Extreme Knitting Redhead: Peeping out again.......

Saturday, December 28, 2019

Peeping out again.......

Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to email me to check I'm OK. You're so kind. I just haven't felt like blogging as we've had so much sad news recently that I felt the need to withdraw for a while. The other thing is that although I've completed a further 4 marathons since my last post, I've been struggling with my asthma and have had to withdraw from 3 others. Hopefully I'm back on track now and ready for my 2020 challenges for Alzheimer's Research UK!

I do have a lot of new craft/wildlife/Shelley/knitting/embroidery projects to share but I'll have to add them bit by bit or each post will be far too long. Plus in the time I've been absent I've completed another round of the Six Pack Revolution and am about to start another session in the next few weeks.

I've been tidying my craft room and finishing a few projects that have been lying around for ages so I'll start with an embroidery project, Hester the hare. Started in 2013 but not finished and put aside for whatever reason.

She came on a printed tea towel and you could leave her like that or make her into a doorstop or soft toy. I remember thinking that she needed some embellishment so had started work on the side I wanted to prettify.

I'd already done a few bits of embroidery

She definitely needed much more than that!

Once I was happy with the level of embellishment I joined both sides together and stuffed her nice and firmly so she'd stand up OK

I left the reverse side plain

There's been knitting too - a jumper and a cardigan. Plus I cut and re-knitted part of my Carbeth jumper because I wanted it to sit on my waist rather than higher up. When I made it I had planned to use it mostly with dresses but I found I preferred to wear it with jeans/trousers which left a cold draughty bit just above my waistline so I'd stopped wearing it.

Thankfully I had plenty of the yarn left (Artesano alpaca) so all I had to do was pick up the row of stitches above the ribbing and then cut off the ribbing (eek!). I lengthened the body by 3" then re-did the rib and now it's perfect. You can see the original rib-line in the photo below and the colour looked slightly different until I soaked and blocked it again and now you can't see it at all.

Now for the jumper, Kapua from Amirisu Summer 2019 magazine. I used some beautiful 4ply yarn from Ella Rae and when I did my swatch I really wasn't sure about it as I thought it looked like camouflage fabric!

I went ahead with it anyway and I'm so glad I did as I was delighted with the result:

I loved doing the pattern on the sleeves and although the tiny pompoms seemed fiddly to begin with I quickly got into a rhythm with them.

The only changes I made were to the finishing of the neck and sleeves: for the neckline I used a 2 stitch icord bind-off as I felt they looked better than just casting off loosely and for the sleeves I bound off using Elizabeth Zimmermanns 3 stitch icord bind-off.

Then there was the cardigan, Ystava from Laine magazine. I must be having a green colour phase as I chose to use green Rowan Mohair Haze and Rowan Fine Lace held together (both from Stash). It was such a lovely knit and the words I used to describe it on Ravelry were "absorbing', "meditative" and "comfy" and it's already a firm favourite.

I marked the position of the buttonholes on the buttonband using tailors tacks - you can tell I have a background in dressmaking!

The buttons were a chance find in a small local shop!

There's much more to add but tempus fugit and I have other things to attend to but I'll be back; methinks I'll need a few sessions to catch-up completely!

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Mum's Story

In 1997 my mother, then aged 81, had a series of minor strokes. Shortly after that we started to notice behavioural changes notably memory loss and confusion over everyday items. We thought it was just old age finally catching up with her. Then she started wandering and had violent mood swings. Although she already lived with us it became obvious that she couldn't be left alone for long and so I left my job to care for her. The next few years saw a gradual decline into the blackness that is 'vascular dementia'. My normally placid mum became violent and aggressive. She had psychotic incidents where she would see imaginary people (children hiding in her wardrobe, Russians sitting on the stairs, women stealing her clothes) and she would shout at them and sometimes throw things too. She was so convincing that we used to go and check that there wasn't anyone there! When my sister died mum did not know who Judy was or that she was her daughter. There came a point when I suddenly realised she no longer knew that I was her daughter and this was a terrible time for me. In the last 2 years that she lived with us, life for us all became almost unbearable as she needed 24 hour care - she couldn't be left alone at all because she would either wander off or hurt herself, she never slept for more than 30 minutes at a time during the night, she became incontinent and incapable of doing anything for herself. Finally my husband and I realised that we could no longer provide her with the care that she needed and she went to live in a special care home where the team did a splendid job caring for her in the last few months of her life. There she lived a zombified existence unaware of who she was, what she was or where she was. It was heartbreaking. She died in March 2005, the day after her 89th birthday.

Thank you for taking the time to read mum's story and I hope you'll dig deep and sponsor me using the link below to help find a way of beating this destructive disease.