Quilt Update, Other Stuff

My quilt is proceeding well.  I’m now quilting the water in semi-circles below the land, and when that’s done I’ll do a bit of sky – haven’t decided how exactly that’s going to look yet.  You can see a bit of the water in the picture below, and you can see the leaf stitch work I’ve been doing over the past few weeks.  Remember back whenever, when I said that the stitching I was planning would take just a week? I am completely full of nonsense about that.  Totally. I get maybe 2 hours a night at most to work on this, so getting things done fast is really unlikely.  I never estimate time correctly!

Stitching and a bit of cooking have been my salvation lately. This quilt is a sea of calm, a reminder of a place I once was that was beautiful and soothing, which I’ve needed.  So this “thing” – I’m normally pretty stoic and uncommunicative about things like “this,” but it’s not a state secret, and it’s affected my life quite a bit, like blogging less, and making my dream of backpacking pretty hard, and using so much sick time I can hardly take a vacation, that sort of thing. For the last several months I’ve been dealing with a medical issue that I flippantly refer to as “irritating” but when I’m feeling less flippant I refer to it as painful, scary, and gets in the way of life a whole heck of a lot. For months, since last summer, I was getting only small pieces of what was going on, and the problem continued while I saw doctors, and had uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking tests for things like seizure and stroke and blood pressure.

So I worry, but what can I do?  Well, I have finally gotten a clue – narrowed down the doctors to a headache neurologist, who  thinks basilar migraine is the culprit, a less common type with a peculiar, worrisome aura, one that that results from problems with reduced blood flow to the brain stem. It’s not fun. It lasts too long a lot of the time, and it has scared me half to death sometimes. I get dizzy and faint, my eyesight goes funny, I can’t speak well and get confused, and I get clumsy. And indeed, if untreated or treated wrong, those stroke-like symptoms can become stroke. Plus, it can’t use many of the typical treatments. And so there I was today, listening to this, and then getting an injection in my head, and I’m thinking, what in the world is going on with me?

This is treatable, it is. It’s not quick, but it’s possible. I’m feeling scared right now, as I start treatment that’s more specifically directed toward this, and I’m tired because naturally there will be more tests involving needles and claustrophobia.  Ironically, this is when I need my sewing needle and crochet hook and my cooking spoons more than usual, at least these are things I can create and have some control over, soothing things I can do when I need to think, or when I just want to watch TV and zone out, or just something else to concentrate on when my head doesn’t feel like it’s on straight.  Everyone has their own things that they do; this is mine. This is what I do when it feels bad, or I just need to unwind.

Thanks for bearing with me. It’s not my usual thing to share, but if I can’t talk about it here, where can I talk about it? I hope in the next few months I can find some peace from getting 2 or 3 or 4 headaches a week, some more permanent resolution, some sort of break from feeling like this, and get back to feeling more like typical energetic and overly creative self. It’s taken a fair piece of that away since last July.

I hope all of you in blog land have places to share what you’re going through. I’ve found a good bit of comfort in reading others’ struggles – not that they’re struggling, I wish they weren’t, but that I’m not the only one who goes through things that disrupt their life like this even though they have to keep getting up and doing what they do every day. I feel weird, having problems that don’t go away; most days it’s fine, but some days like today, it’s just a little harder to wrap myself around.

Ta for now, M

Something Extra for June

My first post was published in June 2007, almost a year ago. I have a little sidebar widget over there –> that says right now that I have 13 days left until my blogoversary (c’mon, that’s not a word, is it?).

Anywho, it took me three days to decide, but in the end I wanted to do something special to mark my blogging anniversary month because my blog has been an unexpectedly influential force in my life for the last year. So I’ve decided to participate in NaBloPoMo(Fo) again for June. In case you were unaware, the organizers decided to continue the monthly blogging sprees with new themes for each month.

Home …

June’s theme is Home, so at the very least, each day I’m going to say something about some concept of what home means to me, from the simplest “home is … ” to the more absurd things I can contemplate.

