A Happy Fuzzy Blog

My so called whatever

I had another migraine today.  It's still lingering, but I think I can actually be coherent now.  I usually don't even try to write when I have a migraine.  My brain just doesn't work.  It takes me a full five minutes to email my supervisor to say "My head hurts.  I'm staying home."  Seriously.

I've tried to be pretty upbeat since I started the new blog and focus more on things that make me happy.  I've tried to just write when I feel good and not write when I feel like crap.  I want to have a positive outlook on life.  I really do.  And sometimes I actually do.  But you know what?  Sometimes I just feel like hell.

I never know how much I should write about these things.  I don't want you all to view me as some kind of whiner or something.  But I don't know if I'm just having unrealistic expectations of myself because of situations I was in where my feelings would absolutely not be considered so I really wasn't allowed to voice complaints.  Like, who did I think I was to think I had rights?

On the other hand, I'm not some kind of Stepford Knitter or robot dyer or something.  I mean, do you all come here just to read about my knitting and dyeing, or do you want to read something about my life?  I really don't know.  Hardly any of you ever comment, so I kind of feel like I'm just talking to myself sometimes.  I'm well aware that I'm not, of course.  I know that anybody could be reading this.  And of course the Google-bots capture every word.  People do some pretty weird keyword searches to get here.

Anyway, I've been noticing something about my migraines in recent months.  Now, I've realized for years that the day after I have a migraine, I'm totally wiped out.  Exhausted.  Brain still doesn't work so well.  Kind of in a fog.  And I had also noticed that sometimes I wake up in the morning feeling extremely depressed, and then a short time after, a migraine starts. 

When I paid more attention, I realized that the wipe out day also often included a depression, and I thought, Wait a minute, is the depression connected to the migraine?  I had read about migraine prodrome and postdrome phases before, but it had been a while, so I looked them up again, and sure enough, depression was listed as a symptom of both phases. 

While not exactly a happy thing, this is a bit encouraging to me for one reason.  A lot of times I've felt depressed and really had no idea why.  (Sometimes of course I feel depressed as hell and know why, but it's disconcerting to be depressed and have no idea why!)  Well, now I know why.  It was just my brain being fucked up.  I had a migraine, only I didn't think of it as a migraine because it wasn't during the headache phase, it was during the prodrome or postdrome phase.  (I don't get an aura phase.)  I've tended to use "migraine" and "headache" interchangeably, thinking of migraine as a type of headache, even though I know a migraine has a lot more symptoms than just the headache.  Now I realize just how inaccurate that was.

I also realize now that the prodrome phase is longer than I had thought.  When I paid more attention, I realized that I didn't just wake up depressed and then get a headache.  I went to bed depressed the night before.

Brains are weird.  Blobs of protoplasm and neurotransmitters and whatnot.  All squishy.  Amazing they work as well as they do when you look at the things, looking like some kind of alien life forms.  Not surprising when parts of them just don't work right.  What are you going to do?  You can't take them back to the store for a refund.  Can't take 'em to a mechanic and say, "Fix it." 

Oh, wait, I guess that's what a neurologist is.  Yeah, ok, I did that.  Got way potent drugs.  That's why I just have a couple of migraines a month now instead of almost every day.  Ok, I am grateful for that.  Really.  Drugs are good.  (Oh boy, that should get a keyword search or two.)

And I seem to have lost track of where I was going with this.  I think I had a point.  Maybe I had a point.  Ok, maybe I'm not really coherent enough to be writing.  See what I mean about being in a fog?  Um...I think it was something like, does anyone care about this stuff?  I mean, I'm not just writing this to get sympathy.  I'm hoping maybe it might help someone else.

10 things I've done

Dr. Steph had this meme on her blog today, and it looked like fun.  Ten things I've done that others likely haven't.  Well, this should be easy since I tend to be a freak unusual different.  Will I be able to stop at 10?

1.  I was salutatorian of my high school graduating class.

2.  I used to work as a jewelry designer in a bead store.  A customer received a compliment on a necklace I had made from the queen of Sweden.

3.  I used to sell some of my jewelry in art galleries.

4.  I have only ever gone on a diet once in my life.  (Of course I gained all the weight back and more.  That part isn't unusual.)

5.  I have lost 80 pounds through lifestyle changes, i.e., not dieting, and kept the weight off for over nine years.

6.  I quit eating mammals and fish about 20 years ago, then became vegetarian about 9 years ago, and have gradually cut out more and more animal products since then.  I'm now about 99.9% vegan.  The only animal products I consume are honey in my tea, and whatever is in a piece of birthday cake if someone hands me one.

7.  I quit drinking pop years ago.

8.  I quit driving a car for environmental reasons.  I have not driven since October 27, 2002, and I don't intend to drive again.

9.  My first knitting project was a sweater from Vogue Knitting.  (I didn't know any other knitters to tell me most people start with a scarf or hat or something like that.)

10.  I figured after I had knit a sweater I knew how to knit and didn't need patterns anymore, so I designed my second sweater myself.  (see #9)

I could actually keep going -- there are a lot of other not so usual things about me -- but I'm up to ten, so I'll stop.   

Observations made while home sick with the flu

1.  It is possible to fall asleep while knitting.

2.  It is possible to fall asleep in mid-stitch.

3.  It is possible to knit while sleeping, but not very fast, and not for more than a few stitches.

4.  It is possible to sleep with one eye open.

5.  While I thought I had a 16 inch size 7 US circular needle, apparently I do not.

6.  For some reason I have three 29 inch size 7 US circular needles.

7.  Since I'm too sick to go out, I decided to try knitting my sleeve with two of the 29 inch needles since so many people rave about this method.  I got as far as two rounds and decided the two circular needle method was invented by Satan.

