Time flies while dealing with Fibromyalgia Syndrome

     Where has the time gone? Why is it that when your a child the time seems to just drag on forever at the snails pace but once you reach adulthood it speeds by about as fast as the roadrunner that teases the wily coyote? I would love so much for time to slow down some and let me enjoy each day just a little bit more. Maybe the fact that I recently celebrated my first 49th birthday and inching me ever so close to 50 that I am wanting the time to slow it's pace for just a little while. I tend to get so preoccupied with getting through each day that I often forget to sit back and just relax. I also forget to keep up with my posts on this blog. I keep saying I will do better about posting to it but it just seems to slip away from me. I wonder if I can blame it on Fibro fog, that nasty little condition that goes along with having Fibromyalgia. My oldest son, A.J. has noticed that I am really starting to show issues with my short term memory over the past 9 months or so. I have complained about it to my doctor and was told that it is time to start taking at least some of the drugs on the market to treat my Fibromyalgia Syndrome. I have been fighting against taking any of the drugs since 2003. Why? Well when I was diagnosed in 2000, I was placed on Vioxx. And we all know how dangerous that drug became. Such a shame because it did so much for my pain. I was later put on Celebrex and it worked for a short time then it became useless. I am now taking a high dosage of  prescribed naproxen twice a day for pain and another drug at bedtime that helps me to sleep without my legs convulsing. It has helped me tremendously to get the rest I need.  I no longer lay awake hour after hour waiting on my problem solving brain to shut down. I seem to fall asleep rather quickly now. I can now get through each day and bare the aching pain from having Fibromyalgia a little better.

      I had a rather weird experience recently. I have been sent to an orthopedic surgeon to help me with issues I have going on with my left foot and ankle that date back to 2007 when I fell down our stairs. I actually suffered 4 falls in less then 10 days. I blame my parents for giving me a middle name that means "graceful" Gravity was testing just how graceful I was! Anyhow due to complications from those falls, my left ankle and foot are in pretty bad shape. This Orthopedic surgeon put me on a super high dose steroid that I was to take for 6 days. The morning after the first day of taking it, I stepped out of bed and onto my feet and as I stood up bracing myself for the pain I have felt in my feet for the last 7 years and there wasn't any. No pain at all. Not only was it gone from my feet but it was gone from all of me! I could not believe it. I felt so free to move around. I started to make plans for all the things I would love to do again like taking long walks. It was overwhelming to feel so free of all pain. All those years in pain and now there was none. I was able to walk around and "window shop" without breaking into a sweat (always from increased pain) I did not get short of breath (another issue from pain) nor did my face become all red. It was amazing. I took my time and enjoyed my pain free outing. There was a very bad downside to this. The prescription ran out after 6 days and within 24 hours of taking the last dosage, my pain came back, all of it. It overwhelmed me and turned me into a couch potato for 4 days straight. I never really realized just how much pain I have been living with until it was all gone and then all back. I became so enraged by this. I am still in pain now but I have started to adjust to it again.  I will be seeing my doc next week and see what can be done to better help get the pain under control. In the meantime I am trying to keep my hands busy working on many different projects to help relax me and take my focus away from the pain day after day that I continue to live with. Speaking of which I do have updates on quite a few of my projects.

     Back in October my younger son Jared helped me get a sewing area set  back up so that I can enjoy sewing from time to time. I have a lot of back issues that have kept me from being able to sew for a long time. I am now able to sit at my machine for about an hour or so before I have to take a break from it. Within a day of helping me to get this area ready for me, my son told me about a best dressed Halloween contest at the store where he works. We put our heads together and came up with a plan of action. Jared wanted to dress as a pirate. So we found a pattern and put our game plan into action with just barely getting the costume completed in the nick of time.  Below is a photo of Jared posing in his costume. He absolutely loved it! He grew that beard to help sell the look of a pirate. I tried hard to convince him that he needed to tuck in his white shirt but he absolutely would not budge on it.

      I recently completed one of my older crochet projects. I made a griffin filet lace piece to match up with the dragon filet lace I made a few years ago. I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. 

Here you can see both pieces side by side. 

     I recently decided to get my tatting shuttles back out and play around some with that. It has only been two years now since I learned how to make tatted lace using shuttles. I learned  from watching videos on YOUTUBE.COM I rather enjoy tatting. Here are some of my recent tatting projects. I actually designed the trim on the handkerchief directly below. 

The doily was started last summer and was made from a pattern that was originally published in the 1920's. The thread I used was size 40 so it really made the doily very dainty to the touch. I am fairly pleased with the way it turned out. 

