Living with ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) aka Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

The 12th of May is ME Awareness Day and as I don’t have the energy to do much else to promote awareness, I try to write about the issues of day to day living with a long term chronic illness. This post is a couple of days early as I’ve been writing it in stages over the last couple of weeka and if I wait to post it until Saturday, I’ll only forget about it!

I know many people who read this are aware that I have ME and apologies to them as they’ve heard most of this before. For those who haven’t please take time to read it and try to understand that it isn’t just about being “a bit tired” or “a bit achey” or even “a bit fluffy in the thinking” ME is so much more than this. I promise that knitting related posts will resume shortly!

Normal life for me is constant joint pains and extreme tiredness – not just a bit wiped out, but usually so tired I feel that I’m trying to wade through treacle. On days when I have even less energy than normal I have to decide if it is an ME crash day or just a bleurgh day that everyone gets occasionally. Usually however it’s because I’m having a bad ME day and on those days all I can do is give in as soon as I realise, retreat to my bed or the settee and accept that nothing is going to get done. And by nothing I don’t just mean things like making a meal or getting dressed or going out in the car, I mean that teeth won’t be brushed, the only food that will be eaten is stuff that requires no preparation whatsoever, essential medication will be missed, not because I’m being lazy or can’t be bothered, but because I just physically cannot find the energy to do those things. I have had post natal depression many years ago and this is very different, it’s not a mental issue that’s causing it, it’s purely physical (although for many people depression is one of the side effects of ME).

With hindsight it’s always easy to think, I should have laid down sooner, of course it was a crappy ME day, not just a feeling a bit iffy. But because society still doesn’t always recognise just how ill you can be with ME it can be very hard to accept it yourself. So many people say variations of “if you only wanted hard enough to get better/tried this patent medicine/therapy you would” and the nightmare of trying to prove to benefits people that you really are long term ill rather than skiving takes huge amounts of energy that you just don’t have. It’s also very easy to get set in your own little routines and ways that minimise the impact of the ME as much as possible so that you don’t realise the huge impact it has on you – after all if you arrange your life so you need never walk more than 20 yards at a time, then you don’t need to accept that walking more than 20 yards causes extreme exhaustion and raises your pain levels even further.

The other day I woke up at 2pm and by the time I’d had “breakfast” I was exhausted and felt ready to go back to bed. Almost all my joints hurt even with the maximum pain killers I am allowed to take, it’s very weird when one of your toe joints suddenly hurts when all you are doing is sitting or you get very random shooting pains. I managed to stay mainly upright and watched the snooker on the tv – I say watched but most of the time I’d have struggled to say who was playing let alone what the score was. One of my sons is currently living with me while finishing his final year at uni and the agreement when he moved back in was that he would do all the cooking. However he’s hardly around at all this week due to uni commitments so I’d already said I’d cook that night to give him a break. Cooking for me now means getting a ready meal and heating it up in the microwave or shoving things like frozen pies in the oven along with oven chips and hoping that I don’t drop them or burn myself when I get them out – my feet often have cuts or burns on them from me dropping knives and hot things!

That night I finally realised that it was an ME crash day and not just me being “bleurgh” and at that point I reached for the takeaway menus! Fortunately I have a lovely local one which delivers, knows my address better than I do and usually gives me a bit extra or rounds the price down for me. Even so I struggled to safely get it out of the containers and into a bowl and my co-ordination was so poor that my pj top needed to go in the wash!

One of the weirdest things for me is that when I get tired, so not a crash day just any day when I’ve reached my limit of processing, my brain stops processing speech and it’s like listening to a foreign language. I found it very surreal when my mother recently took me to Wales for a few days of luxury to give me a rest and I thought I’d reached that limit and then realised that no, I was hearing Welsh and that was why I couldn’t process it! I also struggle to find the right word for something when I get tired, it’s like there’s a chunk of information missing in my brain, so if I want to ask for chillies on my pizza , not only the word chilli will be missing but all the associated ones (hot, jalapeno, green, red, spicy, dried, fiery etc).

I am incredibly lucky that I can still manage to do some things and that I have the support of fabulous friends (and family) who look after me and enable me to go places and do things. They understand that at any point I may need to go and lie down and sleep for a couple of hours and that I may have to cancel things at very short notice. I’ve had friends come round for a coffee and put away all the shopping that’s hanging around in the kitchen or do the washing up or even get the hoover out and do the living room floor!

