In Which I am Poorly Sick

 I have been poorly sick for a while now; and what I have mainly been poorly sick with is Stress.

This is annoying because, although moving was stressful, that is now behind us and  I feel I should be 'over' it. Sadly, the signs are that I am not. 

I am prone to stress and it has various ways of manifesting itself, but generally it chooses one way and does that to the nth degree, then gets bored and moves out for a while. Obviously the whole moving thing threw it into a whirl of confusion and it decided just to go for gold and hit me with everything. 

So I have very  red itchy palms just now. This is a genetic thing that my mother  and at least one female cousin of mine suffered from ; the cousin concerned is a doctor and she did tell me the medical name for red itchy palms. I can't remember what it is, but I do know it's a pain. 

I have a patch of something nasty and itchy  on the sole of my right foot. I'm not aware that this is genetic, but it is stress triggered and I need to start treating it with a steroid cream soon or it will just spread.

My restless leg syndrome is very present just now, especially at night, and to add to the joy of nations it has been joined by restless hand syndrome. The latter tends to kick in at about 8.00 in the evening and settles down at about 11.00, when the legs take over. I literally cannot describe the feeling of either of these things, except to say that it's basically an irresistible urge to move the leg or hand affected, which sounds like nothing but is in fact extremely unpleasant. Especially since moving the affected part does not in fact take away the sensation of needing to move it. 

All of these I have had off and on for years ( although never more than one at a time until now ) but 10 days ago they were joined by shingles. This is a first for me and I sincerely hope it is also a last because it is not fun. A very  sore and itchy rash, which occasionally prickles,  accompanied by pain in places the rash doesn't reach. It was diagnosed in time for me to be given antivirals - 10 pills a day for 7 days, which was horrible in itself as I hate the physical process of taking tablets - but I still felt rubbish. The best thing to do apparently is to rest and relax until it's all over, but no-one tells you how you rest and relax when you've just moved house and are surrounded by a multitude of unpacked boxes. Nice trick if you can work it. 

So that sort of explains why there hasn't been a blog post for a while, because I really haven't had the energy, but possibly I am really on the mend now because here I am typing away. 

I don't suppose anyone wants to see a picture of the truly horrible shingles rash that I had on my back, because why would they, so instead here is a photo of one of the recently purchased  lavenders at the front door. Because lavender is supposed to have soothing properties, yes?  

May - Wool Stats and Project Progress

Yes, I know, I hear you. I've got lots to say about the move and here I am faffing about with project updates. But I just thought I would get this one out of the way, and do move and recent activity stuff over the next few days.

I am delighted to say that the BT Engineer did turn up this morning as arranged. He then had rather more trouble than anticipated getting our internet to work, as apparently there was a broken cable and this necessitated him summoning a colleague, lifting up a man hole cover and standing in a hole for some length of time. The good news is that we now have stable (so far) working internet. I'm told on the ground floor this is via Ethernet and that upstairs uses wi-fi.  I have no idea what this means, but as long as I can get back on my laptop in a meaningful way, it's all fine by me.

Anyway, to the craft update. Wool in was 200g, wool out was 3164g. V-e-r-y pleasing. The large out figure was for a couple of main reasons. One was that I finished a huge project (see below) and the other was that I finally looked out my very oldest wool, most of it inherited from  my mother and squatting under the guest room bed almost since we moved to Orkney. Most of that went to a charity shop, some of it was thrown away. I also sent quite a lot of my own leftovers to someone I know who makes things on a very old knitting machine in a museum; the things she makes are then sold to raise funds for the museum upkeep. 

So net decrease for this month was 2964g and the running decrease for the year is 6297g. This is all excellent, but on the other hand I still seem to have an awful lot of wool. 

Finished projects. First up a pair of socks 

These are from the Skein and the Stitch weekly advent from last Christmas which means I've done three weeks out of the four. Not entirely sure where the wool from week 4 is just now ..... It will turn up. 

The big project was this

a huge blanket. This was part done and I picked it up at the beginning of April, realising that it would be easier to pack as a single blanket than 5 sets of squares/mini skeins in 5 separate project bags. I hadn't actually done all of the squares at that stage, I think I had about 24 to do, and then they almost all needed edging, before being put together and then bordered. It was a Big Ask, but I managedto get it all done before we moved, bar some of the weaving in of the ends, but I finished that after we got here. I call it my Inkling Blanket, because the squares are made from an Advent themed on The Lion and the Witch and The Wardrobe, and a mini-skein club based on the Lord of the Rings. The square edging was done in a colourway called the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and all the wool came from Giddy Yarns. Sorry the colour is a bit washed out in some parts of the photograph but it was a bright day when I took it. 

That's it for finished things, but not bad considering I moved house in May and my crafting time was severely limited. 

Progress reports on other things. At the end of May the Japanese scarf looked like this

so it had grown quite well, considering I don;t like to do too much in a day otherwise I start to make mistakes. 

The earth dancer cross stitch looked like this at the end of the month

which is very little different to how she looked at the end of April which was disappointing. The only real change was that there was more done of her medicine bag. However there will be lots of progress visible by the end of June. 

And the lavender sampler also didn't grow by much but there's lots more tree and a bit more lavender field, compared to the previous month

So there you go. That was May, as far as crafting went. 

