Madsadgirl

Beads, Beads, And More Beads

2011-09-21T21:27:00.000+01:00

I think that I now know why I have studiously avoided knitting a lace shawl that had beads as an additional form of decoration. It is bad enough trying to get the beads in the right place on the shawl without having to worry about how to get them off again when you discover an error several rows back that requires careful unpicking stitch by stitch to get to the spot where the mistake occurred.

The beads are applied using a very fine crochet hook; a hook so fine that it is almost impossible to see the actual hook. My beads, although small, have a hole large enough to allow me to use a crochet hook 0.75mm in size. The problem with this is the fact that the yarn, which itself is very fine, is still more than twice the diameter of the hook. Splitting of the plies of the yarn are a frequent hazard but so far I have managed reasonably well and as I am approaching the end of the second section of the pattern I have not incurred any major damage to the yarn which would require repair of the yarn with splices.

The shawl is being knitted in a very pale blue, something akin to the colour of a cloudless winter sky, while the pattern which forms the background to the shawl reminds me of the patterns of frozen water that would be seen on bedroom windows in the days before central heating. The clear beads with their iridescent centre are reminiscent of the appearance of snow which appear to be like diamonds in the winter sun. It is, therefore, probably no surprise to know that I have named the shawl 'Ice and Snow'.

I haven't progressed quite as quickly as I had hoped, partly because I am coming out of a period of depression and have not been able to concentrate in quite the way that I need to so that significant progress could be made each day. However, I am starting to feel much better and it is hoped that progress will now speed up so that I can move onto another project. I have a scarf that needs a little work on part of its pattern charts so as to enable me to finish knitting it and it is fortunate that when the pattern has been corrected, completing the scarf will possibly be as little as eight hours. Then there is the writing up of the pattern for a hat that has already been knitted and the drafting of the pattern and knitting of a pair of mittens to go with the hat. After that there will still be four more projects to be knitted; two with patterns already created and two which require an awful lot of work before knitting can even begin.

The hope is still that the book will be published before Christmas, but as September seems to be vanishing with alarming speed I know that this could still mean a lot of long nights with the needles and in front of the computer screen in order to meet the deadline. If you had told me a year ago that I would be working towards the publication of a book that contained things that I had designed I would probably have laughed at you. It's amazing what can happen in the space of a year.

Waiting For The Curry To Arrive

2011-09-18T20:10:00.000+01:00

Sunday evenings have become curry night for me. Having found an Indian restaurant that delivers to my area, I now ring with my request just before I start my stint in the office and can then eat it while I am working.

Tonight I will be working at the computer while I eat. I have drafted the first part of another shawl pattern and managed to knit the part that has been drafted. Now I need to think about how the rest of the shawl will look so that I can draft the chart ready for further knitting. If I can work out what is needed tonight then the next few days should see me knitting at a frantic rate to see if I can finish another project for my book. That will see six items finished and another three in the pipeline.

The curry is ordered and I have moved my laptop to the office to work while I am waiting for it to arrive. There are a number of specialist computer programs for knitting designers and I have two of them. One would expect that such specialist applications would be very expensive, but they are, in fact, very reasonably priced. My more recent purchase has the accepted symbols for the specialist stitches to be used for Estonian patterns. The Estonian lace knitters use a number of stitches that are found nowhere else in the lace knitting world. Even Shetland knitted lace uses little more than a combination of increases and decreases to create the filmy fabric that the Shetland knitters are famous for.

My current work in progress uses an Estonian gathered stitch to form the background fabric for the shawl and the diamond-shaped insertions will have more traditional Shetland-type patterns within them with the somewhat unusual addition of some lovely little clear glass beads which have a slightly iridescent centre to them. Adding the beads does slow me down quite a bit but the finished effect is so beautiful that it is worth it.

So now you know what I will be doing this evening. Tucking into a delicious curry and trying to decide what pattern I am going to put where on my current project.

I Know That I've Said It Before...

2011-09-12T21:30:00.001+01:00

I have of late become a very bad blogger. I keep looking at the blog and thinking that I really ought to write a post now and then but somehow something (usually knitting) always gets in the way.

Since I last wrote anything here I have spent all of my spare time designing shawls, scarves, hats and cowls, and then having designed them and created the patterns I have been knitting the various items. So far I have completed one hat, two scarves, one cowl, and one huge shawl. I also have two more shawls on needles being worked on morning, noon and night, a scarf that is half completed but needs a little bit of work done on its pattern before it can be completed, and a cowl which is being knitted by a friend. I also have ideas for a pair of mittens to match the hat, a large circular shawl which I have started to design and that I know how I want it to look but it is creating the pattern for it that is a bit more of a problem. I also have another shawl based on the four seasons that I have thought about but have yet to start on the design.

On top of this I am still teaching knitting and crochet classes and I'm due to teach some classes later in the year where the subject will be lace knitting. As this is a new set of classes for me I have yet to formulate what will be taught. One is for beginners to the art so that will require some careful thought and probably the preparation of a few slides to illustrate what we are doing. The second class is for more advanced knitters who already have some experience in lace knitting and will focus on creating a scarf or shawl to their own design so much of the three hour class will be spent actually creating a design and then test knitting it.

One of the shawls that I am actually working on at the moment has been on and off the needles four times over the last two days but I think that I have got it exactly how I want it now. This means that I can sit down to do a few more rows before going to bed and possibly getting to the stage where I am going to do something that I have never done before. I'm going to be adding beads to the shawl as part of the overall pattern. I know how to do it, I just haven't ever done it for real.

It's going to be a very busy month or so trying to get everything drafted, knitted, edited and then prepared for publication so that we can have the book ready for sale at the end of October. With that in mind I will try to sneak a few minutes every now and then and try to keep this blog updated. I might even try and sneak a few photographs of the various items into my posts so that you can see what I have been up to while I have been silent.

Working Hard And Making Mistakes

2011-07-11T16:30:00.000+01:00

Last week I wrote a post saying that I was back and that I would start blogging again regularly. Nearly a week has gone by and I don't know where the days have gone. It seems that I am working harder now that I am unemployed (well, retired on medical grounds) than I was when I had a full-time job and was studying for a degree at the same time.

Perhaps it is the fact that what I am doing now does not come intuitively as things did during my working days. I found a job that I loved and that I was determined to do to the best of my ability. There were rewards along the way: promotion, opportunities to help develop better working practices, and a lot of travelling the world to see my counterparts in other organisations in Australia, Canada and the United States of America.

I have never seen myself as being creative in the artistic sense of the word. I can knit, I can crochet, I can do embroidery and dress making, but in each of these things I was always following someone else's pattern. Now that I am designing things for other people to knit I am having to be creative in a way that I have never been before. Trying to create original items, deciding which stitch patterns to put together and what the finished article should be are alien to me and therefore not very easy.

And yet, I am being able to create these designs. In a few week time I should have enough patterns for the book and all that will remain is the knitting of the samples that will be used to produce the photographs to illustrate each of these designs. As regular readers of this blog will know, I invariably have more than one project on the go at any given time. Things have not changed. At the moment I have two different scarves on the go at the moment and both of them require me to spend some time sorting out mistakes that I have made through not looking at the pattern properly. In one instance it was because I couldn't be bothered to print a copy of the chart that I have made a mistake which is going to involve me in unpicking approximately 10 rows. Fortunately the other mistake is only a row back and should be easy to correct if I can find a spare half hour this evening.

Much of today has been spent sat at the computer working on the chart for one of the larger items that I have designed. I still have a little work to do on it but I am hoping that I can get it finished this evening and updated on the computer ready for me to turn it into pdf format for my sample knitter. I also have to write the instructions about how the charts need to be laid out and what size needles it is to be knitted on. It is very fine yarn made of 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk and 10% cashmere (the alpaca and cashmere make it very soft when knitted and the silk gives it sheen and strength) and is a beautiful emerald green in colour. Choosing the needle size is important because I want use needles that are large enough to give the finished shawl plenty of drape, but not so large that it makes the finished knitting too floppy. I just might knit a few test swatches to see which needle size I like best.

Unfortunately, I am also having a bit of a battle with depression again as well as the arthritis in my hip. And to top it all off I have got a frozen shoulder again which is making it difficult to move my right arm without causing a great deal of pain and is even affecting me when I am knitting and I have never considered that to be a particularly strenuous occupation in the past. Perhaps my body is telling me that I am not getting any younger and that I have to accept that things aren't going to work so well as they did 20 or 30 years ago. The depression is making it difficult for me to always focus on the things that I need to do and is perhaps why I am making mistakes in my knitting. However, I am spotting the mistakes and I know how to rectify them so all is not lost and I am nowhere near as ill as I was this time last year.

Having written a quick update, I must go and get myself something to eat before settling down to work again. Who says that life gets easier when you are retired?

MSG Is Back!

2011-07-06T22:05:00.000+01:00

Okay, so it's been a while since I wrote anything here. The weekly statistics were still being sent to my personal email address so I knew that there were still people looking at the blog, which I must admit I found somewhat amazing, and it was this that has caused me to reconsider whether to start writing it again.

One of the reasons that I stopped posting was because I thought it would be difficult for me to find things to write about now that my life has changed from what it was. I knew that it would be difficult to write about the daily goings on in the house and I wasn't sure that there was that much more going on in my life that I could write about and that anyone would want to read about. On reflection I have decided that there is probably enough going on that does not require me to break confidentiality and therefore I am going to try blogging again on a fairly regular basis.

So what has been going on in Madsadgirl's life over the last four months? Quite a lot really.

The crochet classes have continued throughout Spring and into the Summer. And I have also been teaching a knitting class each week. My own knitting has been suffering over the last month or so because I am busy designing items for a book. Yes, MSG is writing a knitting book, and not the one that she had in mind. The book is going to be about knitting lace and lace knitting.

Yes, I know that they may sound that they are the same thing but there is a very subtle difference. Lace knitting involves working the increases, decreases and yarnovers that create the pattern on right-side rows only and the wrong side rows being either knitted or purled with no patterning. Knitted lace involves working these pattern-forming stitches on both right and wrong side rows. Consequently knitted lace is far more complicated and you are likely to make more mistakes if you don't follow the pattern closely and those mistakes can be more difficult to pick up until you are several rows further through the pattern and can lead to a bit of silent swearing before sitting down to unpick the rows to get back to where the mistake is.

It is hoped that the patterns for the book and the samples for the photographs will be ready in September so that the book can be printed and released in time for the Christmas market. A few book signing opportunities have already been pencilled into the calendar so I have to keep my nose to the grindstone as far as designing is concerned. I already have one sample being knitted by a friend and I am busy working on two more. One pattern is waiting for the sample knitter to come back from a trip home to the US so that it can be worked on and a couple more have been written and are waiting for sample knitters to become available.

So, that is a brief update on what I have been doing and hopefully I can find things to write at least a couple of times a week so that the blog can become active again.

Rearrange These Words Into A Well Know Phrase Or Saying

2011-03-11T21:42:00.004Z

Candle...Burning...At...Ends...The...Both.

Sometimes I try to do too much. I know that I shouldn't take on more than I can reasonably manage, but there is something inside me that makes me say 'yes' to things when perhaps I ought to say 'maybe'.

I didn't think that I had done too much over the last couple of weeks, but the fact that one of the staff members knocked at the door of my flat this morning and I didn't hear it because I was so deeply asleep indicates that maybe I have done more than I should have. They did manage to rouse me at 10.40 this morning and having sleepily answered the door and assured them that I was okay I went to find my glasses so that I could see what time it was. Panic ensued because I was due at a meeting at the council offices at 11am.

So after a quick wash, brushing my teeth and my hair, throwing on some clothes and picking up my notebook I headed to the kitchen to let the staff know that I was on my way to a meeting. Fortunately the council offices are only two minutes walk from where I am living so I knew that I could just make it in time.

"Is your meeting with R?" asked the member of staff. "Yes," I replied. "Oh, S took a message this morning to say that it is cancelled."

Having rushed to get ready for a meeting that wasn't going to happen, I decided that the only thing that I could do today to be kind to myself was to do nothing. And apart from a quick trip out to have a look at computers in the local PC World and the completion of a few rows of knitting, that is pretty much what I have done today. Nothing.

I now just have to remember to say 'no' a bit more often and then I won't end up burning the candle at both ends!

What An Honour

2011-03-02T20:48:00.003Z

As you know I am an inveterate knitter. Knitting has been one of the most important things in my life for the last few years and has been responsible for keeping me sane at times. I starting designing socks last year in response to the suggestion that I enter I Knit London's design competition. Since then I have designed a hat that was a Christmas present for one of my knitting friends and I have designed a shawl which is being test knitted at the moment.

At the beginning of the year I started to teach knitting classes at the shop in addition to the crochet classes that I have been doing since about October last year. All of this keeps me pretty busy and I don't think that I have the time to be depressed at the moment.

One of the problems with knitting (and crochet) as a hobby is that there is a shortage of good yarn shops about these days. Twenty or thirty years ago there would have been at least one shop on every high street around the country selling knitting wool, knitting needles and crochet hooks, and some would have major haberdashery areas too. Today, such shops are few and far between, which for a yarn junkie such as myself can be a problem. I found I Knit London last year and it has rejuvenated my knitting because it has such spectacular yarns on the shelves.

Yesterday, when I arrived at the shop in readiness for my knitting class, Gerard, I Knit's owner, asked me what I thought about the idea of the shop running a sock club. For those that don't know what a sock club is, the idea is that knitters subscribe and are sent a pattern for an exclusive sock design and a suitable amount of specially selected sock yarn to be able to knit a pair of socks every couple of months. Although I have never actually joined such a club, I think that they are a great idea especially as they can introduce knitters to yarns that they may never have used before.

So, why am I telling you all about this? Well, Gerard has asked me to design the first pair of socks to be presented to the sock club. Having spent so much of last summer knitting socks while trying to come up with my design for the competition, I have a basic sock pattern which lends itself to being used as the basis for practically any design that I can come up with. And that is what I have to do now; come up with a design that is different to anything that is out there already.

This really is a big honour for me and I am determined to come up with something really special for Gerard and his sock club.

No Pterodactyls Here

2011-02-22T10:20:00.001Z

It's Tuesday. Tuesday is psychotherapy day and in the past I have written about the butterflies in my stomach that seemed to be the size of pterodactyls as the awful hour approached. I used to try everything I could on a Friday morning to keep the anxiety under control but usually it was in vain.

When I was having psychotherapy with J last year I found that I rarely had any signs of anxiety until he called me into his office, at which point I would be overcome with such gut-wrenching anxiety that it was possible to see the physical effect that it was having on me. J always used to say that to see me like this made him feel as though he was torturing me.

But one thing I have noticed since I started group psychotherapy just a month ago is that there don't seem to be any particularly signs of anxiety at all. It still isn't the most comfortable experience in the world but there is no stomach churning, no feeling of butterflies, and definitely no pterodactyls.

Just Filling You In

2011-02-21T16:15:00.001Z

Yes, it's really true, I am back blogging again and I have been amazed to receive comments from some old regulars because I had thought that everybody would have forgotten me.

I'm afraid that I don't have a particularly good excuse for not blogging, just complete inertia on my part. The depression has been relatively stable over the last few months although there have been a couple of blips but nothing that I haven't been able to cope with.

When I last posted I was talking about all the Christmas presents that I was knitting. I'm pleased to say that all of them except one were ready and given in time for the big day and the one that was late was only a few days late. Since then, I have continued with my knitting but I have started to work on a new project which may take me a while but will, I hope, be of great benefit to new knitters (I'll tell you more in another post).

So, what have I been up to? My crochet classes on a Thursday evening fill up almost as soon as they are put on the website and four courses have now been completed. And I have now started teaching knitting on a Tuesday evening. I still can't believe that I am being paid to do something that I love so much and I am glad that I am able to impart some of my knowledge to a new generation of knitters and crocheters.

As regular readers will know when I was receiving psychotherapy last year my therapist referred me for group therapy. I joined a group at the end of January so my Tuesdays are now quite busy. It's a quick lunch then on to the bus to take me to the hospital where the group meets, and hour and a half of talking and then across the road to catch a bus to the shop where I can indulge in a couple of hours knitting before the knitting class starts.

The biggest change, however, is my move to new accommodation. I now live in a basement flat situated in a house which provides accommodation and support for 21 people with mental health problems. My accommodation comes free of charge because I provide night cover for the residents. On the evenings that I am teaching one of the day staff takes care of the evening routine until I return at about 10pm. The job is not exactly demanding requiring me to only 'work' for a couple of hours each evening, and once completed I am free to return to my accommodation and go to bed whenever I want.

It seems that for the first time in many years that I am having some good luck for a change and that I do seem to have a bit of a future.

I'm Back

2011-02-21T07:07:00.002Z

After an absence of a couple of months I am back. I've nagged myself several times over the last month or so about not blogging and this morning I have been jogged into logging in to the blog because of a new comment about my Christmas knitting.

A lot has happened since I last posted on here and I shall give details over the next few days, until then may I wish everyone a belated Happy New Year and an early Happy Easter!

A Little Bit Of Blocking

2010-12-07T20:31:00.003Z

I don't know what is wrong with me. I ought to be writing a post most days, there is certainly lots to write about, but I just don't seem to have the time. My excuse is going to be that I have been knitting like mad over the last few weeks in an effort to make all the things that I want to give as Christmas presents. I've even managed to find time to knit a few commissions, a hat and mittens for one of my knitting group friends who is too busy to knit herself because she has started to make beautiful knitting project bags and is inundated with orders, and a lace scarf for her daughter to give to her Mum (she couldn't knit herself because Mum would have seen it and know it was for her).

It is this scarf that caused me to dream up the title for this post. The blocking concerned is not writer's block, but the blocking that is required to get a piece of knitting to its proper size and shape. You should really block all knitting before you start joining seams and doing the finishing touches, but I have never done that, because I know that I knit to tension and I am sure that the various pieces of any garment that I make will fit together easily.

But when it comes to lace knitting then blocking is essential. This is generally because you knit lace on much larger needles than would be expected for the thickness of the yarn. The resultant knitting usually curls around itself and has no real shape whatsoever. In order to block something you have to first soak it for some time so that every fibre of the yarn gets wetted, then you drain the water out of the bowl and squeeze out the excess water from the item to be blocked, first by squeezing it with your hands making sure that it is a squeezing action and not a wringing one, and then wrapping it in an absorbent towel to get rid of as much water as possible.

The scarf that I had to block this morning was knitted in a lovely yarn made from kid mohair and silk. The yarn is a delight to knit with but as anyone who is familiar with mohair will know the yarn has lots of fibres protruding from the yarn; it's these that give mohair its tremendous warmth capability. I put the scarf into the bowl of tepid water and it just floated on the top of it. The water just wasn't getting into the fabric at all. It took a good five minutes of prodding and poking to make sure that every stitch of the scarf had absorbed the water. Half an hour later with the scarf damp and creased from the squeezing action it was time to get the blocking wires and pins out and lay the scarf out on a couple of towels, pull it to shape, then insert the wires and add a few pins to make sure that it was kept stretched to shape while it dried.

Eight hours later I took the pins and wires out and lifted the scarf from the towels. I held up a beautiful scarf with its lace pattern clearly visible and the points at each end of the scarf firmly shaped. It will be going to knitting group with me tomorrow so that I can hand it over to the person who commissioned me to make it.

I have another scarf on the floor now. This one is a far more elaborate lace design and is made from a yarn that is a mix of baby alpaca, cashmere and silk. This one absorbed the water far more readily but I was surprised to find that the water had changed colour when I came to drain it away. Then I remembered that the yarn is from a company that uses natural dyes and so a certain amount of colour should be expected to come out of the yarn when it is first wetted.

This scarf was a little easier to apply the wires to because of the eyelets that are a few stitches in from the edge on all four sides. I'm hoping that it will be dry in the morning and I can block another scarf before I head off for knitting group. I have five scarves and I shawl to block in total and the shawl will require me to move all the furniture around in my room so as to ensure that I have a large enough area on which to lay it out.

I think that in future I will block each item as soon as it is completed so as to not have this blocking frenzy that I am going to have to endure over the next week. But at least it is keeping me busy and I don't have time to think about how difficult the next few weeks are going to be for me.

Burning The Candle At Both Ends

2010-12-01T07:23:00.004Z

It has been three weeks since I last blogged. Every morning I wake up and say to myself that I must write something today but never do. It is perhaps in part because I don't think that anything very exciting has happened to me, but more realistically the reason is that I seem to have been burning the candle at both ends.

I have been frantically knitting during every spare moment to complete the things that are to be Christmas presents. The big pieces are now finished and awaiting blocking, and just a few small items still need to be done. Hopefully they can be completed fairly quickly, but I have been commissioned to knit a few other items so they have to take precedence. The consequence of all this is that I seem to be constantly searching for more hours in the day while getting more and more tired as each day passes. In fact, I have been so busy that I haven't had time to be depressed.

Thursday evenings are taken up with teaching my crochet class. Two groups of students have now completed the course and gone out into the world with new skills and an enthusiasm to continue improving. Another course has been squeezed in before Christmas and like the previous two is completely sold out. It just goes to show that there is a real desire by people to learn the old skills of knitting and crochet because the knitting courses are regularly full too.

I'm going to have a few weeks break from teaching after the New Year so that I can spend some time with the Thursday knitters, something that I miss out on when I am teaching, but a fourth course should begin about the middle of January. The break will also mean that I can do some knitting for myself for a change. I need some new woollies, so I shall be knitting myself a cardigan and a sweater to remedy this situation.

