H is for Hats

It was a cold day in Melbourne, and Wombat could not decide which hat to wear ... Good thing he was wearing a Project Spectrum green scarf for the month of May. 

First the Grumbling...

Wombat has been off school all week with a heavy cold, and now I have it and I feel like death warmed up. He is VERY demanding when he is sick, understandably so, but it means that I am spending time defending myself in Pokemon battles when I really want to sleep. I also have a pile of homework to do for Friday - I have done most of it, bar the sticking down and captioning, plus an embroidery piece that will probably be finished by tonight - but i would have prefered to do it in a less fragmented way.

Baby Bear had her parent-teacher interviews on Monday. I couldn;t go because I had to stay at home with the hacking, spluttering Wombat, so George went along. NOT HAPPY, JAN. It turned out that our happy, cheerful child who is having such a wonderful year is indeed having a very happy and cheerful year but at the expense of things like schoolwork and music practice, and is spending most of her time talking and not paying attention. Poor child has the misfortune to be 'gifted' both academically and musically, so of course we expect a certain standard of work from her (not an exaggerated one, and we are always careful to praise what she does, but we do expect her to work to something approaching full capacity, not slacking off like she has been doing). So we have had to take the cruel and heartless parent line and re-establish some very firm ground rules. I think it really hit home when one of the teachers showed George a classroom test that had nine questions on it, which everyone else in the class had completed but she had only done one question. And no, it wasn't particularly hard, and it was in a subject she likes and is capable at. More stress that we could, frankly, have done without.

And to cap it off, it turned out that she had not bothered to tell us about the Victorian Flute Guild Competition which is being held this Saturday, at which she is expected to be all day. She entered it last year and I happily spent the time there, knitting a sock in between sections, and enjoying a very high standard of music. We think she did not tell us because she knew there was a birthday party on that day (of one of the girls who should be in the competition, no less!) I got really annoyed about this because we had already planned out the day for Saturday, because we all had to go in different directions and then go out in the evening. George is doing a working bee at the primary school; she was going to and from this party, quite a longish drive away; and I was going to spend the afternoon slowly chopping and simmering and organising an elaborate dish that I am taking to the dinner party on Saturday night. Now I have to make the thing on Thursday and refrigerate it, which means doing an online shop for tomorrow because Wombat is still sick, which means that they almost certainly won't send something vital because they ALWAYS run out of the most amazing things; I;m always exhausted after school on Friday, and as I am quite sick that will be even worse; and now I have to spend the whole day at the flute thing and then be the sparkling life and soul of the party on Saturday night. If she had told us in advance we could have at least preplanned something to reduce the pressure on us both. Snarl, snarl.

On the up side ... i got my parcel from Morgan today for the Project Spectrum colourswap and I am so thrilled with it! No pics till Sunday, probably. It included some amazing sock wool, stitch markers, some patchwork fabric and an ornamental hook for the wall, all tucked into a bright orange knitting pouch. I felt truly spoilt, and goodness I needed it!

Use What You Have Month

I haven't written so far about my Use What You Have Month. I have managed not to buy any craft materials except for a few bits I needed for my course (and for this Friday I genuinely don't need to buy anything new! I really will be using What I Have). However I haven't managed to stop buying magazines, naughty me. I did also buy one book - I really wasn't going to buy any craft books this month but this one on art quilts was exaclt what I had been looking for to help with my two major assignments due at the end of semester :)

I have made a number of things Using What I Have. For my April colourswap I sent off some sock yarn from my stash, plus I made something out of yarn and beads also from my stash (she hasn't got them yet so I won't post any more details just yet). I made myself a pair of orange (and pink) socks from yarn I had dyed at the start of the year; and I am halfway through another pair of socks also from yarn dyed then. I have knitted my mum a scarf out of (shock horror) eyelash yarn (for Mothers' Day) and I;m knitting myself a short keyhold scarf out of the same stuff for myself, all from the stash. And I think I will knit my mum a short keyhole scarf in another eyelash yarn from the stash, and use the rest of it for a long scarf for myself. I don't like novelty yarns a whole lot but this is really soft, long eyelash yarn that actually feels rather nice against the neck. Photos eventually. So pretty much all month has been spent using stuff from the stash, which I am pleased with.

