Randomness – Page 2 – The Sick Chick's Constantly Crafty

Too much downtime leads to dangerous scheming

I’ve made my peace with pain, for the most part. I won’t stop trying to get new and improved meds, but probably 29 days out of 30, pain is not stopping me from doing what I want to do and on that 30th I just have to rest up, pace and work around my limitations so that I can still do much of what I want. I still spend a lot of time in bed as it’s the only way to keep up my treaty obligations, and that leads to an overactive brain frustrated by inability to do anything. More on this later.

Fatigue is another story. I have not made peace with it, we’re still at war. It is my primary nemesis and the cause of most of my inability to get things done. You see, 90% of people with chronic pain will experience fatigue. On top of that I have two more diseases that cause fatigue, lucky me. It comes in many guises and has more causes than a bleeding heart liberal. (Not that I have anything against bleeding heart liberals 😉 ). For me, fatigue can come at full blast or sneak up on me on silent cat feet, usually attacking *because* I am at peace with my pain.

Confused? Well, part of my being at peace with pain is learning to ignore it. It becomes just another annoying signal coming from the body, like hunger or the need to pee. When you are wholly engrossed in a project to the point where you don’t notice time passing or hunger pangs rising, you can also ignore pain too. Hours later, you look up from your craft table and realize that you’re really hungry, have a desperate need to pee and you’re in massive pain. Hey, I’d rather have a burst of pain quickly quashed by big drugs (quickly being a relative term) over annoying pain all of the time. Your mileage may vary, but that’s what I have chosen.

But ignoring pain like that drains you of energy without you even noticing it. (After all, you’re not noticing the pain either…) And unlike pain, the fatigue that can come doesn’t wait for you to look up from your fantastic project. Oh no, it sneaks up behind you and pounces, knocking you flat. You have no choice, you are wholly within its mercy. And mercy, it has none. So you can be doing your favouritest thing in the world but when fatigue strikes you have no choice but to go lay down and probably sleep.

This happens to me a lot and is the main cause for UFOs. Actually, Fatigue’s nasty sister Insomnia is equally to blame for UFOs. If I’ve crashed out in the middle of the afternoon for a few hours, it’s practically guaranteed that my sleep schedule will be borked. You see, insomnia is not a lack of sleeping, it’s the inability to sleep when you want to and can be coupled with the inability to stay awake when you want to. It’s simply a messed-up sleep schedule. But oh, how a messed-up sleep schedule can mess up your life!

There are three types of insomnia: not being able to get to sleep in the first place, getting to sleep but then waking up in the middle of the night unable to get back to sleep for several hours, and waking up well before your alarm and unable to get back to sleep. I get the middle one, my husband t gets the latter, but due to the fact that he sleeps half as much as I do, we often wind up dealing with insomnia at the same time.

Insomnia is insidious: you want so badly to go back to sleep, you hope and pray that you can get to sleep any minute now. So you don’t do anything that’s going to wake you up even more and you don’t get too involved in anything so that you can go back to sleep the moment insomnia releases you from her evil clutches. You’re awake, but can’t really be productive unless you’ve given up entirely on getting back to sleep. You pass the time, knowing that every minute you’re awake in the middle of the night is probably one that you’re going to be asleep during the productive part of the day. (At least for me, as I have the option to sleep whenever my body demands it. Unlike poor t whose work frowns upon keeling over in meetings, etc.)

For me, passing time without doing anything so taxing as to wake me up fully involves a lot of random web surfing and a great deal of churning my mind over and over. (Actually the mind churning over and over can be why I can’t get to sleep in the first place on those sorts of nights. Go generalized anxiety and ADD!) I have to admit that a lot of my great craft ideas come from this semi-meditative state, but it’s not always a consolation. I can’t *DO* anything during this time, except maybe fairly mindless online things like adding my entire blogroll to this site, so it means I am filled with ideas that have to wait until I have the energy to do them. Often without regard to whether I already have a project on the go that I really should finish first…

This week I was upin the middle of two nights and caught myself blog surfing and actually commenting. Rare for me, but hey, I had nothing better to do and was already awake enough to form coherent sentences. I came away from these periods of meandering with two burning desires:

