Goodness me!

I actually did some stitching tonight! I have finished knitting the three sweaters for my grandson , have sewn up two of them, and only have one seam to do on the other which I will do in the morning. To celebrate I dug out and old WIP that has been on the go for three or four years now - Glendon Place's Murky Manor. It's the only piece I could get all the bits together for, as I don't have the mobility to really rummage through my stash and start the Christmas design I really want to start. But it feels so good to be stitching something I like - again!

Best laid plans and all that...

Well, I came back from Turkey two days late and complete with broken ankle with new metalwork in it, plus a thrombosis in my leg. I won't go into details as it gets tedious - suffice to say I ended up in a Turkish hospital on day 5 of the holiday, and had a difficult journey home.
This means all my plans ae gone to pot as I can't put any weight on the ankle for another 5 weeks and can't drive. I'm completely dependent on my daughters to take me anywhere, and I'm supposed to be using crutches, but as my other ankle was also badly sprained, I have poor balance (I think linked to my deafness) plus my excessive weight, I find the crutches almost impossible to use. We have borrowed a wheelchair, but that doesn't help me get up and down stairs (a major problem) and I don't have the strength to propell it very far either.
Oh well, life just has to go into abeyance for five weeks.

I will be getting back to work asap though, as the office is good for wheelchair access, and as I am now under threat of either redundancy or demotion it's not a good time to be away!

Is it really Autumn?

I can't believe how long it is since I last blogged or, indeed, did very much at all! All the energy and general 'get up and go' I had in the early part of the year seems to have disappeared and I have been in a period of lethargy and ennui. I've done no sewing, although I have done quite a bit of knitting, exercise, dieting and anything else has really just disappeared. So I need to get arse into gear. The early stirrings of Christmas anticipation have stimulated a yearning to stitch again, although only Christmas stuff of course, but I have some sweaters to knit for Tom before I can get going on that. It would help if I didn't spend hours playing games on Facebook!
Anyway, I am off for a week to Turkey next Saturday - not my choice of holiday destination, but Mum wants to go and is happy to pay for me to acompany her, so I have stocked up with books for my Kindle and I anticipate some lazy hours reading and, hopefully, knitting. I'm hoping the weather will be pleasantly warm without being too hot, and it's Sod's Law isn't it, that as I go away the UK is going to move into an Indian Summer, with what looks likely to be the best sustained period of decent weather this year! When  I get back, the diet must start again in earnest - no more 'plans' etc - just straightforward calorie counting. I have signed up for a gym membership and have started my bicycle lessons again, and fully intend to cycle to work at least once a week. I intend to be very, very good indeed until Christmas.
And Christmas prep will start when I get back - the puddings and cake must be made, and I can start planning the menus and what treats I will cook for the Christmas period. I plan to make more of the chutney I made last year, and cook many of the lovely Christmas food from Delia's book - my reliable Christmas bible.
I move back to normal hours at work as well, from October, so hopefully will be doing more cooking and baking now I won't get home quite so late.
But speaking of work, my employer announced on Thursday that they want to lose 40 people from the business. They have asked for voluntary redundancies, but if they don't get enough applications there will be compulsory redundancies. It's all happening very quickly; they want the new business structure in place by 3 January 2012. They want most of the losses to come from my grade, so I am very vulnerable now. I panicked at first, because if the voluntary redundancy package paid more money than the compulsory, then I had to decide whether to take VR or gamble on not being made compulsorily redundant. However, the terms of the two packages are almost the same for me as I have only been there for 13 years, so I have decided to sit tight. I'm therefore not stressing about it - I don't have to make any decisions, so all I can do is wait it out. It will be a financial disaster for us if I lose my job as, because of my deafness and age, I will find it very hard to get another one, but I daresay we will get through it somehow.
So - lots to do and think about!
Yesterday we scattered Dad's ashes. They were cast into his favourite fishing spot with some flowers, and his fishing club put up a brass plaque commemorating him, as he was very well regarded in the angling community throughout the UK - a celebrity in his field, almost! It was a lovely afternoon, warm and sunny, and  we all found it very moving - I certainly became far more emotional than I expected! SO that has almost marked the end of this process - there is only the tree planting occasion in the cramatorium to come and then it will all be over. I'm hoping Mum will then be able to move on a little bit.
I really do want Mum to move - somewhere near some shops and nearer to me, and a house with a smaller garden that she can manage. She seems reluctant to move; I can understand it, but I do think she needs to look at the practicalities a bit more. Hopefully, we can discuss while we are away.