I have also gone on a longer term Yarn Diet. See that ticker at the top of the blog? I'm in a challenge being run by Rebekah of Knit Knack blog (see my sidebar) which is a yarn diet with a difference. (Or you could call it a cop-out if you were feeling sarcastic!) We try not to buy any yarn for three months EXCEPT we have one free day per month (which can be cumulative). All participants donate some yarn, enough to make a scarf or pair of socks, and at the end of the three months the winner (or winners) get a share of the pot, so to speak. So far I have really not bought any yarn at all and I am so proud of myself! I even passed up the quite good and very cheap printed sock yarn I saw in Lincraft last week. I am expecting a big haul of sock yarn from Sockmonster (see sidebar) soon, but I ordered that halfway through March so I think I get let off that - anyway, I still have my free day for April. I had also signed up for a sock club but I;lm happy for that to be my yarn buying day each month over the next three months, anyway.

Project Colourswap

Project Colourswap is an offshoot of Project Spectrum (see my sidebar for a link). I have just about finished putting together my parcel to send off for April - I had to wait for some glue to dry on something before finishing it off, which I will do this evening.

There is a new questionnaire for the project which I will post here now:

Are you crafty? YES!!!!!

Would you enjoy things like: Buttons, ribbons andembellishments? Buttons and embellishments, not so enthusiastic about ribbons

Do you dye your own wool? One of my favorite things! I;m especially interested in dyeing sock wool right now.

Do you like to scrapbook or make homemade cards? Not really

What are your favorite scents? Floral scents, but either pure ones (like rose scent that actually smells like roses, or lavender, etc) or floral and/or green scents that are not too sweet or too spicey. NOT VANILLA OR TEA TREE OIL, they make me feel sick.

Do you like stationery and cards? Love cards, don't really use other stationery

Do you like to sew or embroider items? Just become obsessed with this!

Do you like beads? MMMM BEADS.... Yes, in other words :)

What kind of candy do you like? Not a big candy fun though do like chocolate and toffee.

Do you like hand lotions or soaps? Love 'em!

Do you like to wear costume jewelry? Necklace,earrings, bracelets etc. Yes, love it!

Do you like to make/or use stitch markers? Occasionally use them, don't make them, but love gorgeous ones.

Do you collect anything? Tiny teddy bears; things to do with wolves, bats or polar bears, or pharoah hounds; I also like dragons and Celtic and medieval things

Do you have any allergies?: Smoke, food, fiber, pets,etc. Smoke, most definitely. Can't wear mohair around my neck but can tolerate it otherwise, no other fiber problems.

Do you have any hobbies? All fiber related ones! Knitting, crochet, emrboidery, patchwork (sort of), textile art. Currently very interested in collecting variegated embroidery threads, of any composition or thickness.

Do you like scented or unscented candles? Don't like candles, sorry.

Are you a fiber snob? A bit - I don't like really plasticy feeling acrylics.

Do you like to play cards or board games? Only a little bit.

Do you like neon colors, pastel, light or mediumranges in the color of the month? Any and all! I LOVE COLOUR!

Do you like kitchen magnets or key rings? I do, indeed.

Do you like picture frames? Yes, sort of - I do like them but I don't really have any nor am I sure if I would use them.


I will finish off my thingy that I am making to send - which will be accompanied with a few other, colour appropriate things - to my pal on Saturday.

Project Spectrum - April - Orange/Yellow

I did this applique for my course a couple of weeks ago. We had to draw still lives with fruit and/or vegetables in charcoal - something that put me off art at school and which I still loathe to do (the still life, not the charcoal particularly, though goodness it is messy!). This is my stitched version of sweet potatoes. Each potato is layered organza using different combinations of red, orange and yellow, and then details stitched in using a variety of orange, green and beige threads. The painting around the outside was a moment of desperation when I couldn't decide how to finish it, and then I added a few orange blobs to the sweet potatoes too. It was surprisingly good fun, considering how much I hated the drawing process. Interestingly, I chose all the materials in daylight, and when the finished product is viewed under artificial light it doesn't work nearly as well, as the organza is quite sparkly and that's what you end up focussing on. This photo looks like the piece does in daylight. I have never done this sort of thing before and I am quite pleased with myself. 

