OK, I’m going to take a short break to go and say hi to some other bloggers. But first, thank yoooooou to Heather (aka darlas_mom) for her sponsorship! *hugs!*
Blogalogalog!
9: Finished skeins – no.2
And here’s my second finished skein of yarn:
As you can see from the collage picture, the original fibre was turquoise, navy, and red. I rather like the way the colours blended, both in the spinning and plying process, to give a blue-purple final yarn (with bits of red). The fibre is Limegreenjelly BFL … and I don’t know the name of the colour. Anybody have any suggestions what I could call the finished yarn?
It was a lovely yarn to spin with – not as soft as the merino I’m using now, of course, but I think that was good since I was trying to spin it a little thicker, and since I’m still learning. It came out bulky weight once plied, by the way. The one in the last post is aran weight. The meino should be lighter weight – perhaps DK after plying?
8: Finished skeins – no.1
Still working on the bipolar post (I should stop faffing, really), and I’ve also realised that I seem to somehow be a post behind. So, here are a couple in quick sucession. I haven’t posted on here yet about the yarn I’ve spun, and since now is a good a time as ever… here is My First Yarn:
This fibre (Forest Fibres Corriedale Top) came with the starter pack I got with my drop spindle, but this is spun on the spinning wheel. I spun about 50g of the navy and 50g of the turquoise, then plied the two colours together. Ta-daa!
7: Merino soffffft
I’m still working on the bipolar topic post, so I though that this half hour I’d show you what I’m currently spinning. Well, not currently, since I’m typing right now, but you know what I mean ;-)
I am, by the way, very much a beginning spinner, so my results aren’t fabulous, but the whole two skeins I’ve produced so far are nice enough, and definitely usable. Which is the point, right? The fibre I’m spinning now is really really lovely, so I hope I don’t make any horrible messes with it. It’s 100% merino from Limegreenjelly in “Take Me Out”, and it’s really beautiful – see:
Charcoal, hot pink, deep jade green, and flashes of purple. Yum!
6: Very Excited!!
I’m trying to contain myself from jumping up and down and running around the room in excitement. (Well, alright, maybe there was a little jumping up and down) I’ve just had an email newsletter from Concorde2 in Brighton, and Skunk Anansie (now reformed) are playing there in October! Eeeee!! I’m over the moon, because I was always gutted that I never got to see them before they split. I did see Skin play there a couple of years ago, and it was fantastic. I have got to get a ticket!
(And now I’ll go back to working on a bipolar topic post!)
5: D’oh, reboot!
Well…. bother. It looks like I have to restart my browser. It’s all gone a bit wonky. Back shortly, I hope! Have a picture of the weather to keep you going:
4: Shoutouts
Just a quick one this half-hour to say hi to some people doing the ‘thon – you should go and visit:
- darlas_mom at tales from a twentysomething artist
- Renee Rigdon at Renee Rigdon is Genre Impaired
- Cia at crazed and infused
- And my ‘thon monitor, Noelle aka webgurl at Life’s everyday adventures!
3: A yarny post
As I said the other day, I’m not only going to be talking about bipolar, but also about the knittng and spinning that I’m doing. I’m even hoping to get some spinning done during the event (because if I sit on this computer chair for 24 hours straight, I may never get up. It also occured to me that today might be a good day to do some finishing: sewing up and blocking of some of my knits that only need that doing for them to be finished. Sewing at the computer is probably easier than knitting at the computer, right? Although I could try that too. I know last time that didn’t work out terrible well, since I need two hands to knit and two hand to type… and don’t have four hands (dammit).
In preparation for doing spinning, the current view directly to my right looks like this:
And the view directly behind me looks like this:
2: A short history of me
Before I start talking about the various bipolar related topics, I just wanted to give a summary of my “qualifications”. An outline of my experience with the illness. Something like that.
I was diagnosed with bipolar in June 2002, but I didn’t really accept the diagnosis until some time in 2003 – I didn’t want to be bipolar. Depression I was reasonably OK with the idea of, since that could be circumstantial and therefore go away once whatever the circumstances were had been fixed or dealt with in therapy. But bipolar was a bit more permenant, so it took me some time to come to terms with that. I’ll talk more about this when I write the post about experiences with diagnosis. So, that’s 7 years now that I’ve been diagnosed and on various medication, some of which has worked better than others. Again, I’ll go into more detail on that later.
