Working Hard And Making Mistakes

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?

New Horizons

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.

Some Good News At Last!

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

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

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.

Madsadgirl Is Two Today

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.

Thinking About The End Of Psychotherapy

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

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.

Feeling The Strain

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.

From Diamonds To Hearts

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.

Trying To Beat Depression

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.

Lifelines

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.

A Sense Of Achievement

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

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.

A Bit Of Success (Hopefully)

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.

Apologies Again

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.

Knitting Socks As A Coping Strategy

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

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

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.

Trying To Focus The Mind

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.