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.

Knifty Knitter and other subjects

Sorry for the long break in posting. *slaps herself for being so bad*

I recently started going to church again and one of the ladies there invited me to a group of crafters. It was wonderful, first, to get out and get involved in a group of like minded people and second to learn some new techniques and have new ideas presented to me. One of those ideas were the knitting looms called Knifty Knitters. I had a friend who used them years ago and I kind of did a stuck up sort of response where I encouraged her, but thought I would never use them myself. I guess it falls under the "never say never" category. My biggest reason for not buying them was because I thought they were pretty much just for knitting hats. I was wrong. Turns out there are a bunch of things they can be used for and there are also a lot of different types of stitches that can be made with them.

But I think the best reason for using them is this: Usually when my hands start hurting I have the choice of suffering with the pain or stopping my knitting. The looms give me another option and that is to stop one method that uses one set of muscles and movements and switch to another. Well...ok....I already was doing that by switching between knitting and crocheting, but this gives me yet another option. I learned to use them by borrowing my friend, Carol's, but then went to Walmart and bought my own set. The hats work up twice as fast and are pretty nice to look at. I look forward to trying some other things as well with it.

My other knitting news is that I entered a bunch of things into a service auction at the church and hopefully someone will like the things that I volunteered into the raffle so much that they will contact me for making them something.

I've been knitting like crazy lately. Here are a few of my latest items, though not all of them:

This is my usual hand warmer pattern that I revised a long time ago, but this time I used some scrap yarn to put a little color into them. I used Paton's Classic wool for these. The color is called Paprika


This is a sweater pattern I found online called "The 5 hour baby sweater" and can be found here: http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/kp3.html
I used some stash yarn I had. Its a soft worsted weight acrylic yarn.


I'm still working like crazy to sell some of my knitting, but now I'm also working on making some things for charity again and it feels good to do so.

More gloves

I just finished a pair of leg warmers. They were super simple with just a k2, p2 ribbing all the way up. I used a bulky weight violet yarn that had a black strand that ran through it. Very pretty. I don't have a picture yet, but will try to get one later.

My next project is a pair of black sparkly fingerless gloves. I'm using some Lion Brand Wool-Ease yarn and its pretty. I think they'll make up for some nice gloves. I just wish I had more of the yarn, I would make them to extend to the elbows.

I am really having a bad fibro flare up right now. I was swimming and extended my arm too far to catch a frizby and that little movement has caused me pain now for two weeks. The pain started in my neck and shoulders and seems to have moved to my upper arm. weird. Because I'm in pain, I'm fogging out and having a hard time staying awake.