  

     

  

  I have this dresser scarf that I started back in late spring/ early summer. I am hand embroidering the cotton fabric and tatting the trim that is going to frame the cloth. I have the other end of the fabric to embroider yet and I need to finish all the tatting for the trim. I work on it from time to time and hope to complete it sometime in the next few months.

     As I mentioned I recently celebrated a birthday, well, one of my special gifts was from my husband Joe. He gave me this very special shuttle that I have wanted for quite some time now. It is handmade by the G8 shuttle brothers and designed by them as well. It is made from black walnut wood and holds two round bobbins to allow me to blend two separate colors together to create a unique color to tat with. I am still adjusting to using it but play around with it here and there to experiment and become used to the weight of it. It is quite considerably heavier then my regular shuttles. I am so pleased to finally own one. I do also enjoy collecting shuttles.

     I was gifted a couple bags of yarn last fall and decided to turn a good portion of it into a new afghan for my family. After some careful thought, I decided it was time for me to conquer working a ripple pattern. I am pleased to say I did manage it and found it was not nearly as tricky as I had always thought.  Of course I have a photo to show you. :)

    Lastly and as usual, I have several photos to share with you of updates to multiple cross-stitch projects.
First we have Le Grand Marquoir. I have a few blocks of the second page completed.

   I actually put in quite a lot of time working on the Sistine Chapel piece but unfortunately it goes at such a snails pace that I still have not quite reached the richer colors of the piece so it gets too boring for me to work on. I did grid out the various pages of chart thinking that I might start skipping about to work different pages here and there to break up the monotony I am experiencing in the drab color areas.

   I am finding that I really enjoy working on the Two Crowns piece. The dusty rose colored fabric is a dream to work on. The soft tone of it helps me to see my stitches better and has taught me that I really need to stop working on white fabric because the white has become rather blinding to me. I am finding the Two Crowns piece to be much easier to stitch.

 

    I recently pulled the Handblessings 2012 Diamonds piece out of hiding with the intent to finish it up over the next week or so. I really put in a lot of time on it yesterday and find it a very easy piece to stitch in comparison to the artwork pieces. I ran into a problem though. An annoying one. If you look closely at the last framed square at the bottom right you will notice the frame is not completed on the left side. I ran out of the specialty thread with only lacking 7 cross-stitches to go! Grrrrrrrr. I will have to make a trip over to my local needlework store and purchase more of that thread.

    This final piece is the mini Fairy Book design from the artwork of Nadia Strelkina and was charted by Heaven and Earth designs, the same company that charted Two Crowns and the Sistine Chapel pieces. I had not touched this piece since early summer and was recently inspired after seeing a friends stitching and commented that her stitching was tempting me to pull this piece out and work on it. Well another friend saw my comment in our Facebook group and politely challenged me to do it, to pull this peace out and work on it as well as taking a before and after photo. This was back on Sunday. I did get it out and worked on the area near the horses hoofs on the right side of the piece where I had become so bogged down with all the different shades of blue that I stopped all work on it last June. Thanks to the friends, I worked may way through it and finished that area. I have since moved on down and am happily working in colors that are not blue. LOL! After taking the photo earlier, I decided to remove the piece from the scroll frame and return to working it with a hoop instead. It was for self survival. The frame was actually becoming too heavy for me to hold due to the recent escalation of pain across the top of both of my shoulders from a new fibro flare up. Anyhow, I am pleased with my new progress and very thankful to my friends for helping me to get my stitching mojo back. :) I am considering focusing on this piece in particular and see if I can get this one finished this year. I might be overly hopeful in this but that is something I would dearly love to do.

Well these are the last of the goodies I have to share with you right now. Here I was thinking that I have not accomplished very much since June but now that I have included all the projects that I can remember working on, I see that I have actually done quite a bit.

 Until next time. 

