WOYWW 490

No change on my main work desk this week, but over the other side, all my felt stuff has been pulled out again…

On Monday afternoon, I finally got round to wet-felting the embellishments I made for the striped scarf. You may remember a while back I needle-felted quite a few felt balls and flowers and these needed a bit of rough treatment to firm them up a bit. At the top of the photo on the left you can see my olive oil soap that you use with hot water for wet felting. That stuff smells lovely and I always associate it with felt.

All the pieces are laid out on the table with the vinyl cloth which is beside the sink in my studio. I shall leave them out until they are fully dry, and then I can start sewing the embellishments onto that scarf.

I’ve done quite a few more inches on the peacock scarf and I should finish the knitting in a few days’ time. I need to make a few more peacock feathers and then I can finish that one too.

I’ve also resumed unravelling a rather unsatisfactory knitted tunic top I made years ago – I like the colours and the design (purple circles on a yellow background – there’s a snippet of it in the photo montage that makes up my blog header) but it never fitted very well and I didn’t like the neck. I am going to knit it up again to a different design. It is made up of different 4-ply thickness yarns so there’s variety in the texture as well as the colour. I started working on this particular UFO (UnFinished Object) unravel months ago and it was another one that bit the dust along the way and definitely needs finishing. It will be good to have a new knitting project to keep me going through the winter.

The only other thing I did in the studio this week was also on Monday afternoon. I mended one of my necklaces that had got broken, and soldered a stretchy metal arm band that had also snapped, which I’ve been putting off doing for months! I like these old-fashioned men’s arm bands as I’ve got rather short arms and my sleeves are always too long, and they keep them up out of the way when I’m busy in the kitchen etc. Really pleased to have got that little job done. I had to do the other arm band too, last year. The joins obviously weren’t that secure, but I’ve had them for years so I suppose they haven’t done too badly.

I am getting absolutely inundated with dried teabags and I really need to start working on those, carefully cutting them open and tipping out the tea, ready to go on the garden. Then I’ve got to decide what to do with them all! This job is definitely on my UFOs to-do list.

Bread

I’ve decided to start making bread rolls. They are useful for sandwiches etc. and looking at the list of ingredients on the supermarket ones, I was horrified! So many added chemicals to such a simple food. They are very little trouble to make really, and much more delicious, and with no artificial additives. I found a simple half-and-half wholemeal and white recipe online and added lots of nice seeds to the mix (my usual sunflower and pumpkin, and also some chia and brown flax seeds for good measure), and topped with sesame seeds. A huge success!

My sourdough this week was NOT a success. As usual the flavour is good but I tried altering the technique a bit because I thought the reason why my sourdough never rises very much may be due to over-proving, but leaving it for a shorter time clearly wasn’t the right decision.

Oh well, it tastes OK, even if it’s rather dense this week! It would make good ballast.

Our Michelin-Starred Meal Out

Last night we went for our special meal out. A friend from church gave us the ticket that he’d won, saying we would enjoy it more than them. What a lovely treat! Scroll down to previous post. View it if you dare. Prepared to be green with envy, and don’t view if you are hungry or you’ll hate me!!

Kitties

On Sunday afternoon my hubby was busy in the garden, cutting back, and clearing all the weeds from the waterfall outside the kitchen window. Ruby was fascinated by all the activity and I snapped this sweet piccy of her balancing on the trellis – taken with the zoom through the kitchen window.

Lily has decided to be antisocial in the evenings and her latest sleeping place is on the armchair in the flat, much to my hubby’s disgust. Ruby just loves to settle down on my legs once I’ve got my feet up on the recliner and we both enjoy the mutual warmth!

My little buttercup was in real trouble yesterday – not just once, but twice, I caught Ruby in the act of licking my butter when my back was turned – while I was actually still in the room! The second time I caught her, she ran away and hid. She knew she’d been a naughty girl. Lots of cuddles and forgiveness later.

Health Update

The first pair of support pants duly arrived last Thursday and to my extreme annoyance, they don’t fit. I thought, “Oh no, not again…” I went through all this last year. I immediately phoned the lovely rep and she was absolutely horrified that this has happened to me again, and immediately swung into action, consulting her manager and attempting to sort out the problem. The next morning she phoned me for some additional accurate measurements and I emailed her photographs too. They are going to remake them and hopefully they will arrive in the next day or two as she was marking it urgent. I also sent her a photo of my now very obvious hernia and she agreed this really needs proper support.

They have cut the pants much too short. The band at the top cuts right across the middle of my stoma bag – completely useless! Also, I asked for lace, and they haven’t put this on. Someone isn’t reading the directions the rep gave them.

My hubby wondered if I could go with another firm but I really don’t want to – when they get it right, the pants are excellent. This company uses a unique fabric which is specifically designed by a doctor to give adequate hernia support while not interfering with the operation of the stoma, and is the only company that does a bespoke service and home visits. Our hospital also deals with them and they run a regular clinic in the colorectal outpatients, and they know the rep that covers our area. The rep didn’t think that what had happened to me was a common problem and was mortified that it had happened to me at all, let alone twice! I had such a time with it last year when they got it wrong twice, and it took months to get it sorted.

In the meantime I am continuing to wear the old ones which the rep said were no longer giving me adequate support because they need replacing every year (they are now about 18 months old) as they gradually lose their stretch with wearing and washing, and also since they were made, I have lost some weight. I didn’t order any more early this year because I knew I was due to have surgery and you can’t wear them for several weeks after that as they exert too much pressure, and then I was waiting to see my surgeon and the stoma nurse for several months after I eventually got out of hospital. When I saw them in August they agreed I should continue with the support garments and the nurse arranged an appointment for the rep to call on me. Everything takes so long to get organised these days and with them making a mistake with the fitting just adds insult to injury and all the time my hernia is getting bigger, it seems.

I had my CT scan last Thursday and of course I haven’t had any result back yet. I shall probably phone the stoma nurse early next week to see if there’s any news.

Rollator

My hubby’s brother has used a rollator for some years now and swears by it, and several months ago, our sister-in-law suggested that I might find one useful. I did some online research and found the one I wanted on Ebay, but it was collect only, and too far away. I looked up the model but unfortunately it is no longer made, which was disappointing because this particular one ticked all the boxes for me. I set up an email alert on Ebay and decided to wait a while to see if any more came up, rather than getting a different one, and this week I got notification of one, and immediately bought it. It’s second hand but looks virtually unused, and I got it for a very good price, and they were prepared to send it, too. It arrived on Monday and it’s really good! We went for a 90th birthday drinks party later on that morning and I was able to try it out. It uses a lot less energy than walking with crutches.

Ruby is terrified of it.

The next thing is for my hubby to try and rig up some sort of bracket so I can hook it on the back of my buggy.

So again, another pretty eventful week chez Shosh! At least I haven’t been so exhausted this week.