The Solace of Stitching or How to Preserve your Sanity one Stitch at a Time!

One thing that no one tells you about having a chronic illness is how much of your personality it eats away.  So many of the things that have defined my life (playing the flute, singing in choirs, dancing etc etc)  are now basically impossible, so I've been trying to find some relief in the things that I can still manage. These are mainly characterised by being hand work, such as crochet and hand sewing my hats.  The state of my health has caused me some pretty big bouts of depression and anxiety (fairly understandable when confronted with the need for a double lung transplant!)  but being able to pick up a crochet project or hat and feel the rhythm of the stitches as I form them is incredibly soothing.

When my mind is in a tumultuous mess, the repetitive nature of crochet and sewing calms me in a way that some people compare to meditation. I have tried Mindfulness Meditation as recommended by my psychologist, and I have found it helpful.  The main problem I have with it, is that it mostly focuses on using your breathing as a way of centering your thoughts in the present and not worrying about the future or the past.  I can see how this can work but when your breathing is a massive problem, focusing on it just makes me more stressed, not less! So sometimes what I need most is a task that prevents my mind worrying endlessly about all the stuff that is driving me nuts. Crochet and hand sewing hats takes enough thought and concentration that it prevents the endless spiral of depressive thoughts that are so easy to slip into.  I really do find a great deal of solace in stitching, and its not just me- a quick search on the Internet shows how many people have found relief from mental health issues using knitting, crochet, embroidery or other hand crafts as a form of meditation, for example this article from the Craft Yarn Council has numerous exampes of knitting being used as therapy for the seriously ill.  So it's not just me!

Another thing no one tells you about chronic illness is how it can leave you feeling out of control.  I find this particularly hard as CF or not, I like to know what is happening in my life and that I have a plan of what I ant to happen and how I'm going to get there. Sadly, n many ways it feels like the illness is in control, because you always have to take into account all the extra stuff that having something like CF entails.  You can't just decide for example, to go out to the cinema, you have to consider if you are up to going there, can manage the air con in the cinema (it can really set off a niggling cough)  have you got all the meds you need to have with you have you  got your insulin and diabetic contraptions and so on and so on and so on.... I'm not saying it's impossible to do things, you just have to be incredibly organised and know that there are these controlling factors to pretty much every decision you make.  I really don't like that my CF makes me feel that it is control and I am not (understatement alert!).  I'm not saying that healthy people are always in total control of their lives, but they can be pretty certain that if you do (A) then the outcome will be (B).  When you add chronic illness into the equation doing  (A)  may sometimes result in (B)  but its more likely to end up being anything from (C) to (the square root of five) and anything you can imagine in between. With something like CF at the stage I am at, you can plan and prepare all you like, but inevitably your body decides to throw a hissy fit and suddenly all bets are off.  I hate that one day I'll feel ok (at least ok my standards!) and I'll be able to do something simple like having dinner with friends and the next I can barely get out of bed cos I've got a raging temperature and I'm trying to breathe through treacle- I really cant express how frustrating this is and how angry it makes me.
Crocheting and sewing gives me some semblance of control back, I can still do these things, the way I want and and my CF can just sod off!  This gives me a great deal of satisfaction, however simple and small the project may be, its still mine.   When everyday tasks feel like insurmountable problems, actually making something from start to finish really does help prevent the feelings of  being out of control, of inadequacy and uselessness that having CF can create.  I frequently feel that I am just a huge burden on Mr EB and my family and friends.  They have never given me any reason to think that, but it's hard not to feel that way when you need so much help to do things that everyone else takes for granted.  To try and help asuage these feelings I have been searching online for articles and books that might help me learn to deal with these difficulties in a more proactive way.  One book that I absolutely adore is Ruby Wax's Sane New World.  Not only is it hilariously funny in its explanation of Wax's own metal health problems, but it includes lots of exercises based upon mindfullness, that are easy and simple to do.