Previous to that, I can now recognise manic and depressed episodes from my late teens onwards – which once again I’ll talk about more later. I’ve had therapy of various kinds, I’m currently being treated by the local Community Mental Health team – I see a psychiatrist every three months or so, depending on how I’m doing. Right now I’m doing pretty well, but I’m not technically “stable” because I still go up and down a few times a year. I occasionally go to a local drop-in centre and take part in some of the things they run, or just have lunch and a natter with some of the other members.
Any questions you’d like to ask? Just leave a comment.
1: And they’re off!
Well, here I go… the blogathon has begun! And of course I’ve suddenly realised I’m disorganised: I’d meant to make a links list of some fellow ‘thoners, and praise my sponsors in the sidebar, and all that. So I’d better go and do that in a minute! Although while I’m here I shall start by sending out much love and appreciation to my wonderful sponsors-so-far:
Thank you guys! :-D
Blogathon Day!
Afternoon all – the Blogathon starts in just under an hour. I think I’m ready! Sponsorships are accepted right through til 48 hours after the event ends, by the way, so if you’re still thinking about it, you still have time!
See you at 2pm!
Topics for the Blogathon / Q&A
As I said yesterday, one of the things I’m planning to do during the Blogathon is to talk about some of my experiences with being bipolar, and I was hoping that people would ask me any questions they have about the subject so that I could have a go at answering and maybe make some things clearer. I’ve thought of some possible topics to start with, so here’s a handy poll:
[poll id=”2″]
Or do you have any other questions or related topics you’d like me to expound upon? Is there anything specific that you’ve heard about bipolar, or gathered from the media, that you want to know about? Or do you want to know about stupid things I’ve done while manic? Or what knitting has to do with it? Feel free to ask absolutely anything (er, about bipolar / being bipolar) even if you think it’s a bit personal – if I feel it’s not something I want to talk about then I’ll say so, but I’m going to try to be as open and thorough as possible with this. Anyway, leave any other questions in the comments. Thank you!!
And as well as that whole topic, I’m planning to post about:
- Knitting: what’s on my needles, recent finished objects, and what I want to do next.
- Spinning: it’s the last two days of the Tour de Fleece!
- Books, film, TV… maybe. Things that I’ve been reading or watching recently, which may include fanfiction. (Funnily enough I’ve just started reading Harry Potter fanfic again, which is what I did during the first Blogathon I took part in back in 2003. Oh the synchronicity!)
- Links to other ‘thon-ers (mostly likely when my brain has shut down in the middle of the night ;-) )
I think that should keep me going!
Blogathon 2009
So, rather later than I’d originally intended (July, where did you go?!), I have signed up for this year’s Blogathon. Which is this coming Saturday and Sunday, 25th-26th July. What does that actually mean? Well, I’ll be blogging an entry every half hour (or thereabouts) for 24 hours, starting from 2pm Saturday. It’s for charity, and like the last time I did this two years ago, I’m blogging for MDF the Bipolar Organisation. They are a marvellous organisation which I’ve been a member of for a few years now, and as their mission statement says, they work “to enable people affected by bipolar disorder / manic depression to take control of their lives”. That includes supporting and funding self-help groups around the country, running courses, providing information and advice services, increasing awareness of bipolar, and much much more. In short, a really worthwhile charity.
Now comes the begging part: I need sponsors! The way the Blogathon works is, if you’d like to sponsor me, please please click through and make a pledge on the Blogathon site (you can either click that link, or the banner above and then look me up on the Blog List). You can either sponsor me for a lump sum for completing the ‘thon, or for every hour. Once I’ve completed then ‘thon, you’ll get an email from the Blogathon site letting you know, and giving you the link to make a direct donation to MDF. Easy-peasy! MDF doesn’t have a minimum donation amount, and even a pound or two goes towards providing important services. Donations are handled via Paypal, and even if you don’t have an account you can use your credit or debit card.
I know this is a little late in the day, but hopefully someone will be able to chip in. The Blogathon people did a Charity Spotlight on Medical, Health and Awareness charities, listing the blogs who don’t yet have $10 sponsorship. I’m one of them! (Thank you for the publicity Blogathon people – now I’m doing my bit!) I would rather like to break that ceiling if I can, at the very least.
