pan, suitable for turkeys and standing rib roasts, but nothing for we-just-want-to-have-some-roasted-veggies. In the meantime, our Pyrex(R) baking dish stood in, and for most things, it did just fine.
But we wanted to make this roasted pork recipe, where the pork roast is cooked at 500 degrees, and then you pour in apples tossed with oil and lemon juice (or something) and they roast and melt into the pork fat. Yum!
Yeah, can you see where this led? We took at 500 degree glass dish out of the oven and poured cold apples into it. My husband credits his escape from grave injury to the cracking sound the pan made just before it exploded, throwing shards of glass everywhere in the kitchen.
In cleaning up the mess, he managed to get a splinter of glass in his middle fingertip. For a few weeks, he tried to pretend there wasn't a splinter, but soon enough he was living in fear of sudden pains in his fingertip while typing (he's a computer science professor - typing is part of his career). So he went to the doctor to get the splinter out.
His doctor very professionally pointed out that sometimes these exploratory surgeries don't really find things, especially things like infinitesimal (but sharp) bits of glass. Anyway, he dug around and made a hash out of DH's finger, found nothing, and stitched it up. DH came home via the pharmacy and bought a bunch of fingertip band-aids and rubber fingertip covers. He was instructed to keep the stitches clean.
Bah, I said, you don't need those rubber fingertip covers. It'll get sweaty and gnarly. I'll knit you a fingertip cover. It'll protect it, remind you to go easy on your finger, provide cushioning, and it'll breathe while keeping most of the dirt out of it. DH dutifully put a band-aid over the fingertip, and covered it with this, the first bit of knitting I have done for DH which actually fit him.
He loved it. He wore it for a week until the stitches came out. He showed it to the nurses when he got the stitches removed. At one point, he misplaced it (while replacing the band-aid) and searched for it for 30 minutes. He couldn't live without it.
Ah, finally, a successful knitting project for my dear, sweet, Sweetie.
Here's a closeup:
Oh, yeah. He thinks there's still a sliver of glass in his finger. But he'll wait for it to make its own way out this time. (It's not stabbing him regularly, so the rooting around in there did change it for the better.)
Pattern: Gloveless finger - it's a tube with decreases at one hand, essentially a glove finger, without the glove. 16 stitches around, ribbing and then stockinette.
Yarn: KnitPicks Risata.
Needles: Size 0, Brittany birch dpns.
Risata has some elastic in it, so it would stretch. It's also machine-washable. And it fit, uh, like a glove!
