Psychological impact of surgery and other news

I am out of hospital today, and have written about my surgery and hospital stay elsewhere so will leave that out of this post. Instead, here I want to focus on the psychological aspects of my surgery and the ramifications. 

Back home from hospital!

 I came home from hospital this morning after FINALLY getting my hysterectomy done (YAY!), so thought I should probably write an update post about how it all went :)

Up to my ears in spindles and fibre!

I haven't written anything for a while, because I have been very busy organising things. My surgery that was supposed to happen on August 17th was cancelled and rescheduled for September 7th (they called me when I was on the train to go to my preadmission appointment no less, would have been nice to get some notice!) so I have been madly trying to rearrange all the things that I had arranged for while I was in hospital, and all the stuff that I had to arrange around being out of commission for a while. Not overly happy, but not a lot I could do about it, so I'm just getting on with stuff ;)

Been a busy couple of weeks....

Now that the Tour de Fleece is finished and I have had a little time to catch my breath lol, I have some pretty big things going on!

Day 21: Challenge Day

I'll get to the Tour de Fleece update in a minute - first I have some huge news - my younger brother and his wife are expecting a baby!! I have 2 nieces already thanks to my older brother, but my younger brother and his wife have been trying for quite some time to have a baby without success, so it's pretty awesome that I am going to be an uncle again :D I went and bought myself a set of KnitPro fine interchangeable Symfonie needles to celebrate, because I am likely to be knitting a lot for my new niece/nephew-to-be ;)

Day 17: Plying counts as "rest", right?

So I finished the "Robin Hood" singles today for my 3ply yarn, and then they looked so good on the bobbins that I got impatient to see how the finished yarn was going to turn out! I spent all day plying, the 3ply yarn ended up being 276g, 657m/730yds of about sport weight (no WPI yet, will do that once it has been washed) yarn. And I ended up with leftover singles after running out of the "Pixie Party" (that fibre was more dense than the other two, so I ended up with less singles for the same weight, even though they were spun the same thickness as the others), which I plied into a second, 2ply yarn:

Day 15 - I thought I wasn't going to spin any more laceweight for the Tour...

...but that's exactly what I have ended up doing! Yesterday I finished a full bobbin of Ixchel Cashmere Fling in "Pixie Party" as laceweight singles:

Day 12: More yarn!!

The Tour de Fleece is now officially at the half way point, and today's spinning for me was quite productive! I managed three whole bobbins for Day 11, and today I have finished plying the first skein from those bobbins:

Day 10 - in which my day of rest turns out not so restful!

So today was the first official rest day for the TdF - I didn't spin, but I was certainly not exactly resting! I had a doctor's appointment this morning, so while I was there I got her to check my sore hand out to make sure it was nothing major (it isn't, just overuse, but I have anti-inflammatory and painkilling medications for it for the next 5 days and a warning to take it easy, meh!) Hopefully with the next 2 spins I have chosen, the fibres are much softer than what I have been spinning so far, so my drafting hand will get a break.

TdF Day 9 - back at the wheel!

After 2 days of forced rest due to injury/fibro pain (boooo!), today I am finally back at the wheel and spinning up a storm. I spun the second bobbin of Turtle Sky singles and plied them together, resulting in this:

Day 7: no spinning, but not a day of rest...and a (long!) rant

At the end of the first week of the Tour de Fleece, I am a little disappointed that I didn't get the second bobbin of my Turtle Sky Navajo Churro spun - I did get about half an hour of spinning in today but my hand was just so painful that I couldn't do any more, and decided that resting it was a better idea.

TdF Day 6 and an injury!

I have had another productive day of spinning, albeit hampered by injury....I finally finished plying the Parallel Universe Lincoln singles, and they turned out to be 350m/385yds of Navajo plied 18WPI yarn (which goes a long way toward explaining the injury!)

Day 5: Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the Universe....

...the Parallel Universe, that is! Halle-freakin'-lujah, I have FINALLY finished the Lincoln singles for the Tour de Fleece - not without drama, with 10 minutes to go till midnight on Day 5 we had a blowout! The leather piece that connects the footman and the treadle of my wheel snapped - and BOY was I thanking the Gods at that point for my wisdom in having purchased a maintenance kit so I had a spare!

