One Year

I came across this yesterday and it made me smile

Today marks one year since my transplant.

According to the statistics, once you reach one year your survival rate goes up to 88%.  I can't find the percentage for less than a year but from memory I think it is around the high 70's.  I try not to look at statistics too much, they freak me out somewhat beyond that first year hike up.  After 5 years it drops to 83% and then by 10 years its 76% and it continues down from there.  There aren't any statistics past 20 years.  Maybe they are too depressing to list?  That's a bit scary so we won't think of that!  I'd like to think that that is taking into account everyone of all ages but unfortunately those percentages above are for 16-39yo patients at transplant. 

On a positive side however, I've had one more year now than I would have had if I hadn't have had the transplant. Every year from now is a bonus for me. 

My emotions have been a little bit all over the shop over the last month as I've been looking back at this time last year.  There was the anniversary of they day I went into hospital, absolutely exhausted, looking forward to a few days off my leukaemia meds and not having to do anything apart from rest as my liver recovered from its prescribed medication overdose.  No one had mentioned liver failure.  No one had mentioned liver transplants.  Sure, I had leukaemia but apart from this little hiccup things were going fine. 


hah.


There was the anniversary of the day they told me that I might need a transplant.  That one would be mindblowing if I hadn't already partially lost my mind to the hepatic encephalopathy (toxins secreting into the brain because my liver was too damaged to process them).  And the anniversary of the day I was put onto the transplant waiting list.  Although, I have no idea what day either of these two days actually was.  Encephalopathy became my friend here.  Being scared and worried was somewhat minimised by the fog my brain was in. 


There has been lots of remembering about how little I actually remember.  This was a hard thing to overcome as I recovered.  Little dribs and drabs of memory.  Not knowing when they happened.  Not knowing what else happened.  I don't like not knowing. 


And then, there have been the thoughts about what would have happened if I hadn't been lucky enough to receive a donor liver.  Well, we know what would have happened to me - according to the doctors I only had a couple of days left and they were ready to transfer me to ICU when the call came in.  All the things I would have missed out on, what my family and my man would have had to go through.  Unpleasant thoughts best not thought of but still they crept in.


I'm feeling much better now.  The day is finally here and I can move forward again.  I am having a bit of a party today to celebrate it.  There will be birthday cake.  And pretty dresses.  I considered a game of Pin the Bile Duct on the Liver, but we are going to be at a restaurant so it is perhaps not the best place for such a thing. 


Happy birthday liver

and more importantly, thank you to the amazing young man who chose to donate life and to his family who respected his wishes.
 

If shiny was a taste

Because we all eat raw egg and sugar mixes right? Right!?

...it would be raw meringue batter.  Don't you think?  It is just so slippery and smooth and shiny in your mouth.

I am all about adding to a word's sensory descriptability.  And all about creating entire new words altogether apparently.  Descriptiveness?  Oh look, no red squiggles.  I still think descriptability sounds better.  And it follows the rules of suffix addition and it makes sense to everyone - unless that's just me - so it should already be a word, right?

But back to the initial lingual argument.

I don't often use the word 'scent', I'm more inclined to say 'flavour'.  As in, 'What flavour is that candle?'  Taste still gets to use flavour too though.  Scent is just somewhat defunct in my vocabulary.

And afterall, other words get to be multisensory.  The kitten can look and feel soft and the cake can smell and taste sweet.  Why can't meringue batter look and taste shiny?



What word would you like to imbue with an extra sensory meaning?  And for extra points, what would you use it to describe?

Last night's dessert

Reasons why not to craft in poor light

Bad for your eyesight, right? Nooo, nothing so unimportant as eyesight.  More like wrong thread colour usage going undetected, right up to the point of taking a photo to show you my progress.

Yes, I took Mr Squirrel into the bathroom (best light in the house) for a photo only to realise he was a two toned squirrel.  Colour blocking in ombre shades.  Fabulous.

He is supposed to be the colour of his head and the red-brown of his tail.  Not the orange-brown of his bottom half.  Looks like tonight's crafting is going to involve a fair bit of unpicking!

Luckily, Christmas Bambi managed to dress himself in the right shades, hues and tones required.  But I have to say, metallic DMC is a bitch to work with!!  I reckon it almost took me longer to do the gold ribbon on the present than the rest of the present.  Anyone got a good metallic floss brand suggestion for me?


joining in


 

Bananas and roses

Apparently, according to my recent garden researching, banana peel is good for roses and tomatoes and citrus.  And apparently, overripe bananas that I was just going to put in the freezer to make banana bread or smoothies are even better.  All that potassium-y goodness.

So today, I planted four overripe bananas next to four of my rose bushes.  I'm sure it's not going to hurt them so if it works and my roses thrive, well that's just a bonus!  I'll plant some next to my passion fruit and orange tree when I next have some old ones lying around.