Last week I was asked to move from the building that I have been living in since July to one just around the corner from it. So the bags had to be packed (I couldn't believe how much yarn I had accumulated in my stash) and I moved into my new (temporary) accommodation. I now have a much larger room, my own bathroom, and fantastic kitchen facilities shared with the other residents in the house. I see little of my neighbours, who are all male, nor do I hear much of them when they are in.

Yesterday I decided that I would have a go at making a cake. I'm not a spectacular cook, but I can be quite innovative when I want to be and being someone who really doesn't like Christmas cake because I just don't like currants, sultanas and raisins, I have been mentally developing a cake recipe for some weeks now that would be a tasty replacement for the more traditional cake.
The end result was a quite dark coloured cake (that was the dark brown sugar rather than it being burned) which was filled with glacé cherries, chunks of dark chocolate, walnut pieces, cranberries (okay, so these were dried but I plumped them up again by putting them in saucepan with the juice of two oranges and one lemon and lemon zest and orange rind). I had a slice (or two) last night and while the cake is definitely not repulsive it still needs a little work on the recipe but I think I know what to do to improve it and I will be experimenting with the recipe again in a couple of weeks to hopefully produce something that is a bit closer to what I was trying to achieve. I think that I had better write down the recipe so that I know what I am tweaking as further test cakes are made.

So. having sat in bed with my laptop on my knees, I don't really have any excuses for not writing on a more regular basis again, and that is what I propose to do. I shall write a post before I get up in the morning and woe betide me if I make an excuse not to do so

Not Enough Hours In The Day

2010-11-09T18:20:00.000Z

I can't believe that it is nearly three weeks since I wrote a post for this blog. I seem to have been so busy that there are not enough hours in the day for me to do all the things that I both want and need to do.

My first crochet course has been completed and everybody enjoyed themselves including the solitary gentleman who had been booked onto the course by his wife an avid knitter. we certainly had a good time because as 8.30 arrived each week nobody could believe that we had been in the classroom for two hours; the time having flown so quickly. The best thing about as far as I was concerned was that I seem to have included the right amount of work in each class so when the second course, which is also fully booked, begins on Thursday evening I won't have any preparatory work to do; everything is ready for me to pack in my bag on a Thursday morning ready for when I set off to the shop in the afternoon. A third course has already been put up on the website and is starting to fill up so it seems that we have found a real gap in the market.

At the hostel where I am living my handwriting skills have been put to use writing the Christmas cards that will be given to each of the residents of the various hostels/bedsits that the company has in the area. I've also written all the Christmas cards for the professionals and suppliers and later this week I will be given the list of staff for whom Christmas cards are required. I haven't even thought ab0out writing my own Christmas cards but as I am going to send handmade cards I can't do anything about it until I have bought the bits to make the cards. That is a job for this weekend.

However, while the cards are not made and written, the presents are nearing completion. I have made lots of scarves, mittens, and some shawls so everybody is getting something handmade this Christmas. I have one scarf that will be finished tonight and one more to make. I should be able to get that started this evening and then work at it during knitting group tomorrow evening. It's a pattern that I have already completed twice and it is a lovely one to make with lots of beautiful lacework on it. I'm hoping that this scarf will be finished this weekend or the beginning of next week so that I can concentrate on knitting a couple of jumpers for myself; and with the way that it has got so cold over the last few days I am definitely going to need them.

This afternoon I went to visit the building site that is my new home. Some of the flats on the top floor are approaching completion and hopefully the rest will be completed in the next month. Once all the flats have had their kitchens and bathrooms completed and it is just a case of furniture to be moved in, I can go and visit again with a view to picking which flat I want. I'm going to have to sit down in a week or so and make a list of things that I want to buy to make whichever flat I choose into my home.

I have so many things going on in my life these days that I have had to buy myself a new Filofax to keep a check on everything. I have a diary that is filling up by the day and it doesn't seem to be letting up. I can honestly say that I have not been this busy since I had to give up work and I think that I am going to have to start thinking about what I am going to do in the New Year. Hopefully things will have calmed down a bit and I can think about getting back to studying with the Open University. I have to admit that I do miss the studying and it would be nice to get back into it again.

Tonight's The Night

2010-10-21T11:48:00.002+01:00

Tonight sees the start of my first crochet class. My bag is packed with two different lots of knitting (neither of them very taxing) that I will work on this afternoon until it is time for the class to begin, and my batch of samples so that the lovely ladies (I am assuming that they are all ladies although more gentlemen are starting to knit and crochet) can see what the same series of rows produce when using the different stitches.

I didn't sleep very well last night so after having a cup of tea and some toast for breakfast, I climbed back into bed and slept for another couple of hours. Then it was time for a lovely long shower and I'm now sitting waiting for lunch to be served. One thing is certain about this hostel; the staff are determined that no-one will go hungry. There is always a cooked breakfast of some sort for those who want it (I usually stick to a couple of slices of toast and the staff all know of my love of a toasted crust so that is what I get most mornings), a hot lunch (today's is chicken curry and rice), a hot evening meal (beef hotpot tonight, although I will miss that but if I wanted they would put some aside for me to heat up when I get back from knitting group) and sandwiches at 8pm and 10pm.

I'll let you know how things go with the class.

News Flash!

2010-10-19T20:30:00.002+01:00

My crochet class which begins on Thursday is full. I must sit down and finish the samples tonight (there's just one left to do for the first class) and if I get the chance tomorrow I will do a few differnt shapes to show what can be achieved.

Now I can start to get really nervous.

Housing News

2010-10-19T19:36:00.003+01:00

Last week I had a proposition made to me. It was something that I couldn't talk to anyone else about because it needed to be approved by "Head Office" before it could become general knowledge. I was asked to think about the proposition, and today I was asked if I had come to a decision. I have, and because "Head Office" have approved it, I can tell you all about it.

As you know I have been living in a hostel for the last few months. I had hoped to have moved into rented accommodation but because I was so depressed the mental health team that look after me felt that it would not be a good idea to contemplate such a move until my mood had stabilized and I was able to cope with things a bit better. The lovely lady who has management responsibility for a number of properties that the company has in this part of London (each facility has its own manager, but she oversees all of them) asked me to consider moving into a property that is being refurbished to provide 27 bedsits for people with mental health problems and acting as caretaker of the facility. There would be professional help Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm and the facilities for me to summon help if needed after these hours.

And what do I get out of this? Free accommodation. Yes, that's right; I get a little flat of my own and don't have to pay for it. Could things actually be going right for a change?

New Horizons

2010-10-18T15:36:00.003+01:00

I've had a busy weekend turning hanks of wool into usable balls for knitting. I am going to knit a garment for a change and it was necessary to spend a few hours getting the lovely yarn ready for me to begin knitting. It was all in preparation for knitting a jumper for myself and requires eight different colours to produce a very striking effect. I can't wait to get started on it now but I have a few Christmas presents to finish before I move on to this project.

I have also spend quite a few hours making samples of crochet stitches ready for the course that I am going to start teaching on Thursday. I still have a few samples to create and then I must take some photographs of them so as to create a couple of handouts for the students.

Nervousness is starting to creep in because this is a new string to my bow. I learnt to crochet when I was in my teens and have created some really stunning work over the years, but I have never really taught a class to crochet before. I have my lesson plans drawn up guiding me about what we hope to achieve during each of the three lessons but I know that there is a big difference between what you think can be achieved in a couple of hours and what happens in reality.

My prize money has all been spent now on things for myself. There were two hanks of silk in magical colours which will be turned into scarves and shawls; a book of Andean inspired knits which I would probably never have bought ordinarily, but the prize money made it possible and there are a couple of things in the book that I hope to be knitting in the not to distant future; a set of blocking wires to aid me in blocking out the shawls and scarves that I make (much easier to use a few wires than hundreds of pins); a beautiful folder which allows me, with the aid of some magnets, to more easily follow the complicated charts which are needed for knitting lace; and a beautiful set of wooden needles in a lovely fabric case that matches the folder.

With all this going in my life, depression seems to have finally taken a back seat again. Life is still not easy, but I no longer go to sleep at night dreading tomorrow and what it will bring. I am starting to make plans again and actually carrying some of them out, but there is still some way to go before I can say that this period of depression is behind me. I have set myself a few goals for this week, including applying for a new passport, and I am definitely thinking about going to Canada some time over the winter or perhaps a trip to South Africa to visit my aunt who is also my Godmother. Perhaps the sun of South Africa would be more welcoming than the snow of Canada, but we will have to wait and see how things go over the next month.

Connected

2010-10-15T16:17:00.002+01:00

After several months of sporadic Internet access requiring me to make my way to the library with my laptop to make use of the library's free wi-fi access, I have this afternoon bought myself a dongle and can blog whenever I want to again. This means that I shall be able to pass news on as soon as it happens and keep you up to date with my goings on.

When I had to leave the house and move into respite care, I had to start paying for this accommodation. Unfortunately, the sum that I have to pay on a weekly basis actually meant that I had little or no money to spend on things for myself. That is now no longer a problem as I decided to dip into some of the money that I invested after my husband died and now have a little spare cash, hence the purchase of the dongle and my return to the Internet.

I have lots to write about, some of which will appear under the "Tackling the Mental Health Minefield" banner as it relates to that area. This time it will not be about my being in hospital but about some of the other areas that those with mental health problems will find themselves interacting with.

This has been one of my shorter posts, but it is now time for me to head off to the dining room for my evening meal. Something like normal blogging will be back from tomorrow. You have no idea how happy saying that has made me.

Some Good News At Last!

2010-10-09T09:58:00.005+01:00

I hate not having instant Internet access because it means that sometimes it can take a great deal of willpower to load my laptop into its bag and get on a bus to make a trip to the library to use the free wi-fi access there. My blog has been a great comfort to me over the last couple of years and has proved to be a beneficial means of me pouring out my innermost thoughts instead of keeping them bottled up inside and I hate not being able to just sit down at the computer and write a post when the urge comes upon me.

Mental illness can make one selfish; it is so easy to think that you are the only person in the world feeling as you do, but sitting down and writing about those feelings and the darkness within, allows you to meet other sufferers in cyberspace and together you can work through the difficult times. I have always been heartened by the comments that I receive and have only ever rejected one comment (apart from those that the writer has asked me not to publish) because I truly believe in free speech and allowing other people to have their say. But if you were to look through all the comments that I have received over the last two years you would probably find that they have been nothing but supportive and for that I can never fully express my gratitude to those who bother to read the blog and to comment on it.

When I had to move out of my home I was already in a very depressed state. Life was crowding in on me and suicidal thoughts were invading my brain increasingly. Having a long period of respite care has made a difference to how I have been able to recover. My consultant psychiatrist decided to make a change to some of my medication and having the support of the staff at my respite accommodation when I was going through the difficult period of weaning myself from one drug and building up to a therapeutic dose of the new one meant that I had support on the bad days.

Over the last couple of weeks I have noticed that I am beginning to feel significantly better than I did a couple of months ago. I have lots of knitting projects on the go and have already shown you some of the lovely items that I have made recently. On Wednesday I received the news that I was runner-up in the 'accessories' section of the design competition which brought with it a voucher for £100 of goods from I Knit. It suddenly made worthwhile all the time that I had spent on knitting sample socks and creating and then adjusting the charts until I got exactly what I wanted. My book of knitting patterns now seems a reality because as well as the six sock patterns that I have already created, I have several ideas for lace scarves and I am looking forward to trying to create the charts for them in the new year.

I have already spent almost three-quarters of my prize money on some beautiful yarn, a book, and a few other items that I probably wouldn't have bought for myself if I hadn't had this windfall. The yarn is the most beautiful silk laceweight yarn in two exciting colourways. this yarn is definitely going to be used for items for myself so I can now start looking for patterns to knit with them or try creating something for myself.

Wednesday also brought another bit of good news. I Knit already offers regular knitting courses for beginners and over recent weeks there have been increasing requests for a beginners' crochet course and I have been asked to be the tutor for it. With a provisional start date for the course pencilled in for 21st October, I am going to have to devote some time this weekend in working some samples for the course so that I can show the students the different stitches and what can be achieved with them.

With a bit of luck I may soon be blogging on a more regular basis and will be keep you up to date with my adventures. thank you for staying with me during this difficult period and I promise you lots of news and photographs of my works of art in the weeks and months to come.

Busy Fingers

2010-10-01T09:45:00.001+01:00

The last few months have been pretty horrific in one way or another, but even during my darkest periods I have tried to keep myself busy. In my last post I included a photograph of the socks that I was entering in the design competition and I appreciate all the lovely comments that you sent about them. The competition was supposed to have been judged at the knitting exhibition weekend, but due to various problems the judging didn't take place. However, I am assured that the competition entries will be judged in the next few days and hopefully I will soon find out whether I have won a prize or not.

I have mentioned before that I learnt how to do Sudoku puzzles while I was in hospital last year and I have spent some of my time working my way through two books of these puzzles (one with 350 individual puzzles and the other 500). I still have problems completing them all because of the way that my brain seems to turn to mush when I am faced with numbers but I must be getting better at working them out because I can now complete almost all the easy ones at the first attempt, the medium ones are completed more often than not, and I have even managed to complete the occasional hard puzzles, something that would have been impossible this time last year.

But doing these puzzles requires a fair level of concentration, and as other sufferers will know, when you really severely depressed, a long period of concentration is something very difficult to manage. However, knitting tends to take care of this for me. I have several projects on the go at any one time, so there might be a couple of lace projects (one large, one small, and requiring differing levels of concentration), and a couple of other small projects such as socks or hats (things that require little concentration above keeping a check on the number of rows that have been completed).

This being the case, I have succeeded in completing a number of projects over the last couple of months and I thought that you might like to see some of the things that I have made.

This shawl was completed over a weekend; I think that it was the novelty of knitting with not only much thicker yarn and needles than I have been using in recent months but also it was such an easy pattern to follow. The yarn itself is Manos del Uruguay's Silk Blend (a blend of merino wool and silk) and not only are the colourways in this yarn fabulous, it is also a very economical yarn to knit with, especially when one considers that it is produced by small cooperatives in

Uruguay.

This photograph shows the three parts that the shawl is knitted in. At the top is the triangle that forms the basis of the shawl, then a border is worked on two sides of the triangle and the shawl is finished with a lace edging which is knitted sideways and joined to the shawl on alternate rows. It sounds very complicated and when I first started tackling lace knitting I didn't think that I would be able to follow the instructions even though I had years of knitting experience but now I think nothing of it and just get the needles out and get on with it.

This shawl has been knitted in 100% silk and is as light as a feather. Well perhaps not quite as light as a feather, but it seems to weigh nothing at all having taken approximately 900 metres of yarn to complete and it weighs in just a few grams short of 100 grams. This is the first triangular shawl that I have knitted that has not been started from either the top or the bottom. Instead it is worked from one side, increasing as you work towards the middle and then the stitch count decreasing back to nothing as you get to the other side. The resultant shawl has very long points at the sides which make it a very delicate shawl to throw across one's shoulders.

I have also knitted a lace scarf in this same yarn, but haven't as yet taken a photograph of it.

I think that I mentioned that I received some special yarn as a birthday present from a couple of my friends at the knitting group. I knew as soon as I saw it what I would make with it and the photograph below shows two of the three items that will form part of my winter wardrobe.

A matching scarf is on the needles at the moment and will probably be completed when I am trying to knit and watch television at the same time. The yarn is from one of my favourite American dyers, Cheryl Potter at Cherry Tree Hill, and is really a sock yarn, but it is far too beautiful to use for socks that will be hidden inside shoes so using it for winter warmers seemed the perfect solution.

My needles are full of work as usual although even for me I have rather a lot of projects on the go. I am almost halfway to completing a poncho which is being created by adapting a shawl pattern (I'm nothing if not adventurous when it comes to what I try), I have started a waistcoat using a new knitting technique (it's knitted in one piece and uses special casting off techniques to ensure that there is no sewing up at the end of the knitting process and as you know I really hate sewing things together after I have knitted them), then there is the scarf to match my hat and mittens, a lace scarf that it going to be a Christmas present for a friend, a pair of fingerless mittens which will also be a Christmas present, a really fantastic shawl in the most incredible chocolate brown silk, and a beautiful kingfisher blue stole which has required me to try two new techniques for the first time. On top of all that, I am really dying to have a go at starting a shawl which will probably take me best part of a year to complete and which is to be knitted in yarn that it is barely thicker than the cotton you use to sew a button on a shirt.

There is also a definite possibility that I may be doing some teaching of both knitting and crocheting in the coming months too. And I have been asked to become a 'service user' representative (how I hate that term) at various meetings between the local council and the companies that provide hostels and supported housing for people with mental health problems. Many of the users of these services are impaired mentally through the use of alcohol and/or drugs, and it seems that I am considered 'normal' and not 'routinely negative' about the services that are provided. I'm beginning to wonder how I am going to fit it all in.

Reporting In

2010-09-07T11:16:00.005+01:00

Okay, so it has been a long time since I blogged, but I am still in the land of the living (just). I have been weaned off one of my medications and had a new one to replace it so I started to feel really low while the transition was taking place. One unwanted side effect has been that I get very giddy when I stand up so I now have to make sure that I have something to hang on to when I stand. It doesn't happen all the time, and because I am aware of it possibly happening I tend to be really careful.

My socks were submitted with one day to spare, but as I thought that I might have to make a special journey up to the shop on deadline day because of the problems that I was encountering translating the pattern onto the computer, being able to drop them off on a knitting group day was great. My pattern told the story of how I came to create the design and had various examples of the variations that could be achieved by adapting the pattern as well as the actual competition pair.

I'm going to cheat a little and give you a look at the finished socks. The competition is going to be judged at the Iknit Weekender which takes place this coming Friday and Saturday, so keep your fingers crossed for me.The photograph was taken before I had pressed the socks so it's not perfect but if you click on the image it should enable you to see it in a larger format and hopefully you will get a better idea of how the finished product looked.

I have been doing a lot of knitting over the last couple of months, it being one of the few things that I can manage in my depressed state. Photographs have yet to be taken but once they are on my computer I will add them to the blog.

Have You Missed Me?

2010-08-17T11:19:00.003+01:00

I seem to be spending my life apologising for not blogging these days but when you don't have easy access to the blogosphere and you are feeling desperately depressed with a whole raft of birthdays and significant anniversaries looming I guess that it is excusable.

This will be a quick update because I have some really important work to do on the computer today. I have finally finished creating all my sample socks for the design competition and I now need to spend all my free time writing the pattern and the rationale behind my design. I have decided to enter just one design, but to show that it can be used in many different ways to create different effects.

The difficult part will not be writing the actual pattern; that is quite simple. However, transferring my charts from graph paper to the computer in the form of tables is going to be both time-consuming and fraught with the possibility of errors creeping in. I intend to spend this afternoon creating the charts and then type up the knitting pattern and the background to my creation.

I have knitted the pattern in a variety of yarns, on different size needles so as to achieve different sized socks while not having to change the number of stitches needed, variations in the positioning of the design, and showing the different effect gained by the design element being created in reverse stocking stitch on a stocking stitch background and a stocking stitch design on a reverse stocking stitch background.

I am hoping that the versatility of the pattern will gain me bonus points when it comes to the judging of the design competition entries. I know that at least one of the judges is a very well-known name in the knitting world so I am hoping they will appreciate the work that has gone into my entry. I have to deliver my entry when I attend the knitting group on Thursday, so I shall be working pretty hard today and tomorrow to get everything completed in time.

The End Of Psychotherapy

2010-07-27T14:00:00.003+01:00

This morning I had my last psychotherapy session with JR. I arrived early, as usual, but this gave me time to sit in the hospital's garden and contemplate what was going to happen with a cold drink and a cigarette. Considering how I usually feel when I have a psychotherapy session, today I was calm and composed. The ending of therapy had been a bad experience for me previously but I was sure that would not be the case this time.

Today's session was more like a chat between two old friends and it wasn't until about half way through the session that I had even a hint of anxiety, and even that passed quickly. I would be lying if I said that it was not an emotional experience, and it would also indicate that I had not been partaking of it seriously. We touched on the good sessions and the not so good ones. We talked about how I had spent most of my life turning my anger in on myself and how that had damaged me and how we had managed to take the first steps towards me being able to stop this destructive pattern of behaviour and hopefully towards me being less self-critical. We talked about my feelings of isolation and how I had made an effort to improve this by joining the knitting group.

We talked a little about the therapy that is to come. While it is impossible for me to continue receiving one-to-one therapy with the NHS at present, I know that I will soon be undergoing group psychotherapy. This will be something new for me and we talked about the difficulties that I am likely to encounter in a group situation. Now it is just a case of waiting for a start date and a meeting with the therapist in charge of the group.

The minutes passed by very quickly and it was soon time for me to leave. One of the things that mark the passage of my week is no longer a regular item in my calendar. For the eight months that I have been attending psychotherapy with JR, I have only missed one possible appointment and that was when I had day surgery two weeks ago. Difficult as I have sometimes found therapy, I have never thought that I would give it a miss. I have many problems that we have only had the time to scratch the surface of, but having made that initial scratch I am now much more aware of these problems and have a few strategies for helping me overcome them. I will probably never be a completely normal person, but then what is normal, and why would I want to be like that anyway?

Is It Blogger's Block Or Too Much Whirling About In My Mind?

2010-07-23T13:11:00.006+01:00

I've managed to make it to the library again so that I can write something for the blog, though having now sat down to do so I find myself struggling for something to say. This is a somewhat unusual situation for me to be in because while I find it very difficult to talk to people, I usually have very little problem writing about whatever springs to mind.