Day 4, the endless Parallel Universe, Food, and Whorled Domination!

Day 4 of the Tour de Fleece has finished, and I didn't get as much spinning time as I would have liked today (had plenty of interruptions and stuff, but you get that!) I did however still manage 3 hours of spinning, and in that time I added another 20g of the Parallel Universe Lincoln to the bobbin, bringing the total on the bobbin to 55g (and 45g left to spin). This is what it looks like now:

Day 3 and a bunch of personal bests already!

I just finished my spinning for Day 3 of the Tour de Fleece - I had hoped to finish another skein of yarn for today, but the fibre I was spinning had other ideas! It wanted to be spun very fine, and I have ended up after 6 hours of spinning time with this:

Spinning up a storm, and birthday butterflies :)

It's that time of year again, yes, the Tour de Fleece is ON! For those who have no idea what that is, it's a spinning marathon that runs for the duration of the Tour de France. 

Gearing up for a busy July...

I have been flat out with not only knitting samples of my Bunny Love mitten pattern, but also making spindles for the Bendigo Sheep & Wool show in July, and getting organised to participate in this year's Tour de Fleece again on Ravelry.

So much to do, so little time!

Oh my goodness, I have SO much on the boil right now! I'm still trying to finish the sample Bunny Love mittens and the other samples of the mittens I designed, as well as designing MORE knitting patterns. I'm also in the middle of making a large batch of about 40 spindles for the Bendigo Sheep & Wool Show in July (BIG love to Charly at ixCHeL Yarn & Fibre who will be selling the Whorled Domination! spindles on my behalf - I'm SO excited to have a presence at Bendi, as it's the biggest yarn & fibre festival in Australia every year!)

Awww.....

This is the song my daughter walked down the aisle to last night....it's so perfect for them <3

Wedding photos, part 2

Here are a couple more photos from my daughter's wedding, the first one is a "serious" wedding photo (one from just before the silly one of my previous post):

Wedding pics, part 1

I only have these 2 photos at the moment, but will post more when my daughter emails them to me after her honeymoon. The second photo is the first time I have had a picture with *almost* all the kids in it in about 12 years, although there was one daughter missing who didn't attend last night. It was at the end of a long photo session so we were all being silly :P

Nothing like a wedding to bring out the best - and worst - in people. So tonight I went to what was supposed to be my eldest daughter's engagement party, but turned out to be her wedding. As usual, my parents stole all the credit and the limelight from me - I didn't even get a mention anywhere for the whole night, they just gave everyone the impression that they are her parents and the sole reason she turned out ok. So I'm a tad drunk while writing this (so yeah, excuse any spelling errors etc, because I'm not exactly in a fit state to spot them).

Sometimes I hate having a brain that never shuts up.....

It is currently 3:45am and as usual I can't sleep because my goddamn wiring doesn't allow my brain to switch off, and night time is when it does most of the processing of things that have happened recently...so I'm going to write this to get it out of my system and allow me to hopefully get some sleep.

Heartbreak, a shift, and finding Love and Compassion

It is no coincidence that in the last week or so I have found myself in a beautiful space of complete trust, joy, love, compassion, gratitude and faith - at the same time this has happened and I have literally had tears of joy and gone to sleep with prayers of thanks and woken the same way, I have had many dear friends who have suffered the most horrendous heartbreak :(

I don't even know what to call this post....

I am heartbroken as I write this - my good friend Charly from IxCHeL Yarn & Fibre has had a devastating loss of many of her beautiful angora rabbits this week, all due to a suspected mutated strain of the calici virus (a manmade virus created to control the wild rabbit population, for which there is a vaccine available - and Charly's bunnies were all vaccinated - but even the literature that comes with the vaccine says that it may not work!)

Charly and her husband Paul have spent the last 7 years carefully breeding and selecting their bunnies, and in the space of a couple of days all their hard work is just gone. I am close to tears even now, a couple of days later, as I think about how this has devastated Charly - this is not only her livelihood, but the bunnies are her babies, they are family to her.

