Getting there!

Blogger hasn't been nice lately, and wouldn't let me write.

I am so sorry for being so utterly miserable last month. Just after I wrote that whiny whinge I got really sick. Spiky temps and shivery hot/cold, ghastly pain, diarrhoea, slept for two days and woke up with a flat belly. In hindsight I should have gone back to hospital but I was feeling too awful to think that far outside my body!! I think the cysts must have popped or leaked, at least they seem to have gone away.

And since then have remained almost flat bellied, and progressively getting better. Slowly. Certainly am not sleeping 15 hours a day, and having to go back to bed to recover from showering.
Have even been doing gardening...!

Today I head back to hospital for the gastroscopy and colonoscopy that was ordered back in July. Been drinking that ghastly stuff and am on my last 500mls of "prescribed fluids" - I haven't eaten anything for 24 hours and I have a caffeine deficiency headache.

I went to my first spinning group on Tuesday. My neighbours gave me a bag of their fleece and two carding brushes/combs at Christmas and then another friend told me about her MIL's spinning wheel which had benefitting in her shed for twenty years. And when we went to pick it up the MIL told me that it had been sitting in another shed for twenty years before she got it...
I carted it along to our local spinning group on Tuesday, and sat next to my friend Janine. I taught her to quilt about 15 years ago so now she is teaching me to spin! She started spinning when she was 15, and has just had her 50th (which she celebrated by joining a roller derby group!!!!).  She has a room full of plastic bins of her wool she has spun, beautiful stuff. She has sold some of her wool through our other friend Alex who owns ZigoZago  - lots of yummy wool there!
Most of the other women at spinning group are either members of the 80s Club or aspiring to shortly become members. So Janine and I are treated as daughters! They are a wonderful group, very friendly and supportive and helpful.
One of them said "Come over here and try my wheel. I want to know if it is because your wheel is awful or if you just can't spin". And then said I was a lovely spinner, a natural! And that it was the wheel which is probably only good for putting in the garden and planting a vine over.
I immediately looked up some wheels on eBay and some of them gathered around my clever new iPhone and were most impressed ("it's a tiny computer, how clever!") and also helpful about which wheels were useful.
My wheel is a home made one and has been changed from having one string around it to two, and the bobbins are broken, and also where the wool gets sucked in is pretty rough and rusty. It was magic to,try the other wheel where the wool slurped onto the bobbin like butter. Whereas I had to keep stopping and winding the wool on by hand...

And I have been knitting, socks for grandbabies, and also bibs. S3 brought back lots of yarny treasures from  Ireland when he was on placement in May-July including balls of cotton which I have knitted into bibs. Half washcloth flowers - they are very cute. And also knitted a couple of shawls, and scarves. It has been fun.
Yesterday I got three balls of Debbie Bliss wool and cashmere at the opshop for ...$2.50. And five balls of Patons Bluebell for $3. Both cream. both so soft and smooshy. So I am knitting a scarf to keep my hands and mind slightly occupied. Size 9 mm needles, both the yarns held together. I started with three stitches and have been doing some KFB, and YOK2tog to make it all lacy and holey. I got to 250 stitches so have decided to stick with that - mostly cos there isn't any more room on the needles...

I will add some photos when I am on my phone and on the net (woohoo, LOVE what it can do. Considering my previous did very little except calls and excruciatingly tedious texting with my nails breaking all the time on the tiny keys.

OK, must go and think about what I am to do at 12.30 today...