1) I want to do MORE with this craft blogging thing. OK, I want to do a podcast but my track record with podcasting isn’t so great. But maybe I will get into interviewing Sick Chicks who Craft for the blog? Or would that be better as a podcast anyway?? (Thoughts welcome.) The problem of course is that I am barely keeping up with this blog this as it is, so a desire to do even more than I’m attempting to do now isn’t really helpful at this stage 😛

2) I want to learn to spin. This is not a new feeling, I’ve wanted to learn to spin since before I’ve wanted to knit, I just fear failure a lot more in this area. I’ve even looked up spinning classes in my local area but none of them tell the prices and well, if I have to ask I know I can’t afford it.

This spinning-lust has been made even worse by egging on from Violet of (of Lime & Violet), which happened because I commented on a review of a new spinning book and she actually responded with said egging. (Thanks :P) It’s pretty overpowering now and I think that when I make a run to the Handweaver’s Studio for some fiber (for felting), I will ask about their spinning classes. And maybe their fiber dyeing classes, as I love dyeing (and am going to do some Kool Aid dyeing as part of Thing a Day). *deep sigh* I can just see my craft budget for the rest of the year slipping away to course fees…..

And now it’s half five in the evening and I have nothing but this post to show for what I’ve done with my day. I’ve been too drained to do anything else. I know it’s not my fault, but I can’t help simultaneously feeling guilty and silently cursing the fatigue monster that made me sleep sixteen hours straight….oh well, my fingers say I have typed too much for one stretch so even if I wanted to get more moody at you it’s time to stop. So goodbye for another day…

Curses, foiled again!

So instead of the forecasted rain it was actually sunny for a while today. I dutifully trudged out to the back lawn (we live in a high rise but it has a garden around it) with yesterday’s knitting and camera, got everything laid out in the one sunny patch (hey, even when we have sun it’s not *that* much!) and turn on the camera. It makes its cute little startup noises and then the screen goes black. Ah, I’ve left the lens cap on, doh! Flick it off and on again and this time it makes its cute startup noises, and lets me see the neckwarmer on the LCD screen for a second before going black again. The ONE sunny day we’ve had in weeks and my camera batteries decided to die! I’m so doomed…..

(I’m gonna sing the Doom song now….)

I’ve got Blisters on my Fingers!

OK, only hotspots. But still, that hated Bernat Soft Boucle is such a pain to work with, the nubby bits just get caught on each other and so trying to do a K2P2 ribbing (which I am doing for t’s wristwarmers — sadly, he liked the first one so I am having to do another) is nightmarish. Hoping to make it end quicker, I worked for 2-3 hrs on them yesterday and got *hotspots * (pre-blisters/swollen hot areas) on my thumb and forefinger from constantly yanking at the yarn to close the loops properly. I think it might be easier with needles but the way that you do a purl on the loom involves lifting it off the loom, putting the new loop on and then tightening, so that’s a lot of manipulating the yarn. Owwie!

Yesterday my Colinette order came through so I am taking a day off the blasted boucle and making a neck warmer to match my Ragdoll hat. I’ve yet to figure out how much “fringe” I want, but I have plenty of yarn this time! 🙂

Pictures are a bit of a problem with the utter lack of light in London at the moment, but we’re building a light tent this weekend so hopefully I’ll be able to take decent photos whatever the weather. Blistery fingers crossed!

On the Soapbox: Fibromyalgia

Warning: No crafting content here, but perhaps some frothing at the mouth.

I can’t even begin to say how much it irritates me that another round of Fibromyalgia-denial has begun. What’s a bit odd is that they are using the US FDA’s approval of a drug to treat fibro (which was months ago) as their excuse to start attacking it (and by extension, us) again. It’s the same old tired refrain: there’s no test for it so it can’t be real. Even one of the docs who invented the current diagnostic guidelines (the closest thing to a test we have) has recanted and said he no longer believes in it. (See this NY Times article for what’s being said.)

