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?

What An Honour

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.

Just Filling You In

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.

Burning The Candle At Both Ends

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

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.

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.

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.

Psychotherapy And The Wonderful World Of Bloggers

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.

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 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.

Three Girls At The Fountains

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

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.

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.

A Long Day

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.

My Day Out

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.

Just Another Day

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.

Passing The Time

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.

Tiny Hands

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.

Getting Some Sleep

I have finally managed to start getting some sleep. There is only one problem. I'm sleeping during the day rather than at night.

When I was younger, and certainly all the time that I was working, I was a morning person. I could face the day, and whatever it had to throw at me, without too much of a problem. I generally needed about eight hours sleep a night, so I used to follow the old adage of early to bed, early to rise. It served me well for many years.

Then I started to suffer from depression and sleep became something that was more difficult to come by. There were times when I would survive on a couple of hours sleep a night for several weeks and then, usually on a Friday evening, my mind would just switch off because my body told it that it could take no more. I would sleep for anything up to 24 hours.

Over the last couple of years I have found myself becoming more of a night owl than an early bird. I can still get myself up early if the occasion requires it, but I am also more likely to be awake at 2am than I am at 9am.

I will probably be able to get myself back to a more normal sleeping pattern, but it may take me a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I shall continue knitting until I can't keep my eyes open any longer and have to fall asleep. I'm hoping that tonight I can get to sleep at a reasonable hour because tomorrow is psychotherapy day and I need to get up to go to the hospital to see my psychologist and it's best that I don't spend too much of the session yawning.

And talking of knitting, Daisy Livingstone Fairy is coming along nicely. As well as having completed Daisy herself, I have made her dress and I am halfway to completing her jacket. She is going to be a very stylish fairy.

Where Have All The Haberdashers Gone?

There was a time, certainly in my lifetime, when just about every shopping centre had a haberdashers. Even the village that I used to live in, which had only about a dozen shops, had one. These shops were often like Aladdin's cave, full of wool, and threads, and lots of other items that one would use to make, and repair, clothing. They also stocked many other things like table runners, pretty little tray cloths and doilies, and often various items of underwear.

In many of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple stories, the elderly sleuth visits the haberdasher's shop in order to gather information while she bought wool for someone's vest, or some tray cloths, or some other such item.

Haberdashery departments were to be found in department stores too. So I felt reasonably sure that I would find the items that I wanted in John Lewis in Oxford Street. I was wrong. I managed to get the lurex yarn that I wanted, but there was no sign of a fluffy yarn or the silk flower embellishments. I did manage to find some wonderful little beads (purple iridescent round beads and bright green bugle beads) which when placed on sequins will enable me to make flower shapes and leaves, unfortunately they didn't have the sequins. So I decided to make my way to Croydon.

So a journey by bus and train found me pounding the streets of Croydon. It has a department store, with a haberdashery, not as good as that in John Lewis, but pretty good all the same. Or it did the last time that I went there. Unfortunately, the store has fallen on difficult times and many of its departments no longer seem to be there, and one of those missing was the haberdashery. So Croydon turned out to be a total failure.

There was one last chance. I knew that I had seen some sequins in the shop where I had bought the polyester stuffing that I had bought earlier in the week so it was another bus journey to that shopping centre. And there they were, some lovely iridescent sequins which will go beautifully with the purple iridescent and green beads.

It has been a long day, there have been four journeys by bus and one by train, and there has been lots of walking, but I think that I now have all that I need to decorate the doll's clothes. It is going to take nearly as long to do the embellishing as it will to make the doll and her clothes so I had better get back to work as I have a self-imposed deadline to meet to get the doll finished. It has to be in the mail in just under three weeks so I am going to have my work cut out, so if I don't post you will know it is because I am hard at work making Victoria (the doll's name in the book that I am working from) as beautiful as possible for someone who I am sure will love her when she receives her.