Attack of the Crochet Claw

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 2 April 2013 in making | 2 comments

One of the reasons my crafting extravaganza hasn’t gone as planned is because of my hands. Between lots of wet felting, crochet and protecting my super-sensitive new scar over the last month, they’ve been slowly turning into T-Rex claws. But it wasn’t until Friday, when my knuckles were properly swollen and achy as well as stiff, that I actually thought about it seriously.

(Me, on Friday. Except I have curlier hair. And glasses. And a shorter tail.)

When I’m working at my computer, I’m pretty good at taking breaks, sitting in a good chair and doing little exercises to help reduce shoulder/eye strain etc. (I don’t use it any more but when I worked at the university, I used to use Workrave to keep me in line.) But for some reason, I don’t apply the same principle to crafting – I can sit curled up in a ball, on the sofa, for hours at a time, and the only exercise I do to break it up is occasionally tickle an animal or clasp my claw around a cup of tea. (This is a small exaggeration, but only a small one.)

As my dad has pretty bad osteoarthritis and I’ve had joint pain problems in the past (in my knees particularly), I’ve decided to take Claw Friday as a bit of a wake up call so it doesn’t get worse in the future. I’ve started breaking up my crafting like I do my computer time (and like any sensible, normal person would do) and switching between different things (eg between crochet and sewing over the weekend) rather than doing the same thing over and over again. I’m hoping to start going swimming again regularly from the summer onwards which will help things generally but in the meantime, I’ve also started doing some hand/forearm exercises that I remember from my yoga/pilates days – hopefully encouraging my muscles to become a little more flexible again. It’s amazing how just a few days of those has already improved things.

Do you do any particular exercises to help prevent RSI/other injuries during your crafting/making or gardening etc? Do you have any tips?

Five things

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 16 November 2011 in chickens, frugal, making | 3 comments

ONE. Two of the chickens are in moult – Ginger the Black Rock and Ms Mauve, an ISA Brown. There have been a lot of feathers about in the coop and run but neither have gone too bald (… yet?). Both have lost their tail feathers so look strangely round and last week both lost neck/head feathers, but Ginger’s have pretty much grown back now, so only Ms Mauve is left looking bit funny.

(I’m not keeping them/her in a separate run from the rest of the crew during the moult, just some of the others had just wandered outside of the run while I was taking photos. She followed shortly afterwards when she realised that there were leaves to scratch in out there, weeeee!)

TWO. Sticking to chicken related things, we’ve discovered that if chickens eat achocha, it taints their eggs like onions or (wild) garlic. I’ve been feeding the chicken some of the many, many achocha fruit we’ve had this season in an effort to get through them before the frost turns them all to mush. They weren’t sure about them at first but now om-nom-nom them up. We discovered the tainting issue – which isn’t unpleasant, per se, in savoury food but definitely there – on Monday, just after I’d taken them the remains of the entire 15ft tall wall of achocha to pick through. Monday’s eggs have been quarantined so they don’t accidentally get used for a dessert!

THREE. One of the reasons why I’ve not been writing much here is #NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. All my spare (and not so spare) time has been sucked up by that, so not only have I not been blogging much, I’ve not really been crafting or playing either. But on the plus side, because I’ve been so focus, I’ve written over 60,000 so far and I’ve not been idly browsing the web or eBay so I’ve saved money by avoiding temptation. Woo!

FOUR. Despite #NaNoWriMo getting in the way of my crafting, I have had a couple of evenings off from writing (when I was too exhausted/distracted to write the day we found Kia and after a busy day in the garden at the weekend) and I’m only about four rows off finishing the back of one of my crochet tops. If I hadn’t been writing, it would be long finished by now – and I’ve got an idea of how I can make another one which is just as nice but even quicker. Because I don’t already have enough WIPs…

FIVE. A little paranoid perhaps but I’m rather aware how quickly we’re getting through our wood pile. I cut a load of wood on Sunday but we’ve already nearly got through the ones for the “big” stove in the office. I think we might start using the central heating more until the winter properly kicks in, so we can see what it holds: I’m worried about racing through all our wood supplies now, then finding ourselves without heating for a fortnight during a super cold spell like we did last year (our boiler broke at just the wrong time). I much prefer our free heating from wood than our expensive gas, but I think I’d rather have a few weeks of expensive warmth than risk having no warmth at all!

What’s going on in your life this week?

November mini-goals

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 2 November 2011 in goals | 1 comment

I’ve got some mighty “mini” goals this month!

1. Declutter November
The Decluttering in November challenge I’ve been mentioning repeatedly – between the every day challenge and the mini-challenges, I’m going to get rid of 50 pieces of junk from around our home/garden in the next 30 days. John’s doing it too so we’ll hopefully have 100 less things by the end of the month – but more importantly, hopefully we’ll both be more conscious of how clutter grows and stays here!