I have however also have friends who’ve told me (or more often a mutual friend) “you can’t be that ill because you look ok”. That is incredibly hard to deal with, as it is when someone sees you on a mobility scooter and jokingly says “oh my legs are tired I’d love a ride on one of those”. My local worship group meet upstairs and finally got a stair lift so that I can manage to sometimes get there (they also meet on a morning which means I am often too deeply asleep to attend) , but I still get comments about how the stair lift must be fun to use. I know that that’s because people often don’t know what to say, but I now reply very bluntly “no, it isn’t and I’d far rather have the energy to walk up and down the stairs”.

The other thing that I find so hard to accept is that whenever I’ve done something fun I have to allow for payback time. So although it was wonderful to go to Anglesey with mum and eat fabulous meals and drink nice wine and explore the tiny lanes and lots of different bays (all by car of course), I still had to accept that once I got home I would need to sleep for up to 20 hours a day for at least a week to recover. And if I’ve had friends round for an afternoon then I’m going to be extra tired and wiped out for a few days just from the extra noise and stimulation of having people here.

In fact if I have to go outside to take the rubbish out or bring something in, I often lurk first to make sure that none of the neighbours are around. I have fabulous neighbours, they’re all really supportive and lovely, but it’s hard to say “no I haven’t the energy to stand and chat” and so it’s easier just to avoid them.

I know I’m incredibly lucky not to be totally bedridden or permanently housebound and I try to remind myself when I feel very down about living with ME, that I am still here and that I can live life and enjoy it – sadly several friends have died from other conditions and I’m sure they would love to have only had ME and be able to live even a restricted life.

As ever this is my view of living with a long term condition and more to the point it is todays view of living with ME, tomorrow it may be different. I could be more positive about it or I could want to shout loudly “it’s not fair”, or I may just be asleep for 24 hours and miss tomorrow totally!

A couple of weeks ago the blanket and my mother both decided they needed a holiday, preferably by the sea. They very nicely agreed I could go too - providing certain conditions were met:
from my mother - that I did the B&B researching and route planning
from the blanket - that I sewed in around 200 ends before we went so that it looked at it's best

I was a good girl and duly did these things and so we headed off to Anglesey for a 4 day/3 night break which was lovely. We were very lucky with the weather most of the time, in fact I got sunburnt one day as we sat outside right by the sea to have our lunch. The blanket spread itself tastefully on some rocks so that it could be admired in all it's beauty (although the presence of some rather lively dogs worried it a little) and we all recharged our batteries and had a lovely break.



As well as a lot of knitting we also managed to explore many of the tiny bays and off the main road areas of Anglesey and had the slightly surreal experience of being filmed by Welsh TV for a programme about the new long range footpath around the coast. We were admiring a very beautiful hand made gate and chatting to the blacksmith who'd made it in the breaks between the filming when they decided they wanted people to walk through it, and we were the only people in the vicinity.



Which is all well and good until you realise that both mum (aged 87) and me (50) are disabled and struggle along with walking sticks..... Fortunately they only wanted us to use the gate, not go any further as it was way too steep for either of us to go more than about 4 steps!



On the way home we decided to go via Trefriw Woolen Mill which I was quite disappointed with. Admittedly we arrived just as the sheds and top floors closed for lunch, but I wouldn't have been able to get up to the top 2 stories as I struggle with lots of steps. I did go and have a look at the blending shed and the dyers garden but the rest was just a shop selling things that mainly weren't my taste! I was very disappointed with the wool, they had a few hanks of really nice dk weight, some small bits of very artificially dyed single colour 4ply and some bags of odds and ends. And then they had a range of Trekking sock yarn which isn't even made in the UK. The cafe only did cakes and sandwiches (which I can't eat) and didn't actually have any of those as they were short staffed. So not a very successful visit - although the people in the cafe in the village were really helpful and friendly and made me a lovely salad (not on the menu) so that I could have some lunch.

So we decided to detour a little more and headed further down to Llanfair Caereinion the home of Colinette Yarns. Even my mother who is not a knitter or a crafty person was blown away by the range of colours and yarn. I just wandered round going "oooh" and "aaahh" and "want" and stroking random skeins.



The staff were fabulously helpful, even though it was nearly the official closing time when we arrived I was told to take my time and not to worry about that. He then spent ages fetching different skeins for me to look at and suggesting different ones until a decision was made.



