Friday, April 26, 2013

still healing

Well, the stitches came out, but only a fifth of the incision knit together, so now there's a great big gaping hole in my arm.

Two weeks or more before that's healed, and god knows about the pain. The nerve disease I had, RSD, is sneaky. The more you rest the affected limbs the worse the pain and inflexibility gets. So there's more pain all around, due to resting the arm. Stitching, cooking, and cleaning are my at-home physical therapy, but with tangible and helpful side effects like food, a feeling of productivity, and a clean environment.

I can't express how frustrated and depressed I am. Hope I'll be back to normal sooner than I expect.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

endless boredom

I went in for what I thought was a tiny mole removal. One to two stitches they said. 

Now I have six stitches over an incision a bit over an inch long and I can barely use my right arm. Also the student doctor, right before she started the stitching, said "I'm so nervous!"  UGH.

No idea when I'll be stitching again. Anything like this tends to react with my nerve pain disease like crazy, and I heal slowly. The pain when I type more than a couple sentences is ungodly, so it seems like a poor lookout for stitching.

Hoping I'll be good for mouse-work soon and can work on some pattern designs at least. The boredom is making me ridiculously crazy but the extreme stabbing pain (even three days after the incident) makes it rough to concentrate. 

I will spare you the disgusting picture of my stitches which I've subjected everyone else to.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Blossoms again

I added just a bit to this. I think it looked odd with just the little bit of black. I'm pretty happy with it, though I'll probably look for a smaller hoop. There's a whole series of these similarly sized circular designs, and maybe I'll eventually do the lot. Or not. We'll see.

Now I've started on another blackwork quilt piece, with a different block design.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Blossoms

Look at me, stitching things I didn't design/create the pattern for... Crazay. This is from the book Classic Orientals for Needlepoint and Cross-Stitch by Mary Duckworth. It makes you wonder if she had to pay for each word in the title and thus couldn't at least stretch to Classic Oriental Designs. Oh the 80s.

I actually made myself do French knots this time, instead of my usual Chinese knots cheat. The pattern called for the black to be done in the darkest pink of the pattern, but it didn't look great in the picture. I'm thinking about outlining the outer circle in black as well.

I've also got this Creative Needle Imari collection, which has some gorgeous designs. I'm still kind of "Oh what to do next..." in terms of stitching. I have some non-craft projects I really need to work on though, including scanning a few thousand family photos.

My mom is finally all moved, so at least I'm not thinking about/attempting to help with that anymore. I had my nephew over here the other morning, which started out rather traumatically (a bathroom accident and then bread in my toaster oven catching on fire), but ended with Shirley Temple. Apparently Benjamin was tap dancing about for the rest of the day.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Easter!

Did you guys have a good Easter? We don't celebrate in the Christian sense, just the "all the stuff borrowed from the Pagans" sense. After my parents divorced my dad started taking us to the tiny Episcopal church (it was much like the Vicar of Dibley, even down to the fat, lady vicar). I didn't understand religion though. No one told me that people *believed* and I assumed it was just a traditional thing that had hung around (yet was treated like the study of ancient mythology).

In any case, it usually meant a new dress and an Easter hat, which I both enjoyed and disliked, somehow. I didn't wear dresses much, but I enjoyed, particularly if I could find a Shirley Temple element therein, and I loved the hats.

This year was a bit of a downer. I didn't get to dye eggs with the kids, and I was so tired on the day, from helping Madre tidy her new house for brunch. I did make Benjamin and Evie each an Easter hat, with this yarn which I felt looked Easter egg-ish in color. 


As a child Easter was my favorite holiday, because it meant my birthday was no more than a month away. Now I think I like it more than my birthday, because of the focus, because of not having to make any decisions, and being able to opt out if I don't feel well.