I have been feeling really under the weather for the last few days. I have been very tearful much of the time, found it difficult to settle to do anything for longer than five minutes, and been in excruciating pain from the surgery that I underwent last week. the pain has been so intense that there have been times when it has brought me out in a cold sweat and caused overwhelming bouts of nausea.

And sleep has been difficult to come by even though the medication that I take at night often leaves me drowsy throughout much of the following day. For the last two days I have been eating breakfast and then going back to bed to try to catch up a little on what I seem to be missing at night, but I don't want to do this too much because I am afraid that I will get back to the cycle of nocturnal living that I was going through a few months ago.

While all of this is happening my mind seems to be constantly churning over stuff, much of it things that I don't want to think about at the moment. I know that I can't put everything off for ever, but I need to deal with things in manageable portions so that I don't become so overloaded that I implode again.

So, it's a strange post from me, but hopefully having actually sat down to write it has helped in some small way. I shall be back again tomorrow when I will hopefully have something more meaningful to say.

Psychotherapy And The Wonderful World Of Bloggers

2010-07-20T13:50:00.000+01:00

Today I have been for my penultimate psychotherapy session with my current therapist. He is a lovely man and therapy with him has been good. We talked today about it being so near the end of our work together and he asked how I felt about that, especially in light of the disastrous termination of therapy that I experienced last year. There is no doubt that having a very experienced therapist makes a big difference, but as with all things people have to be trained and I am sure that in the future my previous therapist will be very much better at handling termination of therapy than he was with me.

I will miss my Tuesday sessions, not least because they have been responsible for a bit of structure and routine in my life for the last eight months. Today we talked about a wide range of subjects not all of them things that I would have considered as subjects for discussion during therapy. I said that I felt that while I still find it difficult to talk about my feelings when we are in a session, something that I don't think I will ever feel comfortable doing, one really positive thing to have come directly from this therapy was joining the knitting group.

It was as a result of one of our sessions that I made my first tentative steps into the world of the knitting group. My therapist encouraged me at a time when things were particularly difficult to take that first step and like blogging it has made a difference to my life. I haven't been for two weeks (the first week because of the trauma of becoming homeless and then last week because I really couldn't face it so soon after my surgery) but tomorrow I will be going and taking with me a finished item for all to see. I have just a few rows left to knit on the shawl/stole that I have been knitting for the last few weeks. I actually started it a day or two after my last visit to the knitting group and today I will finish the last of the 554 rows. It will still require blocking to show it off in all its glory but that is something for later.

I talked about going to the knitting group tomorrow and having this wonderful work of art to show to all. My therapist then asked why I had not talked more about my knitting in my sessions with him. His question was "Did I not think that he would be interested?" After thinking about this I suppose that I didn't think of it as being a subject for therapy, but following a complicated pattern and creating a work of art, as this shawl is, probably says quite a lot about me that I find impossible to express orally. One thing is certain, I will be taking it with me to next week's session to show him what I can do.

We also talked a little about my blogging. He has never asked for details of my blog and I have no idea whether I have given him enough information to be able to find it that easily, but one of his comments leads me to believe that he may have come across it at some time. He spoke of my ability to express myself in my blog in a way that I find very difficult, if not impossible, to do face to face. There is no doubt that blogging is a way of expressing my frustrations and pain and despair without having to burden someone with what I need to say. After all, you can carry on reading each post if it interests you but you don't need to continue to read if you find that what is being said is not interesting or thought provoking. I have always tried not to write post after post about how depressed that I am. There are only so many ways in which you can say it and I don't want to come across as someone who whines continually about how bad their life is. My life sucks; it's not how I thought it was going to turn out but it's a whole lot better than that of many other people out there.

This brings me nicely to what I wanted to say about bloggers. I know that it is something that I have said many times before, but it is worth saying again because I think that it is very important. There are some really nice people out there in the blogosphere and the supportive comments that I have received after my last few posts show how much we care for each other, even if we never actually meet. I may not be able to deal with comments as quickly as I would like owing to my limited Internet access at the moment, but logging in today as I have and finding six comments on my last post, all very supportive and kind, has reduced me to tears in the public library. As someone who hates showing emotion in public, I think you will understand just how much the sentiments expressed in these comments has moved me and saying thank you just doesn't seem to be enough, but it will have to do for the time being.

Once I am settled into some more permanent accommodation and have an Internet connection that I can access all the time, I will try to write most days again and to include photographs of whatever I am knitting so that you can keep up with how things are going. Once I have finished the shawl today, I need to head back to the socks so that I can get them all knitted and the patterns written ready for entry into the competition. I have five pairs to complete although socks grow a lot faster than the kind of lace knitting that I have been doing over the last few weeks, so while it may seem like a huge mountain of work, I think that I should be able to manage it without too much trouble.

Being Homeless

2010-07-17T15:30:00.004+01:00

Life has not been easy over the last couple of weeks but I have survived thanks to the support of some lovely people. I would like to be able to say that it was the staff from the CMHT but it wasn't. I have had contact with CMHT staff almost every day since I left the house, but it has rarely been the same person twice and it seems that we go over the same things every day.

When I was seeing the Home Treatment Team when I came out of hospital the first time, my biggest complaint was that they seemed to work to a formula. It was always the same questions, and you could almost see the cogs going round in their brain as they mentally ticked off the questions. How have you been sleeping? How is your appetite? How are you feeling? What is your mood like?

When I became homeless, a room was found for me in the respite home that I stayed in after my first hospital admission. Unfortunately, it was only for five nights, which meant that last Monday somewhere else had to be found. The staff in this respite home are absolutely wonderful. Nothing is too much for them and yet they are almost certainly on minimum wage and have no formal training for the job that they do. they ensure that we have a good home-cooked meal every evening and that there is always someone who you can talk to if you need it. The house has nine bedrooms (two of which are for long-stay residents) which means that it is not an easy place to get in to. Run for the benefit of the local mental health trust, a week's stay costs £55 which is never going to break the bank and means that it can be afforded by just about anyone.

My stay there coincided with the long run of hot weather which meant that I spent much of my time sitting in the garden under the umbrella. I did some knitting, some puzzles, and played some games on my Nintendo DSi (this has to be one of the best investments that I have ever made). The knitting progressed slowly, but progressed nonetheless. Even though I did not sit in direct sun at any time during my time there, I came away with well tanned arms which means that my hands and arms no longer look like porcelain.

Last Monday I had to move from the respite home so with my belongings packed in the boot of a taxi, I made a tearful farewell to the lovely lady who is the home's manager with exhortations that I must visit them regularly for a cup of tea and a chat.

The move of temporary accommodation has found me in a hostel most of the inhabitants of which are men with drink and/or drugs problems. While many of the inmates leave a lot to be desired in the way of cleanliness, once again the facility is lucky in its staff. The manager and deputy manager have looked after me very well ensuring that I had a room on the first floor so that I didn't have to climb multiple flights of stairs to get to my room (my arthritic hip is giving me quite a lot of problems at the moment).

I am the only person in the facility who is not on benefits of any kind which means that I have to pay for my board and lodging out of my pensions. The problem with this is that the sum paid weekly by the benefits people for each of the inmates that they support is actually higher than I receive as a pension (well, four pensions actually; two occupational pensions of my own and two occupational widow's pensions in respect of my husband, both of which would cease if I was to remarry or even formally cohabit with a new partner). The manager has negotiated with the head office of the company that runs this hostel and it has been agreed that I can pay half the normal rate, but at £190 a week, this is still considerably more that I paid at the respite home.

The difference between the two places could not be more extreme, but at least I have a roof over my head. Hopefully, this situation will be rectified in a week or so. I have found a ground-floor studio flat a few hundred yards from where I was living and hope that I will be able to complete all the financial aspects over the next week and then be able to move in. Being in the same locality as my former residence means that I don't need to change doctors, and I will be even closer to the bus stop serving the buses that I use most often. In fact it is just a few yards from my new front door.

Last Tuesday was the day of my surgery and I am now on heavy duty painkillers and antibiotics. Sitting is at times painful, but each day gets easier and I am hoping that I will be pain-free in a couple more days. I was warned that I would suffer a great deal of pain after the operation, but it has not been as bad as I thought it might be, and I now have to hope that the problem does not arise again.

I am going to try to get to a location that offers free wi-fiaccess every couple of days over the next few weeks so that I can keep you up to date with how things are going. I would also like to thank everyone who has sent me good wishes over this difficult period. Bloggers really are the nicest people and it means a lot to me that so many have taken the time to send me a few words of encouragement.

Homeless

2010-07-06T18:45:00.001+01:00

At 8 o'clock tomorrow morning I will be officially homeless. Yesterday I found somewhere to stay for a couple of weeks while I sorted out some rented accommodation only to receive a phone call this morning while I was waiting for the bus to take me to my psychotherapy session saying that the offer had been rescinded.

I'm sure that you can imagine how I felt. By the time that I got to see my therapist I was an absolute wreck and it didn't take him many seconds to realise that there was something seriously wrong. We talked through the situation and he made a couple of phone calls to the CMHT and managed to make arrangements for my key worker to see me once the therapy session was over.

We continued with the therapy session by discussing the impact that this has had on me. At that moment I felt alone and vulnerable and suicide was at the forefront of my mind. Much of the rest of the session was spent talking about the way that I am constantly suffering setbacks and how this is causing me to sink into deeper and deeper depression.

I don't have psychotherapy next week because I am due to go into hospital for my day surgery so I won't see my therapist for two weeks and then there will only be that session and one more before this course of psychotherapy ends. We talked about the impact that the ending of therapy will have on me. I said that I thought that I had accepted that end was in sight, but my therapist is concerned that even though I think that I will be able to cope, it may be harder than I think and that I may experience a sense of grieving.

I made my way to the CHMT and we rang around countless bed and breakfast places to try find me some temporary accommodation but none had vacancies. I left them and made my way towards home and a visit to an estate agent that I knew had some accommodation for rent. I have found myself a ground-floor studio flat that I can move into in two weeks time. It is in the same road that I am living in at the moment so I know the neighbourhood and it is just yards away from the bus stop that serves most of the buses that I use on a frequent basis. I have to go into the estate agents tomorrow to fill in the necessary paperwork and pay a holding fee.

This evening I am going to have to spend time on the web trying to find myself some accommodation for the next two weeks. I think that there are a couple of places not too far from where I am at the moment so keep your fingers crossed that one of them will be able to provide me with a bed for a couple of weeks.

A Difficult Time

2010-07-04T18:39:00.002+01:00

I'm having a very difficult time at the moment, which is why posts have been a bit few and far between. And it is about to get worse because I am going to be without access to the internet.

I will be moving into new accommodation in the next few days and as this is likely to be temporary accommodation to tide me over until I can get myself something more permanent, luxuries like a phone line and internet connection are likely to be unavailable. I will, however, try to get myself to a place with free wi-fi a couple of times a week so that I can keep up with all my blogging friends.

So, if you don't find any new posts from me don't worry too much, I will post as and when I can.

I Won A Prize!

2010-07-01T23:24:00.003+01:00

As regular readers will know, I go to a knitting group on a Wednesday afternoon/evening at I Knit London. Over the last few weeks I have also been going on a Thursday. Some of my fellow knitters go to just one of the evenings, but there are a few who attend both.

This week we have been raising money for Mencap by selling cake and cups of tea and coffee. There has also been a raffle which had 12 donated prizes including a wonderful bag of goodies from the Knitter magazine, a lovely lace shawl, a gift voucher from I Knit London, several prizes of various toiletries from one of the local shops, and some note cards and photograph frames donated by Mencap.

I was very good last night and managed to avoid the cakes but I did buy some raffle tickets. This evening I bought a couple more raffle tickets and indulged in some cake and cookies. It was nice to be able to support a charity while we were enjoying our evening's knitting.

At about 7.30 this evening it was time for drawing the winning tickets in the raffle. My record for winning prizes in a raffle used to be very good years ago, but in recent years my luck in such events has been appalling and it seemed that this was going to be another of those unlucky occasions. As the winning tickets were drawn prizes were won by those who had bought the tickets immediately before and immediately after those that I had bought both yesterday and today. It is bad enough to be so close once, but when it happened four times I was beginning to feel a little paranoid. And then it was time for the eighth prize to be given, and somewhat unbelievably, mine was the winning ticket.

My prize was a set of beautiful note cards. They are made from beautiful thick handmade card with a wonderful flocked design on the front. The design is swirling flowers and leaves and there are two each of three colours, black, brown and white. And the box that they come in has the same lovely flocked design on its lid making it a very beautiful gift.

What is extra specially nice about this prize is that not only has Mencap been the focus of our fund-raising, but the note cards have been made in a fair trade project in rural Bangladesh for Mencap. The cards are just so beautiful that I would find it difficult to use them. However, I will use them when I want to send a greeting or communication to someone special.

I wish that my luck in other areas of my life could be as good.

Madsadgirl Is Two Today

2010-06-30T02:00:00.002+01:00

Madsadgirl, my alter ego, is two years old today.

When I decided to start this blog one of the first things that I thought about was whether I wanted to be anonymous or to write under my real name. It didn't take me long to realise that I would probably be more honest in what I wrote if I was not easily recognizable. Yes, I would probably tell some people that I wrote a blog, but it would be my choice as to whether I told them the name of the blog, which was also the name that I adopted for myself.

I had been writing the blog for about three weeks when I told my GP that I had a blog. A few weeks later, while having lunch with Mr Smiley, I told him about the blog and he became a regular reader, and occasional commenter although always anonymously but I knew which were his comments nonetheless.

I thought that the blog might become a sort of therapy for me in my battle against depression. I was right. Originally meant as somewhere to write about how I was or wasn't coping with depression, it immediately became something more than that. I started writing about other things that were important to me and then about knitting, one of the things that has kept me going over the last few years.

I have tried to write every day, but sometimes the muse just wasn't there, and then there were the times that I was in hospital and therefore without my computer so the posts dried up. One of the things that I wanted to make sure I didn't do was write each day saying how awful I was feeling, so this led to posts about the strange, and sometimes funny, things that I saw around me. Writing about my experience of psychotherapy was another thing that found its way onto the blog, and was responsible for me being invited to give occasional lectures at one of our universities on the patient's perspective of therapy.

One of the biggest bonuses that I have derived from writing this blog is the array of virtual friends that I have made within the blogosphere. And some of them are not so virtual because I have actually met them and correspond with them outside of our blogs. And the support from other bloggers when things have not been going too well has meant a great deal to me too.

So, my third year of blogging is about to begin. Thank you for reading, and commenting. You have no idea how much it means to me.

Like A Drowned Rat And Feeling Stupid

2010-06-29T16:20:00.000+01:00

After a period of hot weather which has left me flagging at times, this morning there was torrential rain in my part of London.There was no clear blue sky to wake up to, just unremitting grey clouds and a substantial amount of rain pouring from them.

The rain was not altogether unexpected, but it wasn't the light shower that had been forecast, something that would not have bothered me too much, and it was fairly obvious that I was going to get wet on my way to the bus stop. And I was right to expect to get wet because just after I had left the house it started to rain even harder and my waterproof jacket was finding it hard to cope with the rain.

By the time that I got to the bus stop I had a very wet jacket, rather wet trousers, and the toes that were peeking out of my sandals were both wet and covered with dirt from the splashing rain. Fortunately my jacket has a hood so I was at least able to keep my hair dry otherwise I would definitely have looked like a drowned rat. I looked at the electronic board at the bus shelter to see how long I was going to have to wait for my bus and found that one was due in just a few minutes and another was about five minutes behind it.

I like to make sure that I have my Oyster card in my hand before I get on the bus so that I am not scrabbling around in my handbag for it while other people are waiting to get on the bus. I'm pretty good at putting it in a place in my handbag where it is easy to find whenever I need it, but this morning it wasn't in its usual slot in my bag. Panic set in. What had I done with it? I had used it yesterday and although I had removed quite a few things from my handbag when I was looking for something in it yesterday evening, I was fairly certain that I hadn't taken it out of my bag.

There was only one thing for it, I was going to have to take things out of my handbag systematically so that I could find the card. Unfortunately this was easier said than done because there was nowhere for me to put the things as I took them out. My bus arrived and I still hadn't found the card but as I knew that there was another imminent I decided to let this one go without me so that I could search a little longer. I did eventually find my card as a bus arrived at the stop.

With card in hand I leapt onto the bus (well, perhaps I didn't leap on) and found myself a seat. These days there are a number of different seating arrangements on our red double-decker buses, and this should have alerted me as I got on, but it wasn't until the bus was moving and the speaker system on the announced its route and destination that I realised I had got on the wrong bus. And I only had one more stop that was shared by both this bus and the one that I should have got on. So, I quickly rang the bell to alert the driver that I wanted to get off and a minute later I was back out in the rain waiting for the right bus.

I really cannot believe that I boarded a bus without checking to see what number it was. I had to wait for about 10 minutes (the bus wasn't quite as imminent as I had thought it was) for my bus to arrive getting wetter by the minute. By the time that I had arrived at my destination the rain had stopped but I was still looking like a drowned rat and feeling a stupid one at that.

I Knew Things Were Going Too Well

2010-06-28T19:20:00.000+01:00

I started working on a lace shawl just over a week ago. It was started because I needed a break from knitting socks which had been taking up all my knitting time for some weeks. The first hundred or so rows were completed pretty quickly but as the shawl grew it took longer and longer to knit each row until it got to the stage yesterday where each row was taking something like 20 minutes to complete. But even though the rows were taking longer to complete, the actual pattern over these stitches was very easy to follow and soon became imprinted on my mind so that minimal viewing of the pattern charts was necessary.

Things were going smoothly until about 5.30 this evening when I discovered that there were some mistakes in the shawl. I started to unpick it stitch by stitch but with almost 500 stitches to the row, trying to find out where the errors occurred was going to take forever. So I did the unthinkable. I pulled the needle (I'm using a circular one because they are the best thing to use for shawls) from the shawl and started to unravel the whole shawl.

It may seem a somewhat extreme to do this but I really don't have the ability to concentrate on the shawl for the length of time necessary to unpick it a stitch at a time to find the errors. I often resort to this when knitting lace because it can be so easy to make a mistake which can take forever to find. Admittedly I have never managed to get so far with a shawl before making one of these catastrophic mistakes, but I know that the shawl will probably be better second time around and I am now more aware of the likely problem areas of the pattern.

I have already started knitting again and already have completed 13 rows of the first chart. It is likely that I may finish the first chart this evening and possibly even start the second one. Hopefully, this time I will be able to work on the shawl without having to resort to pulling the needle out.

Thinking About The End Of Psychotherapy

2010-06-27T21:20:00.000+01:00

I'm not coping with this hot weather very well. I have lots of windows open but there is nothing much in the way of movement of air so it isn't helping me to keep cool. It's too hot to contemplate cooking which I probably couldn't cope with even if it weren't so hot, and I don't have anything that I can just throw in the microwave to heat up. Going without food is not a good idea so I have ordered a pizza to be delivered later when the temperature has hopefully gone down a little and the thought of eating something is not quite so unpalatable.

I think that it is unpalatable thoughts that have been part of the reason that I have started to go downhill into the depths of depression again. These thoughts invade my brain at any time that I am not actively concentrating on something else, and it is the difficulty of maintaining concentration that is inherent in depression that allows these thoughts in.

I live alone and spend most days isolated from the rest of the human race. Part of the reason for this is that I find it very difficult dealing with new people and have done for most of my life. The consequence of this is that I am alone, but that is not the same as being lonely. I don't feel lonely, just alone and as I get older this seems to get more difficult to deal with.

I have made efforts to change things. Recently I have joined the knitting group that meets at I Knit London a couple of times a week. It's not exactly local but close enough to home for me to make the journey at least once a week and sometimes twice. The ladies (and the couple of gentlemen) who meet at this shop for knitting, having the odd drink, and partaking in a lot of conversation, not all of it about knitting, are an incredibly friendly group and have made me feel very welcome.

My joining such a group would have been something unthinkable this time last year and I still find it difficult to believe that I have taken such a step. I still suffer great waves of anxiety when I set out to go to the group, but having to make a fairly lengthy bus journey to get to the venue does allow me time to try to relax. I know that I have most difficulty with group situations when I have to walk in on a group that is already present so I tend to arrive early so that the members join in ones and twos after I am already present and for me this is a more comfortable situation.

The strength to join this group has come about as a direct result of the psychotherapy that I have been undergoing since last December. This therapy was originally meant to finish at Easter but my therapist felt that further long term therapy, this time in a group setting, was needed so after having referred me to the mental health trust's psychotherapy services for assessment as to suitability for group psychotherapy, he decided that our sessions together should go on for longer.

This therapy is now approaching its conclusion. It will come to a close at the end of July, so with me being unable to attend one session because of my impending day surgery, I have four more sessions with this therapist. During our last session he asked if I was concerned about the impending termination of therapy. I replied in the negative, but I am now not so sure. I think that it is almost certainly one of the factors in my descent back into depression.

After such a difficult termination of therapy last year it is perhaps not surprising that the impending termination of therapy is playing on my mind. I know that it is going to be difficult, but I am being seen by a very experienced therapist, a senior consultant psychologist, within the mental health trust, and he is aware of how I was left feeling abandoned after my previous therapy. I also know that he is going to do everything in his power to ensure that I am not going to be left hanging as I was before.

I have made significant progress over the last few months. Psychotherapy is still something that I find difficult; I just don't like talking about myself and my feelings. However, we have worked hard on certain aspects of my behaviour and I am now much more aware of when I am moving into difficult territory and am therefore more equipped to deal with it.