The Australian Government really needs to rethink their policy here - they allow scientists to create dangerous man-made viruses by manipulating biological material (myxomatosis and calici virus) in order to kill wild rabbits without warning, because if a wild rabbit is sick it is not allowed back into the warren to infect the other rabbits. So these viruses act quickly and with very few signs of infection - and it is currently government policy that domestic rabbit owners are not permitted to vaccinate their pets against myxomatosis (presumably for fear that a domestic rabbit will escape and infect the whole wild rabbit population with immunity to it - can we say, "whuuuuuut?") These viruses mutate very quickly, and the virus that killed Charly's rabbits is suspected to be a mutated strain of the calici virus (which the already rather ineffective vaccine does not protect the bunnies against).

In honour of the beautiful bunnies that Charly has lost, I have created a very special pattern for some colourwork mittens using IxCHeL BFL/angora blend yarn. You can find it on Ravelry here:

Bunny Love

All proceeds from sales of this pattern will go directly to Charly and Paul to help them begin the long process of rebuilding all their hard work. In addition to this, for the month of June, 50% of the proceeds from all my other patterns will also go to Charly and Paul. Please, if you like my patterns, consider purchasing during June to help my wonderful fibre friend.

In addition I would like to ask you to take a moment to email the Hon. Joe Ludwig, current Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and ask him to stop allowing the manipulation of biological material to create these deadly viruses, and to allow vaccination against myxomatosis for domestic rabbits. So many pet rabbits are lost for no other reason than that the government considers biological warfare to be effective but doesn't think about the consequences (cane toads, anyone?) and then will not allow the owners to protect their pets. There are links to a couple of petitions on Charly's blog that I linked to above, please go read her blog with the full story of what happened and then click on the petitions to sign them! Thank you.

Knitting news!

I am all aflutter - I have just uploaded my first ever pattern for sale on Ravelry! You can find it here:

Ukrainian Inspired Mittens

This pattern marks a couple of firsts for me - my first ever pattern for sale, my first colourwork design, and my first charted design :) I hope you all like it! It is the first in a series of 8 mittens I have designed all inspired by my Ukrainian heritage, all of which will be available for sale on Ravelry within the next week or so.

*bounce* I'm EXCITED! :D

ETA: Rather than making a whole 'nother blog post for this one, I am adding it here - I have also just uploaded the second pattern in the series, you can view it here:

Ukrainian Blue Mittens


I will be working on uploading the remaining 6 patterns over the next couple of days, then I have some new design projects in mind already ;) One in particular using some spectacularly soft BFL/angora yarn that I purchased recently from Charly at IxCHeL - stay tuned for updates!

PS - It's 1am and I have just uploaded the third pattern (YAY for insomnia LOL!):

Ukrainian Diamond Mittens

More musings on Love

I have had plenty of time for introspection in the last couple of weeks, and have done a lot of thinking and processing. And it has all come down to one single, very important realisation.

It's going to be another long night....

That is all. Sometimes songs and pictures say it better than I ever could.

Responding and Flowing with Love.

Time for some major life-shifts. So just to bring everyone up to speed, since my last post, my fiancee has now got back together with her ex, without giving me a chance to even speak to her (I didn't even get told, it was plastered all over facebook). At this point that's all anyone else needs to know about the background for this post, because I'm not going to get into who did what or said what or anything - there's no need and it doesn't change the events. And since the whole point of this post is that I'm ok, it's counterproductive to do the usual Virgo thing and analyse it to death :)

And in other news.....

Now that I have the long post out of the way (lol), I can write a monumental, if brief, update on my hysterectomy saga:

A lesson in compassion, forgiveness, and letting go of ego.

(crossposted from my journal elsewhere and edited slightly to explain the backstory a little to those who wouldn't know it)

Playing catch-up, new directions and a visit from my Muse :)

I have been absent from blogworld for a couple of months due to no internet access (which sucked, royally). But I'm back, with a whole lot of stuff to report to kick off the new year (and what a year it's going to be, I can already feel the awesome energy of it in motion!)