Project Spectrum - April - Orange/Yellow

 

The Endeavour - or, What I Did on My Holidays Part 2

We went around the Endeavour, which is a replica of the ship was Captain Cook was sailing when he discovered Australia. This replica was made for our Bicentenary in 1987. It is a very faithful reproduction and it is a rare treat for it to be docked in Melbourne, so it was great fun to see it. We spent a couple of hours crawling around it - quite literally in the part where the clearance was only 4'!!! George took a couple of most unflattering pictures of me getting down to crawl through that bit. They are NOT in this picture collage!!! 

The Buddy System - or, What I Did In My Holidays Part 1

It's nearly two weeks since the end of the school holidays and I have pictures still to post. The Buddy System was an interesting interactive art happening where we became part of the exhibition. Participants crocheted a flower, which was then pinned to the wall. The flowers are then posted on to your nominated Loved One at the end of the exhibition, extending the reach of lovingly made craft pieces into the outer world. Non-crocheters were taught to do chains in green wool that became the connecting pieces. I had Baby Bear (12) and her friend C (13), who is a crafty male who already knits rather well. They were both very enthusiastic about learning to do the chains. It was a fun half hour and C found himself the centre of attention as EVERONE wanted to see a 13 year old boy crocheting!! It was fun, though admittedly the crochet lessons were a bit sketchy and all the yarn was the most disgusting plastic acrylic - I understand why, as they were supplying it, but I HATE using the stuff! I also felt a bit incompetent as I could only remember one flower pattern, but the wall was full of gorgeous flowers made off site by other people who obviously had access to patterns. I could have done a great one with a pattern! I really liked the interactive approach and it will look very pretty when it is finished - and I like the ephemeral feelings about flowers and about this exhibition - but there was something about the atmosphere that I still can't my finger on that I did not enjoy.

A later note - George read this entry and said that every time he wandered into the room (he was keeping Wombat entertained elsewhere in the gallery) he felt completely frozen out and very unwelcome. And he is someone who schmoozes with women of all ages/sizes/shapes/nationalities to an almost embarassing extent. He and I are both very sensitive to atmospheres and the 'auras', for want of a better word, of people, and it's interesting that we both apparently had similar feelings. And no, we hadn't discussed it at the time.

My Beautiful International Scarf Exchange Scarf

A little late, but no less beautiful, this is my International Scarf Exchange Scarf from Tina. Tina has no blog or website and barely posted to the ISE blog, so I know almost nothing about her, but she sure knows how to pick the most beautiful colours. This is a gorgeous thick and thin yarn, fairly coarse but I just adore the way the colours meld into each other. I have emailed her to thank her and to ask what the yarn is, but I haven't heard back. Whatever it is, I just love it! 

G is for Green

 

G is for Green

 

G is for Green

Green is one of my all time favorite colours! (The others being pink, blue and purple - in no particular order). Green is the colour of nature and it soothes me and makes me feel at peace. I've made a collage of sundry green images that I liked and I feel good just looking at it. Most of the plants are in my garden; the skeins of yarn are from Lorna's Laces and will become lacey scarves or shawls one day; and the tub full of yarn is my Green box and it is overflowing! 

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

 

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

Sirius says that her collar is in honour of Project Spectrum this month!! Notice her pink nose and lips - Pharoah hounds blush when they are happy!

School Holidays

We are slowly reaching the end of these unseasonably early school holidays here at Chez Sheep Rustler. They were brought forward by four weeks to coincide with the Commonwealth Games. This meant that first term was a headlong, breathless rush, and everyone has to cope with a 12 week term starting next week. Easter will at least give us a long weekend soonish, but we think we may take the kids out of school for a couple of days mid term and give them another long weekend, just so that they can make it to the end of term!

