Threshold

 

One of my 4 books 

I 'self' published this book and two of my others and posted them to blurb online for people to purchase either as a pdf or as a print version.  (The 4th is available in my ko-fi shop available as pdf only.)

For the first time since publishing The Intentional Weaver, I did not make enough sales to get a payout from blurb for the past month.  (There is a certain level under which they hold on until you have sold more.)

I'm not complaining.  It just took me aback because I budget that minimum payment (more if I'm paying attention) to help cover the expenses to help pay for the things I do for free for the weaving community.

Like pay for things like my website, purchase the security certificate which somehow got dropped (but is now purchased). and the other things that go towards studio expenses (like the insurance policy, due this month.)

If you like my book(s), you can do me a huge favour and let your weaving friends know that you think it/they is/are useful.

Since I spent the past 8 weeks largely trying to find the energy to do something, anything, I did not do the pr or marketing that I usually do.  And, well, not reaching the payout threshold means I have no income from book sales for October.  

I posted a couple tea towel designs in my ko-fi shop recently, so if you are interested, do take a look?

In the meantime, I am s-l-o-w-l-y getting back to the loom.  I was told on Wednesday that most people who experience the significant level brain bleed that I did, do not get discharged to go home but rather to rehab.  For months.  I now understand why so many medical professionals have been patting me on the shoulder and telling me how lucky I have been.  Since I was thinking how *un*lucky I had been to have a brain bleed, I didn't take their comment very well.

After talking to the surgeon I understand how lucky I have been in a whole other way.  I will go on to weave, even possibly to write, with the assistance of a friend willing to go through my writing and help me with the grammar.

I still have problems with communication - at times whole words keep dropping out of my brain.  But writing is 'easier' because I can re-read and correct multiple times before I hit 'publish'.  And I think, with the help of my friend, I will get to the point that I will be able to write for publication again.

As for the zoom seminars, I rather suspect I will not.

So - if you want to learn from me, the best way is to buy some (or all) of my books.  Next best way is to read this blog (for free), or join School of Sweet Georgia or The Handweaving Academy.  The SOS has launched a 'free' blog and today one of the ones I wrote for them last spring was published.

If you want to join SOS this link provides a small discount off the price of joining.  

If I can find the link to the SOS blog post that was posted on Facebook this morning, I'll post that link in the comments.

Perspective

 

There is nothing like a little perspective to adjust your attitude...

This morning I had a telephone appointment with the surgeon who operated on me in Vancouver.

I have spent the better part of the past 8 weeks essentially kicking the floor boards and shaking my fist at the sky at the unfairness of being felled (literally) and weighed down with yet another health issue.

But this morning I found out how close I had been to having *no* more health issues.  Oh, I knew how serious it had been - sort of.  I knew that if I hadn't had the surgery it would have gone very badly for me.  What I didn't know was how truly lucky I had been.  That all those medical people who kept telling me how well I was doing were simply amazed how well my recovery had gone.  And how the recovery had been expected to be much more difficult.

When I asked about speech therapy, the surgeon essentially said that by the time I could get an appointment with a therapist, I would be further along in my recovery than a therapist would be seeing.  

He also said that essentially a person with that degree of bleed (17mm) would not leave hospital and go directly home, but would be expected to be discharged to a rehabilitation facility and scheduled for months (not weeks) of intense therapy.

He advised me to live my life as well and fully as I can because healing will come with using my brain, even if that means I don't have the words I need on my tongue.  We talked about my weaving and he encouraged me to *slowly* take up my life again, writing, weaving etc.  

I still don't feel like I want to stress myself with doing remote presentations, my speech centre has been in the middle of where the damage happened, and truthfully he told me my speech may never recover to what it had been.  He encouraged me to keep playing Scrabble and whatever I enjoyed, but to not sit around waiting for recovery because recovering my life will be through living it.

To that end, I will carry on with the proto-article I had been planning before all this happened.  I have a draft just needs a tiny bit of tweaking to make it look 'better' (to my eyes) and the samples I wove on the current warp have confirmed my speculation about needing to change the density to 32 epi.

I have - quite literally - been given *another* chance to live and to weave, perhaps to teach, some more.