Anyway - thats enough for now. I will make more of an effort to post now that I will have more time!

New starts

I recently sold quite a bit of my cross stitch stash and also some ex study books using Amazon, and with the funds I gained, I bought this:



I've been meaning to try and do some quilting for ages now, plus other sewing too, but my machine was elderly and very basic and I thought a more modern machine might provide a helping hand and help me feel more comfident.
I've started a simple quilting kit that a couple of friends bought for me on my birthday a while back, and while I'm not really doing a brilliant job, I am getting a bit of a feel for the machine and how things go together. Here is the evidence...


I can't truthfully say I'm enjoying it - I'm finding it too nerve-racking for that, but the difficulties I am encountering are not exactly what I expected. I'm finding it fairly easy to do a 1/4" seam, which I expected to find hard, but what is really discombobulating is that when I stitch two pieces of fabric together on the machine, the top piece stretches a little and ends up a bit longer than the piece underneath. This happened on my old machine and I assumed it was a fault, but as it's still happening it must be user error! Not sure what I can do about that. The other problem I'm finding is that the printed pictures on the fabric are not square and so the final blocks are ending up squiffy and slightly different sizes. Also, where the shop cut the fabric, there isn't enough on one edge to give the correct clearance for the seaming. However, I am telling myself that it is all a learning experience and that the finished article wil look fun even if it's far from perfect. Thats what my friends keep telling me!
The irony is that my Mum was a trained upholsterer and made curtains and soft furnishings for a living all her life, and so is expert on a machine, but for reasons of pride, I don't want to ask her for help. And whe wouldn't 'get' modern day quilting and patchwork - she would find it obscene that people spend money on custom fabric and don't just use scraps from home. She has done some pretty cool stuff though - in the fifties she worked on the famous curtains at the London Palladium, and the starry back drops they used for the 'Sunday Night at' shows, and she has made curtains and other soft furnishings for a couple of minor celebrities, some of which were featured in a design and interiors magazine.
Anyway - with things being as they are, I have slipped on the TUSAL, but here is one I took just before I moved in with Mum and Dad for what were Dad's last few days.

I haven't done any stitching since then until this last week, so there wouldn't have been anything to see for April and May, but I shall definitely put one up next new moon!

Contd

I said it was another story, but briefly I'll explain that although I consider my marriage over, I intend that both of us will continue to live together at least for a while. The impact on the family will be too great otherwise. My son and his fiancee live with us and do not earn enough to get a place of their own, and my younger daughter will remain living with us for another 2 or 3 years yet until she and her partner earn enough to get a place of their own. The house is very crowded - a three bed semi with 5 adults living in it is not ideal, especially as we each have a car and trying to fit 5 cars in our small cul de sac is not easy (6 cars when Debbies partner stays). I fear we are not popular with the neighbours! Also, I can't bear the thought of the family having to divide their time between me and Ken and my ex-husband too, it would put such a strain on everyone, and I know I would get resentful about their visits to Ken. Also, Christmas would be ruined for everyone, as my home is at the centre of everyone's arrangements, and I like it like that. So my intention is for me and Ken to live like house mates, which truthfully we have been doing for some years. There is no (mental) intimacy or closeness between us and hasn't been for a very long time; I have tried several times to talk about our relationship and try to resolve the tensions and resentments between us, but Ken just won't open up. He is content with our 'relationship' to continue as it is and he thinks there isn't a problem; I'm not, but as I can't or won't leave, I just have to stop thinking of us as a married couple. It seems to be the only answer. There is an atmosphere between us all the time, which saddens me, especially as it makes things uncomfortable for the kids, but I don't see what I can do about it. I have tried to make myself less angry and resentful over Ken and the way he acts, but I just can't seem to get over it. I'm just fed up with feeling hurt by the way he speaks to me and the lack of affection, I am fed up with getting angry about his laziness, I'm fed up with his racisim and bigotry and general intoleracne of the rest of the world.
It's come to a head now I think because I have come of the anti-depressants and am no longer living with my emotions smothered in a fog of sedation. I just can't let stuff go over my head any more.
I have got to do something about myself though. Over the last few years I seem to have got myself tied up in knots over various principles and views which are causing me and others problems. An example is my attempt to be vegetarian and even vegan which presents problems for catering for the rest of the family and for family celebrations and get togethers. I do get worried and guilty about the way animals are treated in farming and this has been the driver for my attempts to be vegetarian. Dairy farming is even worse, hence my desire to go Vegan but that really is very, very difficult indeed. Then there is the green issue - you need ten times as much land to rear animals than you would to provide the same amount of nutrition for vegetarians. Yet I know that me being a veggie/vegan will make not a blind bit of difference to what goes on; the vast majority of the world care not one jot. And I have no real objections to eating meat, milk and eggs if the animals have a humane life. So maybe I could just buy organic meat and dairy produce - I'm assured that if the products are organic the animals have a better life than those that are not. And yet, I find it hard to let go of the principle, even though Ken ridicules me and despises vegetarians and keeps talking about the 'shit' that I eat. It would be easier for everyone and for me if I just gave it up, but what is the right thing to do - to persevere for a principle, or to accept the realities of the situation and try and let go? I'm making life so hard for myself. I used to be very tolerant, but now I get angry about religion and I get angry about the monarchy. I've got myself uptight about trying to read 'literary' literature which I mostly enjoy but sometimes yearn for the easy read, but won't allow myself to give in to it. I do think if I could just let go of all these things it would get rid of a lot of tension between me and Ken; I mentioned his bigotry - I used to hate his racism, but it's only since having my mind opened by more varied reading and the OU course that his other opinions and views now really grate on me and make me think badly of him.
So in summary, I know it's me that has changed, and I'm really not sure if I can go backwards to how I used to be, or even if I should. Whats the real me? The person who up to 5 years ago was laid back and tolerant and didn't think too hard about issues, or the person I am now? Do I even like me as I am now?

