A little hectic here lately

Things have been busy here, but it's all been good stuff. I took a break from gloves (mid pair, like I always seem to do) and made a wash cloth. Hmmm....let me start from the beginning.
We got new room mates....no....before that...


We got a new cat. Morgan came into our lives a month ago and has settled right in. He's big, real big, and bushy and black and is very regal until someone rustles his food bag. Then he becomes a spaz. 
Then we had room mates move in. Zasha and Siobhan moved in after they decided to try this area out for jobs. They are long time friends of ours and it's been very pleasant having them here. They put up with our eccentricities very nicely! 


I'm still working out on the treadmill every day and have been at it for two months now. I even decided I needed to treat myself for my hard work and picked up Sims 3. So when I'm not knitting, exercising, or trying to keep up with my housework, I'm populating Sim worlds.


As far as my fibro goes, the exercise helps me keep my pain levels in check, but I did get a little absent minded this last week and missed a doctor appointment. I have my painful moments, don't get me wrong, but I seem to get through them with a lot less stress now.  


This week John (that's my son for all of you who don't know me) is coming for a visit and will be staying for a month. That means lots of Dungeons & Dragons! I already have a Gnome character all made up for our game. Speaking of Gnomes. These are some glasses Chelle bought me a while back. 

I'm somewhat fond of Gnome stuff.


The washcloth that I was speaking of a few paragraphs ago is for my new room mate, Siobhan. We all made a trek to Hobby Lobby the other day and purchased yarn. I got two skeins of "I Love This Yarn" cotton yarn for wash cloths and two skeins of  "I love This Yarn" acrylic yarn for children's gloves.


Here is the finished wash cloth. It's made with size 9 regular needles and is a simple seed stitch with a garter stitch border. Nothing fancy, but it's extremely soft. Washcloths are also a great project when you need something simple that you can knit while you meditate.  One of the nicest cotton yarns I've found that is so inexpensive.

I have some more that is in a tan with orange and brown speckles. I plan to make another cloth for Chelle.


That's about all I have for now. Have a nice Leap year!

Yet another pair of fingerless gloves

You would think I would figure out that taking pictures at night isn't such a good idea. They all turn out looking like the same colored yarn for each one. These gloves are actually dark green with a white accent.

I decided to do this pair with partial fingers instead of making them into mitts. It takes a little more work, but they seem to sell better. I usually opt for the mitts so I don't have to do battle with holes between the fingers. However, I appear to be doing better in that regard. This time I don't see any gaps, and I used worsted weight yarn. If I can continue with that I will be really pleased. I know I can revise the gauge and make them with sock yarn, but they take longer and are more expensive to make. Not a good option for things I sell. I made this one, now I need to make its mate and then put them on Etsy to sell. 

I started doing chair yoga today for my fibro. I managed to make it through an entire month on the treadmill and now I'm ready to add a little more. I figure the yoga will help with flexibility and I plan to do it every other day and change it out with some weight training on the other days. I'll see if that will give me the strength and flexibility that this darned illness takes away. I am determined to fight my way back to the best health I can manage. I went from being in a wheelchair all the time to walking twice a day for 20 minutes at a time. My goal is to get to a point where my energy and strength are good enough to make it possible to start working again. I know I can do it, I just have to be smart about it and work towards it in babysteps. 

Now I just need to get my sleep problems ironed out so that doesn't drain my energy so much. 

Yay!! New projects!

I can safely say that I have been one busy knitter! Before I post pictures, though, I would like to discuss the following nifty things. First, I have been reading! LOL I read two books in particular that deal with issues about my fibromyalgia. I keep reading about stress relief being a huge part of controlling pain and have been delving into the idea of knitting being used for meditation. A good book I found on the subject is "Mindful Knitting" by Tara Jon Manning. Another great read that I found has more to do with keeping a positive attitude while dealing with adversity and that is "Get Off Your 'But', How to End Self-Sabotage and Stand Up for Yourself" by Sean Stephenson. 


My other piece of news is that I finally took the step towards advocacy and wrote letters to my State Senators in behalf of the National Fibromyagia & Chronic Pain Association. It was to get them to go to a meeting that discusses the need for the Senate to take some action towards making life more livable for people with chronic pain issues. I've been wanting to get more active for fibromyalgia causes. 


Now...about knitting.LOL I got my Etsy shop back up and going and put a few things up for sale. Here are some of the things I've been working on:

 

These are some gloves I made and put on Etsy. I used Wool-ease yarn that I had in my stash. 

 

This is a dog sweater I finished quite a while ago and finally got around to putting the button on it. I also have it up for sale. 2bits hates me. She hid for hours after I forced her to model.

 

Some child sized gloves that I made. I started these before Christmas and got sidetracked with making gifts so they didn't get finished till February. I have them up for sale on Etsy right now also.

Finally, these are what I'm working on right now. I'm going to make this pair of gloves with partial fingers. I'll try and get a picture of them up after I'm finished.

"Pain is inevitable. Eventually, it touches us all. Suffering, however, is optional." Sean Stephenson

I, like a lot of people like myself, have a little secret.
Every morning, I have to fight off a monster.

It greets me before I open my eyes. It whispers in my ear, "Don't get up. You hurt too much. Just lay here and allow your family to take care of everything. You know they would be more than willing to."

But the monster forgets that I'm too stubborn to listen to it. It knows that I will push past it and get up. I will do everything I have to to make it possible to enjoy my day. Right now, I am winning every day.

For a while, a couple years ago, that wasn't true. I allowed to monster to rule my life. I let my husband and my family do everything around the house. I took pain medication and stayed immobile. I forgot to take care of myself and let my hair get dirty and my face break out. I put aside the things that mattered to me, my family, my crafts, even my pets. I allowed the monster to possess my life.

