Knitting Projects

Finally, here are some of my recent knitting projects (or in some cases old knitting projects).

One of the completed knitting projects was August’s “Thrifty Knitters Sock Club” Project which was the “Bellatrix Socks”. They were really fun to knit up and were reasonably quick. I used a new technique in these which was the “drop stitch”. I have many a time dropped stitches un-intentionally but never intentionally so it was quite weird the first couple of times, but once I realised they weren’t going to run all the way to the bottom of the sock I was okay. I also really liked the colour yarn I used as the patterning went well with the colour changes of the yarn.

The second completed project was from the “One Skein” group and was again the August project. I have never really knitted up headbands but thought I would give this a go and I was really pleased with the outcome. I have a rather small head so it is a little bit too big for me but I am going to donate it to my local knitting charity which sells knitted items to raise money for the children’s hospital in Liverpool annually.

The last project I have finally taken photos of is a blanket which I started knitting nearly 11 years ago when I got married. It is a love/hate relationship and when I feel guilty not working on it I dig it out and work a few rows. A while ago I pulled it out and had lost where about I was on the 16 row repeat stitch pattern so had to unravel a dozen rows until I found where I was. It takes over 40 minutes to knit a row on it and the yarn has a lot of knots in it which makes it annoying to work on. As the rows are so long I am leaving the knots in situ on the wrong side as they guaranteed appear 3/4 of the way along the row. I will be so glad once this project is finally completed but fear that it will not be any time soon.

As you can tell from this picture it is already as large as my garden table and it is not quite half way through yet!!!

The next few days I am hoping to knit some more on a “Drops Garn Studio” pattern which I am about 1/2 way through as I really want to complete it and also to review the knitting dvd’s which I have been promising you.

Until then Happy Knitting!!!

Detoxing and Infertility Update

My detox was a roaring success (apart from diarroeah since Saturday 😳 )

I managed to lose 5lbs in total which meant I got my BMI below 30 for my IVF Consultation today :DD

Firstly I will tell you about the detox. I followed the Gillian McKeith detox (sort of), I took two of her powders with orange juice (forgot to buy grapefruit juice) a day and drank a load of water and did not eat anything. I did this for two whole days 8| . By Monday I was starving and feeling quite poorly along with a sore backside (Germoline on some soft toilet tissue helps). I had lost 2.5lbs so decided drastic action was called for if I was to lose the rest of the weight by today, so limited what I ate to a bowl of cereal in the morning and some lean meat at teatime. That was it

I had hoped that by yesterday the diarroeah would have stopped, but it hadn’t so I weighed myself again and had lost a further 1.5lbs which only left 1 lb left.

By this morning I had taken to praying at every chance I had and my prayers were answered, I had lost the 1 lb and had managed to get my BMI dead on 30 (now weighing 9st 12 lbs exactly). I was so pleased until I got dressed. Now bearing in mind I had chosen the lightest underwear and dress I had I was quite optimistic that my weight would stay the same. Oh no, I weighed 2 lb heavier, aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh! :crazy:

I took my dress off and jamp back on the scales, 1lb lighter, took my watch off and jamp back on, now I was only 0.5 lb heavier. Bearing in mind I am quite a large lady up top I had no option but to leave my bra on and as my dress was cotton and quite thin I decided to leave my knickers on as well and decided the best thing I could do is add 0.5 inches onto my height and hope for the best, oh and to remember to take my watch off before going on the scales at the hospital.

Before we left for the hospital I took some anti-diarroeah tablets as it was going to be a 2 hour drive to the hospital and prayed I wouldn’t have any accidents on the way there. I had also decided to forego breakfast and a cup of tea in the hope that dehydration would make me weigh less.

Off we went and 1.30pm we were sitting in the hospital waiting room waiting to be called in. I was terrified, my tummy was doing all sorts of funny things and I just wanted to throw up.

We went in to the consultation room with the nurse and one of the first things she did was ask my height, so I fibbed and said 4′ 9″ and a half (every little bit helps). I then took my shoes and watch off and was considering whether she would think I was weird if I took my dress off. I decided it would look weird so hesitantly went on the scales.

The scales were in kilos, aaaaaarrrrrgghhhhhhh I couldn’t quite make out what the scales said as I did not have my glasses on |-| .

We sat down and I mentioned that I had weighed 9st 11 lbs this morning (another little white lie) and by Rosemary Conley’s BMI calculator that made me, wait for it, 29.8!!!

She studied her chart and said I weighed in at, wait for it, 9st 11 lbs, yayyyyyyy :DD which meant with my 0.5″ added to my height, my BMI was between 29 and 30, so we had the go ahead for the IVF. B)

The rest of the meeting was a bit of a blur as I was so relieved and couldn’t quite believe it, I had actually done it. After 11 years of trying for a baby and numerous miscarriages I was actually going to have a good chance of having a baby.