Thinking Things Through

 

Linen from Lithuania, Tex 56 or Nm 17.9

I received a gift from someone in the form of linen produced in Lithuania.  I chose the fine singles because my end product was intended to be tea towels, and I thought this yarn would make a lovely weft.

Since I really liked the end product, I bought 5 more kilos in dyed white.  (I know I'm supposed to be stash busting, hush!)

I proposed a project for the new magazine and while it hasn't been approved yet, I figured it would be a good idea to do some experimentation to go with the idea I had to weave.

The singles linen is finer than 2/16 cotton, but that was what I wanted to use as the epi.  However, the idea I had for the article was to weave with two singles in a double bobbin shuttle, but 36 epi - my current warp density - wasn't going to 'work'.

Yesterday I got to the end of towel #6 and instead of weaving one more towel, I wove a couple of samples with the 2/16 and two strands of the singles linen.

My initial thinking is accurate, it looks like.  It's the wrong threading/treadling and the wrong epi, but I was looking to add more data to my decision making, and it's looking like the 32 epi that I expected would be needed, is.  Just based on the difference in the density, the weft is beating in too loosely to square, so it looks like 32 is going to be a better match.

Normally I wouldn't fuss too much about a weave that doesn't beat 'square', but there are times where it becomes important.  On this project it's optimal, if I can get there.

I won't go into that here now because if the project is accepted for the magazine I'm not supposed to talk about it before it is published.

But I thought it was fair game to talk about the steps leading up to my actually going ahead with this idea.  And, who knows, if they don't feel it is appropriate for them, I can go into the details here when I get them done.  Because now that I've done this much work on it, and exploring the factors that are being considered during the design process, I might as well share, if no where else.  

Season Change

 

Somehow, without my noticing, it has turned into deep autumn and winter is not far away now.

The other morning the windshield was covered with frost.  Which isn't a surprise at this time of year - in fact it is 'late', truth be told.

This year winter, for me, is going to be another level of challenge.  I did buy boots with built in studs in the soles, so hopefully I can get around.  Plus I have been using a cane, to make sure I don't lose my balance.  I have a handicapped parking pass, which will help, but there are other things that are going to take a while to resolve - like the swelling in my brain, the fact that there is swelling in my head, above my ears so that my eyeglasses don't sit properly on my face - which makes seeing properly difficult.  The assistant at the eye doctor's advised me to wait until the swelling goes down before I get my eyeglasses re-fitted, which makes seeing...annoying.  Fortunately my closeup vision isn't too bad, but it gets dicey at a distance - and is why I am not driving now.  I'm seeing a massage therapist who is working on the whiplash (mild, thank goodness, but still) and that is slowly getting better, too.

When I talked to the pain doctor a couple of days ago, he understood that I was even more compromised dealing with injury to the lower back, and now the upper - and was sympathetic.  It is such a relief to have found a pain doctor who doesn't ignore the other things going on in my body.  And to have him be supportive about the tweaking on the new medication.

I am trying very hard to pace myself *slowly* in building up my strength again, but I admit it is hard.  Next week I talk to the neurosurgeon who did the surgery, and hopefully find out a bit more.  What to expect.  If I have a 'deadline', then I am happier if I don't.  Something to aim for.

This is not the way I foresaw the winding up of my life so I am having to change my expectations.  Something that is always more difficult when it is pressed upon you.  And I have no idea how far my recovery will go.  

So, I guess the next few years (?) I am going to have to practice the 'no expectations' way of life.  And work at that attitude of gratitude.

Just so long as I can keep weaving...

Contemplation

 

Everything seems to take ages and I get so frustrated that I can't seem to get myself in check.  But truthfully I don't have the energy to do much.  

Between the two of us, Doug is driving me everywhere because I'm still not driving yet.  So when I go somewhere, he comes too.

But little by little, tiny pieces of my new life are appearing.  And over the coming 3 weeks, I have several major appointments - because this brain injury is *not* my only issue - and I am hoping to get the phone call with the neurosurgeon, the appointment with my eye doctor, the review at the cancer clinic and continue to tweak the pain meds.