8.  Ok, you got me.  I don't actually believe in Satan.  Insert evil being of your choice.  The two circular needle method was invented by Dick Cheney.

9.  I just took another look through my needle box and I do actually have a 16 inch 7 US.  Why the hell wasn't it with my project?

10.  I'm going to bed.

Exactly!

This is why Sheldon is one of my favorite webcomics!

Tick tock

I meant to write a post looking back over 2007 before 2007 actually ended. And then somehow the year ended, and the new year came, and we're several days into it already.  I seem to be time impaired.  This is one of those left brain/right brain things, I think.  I'm just not very time oriented. So be it.  I can accept that in myself.

So.  2007 was one weird year.  Some really bad stuff happened.  I'm not going to write about the bad stuff.  It's too personal and too depressing.  But some good stuff happened too.  But I can't really write about most of the good stuff either because the bad stuff has forced me to be much more careful about my privacy.  Which all leads me to wonder, why the hell do I even have a blog anymore?  You probably don't all want to come here and read "stuff happened, and I'm not going to tell you what it was."  Yeah, that's pretty annoying.  Why do I have a blog?

I guess partly it was supposed to be therapeutic, right?  But if I feel like there's so much I can't say because I need to worry about my privacy, I'm not free to really write.  Maybe I should just talk about knitting. I never really meant for this to be just a knitting blog though.  It was supposed to be a me blog.  All the stuff in my head and my life.  Maybe I should start an anonymous blog.  Or maybe the stuff in my head and my life is just too much to write about. I don't know.   

After some of the bad stuff happened I just wanted to hide from the world. That's kind of hard to do when you have a business.  I considered going to wholesale only, or starting over with a new business name, or anything, just so I would be completely unreachable.  Eventually I decided to continue with the business I have, but to be reachable by email only.  I realize there may be a few people who choose not to order from me because of that.  But there are some people who won't order online at all.  I can't be all things to all people.  I'm not a huge corporation.  I'm one person.  My safety and my sanity (or what passes for it) have to come before all else.  So I'm doing what's right for me.

To be honest, one reason I do have the blog is to attract people to my store.  Since I haven't been blogging as much, my sales have gone way down.  But I haven't been doing updates either.  I haven't been dyeing. I was under way too much stress from the stuff that happened to be creative.  If you've been coming to the blog or to the store looking for new stuff, you haven't been finding it, so I can't say I'm surprised my sales are way down.

But I think my dyeing mojo is also sort of paralyzed by the realization that the process I've been using (cold-pour) just uses way too much plastic, and I have to find a more environmentally friendly way to dye.  I like my stripey yarn.  I love the socks I knit with my stripey yarn.  All the other ways I've read about to dye multi-color yarn sound like the results are different.  I need to experiment.  I've got some ideas.

Anyway, I don't think I'm going to be dyeing the way I have been anymore, and I don't know if I'll be able to get the same results I've been getting or not.  I'll experiment until I get results I like, but they may not be the same as what I'm selling now.  They probably won't be, and some of my ideas are certainly going to take me in some different directions.  I need to play so this is fun or I'm going to get burned out.  I'm probably going to be going back to smaller lots of each colorway, partly so I don't get burned out, and partly as a limitation of the change in technique. What I'm saying is, if there's something in the store  you like, buy it now because I won't be making it again.

Of course, if you think all my stuff sucks, maybe you think my dyeing mojo should just go drown itself in a dyepot.  Yeah, well.  To each his own.

So, maybe I should talk about knitting.  Yeah, I've been kind of negligent about that.  Did someone mention stripey socks?  Oh, I did?

My bus socks are moving along.  Um, no pun intended.  (Bus...moving... Sorry.)

I started another desk sock.

I only dyed one skein of this yarn, and it was kind of an experiment.  I was dyeing some other skeins with purple and there was way too much dye, so I grabbed an extra undyed skein to sop up the extra dye -- this one! It turned a different shade than the purple in the other skeins since the purple is a mix of dyes and some of the colors had already bound.  I added blue to the other end of the skein, and I didn't think I would like a skein with only two colors, but I really like the way it looks knit up!

And sweater progress!  I finished the body and did a three needle bind off on the shoulders...

And then I picked up stitches around the bottom and I'm working on the ribbing.  Amazing how much longer it seems already now that it's not curling!

If you look carefully, you can see the piece of paper with my notes scrawled on it poking up from underneath the sweater. 

And there's more!  I've been spinning the yarn for the next sweater!

I'm going to modify Jared Flood's Cobblestone pullover  from the Fall 2007 Interweave Knits  to a) fit me and b) be a cardigan, because yeah, give me an entire issue of several women's sweaters and one guy's sweater (and Jillian's vest which I'd consider unisex), I like the one that's for a guy.  You know, I'm just not a girly girl.  What can I say?  It's not that I don't think some of the women's sweaters are pretty.  It's just that I can't see myself wearing them.  They're too fitted or too lacy or too low cut or too "Hey! Look at my breasts!" or "Hey! Look at my stomach!" or just too...something.  I don't know.  They're not me.  Jared's was the first one I saw as I was leafing through the issue that made me say, "I'd wear that!"  Then I realized a guy was modeling it and said, "Oh, it's supposed to be a guy's sweater?  Well, fuck that, I'll just modify it to fit me.  And make it a cardigan, of course, because I always make cardigans."  Yep.

As for the color, you know, I work with a lot of Chinese people, and I find I've adopted their thinking of red as a lucky color.  So I'm bringing more red into my life for luck.  Why not?  I can use it.