Another really interesting article that  found online is by Dr JoAnn LeMaistre, all about Coping with Chronic Illness. It's actually a shortened version of a book of the same title, which is sadly out of print, but despite its relatiely short length it is a really helpful read.  She talks in depth about setting realistic expectations of what you can achieve and trying to live in the present.  If you have a chronic illness I seriously recommend reading her article, as it really does cover loads of helpful ways to cope with your reduced health.  So until I either get listed for tranplant, or by some miracle a treatment does become available for my genotype I shall be crocheting and sewing myself into some sense of sanity!  If you'd like to see some of my crochet projects, do check out my projects page on Ravelry.

1940's Style Crocheted Turban

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When I was lindy hopping regularly, and doing a lot of historical re-enactment events, I often wished that I had a crocheted head scarf to wrap up my hair and look so effortlessly chic.  I've never managed to get the hang of 1940's victory rolls and up dos, probably because my hair is very fine and slippy so even my hair dresser had trouble with it putting up for my wedding.  In fact, I resorted to buying a swatch of extra hair so that I had enough on the day to actually get some volume!  The other main issue is that I am far too inpatient to do a proper hair set which is pretty vital to getting an authentic vintage look that will last more than five minutes.  Women working in munitions factories or other manual work during WWII usually wore their hair up and covered with a scarf to prevent it getting caught in things and getting very dirty. Rosie the Riveter is probably the most famous head scarf wearing image of the day and I have a couple of spotted kerchiefs that I wear around the house- especially when steaming hats.  I've always fancied the somewhat fancier looking crocheted ones, patterns for which were often advertised in contemporary magazines.

I found the page on the left on Pinterest, but sadly the link to the original source no longer works,. I've cut and pasted it here, and if you zoom in you can just about read the pattern, which sadly turns out to be for a knitted jumper which must be on the next page of the magazine.  It does have little diagrams illustrating how to tie it, which come in useful later, and shows just how elegant these headscarves can be.











I found this next pattern on Ravelry, another online community to which I am sadly addicted! (If you happen to be a member, my username is Rosaerona, if you'd like to see my other crocheting projects) It was created by The Spool Company, published in 1942, and makes a very fetching striped turban . It is made from a very simple mesh pattern created from treble crochet and chains (uk terms) in alternating colour rows - they suggest red, green, white and yellow, which is not a colour combination that I would go for! I used this pattern as the basis for my headscarf, but I made a slight change to the edge so that short edges are square not slightly tapering.  Not that once you've tied it you can tell because the ends are all tucked in.  I made my two coloured scarf in Ella Rae Cozy Bamboo, in pale blue and teal. It's a lovely, soft and squashy dk yarn made from 80%bamboo and 20% wool.  Fortunately for me the bamboo content it large enough that the wool doesn't set of my usual itching to it... I used two balls of each colour to make a headscarf 127x22cm (50x8.5inches)

To make a two coloured stripe scarf, using DK weight yarn and 4mm crochet hook -

• Chain 220 in colour A, or however many even number of chains it takes you to make 127cm/50inches of chain
• Row 1  Chain 4 (counts as 1tr and 1 chain), tr in 6 chain from hook, chain 1, *skip one chain 1tr in next chain,  reeat from * until you have used all the base chain. Fasten off
• Row 2. Join colour B in first treble of row 1, chain 3 (equals first tr) then tr in first chain space of previous row, then chain 1.  Or you could usee a standing treble to begin the row (brilliant tutorial here on this technique, called standing double in USA terms), then tr in first chain space of previous row then chain 1.
• *Tr in next chain space of previous row, chain 1, repeat from * all the way along working tr in chain spaces,  work an extra final treble in the last treble of the previous row
• Repeat rows 1-2 until the piece is 22cm/8.5 inches wide.  This means all odd rows start and end with one treble and all even rows have two tr stitches at the beginning and end of the row,  

The easiest way to explain this pattern for me is this diagram of a sample of the mesh pattern which I made. I couldn't find a symbol for a standing treble crochet so I've used the usual chain 3 at the start of each row instead. Sorry its a little scrappy but I think you should get the idea-