And now it's being dyed up for me as there wasn't enough - and I even got to chose which of the two existing skeins I preferred (because it's all hand dyed they do differ even if they're meant to be the same) so that they can try to aim more for that look. And it will come special delivery for free. 10/10 for service, quality, professionalism and sheer beauty - and it was all much cheaper than I expected it to be. I also got a gorgeous dark blue/black/occasional flashes of purple skein of jitterbug for £4 as it was in the sale room.



Yesterday I headed off to Texere Yarns in Bradford as the Braid Society were running a demo and hands on day. It turned out I'd already tried most of the things they were showing and so I settled down on the comfy settee with the blanket for a bit of quality time together. I ended up spreading it out about 8 or 9 times and explaining each time the basics of how it's made. A couple of people were really interested and ended up with a step by step demo, one woman had got a kit to make a mitred square jacket but was too intimidated by it to actually start it and the other was a textile student who was just blown away by the possibilities. Two other women were fascinated by me knitting and were both so keen to learn to knit that I offered to teach them there and then. They bought needles and a ball of wool each and away we went. They were brilliant and in less than an hour had mastered knitting and purling and were producing beautiful even work and somehow neither of them had added or lost any stitches at all. I was so proud of what they'd achieved!

If you're thinking that I haven't mentioned the patchwork for a while, that's because I decided that if I was ever going to get the blanket finished, and especially if I'm going to attempt it within the 3 year self imposed time limit, then something had to go. I still love the patchwork, it's sat on a unit in my bedroom and I stroke it when I go past - as soon as the blanket is done, I will be working on it a lot to catch up. Someone who doesn't know me very well asked me a few days ago what I would do when I've finished the blanket, I think they were a little shocked at just how many things I listed there and then!

The blanket and I went off to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park this afternoon to take part in the Sit in Peace event which was being held to coincide with the big Sit in Peace event in Trafalgar Square with the author, poet and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh.



We were using the Deer Shelter which has been converted to be a Skyspace. Basically it's a large room with seats around the edge and a large hole in the roof so you can focus on the sky. It's an amazing place to just sit and "be" or to meditate or even to run around and explore more physically, although that's probably not advisable when there are a lot of people trying to sit quietly!



People also gathered outside the Deer Shelter and I chose to sit on the grass opposite 2 beautiful trees and used the space they framed as my own personal Skyspace. It was wonderful to watch the clouds as they darkened and lightened, the occasional patches of blue sky and the odd flash of sunlight as I sat in peace.

I'd chosen to take the blanket as I can knit on it without having to think very much and I find it a very soothing item to knit (well most of the time - some times I get frustrated and fed up!) It really helps me to calm down and focus on just being and during the afternoon among other things I was aware of

the smell of the grass
the noise of the M1 passing the bottom of the Park
the feel of the wool and needles in my hands and the way my hands worked the stitches
the 2 beautiful trees opposite me and the patterns their branches made in the wind
the colour and texture of the blanket, I also thought of the many friends who've given me wool for the blanket
my breath and the way my body relaxed into the knitting
the laughter and chat of people who were visiting the Park
the smell of the outdoors and how fresh and clean it made me feel
the occasional aeroplane as it passed overhead, both the noise and the silver flashes of it in the sun
the songs of many different types of birds
the shape and colours of the different clouds
I also felt very connected to the people who were sat in silence around me and also those in other parts of the UK who were also Sat in Peace
the joy of small children as they stopped "being quiet" and ran around, 2 of them loved finding different colours in my blanket and spotting matching squares
the noise of the sheep and their very new lambs



And afterwards a group of us sat in the cafe and made up for a couple of hours of silence! And so that they didn't feel left out I did a few rows of the amazing stripy socks, which I really will get round to photographing at some point.

For further details see Go Inside To Greet The Light or the facebook page

Oh dear - bang goes my resolution about updating this regularly... In fairness March has been a manic month with my 50th birthday and the boys 21sts plus mothers day. And that has meant lots of celebrations which have been lovely but have left me very wiped out the rest of the time.

I did manage to do quite a lot of hexagons in february



Due to the exhaustion levels I haven't done very much on them this month and have missed 3 days when I just have had no energy to attempt to sew at all. However I have managed some knitting, or to be truthful the finishing off as I did most of the knitting just after Christmas.



The pattern can be found here.

I've also been knitting on the blanket as much as possible, I don't think I'll get it finished within the self imposed 3 year limit which is mid June, but I'm hoping it will be done fairly soon after. Although doing things like this doesn't really help...