Wombat came down with an ear infection three days before the end of last term and so started his holidays earlier than I really wanted him to. It meant I had to miss my TAFE Classes on the last Friday as George was in Sydney. George's mum did offer to come down but as I have to leave at 8.30am she would have had to have caught a train at 6.30am and that would have been just too cruel! Besides which she then got caught up in a real family drama which has resulted in her having to hare off to Broken Hill for a month to care for her sister-in-law.

Poor Wombat took a good ten days to get over the ear problem, including three visits to the doctor, antibiotic eardrops, oral antibiotics and an ear washing out session. It left him very clingy and I am, I;m afraid, looking forward to some time without him following me from room to room all day. Yes, he gets plenty of attention from me, but it would be nice not to have to be in the same room as him all the time.

Baby Bear usually spends a week in Moe during school holidays, but that hasn't been able to happen this time. So she and Wombat have been at each other's throats half the time. And because she is used to having that week of one-on-one attention during the holidays, which I just can't give her with Wombat around, she is getting clingy too and I have trouble getting any time to myself at all. All of this plus the fact that George, despite repeated promises to sort things out and stop doing it, is still going up to Sydney at least every second week and the people in the Sydney office are now treating him as a Sydney employee who should be there whenever they say Jump. (Not that they have given him an office, or a desk, or a computer, or a phone line...) And whenever I complain he says he will talk to such-and-such and it will stop - and they have the conversation and he tells me that it will stop, then nothing happens and he tells me I don't understand the politics of it. What I do understand is that it is wearing him out to the extent that I am afraid he is going to have a heart attack, and driving me into a depression that eventually I won't be able to climb out of.

Despite all this we have had some nice times over the holidays. George took a day off on Monday and we went into the city and went to the Museum to see the props used during the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony. Only unfortunately instead of going to see them straight away (it being the supposed reason for out visit) George insisted on us going round most of the Museum first, until Wombat was on a verge of a wobbly, and then we had to race around the exhibition in five minutes flat. It;s a great museum (I hadn't been to it since it moved into the new building) and I really enjoyed it, but I think we should have done things the other way round. We took three boys who are friends of ours and it worked really well, as everyone had someone to keep them company without fighting. The alarming thing is that these kids (they have a little sister too, who we didn't take as the car only has seven seats) and our kids look sufficiently alike to pass for siblings, and the various heights (more so than the actual ages) made them look as though they could just be all the one family. Scary thought!!

Knittingwise - I am three quarters of the way through a second sock; I have been working on my Project Spectrum project for March, the pink Kid Silk Haze Trinket scarf; the Diamond Patch jumper has not been touched for about four weeks; I am making a hat for Beyond Blue, or rather the Blue Hat Project, which is an exhibition and then charity auction for our deperession charity; and I have made a turquoise curly whirly for Baby Bear which i must photograph. I probably won't finish Trinket by the end of March because we are having a late burst of hot weather and KSH is horrible to use in hot weather - and I can't even use it sitting in front of a fan because it is so featherweight that it blows around and annoys me!! But I have vowed to start and mostly work on a project for each month of Project Spectrum in the relevant colour/s.

And now to get the pizza dough out of the breadmaker and make pizza!!

Use What You Have

OK, this is going to be a hard one. Inspired by Simple Sparrow and Whip Up (see my side bar for URLs) I am going to endeavour to use the month of April to Use What I Have. No craft purchases FOR A WHOLE MONTH and to use things that I already have to make something. I will only buy stuff if I absolutely need it for the course (every week we are given a list of things to bring for next week, some of which I have and some of which I don't). I was momentarily worried about Project Spectrum for April, which is Yellow and Orange, becasue they are colours I don't normally use. But I will take photos of appropriate things around the place, and I do have some mostly orange sock wool that I was planning to use anyway.

What a challenge!!!

F is for Fabric

Over the years I have accumulated quite a lot of fabric of one sort and another. I used to make most of my own clothes. I don't really now, because I have branched off in other directions and found that I was resenting the time it took me to do dressmaking. So now I buy most of my clothes and have pretty much decided to have a holiday from dressmaking.

I used to dabble in patchwork. I have a goodly accumulation of patchwork fabrics. But I discovered that I hate, and am not good at, quilting, so I gave up on patchwork. That fabric won't be wasted though, there are lots of smaller projects that don't need proper quilting that I plan to do in good time.