I allowed the monster, Fibromyalgia, to become my identity.

I am pleased to say that I have acquired a few very powerful weapons to use against my monster. My biggest weapon is my family. While they would step in and do everything for me if I ask, they also step back and let me take control of my own life when I feel like I can. They have stood by me through thick and thin. They are my cheerleaders and my muscles when mine refuse to work. I love them dearly.

Another weapon that you will go, "Huh?" when I mention it, is Flylady. Go to flylady.com for a quick look at what I'm talking about. Flylady gives me the power to keep up with my home, regain my self-esteem, and get organized at my own pace. It has made me realize that my best friend is my kitchen timer.LOL

My latest weapon is a great motivational speaker that my daughter told me about. I'm reading his book now and he is a powerful person. He is showing me how to push past my barriers, how to claim back my life from my monster. His name is Sean Stephenson and he has a great book to read called "Get off your 'But'". My favorite quote from him is one that his mother told him when he was a child, "Pain is inevitable. Eventually, it touches us all. Suffering, however, is optional." That is now my mantra!



Now...my knitting! LOL I have a new baby sweater set that I've finished, but haven't taken pictures of yet. I also made some fingerless gloves for a family friend and gave them to her. I'm crocheting a couple doilies to put under my pepper plants right now, small sized pineapple designed that I got from a vintage doily book I've had for years. It was printed during the 40's and I love the old fashioned doilies in it. I'll try and get a picture of it when I finish it.

The Price of Not Paying Attention

So, here I sit, late at night, knitting away. I'm dealing with back pain tonight and I managed to zone out on knitting and Sims when it suddenly occurred to me that I just put the thumb stitches for the glove I'm working on in the wrong place, not over the thumb gusset. I had already finished the thumb and cut the yarn.

So I ended up having to splice the yarn and remove the thumb stitches from the wrong place. I then started the thumb over the gusset like I should have to begin with. When I got to the area of the splice, I found that I didn't like the way the yarn was separating so I tried to make sure the fuzziness was on the inside. I dropped a stitch and it ran. I was beginning to get frustrated, but I worked the yarn back up with a crochet hook and it was going fine till one of my needles dropped out and now I had four more stitches that were loose and threatening to also run. Ack!!

I managed to save the thumb, but I felt it was a really good example of the difficulty of knitting with Fibro. Fibro fog and pain can really take your concentration away from your work and make some difficult saves. The good thing that I got out of all of this was that I was able to save the thumb and continue the glove. A couple years ago I would have had to chuck the glove and just start from fresh.

Now lets just hope the gloves are nice enough looking to sell or give away after all of that.

knitting and crocheting while dealing with hand pain

There are a lot of things I've had to give up while dealing with fibromyalgia and neuropathy, but I refuse to give up my knitting! I figure I'll knit even if I have to hold the needles with my teeth.Ha! I just can't give up something that brings me as much joy as this craft and that allows me to be creative, make a little extra money, and give nice things to people that need them.

I'm definitely challenged right now. I don't have a car so I have to walk to the post office to mail out my knitted goods. As much as the knitting hurts, the walking is even harder for me. I make the trip at least once a week and I have to take time afterwords to recover. Sometimes it takes several days. I'm dealing with foot problems that are common for people with fibro (heel spurs and plantar fascilitis). I gave up driving when I realized that I kept dazing off in a fibro fog and I had a couple close calls. None of my doctors have taken the fibro fog issue seriously and they don't have a clue of anything I can take or do to make it better. So there went driving. Most other things I've been able to find ways to do them, just had to alter the way they were done. I also have to pace myself so I don't get too worn out or sore.

My mantra now seems to be to not give up and keep plowing along. If I give up and stop doing things, I sit and get depressed and the soreness and fog take over.

Eep! Its been that long?!

I've been an awful blogger. Hopefully there isn't a Blog Police Force or I'm busted! I have several projects that have come up, been knitted, sold, and moved past. I finally decided that I won't get rich by knitting.LOL I have been selling my knitting on e-bay and on another auction site called Listia. I sell my items usually on e-bay, but never for as much as I want. I'm lucky to meet the buy it now price when people bid on it and I have never had anyone actually "buy it now". Listia is just plain aggravating. I put my items up, they go for a fair amount of points, but when I try to use the points to purchase yarn, it never happens. I always get outbid. All I've managed to win were some buttons and a set of knitting needles that I really didn't need to begin with. Even letting people know that I'm using the auctions to finance a charity doesn't seem to matter.
Soooo, my next thing is to try Yardsellr, a site that pays cash (or paypal) for things you would normally sell on a yardsale. We'll see if I can get enough from my knitting there to help. In the mean time, I'm doing all this knitting and so far have donated nothing. It all goes to making money to get yarn to make money!?
I refuse to get frustrated. I will not stop. I have a facebook group that is just for my charity and I have a following finally! Maybe I can make something happen from this. Maybe I need to stop putting up auctions and start concentrating on making stuff to donate for a while. It will definitely make me feel more appreciated.LOL. This is what I'm working on right now:
These gloves are made from Caron Soft Yarn and I decided to put fingers in them. I'm pleased to say that what holes there are between the fingers are small enough to not be noticeable this time.



These are the gloves that I'm auctioning off right now. They are actually handwarmers, but a lot of people just call them fingerless gloves:



I knitting a bunch of other things and didn't keep the pictures.LOL A couple of Jayne Cobb hats and some socks and gloves. Lots of fun!

Well, I should stop blabbing ... oops blogging, and get some actual knitting done.