You could make all sorts of variations on this headscarf, you could omit the colour changes and just turn at the end of each row in a single colour, or you could use more colours, or its easy to make it bigger or smaller, just adjust the length of your base chain and make as many rows as you need.  I'm going to try a plain one next.  I tend to tie mine in the way pictured on the first pattern, with the knot at the front and the ends tucked in. To do this you centre the scarf at the back of your head, so the middle of the long side of the scarf is at the base of your head.  Then bring the two ends forward and tie it at the centre of your forehead in a square knot (right over left, then left over right).  You then tuck the ends left into the part that is wrapped around your head and voila- effortless chic and a great way to cover up less than perfect hair, as can be seem from this rather awful photo of me taken wearing my scarf during my last hospital admission!

Little bit drugged up, but at least my hair is under control!

Rainbow Granny Scarf

I have to admit to being a major Pinterest addict.. I may need to join a support group, if there is one. Most of my pins will never get used as anything other than a picture of something that I think is pretty, but some have actually proved amazingly useful and inspired my sewing, hatting and crocheting.  One of my favorite finds on Pinterest is Sarah London, a crochet designer from Australia.  She has loads of fantastic crochet patterns, some are even free, including a designed for a Granny stitch based scarf called The Arctic Scarf  which incorporates all the bold colours that she is most known for.   Although I really liked this pattern it was not quite what I wanted, but it is gorgeous nonetheless. So I decided to create my own pattern-eek!

The Granny Square is a classic and super easy crochet technique which I love making, as you don't have the fiddly first step of most crochet patterns of crocheting a long chain and then trying to crochet into that.  What I wanted tho was not a square but a long, thin rectangle- ie scarf shaped! This did mean that I needed to start with a long chain-sigh... However,  I found a fantastic tutorial (Pinterest again!) on how to make a granny rectangle as the basis for a blanket at the marvelous Crochet Again website.  It even has a stitch diagram, which I find much easier to follow than written instructions. So all I needed now was some yarn.  Fortunately for me The Sheep Shop in Cambridge stocks all the colours of Rico's Creative Cotton, an aran weight, 100% cotton yarn, so I could pop in and choose my rainbow. In my opinion it is more of a heavy DK than a proper aran weight, as it feels a lot lighter than any other DK yarn I've used.  It comes in so many gorgeous, rich colours, and being 100% cotton it doesn't make my hands itch and go pink when I use it.

Anyway, as we all learnt in school the seven colours of the rainbow are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet (or Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain!).  For my scarf you'll need a ball of each colour, plus an extra ball of violet- as the scarf is finished with an extra row of this colour and fringe.  So here is my first crochet pattern!

Rainbow Granny Scarf

You will need seven colours of Arran weight yarn.  If used Rico Creative Cotton in, Red-05, Orange-74, Yellow-63, Green-49, Sky Blue-37, Royal Blue-39, Cardinal-11.  The closest I could get to a rainbow. You need one ball of each colour and two of the last colour.

Finished dimensions
Width-16cm
Length-3m 20cm  excluding fringe

Foundation Row

• Using a 5mm hook and red yarn- Chain 360!!!  Yes I know that is ridiculously long, but that's what I wanted. 
• If you want your scarf to be slightly less mad, then chain 300; you will also not need to worry about the yarn running out in the later rounds as it got pretty close with mine! (or you can make it any length of chain you like as long as its a multiple of 3)

Row 1

• In the 6th chain from the hook 3 Treble crochet (from here on I will call this a Treble group or TrGp).  
• Skip two chain, then TrGp in next chain.
• Continue this pattern (skip two chains then Tr Gr in the next) all the way along the chain until there are only 3 chain left
• Treble crochet in the last chain.
• Fasten off red yarn and weave in ends.