Going back on a promise

I said ages ago I wasn't going to write about personal stuff here, but I am going to renege on this. I have a lot to get off my chest and things to resolve in my head so I might write some stuff down in the hope it helps.
Lots has happened in the last few months, I have changed a lot, I haven't been able to post crafty stuff for various reasons, and things have been a mess. I have even let the TUSAL slip!!

To summarise, the last four months of last year were hellish, far worse than anyone realised, I think. The tooth abscess, extraction and resultant septic socket was incredibly painful and made me feel really ill. I contracted Norovirus followed shortly by a flu type thing and a nasty chest infection and had odd symptoms that led to my me being regularly feverish and unwell and having tests, scans and X-rays to check for possible cancer (apparently).

Now it is all over, I have worked out what was going on. Firstly, I was coming off the Seroxat (antidepressant I'd been taking for 8 years) which caused brain zaps and I'm sure, the intermittent fevers.
Secondly, I think I had an intense menopause; I didn't get hot flushes, but I think all the vulnerability to illness was due to that. The reason I think this is because since last October I have not had one single migraine. That is miraculous considering I have had them roughly every month since I was 12. Even though I was told years ago that they would probably disappear with the menopause, I never really thought it was linked to my cycle because they were not every 28 days. However, looking back, my cycle never was that regular; when I was getting periods ( I had a hysterectomy in '93) my cycle did vary between 26 days and 56 days.
Thats what I now think was happening to me last year.

Sadly, I lost some friends over this. At the time I went very quiet and disappeared a lot from the internet scene, and some OU friends I made took offence at that and basically were unable to forgive me for retreating. My longer standing and truer friends knew that I wasn't good and gave me space, but this particular group of people didn't and I have been hurt by that. I know it is probably unreasonable of me to feel this way, because being newer friends they didn't know me so well and understand that I do tend to disappear when life gets difficult, whereas my older and better friends do know and accept it. I did let these people know I was having a rough time, but they never once emailed me to ask what was going on' just made it clear that they felt I was being rude. I'm told they left messages on Facebook, but my FB wall tends to be over run with game posts and the like and at that time I never had the energy or inclination to really sort out my wall so I daresay I missed their posts. The reason I am so raw about this again right now is because I went back into Twitter for the first time in months yesterday and found a message from one of them saying that friendship had to be a two way street, and I replied and got an almost abusive message back.
Anyway, there seems to be no way back there despite my apologies, so I just have to regret the loss of what could have been good friends.