Today’s concept of home, to coincide with that picture of my couch, is sanctuary. What you see in the picture is one thing that my home crafting exploits means to me, and that’s retreat and respite. I had a really stressful month of May, and coming home to that pile of yarn and books and my crochet hook was very therapeutic and necessary for me. I can get lost in the repetitive motion of the hook, and take comfort in my messy piece of couch and forget all the stress of the day.

Today is another example of how home is a sanctuary. I had a lot of nasty dental work done today, and I was not feeling very well by the time I got home. Frankly, I don’t know who’s writing this post, as I’m in medication la-la-land. I was so incredibly happy to get home and find my couch corner, a book and a blanket. I should also mention that it’s days like today I remember why my husband is so completely awesome, because he was absolutely the epitome of good husband-ness today, and even managed to make me feel like I wasn’t quite as pathetic as I looked.

See you tomorrow

Indie Love

By now, most people who know me know I like handmade items a lot, but nonetheless I was so pleased that some took the time and spent the energy to get me gifts this year from craft fairs and Etsy. I know it’s almost two months since the holidays, but I don’t see some of my friends as often as I’d like, so some of these I’ve had for just over a week.

One thing I got from Jeff was spices, the Pepper and Lime seasoning to the left is one of my favorites, from a company called Cherchie’s from PA. I found Cherchie’s at a craft fair long ago. Although the business has grown, they’re still small enough to write a note on the packing slip! I think food is the best part of craft fairs. I like all of it, but I really like people’s cooking and spices. Like the hot sauce festival I went to. I guess I just like meeting people who are  into their food. I love food.

… Right! I was getting hungry there. Two good friends also gave me handmade things: the pretty coffee cozy is from the bright and cheerful Etsy shop Dizzlepop, and is a simultaneous nod to my obsessions with coffee, daisies and indie. The Murano-esque earrings are from one of Austin’s oldest street-fair-craft-places down on the “Drag” across from the University of Texas. The fair’s been there forever, from way before DIY became cool and the founders of Etsy were born.

The next item was from husband again, who is lovely, and finds that buying me presents is ridiculously easy when I excitedly point out pretty things on the web to him. I also loved the packaging. The woman behind Shy Siren knows something about business – her products, presentation and marketing were all quite impressive.

These next items aren’t gifts (do gifts to self count?), but I purchased them at a shop called Parts and Labour that only sells local artists’ wares. I wanted to buy half the store, and my friend Melissa wanted the other half.  Independent artists have long been popular here in Austin (we did/still do have a lot of hippies here, after all), and now is no different.  Indeed, it’s been helped by the resurgence in interest in such things nationally.

D’you know, sometimes I meet people who believe that crafting as a business is a new modern thing (perhaps the ones who believe leg warmers are a new thing?). Hardly! We’re simply re-fashioning it in our own political and social image, as all cultures do. This shop is a good example of that sort of recent re-imagining.

Handcrafting as a business has long been a staple of western culture, even if the media has tried to convince us it’s not true and big companies have tried to marginalize the independent worker. Even the industrial revolution began and existed for some time as a mobilization of woman-centric home crafting industries. Handcrafting is also (as some craft-loving but not historically-minded people don’t realize) long been an important part of feminism, as the method by which many women granted themselves financial independence or provided for their families. Women’s handcrafting has saved several civilizations’ bacon by doing everything from lacemaking to brewing to scribing. The idea that women aren’t intelligent workers and valued breadwinners is a purely ridiculous and modern idea unsubstantiated by historical record.Hey, where did that come from? I just can’t quite help that I was a feminist social historian, it leaks out. Seriously, after all that social history I have the utmost respect for women and their crafts and the enormous historical impact they’ve had. Some young women seem to feel embarrassed by their knitting and I say Knit On, Sew On, your skills have had more of an impact than many philosophers could dream of.