I'm certain that I will still find the end of this therapy very difficult, but I know that it is only a matter of time before I enter a new phase of therapy, this time in a group setting. The talking therapies are regularly offered as the answer to so many of the problems that those with depression are faced with, but it is important that the therapist is well qualified, and because many of those who are most in need of such treatments have no means of paying for therapy and must rely on what little is available on the NHS, it is important that as many good therapists as possible work for the NHS.

In four weeks time I am sure that I will be sitting here contemplating my final therapy session with J. He has made a tremendous difference to the way that I am over the last six months and has helped me come to terms with so much that has happened in my life. I will, of course, thank him, but that seems so little when I consider what he has done for me.

Black Clouds Overhead

2010-06-26T23:46:00.003+01:00

After a couple of weeks feeling rather better than I have for a very long time, over the last few days the black clouds of depression have loomed on the horizon and now are settled firmly overhead.

I have endured a very disrupted pattern of sleep. Sometimes I don't sleep at all and at other times I can't stop sleeping. Tears start flowing for no particular reason and the horrible thoughts are intruding whenever I am not focused on doing something.

Even though I have lived with depression for nearly 12 years, it still amazes me how quickly I can change from being able to cope with life to life becoming unbearable. I am finding it difficult to concentrate for anything longer than about half an hour so my knitting is being done in fits and starts. But even so I have managed to make good progress on the lace shawl that I started last Sunday. I have completed 208 rows and have 160 more to go. Each row is now taking about 10 minutes to complete so progressed has slowed considerably to what it was at the beginning of the week and as additional stitches are added (4 on each right-side row) it will continue to take longer to complete each row.

I have decided to continue working on the shawl over the weekend and then return to knitting socks on Monday. The break from socks has been good and will, I hope, enable me to get back to them with renewed enthusiasm.

Where Have My Followers Gone?

2010-06-24T21:58:00.003+01:00

I have followers. I have more than 40 of them, but they seem to have stopped appearing on the side of my page. Yesterday they returned for a few hours and then they disappeared again.

The sad thing about not being able to see who is following me is that I have found quite a lot of really good blogs through bloggers becoming followers of my blog. Now it seems that I can see that I have followers on the dashboard, but not find out who they are.

Does anyone have an explanation for their disappearance and a way of getting them back on my blog?

Update: It seems to depend on which browser you use. I generally use Firefox for my blog because I had encountered some problems when trying to create posts using Google Chrome. If I view my blog using Firefox, then the followers are missing, but if I view it using Google Chrome then they are present. It looks as though I will be changing my browser to Google Chrome permanently if I find that the previous problems have now been solved. Thank you for letting me know that you were able to see the followers because that guided me to try other browsers.

Post 600

2010-06-22T22:58:00.003+01:00

When I started this blog nearly two years ago I did wonder whether I would keep it up. There have been a few breaks in posting, the times that I was in hospital and again when I went through a really bad period of depression and just getting myself out of bed each day was a major achievement.

The blog was originally intended to document how I coped with depression, and to be fair it has continued to do this although I try not to make my posts depressing catalogues of how bad I am feeling. Instead I try to write about the things that I am doing to try to keep the depression at bay. And now I am writing the 600th post.

A number of posts continue to attract a lot of attention, even though they are now quite old. One is entitled 'Psychotherapy and Termination' (written in March 2009) and I can guarantee that there will be a couple of hits on this post each week. The post that is viewed most often however, is nothing to do with depression or psychotherapy. It is the post titled 'What is a Shetland Hap Shawl?' which was written as a result of a number of people asking me that question in comments to an earlier post that gave details of the Shetland hap shawl that I was knitting at the time. This post is viewed at least five times a week which is somewhat surprising considering its subject.

The posts that I am probably most proud of are those in the 'Tackling the Mental Health Minefield' series. Being admitted to a psychiatric hospital was never something that I had considered as being a thing that would happen to me. But it did, and I am just so relieved that I had enough sense to take myself off to see my GP when I started to do some really silly things that were putting me at risk. I tried to provide an objective overview of my time in hospital, the people that were supposed to be looking after me and the stupid rules that seemed to be there to make life easy for the staff with little regard to the effect that they may have had on the patients. Admission to a psychiatric hospital is never a nice thing but I hope that what I have written on the subject may help to give an idea of what to expect and how you can come out the other side without too much harm being done.

In eight days time the blog will be two years old. I think it is likely to continue to form an important part of my life for the foreseeable future, there are many things that I want to write about and I am sure that there will be more things that crop up as time passes. I hope that anyone who reads this blog will gain something from it, just as I gain something by writing it.

Lace Again

2010-06-21T20:28:00.004+01:00

The shawl that I started (twice) on Saturday was finished yesterday. It didn't take long because it was the simplest pattern possible. Buoyed up by completing this project I decided to start work on another shawl. I prepared needles of the correct size and started work on this shawl yesterday afternoon.

While taking a break from knitting I spent some time looking at free patterns for shawls on Ravelry. There were hundreds to look at but one in particular attracted my attention. It wasn't the first time that I had looked at this pattern, but it was noticing that the pattern's designer had used yarn from one of my favourite yarn producers, Cherry Tree Hill, to make this shawl that decided me to take a closer look.

I had a ball of Cherry Tree Hill yarn waiting for me to find a suitable project so I decided to give it a go. Yesterday evening I cast on the five stitches that formed the starting point for the shawl and got stuck in to the pattern. I have now completed 94 of the 368 rows of the pattern and the stitch count has risen from 5 to 192.

There is still a very long way to go until I complete this shawl, and it will certainly have to take a back seat again so that I can get back to work on the socks for the design competition. However, it is a long time since I have worked on a complicated lace pattern such as this one and the fact that I am progressing so well has made me feel a little better today.

Once all the socks are completed then I will be able to devote all my time to the shawl, but until then I will content myself with doing a couple of rows a day so that it continues to grow albeit at a much slower rate than it has over the last 24 hours.

Taking A Break

2010-06-19T21:05:00.000+01:00

I seem to have been knitting socks constantly for the last few weeks and yesterday evening I felt I needed a break from them. So after a brief foray on ravelry, a wonderful site for knitters and crocheters, I found a shawl pattern for one of the lovely yarns that I have in my stash.

It couldn't be more different from knitting socks if it tried. Although sock yarn is used for both, the socks are knitted using 2.25mm needles and the shawl is knitted with 8mm needles. It's like knitting with pencils after having spent so much time with very fine needles.

Work on the shawl progressed well last night and again this afternoon so that I was heading towards being at a stage this evening where I could start working on the ruffles edging. As I say, I was heading towards the final stages of the shawl when I found that I had dropped a stitch.

Dropping a stitch would not have been a problem had I been using needles more suitable to the yarn, but because the needles are so large it meant that as I watched the stitch just kept dropping down through the rows until it reached a point where it could go no further. Unfortunately that meant that the only way that I could retrieve the situation was to unpick much of the shawl. Having looked at it, and said a few choice words I ended up unravelling the whole shawl and starting again.

Second time around the shawl is growing. I am about half way to point where I cast off the centre stitches and start working on the front corners. I'm not going to get to the ruffle tonight as I had hoped, but work is commencing at a good enough rate that I can realistically expect to finish the shawl tomorrow.

I must be feeling a little better because had this happened to me a week ago I think that I would have gone to pieces and thrown the yarn and needles across the room. Instead I have just got on with things and started again. One thing is certain, I am going to keep a very close eye on the work and make sure that I don't drop a stitch again.

Ladies Who Lunch

2010-06-17T07:55:00.004+01:00

Yesterday evening saw me at the knitting group. I have come to really enjoy the company of this group of ladies (and occasionally some men) on a Wednesday evening especially because it can be enjoyed with a bottle of wine or some other alcoholic beverage (I have acquired a taste for strawberry perry). It can be rather amusing to watch the expressions on the faces of passers by when they see 20 or more people sitting down in a shop knitting and chatting.

Yesterday saw me showing off my sock designs to a few of the people present and they received many favourable comments. When I showed the first design (the only one of which actually has a pair of socks at the moment) I was immediately asked if the pattern was for sale. When I showed my 'Cards' series of socks there was more encouragement and amazement at my creativity.

I explained that I had even more design ideas tucked away in my brain and that I had given up plans to submit a lace design for the competition so that I could concentrate on socks as my entries for this year. It was at this point that Lorraine the lovely lady who works in the shop and answers all my emails about competition entries suggested that this could be the basis of a book. This set me thinking and maybe she is correct. Perhaps this competition has given me the push in the direction that my life needs to move in to. They say that there is a book in all of us, and it is possible that my book is not a novel or a piece of historical research as I had previously thought but something for knitters everywhere.

As I was chatting with the lady who got me to join the knitting group she asked if I was doing anything today. When I said that I wasn't, she suggested that I might like to join a small number of the knitting group who lunch together on a Thursday and who then make their way to I Knit London for the Thursday knitting group. With nothing of any importance in my diary for today, that is exactly what I am going to do.

I am going to be a lady who lunches and who knits too.

Leaving On A Jet Plane (Actually It Will Be A Bus)

2010-06-16T12:45:00.004+01:00

To quote a song from my younger years 'My bags are packed, I'm ready to go' and it will soon be time to walk to the bus stop to catch my bus rather than the aeroplane of the song.

I have sorted out all my competition socks and put them and the wool that I have used for them into one bag so that I do not have to search for them when the time comes for me to start work on the competition pairs of socks. This bag has been joined by scissors, my charts, and my pad of graph paper and all of this has been put into my I Knit London bag.

I'm hoping that I will finish the first of the 'Full House' socks this evening and then it will be full steam ahead with the twin that will make up the pair. The next task will be to knit the other four pairs of socks that make up the 'Cards' designs.

I am now pretty sure that I won't have time to design and knit the lace scarf for the competition. Perhaps it was being a bit optimistic to think that I would be able to manage that as well as six pairs of socks. However, I have had another idea for a sock design so I may well add this to my entries if I can get the idea to work.

Whilst I have always done handicrafts, I have never really considered myself to be a creative person because I have always followed a pattern. Designing these socks has shown me that I was wrong and that I do have a little bit of a creative streak in me and that I should see where it takes me. Socks are a relatively easy starting point, but I have become hooked on designing things so I think that lace designs are going to be the next area that I concentrate my efforts on. Scarves to start with and then if these work well I will turn my hand to designing a shawl. This will be a much more difficult area to work in so I may have to wait until my concentration has improved significantly from how it is at the moment.

Who knows where this may all lead to.

Down At Heel

2010-06-15T22:17:00.003+01:00

Just a quick update on the 'Full House' sock.

I'm just about to turn the heel. This is the part of sock knitting that I like most because it means that I am half way to completing it. It just so happens that the pattern that I have designed has approximately the same number of rows before the heel as it does after the heel.

Once I have turned the heel and picked up the stitches along both sides of the heel flap I will find out which of the suits comes next. I know it sounds daft but I have absolutely no idea whether the chart that I have used for the leg part of the sock will be used for the foot part (albeit only half of the pattern) or whether I will have to draw up a new chart.

My intention is that the vertical view of the sock will show all four suits. I'm just going to have to keep knitting to find out what will happen. I'm quite pleased with how the sock has turned out so far and I am sure that I will be pleased with the finished result.

It's time to get back to those knitting needles.

A Long Way To Go

2010-06-14T17:17:00.002+01:00

I'm having real problems with depression at the moment and I'm finding everything difficult. This means that with my not being able to concentrate on anything for very long even the simplest things take much longer than they ought to.

For me, it's not the continuously feeling very low that is the worst part of depression, but the lack of ability to concentrate. Lack of concentration means that reading a book becomes very difficult because I have to read the same paragraph several times for it to make an impact on me. It's at times like these that I resort to old favourites; that is books that I have probably read many times before so I have some idea of what the book is about while trying to concentrate on the page. At the moment I am working my way through the Harry Potter books because children's books are usually easier to follow although that is not necessarily true of the later books in the series because they are much longer and far more complex.

Knitting, the hobby that has kept me going over the years, is also causing me some problems at the moment. In part this is being caused by the fact that I am trying to design sock patterns for the design competition. I have completed one pair of socks and I have knitted one sock of each 'Clubs', 'Diamonds', 'Hearts' and 'Spades' and I am working 'Full House' at the moment. This sock seems to require far more concentration than the others, probably because I am trying to work two symbols at a time on the sock ('Clubs' and 'Diamonds' at the moment).

I had asked whether it would be necessary to knit a pair of each design for the competition and today I have received the reply to my query. This means that I have to make a pair for each design so I have a lot more socks to knit before I am ready to enter the competition. Having to knit the additional socks means that it is now less likely that I will be able to enter a lace scarf in another of the competition categories.

Perhaps this is not such a bad thing because trying to do too much does put pressure on me at a time when I am less able to cope with it. Although I have already knitted the four 'suits' individually, I had knitted each of these socks as a kind of sampler. This means that I have to knit a pair of each of the designs as a finished product so as well as the pair that I am working on at the moment, I have to knit four full pairs for the competition. This is going to require some more wool so I will have to see about buying that later this week when I have a bit more money.

If I were to win one of the prizes in the competition, the prize money would ensure that I would be able to add to my wool stash to keep me going for some considerable time. And the possibility of my patterns being offered for sale would also mean that I could create a little revenue to supplement my hobby.

Although I have a long way to go to complete my entries for the competition, I am glad that I have decided to take on this challenge. So, keep your fingers crossed for me that the judges like my designs and award me one of the prizes.

Socks And Suits

2010-06-13T19:20:00.001+01:00

I've not been feeling great for the last few days and this has resulted in me spending a large part of the last three days asleep. Fortunately I can sleep now thanks to the additional medication and getting plenty of sleep does seem to help me cope with things a little better.

I have now completed one sock for each of the four suits. I am happy with the socks for 'Diamonds', 'Hearts' ans 'Spades', but I have made a few alterations to the chart for 'Clubs' so a new sample sock will have to be knitted. However, rather than work on this single suit sock, I have drafted the chart for the 'Full House' sock and I have started knitting that. I've only done three of the 10 rows of rib for the sock's cuff as yet, but it shouldn't take me long to complete the cuff and then I can move onto the leg part of the sock and I have to admit that I am looking forward to seeing how this sock turns out.

I've done a bit of preparatory work on writing the patterns but I shall need to sit down and work on this earnestly over the next couple of weeks. I still have plenty of time before the designs need to be submitted but I also have a lot of work still to do. I am still hoping that I will have the time to create a lace scarf for the competition but it is going to be touch and go whether I can achieve this.

I am hoping to treat myself to a new book this week once my pension gets paid into the bank. This book is full of charts for lace patterns mainly of Estonian design, and it would be a wonderful resource for creating my own designs. So I will be doing a few calculations and if things look okay I shall be buying the book on Thursday and no doubt spend Thursday evening turning the pages slowly and trying to decide which patterns to include in my lace scarf.

Feeling The Strain

2010-06-10T21:20:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy week for me. Okay, so it's not been busy like it was when I was working full-time and studying for a degree in the few spare hours that I had, but busy for how my life is now.

The problem with depression is that it saps what little energy you have. I know that I don't eat properly which probably doesn't help much, and while I am at last getting a reasonable amount of sleep each night due to the addition a month ago of 400mg of Seroquel to the 45mg of Mirtazapine that I was already taking, I still find that doing many things really takes it out of me.

I didn't do much on Monday other than what was necessary. I had a misfortune with the sock that I was knitting and had to pull it off the needles and unravel it, ready to start again. I decided to draft out the chart for the next of the sock designs, and 'Spades' quickly took shape on paper to be followed a short time later by work with needles and wool.

Tuesday was psychotherapy day and this week was one of the most intense sessions that I have ever experienced not only with my present therapist but the others who had preceded him. I know that I have sometimes talked about feeling like a limp lettuce after psychotherapy when the session has taken me to difficult places in my mind, but Tuesday's session was different; I didn't feel like a limp lettuce, I just felt mentally and physically drained from the effort that I had put into the session as well as somewhat exhilarated by what had been achieved. When I got home I found it difficult to settle to anything and consequently lots of things got started and then stopped again as my mind couldn't cope with what I was trying to achieve.

Yesterday, Wednesday, I went to the knitting group. Although the group officially meets from 6-9pm, it is usual for some of us to be there before that time. I arrived at about 4pm and sat chatting with the girls in the shop and with a couple of other members of the group who were also there early. I still find it difficult being in a room with a lot of other people, but I have learnt through experience that if I am there early and the room fills up around me that I can cope with it quite well, but if I am required to enter a room that is full of people already then I know that I am going to find the situation much more difficult and I am likely to just stay on the edge of the group rather than joining in. I managed to get a fair bit of knitting done at the group, finishing the leg part and creating the heel flap and starting the turning of the heel.

Today, I had an appointment with my consultant psychiatrist this morning and this afternoon a visit to the CMHT. Dr M was his usual kind self, although today he had two medical students in with him and he was concerned that I may not be happy for them to stay during the consultation. A few years ago I would never have accepted anyone else in the room, but I know that it is very difficult for medical students to get a real feel for the various specialties if all the patients refuse to allow them to stay. These days I am more likely to agree to them remaining with the proviso that if I start to become uncomfortable with the situation that they can be asked to leave. We talked about how I was coping day to day, how my mood has been, and whether I was able to write regularly on the blog. I also told him about going to the knitting group and working on some sock designs for the design competition. We talked about my medication and it has been decided to leave it as it is for the time being to see how I get on over a longer period with the present drug regime, so it's 200mg of Sertraline in the morning and the Mirtazapine and Seroquel at night.

From the hospital it was a bus ride to the CMHT and a meeting with the two workers who are going to be helping me over the next few months cope with the things that I just haven't been able to face for a long time.

This evening I have been taking it easy. I've played a few games on my DSi and done a bit of knitting and I'll probably do a little more before taking my medication and heading for bed. I'm tired, and I don't have to get up early tomorrow to get anywhere so I can have a lie in if that's how things turn out. I guess that I have to expect that I won't be able to do all the things that I did 20 years ago, but I'm just not happy with admitting that I am getting old as well as being depressed.

Socks

2010-06-09T14:51:00.002+01:00

It's knitting group at I Knit London tonight so I am about to pack some wool and needles in my bag and head off for an evening of knitting and chat.

My 'Hearts' sock was progressing well until I found that I had dropped a stitch and it had run down many rows. There was nothing for it but to pull out the needles and unravel the sock. A bit heartbreaking but that's the way it goes.

Instead of restarting that sock straight away I decided to have a go at drafting the chart for 'Spades' and start knitting that instead. The chart was fairly easy to draft and I am reasonably happy with how the Spade-shape looks on the sock. I'm working this one in shades of brown. I have almost completed the leg part of the sock so will be knitting the heel flap and turning the heel while at the group this evening.

I will start 'Hearts' again once 'Spades' is finished and then probably start on 'Full House' although I think that having worked on the other suits I am not so happy with 'Clubs' any more and may consider redrafting the design and knitting it again.

At least it keeps me off the streets!

How Did We Manage Before ...?

2010-06-08T21:45:00.000+01:00

I can remember a conversation with my husband, before he was my husband, about watches. The conversation was about how complex watches had become (digital watches were still an expensive item and not very good) with practically all analogue watches having a date function by that time. My yet-to-become husband said that he remembered the strange looks that he got when he first came back to the UK after a posting to Germany and someone asked what the date was and he (hubby-to-be) looked at his watch. Watches with a date function had not yet become commonplace in the UK hence the strange looks when hubby-to-be looked at his wrist.

Mobile phones when they first became available were difficult to actually call mobile. Yes, you could make a call without recourse to a fixed line, but coverage was patchy and the phones themselves were the size of a brick, and somewhat unsurprisingly that is the name that became attached to them.

Once it became established that this was the way ahead for mobile communications, more companies climbed on the bandwagon and offered a mobile service. Some providers had better coverage than others so you needed to do a bit of detective work to see whether the network provider that you were thinking of getting connected to would give you a service that did at least mean that most of your calls would get through to the person you were trying to call.

It was about this time that I got my first mobile phone. It came free with my new car. Ford started to give a free mobile phone with new cars because they could see the benefit to the driver having a mobile phone in case of an emergency. And I managed with that free mobile phone for several years because I did only use it on rare occasions. My husband liked me to have it with me when I went on long journeys on my own and it was handy for letting him know that I had arrived safely.

Eventually phones became smaller; they truly were mobile and could easily be carried in a handbag or a pocket. Small was beautiful and the smaller your phone the more impressive it seemed to be. Then cameras were added to the phones and if you had a mobile phone you always had a camera with you to take that spur of the moment, once in a lifetime photograph. Then a video facility was added and while the photographs and video that you may capture with your phone were never going to win any prizes they provided hours of fun for some people. And then there was the 'hands free' boom achieved first with and earpiece and microphone attached to the phone and later with a Bluetooth-enabled earpiece that looked like something that you might see Lt Uhura in Star Trek sporting in one ear.

Mobile phones have started to become larger again. Now it is not sufficient to have a phone to make the odd phone call or send a quick text message, you need to have a phone that allows you to access the Internet, that allows you to listen to your entire collection of MP3 tracks, that allows you to listen to the radio if that is your thing, that provides an alternative facility for sending and receiving emails, gives you GPS capability so that you need never get lost. And all of this means that those dinky little phones of a few years ago are now a thing of the past and your credibility seems to be determined by how many 'apps' you have on your mobile phone.