It wasn't until I actually started to sew the ends in and wondered why I couldn't find the black ones that I realised what I'd done, or rather not done. I did debate leaving it, but knew it would bug me, so I was good and unpicked that one and redid it with some black.

I was very spoilt by my friends for my birthday and thought I'd show off some of the gorgeous hand made gifts

A beautiful crochet scarf from Lynn


The most gorgeous pin cushion from Karoline, it's so beautiful I'm almost scared to use it, but have managed to put some pins in very carefully round the edges so that it feels loved


I also got a fabulous scrapbook with lots of photos and memories in from the people I go to Pardshaw with - it made me cry when I opened it.

Michael knitted me this utterly fabulous Dalek which is busy knitting a Dr Who scarf - so I now have my very own Dalek!


Friends who aren't knitters, bought me this gorgeous DPN holder, they weren't entirely sure what it was for but as I'd flagged it as something I'd love, decided to buy it anyway. It's from Nic's Knots on etsy.


Matty and his girlfriend Kayla organised this gorgeous yarn for me from Knitting Goddess (aka Joy) - it was a special commission just for me and it's a beautiful deep rich purple with gold sparkles in it. Not sure yet what I'm going to make with it, but I'm really enjoying stroking it and admiring it.


I had to take my mother to a medical appointment yesterday and as she has to have drops in her eyes and then wait for them to take effect it means we're there for quite a while, so instead of just working on the latest socks (which are FABULOUS), I took the blanket along for an outing. The person waiting next to me turned out to be a knitter and she was bemoaning the fact she'd not brought her knitting with her, lots of people commented on it and as I was asked to spread it all out for people to look at properly, I took the opportunity to take a photo, albeit a not very good one.


And finally, for various complicated reasons I ended up getting Matty a car exhaust for his birthday and rather than attempt to wrap up a real one, I made him this from fimo

I am still so in love with my little hexagons and I'm really pleased that I've managed to work on them every day during January. There have been a few days when health/other stuff has meant that I've only managed a very little bit of sewing, but at the end of the month I've achieved 13 hexagons and a lot more prepped up ready to sew together.



I've also thought a lot about the finished item, I've decided that I definitely want to make a quilt and probably a double bed sized one for my bed. The top part is going to be these sized hexagons with a further white row round them and then small green diamonds linking them together. The edges will be just the plain central hexagon with one row of patterned ones round them and then white hexagons linking them together. So yet another long long term project I've started.... My mother asked me why I wanted yet another long term project and after a flippant "because I like them", I've actually given it some thought and decided that it is partly that I like long term projects with a fiddly element to them and always have done, but also that it's partly not being able to work at the moment, it's nice to have long term goals to focus on. I'd far rather have work projects and goals to aim for but as that's just not possible at the moment, craft stuff will have to suffice instead. As well as things like aiming to read every book I possess of course!

So the next thing to work out is how much white fabric I'll need (well apart from "lots" which is my current thought)and then decide whether I'm going to try and add the white ones as I go, in which case I've some catching up to do, or whether I do them every so often. I quite like the idea of doing them as I go, but my living room already has bits of material everywhere plus I've the knitted blanket and lots of wool out for that plus a couple of other projects.... Once I've bought the material, I might cut some up and make up a little pack of square and paper hexagons to carry around with me as my "handbag project" as none of the current knitting projects really count as carry around for differing reasons.

Right time to go and make a coffee and then do todays hexagons.

There have actually been some knitted items finished recently! I made Matty's girlfriend Kayla an Ishbel for Christmas using some rather nice green variegated 4ply that was in the stash.



And I was requested to make a rainbow cardigan for G who was 4 just before Christmas, but got rather distracted by finding some rather nice variegated purple chunky acrylic (G can't wear wool) and knitting her a chunky jacket which I gave her in person when I saw her at new year.



The rainbow cardigan was started and then I did get slightly sidetracked by pretty little sewn hexagons, but I managed to finish it a couple of weeks ago and get it in the post to her. Apparently G was very excited "It's from Dawn! Everyone at nursery will love my cardigan, it's fun. I just love it." So I think that counts as a most successful knit - apologies for the appalling photo - the weather wouldn't play nicely and makes the deep purple ribbing and stripe look blue. I used to use the top of the tumble dryer to take photos on as it was in a corner of my back porch and had windows on two sides, but when we sorted out the back porch, it got moved and admittedly is much easier to use as it can stay plugged in all the time, but no use for photographing knitting on any more.