And lots of that fabric can find other uses, too. I am now constantly on the lookout for interesting background fabrics for embroidery - which is what this lot of four is for.

The funny thing is, when I started the Studio Stitch course I went in there not really wanting to do embroidery - I wanted to use scrumbling as much as possible. But I have rapidly become quite obsessed with embroidery and keep reading books about it and even dreaming of projects I could do.

F is for Fleece

I have lots of greasy wool fleece stuffed away in the shed. My MIL has lots and lots and LOTS more greasy fleece waiting for me to use. I adore dyeing my own yarn. My spinning is not great but I like to use the results in scrumbling, whre it doesn't matter if they are even or perfect.

This is the first dyed fleece that I have bought. I dom't know if I will spin it or use it for other things. I also bought a couple of needlefelting needles at the same time. I would like to try needlefelting, both to make 3D objects and to try putting down stuff on fabric to embroider over.

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

I've decided that for each month of Project Spectrum I am going to take photos of things in the appropriate colours - as already posted - as I have found this to be a great way of starting to look at the things around me. (The course is starting to make me look at EVERYTHING differently!!)

But I am also going to do at least one project per month that also corresponds with the relevant colour/s. This is Trinket by Kim Hargreaves, which is going to be so beautiful when it is finished! I lashed out and bought the kit, which is the only way you can get the pattern. I will probably use other yarns to knit it again and again as it is so pretty. It's easy to knit, too, and once you have memorised the pattern (quite quickly!) it is perfect TV knitting, but it looks so clever because it is on the diagonal! However, I have a confession to make. After lusting after Rowan Kid Silk Haze for the past couple of years, and taking out a second mortgage to buy this lot plus another three balls of a different colour, I am forced to admit that I don't think it is worth the money!! It is very nice, certainly, but when I put it against my neck it itches. A bit of a disadvantage with a scarf! But I can wear scarves so that they don't touch the skin on my neck (it doesn't get cold enough here to really need them wrapped tightly around for warmth). It is a sweet yarn and comes in delectable colours and looks cute knitted up - but I don't think I will be buying it again. I can just see this pattern knitted up in a lovely laceweight that doesn't have mohair in it. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I just can't wear mohair against my skin, no matter how expensive and desirable it is!! 

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

 

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

 

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

 

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

 

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

 

My I Cord So-Called Scarf

I am feeling a bit embarrassed about my ISE scarf. After being so late in sending it off, I'm not even sure that the lovely recipient likes it! I suppose it was a bit left of centre. It was an experiment and I don't personally think it was a very successful one. I didn't even take a photo of it myself, as I had taken so long to organise to send it off, and at the last minute the camera battery was flat and I didn't dare miss the posting opportunity.

Just in case anyone else wants to reproduce my experiement and maybe make a better fist of it than me:

My I Cord So-Called Scarf

Choose a selection of yarns in a colour scheme that you like. I put ten I cords into this, each one in a different yarn. They can be all the colours of the rainbow, or harmonising, or complementary, or clashing - I made it a good mixture of colours and textures but some people (including, I fear, poor Marji!) would find it too busy that way.

Choose an approximate length for your scarf, erring on the generous side. You could make a short one, of course, buyt you won't be able to do as much with it afterwards.

Make ten I cords in approximately this length. Don't have them all identical. I used 5mm dpns (US size 8) and six stitches for each one, and as the yarns were not uniform this gave different thicknesses of I cord. You could use an I cord machine but I think they only take fine yarns - which would be lovely, too!

When you are done, lay them out flat on a large flat surface like a bed. Play with them, arrange them, intertwine them, until you like the arrangement. Then catch them together carefully in quite a lot of places with a few stitches using sewing thread, and make some of those intersections with beads or buttons, if you like. You want it to hold together, but to have plenty of gaps left over.

Now you can wear it as you will. Wrap it around, pull one end through a hole, pull the other end through another hole, wrap it around your head - decorate it more, scrumble all over it, whatever!

I am going to be making myself one, so when that is done I will take photos and demonstrate some of the ways it can be worn. In the meantime, look at Marji's picture and imagine!!