You are probably wondering where this is all going. Well, just as my husband got strange looks when he looked at his watch to see what the date was, so we are now living in a time where it is not unusual to see people walking along the street talking to themselves. Just a few years ago if you did that you would be considered a suitable case for a quick admission to the local mental hospital, now it seems that you have to be seen constantly talking into a mobile phone or you are a loser, someone with no friends. And many people are not content with just one mobile any more. A few years ago anyone with two mobile phones would be likely to have his collar felt by the local constabulary as a possible drug dealer, but today it does not seem to be unusual to be seen with a mobile in each hand.

Considering that this has all happened in a relatively short a time period it begs the question, 'How did we manage before we had mobile phones?'

A Crowded Mind

2010-06-08T16:33:00.003+01:00

For the first time in ages I have posts for this blog queueing in my mind. My memory being what it is at the moment I will have to jot down some notes for each of them so that I don't forget what I want to say.

Today has been psychotherapy day. I had what my therapist described as a good session. He worked me hard and I responded to it in a way that he has not seen from me before. As we chatted at the end of the session he told me how pleased he was with how hard I had worked today and that he felt that the therapy is making a difference to me. He's right; I am seeing some benefits from it as I am not blaming myself for everything any more. But I have a long way to go yet and it is unlikely that we will be able to deal with all my problems before the work with this therapist ends in July.

I am feeling a bit mentally battered and bruised from the session but at the same time there is a certain calmness about me that has not been there for some time. The racing thoughts are still there but they seem to be easier to switch off for short periods of time rather than being there every waking moment.

It's going to be a busy week mentally-speaking because I have my next appointment with my consultant psychiatrist, Dr M, on Thursday, then straight after this I have to go to the CMHT to meet my new care coordinator and key worker. This will be something new for me as I have never been in this position before. I am hoping that they will be able to help me with some of the things that I need to deal with but which I find it impossible to face on my own.

A Sneak Preview

2010-06-06T13:38:00.005+01:00

Bippidee asked in a comment to yesterday's post when you were going to get to see some photographs of my sock designs. The rules of the design competition are quite explicit on the fact that the designs should not have been published anywhere prior to the competition, however, I have managed to take a few photographs with my phone and I am going to publish them here. I must apologise for the quality of the photographs but I needed to make sure that I wasn't giving too much away. The socks also need to be blocked so that they lay flat, but that is a task that I am saving until I can do them all together so you will see that they are a bit puckered at the moment. However, I am sure that you will forgive me when you see what I have been working on.

Sock No 1

Sock No 2

Sock No 3

Sock No 4

As I say, the quality of the photographs leaves a lot to be desired, but proper photographs will be taken in the future and will eventually be published here once the date of the competition arrives.

From Diamonds To Hearts

2010-06-05T23:10:00.000+01:00

I finished the 'Diamonds' sock last night and this morning started on 'Hearts'. It didn't take me very long to draft a chart which I thought might work and started knitting the sock. This was fairly early this morning; I didn't take my night-time medication last night so I managed to wake up fairly easily without any lingering sleepiness this morning. It didn't take me long to realise that it was going to be a very hot day and doing anything work-like was not going to be pleasant. So, I decided to go out for the day.

A walk to the bus stop and a short wait for the right bus to take me to Waterloo. I knew that if I carried on knitting the socks at the rate that I have been this week I would soon need some wool for the last two designs. I walked to I Knit and soon managed to find some wool in the same range that I have been using for all the socks in colours that I had not already used. I bought them and having put my knitting in my handbag before I left home I decided to sit in the shop and do a bit of knitting.

It was nice being able to sit in the shop knitting and chatting with Gerard (the shop's owner) and Coral who was manning the shop today. It meant that I spent a fair portion of the day in the company of other people rather than alone as would have been the case if I had not decided on the spur of the moment to go out .

I got a fair bit of knitting done while I was in the shop. With the first pattern repeat completed I was able to see that my first draft of the chart had been perfect and the heart shape seems to be perfectly proportioned on the sock. I wasn't sure that this would be the case, so I was prepared to have to unpick the sock and start again from scratch; a bit soul-destroying but the only way to get the design right.

I've managed to do a little more of the sock since I have been back home, but my indelicate problem is causing me a great deal of pain at the moment and it is difficult to find a comfortable position for sitting. I'll be glad when the middle of July arrives and I have my operation.

I have found that the pain is causing me to also feel a lot more depressed. When I am knitting I am able to forget how I am feeling, but while not concentrating on my knitting my brain has the opportunity to start the disturbing thoughts.

Forging Ahead

2010-06-04T17:15:00.000+01:00

Knitting is probably the only thing that is keeping me going at the moment, so I can report that the latest design is progressing well.

This sock seems to be growing quicker than any so far. This may be because I am familiar with the basics of the pattern now, but is probably, in part, due to the fact that the 'Diamonds' design is easy to work and has not required me to keep looking at the chart. This means that each round seems to have been completed in record time and consequently the sock has grown at a very fast pace.

I have turned the heel and I am now starting the foot part of the sock. There is a good chance that it will be finished this evening so I will be able to start on the next design tomorrow.

Steph asked in a comment on my last post if 'Hearts' and 'Spades' were to follow and I can report that they are. 'Hearts' will be next followed by 'Spades'. When the four suits have been completed I will be working a design which employs all four of the symbols, and this is the design that I have tentatively named 'Full House', although 'No Trumps' is another possibility.

I have decided that I will spend part of Sunday actually typing up the patterns for the socks that I have already completed. Fortunately the socks are all based on the same basic design so once I have typed up the first pattern, it will just be a case of changing the charts for each pattern and altering any details that are specific to each sock.

It's a lot of work, but I am quite enjoying the opportunity to create something of my own design. And all this knitting is keeping my mind from dwelling on how I am feeling.

Clubs

2010-06-03T20:43:00.002+01:00

I have finished the first of the socks in my 'Cards' series of patterns. I deliberately chose the 'Clubs' design first because I knew that it would be the most difficult to get right. And the number of times that I had to redraft the design and start the sock again shows that I was correct in that assumption. I am quite pleased with the resultant sock.

Today I have started on the second in the series, 'Diamonds'. This is definitely the easiest of the designs and seems to be turning out quite well as I am almost half way to the heel already. I shall do some more work on it before I go to bed and hope to get to the heel before I go to bed.

I still have to get some more information regarding the design competition itself so I must send an email to Lorraine tomorrow asking about what the standard list of abbreviations is, and asking whether I have to actually produce a pair of socks for each entry, or if one of each design will suffice. I am hoping that this will be the case as it will give me more time to concentrate on the lace scarf which is certainly going to be the most time-consuming of the things that I hope to enter.

I also have to sit down at the computer to write the patterns for each of the designs. Although the socks are all based on the same pattern it will be important to make sure that the instructions are clear for each of the designs and that the charts are correct.

There is a lot of work still to do but I am quite enjoying it and it helps to keep me occupied and stops me from giving in to the racing thoughts in my brain.

A Bit Of Navel Gazing

2010-06-02T19:45:00.001+01:00

I have been having problems in recent weeks in sticking to my declared intention to write a post on this blog every day. It wasn't really a New Year's Resolution, more a desire to write whenever I could on whatever subject came to mind.

When I first started this blog I seemed to have no problem writing something for the blog, often producing more than one post a day. As time went by the quantity of posts may have diminished a little, but, I would like to think, the quality did not. Then towards the end of last year there was an enforced break when I went into hospital. My stay in hospital led to me writing the Tackling the Mental Health Minefield series of posts and to a lot more people finding my little corner of the blogosphere.

Nothing shows the reduction of posts like looking at the 'blog archive' list on here. I started this blog on 30th June 2008 and wrote 218 posts up to the end of that year. Last year, 2009, saw me writing 227 posts in total, clearly showing that I was slowing down with my output, but that I still found plenty to write about. So far this year I have written 140 posts, including this one, so it is fair to hope that I should manage double that number for the whole year.

Another thing that has changed is that in the early days I would write most of the posts in the morning. Now I usually write them in the evening. One of the reasons for this during the last month is that I am rarely awake in the mornings, and when I am, I feel so 'spaced out' that trying to string two sentences together is beyond me. And because I am writing later in the day, I sometimes get to the stage where I end up thinking that I can't be bothered to write today I'll do it tomorrow. Unfortunately, sometimes tomorrow doesn't come.

But I shall keep on writing. I can't tell you what I will write about because each post may be different to anything that I have written before. And I hope that you will keep on reading and occasionally commenting. My 'virtual friends' mean a great deal to me and have done much to keep me going over the last year or so. You really are wonderful people.

That Eureka Moment

2010-05-31T22:50:00.005+01:00

I think I know how Archimedes felt when sitting in his bath he realised that a body immersed in water displaces its own volume of water from the container in which it is placed.

For me, my 'Eureka Moment' came this afternoon when I realised that the latest version of my sock design was actually producing the effect that I wanted. After a number of false starts, I had finally got the stitch pattern right so that I was able to produce something that resembled a club such as those found on a playing card.

I know that I still have more designs to create, but the club symbol was always going to be the most difficult to produce for my planned series of patterns. This means that I can now press ahead as fast as my fingers, and mood, will allow me. I shall make one sock of each pattern as quickly as possible and write up the patterns complete with their charts so I have them all ready to submit. I'm going to ask if it is necessary to submit a pair of each design so as to allow me as much time as possible for the lace scarf design.

Despondency had started to take over last night when I realised that the design that I had hoped would look okay, in fact did not and needed to be redrafted. Mr Smiley often used to tell me that I should persevere when I found things difficult to do because of depression. And that is what I have done over the last few days; I have persevered and kept working at it until I had achieved what I wanted.

The sock will take a couple more days to complete, but knowing that the most difficult design has been nailed means that I can knit with renewed vigour. After this design the others will seem pretty simple and take only a few minutes to draft onto the graph paper. And they will actually be easier to knit too.

I didn't shout 'Eureka', but I did think it. Oh yes, Archimedes, I have an idea of how you must have felt at that moment.

Trying To Beat Depression

2010-05-30T18:45:00.000+01:00

I had hoped that with the additional medication that I would have started to feel better by now. Yes, I am getting the sleep that I need, but my mood does not seem to be getting any better. I do have occasional short periods when I am actually able to feel that things are going well but they are interspersed with long periods when I continually question why I bother with carrying on living.

I have been concentrating on my knitting in the hope that will help me through this difficult period. Having decided to enter some designs in the I Knit design competition has given me a focus. I am not just following somebody else's pattern, I am trying to create my own. And it isn't easy.

I am not a naturally creative person. Yes, I am able to follow a pattern to make whatever I want. I can knit, crochet, do cross-stitch, embroider, sew my own clothes (although I haven't done that for some years), make cards, and scrapbook. Lots of things that might be called creative, but for me creative also means making something from scratch; not following a pattern or a guide.

Creating a few sock patterns has been a major challenge for me, and I have not found it easy. I know what I want to do but actually being able to translate that into a finished article has proven more difficult than I thought. I think that part of the reason for this is because I am unable to draw anything so that the result I produce is recognisable as what I was aiming for.

This has meant that I have had to create a number of drafts of the chart for the second of my sock designs. I have had to make the design much larger than I had originally intended for it to become obvious what is being represented. I have probably chosen to do the most difficult one first so I am hoping that the next three designs will be a little easier to draft and then knit.

This afternoon I have started to knit the design that I have been working on for the last three days. Even as I have been knitting it I have thought of a way in which I can give the pattern more impact. I am hoping that I will be able to do enough of this first sock today to be able to show whether the pattern is viable as an entry in the knitting design competition. If it is, then I shall finish the sock as quickly as I can and complete its pair so that I can move on to the next design. I am hoping to be able to enter six sock designs in the competition, and that is a fair bit of knitting, but I also want to enter a lace scarf and that is going to be a much harder item to complete as it requires much more knitting and a lot of concentration while doing that knitting. I also have to create the pattern for this scarf and that is going to have to be done as I am knitting the first half of the scarf. I have about seven weeks to do all this knitting and it is going to be quite a feat to be able to complete it all in time.

To do this means that I am going to have to set aside a period every day where I knit like there is no tomorrow and I am hoping that this will help me to get through the next few months and not have depression dictate how my days are spent.

Back To The Drawing Board

2010-05-29T10:10:00.000+01:00

Having drawn up the four charts for my 'Full House' sock designs, yesterday evening was spent knitting a trial swatch to see if the charts produced the effect that I was looking for. Unfortunately, I have failed at the first hurdle for although the draft charts looked fine, when they were transformed into knitting they didn't have the impact that I was looking for.

This morning I have done another test using just one of the charts, this time testing whether the design looked better as stocking stitch against a reverse stocking stitch background, or reverse stocking stitch against a stocking stitch background. Again, the effect was disappointing so it was back to the drawing board.

For my third attempt I am going to increase the size of the motif in the hope that it will look better when knitted up. I have redrawn one of the designs in this larger size and I am about to knit the test swatch to see if this version is any better.

Having to use larger motifs means that there will only be four on each sock, and the impact of the fifth sock design will not be as great as I had hoped but I will still be able to put all four motifs on one sock which means that I should still be able to create this set of designs as I had originally envisaged.

While there are many exciting sock patterns out there for anyone to try, sock designs for men are a bit more difficult to find. I am hoping that the 'Full House' set will be able to fill the gap in this area. It does mean that I am going to have my work cut out knitting all these socks for the competition, but I am hoping that the originality of the set of patterns will give me a bit of an edge when the judging occurs. Winning one of the prizes would give me some extra funds to spend on wool to add to my stash. And their stash is every knitters home for future projects and dreams of things to come.

Creating Charts

2010-05-28T21:30:00.000+01:00

I went into WH Smith today to buy myself a small ruler and some graph paper. It's a long time since I have used graph paper (Madsadgirl left school a long time ago and didn't do maths during the last two years of school) but I needed some to be able to draw out the charts that will be needed for my knitting designs.

The charts will eventually have to be put onto the computer so that I can print out the patterns and create the electronic copies that are also required. But for playing around with designs and doing my test pieces graph paper is just the thing to use. I bought some graph paper on Tuesday but didn't look closely enough to the paper that I bought and it wasn't until I had got it home and tried to use it that I realised that 2mm squares just weren't big enough to allow me to put the various symbols into them.

The pad that I bought today has 5mm squares and I have already managed to draft out the designs for one of the socks that I am creating. Having managed to work out what stitches I wanted where to create the pattern, I then had to redraft the charts with the designs upside down because I am knitting the socks from the cuff down to the toes. Unfortunately I am unable to post photographs of the socks that I am designing because of the competition rules, but once the competition closing date has passed I will see what I can do.

I have also decided to design a lace scarf for the competition. This also requires lots of charts to be drawn up to work from. I have done the first chart and I have managed to knit this chart. As I want the scarf to be a bit like a sampler I have to work out a number of charts to provide a good range of designs but there must also be some form of linking between them, so I have decided to make it themed on butterflies and flowers/leaves. To ensure that the designs are the right way up when the scarf is worn it will be knitted in two halves and then the two grafted together. This will be a first for me as I have always knitted lace designs that could be viewed from either direction. I'm quite looking forward to the challenge.

Lifelines

2010-05-26T14:00:00.001+01:00

I'm sure that many of us have lifelines; things that help us to remember names, things that help us to remember important places or occasions, and for those suffering with mental illness things that are our coping strategies when things get really bad.

I have a number of lifelines that help me when I am feeling very depressed and I write about them often on this blog, another of my lifelines. Writing was an important part of my daily life when I was working, and when I was studying for my degree. As both work and studying stopped at about the same time (although I have continued to do the odd bit of studying in the intervening period) the loss of writing as everyday occupation impacted on me quite severely.

I don't know why I feel the need to write, nor am I always pleased with what I have written, but writing does help me to remain sane. When I started this blog, I had no clear idea where it would take me, nor what I hoped to achieve with it. I wasn't even sure that it was something that I would keep up. The loss of the ability to maintain an interest in things can be one of the first signs of depression and this might well mean that I would, like many other bloggers, fall by the wayside.

But I haven't fallen by the wayside. Yes, there have been periods when I found it very difficult to find the energy, or enthusiasm to write. Two periods being hospitalized meant that blogging stopped for a while. However, I have always returned and perhaps I am stronger for it.

This blog has always been a cornucopia of subjects. Originally envisaged as a forum for writing about how I dealt with depression, it has become much more than that. The need to write has meant that I would often write about the things that I have seen or heard, that I would describe some of my coping strategies so that others may also embrace them. I have written about the good times (not that there have been many) and the bad, about knitting, about psychotherapy, about strange things that I have seen, about places that I have visited and the blogging friends that I have met.

My blog was about a month old before I told anyone about it. It was about two months old when I mentioned it to Mr Smiley, who became a regular reader and commenter from that moment on and a great source of encouragement when I was finding it difficult to write for the blog. You won't find Mr Smiley's name on any of his comments; they were always made anonymously but because I knew his writing style I knew exactly which were his comments.

It is now more than six months since Mr Smiley's last comment on this blog. He was too ill to read it once he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, so he didn't know how well received the posts under the title Tackling the Mental Health Minefield had been, which is a shame because it was he who encouraged me to write about my experiences so that others might learn or derive support from them.

I guess that it would be true to say that Mr Smiley was another of my lifelines. I did wonder whether I would be able to continue without his support and encouragement. The fact that I am still blogging shows that I could, but it does grieve me that he is not here to read about my meetings with blogging friends, about the knitting group that I have joined (about which he would have been really pleased) and my new adventures in designing knitting patterns.

Lifelines are important to us and we should never underestimate the impact that they have on our lives or on what they allow us to achieve. I will continue to use my lifelines to help me keep my head above water and to make the most of every day that I have.

I Did It ... And More

2010-05-25T21:45:00.000+01:00

Yes, I finally managed to cast on the stitches and complete the 10 rows of rib for the cuff of my sock. I am now halfway through the first repeat of the pattern in the leg part.

I actually managed to get the sock properly under way before going to bed last night. Perhaps I shouldn't have done that because it was pretty late when I eventually settled down for the night and I had to be up early this morning because being Tuesday it was psychotherapy day.

My night-time medication certainly puts me to sleep these days, but it also means that I am very drowsy in the morning and when I have to go out I have to make sure that I set the alarm to wake me up. When the alarm goes off, I force myself out of bed immediately because I know that if I didn't I would quickly go back to sleep again.

Today's psychotherapy session started with us discussing when this therapy is going to end. This was always intended to be a short period of therapy, but it has gone on for longer than originally planned. The end of July has now been set as the time for ending this therapy which means between six and eight more sessions. I know that I will have to miss one session because I am due to have the surgery to deal with my delicate problem on 13th July.

After this initial discussion we moved on to the therapy proper. We focused on how I find it difficult to express my emotions. Suppressing one's emotions meant that it can be very difficult to deal with normal reactions to things like bereavement. Being unable to show grief, or anger, or any of the other emotions that one might expect to exhibit at difficult times in your life, has meant that I have done a lot of damage to myself mentally. Painful, and difficult, as this period of therapy has been, my therapist has helped me to start to experience emotions that I have fought to control for most of my life.

After my therapy session I had a quick lunch and then caught a bus to take me to Waterloo and a quick visit to I Knit London. Having decided to enter the knitting design competition I have started to design four more sock patterns that will be based on a common theme, and I have also decided to have a go as designing a lace scarf too. With all these projects on the board, some more yarn was required and that was what I was going to the shop for. I have managed to find four lovely yarns for the socks, and a wonderful lilac-pink laceweight yarn for the scarf.

It looks as though I am going to be busy for the next couple of months.

Sheer Frustration

2010-05-24T19:50:00.000+01:00

One of my character traits is that I show a great deal of patience. Most of the time any way. I admit that when I am very depressed, patience is one of the things that disappears along with self-confidence, self-esteem and my ability to concentrate. I'm no different to anyone else in these circumstances and when these things happen frustration creeps in when anything that I am doing goes wrong.

This afternoon I have drafted the knitting pattern for my sock design and I have started knitting the second sock using the pattern. Three times I have started this second sock, and three times I have inadvertently pulled at the wrong needle of the five that I am using and ended up having 16 stitches not on their needle.

The fact that I have done this three times is an indicator that I am not concentrating on what I am doing. I can't blame it on watching television because I don't have it on. I'm not at a difficult stage in the pattern, its just working the rib that forms the cuff. But for some reason I just keep trying to transfer a needle that is in my left hand to my right hand and I keep moving the wrong one. The result being that I have two needles without stitches instead of one.

Sheer frustration!

Am I Really A Depression Hero?

2010-05-24T14:00:00.001+01:00

Today I am being featured as a "Depression Hero" on this blog. It's very flattering to be considered a hero by someone, but do I really deserve the title?

One of the things that I have learnt since beginning this blog is that there are some really nice people out there in the blogosphere. There are people who have encouraged me to keep writing when I was finding it difficult, people who are worried when I don't write a post and will send me an email to make sure that I am okay, people who are kind enough to comment, people who love to hear about my knitting exploits, and people who just read the blog because they like what I have to say or the way that I say it.

Perhaps the best thing to have happened to me since I started this blog is that I have made a number of virtual friends as well as a few who are no longer virtual but who I meet on an occasional basis. The fact that I am old enough to be mother to each of these new friends doesn't matter. I offer a virtual ear to listen to their problems and they offer support to me when I am at my lowest. It is a mutual help function that is somehow missing in much of life today.

One of the things that I have learnt from blogging is that there is much that we can do to help someone who we don't know and who may be located in a town or city, or even a country, far away from our own. And much help can be received from them. Mental health bloggers are wonderful at supporting other mental health bloggers when things are not going well. It is because we have some understanding of what the other person is going through, that we can empathise and offer support that is based on experience. We won't ever tell a fellow sufferer 'to pull yourself together' nor will we ever allow a fellow sufferer to feel alone when a few words from us can make the difference that shows that there is someone out there who cares.