Due to hubby’s low sperm count, and my irregular(ish) cycles we are going to go with ICSI which will give hubies sperm a bit of a helping hand as they haven’t quite worked out how to use the TomTom I gave them (sorry hubby couldn’t resist that one :)) ) All they have to do is lie back and enjoy the ride so to speak (that is after they have been in the washing machine to make sure they are all clean 😛 )

So now all we have to do it wait for my monthlies to start in approximately 2 weeks, phone them up and away we go.

We were so chuffed at our good news we went off to Cheshire Oaks to look at some wrap dresses for me (would be a lot easier in a dress than trousers etc for my examinations etc for the ICSI). We went into Jane Norman thinking there wouldn’t be anything to fit me, and I saw a lovely dress but it was in a size 12. Hubby suggested I go and try it on anyway. Off I went rather hesitantly to try it and surprise surprise it fitted, a little low cut, but it fitted, all I have to do now is sew the front up a little bit.

We then went and hubby treated me to an ice cream from Thorntons for having worked so hard at the dieting and I really enjoyed it.

So from now on all I have to do is sit back and relax for a couple of weeks and try and not put the weight I lost so quickly back on.

I promise to try and post a review of the knitting dvd’s I promised and also an update on my knitting soon. Things have been so stressful here the past couple of weeks, but hopefully all the stress is now gone!!!

De-toxing

Well, I am still on a silly starvation diet.

Everyday I have a bowl of special K for breakfast, then some meat for tea, and that is it. Oh not forgetting 2/3 cups of tea a day.

I have not had the guts to weigh myself yet, but will have to in the morning.

The past couple of days I have been taking the Aloe Vera Colon Cleanser tablets, my honest opinion on them is that they are useless. They do absolutely nothing apart from give you bad wind so I would not advise you to buy them (unless you want to have smelly wind that is !!!)

I have decided to do a 48 hour detox over the weekend. I have bought “Gillian McKeiths 24 Hour Detox Kit” which comes with four sachets of herbal detox powder and a diet sheet which has various juices etc to have during the day.

I have also bought “The Fast Track Detox Diet” book. The Fast Track Detox Diet tells you to follow a seven day pre-detox diet, then the 24hour detox which involves you drinking vast amounts of water and a miracle drink, and then a three day sequel-detox diet.

As I don’t have the amount of time that the Fast Track Detox Diet book needs and I am not really keen on the diet sheet which comes with the Gillian McKeiths Kit, I have decided to do the both.

I will be detoxing for 48 hours (Saturday and Sunday) so will take the four sachets of the Gillian McKeith Kit and will be drinking vast amounts of water and the miracle drink from the Fast Track Detox Book.

I will be avoiding all solid foods over the weekend and am slightly worried about not eating. Although I feel that the side effects of the Gillian McKeith sachets will make me rather too busy running backwards and forwards to the bathroom to worry about eating 😳

Apparently the miracle drink which you mix yourself out of cranberry juice, water, orange juice and lemon juice, oh and don’t forget the ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg is supposed to stave off hunger pangs and give you energy. I will let you know whether this is true or not.

I would not advise you to try this detox and will not be held responsible if you do as I am not a dietician or a doctor, but I have ran out of time to lose the 5lbs for my IVF.

D-Day is Thursday and I will be weighing my clothes to ensure they are the lightest garments I own and will also be limiting what jewellery I wear as every ounce will count.

Wish Me Luck!!!!

Is Life Really Worth Living???

At the moment everything seems to be going wrong for me.

My IVF consultation is on the 28th of August and I have 9 days to lose 5lbs in weight. No matter what I do it does not appear to be coming off.

At the moment I am surviving on a bowl of cereal for breakfast and some meat for my tea and that is it. Last night I splurged and had some grapes which I sorely regretted as I have had an upset tummy since Saturday and can’t keep anything in, it was so bad on Saturday night I had to take a bowl to the bathroom with me as I was vomitting and had the runs 😳

Things have not really gotten any better, today I have not managed to keep anything in and am feeling so unwell and weak that I did not have the energy to comb my hair properly.

Knowing things were getting me down you would have thought I would have left my laptop alone seeing that it has been acting up since the middle of last week. But oh no, not me, I decided to sort it out once and for all today.

I decided to play it safe and backed all my files and photos and knitting patterns etc onto the D: drive so that whatever happened to the C: they would be safe and I would still have them.

After three attempts to trying to restore my laptop back to the manufacturer’s settings etc I decided the only thing I could do was to format the C:.

Before we had the laptops hubby and I used to build and programme desktop pc’s, so I felt quite comfortable setting off to format the C:. What I did not know was that the formatting programme I decided to use (had not used it before) decided to format all of the hard drive which included my precious D: with all my files and folders.

