jwt2008 – The Sick Chick's Constantly Crafty

It’s my birthday and I’ll post if I want to

So the prodigal returns, at least for a few minutes before dashing off for a much-needed birthday weekend break.

I know that most people here don’t like long-winded diatribes about personal life so I’ll just say that my father has been gravely ill since mid-May and I was in the States with him and my mom at various hospitals and assisted living facilities (he’s still in the Army and they didn’t let him come home – even to visit – until after I had to get back to the UK :/ So we had to go to him.) As I said earlier I got to go to Convergence which was awesome and has gotten me to take up weaving on paper looms (no space for proper ones at this time maybe looking for an inkle soon tho). And due to the stress of the situation (Daddy was really touch and go for a while there in and out of ICUs) we did a ton of retail therapy in an attempt to keep ourselves half-sane and so I now have a starter supply of scrapooking and card making stuff. 🙂

I did get to go to I Knit Day, but sadly missed seeing most of y’all who were there. But I have proof that I went! (In my totally non-goth, non-steampunk look I’ve been sporting all summer as my mom hates goth so I’ve reverted to neohippy 😉 )

I’ve done a ton of craft projects over the summer but most are not yet photographed. I’m still completely exhausted both physically and mentally and am not really up to dealing with people still so have not been reading blogs. I am sorry and I hope to get back to it as soon as I am able. But right now my priority is my health which is why my husband is whisking me away for a short break at the (all-too-chilly) seaside for a few days for us to relax and chill out before preparing for the next hurdle: him having to go home to *his* ill father and me having to fend for myself for two weeks. That’s so scary I can barely think about it yet (and haven’t the health or wealth to go with him). All I know is that I am going to have a lot of people over to craft with me in the evenings so if you are going to be in the London area in mid to late October and want to come play let me know 🙂 But I have several hats and a mini scrapbook to make before he leaves so when I get back I have to get a move on! )

I’m also planning to be at The Big Stamp & Scrap Show next weekend and the Knitting & Stitching show on the 9th and 12th of October, both at Ally Pally, if anyone is going to either of those. I hope to be able to catch up with people I missed at I Knit due to being in a delightful haze of fiber-buying 🙂

Well, I am going to go finish packing and wait for the boi to wake up and give me presents. Wheee! 🙂

I’ll try to post more of my summer projects next week if I have any energy left 🙂

Update, organize, advance!

The update: My dad is still in the hospital in Tampa, but due to schedule conflicts Mom and I came back to North Carolina this weekend. It was a long drive but there are lots of craft stores along the way 😉 She’s flying back on Thursday for the long weekend but I can’t handle that much flying so I’ll be here on my lonesome with a huuuuuuge stash to play with! We’ll have to go back to Tampa again to pack up his apartment by the 26th and move his stuff to NC, while he is being transferred to an Army hospital at Ft. Benning in Columbus, GA. We may or may not be visiting him there, the schedule is tight as it is since I go back to the UK on the 30th.

Organizing: I have bought so much stuff! I had ordered more fiber from the Homestead Wool and Gift Farm before I found out that I would be able to attend Convergence 2008. No, not the goth one, the biennial conference of the Handweavers Guild of America. I was only able to go for one afternoon at the exhibit hall but oh my, what a wonderful experience! I don’t weave much yet (although that’s something I want to do more of in the future) but the vendors included sooooo much for spinners and dyers. Dyeing, too, is something I have only toyed with really, but I hope to take a natural dyeing course through a lovely SCA lady in the UK if she is ever able to resume doing the courses. Plus there was plenty of “weaving” (read: knitting) yarn for me to buy 🙂 So I loaded up a lot on fiber and yarn and got two new spindles, a nostepinne, a new lucet, some wooden bobbins, a sock loom from a company I’d never heard of before and several books for spinning on spindles. It was fabulous! (And many thanks to Mom for financing it all 😉 ) Mom really, really fell in love with the Ashford Elizabeth 2 but I have yet to make up my mind as to whether I prefer a double treadle or a double-wide single treadle (like on the E2). I just don’t know which is better for my knees. And anyway, I want to get a drum carder before considering a wheel! (Plus I am holding out for a reasonably-priced electric spinning “wheel” to appear in the UK, alas I can’t just get a US one because of the power/voltage issues :/)

We also stopped at 5 scrapbooking/stamping stores and one quilt store plus Michael’s had a big sale on scrapbooking stuff while we were down there and we hit a Hobby Lobby. (No Serenity looms though, do they still make/sell those???)

