That was not the weekend I was looking for…

Long story short:

1. My relaxing weekend wasn’t.
2. The winner of *last* week’s Saturday Giveaway is announced at the bottom of this post.

Catching up and keeping up

You may have noticed a drop-off in blog posting round here recently….  Well, I’ve not been too well.  Nothing serious or life threatening, just notably sub-par.  I don’t talk about it much here, but I have ME (also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS/ME).  It waxes; it wanes, and generally I think I’m doing pretty well.

At the beginning of this month, though, I had my first occupational therapist appointment at a specialist CFS/ME clinic.  It was eye opening.  I’m on three scheduled rests per day (and you would be amazed at the things that do not count as resting.  Not Ravelry, not knitting, not television, not reading, not audiobooks!), and I’m slowly realising that things that have just faded into the background – things I have considered ‘normal’ for years – are actually symptoms.  Anyway, I don’t intend to blog about this here, (if you are interested, I have started a new blog* to chronicle my journey back to normal functioning), but suffice it to say that I have not been keeping up with the online world.  Shop listings, blog posting, Ravelry, blog reading and commenting – all have fallen by the wayside.  And it’s November!  When a whole bunch of you nutters join in with NaNoBloPoMo, and try to post daily!!  Talk about bad timing.  My RSS reader currently shows over 350 unread posts.

Anyway, I’ve decided that there is no point in trying to catch up with everything whilst the whole world rattles onwards without me.  So I will be working my way through the backlogs, whilst simultaneously attempting to keep up with stuff coming in from now onwards.

In related news, I realised that Saturday came and went without me saying anything more about the current Saturday Giveaway competition.  Oh, dear.  That is very much ‘my bad’.  Well, I’ve decided that I will extend the competition until *this* Saturday, so get on over there, read about the Farm Animal Sanctuary, and see if you can help them out.  Remember- you don’t actually need to spend anything to enter the competition: Spreading the word on Twitter, or Facebook, or your blog counts, too!  (but don’t forget to come back here and let me know, so I can enter you in the draw!)

Well, enough rambling – I will be back soon (I sincerely hope!) to update you on my recent adventures.

82) Tipping point

I'm at work, and I'm really struggling to be productive.  I'm tired, which never helps, but more significantly, I realise I'm coming to some sort of tipping point regarding my professional life.  For around ten years, I've been trying to do the responsible, corporate thing. Trying to find a job where I fit in, where I feel capable and competent and challenged and engaged, and I simply haven't found a niche that is me-shaped.  Whenever I hear about people keen to return to their work after having a child, it just boggles me.

It's not that I have a Bad Job – far from it.  It's just that, beyond my general wish to do good, professional work and not let anyone down, I'm totally indifferent to it.  I do not, in the vernacular, give a crap.  I am not interested in my 'career'; I do not want to advance my prospects.  I don't want to 'graduate' into management.

But the big problem here is that the world is full of things about which I really do care, about which I am truly passionate.

If I had no driving passions, no wish to do anything else in particular, I'd be happy enough to plug away at my desk for 37.5 hours per week, collect my pay cheque and relax for the rest of my waking hours.  Unfortunately, that's not me.  I cannot be that person; I am starting to realise that I cannot be happy pretending to be that person.

I'm hoping to agree part-time hours with my employer in the near future.  I'd ideally like to go down to three days per week, but I think they are likely to hold out for four.  I really don't know if that will make enough of a difference to me.

———————-

One final note:  I do, honestly, realise just how lucky I am to be able to even contemplate voluntary part-time working in our current economy.

Please, no comments encouraging me to 'be happy with what I have' or 'look on the bright side'.  Believe me, if it were that easy, I would already be there.

5) New energy

It's glorious weather here in Cambridge today.

I had to go out at lunchtime, to post a letter, run a few errands, so I was glad to see the sun shining after the frost and fog of early morning.  I wrapped up, and set out.

After five minutes, I took my gloves off.  Two minutes later, my scarf was being carried.  After a total of about 12 minutes, I took my coat off.

The air is cold, but soft and fresh, rather than harsh and bitter.  The warmth of the sun is very obvious.  It's a turning day; a day of new energies, and the promise of spring.  It's not that winter is over yet, but you can feel the shift, the certainty that the cold is heading away from us again.  And as I was walking down King's Hedges Road, and back up through the
Science Park, I could smell wet earth and creosote.  Smells of a new
year, and new growth.

1) X-over

Let's admit it: I stalled on 'X'.  I have strenuously avoided 'Xmas' because I hate the Xpression.  So I'm stuck with the X-over between the new year and the old, which is, if anything, even lamer.