Well, we're in.

Apologies for the lack of a picture but I'm too tired to source one. 

I'm pleased to say that we are in the new house and so far we are loving it, even though there are a few things that need/(ed) sorting very quickly.

However we are plagued with minor frustrations of the sort which I suppose attend every house move, but knowing that doesn't make them any easier to cope with when they are happening. 

Today has been the first day I've had access to my laptop because BT/Openreach are useless and although they promised that an engineer would come last Friday to set up our internet he didn't appear, and the next available slot is not until 8th June. They sent us a temporary battery powered hub to tide us over but the battery doesn't hold a  lot of charge and we won't leave it charging overnight so it has to start almost from scratch every morning. 

More details to come over the coming days; and I'll try to balance the annoyances out with some of the good stuff. 

Moving Out!

Tomorrow is moving out day. Everything is almost all packed and some of it has already been taken away. The house feels odd, with no books, no pictures and no ornaments; it is a house, and not a home.

That said we were looking around today and remembering all the things we have changed in it. Major stuff like the new kitchen and bathroom and building on the sunroom. Reroofing the byre. Painting the outside walls and getting a nice front door. And the almost invisible stuff like new windows, and upgraded insulation and new lighting. Smaller things like removing and replacing internal doors and handles, new carpets and curtains and windowsills and shelving and redecoration. Twenty years of our life have been spent in this house, and we've put care and effort into turning it from a rather ghastly unloved house into a lovely much loved home. 

Of course I'm excited about the new house and the new life we will lead down in the Central Belt.  But today was a day for remembering because even though I don't regret that we're going, I should remember the good things that Orkney and the house have given us over the last two decades. 

Today was for looking back. Tomorrow will be too busy for anything. The day after is for looking forward. 

Some 'last time' things

 So there were a few things we wanted to do 'for the last time' before we moved.

One was a final trip to Geri's Ice Cream parlour where, in honour of the occasion I had an ice cream  dessert and not just a cone,

Mine's the top one, a raspberry ripple and the OH had a Salted Caramel. In the event I might have enjoyed a cone more, but there was nothing wrong with the raspberry ripple really.

Then there was a trip to Celina Rupp's. This was partly a last visit  to her Barrier View Cafe 

and partly to buy a piece of jewellery. Celina is the last major Orkney jeweller who didn't feature in my jewellery box so we felt that needed to be remedied, sort of a farewell present to myself really. After much deliberation this is what I chose

It's from her Harvest Moon collection and I love it. 

Another one was catching the primula scotica. This was going to be a More Walks (2) post but time has gotten the better of me. We saw a post on Facebook a couple of weeks ago which said the primula scotica was out. It seemed a bit early but we decided to give it a go as it would be nice to see it once more before we leave. It only grows in Orkney and Caithness, and as it's very tiny and very low growing it's hard to spot. Once you've found your first one and got your eye in you see loads and we were lucky.

they may be small but they are lovely

thumbnail for size reference!

After we'd had our fill of the flowers we had a wander along the cliff tops at Yesnaby ( which are very close to where the P S grows). I love this stretch of Orkney's coast and have many photos to prove it. here are a couple more from that recent visit

We are still packing but fast approaching the stage where we will only have the last minute things to do which can obviously only be done at the last minute. That doesn't necessarily mean I will have the time, the energy or the means to blog again until after we are in the new house. We'll see. But I'll be back when I can. 

Farewell to Some Old friends

 

Not people; but chairs. 

These belonged to my grandmother; in fact they belonged to my great aunt before that and I assume they came from a set of six but two were all my grandmother had. My parents kept them and at some stage they came to me.They were what Peter Kay calls 'spurr churrs'  but it's a long time since they have ben called into service. We did have them recovered a few years ago but basically they have just been sat in the spare room for years. There is no room for them in the new house, not nohow so, with a heavy heart I took them to the Orkney Reuse and Recycle centre this morning  where the man in charge was very enthusiastic about how nice they were. In fact he waxed  so enthusiastic that he almost made me want to bring them back home with me. 

But sadly there's no point in taking them all the way to the Central Belt where they would sit, in the way and unused again for decades more. I was very sorry to say goodbye to then but the time had come. 

More Happy Mail

So the thing about getting a monthly club instalment very late is that the gap between instalments becomes quite short.  Not very long after the ( late ) March Van Gogh from Yarn Unique, here comes April's William Morris. 

I ordered DK for this as I thought I knew what the yarn would look like and I wanted to use it for  a specific mitten pattern I have. Sadly my impression of what the yarn would be like - I expected it to be based on the colours of Strawberry Thief -  and what it actually did look like were very different and it won't be suitable for the pattern I had in mind at all, as the textures won't show up in anything so dark. 

I'm not devastated! I'll just have to look for a plainer mitten pattern. 

Here's the yarn - and the extras, a bookmark as always and another coaster

Those colours in the yarn really do not say William Morris to me, but I'd be the first to admit I don't know a lot about his work.

This isn't a club where you have to buy it every month and I'm skipping the next two as they're Monet, and I have a lot of Monet themed yarn from someone else, and Turner, because I'm not a fan. If I remember I will be back in July for Kandinski. 

We are still packing but at least some of the filled boxes were taken away by the removal firm yesterday which was a relief.