However, once I passed 3 days without having done an update, the stress of knowing how big the next update would have to be was beginning to get to me. So tonight, I've cancelled sorting my nails in order to get this update done.
Advent
December 18th
On the 18th, my Advent of Change donation helped:
Wildlife and Welfare, who work with other animal welfare, and environmental protections charities to fill in the gaps that aren't covered by the larger, more prominent charities.
Behind the doors, and inside the packets of self-indulgence I found:
Lindt - mini Lindor truffle, with a milk chocolate shell, and white chocolate ganache
Hotel Chocolat - tiny chocolate slab with Santa Claus on it
Charms - ice skate stitch marker
Yankee Candles - Evergreen Mist scented Candle
Imperial Candles - pale blue soy wax melt. I think I'm just going to give up trying to identify the fragrances!
Cath Kidston - Christmas Village Lip Balm
Bird and Blend - Carot Cake flavoured tea. Yes, this genuinely did taste like carrot cake!
Made by Penguins - the bottom mini-skein, in the colourway "Denim", plus a button badge like a stylised ball of yarn, and a dolphin stitch marker
Vicki Brown - the top mini-skein, in the colourway "Pesto", plus a Three Ginger herbal infusion
Gamer Crafting - the middle, sparkly mini-skein, in shades of yellow.
Finn waiting patiently for his advent treat.
December 19th
On the 19th, my Advent of Change donation helped:
The National Autistic Society, who work to improve understanding of autism, and help those who are autistic to navigate a world that isn't a comfortable place for many autistic people.
Behind the doors, and inside the packets of self-indulgence I found:
Lindt - chocolate square
Hotel Chocolat - tiny chocolate slab with a snowman on it
Charms - candy cane stitch marker
Yankee Candles - Cinnamon Stick scented candle
Imperial Candles - pale pink soy wax melt
Cath Kidston - Christmas Village Body Lotion
Bird and Blend - All Nighter naturally high caffeine green tea
Made by Penguins - the bottom sparkly mini-skein, in the colourway "Sugar Mouse", and a beautiful snowflake stitch marker
Vicki Brown - the top mini-skein, in the colourway "Glacier", and a sachet of Soak, which is a special wash for anything made of wool.
Gamer Crafting - the middle sparkly mini-skein, in a colourway that I'm really very fond of, white, with red and ginger speckles
Finn the adorable, being adorable.
Significant progress has been made on the Millennium Falcon construction! Also, I think that secretly Stephen quite likes the Christmas decorations, as he seems to have made an effort to include them in this photo of his advent haul on the 19th.
December 20th
Yesterday, my Advent of Change donation helped:
Forward Trust, who work with people combating addiction, and people who have been released from prison, to help them overcome the difficulties that caused their destructive behaviours, and move forward into a more hopeful future.
Behind the doors, and inside the packets of self-indulgence I found:
Lindt - mini Lindor truffle
Hotel Chocolat - tiny chocolate slab with Santa Claus on it
Charms - Penguin stitch marker!
Yankee Candles - Pomegranate Fizz scented candle
Imperial Candles - lilac coloured soy wax melt
Cath Kidston - Cuticle cream
Bird and Blend - Belle's Breakfast black tea with rose petals
Made by Penguins - the bottom mini-skein, in the colourway "Rainbow Moonstone", with a beautiful crystal rainbow stitch marker
Vicki Brown - the top mini-skein, in the colourway "Ink"
Gamer Crafting - the middle, sparkly mini-skein, in my favourite GC colourway so far! A beautiful semi-solid burgundy red!
Close up of the penguin stitch marker, just because it's a penguin!
Finn, the goodest boy!
December 21st
Today, my Advent of Change donation has helped:
Winston's Wish, who help grieving children come to terms with their loss. This one means a lot to me, with this time of year being heavy with my own grief, I can't even imagine being too young to properly understand, and having to deal with these emotions.
Behind the doors, and inside the packets of self-indulgence I have found:
Lindt - mini Lindor truffle
Hotel Chocolat - tiny chocolate slab with a penguin on it
Charms - faceted yellow crystal stitch marker
Yankee Candles - Candlelit Cabin scented candle
Imperial Candles - pale green soy wax melt
Cath Kidston - Christmas Village hand cream. This is gorgeous! it makes my hands smell like I've been walking through a pine forest. I know this isn't necessarily a fragrance that everyone would love, but it reminds me of camping with dad.