I have just to kitchener the second purple sparkly sock together and they will be done, which actually leaves me with no carry around knitting. The blanket is way too big and heavy to be taken anywhere other than knit night, the jumper I've started for me is also quite big and heavy (the downside of icelandic style jumpers) and the dalek I want to make with the remainder of the purple sparkly is a bit too complex for carry around knitting. I do have plans for a shawl with the purple galaxy with sequins in, but I prefer knitting them on straights rather than a circular and I suspect the galaxy wouldn't be too happy at being squashed into my handbag for the next few weeks and will fuzz.

Maybe it will just have to be sewn hexagons for carry around stuff until I get inspired for the next pair of socks.

The hexagons are coming along nicely - I'm planning to update at the end of the month (and how come that's on tuesday?!)

Well I've managed to do some each day for the first 8 days in 2012 and have completed the first 4 flowers plus made quite a lot more spare hexagons. There is a distinct pink/red/blue bias as those were the first fabrics I grabbed. I do have some other bits which I hope to start using in the next few days and also people on Ravelry and here have been brilliant about offering scraps to me, so hopefully in the next few weeks the colour range will start to grow somewhat!

I've really enjoyed doing this and so far as well as working on it at home I've also done some:
1st - friends house
2nd - British Library cafe, a restaurant and services on the M1
7th - York Book Fair cafe
8th - mum's house after a very nice takeaway.

In addition I've also used it as distraction/bribery to get me through filling a very long nasty official form and I have to admit got totally got distracted from working on it by reading Spring Term which is a fairly newly published filler in for one of my favourite series of books (about the Marlows by Antonia Forest), which I just couldn't put down once I'd started.

Knitting hasn't done quite so well, although I'm most of the way through the back of G's cardigan and really want to get that finished in the next couple of days.

Happy New Year and may all your craft projects go well in 2012!

I'm staying with friends over New Year and decided that rather than delay starting the patchwork, I'd get everything prepared and bring it away with me. This did mean that I had to find both my iron and my ironing board, which was a big shock to my system...



And today I started actually cutting bits of material up and sewing them onto small hexagons before actually assembling a whole flower. The only rules I've made for myself are that I want to keep each central hexagon made of plain fabric and each flower different.



No idea how many of them I'll do, but the aim is to do at least one teeny hexagon a day AND update on here regularly too.

Other craft aims for 2012 include:
finish the blanket (3 years - the original target - is up in May)
knit the rainbow cardigan for G
design patterns for the Quaker Tapestry
knit myself a jumper
knit myself a purple sparkly dalek

Well it's a week to go until Christmas and I still have to:
finish a shawl
8 out of the 56 pattern rows done so far, so quite a way to go
I thought I'd done the boring bit earlier in the year, but when I picked it up I had exactly the right number of stitches, but 7 more on one side than the other, I'm blaming it on the beer at the festival I was knitting it at rather than total incompetance!

penguin
I made one of these for a friends son and it took about 3 hours so now I know what I'm doing it should be a bit quicker

an entire scrapbook
mum and I spent 11 days in Scotland and her main Christmas present is this.... So far I haven't even chosen the photos

oops nearly forgot this one...
child's rainbow cardigan small child and not seeing her till after Christmas. But I hate doing cardigans, no knitting in the round (and no I can't steek as it's acrylic as she's allergic!)

However I have been doing a few other things. There have been a few of these





and I have been putting some effort into the blanket, which is now at 999 squares. I'm meeting up with some friends this weekend, so am very hopeful that the blanket will see some serious knitting action. I'd also like to finish spinning the current stuff on my spindle, although I appear to have volunteered to teach people how to spindle spin - which as I am really a total novice should be interesting!

I have however spent a lot of time sorting out my photos - when ex and I split he got custody of the albums, but I got to scan all the photos and keep all the spare ones too. I've realised just how much I made for the kids when they were little (knitting, sewing, smocking, cake making etc) and may post some photos at some point.

The big news for 2012 is that I've decided to take up patchwork again and the intention is to work on it every day (health permitting). Some friends and I visited the Quilt Museum in York a while back and I got very enthusiastic about teeny tiny hexagons (sane - moi?) The only hand patchwork I've done before is a bedspread in nice large squares so this will be a challenge. Actually that's a lie, when I was a small child and very inspired by the Milly-Molly-Mandy stories I made myself a needle case using small patchwork rectangles, only I didn't know about paper piecing so I had to just cut them and do my best to sew them neatly to each other. I still have it somewhere and am still impressed by what I managed with no teaching or having seen "real" patchwork.