Anyway, let me know if you happen to be Blogathoning too, or if for any bizarre reason you’re going to be up all night Saturday – I’ll be signed on to every chat thingy I have. And look out for a new site design: I’m just in the process of putting one together and it should be up before the ‘thon starts. Which might be famous last words, of course. I’m also intending to come back tomorrow and tell you what I’m going to be blogging about – this is another thing I’m leaving way too late, but I wanted to ask for questions about bipolar that I could answer during the ‘thon. Mainly because I was thinking that rather than writing one enormous long post about it that takes too long (I have to post every half hour, remember!), doing a question or topic at a time would break it down better. And I can do other stuff in between. But that’s for tomorrow! Which is now technically later today. Good night!
On Giving In Gracefully
So, back in March I made some bloggy resolutions about what I intended to do for weekly posting goals. Obviously, I haven’t kept those up… and then I started feeling like I was in catch-up mode all the time with myself, and oh noes, panic!! Which is bad, since this blog isn’t supposed to be a duty! Therefore, I have Made A Decision: I’m giving myself permission to “give up”. In actual fact what that means is that I’m going to forget about Project 365 this year, since taking the photos already wasn’t working out – maybe I can go again another year, but I’ll see how it goes. I’m still going to do the Friday 5 whenever I feel like it, but not necessarily every week. I am going to try to post more about knitting and spinning and things in general. This way, it’s more of an adjustment of my goals to something more realistic, rather than really giving up.
Another thing that I’ve decided to let go of is taking strict part of the Sock Knitter’s Pentathlon ’09. I haven’t been knitting very fast this year, and I’d ended up knitting nothing but those socks and still not finishing them. It all got a bit too much like hard work! So even though I love the patterns for the first two socks, and I really like the look of the third one which has recently been released, I’m not going to start #3. I do intend to finish the first two socks, but not as my most immediate projects. Instead I’m going to go back to my other knitting works in progress and try to get those finished off. They’d been pushed back while I was knitting just socks. That’s meant that I’ve now almost finished the shawl I’ve been making for Emily (I’m casting off at the moment, but that’s deadly boring so I’m just doing a few stitches at a time then putting it down again *g*). And I’m really looking forward to picking up the projects I’ve been neglecting and making some real progress on them. Hooray! I don’t even feel like starting something new, because my old projects are almost like new ones by now.
I’m also thinking about giving in using Coppermine for my photo album software. Yes, I’ve been using it for years on this site, so it seemed like a more sensible decision to keep using it and integrate it with WP rather than migrate to something else. But there’s a good photo album plugin for WP, and the integration plugin for Coppermine doesn’t do precisely what I want it to do – it’s a great plugin, and it’s probably perfect for everyone else… but I’m picky! Also, I do have to do some tweaking of the source code every time it updates because of the way I have my Coppermine set up, and… well, in the long run it might just be easier to change to using something more integrated with WP. It’ll mean not having to theme Coppermine to match WP, too. I’m going to ponder it a while more, but I expect I will change over.
Why am I mentioning this, when no-one but me cares? Because it kind of fits the theme of the rest of this post: I’ve been hanging on to some things that I should have gracefully given in on a while back. Letting go and making a few small changes will make things easier. Note to self: change is good, and giving up on something doesn’t necessarily equate to failure. There we go, that’s my deep personal insight for the day. Now I shall stop rambling, let go of this post and send it into the big wide world (= hit the publish button)! TTFN.
Spin spin spin
Today is 4th July, which means it’s the start of the Tour de France for this year, and therefore also the Tour de Fleece. (I understand the date also has some link with Americans blowing up aliens with fireworks, but I’m not really sure about that.) And what that means is spinning along every day that the Tour de France is on. I’ve joined up to the Ravelry Group for it – this is my first time, which puts me on the Rookie team and I’m also in Team Jelly Legs, which Jo set up. That’s appropriate in more ways than one, as spinning every day will no doubt give me jelly legs, and I’m going to be using fibre from her etsy shop, Limegreenjelly.
This is the fibre I’ve started with:
It’s Blue Faced Leicester, and it feels absolutely lovely to spin with. I shall post progress photos when I have them. And do what I said I would yesterday and give some updates on what I’ve been up to in general!