A nice quiet Sunday update

Greetings my crafting and artsy friends. It has been a few weeks since I last posted updates on my projects. I decided to wait a bit until I had a bit more progress on my projects underway before updating. Part of the problem is that I am fervently stitching daily and keep thinking, "Hmm, think I will wait and update tomorrow after I get in just a few more stitches." The problem is, a few more today leads to a few more tomorrow, lol. Before I know it, a week has passed then two weeks and still no update. I am still trying to get my right knee to mend so this is why I keep having extra time to work on my cross-stitching. As much as I am enjoying this, I think I would prefer for my knee to fully mend. There are places I would like to get out visit but with this big swollen lump, it is not very safe for me to be driving since it is on my driving knee and all activity just seems to make the swelling increase greatly. UGH! So here I am sitting with the knee elevated the majority of the time and stitching, stitching, and more stitching. Actually, I also did a little genealogy research through the use of my PC and had a really nice break in my Schreiner side of the family research. I have had trouble with this one brick wall as they say since I started researching in 1997. I managed to find a website on rootsweb.com that published a list of names in a biography book printed in 1911 and the email address of the contributor of this information to the website. So I sent the fellow an email to ask where I could obtain a copy of one of the biographies and honestly doubted if anything would come from it but a few days later I received a very welcomed response with the biography transcription of my ancestor included in it! How awesome was that! Through this data from the biography I have new searchable leads and another generation back. This was thrilling for me! Now I just need to get over this stupid knee injury issue so I can get out of this house and get over to the Ohio Historical Society Library and delve into some research. In the meantime, I continue with the embroidery counted - cross stitching, lol.

I did not work on all of my projects this time around but rather instead I selected just a few of them to focus on and worked on an old project that had been set aside for well over a year as well as started another new projects.

Since I am talking of genealogical stuff in this post as well, I will start the updates with two photos of my great-grandparent's 1899 wedding photo tapestry. My great-grandparents were Louis Schreiner and Evalyn "Eva" Mae McNutt.  I decided to put the tapestry on the scanner to get a better clean image of it but due to size limitation of the scanner bed, I scanned the tapestry into two sections. This tapestry is being worked on 32 count linen fabric working two strands of DMC cotton floss over two strands creating a 16 count image.

Here is Great-grandmother Eva. I completed the side of her and will continue working down to complete her wedding gown. I have more back-stitching to work into it but holding off just yet. I added some faded frosted lavender glass beads into her wreath on her head to better depict the flowers that were in her wreath.

And I have moved over to the other side to fill in some on great-grandfather Louis.

The reason part of his suit is so dark is because it is the shadow in the photo causing the dark shading. The photo was a sepia toned photograph and this is how the computer program I used to create a graph from the photograph interpreted the image for design. 

This next update shows one completed page of the "A Token of Love" sampler. I am already working into the next page and making more progress then is shown in this scanned image. I do love this simple one color stitching as it is a very nice break from my busier projects. This is 18 count Aida cloth using DMC cotton floss working with two strands.

In my last update, I was just barely started on a tapestry of "The Last Supper" which I created the design  chart for myself  from a photo of the painting but I have spent some time on that piece as well. Here is my update for it.This is worked on 25 count Lamb's Wool colored Jobelan cloth working 1 thread over 1 thread. 

I have really made some nice progress on this next tapestry, "Earth Song" whose chart was produced by Heaven and Earth Designs. I am slowly trying to make my way across the entire top of the design. 

This little nativity piece is the UFO project I started over a year ago. Actually the design has a bit of history to it for me. This is actually my second time to stitch this design. It is the symbol of my beginning into the realm of counted - cross stitch. 

I actually received my very, very first cross -stitch kit as a Christmas gift in 1982.  It was sent to me from a sister that was living out in Germany at that time. The kit was very tiny and the image was a rose to be stitched on a very small count fabric with a small wooden frame. I remember when I opened the gift and looked at it, another siblings now former spouse made a comment about, "You actually think you can stitch that?" He didn't mean it in a negative way, he would never do that but when he saw the sheer size of it, he had his doubts. To me, I saw this as a challenge and I welcomed it. I was not quite 18 at that time. So I did stitch it and complete it but not without errors. It was rough going, I will be honest of that. I think it was 32 count, 1 over 1 and not a beginner's project by any means. I kept that piece for many years but eventually lost in in one of my many moves. Okay so that was officially my first cross-stitching kitted piece. I did other types of embroidery before and after that rose. But still had no clue about charted cross stitching designs that you kit up yourself. 