So as a result of all of this wonderful stash enhancement, I’ve been spending most of today trying to organize everything so that I can get the most out of what little crafting time I will have available to me this trip.

Advance! On to bigger and better things, I say! I’m really gunning to get crafting, I just have several more chores and a few doctors appointments this week and then I can hopefully get my pics off my cameras to post them and also get back to making stuff!

Hope everyone is having a great week, and happy 4th of July to those who celebrate it.

PS. Don’t miss today’s episode of Yarncraft (the podcast by Lion Brand) which is on Loom Knitting! I’m bummed that I never really got the chance to call in for it but oh well. I’m going to go listen right now!

Safe and almost Sound

Just a quick note to say that I am safely arrived in America (despite an unusually gruelling trip). However, my computer did not arrive intact and needs to go to the shop to fix (or worst case replace) the hard drive. I have my data backed up so this is more of an inconvenience than emergency. But still, I may not be online much until it gets fixed — or maybe I will as Mom’s work is loaning me a MacBook Air until my Mini is back from the shop, wheee 🙂 But I may still have problems accessing Mail and the like depending on how much I can recover from that hard drive before it goes into the shop as my backups are in the UK and will take some time to get here if needed.

Have done a ton of crafty shopping today, mostly books, magazines and second sets of supplies that are going to live here at my parents house so I don’t have to keep dragging things back and forth across the ocean (beading pliers, Knifty Knitters, etc.). And 10 skeins of Lion Brand Homespun, at last! Now to find a Serenity loom if we make it to a Hobby Lobby (sadly, an hour or so away from here), or to ponder an afghan or prayer shawl loom from somewhere else if it would get here in time before I leave (which may be as soon as 9 weeks from now). Meanwhile I have the Fine Gauge double rake from Decor Accents to play with and 15 balls of Peaches and Creme so many dishcloths are in my future! Still waiting on the DA single rake and sock loom which should get here in a week or two.

Oh and did I mention that mom gave me a yarn budget of $200? (Not counting the Homespun or anything else that is being made for her.) Yaaaaaaay! I love being a spoiled only child!!

BTW the trip to Tampa, Florida is back on but Pennsylvania is still cancelled. My dad’s colonoscopy is on the 29th so fingers crossed that the news is good. They did find that he had a massive infection of the intestines requiring IV antibiotics so maybe, just maybe, that was behind the mass they had seen on tests before. *hope hope* It may be something like Chron’s or Diverticulitis but those are very manageable and certainly less life threatening than cancer. So he’s not coming home for the summer and we’ll have to go visit him. He retires from the Army in December so will finally get to come home for good then, no more tours of duty!!

But first up I have to finish the item for the Functional Felt Swap and mail my ATC for the Creative Mom swap. And get my computer fixed. So until tomorrow…

News

First, thanks to those who donated for my Fibromyalgia walk, I am pleased to announce that I exceeded my goal thanks to the help of Denise Layman talking about it on her blog and offering a raffle prize 🙂 Pictures will be forthcoming once I steal them from t’s Flickr.

My dad’s health is getting weirder. They couldn’t find the mass/alleged tumor on the CAT scans so now he’s scheduled for a thorough colonoscopy on the 29th. Maybe the mass went away? It’s a medical mystery at this point. But until we know what it is, the Army is keeping him down in Florida, so it looks like I will be headed to Tampa after all. Don’t know for how long.