Bird and Blend - Cherry Bakewell herbal infusion. This is one of my usual go-to teas that I always like to keep a stash of at home.
Made by Penguins - the bottom mini-skein, in the colourway "Fizzy Splash"
Vicki Brown - the top mini-skein, in the colourway "Biscotti"
Gamer Crafting - the middle, sparkly mini-skein, in many shades of green
Last night Finn was re-named Farty McFartyPants. These emanations I'm certain have nothing to do with his advent treats, and more likely something to do with his habit of finding things to eat on the ground when he's out for a walk. None-the-less, the effect was to leave our home temporarily at risk of being banned under the Geneva Convention, and for the occasional comedy moment when the sound of his own fart startled him. Fortunately, the ill effects of his most recent sneaky scavenging seem to have been limited to gaseous emissions only.
The Falcon is almost space-worthy, and a Cool Yule is to be had this Longest Night by a somewhat demented looking penguin.
Regulars
FO's
I finished the fluffy socks for my youngest niece. If you look very carefully, you can see that I had to use a different colourway just for the toes. I don't think that my niece will mind, because they are soooo soft and fluffy!
I am desperately running out of empty branches on the tree, but Stephen wants to save the chocolate decorations for Christmas Day, so I'm having to temporarily hang some of my knitted baubles at the slightly more sparsely decorated back of the tree. This is also why I've had to use flash for this photo. There are 4 new baubles in this photo that I hadn't finished before my last update. I'd be happy with this average of 1 per day if I weren't 4 days behind! As it is, it's causing me rather more stress than it should. Sadly, whenever I have spare time just now, I'm falling asleep, so it's unlikely that I'll manage to catch up before Christmas Eve, which is when I plan on casting on my new sweater.
WIP's
This is bauble number 18, in the colourway "Denim", and I'd hoped to finish this before starting this update, but my bauble knitting today was hampered somewhat by someone wanting extra attention and snuggles, getting himself comfortably installed under my left arm, and falling asleep there:
I did manage to finish the bauble you see in this photo (colourway "Violets"), and it was in my FO photo, but it took at least twice as long as it should have, as I held my arms in a very unusual position in order to avoid disturbing the sleeping pup (everyone knows that you absolutely cannot move if you have a sleeping dog or cat lying on you!) my left arm was extra sore, and shaking from the effort by the time I finished too!
Stash Acquisition
I've done it 3 times now, so it's officially a tradition - when I take Finn to the groomers, I have to leave him there for 1-2 hours. If I've driven there, then I could just go home and wait, but sometimes I walk, and it's about my limit for how far I can walk on a good day, so I have to stay near by and wait until Finn is done. Conveniently, just around the corner from the groomers is my LYS - Haberdashery, and a lovely little coffee shop called Aroma is right next to the yarn shop. So I pop in to say hi at the yarn shop, buy myself a little something because it's good to support local independent businesses, then go to the coffee shop to do a bit of knitting and have a nice hot chocolate while I wait.
Dinnington is a classic little working class town, it's amazing that it has a yarn shop at all, but most of the local residents are unlikely to buy expensive artisan yarn very often, so most of what they sell is aimed at lower budgets. Every yarn has a use though. Even the cheapest acrylic can be used for silly seasonal decorations, or pet blankets to donate to cat and dog shelters. There are also increasingly some nice, soft, but inexpensive yarns available. I'm unlikely to ever buy a lot of acrylic, because in the end, no matter how soft, it is still plastic, but for many people, it's the only option available to them, and even that will go if we don't make an effort to support our local yarn store.
I bought these with a project in mind. I recently saw on Instagram a woven cushion cover that someone had made using a small rigid heddle loom, very similar to mine, using a technique called "Clasped Weft", and it looked amazing! So I'm going to try this new technique, using inexpensive yarns to begin with, next year.
These are Stylecraft Special DK, in the colourways "Charcoal", and "Peony", plus a little blue faux-fur pompom that I just really liked.
These are the 2 balls of Peter Pan Cupcake, in the colourway "Fizz Wizz" that I ordered in case I ran out of yarn to make my niece's socks. Of course, I only ran out just before the toes, so now I have most of 2 balls of discontinued fluffy yarn that I'm not sure what to do with! Still, I have a niece who loves fluffy things, I'm sure I'll find a use for them!
Penguins!
