I don’t know about the rest of you, but the flow of our weekend messes up Mondays. All the habits I try to keep the rest of the week, just disappear. Piano, exercise, diamond painting, etc. don’t find a place/time.
So Mondays I have to reinvent my life. Mondays I have to settle for less time, less quality. But today felt like a Wednesday or Thursday. I didn’t have to sacrifice. 33 minutes of stationary bike, 45 minutes piano, and half an hour diamond painting. I don’t know why it went so well this time. But I am so grateful.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “hand.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
When I was 16 I was a Candy Striper. I was lucky to get to work in a lot of the hospital wards and even the pharmacy.
At one point they put me in the part of the hospital dealing with folks who needed long term care but not high risk.
I met a patient, Frank, who was quadriplegic. When I first met him he was painting the most marvelous pictures. He held the brush in his mouth, dipping into the color, then directed to the spot on the picture.
I was in charge of feeding him. Another lesson. He insisted I stir it all together. I’m a purist. I don’t like my foods to touch. But he loved it and in huge bites.
I got to take him on long walks about the hospital grounds. He would talk about his life. So cheerful. He never said anything about his lack of mobility or inability to use his hands.
Frank was one of those people who taught me lessons for life. I learned that I didn’t want inability to stop my life. Or pain. Even when fibromyalgia or whatever it really was that put me to bed, I didn’t want to just lie there. So I read, or crocheted. When I couldn’t see well enough to read I listened to books. When I didn’t have enough money for yarn, I made plarn. I refused living in the pain. The more distractions I could dive into the better. Creativity kept me free.
When arthritis grabs my hands I think of Frank. I make lists of things I want to do when my hands feel better and picture my projects.
Now I’m better and handcrafts and piano fulfill those creative hands.
Rather than show you the progress of my projects today, I decided to share the places I am trying to learn from. I am tired of frogging (ripping the knitted fabric apart and starting over) and tinking (knitting backwards). There’s got to be ways to fix mistakes without going to all that. So here are videos I have found helpful. And now I won’t have to re-search the answer every time I need it.
Once I learned to turn off the annoying AI I had fun with this video. There are many more knitted yoga sock tutorials out there. But here’s the first one I looked at and learned from.
I mentioned Friday that I’m trying to make a pair of Yoga socks.
Here’s how far I’ve gotten along. This is the part that goes from the toe joints and getting into the instep. I ribbed the first few rows then knitted to the arch. Now I’m back to ribbing. But I wasn’t sure what to do with the heel. I could just do a Fleegle Heel but I’d rather leave it heelless. So I went searching.
Who would think leaving something out would make it harder? And maybe once I learn it will be simple. But for now I’m getting lost in yoga sock knitting YouTubes black hole. In fact, I found one in German that I thought might be fun. That one used short needles. Well, that neon flickering lightbulb in my head went off.
I pulled out my Hiya Hiya Flyers and casted on another test set.
Who knows how these will all turn out? Or will they be frogged into something else?
Because of Blood of My Blood (BOMB), the newest addition to the television series of Outlander, I decided to re-listen to the Outlander books. This one seemed the longest yet. I didn’t want to take forever reading it, so I listened during the days as well as the long hours at night. I carried my Fire around while doing chores, knitted, or played easy games while living in the Outlander world. I highly recommend these books and the show. Below is my previous review.
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Whew! These books are long. But good. This review is for the Audible version. After you get used to her, Davina Porter, the narrator, you will find her voice versatile and natural for this story. One of my reasons for using this method to read these books is pronunciation. There are words in Gaelic or French and a couple of other languages that I wouldn’t know how to say, and text-to-speech would garble.
I don’t usually like to read a book after watching the show. I like to form my ideas of the characters before I see a director’s point of view. But so far, this series translates nearly directly. It makes me proud of the show and the author of the book. It seems each of the scenes in the show was in the books. The only difference in this one is Gilly (not sure of the spelling–Audible doesn’t have written word.) I won’t spoil it for you. I actually like the book version over the show. But both work.
I can’t wait to listen to book four. And I’m looking forward to the next season of the show.
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
Books, games, music, and life — filtered through the mind of a writer, drummer, and philosopher who thinks too deeply about all of it. If it moves something in your chest, I'm interested.
Darswords 
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