Sometime after entering my 20's I moved across the county (1986), working, living single on a too tight budget with little to entertain myself with. I couldn't even afford a TV, lol. My dad eventually bought a small color one for me just because he could not imagine surviving without a television set. I found ways. I read books from the library! However everyday on my way home from work, I would pass by this store that was called "Spare Time Crafts." Being a crafter/artist type of person,  I decided to stop one day to check it out. It was not a craft store that I thought it would be. It was a cross-stitching store that sold fabrics for embroidering on, lots and lots of cross-stitching design charts and embroidery floss. I had never seen anything like this before, ever. The store clerk was not the most friendly person but she did explain to me about cross-stitching and how to follow a chart, purchase the cloth and floss. I had no clue that there was a thread called DMC with a number coding system, lol. I had very little cash to spare but I saw this chart for a nativity scene that just sort of called out to me so I purchased my very first ever design chart that day of the Stoney Creek design "Humble Stable." I also purchased my fabric and a few of the flosses. Not many as this was about to break my limited budget. So I opted to purchase the colors that were used at the center of the deisgn, the starting point for my stitching to get me going. I later found that the floss was far less pricey at another store in town and slowly began purchasing the flosses each pay day. It meant work went slowly on that design. I set it aside when I met my husband, got married and had the first child. No real time to stitch for a while but I picked it back up when my son was a busy toddler and eventually I finished that design. I discovered I could actually use these stamps we had been collecting from the local Big Bear grocery store over in the Hearts department store to purchase the remaining floss I needed so I basically got a lot of the floss for free that way. :) I made a gift of that finished piece and have been a cross-stitcher off and on every since. I had marked up that original chart as I worked each stitch which I later regretted as I found obtaining a fresh copy nearly impossible. I really wanted to make the design again, this time to keep for myself. A few years ago a friend on one of the yahoo email groups I am in had a great windfall. She received a number of tubs of cross-stitching charts from off of her local freecycle group and decided that she didn't want all the charts and freely offered to share them with others of us in the group. We simply paid for the postage. Well, the Humble Stable chart was among them!!!! I finally had a copy again. I am still so thankful for this. I have nearly half of that design complete now.  I have also since learned to go make photo copies of my charts as a working copy that I can mark on and still have the original design chart to refer back to in he event of a disaster such as having to restart a design. I had that experience on a few projects. 

I absolutely love this nativity "Humble Stable" working this on linen.

I know this is a really long post already but I do have one more tapestry piece to share today. It is simply called "Lion" and he is a design I created from my own original painting I did back in 1999. I always felt like this Lion would look so much better in thread then he does in paint but I kept storing him away and debating on whether or not I should try and turn him into a tapestry. As you will see, I finally decided to move forward and have completed the first page of the tapestry. I am working 1 over 1 on 25 count Lugana a linen blend fabric. I have no clue if he will turn out well or not but I do like what I have completed of him so far. 

This is an image of the painting I created the design chart from. I made a few tweeks to the painting in Photoshop to obtain a sharper image in the software I used to create the chart and added a copyright across his face hopefully prevent copy theft. 

Well I think that about sums up what has been keeping me busy with my stitching of late. I do hope you have enjoyed reading up on the progress and seeing the photos. 

Until next time friends.

Happy Monday!

I know, what is so great about Monday, lol. Well today we are having a lovely weather day so it makes it worth getting up and getting the day going. Our temperatures had one of those typical Ohio spring drops over the weekend which included some rain near the weekend making everybody just feeling blah. So waking up to sunshine this morning makes it worth getting up and functioning on a Monday. In addition though to my blah cold weekend I dealt with the beginning of a nasty flare up with my fibromyalgia. YUCK! I should have expected it or seen it coming. I think it was triggered by my fall two and half weeks ago.  Speaking of which. My right wrist is doing much better now. I just wear the brace on it at night when I sleep. However on the downside of that fall.... The day after I fell I went to an urgent care center to get my wrist treated, they also looked at my right knee, pushed around on it but didn't take x-rays and thought it would be fine. In the week that followed, my pain level in the knee began to increase from ouch that sort of smarts to wholly cow that darn thing really hurts and making my blood pressure hit the roof. I ended up in the ER because my blood pressure diastolic number was really getting high, 117 (80 is what it should have been). While I was there I told them about the prior fall and trip to urgent care. They decided to perform a number of x-rays on the knee. When the doctor came back to talk to me he informed me that I had landed on that knee a whole lot harder then I thought. He said  I had to have hit it extremely hard. He told me I have a contusion that is extremely deep down in my knee causing fluid to build up.  They started me on pain meds and made me stay until the meds could kick in and the BP came down to be reasonable and also wrapped my knee up like a  mummy in ace bandaging. The doc was trying to offer me a choice between crutches or a walker. I told him the last time I tried to use crutches I managed to fall 3 more times because of the crutches so that was out. He tried to push to get me to use a walker but I informed him my cane would work just fine. We discussed it for another 5 minutes until he realized just how how stubborn I can be and gave up and consented to my cane while also telling me to stay off the knee. So here I am still hobbling around with a cane a week later. I decided that telling me to stay off my knee and keeping it elevated sounded like a prescription to sit and work on my cross-stitching tapestries. :) So I am working my way through my rotation of cross-stitching projects. I am having fun with this although I am spending more time working on the Earth Song piece designed by Heaven and Earth Designs over the other pieces right now.