You've probably already noticed this, as I've been wearing it to splodge around the house in for a couple of days, so it's already appeared in a couple of photos. It's a nightdress covered in penguins. I saw it in a fat girl shop at least a month ago, but told myself that I couldn't justify buying it, as I'd already bought myself a new penguin nightshirt for Christmas Eve. Then a few days ago it appeared in the sale, most sizes had sold out, except for the smallest size (Fat girl shops never sell out of the smallest sizes, because most people who fit into those sizes can still shop in "normal" shops, and why would you want the stigma of going into a fat girl shop if you don't have to?) and also my size (I am not the smallest size that fat girl shops sell). So, at less than half the price, and too exhausted to keep up with the laundry, plus Finn has stolen and chewed a hole in one of my pyjamas and is now using them to line his bed, I could suddenly justify buying a penguin nightdress.
This is my Christmas Eve/Christmas Morning nightshirt. It's a tradition started by my mam when my sister and I were very little, that every year we would get a single present to open on Christmas Eve, and that present would be new nightwear. The idea being, that we'd be wearing brand new pyjamas in the Christmas Morning photos of us opening our presents, instead of one of the more disreputable garments that we tended to get overly attached to, and refuse to throw away despite them having become too small/tatty.
Anyway, I went searching for new penguin pyjamas about a month ago, and discovered that the current fashion in pyjamas is not one that I would find comfortable (mostly unreasonably short tops that will let in a draught at the waist!) so I had to settle for a nightshirt/short nightdress that I can wear over leggings, or other pyjama bottoms.
Then I forgot to photograph it and share it with you! I've just read through the last 2 months worth of posts to be sure! While doing that, I've also discovered that I never did share a photo of my mitred squares blanket progress before the couple of photos of it folded up, although I'm certain that I took a photo that I'd intended to share. I've also discovered that I never explained what actually happened with Stephen's eye! It was such a big thing in our lives, that I didn't realise I'd not already written about it when he went for his operation!
<Tangent>
So, in case you're wondering, Stephen managed to detach his retina. He'd been having a few very minor issues with his left eye for a couple of weeks (floaters, sensitivity to glare from oncoming car headlights) then on the day that I went up to Newcastle he had an unusual aura, which he thought might be a migraine starting, then a few hours later he went completely blind in that eye for a few minutes, but it seemed to recover after a while, leaving just the aura. Expecting a really bad migraine, Stephen took some pain killers and went to bed early. The next day he'd lost peripheral vision in that eye, and he began to worry that it might not be just a migraine after all. By the Saturday when I came home, he had a large blind spot, so he went to the opticians to get them to take a look, having googled his symptoms, and decided that he had glaucoma, cataracts, and bird flu, and that he'd be dead before Monday.
The optician told him that he's an unusual case in that there was no visible haemorrhaging, but he'd definitely partially detached his retina. Apparently sometimes it just happens spontaneously. Usually to people in their mid 40's, who are already short-sighted, and have high blood pressure. Anyway, he was booked in to the ophthalmology clinic in hospital for the Monday, which was the earliest possible appointment. He still ended up in A&E on the Sunday, as despite following all of the opticians rules about lying on one side to prevent further damage, his vision had got much worse. Sadly, there was nothing that could be done in A&E that the optician hadn't already arranged.
I took him to the hospital on the Monday morning, without letting him have breakfast just in case, and left him there not knowing what would happen. Sadly, there were insufficient staff available to cope with Stephen, and a couple of emergency cases that also arrived, so he was sent home, and told to come back the next day, also having not eaten anything. By the time he actually had his surgery, he'd lost 3 quarters of his field of vision completely.
The surgery involves temporarily replacing the vitreous inside the eye with a pressurised gas bubble, that pushes the retina back into place, and holds it there until it begins to heal. This does have the effect of causing complete blindness in that eye until the gas gradually escapes naturally, then his vision won't settle until the vitreous completely regenerates, and the retina heals. Even then, he will have permanently lost at least some visual acuity in that eye, as those floaters he was seeing weeks ago were actually the light sensitive cells called rods and cones that cover the retina coming loose as the retina tore and began to lose adhesion. Hopefully though it won't be so bad that a change in his glasses prescription can't give him full vision back.
</tangent>
That's all for now my dears. I have a lot to do tomorrow, so I may not get to do an update, if not, then I'll do my best to post on Monday.
Sweet Dreams on this Longest Night.
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