Playing with Picasa 2

This is the four photos that went into the spooky montage.

I feel a desire to play with photo software coming on!!! 

Playing with Picasa 1

I thought I would experiment a bit with Picasa's collage functions. I really like this result, it looks a bit spooky! 

E is for Embroidery

This is the first stitched piece I did for my course, a couple of weeks ago. It is the first time I have ever done this type of embroidery - I have done squillions of cross stitch and woolwork pieces, and know how to do most embroidery stitches, but I had never done this sort of 'free' embroidery before. I am actually quite pleased with it and I'm glad to say that my tutor was too! We are now doing a stitched piece every week - the next one is appliqued, as is the one I have to finish off this week. And I think the next assignment is an applique too. Can you tell I am having fun!!! 

Books!

I'm obsessed with books. We are drowning under the weight of our book collection. So when I saw this meme somewhere I had to do it!

Meme instructions : Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of. (I'm having a fight with Blogger and can't get it to underline, so I will mark them as GOT instead of underlining)

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - GOT
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger -GOT
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams - GOT
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald - GOT
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - GOT
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling - GOT
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell - GOT
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller - GOT
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien - GOT
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - GOT
Lord of the Flies - William Golding - GOT
1984 - George Orwell - GOT
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling - GOT
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - GOT
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut - GOT
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown - GOT
(Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk)
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Secret History - Donna Tartt - GOT
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess - GOT
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - GOT
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - GOT
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis - GOT
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
(Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell)
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien - GOT
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - GOT
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman - GOT
Atonement - Ian McEwan
(The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - GOT
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - GOT
Dune - Frank Herbert - GOT

That was an interesting exercise - go ahead, do it, you know you want to!

D is for Dolman

Another Jersey photo from the same holiday. This is a dolman, an Iron Age burial site. Jersey had a number of fantastic dolmans and other standing stones - I love visiting these and it is something that Australia rather sadly lacks! Nothing beats the feeling of walking along that path and standing under the stones - unless it is going underground to see them, which I was able to do in some of the other sites. (Which got interesting as I was six months pregnant at the time!) 

D is for Daffodils

This field full of daffodils is in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. I took this photo when we there on holiday in 1993. I loved the effect of the whole field full of them with the clouds and the castle in the background. 

Diary of a Hypochondriac

This is going to be blather about my health, so I advise everyone to skip it :)

I went to the rheumatologist yesterday, who was fantastic. He took a full history, looked at my test results, and we talked.

I do have fibromyalgia, as suspected. I probably did all along, it's just that I first went to my GP I think I put fatigue first on the list of symptoms and pain second. That was three and a half years ago. Since then I have had most of the blood tests repeated, to cgeck that I really really don't have various things wrong with me. I had several sessions with a therapist last year who taught me some really useful stress management techniques that I use regularly and that have really helped a great deal. Over the last six months the fatigue has receded very slightly. But the pain has got worse .... and worse....

Basically I feel like I am in the first stages of flu - every day. Most of my major joints hurt all the time and most of my muscles are stiff and sore. I can no longer climb stairs (in either direction) with any degree of ease. Even getting on and off buses requires me to move sideways like a crab. I can't kneel or sit on the floor (not without requiring a block and tackle to get me up again). Anything more than a tiny bit of walking makes me hurt so much it is not worth it. I feel like an old lady, and probably walk like one. I am held together by painkillers. Every day is a litany of generalised aching plus specific pains (the places move around from day to day - this morning I am hurting in my left knee and my lower back, as well as all over - they are different types of pain).

Yet I test negative for all the arthritic conditions, my thyroid function is fine, I do not have diabetes, and although I have a little ostearthritis in my knees it is not bad enough to cause all the problems.

Fibromyalgia is probably the same thing as chronic fatigue syndrome, and they are both labels for a very real condition that can't be properly tested for. There is no test to prove that I do or do not have it. It has been described as arthritis of the soft tissues, only it isn't arthritis. It is most probably a neurological condition.