From last year's first post, I see that I felt over-burdened with yarn and fabric, and rather guilt-ridden about all the stuff I had, but was not really taking advantage of.  I made the following resolutions:

• Knit daily - no, but probably close
• Blog three times per week – no; I averaged twice, with 105 posts in the year, not 156.
• Spin weekly – I don't think so, but I spun more last year than the year before
  
• Learn 1 weaving technique per month – definitely not!
  
• Sew more.  Some.  At all. – no…
• Detash some – yes!
• Practise recorders – no…
• Grow food for J and I (the dogs will eat pretty much anything out of the garden; that's not a challenge). – yes!
• Increase my flexibility, strength and cardio fitness - maybe a bit.
  
• Decrease my weight, hopefully to pre-shingles levels – yes! Though there has been a slight relapse over hte festive season…
  
• Learn to sing – no…
• Spend more quality time with J and the hounds – yes!
• Follow my inspiration – no…
• Allow time to breathe. – no…

There's a lot of 'no' on that list, but actually, I'm happy with it.  This year, I want to:

• Appreciate what I have;
• Release what I don't need;
• Keep up with the obligations I have taken on;
• Be more aware of what I am achieving.

That's a rather looser list than last year, definitely, but I think I will try and set a concrete goal in each area for each month.  I'm also going to number my posts again this year, just because it's fun.

January's list:
This month, I am going to:

• Make a project list for the year.  This has worked awesomely for me in the past, even if I don't stick to it, and it would be fun to appreciate the stash I have rather than wishing for more.
• Destash more fabric and yarn.  There's always more that I don't need.
• Work hard.  There is a big deadline at the end of the month, and I need to concentrate on it to ensure I hit it, rather than allowing it to hit me.  I also need to dye/blend more yarn and fibre in preparation for TIF.
• Try and put together a project round-up for last year.  Both my Ravelry and Weavolution records are sadly out of date, and I'm not sure even I can remember what I've been doing in recent months.

More on the X-theme…
I had an Xcellent festive season with my Xceptional family.  I think this was the first time in almost a decade that both my brothers were able to get to my parents' house on Christmas Eve and stay well past boXing Day.  I think it's safe to say that there are few families who will go sledging -twice!- when the youngest member is 30 and the eldest more than twice that:

The best – and fastest – of the family sledges are at least 15 years old, and technically broken.  Large cracks have been mended with various kinds of tape, but we've found no replacements to beat them, so they stay.

My Dad had the most spectacular wipe-out.  I managed to catch this shot with light visible between the sledge and the ground, and between the sledge and Dad.  No light is visible between Dad and the ground, though his feet are *definitely* well above his head:

Andy was specialising in coming down face-first, with a sh – err, snow-eating grin, which you can't really see.  Steering was by means of his toes:

Mum was perfecting a no-hands technique:

Whilst Stu was holding on tight and giggling like a loon:

Me?  I'm behind the camera.  There is no evidence of my waterproof yellow fisherman's waders.  Though, I will say, I am happy to wear them with no shame at all.  I like winter clothing which pretty much does away with the need for the sledge – wearing these, you keep going, even if you come off…

98) P: Panic, or Possibly Pneumonia, or Planet, fallen-off-of-the-face-of

OK, my alphabet challenge isn't goign to be finished in a month.  Surpriiise!

I've started a few P-posts, about post offices, parcels, postage, packaging (as in, excessive), but they were all snarky and snide and not really 'me', so I binned 'em.

I'd got stuck on 'P', so I was pouty and petulant and peeved.  And I've spent the last few days feeling slightly panicky – though it's nothing to do with silly alphabet challenges (or even Pyjamas!  Now, that would have been a good P…).

I'm a bit …ill-ish.  I really don't want to sound all dramatic, but I can't quite breathe properly.  My lungs are achey and feel 'clenched', somehow, and it seems there isn't quite as much oxygen in the air as there should be.  It feels like the symptoms of acute, panicky anxiety, and so in a fit of extreme conditioning, my emotions are following suit.  So I've been wandering around feeling anxious and sad and panicky, all because my lungs have led the way.

I have a doctor's appointment in about an hour, and I'm suspecting some sort of chest infection.  Pneumonia would fit the P-theme nicely, but the universe doesn't have to play along with quite such enthusiasm really.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue with the alphabet, but more slowly.  I was failing to keep up with the comments anyway.

Oh – and the person who found this blog by Googling "Can you do 4 shaft patterns on an 8 shaft loom?" – yes.  Yes, you certainly can! 