If that is what makes a Depression Hero then perhaps I am one. All I have ever wanted to do with my blog is to give others an idea of how I cope with long-term severe depression and perhaps hope to do something to help to reduce the discrimination and stigma that is associated with mental illness. I am really very proud, and a little embarrassed, at being Wendy Love's first Depression Hero, and I look forward to reading about more of her heroes as the weeks pass by.

A Sense Of Achievement

2010-05-23T20:23:00.004+01:00

Well, I've done it! The first sock that has been of my own design has been completed. I now have to sit down at the computer and write out the pattern and produce the two charts that are necessary for the design to be worked. One of the charts is going to be pretty simple to complete, the second a little less so but I have already half completed it so it shouldn't take me too long to finish.

Once the pattern is written, I will have to knit the second sock using the pattern as my guide so that I can make sure that the instructions are clear and correct. If everything works out okay, and the second sock matches the first then I will have achieved what I set out to do.

Having created this design, I have had an idea for some further patterns. This first one has diamonds as its theme, so I have decided to see if it would be possible to design some similar socks to incorporate hearts, clubs and spades, thereby creating a set of patterns under the name 'A Full House'. I'm not sure that it will be possible, but I'm going to have a go. This time I will create the patterns first and then try knitting them to see whether the patterns work or not.

Having something to focus on, as creating this pattern has done, is proving helpful in keeping me from dwelling on how bad I am feeling. I think that the fact that the socks are knitted in the round helps a great deal because I can just keep knitting one needleful after another and the sock keeps growing without me really noticing it.

I have to thank my Mum and my Grandma, who taught me to knit at a very young age, for giving me a skill that has done so much to help me deal with depression over the last 12 years.

Life Is Topsy-turvy

2010-05-22T22:46:00.003+01:00

All my life I have been a morning person. I have never found it difficult to get up in the morning, and once up I was always raring to go for the day. By 9pm I would be starting to flag and 10pm was my bed-time for many years. I might not go to sleep straight away, most nights I would read for about half and hour and it was not uncommon for me to fall asleep with my book in my hand and still wearing my glasses.

Over the last year or so, I have found that I am becoming a night owl. I no longer find it easy to get up in the morning and it is not unusual for me to still be awake in the early hours of the morning. I know that part of this is caused by depression, but I don't think it explains it completely because even when I am not in the depths of depression, I am staying up later and sleeping well into the morning.

So, it seems as though my life is becoming topsy-turvy, that I am able to function well into the evening where just a couple of years ago it would have been impossible. This means that I am often still knitting at midnight, and it has meant that my eating habits have changed too. I rarely eat breakfast in the morning; my first meal of the day is more likely to be a kind of brunch taken at about 11.30am. My next meal will probably be in the early evening, and if I have a large meal this will be my last meal of the day, or if I have something more akin to a snack then I will probably have something else to eat at about 10pm.

This change to how I spend each 24-hour period is being reinforced by the medication that I am taking for depression. I have recently had an addition to this medication and it has meant that I am at long last getting a decent night's sleep most nights. But it also means that I am finding it even more difficult to get up in the morning. I seem to wake at about 7am to answer the call of nature but I have to go back to bed again because I am so sleepy. I will fall asleep almost as soon as I am in bed again, and will usually sleep for several more hours.

I'm hoping that this extreme sleeping will become less of a problem as my body gets used to the new medication. It makes me wake up with a very dry mouth but while at first that dryness would last throughout the day, I have realised that today that dryness was gone by mid-afternoon. And the extreme sleepiness that I have been experiencing well into the afternoon is now staying with me for far less time. Now I just need to see if I can experience an improvement in my mood so that I don't feel depressed all of the time.

Knitting Design Competition

2010-05-21T18:43:00.003+01:00

When I was at I Knit on Wednesday I started work on my own sock pattern. It was the second design that I had tried because I realised very early on that the first one that I was knitting just wouldn't work because the yarn was too dark a colour for the pattern to be visible.

While I was working on this new design, Lorraine, who works in I Knit, told me that they were running a design competition so yesterday I emailed her for the rules for entry and this morning I received them. There are three categories, a knitted lace shawl or scarf, a full-size garment (for either an adult or child), and accessories (scarf, hat, mittens, gloves, socks), and each of the categories has three prizes, £250 +wool, £100 + wool, and £50 + wool.

Entries don't have to be in until the middle of August, so I have the opportunity to create more than one design. The knitting of the items is the easy part, the difficult part will be writing the pattern. One of the good things about designing socks is that I can knit one, then write the pattern, and use the pattern to knit the second sock, hopefully spotting any problems or errors as I knit the second sock.

Deciding to enter the competition has also given me something to focus on. There is some purpose in my knitting rather than it being just something to do to pass the time. So this evening I shall focus on the sock and hopefully get to the stage of turning the heel, maybe even completing the manoeuvre. The foot part of the sock is going to be the more difficult part of the pattern because I have decided that rather than have the pattern repeat across the width of the instep part of the sock, it is going to form a single line of moss stitch diamonds from ankle to heel. I think that this will give more impact to the design, but only time will tell.

A Bit Of Success (Hopefully)

2010-05-20T20:42:00.004+01:00

Having had a disaster with my first attempt at designing a sock, I started again and I think that my second attempt may turn out better. I have gone for a yarn that is much lighter in colour, comprising blues, lilacs and green, and a stitch pattern which is based on moss stitch diamonds. I have completed one full pattern repeat and so far so good, but I know that the real test will come when I start work on the second half of the sock, that is after I have turned the heel.

I have also made a start on a shawl using the very fine yarn that I bought a few weeks ago. I had decided on a pattern, then changed my mind but having started this second pattern I have decided that the yarn is just too fine for the pattern that I had chosen and there was a serious risk of me breaking the yarn when working the little bobbles that were an intrinsic part of the pattern.

So this afternoon I have started work on the shawl using the first pattern that I had selected. It begins with eight rows of garter stitch before moving on to the lace border that surrounds the sampler design that forms the centre of the shawl. The garter stitch rows were easy to complete and didn't take me very long, then I started on the first lace chart. I had almost finished the first row when I realised that I had gone wrong somewhere because I didn't have the right number of stitches at the end. Now I have to carefully look at the row to find out where I went wrong and unpick to that point to get it back on track. This is a job which requires a degree of concentration that I am not sure that I have at the moment.

My concentration has not been good for a while now. I am finding it impossible to read a book and it has also been quite difficult to concentrate on my knitting which is why I have been spending much of my time knitting socks recently. Over recent weeks I have been able to blame my lack of concentration on the lack of sleep that I was also experiencing. However, with the addition of another form of medication to my already long list I am no longer having problems sleeping. Now I am having a problem staying awake.

I had hoped that getting some sleep would help me to start to come out of this period of depression, but it doesn't seem to have happened. I am still feeling very depressed and, at times, finding it difficult to carry out even the basic functions of everyday life. But, I shall persevere as I have for almost 12 years now and hope that it won't be too long before I am able to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

A Dismal Failure

2010-05-19T10:16:00.003+01:00

Well, the sock has been unravelled. I opted for a rather simple stitch pattern which I was sure would translate well for use on a sock but unfortunately the wool that I was using for the sock had too dark a base colour so the pattern did not show up particularly well. My only course of action was to take it off the needles and start again.

Fortunately I have a reasonable range of sock yarn in my stash so I am going to start my exercise in design again, but this time with a yarn that is much lighter in colour and which, because of this, will allow me to choose a more exciting stitch pattern to incorporate into the sock. So, armed with my book, my knitting needles and my new choice of yarn, I will be setting off for the knitting group and some serious knitting and knitters' chat.

I'll let you know how I get on later.

A Girl's Gotta Do

2010-05-18T20:50:00.000+01:00

There are many so called quotes that were never, in fact, spoken by the person to whom they are attributed. Frank Spencer never said "Betty, I've got a problem", Humphrey Bogart didn't say "Play it again, Sam" and it is probable that John Wayne didn't say "A man's gotta do, what a man's gotta do" even though it is a phrase beloved of those trying to do a John Wayne impersonation.

However, this girl has decided that the thing that she has "gotta do" is try her hand at designing a knitting pattern. As an avid knitter it is perhaps surprising that I have never done this before. I have adapted patterns and I've knitted a cardigan without the aid of a pattern, but it was a very simple design and was meant for wearing around the house or in the garden and not for public exhibition. But having got the sock knitting bug, I thought that it was perhaps now time to give it a try.

I bought a book yesterday that has 300 stitch patterns in it. There are simple combinations of plain and purl stitches, twists, cables, bobbles and leaves, lace, and complex patterns involving the use of colours. Many of the patterns are only suitable for flat items, such as a cardigan or pullover, but some look as though they could be adapted for an item that is knitted in the round, as socks are.

To start with I am going to use a sock pattern that I know produces items to a given size as the basis for my design. I have nearly finished the rib of the cuff of the sock and now I have to make a decision as to which of the designs in the book that I am going to use for my first attempt at designing a pattern that others may also like to knit.

I am torn between a simple combination of plain and purl, a rather attractive and unusual design based on cable techniques, a simple lace design worked over a small number of stitches and rows, or a twisted stitch design. It is important to find a pattern that has the right number of stitches for the repeat that is possible for the base sock pattern that I am using. This means that the pattern has to be based on a 4-stitch, 8-stitch, or 16-stitch repeat. This reduces the number of designs that are available to me, but there are still sufficient variations to make the choice quite difficult. An additional difficulty is that not only is it important to take the stitch repetition into consideration, but it is the number of rows needed to complete a pattern repeat that needs to be entered into the equation.

I am going to knit the last couple of rows for the cuff and then I am going to have to make my decision. I know that it is likely that I will end up having to unravel the sock because the design just doesn't work in the yarn that I am using. But I might be lucky and the design that I choose may look really good. If things go well, it may be possible for me to post a photograph here of the first sock designed by Madsadgirl.

Three Girls At The Fountains

2010-05-17T21:53:00.004+01:00

Okay, so I know that isn't really the name of the film, or its title song, but the meeting place for Faye, Lily and myself on Saturday was Trafalgar Square just a few yards from one of the famous fountains there. Saturday brought my busy week to an end and was a lovely day spent with two lovely young ladies. We met at about 12.45 and made our way to the restaurant where we were going to have lunch. This turned out to be a very leisurely affair. We took ages to order our food because we were so busy talking (I think the waitress had three attempts at taking our order) and we also managed to save some money because I had found a discount voucher online which meant that one of our pizzas came free. After lunch we walked across Waterloo Bridge and made our way to I Knit London, the wool shop where I go to my knitting group. Faye bought some wool and a circular needle to make a blanket for her young cousin, and Lily bought a crochet hook which has a light in it so she can crochet in the dark. After making the purchases we headed across the road to a small park which is situated opposite the Old Vic and sat there talking for several hours. Eventually it was time for us to go our separate ways; Lily was going to meet her sister, Faye was off to meet another friend at Greenwich, and I was to wend my way home.

I can't remember the last time that I had such a busy week, and things have started in a similar vein this week with me spending all morning at the hospital for my pre-operation assessment. The operation is to deal with the little problem that I have that is not mentioned in polite society and I can't wait to have the operation because life is just so uncomfortable for me at the moment. I'm hoping that I won't have to wait too long for a date for the surgery.

Tomorrow is psychotherapy day and I must go and do a bit of shopping afterwards. I need to buy some food and a dressing gown. At home I don't bother with such a thing, but I have been told that I need to take one with me when I go for surgery to cover up my nether regions owing to having to wear a wonderful hospital gown that probably will leave everything open for anyone to see.

I may actually be able to spend most of Wednesday at home, although I will be going to the knitting group Wednesday evening and it makes sense to go a couple of hours before it actually starts because it means that I can then miss the crowds at rush hour.

Apologies Again

2010-05-13T23:27:00.005+01:00

I must apologise again for not posting. Life for me is still very difficult and not being made any easier by almost certainly having to look for a new home. This is something that perhaps may turn out to be a blessing in disguise, but it doesn't make it any easier when at the moment it is as much as I can do to drag myself out of bed each day.

Tuesday's psychotherapy session was difficult. I have a half written post about it and about the meeting later that day with the guy who got the job that I applied for at the beginning of the year. I will finish it and publish it tomorrow. Yesterday I was feeling so awful that I couldn't face going out to the knitting group, which was a bit of a pain because I wanted to look to see if the shop had some more of the fabulous yarn that I bought a couple of weeks ago. Today I had an appointment with my psychiatrist, the nice Dr M, and as a result I now have to go to see my GP tomorrow to get a prescription for another additional antidepressant. Dr M is really concerned about how depressed I am and that I am not sleeping, which is probably making the depression even worse.

I'm hoping that Saturday turns out to be a nice day because I am meeting Lily and Faye in Trafalgar Square and we are going to have lunch together and possibly go looking at knitting supplies. I won't need to buy anything because I went to the knitting shop after I had been to see Dr M today and manage to secure the yarn that I wanted to add to that which I had bought a couple of weeks ago and I can now knit the shawl that I had hoped to be able to make with it. It's going to be a project for the future because I really don't think that I am in the right frame of mind to start working on it at the moment. If I can't even manage to read a book because my concentration is so bad, then there is no chance that I can knit a complicated lace shawl which requires me to follow several charts at the same time. When I do eventually get the shawl started I will post some pictures of my work of art as it progresses. It is not going to be a quick project, but I am sure that it will be worth the effort in the end.

Anxiety And A Busy Day Ahead

2010-05-11T08:45:00.000+01:00

For the first time in several weeks I have woken this morning in a state of anxiety. Anxiety is nothing new on psychotherapy days, but in recent weeks it has remained at bay until I am actually waiting to go into my therapist's office. Today, I am back to the old feelings of a lurching stomach and uncontrollable shivering.

I was later than I wanted to be in going to bed last night. I think that it was because I got engrossed in my knitting and I didn't notice the time pass by. It was only when I got to the stage of grafting the stitches of the toe together that I realised that it was nearly midnight. When I did go to bed it took me almost an hour to get off to sleep, and then I was awake again at 5.40 this morning.

So, now I am about to get myself ready to head out for the day. First to the hospital for my psychotherapy session, then into town to get some lunch and then off to see the chap about record access. There will be some hanging around because I could not get the things more closely timed, but I will go equipped to do something constructive.

Mine is not a large handbag, but thanks to the ingenuity of the designers at Kipling, it is a bit like Mary Poppins' carpet bag. It can take an amazing array of items and there still be room for more. This means that I can make sure that I have my purse, my pocket organiser, a hair brush, a two-way mirror, my Oyster card, my building society book, some chewing gum, a packet of Polos, my GTN spray, various letters for forthcoming appointments (if they are in the bag already then I won't be looking for them on the day), a large bundle of tissues (always needed on psychotherapy day, and even though there are always plenty of boxes of tissues in my therapist's office, I much prefer my soft ones to his NHS issue rough ones), my DSi in its hard case with 6 games to choose from, and my knitting.

Yes, that is right, I have managed to get the wool and the five double-pointed needles into my handbag so that I can do a bit of the second sock while trying to pass the time. I have started it this morning and managed to do a few rows to get it started, now it is there for me to do if I get the opportunity.

All that remains for me to do before I set off for the day is to finish getting dressed and to take my morning medication. I have been a bit lax with the medication just recently. Sometimes it has been lunchtime before I have remembered to take it and some days I haven't taken it at all. So, I shall do that now and then get on my way.

It Was A Rhetorical Question

2010-05-10T20:30:00.000+01:00

Okay, so it was a bit stupid to entitle yesterday's post "Why Do Socks Have To Be Made In Pairs", but my point was that having knitted one sock, I always hate having to knit its pair rather than starting a new project.

I am also aware that it is possible to knit both socks at the same time if you use circular needles, but having tried it once and having found that I didn't know whether I was coming or going, I will stick to knitting socks on double-pointed needles and one at a time.

So, as we are on the subject of socks, I have progressed on the one that I am knitting at the moment. Heel was turned yesterday, stitches picked up on both sides of the heel flap, and the necessary decreases have been made. I am now about half way to where I need to start the toe decreases. I don't suppose that I will get to that stage tonight, but I will certainly do my best to get as much done as possible.

Tomorrow is psychotherapy day, so that means having to get up early and the morning being taken care of. Then I shall go into town for lunch before going off to the meeting that I wrote about last week. That pretty much takes care of most of tomorrow, so I will be glad to get home to do a bit of knitting to unwind from what will probably be a quite traumatic day.

Then on Wednesday I shall be going to the knitting group again. I am really enjoying going to the shop and sitting with a group of knitters, who chat while they knit and have a drink or two, too. I'm going to take my socks with me (I should be well on the way with the second one by then) as well as the lace shawl that I am working on. That way I can have a choice of what I work on. If I manage to finish the socks, I will make sure that I have some wool with me so that I can start another pair if I want to. Socks are definitely easier to be working on when you are chatting; lace knitting is not always the best thing to be working on if you are chatting while you are knitting.

I also have a day planned for Saturday. But more about that later.

Why Do Socks Have To Be Made In Pairs?

2010-05-09T19:42:00.003+01:00

The sock progressed well yesterday evening. I finished the leg part and actually did a few rows of the reinforced heel area before putting it down for the night.

I was very tired when I went to bed but I couldn't get to sleep straight away. I knew that I needed something to distract me and which would help to encourage the sleep to come. So I sat back in bed with my DSi playing the game that I got on Friday. It worked because after about half an hour I could actually feel myself falling asleep as I was playing the game. I put the stylus back in its slot, pushed the power button to switch the DSi off, put it down on the bedside table and the next thing I remember was waking up several hours later.

This afternoon I have been working on the sock again. The heel has been turned and I just have to pick up the last few stitches along the side of the heel flap and then I can start working on the foot of the sock and start heading towards the toes and the grafting at the end. I know that I won't get the sock finished tonight, I will probably keep stopping to watch Lewis when it starts in a few minutes time, but I will do as much as I can so that I can get to work on its pair as soon as possible because I have so much lovely sock wool waiting to be used and so many patterns to try.

So it is time to publish this post and pick up the needles so that work can progress.

Knitting Socks As A Coping Strategy

2010-05-08T19:55:00.000+01:00

I finally managed to get a sensible amount of sleep last night after nearly a fortnight where the best that I have been able to manage is a couple of hours a night. I'm never sure whether the depression causes the inability to sleep, or the lack of sleep causes the depression. Whichever it is, there can be no doubt that for me the inability to sleep is always the indicator of a period of severe mental unwellness.

I have always had a number of things that I use as coping strategies when I am feeling depressed. For me it is important to try to ensure that I keep my mind occupied so that I don't have time to think about how bad I am feeling. Sometimes I am successful, but often it feels like I am fighting a losing battle and the bad thoughts invade my mind and are difficult to control.

I haven't been able to read more than a few sentences for some weeks so reading a book, one of my favourite pastimes has not been on the agenda. I have managed to while away the odd hour or two playing games on my Nintendo DSi. I don't have many games for it, but the ones that I have do keep me occupied and help me to focus on things other than the depression.

But it is knitting that I turn to most often, and at the moment I am knitting socks as a coping strategy. One of the joys of knitting socks is that as a garment they are fairly quick to knit. A sock generally takes me a couple of evenings to complete, so a pair can easily be knitted inside a week. And there are literally thousands of sock patterns on the Internet to chose from, many of them absolutely free, so it is possible to make every pair completely different to anything that you have knitted before.

But I am a bit predictable because I tend to use a few patterns that I have used before and which I know will give me the results that I want. I like to use hand-dyed yarns because of their unpredictability of colour and the colour mixtures that the dyers select. There are almost as many different sock yarns to chose from as their are patterns for socks. This means that even if you use the same pattern for each pair of socks, by using a different yarn for each pair you can have an extensive selection of socks each of which will appear different from the others.

So I am in the process of knitting another pair of socks. I'm using the same pattern as I used for the last pair of socks that I knitted. They are less colourful than some that I have made being made in a yarn that is shades of one colour rather than being made up of several colours. I should be able to get to the stage of turning the heel this evening as it is an easy pattern to follow. That means that I should have the pair finished by either Thursday or Friday. And there are only a couple of ends to sew in which means that there is little finishing off, a job that I hate.

Continuing To Go Downhill

2010-05-07T09:30:00.000+01:00

I am continuing to fall deeper into depression and finding life very difficult to sustain. I know that this is in part due to my wedding anniversary approaching and no matter how hard I try to ensure that I don't think about it, the fact that it is another year alone keeps invading my mind.

But this is not the biggest factor affecting me at the moment. Unfortunately, the thing that is causing me most of my problems is something that I have brought on myself by agreeing to do something, without first giving sufficient thought to the possible affect it may have on me and my mood. I think that I have a strong sense of duty and I believe it is that which led me to agreeing to the request without considering the impact.

Last week I received an email asking if I would agree to meet with the person who got the job that I applied for earlier this year. The request was somewhat vague and I have had rather conflicting information about what it is that is hoped to be achieved from the meeting. I know that I have to write to the person who asked me to attend this meeting for more information on what he hopes will be achieved, but I also need to let him know that I am now having serious reservations about this meeting because of the effect it is having on me.

Tuesday's psychotherapy session focused on my having agreed to a meeting that was obviously having a very detrimental effect on me. My therapist sought to find out why I agreed to the meeting so quickly after the request was made. He thinks that I have made a mistake because of the effect that it is having on me; I think that he is probably right. He thinks that I do these things because I don't want to upset anyone or to let them down. The result is that I end up punishing myself when simply saying 'No' would have stopped that from happening.