This results in a long, thin ribbon of crochet that looks like this-

Row 2, Orange yarn

• Begin in a skipped chain space, or between two treble groups, either attach your yarn and chain three (equals one treble) or use the amazing technique called the Standing treble crochet that I learnt at Moogly.com which produces a totally invisible start!  (It is called a standing double crochet in American terms).
• One treble in the chain space
• Chain one, then TrGp in next chain space.
• Repeat (Chain one, TrGp) in each chain space until you reach the end of the red row.
• To work around the end of the row work a TrGp, 3 chain, TrGp, 3 chain, TrGp.  (The chains from the corners that you will work into in the next row- you can see this in the picture below)  
• Continue making chain one, TrGp repetitions all way along the other side of the red foundation row.
• When you reach the other end of the scarf work the end in the same was as the first. (TrGp, 3 chain, x 3).  Then work along the first side until you reach the starting point.
• Chain one and work one treble in to the first chain space where you started.
• Join to the top of the first treble with a slipstitch, cut the yarn and weave in the end, or-
• Cut the yarn, leaving a 6 inch tail, and pull the tail out from the last stitch.  Then using a wool needle, pass the tail under the top loop of the first treble crochet of the row then back through the top of the last treble to create a loop that joins the two trebles. Weave this end in.  This produces a seamless join- there are two joins in the picture below-Can see you see them?!

First three rows.

Rows 3 (yellow), 4 (Green), 5 (Blue), 6 (indigo), and 7 (Violet), are made exactly the same way as Row 2, they are just slightly bigger.  If you'd like a diagram do check out Crochet Again's post mentioned above.

Once you've finished all 7 rows, you can block the scarf by pinning it to an ironing board and gently pressing it with a steam iron and a press cloth, or if you prefer you can wet block it- cotton yarn will take either.  I then finished mine with a fringe.

Making the Fringe

Fringe is dead easy to make and add to a scarf. I used a postcard to make my fringe, but any piece of card or a cd case or anything that is the twice the length of fringe you want is fine as a template.  My postcard is 16cm long, so the finished fringe will be 8cm long.  To make the fringe pieces, wrap your yarn around your template a few times- don't do too many wraps or it get more fiddly to hang on to it all.  Cut the yarn at the bottom of the template, keeping hold of the yarn on the template, then cut it again at the top of the template. This will leave you with several individual lengths of 16cm.

Then taking one length, fold it in half.  Using your crochet hook, pull the folded end through the top of a corner stitch at the bottom of the scarf to create a loop-

Use the hook to catch the two ends of the strand and pull them all the way through the loop you have just made-

Pull the ends gently to tighten the knot against the scarf.  Repeat this process all the way along the end of the scarf.

Ta-dah!

You may need to trim the ends of the fringe a little to get them completely level.  Now, take your scarf wrap it several times around your neck and feel smug!  I hope the pattern is clear and easy to follow, any problems do drop me a line or a comment and I will try and help.

Pattern  Rainbow Granny Scarf, Copyright Rosalind Evans.  You are welcome to reproduce this pattern for personal use, but please do not use it for commercial gain. Please do not reproduce my photos or the text of this pattern without contacting me first. If you would like to link to this pattern please do, but I would ask that you let me know.

Hexagons!

I've finally managed to get all my hexagons joined together into one pretty big blanket :-)  Since I've been making these things for actual years, so it is great to actually see it as a usable single thing!  I sewed them into long rows of twelve first using a double crochet seam, then joined the strips together to make a big 12 by 12 square. My only problem is that I still have quite a lot more wool left as I originally planned it to be big enough for a double bed.... It would be easy to add more hexagons I'm just not sure I can face having to make more! So I think I'll do some different shapes and projects first and then maybe return to this when i have dehexagoned my brain!

Pretty big!

The white wool long seams running vertically.

All folded

Going round in circles, crocheting as I go!