84) B is for…

better?  J is home from hospital, complete with his appendix and no plans to have it removed.  Whilst I'm not familiar with this concept of appendicitis 'getting better', Mum has reminded me that doctors used to talk about people having a 'grumbling appendix', so maybe we'll call it that.  Everybody repeat after me, in your best 'Dr. Nick' voice: "Feengers crossed, everrybodee!"

B is also for beer!  J and I started brewing our first batch of beer that isn't made from a kit, a few weeks ago.  It's a Belgian Wit (wheat) beer, flavoured with orange and coriander seed, and uses real, actual hops and torrified wheat, as well as the more familiar malt extract.  It's a step towards doing full mash, or all grain, brewing, which feels so much more 'real' to me than using tinned extracts.  It also means that, once you know what you are doing, you get far more control over the final flavours in your brew.

It also means you have to boil the ingredients for about an hour, depending on the recipe.  We have a special mash tun and boiling vessel, which is a plastic tub with a very serious heating element in the base, and a thermostat.  You can use this to do the vigorous boil, or the gentler, more refined heating that is required to get the sugars out of the malted barley (or the wheat, in this case). When you add the hops, they float on top of everything else:

But by the time the boil is done, they're significantly less buoyant.

This is really a spring/summer drink, so here's hoping it keeps well!  It's almost finished fermenting now; we should be bottling in a week or so…

83) A is for…

…appendicitis.

J has been suffering abdominal pain – bad enough to keep him in his pyjamas, but not bad enough to prevent him from sampling the leftover Hallowe'en chocolates – since Saturday morning.  Diffuse lower abdominal pain, which is sensitive to pressure, and slowly 'focusing' itself off to the right, between his navel and his hip bone.

Last night, he phoned our local out-of-hours service, who confirmed our amateur diagnosis of 'probable appendicitis', and this morning, I dropped him off at A&E.  As yet, I've heard nothing further, and can only presume that this means he is in some way incapable of using his phone (because mobiles are now allowed in hospitals, and if I know him, he's going to be Very Very Bored by now).

Of course, this is the week we are having window fitters in for four days, double glazing the whole house.  J was going to work from home, bless him, to keep an eye on the workmen, so I don't have to.

It never rains but it pours – and we live on a flood plain!

81) Off the loom!

Another real 'quickie' today; I cut the bag fabric off the loom this morning!

I brought it to work today, and will be knotting the warp ends at lunchtime so I can safely wet-finish it tonight, and start sewing up the bag at the weekend.

I would have finished a day earlier, but due to my own stinginess I ran into two problems….  Firstly, I tried to use the dodgy bit of yarn at the end of the ball for one of the warp stripes, and it gave out when I had about 10cm left to weave.  And secondly, I didn't *quite* put enough warp on the loom to give me the fabric length I wanted.  I got there in the end, but was reduced to needle-weaving for the last few rows, because my shuttle wouldn't fit through the remaining shed any more!

And finally: an apology.  I have been unbelievably remiss in replying to comments and keeping in touch generally, recently.  I no longer have regular access to my personal email at work (though sometimes I sneak a peek), and combined with the recent Typepad comment-weirdness, a new job, the fact that the last thing I want to do after sitting in front of a computer all day is boot up my laptop when I get home, and just Life In General, I have been pants.  I am just about managing to work, walk the dogs, feed myself and J, and occasionally play with wool in my minimal downtime.  Sometimes I go for a run, or brew beer.  I have about 300 posts to read in Google Reader.  I owe so many people blog comments, emails and/or phonecalls, it's just not true.  I'm sorry.  All I can say is, "Be glad you're not coming to stay with me any time soon", because the astute will have noticed that 'housework' did not feature anywhere on that little list.

And I *will*, at some point, get back to you.

75) 102 great days

Do you know the saying, "Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck"?  It featured heavily in a book I used to read as a child, and it's stuck with me ever since.

On Friday, I found a penny.  On Saturday, I found a penny.

On Sunday, I found a pound coin.  Wow.  102 days of great luck?  102 awesome days.  I did the maths, and that takes me right through into the new year.

I'm not generally superstitious, but I love the idea of 102 great days.  Somehow, it's impossible to imagine that many great days in a row; but at the same time, it's a lot more concrete than, for example, "may you have great fortune for all the days of your life".  I'm carrying the pound coin round with me now, and just thinking about it never fails to make me smile.  Yesterday was definitely more awesome, just for the sake of owning it.

Talismoney.  Hee.