I;ve been referred to a fibromyalgia clinic, which are apparently almost unknown in Australia but my rheumatologist has a real interest in the condition and knows these people. Hopefully they will come up with strategies to help me manage this. He's also prescribed Naprosin and told me that it is better to take that, plus pain killers as required, than to live on Panadol. It will be tomorrow before I can fill the prescription - I am hoping that it helps.

So, that's my boring health problems. A chronic, incurable, semi crippling condition that no-one really understands. On the other hand it supposedly does not cause degeneration of the joints or the major organs, and won't actually kill me.

Four Things

I'm just procrastinating here, there are things I should be doing but I like this meme!

4 jobs I have had - temp typist, records indexer, librarian, MUM!
4 movies I can watch over and over - Gone With the Wind, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Vertigo, Phantom of the Opera
4 places I have lived - Essendon, Melbourne, Australia; Chiswick, London, UK; Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK; Glen Waverley, Mebourne, Australia
4 TV shows I love - Dr Who, Mythbusters, House, Taggart
4 places I;ve been on holiday - the Flinders Ranges, South Australia; Vancouver, Canada; Paris, France; the Lake District, UK.
4 favorite dishes - fried rice, chilli prawns, macaroni cheese, good pizza
4 websites I visit daily - ABC, my blog to read through my list of favorites, Bureau of Meteorology, The Age (a Melbourne newspaper)
4 places I would rather be - in bed; in France; in the V&A museum in London; actually I rather like being here too!

No tagging, this has been around everyone!

Lurgy is Lifting

George is back at work, the kids are more or less OK apart from a minor sniffle from time to time, and I am still feeling like ****. A quietish day today before another two or three days of frantic running around. For a SAHM I seem to be spending too much time not staying at home!!

The trip to the Eye Hospital was time consuming but reassuring as they have decided that it was migraine and that everything else is fine. We hear too much complaining about our health system, often with justification, but I want to say publicly that I have been hugely impressed with everyone at the Eye Hospital, they have all been very courteous and efficient and pleasant and it was all free!!

On the down side, I didn;t realise that I would be getting the atropine drops again. I didn't even have my sunglasses with me and I had to get myself home on public transport looking like the Corpse Bride and unable to cope with the sunlight - of course it was a beautiful sunny day!

Tomorrow I am off to a rheumatologist - I test negative for all the arthritis conditions but have consistent symptoms, so I expect I will end up with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, which is just another way of saying chronic fatigue syndrome, but every now and then I feel I ought to pursue these avenues just in case someone actually finds something else wrong with me! I asked my lovely GP for a referral to someone nearby, which she did - but of course the appointment I was offered was in the city, actually opposite the Eye Hospital where I was on Monday!

Some knitting is happening. I am plugging away on the Diamond Patch jumper, plus occasionally picking up the purple socks that I was supposedly knitting for Baby Bear but which will probably go to George because she misled me about sizes!!

I have finished my Scarf Exchange scarf though it won;t be posted till Saturday. I am not very pleased with it, sadly, but I hope that Marji is OK with it. It didn't turn out quite like I had hoped, but I;m sure she can find a creative way to wear it. I still have to do one little extra thing to package up with it, and take photos of it. I think that if there is another scarf exchange I will not design my own next time, I have loads of scarf patterns that I fancy knitting and I might use one of them.

I was going to mumble something about resolutions once a month, wasn't I? Well, here goes:
1. Decluttering - well, a brief start was made, and then fell apart under the onslaught of constant heatwaves. But all the yarn stash is now neatly in boxes on shelves, and yesterday I started tacjling two large piles of stuff that have sat in their 'temporary' homes for about six months. I did say it would take all year! George has also streamlined the supplies in the study.
2. Food - well, let's draw a veil over that, some days I am good and some days I am bad!
3. Exercise - oddly, I did more in the hot weather (lots of swimming) than since it cooled down a bit. Sort of doing some exercise.
4. The course has only just started but it is so much FUN and I have so far thrown myself into it. I am definitely keeping up with this resolution.
5. Curb spending habits - um, not really, me bad.

C Is For Curly-Whirly

Meet my Curly-Whirly, alongside Snakey who just happens to match.