Although it is difficult to string two sentences together at the moment I am going to see if I can manage to get back to blogging on a daily basis. I'm not sure how interesting the posts will be, but it can be good for me and I think that I need to make the effort, not least because I have been very heartened by the fact that people are still looking at the blog on a daily basis and because I have had some lovely messages hoping that I will soon be back to regular blogging. Special thanks to Little Feet who wrote an email hoping that I was okay and who prompted me to write the previous post which explained that things were not going well.

Not At My Best

2010-05-02T19:32:00.002+01:00

I'm sorry that I haven't written the post that I said I would after my adventures on Wednesday. Life has taken a bit of a nose-dive again and I am having problems with just day-to-day living, let alone writing the blog.

I am hoping that I will be back to blogging in a day or two and I promise I will tell you about the lovely group of knitters in whose company I spent Wednesday evening. They were so nice that I have decided to make this the group that I meet with regularly, so you will be getting regular updates about what we are all knitting or talking about.

A Long Day

2010-04-28T22:17:00.002+01:00

It's been a long day today. I know that is a stupid thing to say because days are all the same length (give or take the odd millisecond). But I am sure that you understand what I mean.

I have been out of the house for about 12 hours (almost unheard of for me) and I have been out and about to a new shopping centre (well, one that I haven't been to before) and I've spent a fair bit of time in my new favourite knitting shop (and I even had an alcoholic drink while knitting in there).

There's lots to tell you about and some photographs to show some of my work, but they will have to wait for tomorrow because I am absolutely worn out. So come back tomorrow and I'll tell you all about my long day.

Best Foot Forward

2010-04-27T20:30:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm afraid that I didn't do as I said I would. Last night I did not go to bed early and I didn't get much sleep. And it wasn't just my knitting that was to blame.

I managed to finish the leg part of the sock and I did a few rows of the heel flap and then put my knitting down. I then got myself ready for bed and actually climbed into bed, but sleep was unfortunately on the agenda. I tried reading but that didn't work, so I turned to Sudoku puzzles in the hope that they would do the trick. Unfortunately not. Sleep just would not come no matter how hard I tried, and the harder I tried the more awake I seemed to become. I did eventually manage to drop off only to be woken by the alarm after what seemed like only a couple of hours sleep. It was probably more than I thought, but it wasn't really enough to allow me to feel refreshed.

But having got up with the alarm, I ensured that my bed didn't call to me by taking a cold(ish) shower, then washed my hair and towel dried it. This meant that I had lost that lovely warm bed feeling that makes it so difficult to get up when you don't want to and I was soon ready to leave for my psychotherapy appointment.

Psychotherapy was really hard today. It was both physically and emotionally overwhelming at times, but for all that it was a session where a great deal was achieved. The session finished with my therapist asking me about last week's assessment appointment. He asked what had been talked about, whether I had been given any indication as to whether I would be accepted for group psychotherapy (I was and I have been), and whether I had learnt anything from the appointment (yes, I had). We then talked for a few minutes about how hard I was likely to find group therapy. Then the ordeal was over and with a goodbye, see you next week, it was time for me to go.

I then went to do a bit of shopping (lots of vegetables for some more vegetarian dishes that I want to try), lunch and then the bus home. Since arriving back home I have been trying to relax and recover from the effects of psychotherapy. I've read a few blogs, read a few emails and written one, made a telephone call and received one in reply to my call, but most of all I have been knitting. The heel flap has been completed, the heel has been turned, and now I am working my way towards the toe. I won't finish the sock tonight, but I will do as much as I can before tiredness overcomes me, and I am sure that it will overcome me tonight.

Tomorrow, I am going to go shopping for a new mobile phone and then I am going to join a knitting group for a few hours in the evening. Not the same group that I was with last week; this time it is going to be a group that meets a couple of evenings a week in the shop where I have been buying wool for the last couple of months. And the shop has a drinks licence too.

Turning The Heel

2010-04-26T19:52:00.002+01:00

Today has been a strange day. I seem to have done a lot of things and yet not really accomplished anything. That is until this evening, where progress has been rather good on my second sock.

One of the benefits of knitting two identical items is that the second one invariably gets done quicker. I started the second sock yesterday evening but only did a few rows before I got engrossed in something else so it was put down. Late this afternoon I picked up my knitting again and finished the rib and started on the pattern on the leg of the sock. It's a very simple pattern which only requires that I be able to count to 3. This is something that I have been able to do since I was a very young child, and as the requirement is only required on alternate rows, I do get to knit half the rows without having to count at all.

Knitting in the round, as you do when making socks, does have its pitfalls nevertheless. The main one is that you have to be aware where each round starts and finishes and if possible it is best to have the start and finish on different needles. I use a small brass safety pin to indicate the end of the round, and to count the number of pattern repeats. I have to complete 18 pattern repeats and then I start the procedure for turning the heel. Hopefully, I will get that far this evening.

Turning the heel always seemed an incredibly difficult thing to have to accomplish when I was younger, and it seemed so difficult that I avoided knitting socks for many years. Having knitted a number of pairs of socks over the last couple of years, I now wonder why I thought that it was so difficult. It is simple enough that anyone who can follow a pattern can do it.

So, I am going to pick up my knitting and based on how long it has taken me to knit the pattern repeats that I have so far completed, I think that I can reach the point where I start work on the heel while watching a film tonight. But then I will put my knitting down, much as I would probably love to continue because I don't want to be too late to bed tonight. Tomorrow is psychotherapy day and that means having to get up early, and a late night because I have become engrossed in my knitting is not a good idea.

Trying To Focus The Mind

2010-04-25T18:15:00.000+01:00

Now that Spring is finally here I ought to be feeling better. The days are longer, there is now some warmth in the sun, the birds seem to be tweeting like mad, yet I am still in the doldrums.

One thing I am sure about is that there is not a seasonal factor involved in my depression. Seasonal affective disorder it is not, and yet there is a very definite pattern involved in how I cycle through the bad times and the worse times. It's birthdays and anniversaries that signal the rise and fall of my mood and no matter how hard I try to stop this happening I seem to be powerless.

I'm still having serious problems with my ability to concentrate. This means that I have not been able to read a book for weeks now, and while I am able to knit, it has to be something relatively simple otherwise I am constantly making mistakes (or dropping stitches).

One of the things that you are often taught in therapy are coping strategies. This is not something that I have ever been taught but I have often been complimented on the way that I find things to do when I am at my lowest. I have used studying, knitting, embroidery, reading, card-making and crocheting as a means of trying to occupy my mind at various times but none of them is completely effective at stopping the despair from its insidious creeping into my brain.

So, today I am knitting in an effort to stave off the negative thoughts. It's not perfect but it is helping, and I will have something useful at the end of it all. Today I am going to finish a sock and begin its pair. Having made one, I know how many rows I need to knit to complete each part of the sock and this helps to give me a focus. I have 19 rows of this first sock left to knit, and as they are rows that include a number of decreases to shape the toe, the number of stitches for each round will diminish and therefore become quicker to knit.

I am so grateful that I was taught all these old-fashioned crafts when I was young so that I have something to occupy my mind now when I need it most.

Hitting The Bottle Again

2010-04-24T19:19:00.002+01:00

I don't drink alcohol very often. Okay, so I had half a bottle of wine when I went out for a meal last Saturday, but that was the exception rather than the rule. A number of the various medications that I take say that I should avoid alcohol, and I am well aware how easy it would be to turn to alcohol to try to help my depressed mood even when I am aware that alcohol adds to the depression rather than suppressing it.

Today, I have been shopping for vegetables (lots of them so that I could make a vegetarian casserole in bulk and freeze portions of it) and I added a bottle of sparkling wine to the shopping bag. I did the cooking this afternoon and portioned the casserole out and it is now in the freezer for future meals.

this evening I have enjoyed a homemade curry (something that I already had in the freezer) and I have indulged in the wine with the curry. I had a late breakfast so didn't have any lunch and having the wine with my evening meal has meant that it has gone straight to my head. I'm sure that the effects will soon wear off and then I will be able to do a little bit of knitting while I watch television.

My sock is growing and having turned the heel I am now working my way along the foot towards the decreasing for the toes and then the finishing of the sock. It should progress reasonably well once the alcoholic effects have dissipated. At the moment I am feeling somewhat light-headed and knitting is the last thing that I want to do as I am sure to make mistakes and having progressed so well I don't want any errors to creep in caused by knitting under the influence.

So this evening, I shall finish watching the DVD that I have running at the moment (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; I couldn't manage anything more intellectual at the moment) and then I shall see how I am feeling and if I'm a little less befuddled then I will knit while I watch something on the box.

One thing is certain, I am likely to be able to fall asleep pretty easily this evening having drunk a bottle of wine. I must remember to drink plenty of water before I go to bed even if it means having to get up in the night, because I don't want to wake up with a headache from my little indulgence.

All Fingers And Thumbs

2010-04-23T20:38:00.002+01:00

I've been all fingers and thumbs with my knitting this week which is a bit strange because I have been knitting socks not gloves.

I started knitting a sock on Monday while I was in the I knit store, and continued with it while at the Stitch London gathering. It was progressing quite well, but it wasn't suitable for working on when I was watching television as it was quite a complicated pattern with a 12-row repeat.

In order to have something to work on while watching television I started working on a second sock. This was a much simpler pattern with only a 5-row pattern repeat and only one of those rows required much in the way of concentration. The sock grew quite nicely and I was approaching the heel when disaster struck. I inadvertently pulled a needle thinking it was the spare needle when in fact it was one of the needles with stitches on. I tried to pick up the stitches but it was impossible, so I ended up having to pull all the needles out and unpick the sock.

That all occurred early this morning; it was too early to get up but I had spent much of yesterday sleeping and I'd slept pretty well last night so I had decided to do a few rows of knitting until it was time to get up. Having had to give up on one sock, I picked up the other one to work on. Big mistake. Within five minutes I had dropped some stitches and again they were impossible to pick up so a second sock had to be unpicked.

This afternoon I started work on a different sock pattern. I have knitted the cuff of the sock and I'm progressing well on the leg. It is a pretty simple pattern and hasn't caused me any problems. So far. I shall continue with this sock this evening while I am watching television and if all goes well I may get near to turning the heel this evening. But I'll probably leave that part until tomorrow. I don't think that I could face any more mistakes today without it affecting my mood, which while not perfect is certainly better than it was a week or two ago.

Psychotherapy And All That

2010-04-21T23:30:00.000+01:00

I've had a busy week and it's only Wednesday. Other people probably wouldn't see it as a busy week, but as I rarely leave the house other than for my weekly psychotherapy session, to have been out for prolonged periods on three consecutive days has been almost unheard of for a considerable time.

I've already written about Monday's activities, so here is an update on what has been happening over the last couple of days.

Yesterday saw a return to psychotherapy after a two-week break while my psychotherapist was on leave. I have always suffered with terrible anxiety before my psychotherapy sessions but over the last month or so I have found Tuesday mornings less of an ordeal. I still leave the house far too early for my 11.15am appointment, but being early for any appointment is not something that I am really concerned about. On arrival at the hospital I got myself a cup of tea from the kiosk and went outside to the garden to sit in the sun while I drank my tea.

It was very apparent that Spring has finally arrived in the hospital's garden. When I was last there the trees were still barely in bud and only a couple of daffodils had managed to force themselves into bloom. Yesterday, the trees were covered in fresh green leaves and in addition to there being many more daffodils, there were tulips and several shrubs in full bloom.

Eventually it was time for me to make my way up to the 4th floor for my appointment. At this moment I was still calm but the moment that I took a seat to await my psychotherapist calling me to his office, the anxiety started to begin. I had a few minutes wait, all the time willing myself to relax and being partly successful. But it was all wasted because the moment that my psychotherapist said hello and I walked into his office anxiety swept over me in painful waves. And as I sat it my usual chair my therapist was aware by my body language and the pained expression on my face what had just happened.

What was to follow was even more difficult to deal with. After a brief discussion of how I had been since I had last been for therapy, the intensive work began. The probing, the answering of questions, the raising of emotions and being encouraged not to suppress them as I have done for most of my life but to allow them to come out was painful both mentally and physically. It was a hard session yet at the end of it there was a vague sense of success in that I had allowed these feelings out rather than having used them as a weapon against myself.

The session ended with a brief discussion of my feelings about the assessment appointment that I was to have today to find out whether I am a suitable candidate for group psychotherapy. I said that I wasn't particularly concerned about the assessment as I had been through this process before, but that I was aware that some difficult things could come up and that I felt that I would be able to deal with them.

Today arrived and after a bad night with only a couple of hours sleep I was very anxious. I arrived for my appointment about half an hour early and having reported to the reception desk I sat in the waiting area and attempted to read to take my mind off what was to come. Eventually the psychologist with whom I was to have the appointment came to meet me and after saying hello and shaking hands we went to her office for the assessment to begin.

I had been sent a very long questionnaire to fill in in preparation for this appointment some weeks ago, and armed with this, and all the other records that the mental health trust has on me, the psychologist had a lot of information, so some of the most difficult things in my past did not need to be gone over again. There is no doubt that this was probably the less emotional assessment appointment that I have ever had, and while there were tears when I was asked about the circumstances of my husband's death and at a couple of other points in the 90-minute appointment, it was not the traumatic experience that the first assessment appointments had been just over two years ago.

The result of today is that I have been put on the waiting list for group psychotherapy and hopefully in a couple of month's time I will be invited back for a couple of appointments with the psychotherapist in charge of the group before actually joining the group for regular therapy.

You Don't Notice Them Until They Aren't There

2010-04-20T22:20:00.000+01:00

Regular readers will be aware that I live in south-east London. What they may not be aware of is that my home is almost exactly under the flight path into Heathrow Airport. In fact, it is not uncommon for aircraft to fly over the back of the house and then make a turn to line up for final approach. When aircraft are flying this way passengers on board the aircraft will be given a wonderful view of London as they fly over the Thames heading westwards for landing.

In the days when Concorde was in service, it could be heard long before it came near the house, and I never tired of running out of the back door to watch it approach and then turn over the house to make its final approach. I miss Concorde; it may have been noisy but it was a joy to watch. However, even though there are aircraft flying over the house most hours of the day, I hardly ever notice them; they are just part of the general noise and are less invasive than the sirens of police cars, ambulances or fire engines.

With the lack of flying from British airports over the last few days due to the volcanic ash, I have been aware that it was quieter than normal. Even though I don't usually take any notice of the aircraft flying over every couple of minutes, I had been aware that the noise wasn't there and I had begun to miss it.

But about 20 minutes ago there was a strange sound to be heard. Aircraft have started arriving at Heathrow again and I had become so used to there not being any flying over, that the first one that did sounded much louder than usual. I expect that I will get used to the sound again in a few days and I'll go back to not noticing the aircraft flying over.

My Day Out

2010-04-20T19:45:00.000+01:00

I had a day out yesterday, something that I haven't done for a while. And somewhat unusually for me it was planned.

I tend not to plan days out because something invariably crops up which puts an end to it. Yesterday I got my chores done reasonably early and set off for the bus stop and my day out. A few minutes wait for the bus that I wanted was a pleasure rather than a pain, because the sun was shining and the air was warm.

The first stop on my travels was at Pizza Hut on The Strand. A buffet lunch would see me stoked up for the day and the activity ahead. After lunch a leisurely walk across the road to the bus stop for a bus to take me to Waterloo. I wasn't in any hurry so I looked in shop windows as I walked past and dodged the tourists more intent in looking at their maps than with looking out for other pedestrians.

One of the things that is likely to happen when you are walking around this part of London is that you will see somebody famous. Sometimes it will be a politician, on other occasions it will be a well-known actor on their way to whichever theatre they are performing in. Yesterday's celebrity was spotted as he made a swift entrance into the Adelphi Theatre, possibly to buy tickets for the play that is there at the moment. The reason that I can make this suggestion is because the celebrity was not an actor. So who did I spot? One of the great rock guitarists of all time and astrophysicist, Brian May.

After my little bit of celebrity spotting I got to the bus stop and then it was off to Waterloo to visit I Knit, the wonderful wool shop that I first visited a few weeks ago. I had a look round and then settled on two hanks of sock yarn from Cherry Tree Hill, one of my favourite American yarn companies. These hand-dyed yarns come in a wonderful range of colourways and both that I had chosen are a riot of colours. The first is called Peacock and is a mixture of the colours that you might expect to see on a peacock when it is displaying at its best. The second is called African Grey, presumably after a parrot, and is a combination of grey, brown, orange and purple.

I had gone armed with some sock patterns which I had printed from the Internet before I left home. I had selected four patterns as likely contenders to be knitted and having decided which patterns I would knit with each of these yarns I decided to look for the needles necessary for the patterns. I like to knit socks on double-pointed needles but there can be problems with metal needles dropping out of the knitting when there are only a few stitches left on the needle. For this reason, I had decided to invest in some wooden needles which would mean that this would not be a problem.

While I was looking for needles in the sizes needed for the patterns that I had chosen to work, I saw that I Knit had some square needles in stock in the size that I needed for one of the patterns. Now square needles may sound a bit strange but I had heard of their existence a couple of years ago and had been intrigued by the idea. They are more expensive than standard metal needles but having tried them I am now a convert.

Knitting with these needles has been a real joy. I found that I have no problems from my arthritic fingers, even though the needles have a very small diameter, and they seem to facilitate more even working. No matter how hard you try to knit evenly, you can usually discern a difference in the appearance of the stitches in different rows and sometimes even in the same row. This doesn't seem to be the case with the square needles and I am now considering buying more and making them the mainstay of my needle collection.

Anyway, having selected the wool that I wanted and found the needles for the two patterns that I had decided to knit, I paid for my purchases and sat down on the lovely old sofa that is a feature of the shop. You are actually encouraged to sit and knit in the shop and I was going to do just that. But before I could start knitting I had to convert the wool from a hank into a ball. Much of the wool that I buy these days comes in this format because I tend to buy wool from small independent companies who hand-dye their yarns. As I have to do this on my own when I am at home, I didn't hesitate to sit down with a hank across my knees and start to wind it into a ball.

The female shop assistant was having her lunch break at the time and was also sat on the sofa doing some knitting. She asked whether I wanted to use the ball winder that they have set up in the shop, or if she could hold it over her hands for me, but I said that I was used to doing it by myself and just got on with the job. So the African Grey was wound into a ball and once done I started work on a pair of socks using my new square needles. The knitting progressed well and it was lovely to sit and knit and chat with both the shop assistant and the various customers who came to browse while I was there.

A little later, I decided to have another look around the shop and rather naughtily bought myself another hank of sock yarn, this time from a different American company. It is a lovely mix of greens and is absolutely perfect for a pair of lacy socks that I want to knit. It was at this point that I decided to avail myself of the ball winder and shuttle (the frame that you put the hank on for winding into a ball) to translate my two remaining hanks into balls that would be ready for use. I have to admit that this was a lot quicker, and easier, than my usual method and I think that I will do this in future when I buy yarn in this shop.

As 6pm approached, I said goodbye to the lovely lady in the shop and set off for the venue of Stitch London's meeting. I knew from looking at a map that it might be difficult to find the location, and so it was. I knew that it was up past the Young Vic and was situated in a side street, but as I could not see anywhere with the name of the road that I was looking for, I began to wonder if I was going to have a wasted trip. However, at that moment I saw someone walking along the street with a small bag in her hand from which a pair of knitting needles could be seen protruding. Without further ado, I decided to follow her and just a minute or two later found myself outside EV Delicatessen which was where Stitch London were meeting.

I spent two hours with a lovely group of ladies and we sat knitting and chatting with the opportunity to indulge in a little food or drink (alcoholic or otherwise) if we felt the need. There were about 30 knitters arranged at tables and the group that I was with comprised three seasoned members and three of us who were at our first meeting. We chatted about what we were knitting and what sort of things that we liked to knit. While all were fairly experienced knitters, it seemed that I was probably the most experienced and adventurous being the only one knitting socks, and who was experienced at knitting lace.

I enjoyed my day out, and the opportunity to sit and chat with other knitters. Next week Stitch London are meeting at another of their regular haunts, the Royal Festival Hall. I may well venture out to this meeting, but I am also looking to see if there is a group that meets a bit nearer to home.

Too Tired To Write

2010-04-19T22:16:00.003+01:00

I've had a day out today, so I haven't had time to write a post. I could write one now but I need to wind down for about half an hour and then hit my bed as I have an early start tomorrow because it's psychotherapy day.

So, tomorrow there will be something new from me. I hope that you can wait.

A Bit The Worse For Drink

2010-04-17T21:20:00.000+01:00

If this post does not make sense, I can only apologize and lay the blame on drink. The usually stone-cold sober Madsadgirl has been out for a meal at the local Italian restaurant tonight and in honour of the occasion decided to treat herself to a half-bottle of Valpolicella.

Going out to a local restaurant for a meal was something that my husband and I used to do most weeks. When we were both in the RAF and he was serving at a base on Salisbury Plain we used to go out every Friday evening when he got home for the weekend. In those days we used to go to an Indian restaurant in a nearby town where they would always find a table for us, no matter how busy they were. We were regulars, known by name, and they valued their regular customers.

When my husband died, I found it a bit awkward going into a restaurant on my own, but eventually I started going to an Italian restaurant on a regular basis and it became first names there too. I would always go there for a meal on the day that I did my OU exam and used it as an opportunity to celebrate the end of another module. But having an alcoholic drink with my meal was not possible because of having to drive home afterwards.