I am feeling as though my writing is getting better enough that I can try to keep writing.  The nice thing for the next one was a very short 'opinion' piece, and I managed to get through it - slowly, but never mind.  Have not heard back from the editor - yet - but in the early months of the start up for a 'meaty' publication, running on a skeleton crew, I am sure they are scrambling as hard as they can go.  In the meantime little 'newsletters' come and it feels nice to know that they are making progress.  I have zero desire to be in on launching this publication - writing an article or two is enough!  

As for more?  Well, I have been discussing another, but I need to weave some samples and see if what I'm thinking is the direction they want to go.  In the meantime I tweaked the draft and it will need some work, although it looks do-able.  When I get the first section cut off the current warp, I'll weave some samples of the yarns I am thinking of using, testing to see if I do need to adjust the epi or not.  Everything takes so long I cannot miss a deadline...

In the back of my head I keep hearing 'this is the winter of our discontent...'   I'm hoping that I will be able to drive when winter leaves so I can be more independent again.  

And please, whatever keeps testing me to see if I've become strong enough?  Stop!

Bite by Bite

 

Aerial photo of my town.

It's harder and harder to maintain any semblance of keeping my energy spoon drawer filled every day.  Of course, the overcast dreary days don't help.

Yesterday I managed to keep myself going by laying down but not actually sleeping.  But I stayed down for 40 minutes by reminding myself I needed to rest.  Hopefully the balance between rest and activity will become a 'better' balance.

OTOH, this morning we went to have our flu shot, so who knows where I will manage on that rest/active point.

On the positive side, yesterday I didn't feel quite so tired, and now I just go with the flow, as we say.  

I may do at least one session, and see how the afternoon goes.  A friend who got both her shots at once said she didn't feel awful, so perhaps I can keep going.

But that's the thing right now - no expectations.  Do what I can and if fatigue (or ennui) is greater than my desire to do anything?  Well, I am supposed to be 'retired'.  

My hair is bugging me as the part that got shaved is starting to grow, but the rest is weeks late in getting cut.  And my eye glasses are still not fitting on my face properly, so I am not driving right now.  I see my eye doc early in November, and maybe she will have some advice about the left eye that keeps swelling up - with no tell-tale reason why.  Just one more niggling 'worry' that might be unnecessary!  But there are so many things to 'worry' over right now.

My craft fair inventory has gone to the guild, I've added a couple new towels to the inventory on ko-fi.

Little by little I seem to be starting to function (at a very low level!).  

Full Calendar

 

My life is over run with appointments, along with a dearth of energy.  No matter how much I tell myself it's ok, it doesn't feel like it.

This week one or other - or both - of us have appointments, one of them the flu shot, to be followed in a few weeks by Covid.  We decided that since there were several weeks between both, we'd do them one at a time.    The bug we caught (some nasty cold) lingers and Doug is still coughing a lung up.  (He's had multiple cases of pneumonia which have left his lungs vulnerable.)

Neither of us wants to catch anything else, and we make sure we tell people that we have a bug to let them know we don't want to share it, and at the minute we are protecting *them*, not just us.

I have just added another appointment to my calendar for Friday, which had been 'empty'.

In the meantime I am faithfully heading to the loom twice a day, for 15 minutes each.  The big job now is to increase my leg muscles so that I can get back to two 45 minutes a day.  It feels good to be there, and now that I'm weaving again I can start to work on regaining the physical fitness I lost over nearly 8 weeks.

But everyone cautions me to take it easy.  So, I am working really hard on doing just that.  The earliest I've been warned is to not even think about regaining what I want/need is 2.5 months, and that is just getting started on getting my brain working again.  (e.g., I wrote the next appointment down for next week instead of this, but my brain kicked in and I was able to put it on the correct day...)

I don't always 'hear' the words being spoken to me, and I don't always recognize the words that come out of my mouth.  And until I can see the speech therapist, I will likely continue have to problems.  In the meantime I play some games (Scrabble and such) and hope to encourage my brain to use the neuroplasticity our brains are capable of, and try to work on writing (still hiccoughs, there, too). 

On the other hand, after some really dull dreary days, the sun is shining brilliantly, and even though the autumn coloured leaves have mostly dropped on the ground, it's a pretty day.