I used some leftover acrylic, as mentioned in a previous post - it was a Lincraft own brand but I am pretty sure it was one of their relabelling of well-known European yarns that happened last year - very good value too as they were identical but much cheaper. I think it was the same as Filatura Di Crosa's Hopla. I also used another Lincraft branded yarn that was another fancy European yarn rebranded, but can't remember a thing about it!

This was crocheted - much easier than having millions of stitches on the needle - but boy did it eat up yarn! That's why I added the extra yarn, as i ran out of the first yarn too soon and the scarf was still too narrow. Unfortunately the only yarn I had which looked right with it is a bit scratchy and I am going to have to be careful not to let actually touch my neck - a pity because the original yarn is nice and soft, like a cloud!

I am keen to do another, wider one of these, with beads. I really liked the one Yarnivorous did and I;m thinking of something like that. 

5 Weird Things About Me!

I wrote this post several days ago but since then we have all been coping with the Lurgy. The kids had it first and weren't too sick, then they gave it to me, and now George is a quivering lump in bed. I dragged myself to my first day at TAFE (subject of another post sometime soon) on Friday with a zig-zagging temperature, spent Saturday morning running errands, the afternoon in bed and the evening drinking too much with friends, and yesterday hanging around the house feeling like ****. Now it is Monday and I feel even worse but I have to go into the Eye Hospital for my final checkup - I am hoping to stir the quivering lump to drive me to the station on the promise that he then gets the rest of the day in TOTAL PEACE as I will be out till late afternoon (I have two appointments, one to do a final test on my eyes and then a final checkup three hours later when those results will be ready along with everything else).


Well, I;ve been tagged by Cathy with this meme, so here goes!


Groundrules: The first player of this game starts with the Topic"5 weird habits of yours" and people who get tagged need to write a blog entry about their 5 quirky habits as well as state this rule clearly.In the end you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.

1. I cannot watch television, or indeed sit in a chair at all, without doing something with my hands. Mostly, I knit (or do bead embroidery, or crochet). Sometimes I read (well, turning the pages is doing something with my hands!) Sometimes I play Snood on my daughter's Gameboy (actually sometimes I do that FAR TOO MUCH!!) But I just CANNOT have my hands unoccupied.

2. My DH is going to hate this one - I cannot share a bed with anyone. I snore, thrash around, steal the covers, generally make myself unloveable, and then complain if my companion so much as twitches or even breathes. So we have come to a happy compromise - we sleep in seperate rooms now. Secretly I think he is relieved!

3. I have a real phone phobia. I find it incredibly hard to make phone calls. Not so much the making appointment type of call - I have no problems ringing the doctor or whatever - but ringing actual people to have an actual conversation is really hard for me. I can ring DH, that's fine, but that's about it! On the other hand I do not mind talking to people when they ring me, it;s just that actual making of the call that's hard. I like to email people, though I am also horrible at returning emails! (Several people are waiting on emails from me right now, so if you have commented on my blog or emailed me recently, or even not so recently, I will reply to you!)

4. I do not drive. I took driving lessons 15 years ago and sat four driving tests. The first one was far too early and I was not ready, so I;m not surprised I failed (the instructor made me sit it too early, I then changed instructors). The next test, I did perfectly except for mucking up a three point turn - I just touched the kerb and was failed on that. The third test was on an absolutely freezing cold, icy morning and I kept stalling the car. By the time I took the fourth test I had decided that if I failed that, I was done with driving. And yes, I failed it, on something so trivial that I cannot even remember. I personally thought I drove better than half the lunatics on the road, but no, I failed on something so small that I don;t think anyone ever does it in real life. At that point I then gave up! I was going to take driving lessons again a few years ago but then came down with chronic fatigue syndrome and haven't had the energy since, which is a shame because using public transport is rather tiring...

5. I am painfully shy and worry about everything, all the time, yet most people (even good friends) see me as sociable and calm and capable. I am obviously a really good actress!

Now who to tag? Actually it now being some time since I wrote this post, and my brain having left home somewhere in the midst of all the disgusting hankies I have been using, i think I will leave it open to anyone reading this1 i know this a cop-out but it's either that or wait another several days.