Since having moved back to London, regular restaurant going has not been on the agenda. This is partly because I don't have the money to spend on it that I did when I was working, but perhaps surprisingly more because there aren't so many good restaurants to choose from. I could go up to the centre of London and have more of a choice, but that would mean having to get a bus there and back, and the prices in those restaurants would probably be like spending a month's food money on a single meal and that is just not an acceptable position.

However, there is a more than passable Italian restaurant just a 5-minute walk from home and that is where I have been tonight. I feel bloated from having eaten 3 courses, something that I would never dream of doing when cooking for myself, and a little bit tipsy from drinking the wine. It will probably be months before I do this again, but for now I am going to enjoy the sensation of fullness and the slight fuzziness in my head and watch a little bit of television before going to bed.

I don't think that I should have any problems sleeping tonight.

Daisy Livingstone Fairy Mark 2

2010-04-17T17:15:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I had lunch with Lily and I was supposed to be giving her Daisy Livingstone Fairy. However, on Thursday evening I had a visitor and Daisy Livingstone Fairy walked out the door with her.

An old school friend popped in for a quick chat before taking her 3-year old granddaughter home. Unfortunately I had left Daisy Livingstone Fairy sitting in an armchair ready for me to pick up take to Lily on Friday, and granddaughter saw her and started to play with her. When the time to leave arrived she just did not want to leave Daisy Livingstone behind. So Daisy Livingstone went off to a new home, just not the one that she was meant to go to.

I apologized to Lily and explained Daisy Livingstone's non-appearance. Fortunately I am able to rectify this because I can make Daisy Livingstone Fairy again. And that is what I have started to do. After a lovely lunch together and plenty of chat when I left Lily yesterday afternoon I called in at the local wool shop and bought a few balls of wool to supplement that which I have left over.

Yesterday evening I started work on Daisy Livingstone Fairy Mark 2. I am getting used to following the basic doll pattern now, after all this is the third that I have made, and so far I have completed her feet, the main body section which comprises legs body and head, and her right hand. Her left hand will take about half an hour to knit and each of her arms probably less than an hour so it is likely that this evening may even see me sewing Daisy Livingstone Mark 2 together and stuffing her, assuming that I have enough stuffing. then work can begin on her clothes.

Having made one version of this doll already, I know where the pitfalls are and can avoid them. It is probable that by this time next week I will be adding the finishing touches to Daisy Livingstone Fairy Mark 2 so that I can wrap her up in a bag and put her ready for me to take when next I meet Lily.

Toy knitting has turned out to be quite an enjoyable experience. I like the fact that the pieces knit up so quickly, but I'm not quite so keen on all the sewing up that is required. However, one has to take the rough with the smooth and I can cope with that little problem.

I have decided that my knitting need not be a solitary experience too. After much deliberation, I have decided that I am going to join Stitch London, a group that meets at various locations in London on a weekly basis to knit and chat. It is going to be difficult for me to go somewhere and meet a lot of strangers. But as we will all be knitters, we will have something in common and I am hoping that I can make this a regular thing for the future. Mr Smiley would have certainly approved of that.

Slight Improvement

2010-04-15T15:00:00.000+01:00

Yes, there has been a slight improvement in my mood. Although I didn't get to sleep until gone 2am, once I was asleep I stayed that way and slept through most of this morning. That may seem like a waste of a good part of the day but when you have been surviving on a couple of hours sleep (or less) for a week, it is well worth losing those daylight hours.

Yesterday evening I managed quite a few rows on my latest lace shawl. It's a triangular shawl which starts with just 4 stitches and grows with an increasing number of stitches on alternate rows. It's not the most difficult pattern that I have ever knitted but it does require careful watching and I'm afraid that last night I was paying a little too much attention to Midsomer Murders and not enough to the pattern and I have made a mistake.

Making mistakes is an occupational hazard when knitting lace with its combination of knitting stitches together and yarn overs which create the lacy texture and the pattern in the lace. It looks as though I forgot to make a yarn over so I am a stitch short and the only way to correct it is to carefully unpick two rows stitch by stitch. If I was near the beginning of the shawl then this would not be too much of a problem but there are now just short of 200 stitches on the needles so unpicking those two rows is going to take quite a long time. I was going to do it last night so that I could pick up the knitting today and just move on, but I realised that it was probably a task for when I was a bit more awake so I put the knitting aside as a task for this afternoon or this evening.

I'm hoping that having managed to get some sleep last night the same will happen tonight. I hope that the vicious circle of not sleeping so I get depressed and because I am depressed I don't sleep has been broken. And I have something to look forward to tomorrow because I am meeting Lily for lunch and a chat. And I will be delivering Daisy Livingstone Fairy, too.

Just Another Day

2010-04-14T18:15:00.000+01:00

Last night I managed to get some sleep. Not a lot, but sleep nonetheless. This has meant that I have not felt quite so awful today and have managed to do a little bit of knitting and some reading.

This afternoon I have been to see my GP. This was for my monthly visit so that he can ensure that I am okay and to get a prescription for my antidepressants. He is not very good at keeping to time with his appointments, but today I was seen five minutes early and gave us something to laugh about when I went in. Usually his opening remark is an apology for keeping me waiting, but today it wasn't necessary.

He asked whether I had received a letter for my appointment at the hospital to see the consultant about the little (actually not so little) problem that makes sitting down uncomfortable. I told him that I had been a couple of weeks ago and I'm now waiting for an appointment for the surgery that is necessary.

Then he told me that it was necessary for me to have my blood pressure taken. As luck would have it, I was wearing a short-sleeved top under my fleece so attaching the cuff to my arm was easy. As this was being done he checked that I had taken my blood pressure medication this morning and I had to think about it. Had I taken it? I have to take four different medications every morning and for the life of me I couldn't remember whether I had taken them this morning. Then I remembered. I take aspirin, and this morning when I had put the various tablets in my mouth and taken a good swig of water, four tablets had gone down but the aspirin had stuck to the roof of my mouth and had started to dissolve there. A second swig of water had taken care of that. Anyway, I was told to sit back in the chair and relax. I needn't have worried; my blood pressure was fine, perfect.

We talked about my depression, the support that I was getting from my consultant psychiatrist, and my psychotherapy. Then it was just a case of printing off the prescription for my antidepressants and I was done.

Since I have been back from the appointment (and collecting the medication from the chemist) I have managed to do two rows of my knitting (I have started knitting a lace shawl) and read a couple of chapters of a book that arrived from Amazon today. The book is The C-word by Lisa Lynch and is based on her blog which is one that I have been reading for more than a year now. For any of you who haven't read the blog, I would recommend it to you all and if you can't be bothered to work your way through the blog, then get the book. It is the amazing story of how Lisa found herself suffering from breast cancer at the age of 28 and her fight with 'The Bullshit' as it was to become known.

I shall get back to the book when I go to bed tonight, but I shall pick up the knitting after I have finished this post and written an email to There and Back.

Plummeting Down

2010-04-13T16:05:00.000+01:00

I'm having problems at the moment. I'm still not sleeping properly at night and I'm not even able to catch a few minutes sleep during the day. All of this means that instead of slowly sinking into depression I seem to now be plummeting at speed.

It's at times like this that I really miss being able to talk to Mr Smiley and benefit from his words of wisdom. He would tell me that I have been in this position before and I have got through it. He would tell me to focus on what I can manage rather than try to do things that I can't and that will only make me feel worse. He would tell me that I was strong and that I will come out the depression even stronger. He would tell me that and much more.

The problem is that although I know exactly what he would say to me, how he would encourage me, it doesn't make it any easier. It can be so much more difficult for you to convince yourself, even when you use the same words, as when someone that you trust says the words to you.

I know that these feelings will pass. I know that things will get better. But knowing doesn't make it any easier to cope with depression.

Passing The Time

2010-04-11T16:29:00.003+01:00

I didn't manage a nap yesterday afternoon, nor did I get a good night's sleep last night. I am already starting to feel more depressed than I have for a few weeks and I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on anything for more than about five minutes. And that is a really bad sign.

Not being able to concentrate makes it impossible to read a book because I find that I am having to reread the same page several times just to have a vague idea of what was written on the page. Not being able to concentrate means that knitting can be a problem if it requires me to follow a pattern. Knitting toys such as the dolls and teddy bears that I have been working on recently requires constant reference to the patterns and careful counting of rows; both things that have been impossible today.

I have never been a person who can just sit down and watch television. It's something that is nice to have as a background to my knitting and to give the feeling of not being in the house alone. I've tried watching a DVD and I just couldn't keep my mind on it, so I have decided to give that up too.

I have decided that I am now going to search the web for some sock patterns. Not that I am going to start knitting any socks today (although I do have a couple of balls of sock yarn that are just crying out to be knitted up) but I want to find some nice patterns for when I do feel in the mood again. It might not be anything too exciting, but it will keep me occupied for an hour or so and help to pass the time until I can reasonably take my medication and take myself off to bed for what I hope will be a better night's sleep.

I Knew That I Shouldn't Have Said It

2010-04-10T13:45:00.000+01:00

The other day I was talking about what a difference the increase in medication had made to me being able to get a good night's sleep. Okay, so some days I had real problems waking up and it could take me hours to get going, but at least I was not suffering night after night of just one or two hours of sleep and consequently feeling worse as each day and night passed.

Having told Dr M that things were going well as far as sleep was concerned, it is just typical that since then I have had a couple of bad nights. Thursday night, as I said yesterday, seemed to consist of me waking every hour. Last night was much worse. I could not get to sleep at all. I eventually managed to drop off at about 4am but I was awake again just after 6, and it was wide awake so I could not just turn over and fall back to sleep again.

The problem is that even just a few years ago I would have been able to shrug off a couple of nights where I had not slept and still keep going. But these days, that is not the case. I don't consider myself to be old, but I think that my body is starting to tell me that I am not as young as I once was.

I can remember a visit to my GP in Cambridgeshire some time before my 50th birthday. He told me that once I got to 50 my body would start to fall apart. He wasn't so far off with that statement either. I had recently been diagnosed as having Prinzmetal's angina, then just days before my 51st birthday (and my trip to Corfu) I was taken from work by ambulance and had emergency surgery to remove my gall bladder. Then a few months later I had to give up work and I started to suffer from an arthritic hip.

So, although I should be doing lots of other things, this afternoon I am going to try to get a couple of hours sleep. It might happen or it might not. If it does then I will undoubtedly feel a lot better than I do now, if it doesn't then I will just have to hope that I manage some sleep tonight. It may seem a little thing to many, but anyone who suffers from depression will tell you that it can be a very fine line between enough sleep and not enough. I may not be full of the joys of Spring at the moment, but I am better than I was a couple of months ago and I don't want to slip back to how I was feeling then.

Therefore, I will take sleep whenever I can, and blow the wasted hours. My health, particularly my mental health, is important and I need to do whatever is necessary to maintain the improvement.

Guesting

2010-04-09T15:27:00.000+01:00

I have a guest post over here.

Tiny Hands

2010-04-09T14:40:00.000+01:00

After having had an appointment with Dr M yesterday and telling him that I was at long last managing to get a decent night's sleep, last night I didn't. I had a terrible night waking up almost every hour and although I managed to get back to sleep fairly easily each time, today I am not feeling at my best.

Anything too energetic is out of the question. Not only am I too tired, but my hip is playing up at the moment so bending over doing things in the garden is off the agenda today. This means that I can spend the time doing more enjoyable things and I have decided that means that I shall spend today working on Daisy Livingstone Fairy.

All the components are knitted and many of the pieces are sewn together so it is not much more than a case of dressing her. But there are a couple of vital components that needed work on them and I have just spent an hour working on them.

The vital components were Daisy Livingstone's hands. They may be tiny but they each have four fingers and a thumb and sewing them up is both time consuming and extremely fiddly. However, I have persevered and they are now completed and ready to be attached to her arms. Once that is done I will be able to join them to the arms and then join the arms to Daisy Livingstone's body. Once that is done, I'll need to create her features, attach her hair, and then dress her in her finery.

They may be tiny hands but they are going to help with Daisy Livingstone's character and I am sure that she will be a really beautiful fairy who will undoubtedly try to grant a few wishes.

I Must Have Been Out Of My Mind

2010-04-08T12:00:00.001+01:00

I really don't know what possessed me to make an appointment to see my psychiatrist at 9am.

I did manage to get myself to bed early last night and I fell asleep pretty quickly but the I kept waking up every couple of hours. I had remembered to set the alarm so as to allow me plenty of time to shower and get dressed. But the alarm didn't go off so I overslept and had to leave the house in a rush. I walked up the road to the bus stop as quickly as I could but before I got to the top of the road a bus went by so I knew that it might be a close run thing getting to my appointment on time.

There are three different buses that use the stop at the top of my road, but only one of them would take me to the hospital. I had to wait for about 15 minutes for the bus to arrive and having boarded it when it did arrive it was a case of waiting to see what the traffic was like. It was amazing; the bus just seemed to whiz along the road, often not needing to stop at bus stops as no-one wanted to get on or get off.

It just goes to show that even though school children in London get free travel on buses, there must be an awful lot who are still being taken to school by car, because with it being the school holidays there was much less traffic about.

Anyway, I made it to the hospital in time for my appointment and Dr M called me in bang on 9am. We chatted for about half an hour covering the usual subjects of mood, sleep, emotions, etc. We made a joint decision to leave my medication as it is for the time being as it seems to be having some effect. Certainly I am now managing to sleep reasonably well at night (and sometimes during the day too) and I am not constantly in the depths of despair. So, with all the bases covered, Dr M suggested that we meet up again in 4-6 weeks.

I had to wait while P the outpatients administrator dealt with a query and then made my next appointment. P decided to have a look at what Dr M had free in 5 weeks time and we found a suitable appointment. It's going to be at 10am, a far more realistic time for me to get to the hospital easily, although I was offered 9am again.

I've learnt my lesson. I won't be opting for an early appointment again if I have to travel to it. I can't cope with having to rush about that early in the morning.

It Will Have To Be An Early Night

2010-04-07T16:20:00.001+01:00

As I sit here writing this post, it is almost as dark as night outside. It seems as though we still haven't actually moved into proper Springtime weather. I'm having a lazy day as I can't get out into the garden and after doing some Sudoku puzzles on my DSi (how I love that little gadget) I am about to pick up my knitting to help to pass the time.

I really must have an early night because I have to leave the house early tomorrow for an appointment with my psychiatrist. For some unknown reason I opted for his earliest appointment so I shall have to get up with the lark to get myself ready to go to catch the bus.

It will be good to be able to report that the increase in medication seems at last to be making a bit of a difference in my mood and in my ability to sleep. I'm not exactly filled with the joys of Spring, but neither am I in quite the depths of despair that I was when last I saw Dr M.

So, I shall shortly be making myself something to eat, I'll sit and knit for a couple of hours, and then I shall take my medication and take myself off to bed. One thing that I have learnt is that the night-time medication can work in a matter of minutes. Last night I got into bed, picked up my book to read a few pages, but I didn't even manage to open it before I was asleep.

It really can be possible to fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow.

Empty Days

2010-04-06T11:00:00.000+01:00

The long weekend is over and the working week has begun. Normally Tuesday morning means that I have to get up early, make myself presentable and set off for the hospital for my psychotherapy session. But my therapist is on holiday for two weeks so I have a break from psychotherapy during that time.

The last break that I had in this period of therapy was at Christmas and New Year. I had begun to sink into depression when I went for the first session of the year and my therapist wondered whether it was caused by the break in therapy. I don't think it was but it does make me wonder.

Psychotherapy on a Tuesday is the one real piece of routine that there is in my life. Without routine the days seem to merge into each other and if it weren't for the computer showing me the date and the day of the week, I would almost certainly lose track of time. I know that I need to find things to do that will occupy my time and get me out and about, but trying to find such things and actually making the effort to do them seems somehow insurmountable at present.

Perhaps, now is the time to start looking at doing something new. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea what it should be. It needs to be something that I can focus my mind on, so that I don't have time on my hands to worry about how I am feeling, but something that is not reliant on time or place so that I can do it whenever I feel capable.

For today, I shall spend this morning in a darkened room trying to get rid of a headache that has now plagued me for more than 24 hours. Once I have got rid of that then, perhaps, I can spend some time trying to discover something to occupy both time and mind.

Bank Holiday Weather

2010-04-05T15:44:00.003+01:00

I don't know what it is about British weather and bank holidays, but yet again it is cold, grey and miserable on this Easter Monday. So instead of going out into the garden to do a little bit of work there, I am sitting indoors in the warm and doing my knitting.

Chocolate Free Easter

2010-04-04T14:30:00.004+01:00

I'm having a chocolate free Easter. Yes, you read that correctly. It's Easter and not a single piece of chocolate will pass my lips.

Easter eggs are not the sort of thing that you buy for yourself, so I am able to be good and not indulge in extra calories. This is a good thing because after years of struggling with my weight after having put on about 4 stone courtesy of one particular antidepressant, I seem to be losing weight.

I don't possess a set of scales because I have become so self-conscious of my size over the years. But when my trousers start to be loose around my waist and have to be constantly pulled up so that they don't drag along the ground, I know that the weight must be going.

To lose all the weight that I put on is going to take a very long time, but if I continue to lose it slowly as I have over the last couple of months then I hope that I can look forward to a slimmer me. I know that it is unlikely that I will go back to my former weight because I am no longer as active as I used to be, but losing weight is a good thing and I am sure that doing so will do much for my mood too.

Therapeutic Doses

2010-04-03T18:15:00.000+01:00

Antidepressants often get a bad press. Whether it is newspapers claiming that doctors dish them out like sweets or patients who claim that they don't work. I have been on antidepressants almost continuously for almost 12 years and I am absolutely certain that without them I wouldn't be here writing this today.

I wouldn't claim to have been on every antidepressant that there is but I have taken a fair selection of them over the years. Some seem to have made a difference, one or two don't seem to have worked, and one made me have hallucinations and feel very ill indeed.

At the moment I am taking two different antidepressants. I'm on the highest doses of both of them. One is taken in the morning and is the one that I have now been on for about a year. The dose has been increased twice; initially when I was in hospital the first time, and the second time was on my last appointment with my psychiatrist. The one that I take at night was prescribed when I had my first appointment with my psychiatrist. It's main purpose is to aid me in getting to sleep and staying that way; it's secondary purpose is as an additional drug to help with my mood.

The problem with antidepressants is that it can take quite a while for them to start to improve your mood. It is probable that many of those people who say that antidepressants don't work, haven't given them a chance. They are not like other drugs which allow you to see a difference almost immediately. Many antidepressants have to be started at low dosages and then increased over a period of time until a therapeutic dose is reached.

At long last it seems that things may be improving for me. The night-time antidepressant is now able to knock me out at night and I seem to be able to sleep the night through (apart from calls of nature). And the combination of the two antidepressants appears to be helping to lift me out of the long depression that I have been in.

It seems that the therapeutic doses of these two drugs have been built up in my body and I can hope for some respite from the darkness that my life seemed to have become. Mind you, I still don't feel full of the joys of Spring, but things don't seem quite so hopeless as they did just a few days ago.

I'm having another therapeutic dose today too. A therapeutic dose of films to watch on television thanks to it being a bank holiday weekend. the weather may not be wonderful, but at least I have something to help to pass the time.

I Love My DSi

2010-03-31T20:45:00.002+01:00

I have never been much of a fan of video or computer games although I have been known to play the odd game of Spider or Mah Jong on my laptop when I should have been working on an OU assignment. My husband, on the other hand was a fan from the very start. Yes, he bought a little box of tricks that you connected to your television's aerial socket and spent many hours playing Pong.

As basic home computers, which were really not much more than a vehicle for playing games, appeared he moved on to one of those. The purchase of a cheap book from somewhere enabled him to type in rows and rows of code that when set to run created a basic slot machine programme. I would sit watching television and doing some knitting while my husband would be sat at this basic computer (I think that it was a very early Amstrad) adjusting the code of the slot machine programme with the result that it was so like the real thing (except that you didn't need any money to play it) that even I would occasionally have a go.

Although I have used computers both at work and at home, games have never been a major factor in my using them. So it was a bit of a surprise to me that I even considered purchasing a Nintendo DSi a few months ago and when I actually made the purchase I wasn't that certain that I wasn't making a mistake and it would be a waste of money. I could not have been more wrong.

I bought a couple of games at the time that I purchased the DSi, and I have added a couple more since. My DSi goes everywhere with me. It goes into my handbag when I leave the house for anything more than a trip to the supermarket and has proved very handy when waiting for appointments with my therapist, or other hospital appointments. My most recent purchase was the 100 Classic Book Collection. I usually have a book in my handbag too but that is not necessary any more. And while there are a number of books that I probably will never read amongst the collection, it does include some of my all time favourites. I have started reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.

I first read this book, or at least I was supposed to have read it, when I was 11. It was one of the first books that we had to read for our English classes when I went to secondary school. The book is comprised of a number of narratives written by various characters in the book telling the story of the theft of a diamond (The Moonstone), the mystery about this theft, and the diamond's subsequent rediscovery. It was the first of these narratives that I found so difficult to read and which I sort of skimmed through. I shouldn't have because it is really the most important part of the book. I might not have read the book properly when I was 11, but I did when I was a bit older and it has subsequently joined the list of books that I am happy to read again every couple of years.

Other books in the collection include Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), The Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan), most of Dickens' best works, others by George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, and probably Britain's favourite author, Jane Austen. To have bought all of these books would have cost me a fortune, and would have filled a bookcase. Instead they are contained in little little cartridge less than 2 inches square.

Oh yes. I love my DSi.