I did not realise this until I had successfully restored my laptop and decided to check on the D: to ensure everything was safe. I was distraught, 8 years worth of photos had gone along with over 200 knitting patterns which I had bought and downloaded off the internet over the past couple of years. You would think I would have printed all the photos out and printed the patterns out, but oh no not me, I had saved them on the D: until I had time to put them on a cd/dvd to keep safe.

I have spent the past two hours trying various programmes to try and get my files back, but with no success 😥

At this moment in time I am wondering whether my life is worth living, hubby has told me to “stop stressing, they are only pictures”, but to me they were everything.

I know it is all my own fault and I was stupid not to have saved them onto a cd/dvd but I honestly thought they would have been safe as usually when I just format the C: it is just the C: drive which gets formatted.

All I want to do right now is go to sleep and not wake up until my life is going to be ok. I really feel like I have hit rock bottom and do not know whether I will be able to climb out of this big black hole which I seem to be at the bottom of.

The past few days I have felt like I could not continue with this diet for the IVF and had managed to resign myself that it is only 9 days more and after the past year of dieting hard, surely I had the strength for the next nine days. But, with losing all my files and pictures it feels like it is definitely the last straw and that things are never going to look up.

Why is life so unfair, I am tired, hungry and have got a banging headache after crying for the past few hours.

Here’s hoping the next nine days go quick and I manage to lose the 5lbs in time.

A Talk With My Unborn Child

Whilst looking at the “Fertility Friends” Website which I am a member of I came across this poem and think it is realy lovely and made me cry, so thought I would share it with you. I would like to thank whoever wrote and of course give them full credit for the poem.

These arms of mine are still empty,
It’s been far too many years.
I can hardly keep them hidden,
The heartache and the tears.

I am waiting for you, sweet angel
To bless my life, my heart, my soul.
I think I’ve been a good wife,
Now I want so much a mother’s role.

My life doesn’t seem complete.
You are not there to hold.
I big piece of my life is missing,
Your destiny is yet untold.

I see you in my dreams, baby.
Ten little fingers and toes.
You have your Mommy’s blue eyes,
And your daddy’s ears and nose.

When my eyes are closed I think,
Will your room be pink or blue?
And how much of my life will pass
Before all my dreams come true?

Will I ever know the joy
Of rocking you at night?
Telling bedtime stories
And tucking you in tight?

Will I ever be able to comfort you
When you fall and scrape your knee?
To kiss and make it better
At the tender age of three?

Can I watch you graduate
And drive you to the mall?
Your dad could take you fishing
And teach you to play ball.

Will you make me a grandma
When I am old and gray?
Looking back at my life,
I would be blessed in every way.

So why have I been left behind
When I have so much to give?
I would gladly show you the whole world
If you could only come to live.

Will my turn ever come?
I search my anguished mind.
But questions without answers
Is all I seem to find.

I go home every night
And fight the tightness in my chest.
The silence is so deafening
In my big empty nest.

I guess God has a plan for me
And I shouldn’t have such fear.
But why you can’t be in my life
He hasn’t made quite clear.

I pray for you llittle one.
Everyday, can you hear?
So tell God we are ready
To hold you forever dear.

You would never go without.
We would shower you with love.
My little piece of heaven
Sent from up above.

Zwartbles and Spinning

Whilst sitting spinning this afternoon I realised I had not posted any pictures of my Kromski Symphony Spinning Wheel which my darling hubby had bought me for Christmas, so here it is.

I just love the little stool which hubby bought to go with it, but I wish it had a back to it as I find spinning for a long time sitting on it hurts my back.

This picture is one my hubby took as he did not think much of my photography 🙄

Those of you who have been following my spinning career may remember that my first fleece which I purchased was a smelly, dirty Zwartbles Fleece. It took me forever to wash it and dry it and then even longer to try and hand card it. After hurting my wrists twice I bought the Ashford Drum Carder (best thing I ever bought :DD ). The carding went a lot smoother from then, but it is a shame I could not say the same about the spinning of it.

I found it a lot of hard work trying to spin it as it was not spinning very evenly and I kept losing the end of what I was spinning in the bobbin :**: . I began spinning the fleece shortly after Christmas and I have finally finished it.

From what I remembered the fleece originally weighed around 1.5kilos and out of the whole fleece I have a grand total of 457g of 2ply yarn (a total of 8 skeins).

I know this does not sound a lot out of a whole fleece, but please bear in mind there was a lot of sheep sh*t in it and I had to throw away some of the spun yarn as I could not find the end whilst spinning (it kept breaking and winding itself into the bobbin 😥 ).

The yarn was also very sticky (I didn’t seem to have washed out all of the lanolin), so this made finding the end even worse and did not help my spinning finely.