2. NaNoWriMo
I’m taking part in NaNoWriMo – (Inter)National Novel Writing Month – this year for the first time. I’ve been meaning to do it for a few years but managed to forget the kickoff each time before now. This year though, I’m onboard and I’ve got to write 50,000 in 30 days. (A standard non-genre novel is around 80,000-100,000 words, so it’s shorter than normal but the point is to bang something out, sod the quality, then expand/refine it later.) If anyone else is doing it and wants to be my writing buddy, I’m louisa_

3. Finish making one of the two crochet tops I’m currently working on
I have the attention span of a fruit fly when it comes crafts. I am determined to finish one of the tops this month though – I’m cold, I need the woolly layer ASAP!

4. Do all the winter preparations ‘to-do’s
A long list! I’ve already done a few but need to do the others before winter properly sets in.

5. Batch cook another 2x2servings of meals for the freezer
I liked having this mini-goal last month so want to do it again. The freezer is currently full of meat from our recent Swillington Farm delivery but once we start making some progress through that, I want more homemade ready meals added to our stash.

6. Make bacon
All the cool kids have been doing it recently and we’ve got some pork that would be perfect for a little curing transformation. Plus, it’ll help free up some room in the freezer for that batch cooking – by storing the meat in our tummies :)

Have you got any particular aims or to-dos for this month?

On the hook – draught excluder & cowl/tank top

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 26 October 2011 in crochet & knitting | 3 comments

Inspired by Steel Kitten‘s “What’s in the knitting bag?” post, I thought I’d talk about what’s on my crochet hook. (I’m supposed to be having a week away from the computer this week doing crafty things — I’ve not been very successful at the “being away from a computer” thing so at least I should write about my crafty pursuits, right? ;) )

As I mentioned on here and Twitter last week, I’ve not been hooking for ages but now I’ve started again, I’m in it with a passion. Last week I started a made-up-as-I-go snake draught excluder – the tail on my first version was too short but made a natty hat for cheeky Lily-dog —

— so I frogged that and started again but naughty, naughty, I got distracted by wanting personal insulation instead.

A trip to the yarn shop later (Texere Yarns in Bradford), I’m now working on a version of the Ginny Cowl (Ravelry pattern link). I love the shape of the finished top and the pattern is deliciously simple – but I’ve had to change things a bit because I don’t know whether it was my too-round-headed hook’s fault, the fluffy yarn’s fault or my too-tight tension’s fault but doing the slip stitches in back loops was arrrrrggghh! Hate. I’m not 100% convinced my version will look as good as the proper Ginny Cowl and I wish I could have stuck with the original pattern, but my version stands a lot more chance of actually being completed (since it’s fun not frustrating to make) rather than thrown on the ground in a huff. Details to follow if it does work!

Are you crocheting/knitting anything at the moment?

January – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Monday 31 January 2011 in goals, less than 12 clothes challenge, meta | 13 comments

Just a quick post reviewing my progress on my various goals/spending, and about tracking other stuff that I may or may not have mentioned.

(I mentioned this on Twitter – I’d had this bunting for a while and John surprised me by putting it up in our dining room. Pretty!)

Goals in 2011 progress

I haven’t really achieved any of my goals for 2011 yet – early days, early cold days. I think we’ve baked something every week so far though and I’ve also started tracking of usage of more consumables (FYI – but possibly TMI too – it takes us 6 days to use a toilet roll), so that’s a start. I also built some things from wood for the garden, which will help me with my piece-of-furniture making goal.

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

I haven’t bought clothes this month so my tally for the year is still at zero. (More info about the challenge…)

I did look at stuff in the sales online at the start of the year but wasn’t persuaded by anything. And last week, I went into a few shops that sell clothes amongst other things (mostly charity shops) – but I put my blinkers on and went straight for the other stuff – homeware things – instead of looking at clothes. It’s quite a poor area so the vast majority of the clothes are cheap makes – I don’t mind buying some of my items from charity shops but I want to avoid poor quality clothes wherever they are sold.

Growing stuff & the chickens

Since it’s still chilly winter, not much is happening on the growing front. I sowed some winter gem lettuce near the start of the month and they’re still tiny, but getting bigger by the day. We also had some fruit trees delivered – six apples and two pears – and John’s planted those out now. I also bought two blackcurrant bushes – I feel like we’re making good progress in the perennial fruit situation now.

The chickens have enjoyed the factionally longer days and the mostly warmer weather – and the two black rocks both started laying mid-month. Lime is still moulting and Buff is still refusing to give up the goods, but we’ve had a solid five eggs a day from the other five nearly every day for the last fortnight. We’ve had 109 eggs in total for January – not bad going since it was just one or two a day at the start of the month! (Also, in late breaking news, some of the chickens are currently grounded – I let them out to play again yesterday and someone, Ginger I think, led the parade into the wooded bit of our garden – it took me about half an hour to catch them all again!)