My hexagons are going to be teeny tiny - each side is 1/2 inch so they are 1 inch across the middle... Not sure what it will be, I'm just planning to work on a few every day and see what happens. There will be more details and photos later - I've already got 1500 pre-cut paper hexagons, which are in a depressingly small bag!

If anyone has any scraps of cotton material that would be suitable (1 hexagon only takes less than a 2 inch square of material) so I only need very small amounts, preferably enough to make 6 or 12 hexagons in the same pattern, and is willing to send it to me I would be very grateful. I'm more than happy to reimburse postage charges (or donate them to charity if you prefer).

Right I think I'm going to chose a few photos for the scrapbook so that I've officially made a start and then it's bedtime!

Oh dear, it's almost 2 months since I updated this..... In defence I had a good summer where I was able to get to a couple of festivals with friends, but that meant huge chunks of time resting and recovering when I got back. And then I went off to Scotland with mum for nearly 2 weeks in September and I'm still very much recovering from that. It was a wonderful holiday, but very tiring for me. However we did manage to find some yarn shops on our travels.

We left Leeds and got as far as Clapham (the Yorkshire one not the London one...) where we stopped for lunch and I was very impressed by my mother (a total non-knitter), pointing out it would be very rude to be in Clapham and not go to Beckside Yarns. So we did.

And of course it would have been unacceptably rude not to buy something while we were in there. So I replaced my broken 3.5mm needle with a rather nice Brittany Birch pair and we treated the sock blanket to a nice shade of green. Green not being a colour I wear a lot, it tends to be lacking.



We then headed off up the M6 and over the next few days worked our way down to Cambeltown (Mull of Kintyre). By this point I was in urgent need of some bright red, so I asked about yarn shops and discovered that the local yarn shop was in the local pet shop.... And it was and very good it was too, so I ended up with bright red and some purple which was all because a friend has requested more daleks.



While we were away I also finished my mothers birthday present (in fairness I needed to know how long to make the mittens as she has small hands, so it couldn't be completely ready in time), and did a bit more work on my purple sparkly socks that I started at Towersey festival.



After Campbeltown we headed off up to Oban and found 2 wool shops in the town. The first had very nice but expensive stuff and then I found The Wool and Needlecraft Centre which had all sorts of yummy yarn, fabric and other craft stuff (and much nicer, friendlier staff too). The customers were great as well and my poor mother just stood there looking very bemused as we all talked for ages. I ended up recommending my local shop Baa Ram Ewe to someone who's daughter visits Leeds frequently but didn't know about it (she rang her to check!) and we had lots of discussions about Ravelry too. And of course there was shopping - this is for a possible project which will have to remain a secret for a while...



By now mum was looking rather jaded when I enthused about yarn and knitting and the car was also filling up (one very small car, my wheelchair, mum's tri-walker, lots of books and knitting and clothes for a couple of weeks away, plus the shopping we'd been doing en route...) so I decided to be very good and not go and find Shilasdair on Skye. However on our way to our amazing B&B in Broadford I saw the sign to Teo Handspun and as I was driving promptly followed the very rough road down to it. And it was just as good as I remembered from around 8 years ago. Fortunately it's next to a second hand bookshop - there's even a connecting door through - so mum was very happy and toddled off to browse while I oohed and ahhhed at the pretty colours and shiny things and soft wool....
and just happened to buy this



The plan is to make a lovely loose shawl for myself, or alternatively I may just sit and stroke it!

We did also visit Skye Batiks where both mum and I treated ourselves to new bags - we did have an interesting discussion (the bag has lots and lots of pockets in) about where I would keep all my stuff in it and eventually the assistant said in a slightly puzzled tone "so all you keep in your bag is drugs and knitting?" and I thought about it and said "well not quite all, but mainly"



And finally (about time too I hear you say), I'm heading off this weekend for some utter lunacy with a fab bunch of friends on Ilkley Moor and I've knitted a couple of things for raffle prizes (not the best of photos sorry, but I've run out of daylight) - yep it's the lime green lot I'm going with.



As for the blanket, sadly it's looking much the same as it did in the august photos, so I've promised it some TLC this month (and it's cold so it's going to be a good excuse to curl up in it while I knit!)