Here are photos of the WIPs and SAL in my rotation ATM.

This is a little piece I am doing as a SAL (Stitch a long) through Cross My Heart the needleshop near my home. The charts for it are free so long as I purchased all the supplies for it from the store. It is called "Diamond Quilt" by Handblessings. I love this little piece. It is being stitched on 28 count Jobelan cloth working over 2. The frames around each diamond are stitched with one strand of Watterlillies Nefertiti. I love this thread. The color is gorgeous when you can actually see it being stitched up close. The rest of the threads that are used in the diamonds are all over-dyes. I am all caught up on this projects and nothing really more for me to do until the next three diamonds are released which likely will not be until June. This project really introduced me to Jobelan evenweave cloth and I think this is my new favorite cloth to work on.

This is a current update on my progress of the 1899 Wedding photo tapestry I started three years ago from my great-grandparents wedding photo. I decided to include the original photo in this picture for some comparison. It is really coming along nicely. I am working this on 32 count linen working two over two making the stitched 16 count. I have always said that I wished I had chosen to use silk instead of DMC floss for this project but it is looking good. I am also slowly becoming a fan of working 1 over 1 on 25 count (more about this later) and now wish I would have done that for this tapestry.

Now this is my absolute newest start. I found a really nice photo of the Last Supper painting and turned it into a chart for my own personal use. I am working this on 25 count Lamb's Wool colored Jobelan working 1 over 1 and loving it. It is much easier working 1 over 1 on this evenweave fabric. The last time I worked 1 over 1 it was on linen and the linen had too many blurps (thick areas in the strands) and created a nasty uneven look. The Jobelan evenweave is all precise strands keeping this tapestry uniformed, neat and tidy. I have also found that I love the thickness and softness of the Jobelan cloth.  I think it will be lovely when it is completed. I am limiting my stitching time on this to one day a week for now. I still need to finish gathering all the floss I need for this piece.

This is another SAL that I am spending about 1 day a week on. It is called "Token of Love" and I am working on this through the Yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wiehenburg-samplers/?yguid=294162824 I changed the color scheme to suit my own taste, dark blue DMC floss #823 on sky blue 18 count Aida. It is a fairly easy stitch and a great take along project.

And here is the early stages of the "Magnolia Tree" tapestry I created from a photo of my own tree. There is a great deal of "confetti" stitching involved in this tapestry so it is very slow going. There are 100 different DMC floss thread colors in this chart. I am limiting my time to one day a week on it.

I guess you could call this my main project here. It is "Earth Song" by Heaven and Earth Designs. I am working this on 18 count Aida using two strands of DMC floss. You will also notice that I am actually using one of my q-snap frames to hold it while I am stitching it. I have never been a q-snap fan, ever. LOL, but I do pull them out from time to time and try to get used to handling them. I just really dislike the weight of them, trying to hold them up high enough to my face to see what I am stitching. I have found that if I tuck pillows around me, I can rest my arms on those to help support them while holding the frame close enough to my face to see to stitch. I have strange eyesight. I wear bifocals but I cannot see well enough through the bifocals to stitch so I take them off to see my stitching then I cannot see the TV to watch the programs. I end up listening to TV more then watching as I prefer my stitching over watching the TV anyhow. :) The thing I will say that I do like about this particular q-snap set up is that I am able to work across the top of several of the pages of the chart at a time and it does hold the fabric at the sides nicely taught verses when I used my table scroll stand. And my table scroll frame also creates issues with my eyesight. I find I have to really lean in over it and then this creates very bad back issues for me. Stitching/embroidering should not be painful so I try different things to try and get is comfortable as I can.

I have set aside the "Old Friends" piece I was working on. I accidentally got yellow highlighter on the fabric and have tried a few things to get it out but not having any luck with it for now. I decided to set it aside for the time being.

I recently made another purchase for my design chart stash. I took advantage of a 30% off sale that Heaven and Earth Designs held a few weeks back and purchased a design I have longed to get. It is the Purple Dragon. I love the look in his eyes as that little bird is sitting on the end of his nose. It always makes me chuckle!

Purple Dragon by Heaven and Earth Designs

This is it for now my friends. Until next time. Peace!