At Christmas, my dad was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given just weeks to live. My spare time from then to his death on 13 March was committed entirely to him and Mum; apart from a couple of weeks in early February, I spent each evening either hospital visiting or at their house, and spent a lot of my time ferrying then around to hospital appointments and taking Mum shopping and all the other minutiae. Apart from 3 weeks in total, we managed to keep Dad in his own home, and that's where he died. The last 48 hours was awful. I had no idea how dreadful lung cancer could be, and what a terrible way it is to die. Dad was cremated on 30th March, and I'm proud to say that I organised a good funeral for him. We had a Humanist Celebrant, and it was a celebration of his life and not an overly maudlin occasion, although we did get terribly upset at some moments, of course. We are all adjusting slowly, and my Mum has shown amazing strength through it all. I'm so proud of her.

I have just come out of hospital myself; I went in on 16th May and had a TVT to treat my stress incontinence, and also had an anterior and posterior pelvic floor repair, plus a cytoscopy and two biopsies. It went fairly well, although I had to have a catheter for an extra three days as my bladder went on strike, but all is well now and I am healing. I can't do any heavy lifting and get tired, but I was able to start driving again today which is wonderful after feeling stranded for the last couple of weks! I am off work until 27th June.

Now some good stuff. Because of Dad's diagnosis, although I was only half way through the 6 months Seroxat withdrawal programme, I did the second half cold turkey over two weeks, because I knew I would need to help Mum and Dad a lot and couldn't afford to feel dopey. It was tough, but oh, it has made such a huge difference to my life!! I am no longer fighting severe drowsiness all the time, and fighting to stay awake at work; I no longer need to sleep 12 hours out of every 24 to feel half human. I can manage on 6 or 7 hours sleep most of the time, am awake at a reasonable time in the mornings, and feel like me again. I'm no longer living in a haze.
There has been one downside; it has also made me realise that to all intents and purposes my marriage is over. Thats a story for another post, I think!!

My cousin sent this to me.

TUSAL

Sorry I'm late. I've been helping to look after my dad who finally died last Sunday. I haven't touched my stitching since the last post, but I will get an update pic up asap.

TUSAL Feb

Here's my TUSAL pic for February. I'm quite surprised by how much more there is in the container, although I am stitching at every moment possible. I feel as if I'm wasting more thread, so eager am I to get something in the jar, but what I do put in is pretty much unusable either as it is an unworkable length or getting fluffy. I'm working on an opalescent fabric and it is much harsher on threads than a plain one. I'm also using the loop method to start where possible as it reduces the bulk at the back of the work, but it's a pretty wasteful method because of not being able to cut an individual length of thread each time.
But my jar is filling up!

Oh dear!

I am being sorely tempted to splurge on some stash. I know I shouldn't but it is all calling so loudly!!
Firstly there is WinterWatergarden Mandala by Chatelaine....































Then I spotted these in 1-2-3 Stitch's newsletter

TUSAL

I've finally got my act together and found a container for the TUSAL. Very little in it so far, I know, but I am miserly with thread and also there has been devastating family news which has made me late starting the TUSAL as well as limiting my stitching time. However, I will try and keep up!!
I can't post pics of my WiPS as I have entered a competition at a stitching forum called A Crafty Natter and entries have to be totally secret!! However, I can tell you that I have already been distracted from my current WiP and shall shortly be starting a new design that is related to the family situtation.
In the vase so far are quite a few sparklies!!

New year goals

Most people with stitching blogs are posting about their achievements last year and their goals for next year. I expected to be full of excitement at the prospect of joining in ths year, but life events have taken a turn that is currently overshadowing any plans for stitching in 2011. I do have some targets though. I have started working on a small Joan Elliot design that is sparkly and cheery. I did intend to work on it in the week before Christmas but in the event it wasn't started until a couple of days ago. I have two days left before I go back to work and I intend to spend as much time stithing on it as possible during these days. I'll carry it on until it is finished, and then I shall go back to the baby orangutan and work on that until it is done (I am guessing March). I then have to get a stocking stitched and made for Tom by next Christmas. It's a Dimensions design, and therefore fabulous, but I know it will be tedious to stitch because of their charts and the mixture of half cross stitch and full cross stitch. ( I hate half crosses!).
I also fully intend to keep up with the TUL, although I still haven't found a suitable container. In fact, I'll go and look one out now...