My health — which I try to avoid talking about too much for fear of turning people off — is getting worse in a number of ways and my mom and t think that since I’ve already cleared my schedule for four months it might be worthwhile me staying in the US for some private treatment that I can’t get here on the NHS and so that we can do family weight loss efforts together since it’s getting to be life threatening for my dad and so I’d still be there to support/harass him (if they let him come home or I go to him). I’ve only managed to lose 8 pounds in the 10 weeks since I was diagnosed with Diabetes so I need to step it up more too as there’s still 40 more to go to be officially in the healthy range.

So it’s still unknown just how long I will spend in the US, what part of the US I will be in when (NC or Florida) and whether I will be over there for my treatments or my dad’s or both.

Thus I may be fairly quiet here until I get to mom’s house on the 25th. I have swaps to make stuff for, packages to get out and the gargantuan task of trying to pack for 2-4 months in one suitcase and one carryon.

Coming out for Spring

I know I have been very remiss in my blogging endeavours, but I have to plead illness.It’s been a very hard month+ for me and talking to people is one of the most difficult things at times so I’m afraid I have just been hibernating away. But today, perhaps because of the spring weather (oh how I wish it were going to last!) or perhaps because I saw mallard ducks in my back lawn (why I have no idea and sadly I didn’t have my camera with me) or because I have a lot of announcements, I have finally felt like talking to the world at large.

But before I say more about what has been going on, here are some piccies for your entertainment:

That is a scarf that I made for my mother last December, didn’t photograph until February and am only managing to post about today. It was made using Trendsetter Yarns Blossom using the Alternating rib stitch (5 rows each direction) on the Knifty Knitter long yellow loom. At least, this is how it looked before I washed it and sadly it is far more anaemic looking now 🙁 I’ll try to photograph it again to show the difference. t says he can’t tell and looking at the scrap yarn I can’t tell differences in the strands individually, but it just looks less fluffy 🙁 I’m very mad at myself for chancing a machine wash (delicate cycle) on a handwash yarn, even though I know my mom will only machine wash it anyway. I feel like I screwed up US$45 worth of lovely yarn and am really beating myself up about it 🙁

Beating myself up about things is sort of the theme lately, as that’s part of what happens in my depression cycle. The big D is what has been making life miserable lately (mentally and physically as it increases pain levels). I’m not really going to talk about it much here as I know people don’t like hearing about that very much and so I’d rather save your illness attention spans for when I may need it in the future 😉 But I’ll just say that it has been the worst episode ever but finally my meds are adjusted and things seem to be on an even keel again. I still don’t feel that my meds are quite right, but I plan to study the meditation course for the prevention of depression relaspe so hopefully the meds will become less important in time.

The big news is that I have decided to go to America for a while this year. Normally this wouldn’t be news as I spend between 5 and 10 weeks a year there but I had actually been planning to *not* go over this year and have my parents come visit me instead. But my dad got sick (another reason I have been silent online is being stressed over him being in the hospital, etc.) and can’t do a long haul flight for a while and now my health problems are just getting to be more than t can handle. We’re going to have to look into getting me a carer but to do that I need to get disability benefits and that’s going to take several months so the temporary answer is that I will be going to the US to stay with my mom for two months to give t a break, then she will come over here for a few weeks to get some stuff organized so that we’re in a better position for the future.

SO: I’m going to be going to North Carolina from late May (ish) to the end of July (ish), with stops in Pittsburgh (and maybe Philly) and Tampa to see my dad (and maybe Disneyworld, that would rock!). I’m going to work on my knitting, practice spinning and maybe do some re-enacting. Also probably doing some scrapbooking and maybe a bit of quilting (Mom’s a big time quilt freak). And buying craft supplies. Oh yes, the best part! 🙂

All that comes after our trip to Paris next week though 🙂

I have more to talk about but I must rest my hands, my spinning class is tomorrow so I can’t afford to be crampy! 🙂 I’ll try to post again soon, really!