I am so glad the whole fleece is completed and am planning on recovering and then knitting a bag out of the 2ply handspun and felting it so that the thick/thin yarn will look a lot more even 😉

The next lot of fleece I am working on is from a Texel Sheep and I have hand dyed it using Forest Fibers Chemical Dyes. I had loads of fun hand dying it and am pleased to announce that it is spinning up lovely.

You can see the lovely shade of coral which I am spinning in the first picture at the top of this post. I intend plying it with a strand of handspun white Texel, so that it will be a marled effect.

I will of course post pictures once I have completed the spinning.

I am sure the Zwartbles fleece would have been lovely to have spun up if I was a bit more experienced or had managed to wash the fleece a bit better and got all of the lanolin out of it, but I guess it is one of those things which we learn from our mistakes.

:wave:

Infertility Update!!!

The past couple of days have been a case of “have my monthlies started yet” every time I went to the loo, and as usual they have played hide and seek with me up until this afternoon. The period pains have been present since Thursday evening and so has the spotting, but lo and behold because I wanted them to start at the end of last week, they decided to start today.

The reason I wanted them to start last week is that they put a real downer on the week and I wanted to start this week cheerfully, but no, it is not to be.

At present I am sitting in bed having taken a couple of Co-codamol’s at 7pm and they have only dulled the pain. I am about to take another couple and try and get some sleep with my trusty electric blanket which helps with the cramping a little bit.

The only good thing is that I have managed to have lost 2lbs this week so it only leaves 7lbs to go to get to target for my IVF meeting at the end of the month, that is the bad news, it is just over a fortnight until my meeting, so if anyone has any bright ideas on how I can lose this weight in a fortnight then please let me know. I am at the moment drinking gallons of water and only eating meat and fruit in the hope that this will help.

Most of the day I have been crying for what I can’t have. No matter what I try and do I never get pregnant, I have been trying for over 11 years now and I am beginning to lose all hope. My depression and appeared in full force and all I want to do is go to sleep and not wake up until I am pregnant.

I am well and truly fed up of feeling unwell and having nothing to look forward to. All I want is a baby and it looks like my only hopes are going to be going through IVF treatment.

With my health as it is I am not sure my body will cope with the drugs and the stress of IVF but it is something I am going to have to deal with if I want a baby.

This cycle was the last chance I had of falling pregnant before my IVF treatment began and I feel like I have let hubby down in a big way. I have eaten healthily and tried to exercise (although having a migraine for two weeks made it difficult).

I am terrified of the injections I will have to do on a daily basis for the IVF so again if anyone has any tips please let me know (I am sure they won’t be as bad I think they will be).

As for now I suppose I had better take some more painkillers and hope that the crampings will have calmed down after a good night’s sleep, although I am not going to hold my breath as they usually last a couple of days.

I will post the review on knitting dvd’s over the next couple of days once these dreaded cramps have gone and I also have not knitting and spinning news to tell you in the next post.

Finally Some Knitting News!!!

I have finally completed the Baby Backwards Rib Socks which I was knitting as part of the July KAL for the Thrifty Knitter’s Sock Club.

I was quite pleased with them and think they came out rather well and they even fit perfectly.

I have also found the time and courage to knit clue 2 of the Goddessknits Anniversary Mystery Shawl KAL. I was terrified as the yarn is no fine and you have to really concentrate whilst knitting on it. If you get interrupted you are well and truly snookered.

I think I am finally getting used to the lace charts but am still getting the large holes between the start and end of the round.

I am really hoping that when I finally finish and block it that it will sort itself out (keep your fingers crossed for me). As I have had bad migraines all week I have not worked on it, but am hoping to start on clue 3 this week as the Goddessknits Mystery Shawl 9 has started and I haven’t even cast on for that one yet as I want to complete this one first.

I have decided that the problem I was having on not wanting to knit on the Stitchdiva Bellocq thigh high stockings is that the circular needles I was using were too big and I was struggling to knit in the round, so have sent off for some smaller Addi Circular Needles which will hopefully give me the confidence to complete them.

I have been doing some mindless knitting on the “Art of Knitting” Drying Jacket which is plain stockinette stitch. It is really boring, but is about the only thing I can knit on with these migraines.

On Friday I plucked up the courage to cast on for the August Thrifty Knitters Sock KAL which means I am knitting the dreaded Bellatrix socks from Socktopia. I was dreading these socks but now that I have begun them they are going really quickly. I am already at the home straight of knitting the foot as they were started from the cuff down.

Well, that is about it for now, my next post will be about knitting dvd’s which I will hopefully get out mid-week. I hope you have enjoyed reading this post on knitting as I know it has been more of a life in general blog recently due to my ill health, sorrrrrryyyyyyyy!!!