I must admit to an overwhelming sense of deja vu... I am pretty much exactly back to where I was in October (after I had my first rubbish sample of some sort of micro bacterium), waiting to get some other sort of result that would give enough evidence to justify me being incarcerated at Papworth for three weeks and starting a massive regime of drugs to treat said micro bacterium.  This time they have at least identified the type of micro bacterium, but the doctors still are very wary of starting me on this unpleasant roller-coaster of drugs.  I can see why its such a hard decision, I really don't want to have to do these extra drugs, but it does rather leave me back in limbo- again!  So, I am trying not to worry and fret myself into a total mental collapse and hoping that either I get a nice obvious reason to do all this stuff or that the various teams involved decide that I am not colonised and can still be assessed for transplant when I need it... Like I said in the last post, I'm not good at waiting...

I find that one of the best ways of distracting my troublesome brain is to keep my hands busy.  I've just had another two weeks of what might be called 'normal' IVs, to treat the pseudomonas that regularly upsets my lungs.  These drugs won't treat the micro bacterium, so they should not be affecting the results of the samples I am sending off.  Whilst I'm on them tho I do feel rather like I've been run over by a steam roller and am just knackered.  This gives me far too much time to brood and worry, so I've been keeping myself busy with more crochet and also more embroidery designing with the new software and machine I've got (more on that later when I've got the hang of it!).  I've been gradually crocheting a blanket made of hexagons for several years now... I do a few here and then stop for a bit to do other things, then I come back and do a few more.  Well this dose of IVs I decided to get it a to a point where I could stat putting it together but can can still add more hexagons on later.  I've now got at least 12 of each of the nine colours and will be starting to crochet them all together with white yarn as I've worked out a layout I am happy with.

Many, many hexagons to be joined together.

Because I tend to get bored with repeating the same shape and colours, I have also been working on a yarn-eater blanket, to try and use up some of the yarn scraps I've had hanging around taking up space.  I really like making granny squares so that was an obvious choice. I was rather inspired by a blanket made by my great-grandmother which is made in amazingly bright colours, in clashing combinations that I really love.  So I decided to do a version using slightly smaller squares, only three rounds in different colours.  So far I've done nearly 50 squares and as you can see it's very bright and over the top!  I like the fact that the individual motifs are so quick to make, so you can just knock one up whilst having a cup of tea and have something to show for it immediately.  I will carry on making loads of squares until I run out of colour combinations, then will join them altogether with black.  If I get stuck in Papworth for three weeks I think I could manage an awful lot of crochet...

Crochet blanket for James

One of the annoying things about IVs is that you are forced to sit waiting whilst the drugs drip away. On some combination of meds you can by stuck for an hour for each drug, so you spend several hours a day attached to your drip stand (or handy light fitting!) being very bored.  I hate being bored and sitting around- drives me nuts! So to pass the time and do something useful I decided to do some more crochet and as I'd made a blanket for Sophie when she arrived it seemed about time nephew James got one too.  I've never been able to manage knitting, my stitches always got so tight I could never get the needles into the work! Crochet is a much better bet and I rather enjoy making lots of small motifs that then get seen together to make a blanket.  The blanket i decided to make consists of 35 granny squares in two colours.  I found a really nice acrylic yarn that came in red and cream; I can't use wool yarn as i am mildly allergic to it and it makes my skin red and itchy. This is really annoying as most yarns contain at last a small percentage of wool so my choice of yarn is pretty limited. After three weeks of IVs I'd managed most of the squares and i finished the last few this week.

Very large pile of squares!

Blocking the first batch of squares.

Having made the squares I then had to give them a block to get them nice and flat and even out their size.  My tension is still a little bit hit and miss and some of the squares were a bit different in size.  By pinning them all out onto a board and giving them a gentle steam and then letting them cool you can even out any little lumps and bumps and get each motif to be nearer in size.  To join the all together I used a slip stitch in red wool to make a fairly invisible seam.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I hope James will like it too.   Now I have to decide what my next sedentary project will be, as sadly I think Ill be back on the IVs shortly... at least I can make something fun and useful to alleviate the boredom!

Midway through joining all the squares together.

All joined together just the ends to weave in.

Finished!