Witty knitter

IDAHO

I must say I'd never heard of this until Mazz mentioned it on Ravelry: International Day Against Homophobia. Mazz provides this link to her group, The Standard Deviations, and you can check out the song they've recorded for the event.

Asthma

I've mentioned before that I had untreated asthma as a child. This meant I always had a cough for weeks after a cold. This cold was always worse in the evenings - I can remember having to come inside before it was dark on summer evenings because I was coughing so much. I often had a sore throat and had to stay home from school, although luckily for me it was never suggested that I needed to have my tonsils out - that was the standard treatment for sore throats in the 1950s. My mother used to give me asprin, keep me in bed with an old sock around my neck, and make me lemon-and-honey drinks.

I can't remember ever being taken to a doctor for my cough - it was just how life was. My mother had a horror of asthma, which she believed frequently killed children, and I don't think she would have believed that I had this terrible complaint.

In my teens the cough seemed to abate somewhat, until I started smoking at 18. When I was 20 I had a really terrible cough after a cold, and took myself to the doctor who had been treating me for years, who said I had bronchitis. (He was a heavy smoker himself - always had a fag burning on the desk during consultations.) He frightened me - prescribed the first antibiotics I'd ever had, sent me off to have a sputum test and gave me a sick note for a whole week off work. Around this time I also started to notice that my slow recovery from colds was often accompanied by a chronically blocked nose and sometimes an aching face.

For over 20 years I had bronchitis diagnosed after every cold, and every cold really knocked me around and required an antiobiotic follow up. Even after I gave up smoking this continued to dog me. I was about 45 before a doctor told me that it wasn't bronchitis, it was asthma. After the intial shock I found that the regime of preventers worked really well. I started to feel much better, and recovered faster from colds. But when I came to Sydney I found I really suffered badly from allergies and then sinus infections. When I eventually saw an ENT specialist he took an X-Ray of my head which revealed that I had a really constricted passage on the left side, which was preventing drainage and was probably the  cause of the sinusitis and the failure to really benefit from the allergy meds. A small operation fixed this, and I now recover from my occasional colds much the same as the next person. Most of the time.

My point here is that for over half of my life I had two underlying conditions, one allergic and one anatomical, which meant that any passing bug made my life a misery for weeks at a time. There was a period, about three years ago, when I seemed to have a cold or a sinus infection nearly all the time (a read through my early blogs will confirm that). I don't blame my mother for the untreated asthma - there probably wasn't very good treatment available anyway - but I wish one of the doctors who treated me for 'bronchitis' in the 70s and 80s had picked up on my underlying asthma.

Just think what I could have achieved if I hadn't been fighting my own body all this time.

Dykes to watch out for

If you, like me, are a fan of Alison Bechdel and the comic strip she's been writing for more than 20 years, you may be sad to hear that she's taking a sabbatical from the strip. The last one is here. I discovered a few months ago that you could get the strips on RSS feed, and I've been enjoying keeping up with them. I hope Alison can come back to them in time, but I can certainly understand her need to let the characters go for a while.

And I have a cold, which has kicked up my asthma, and so I'm at home, on antibiotics and steroids, fretting about getting better before we fly (three more sleeps!). Yuck and double yuck.

Knitting pr0n

Here are the contents of the package of sock yarn that arrived from Lisa Souza. Several of these skeins had to wrested with great physical effort from people at SSK last Saturday. They are so yummy: from the right clockwise the colours are Bronze, Elektra, Peacock, Newtown (really interesting and different), Mahogany (the most coveted at SSK) and Periwinkle. And Lisa, as always, is quick and efficient.

And here is the cardigan we just finished for our friend Margo. She loves the colours, and it fits her well, so that's all good.

I have made great progress with the first Tomten jacket in Cleckheaton Country Silk, for my granddaughter Rebekah.

For her sister Hannah I will make a much more colourful striped Tomten from these yarns - they are all single-ply mohair/wool mixture that Narelle and I bought from Los Ojos in New Mexico in 2000. Well aged in the stash. The colours are much more yellow than they appear here - very denim-y and muted and with a lovely sheen.

And finally, I've been working steadily on the Habu jacket. Nothing to see, really, just acres of stocking stitch.

Help with a research project

A student at UQ is looking at the relationship that people have with their favourite bloggers, so I said I'd post  the information about her project here. If you have a favourite blogger (a concept that is interesting in itself), you might want to contact her.

Do you have a favourite blogger that you want to talk about?

I am an Honours student from the University of Queensland, Australia and I am conducting an email-based survey that looks at the experiences that blog readers have with their favourite bloggers.

To take part in this research you cannot be a blogger yourself and you cannot know the blogger offline.

AND
Please note that for ethical and legal issues you MUST be 18+ years of age and an Australian Citizen to partake in this research

If this sounds like you and you would like to participate in this original and exciting research project then please email Bo at:

s4029966@student.uq.edu.au

Participation is until August 2008

All inquiries are very much appreciated!

Have at it. And she's already told me I can't peek at your answers. If you have a blog based in Australia and would be interested in further spreading Bo's request, drop her a line.

Good news on the reno front

It appears that, being higgerant and all, we had the order of events that were necessary for the builder to commence arse-about-face. So, in fact, he can start. And will be starting next week. We can hardly believe it.

But it is strange that neither of us, both fairly intelligent, had got the story straight. Makes us think that it hadn't been properly explained. But perhaps I shouldn't make any more comments about the legal profession.

Some of you may recognise yourselves

Thanks to Sam, who posted this to Queer Revelry and caused me to examine my priorities. It's been a while since I've lived with someone, and sometimes little niceties have to be relearned.

Has anyone seen this book?

Tweed: More Than 20 Contemporary Designs to Knit by Nancy Thomas. It looks really good, but I'm unwilling to spend my bucks (even if they are only US$) without some idea of what's inside. Anyone have a clue?

No longer unique

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but I'm not linking to any of these pretenders.

There is an ebay seller called Witty Knitter, there is a local knitting group not far from me in Sydney called Witty Knitters, there is a yarn store in Big Fork Montana called Witty Knitters, there is an Etsy shop called Two Witty Knitters, there is a Witty Knitters Guild in Warren Ohio, and now someone else has started a blog called The Witty Knitter. Except she's taken her few posts down since I left a polite, friendly comment. Maybe it was something I said...?

But I was the first.

What do you think?

Are my new shoes (from Lana Lane in Adelaide) dykey enough? How about the way they tone with the handknitted sox (Lisa Sousa's Petroglyph)?

I've just ordered some more of Lisa's yumminess. I made a wish list then fainted at the cost of what I'd listed. When I picked myself up I rationalised it. As much as I loved the petroglyph colourway, did I really need more of it? Probably not. Did I really need to buy two shades of green? Perhaps not. Or two purples? OK, not. It still cost me more than $100US + postage, though.

Last night we edged closer to The Renovations - we met the kitchen man. And a very nice man he is too. But the legals are still frustratingly tying us up. We can't seem to get the property agreement exactly right - or at least we can't seem to get the lawyers to agree on how to express what we're trying to tell them we want. We're just about at the stage of ripping their bloody arms off - we need to get this done before we leave in 9 days time. We have managed to complete all the paperwork for the Construction Certificate,  but, although the builder is ready to start, nothing can go ahead until this stuff is signed off and the titles are transferred and the stamp duty is paid (don't start me on the evil state government - this runs to five figures) and the bank has refinanced our mortgages in joint names. This is absolutely the worst experience I have ever had with the legal profession. I've done this before, with Narelle, but that was a walk in the park compared to the last few weeks.

And we wonder why we're tired at nights...