HELLO, smug doctors of the world! In the seven years I’ve had a fibro diagnosis (admittedly, my diagnosis is weak: it may be chronic fatigue syndrome instead and anyway it’s not my primary illness) the advances in diagnostics have been impressive. No, we don’t have a foolproof test yet, but there *are* biological markers in the majority of patients. Plus, chronic myofascial pain (closely related to fibro) has been discovered to be discernible on a special MRI, thus making it “real” in the eyes of these same doctors.

I suppose the real problem is that most of the docs who did believe in it are rheumatologists, but recently it has been shown that fibromyalgia is a neurological condition. This baffles the rheumies, but the neuros aren’t up to speed yet. In any case, the FDA is on board and Pfizer is plastering the airways with “public service announcements” (read: sly ads for Lyrica, the approved drug), so public opinion is swinging our way.

But this just goes to show that doctors are not infallible. Indeed, far too many of them have sticks up their bum. And that it’s sooooo very important to find a doctor that believes both in you and in your diagnoses. While the NHS here in the UK has no trouble with fibromyalgia, I know there are some GPs who are still resistant. I’m blessed that I don’t have one of those! I’m also lucky because Lyrica (pregabalin as it is known here, which is the generic name) is *not* yet approved for the treatment of fibromyalgia here, but my neurologist gave it to me anyway for the neuropathic pain that may or may not be fibro-related. So I get the benefit of the meds without having to wait for more drug trials, etc. Maybe that’s just reason number one million and four why the NHS rocks my world. Sure, you have to be a patient patient as waiting lists can be a pain, but it’s better healthcare than I ever had in the US (and I had health insurance and HMOs that were supposedly the best healthcare money could buy).

I’m going to get off my soapbox now and maybe go photograph some hats. 🙂

Almost!

One of my boxes has arrived from the States — and it has the camera cable! Now I just have to find some sunlight (don’t hold your breath, I live in London!) and there will be pix galore…. It also has some of my yarn in it, mostly the ubercheap stuff I got on sale, some of which I don’t really want any more. I’ll put them up for trade on Ravelry but I doubt anyone will want them…

Meanwhile, I finally took t’s hat off the loom – man I hate Bernat Soft Boucle (and 4 more skeins just arrived in that box today, blech!), it breaks every time I try to knot it. (And being acrylic I don’t trust it without knots.) I got about halfway through with my second fingerless glove but I think I am going to have to tink the last two rows as I seem to have messed up my K2P2 ribbing somehow.

There’s no place like home

…especially if your husband has been sick and hasn’t cleaned anything in the five weeks you were gone. *Sigh* I know better than to expect the place to be nice when I get home but some part of me still is disappointed when I walk into a dump 🙁

I survived the trip to DC, which included a visit to the Springwater Fiber Workshop (which was cleaned out due to their almost-went-out-of-business sale so nothing really to see) and the very lovely Knit Happens shop in Alexandria where I bought three skeins of Pima cotton from Peru. Not organic, alas, and I *know* that it is very important to buy organic cotton as 50% of the world’s pesticide use is in the cotton industry, but it was beautifully handpainted from a small company so I couldn’t resist.

So I’m home, but my yarn stash is in transit as I didn’t have enough luggage space. All I could cram in was two skeins for the scarf for my husband and the yarn that has now become the finished scarf for my mom. I need to try to take pictures but I need to be awake in daylight for that to happen. Right now I am sleeping 15 hrs a day 🙁

I do get to gloat a little as both husband and friend made noises about wanting the very first hat that I made of out Red Heart Light & Lofty. I think I have enough yarn left to make a second hat so both shall be appeased. It’s nice to make things that other people like, I was worried about stuff being really boring or screaming newbie but I find with the looms it’s a lot harder to screw up than with needles! Dropped stitches are more noticeable and easier to fix.

So much to write about, I got five looming books from Amazon for a total of six (out of I think 8 that exist), so I shall be writing up about them soon. Unfortunately my hands hurt too much for me to type any more today, but I really plan to blog more frequently now that I am home. If having my computer in the shop doesn’t turn into too much of a nightmare, that is! But hopefully that will all get fixed while I am away for the holidays and thus will be as painless as it can be. In the meantime though, the hands say it it time to stop and I must obey…