I also learnt that coffee grounds are an excellent fertiliser and can just be dug through the top soil of your garden.  They can also be used to sprinkle in a thick layer around plants to deter slugs.  There are slug issues in my garden at the moment.  They keep eating my passion fruit vine and my gooseberry bush.  I don't like to squash them though.  Meow tries to help out by lying on them and them bringing them inside all stuck and mooshed into her fur.  Thanks Meow...

I don't drink coffee but I was thinking I could go to a local cafe and ask them to save me a garbage bag of coffee grounds.

I have also accidentally found out that slugs, snails and earthworms really like pasta.  I fed next door's cat some left over chicken pasta one evening and I tipped the leftover pasta she didn't eat into the garden.  A couple of hours later I was outside and noticed there were four slugs, two snails and an earthworm eating the pasta.  It was all gone in the morning!  I should have taken a photo, it was quite fascinating to watch.

The first of my roses beginning to bloom

Do you have any strange garden tricks that work for you?  I'm all ears!

WTF???

There is a lot of WTFs going on in my house at the moment.  But they all centre around WhereTF rather than WhatTF.  WTF did I put that (insert random object here)??!?!?!?


Currently on the list of WTF did I put that are a small bag of embroidery floss, lacy trims and size 6 crochet hook I bought at spotlight last week and my first finished cross stitch piece (which I saw only yesterday mind you!) that I wanted to photograph to show you today.

Grumble.

Clearly a sign that I need to do a bit of a tidy up.

So here's the second cross stitch I finished, goodness knows WTF I've put the first one. 

one finished Christmas owl

I've been playing around with making my own patterns, plus the book with the owl pattern in it

the next two Christmas animals planned

I'll have four animals all up and I'm planning on putting them in a square frame together to put on the wall.  I do love Christmas craft!




Have you got anything Christmassy planned or in the works at the moment or is it still too early for you?

Flit and dabble

I've been off on a crafty tangent lately, trying out new (or newish) things for me.  There hasn't been much action with the yarn and instead there has been some cross stitching, some cross stitch pattern making and some mosaic doing.  The word 'mosaicing' just looks wrong doesn't it? 

I started this mosiac at Brown Owls last month and grouted it at home.  It still needs to be sealed but I don't have anything and haven't been to the shops looking yet.  Possibly should get onto that so it can be all finished.  I'm quite happy with the look of it.  But I do wonder, if I get into mosaics more, will I look back and think it is a bit amatuerish?  More than likely, but at the moment I don't really care and plus, I can't spot the amatuerish bits because I don't know enough.  Sometimes I think it is better to not know and therefore not be all perfectionisty and sometimes I think I want to know more so it can be perfect.  Right now I'm happy feeling the former.  This is the size of an average floor tile and I think it is going to go in the middle of the outdoor table.  A trivet of sorts. 

As to the cross stitching? Well, you'll just have to wait a bit for that because I realised I only have partially finished photos of the two I've done.  A task for tomorrow if it's not too overcast.

Have you been trying any new crafty stuff lately?  I wish I could stick to one thing but instead I just want to try everything!  Not to worry!

Some mojo found

Isn't it lovely when you write a post about missing mojo only to have that inspire you to bloody well find some of it later that evening?

I went with Sarah's advice to do something fun first and I didn't even go with something on my list.  Not to worry!

I found this quick pattern on ravelry and decided I could probably whip it up in one evening.  Nothing works quite so quickly as a big crochet hook and a chunky yarn!  I ended up making a couple of changes - I added an extra round in the lengthening section and made the band thicker and a bit tighter with some decreases.  I like that I am at a level where I can make alterations to a pattern and have them work out successfully.

This is the first thing I have crocheted in a while, I've been busy knitting lately.  It was nice to get back to the hook actually.  And I think this is the first thing I have crocheted (and finished) for me as well!  I wore it out on Saturday for morning tea and with rain forecast for all this week apart from today I might just get a few more wears out of it before it goes in the cupboard for next Winter!

I still haven't done anything on that list.  But I'm about to go hang out a load of washing and then my plan is to get grouting while the sun is still shining.

Hopefully this is the start of a productive week!


raveled 

 

Missing mojo

I've lost my mojo lately.
Not just my crafting mojo, or my blogging mojo but all my mojo. 


I have a stack of overripe bananas that I should make into yummy banana bread.

I have an embroidered clock waiting for numbers and clock parts to be added.

I have a mosaic waiting to be grouted and then sealed.

I have many other unfinished crafty projects.

I have a garden filling up with weeds and not much else.

I have a very messy craft room.

I have tax that really needs to be done.

I have two ginormous stacks of washing to put away because thankfully I still have managed to find enough energy to do a load here and there this week.

I have a September One Task a Day calendar missing many, many ticks.

I have a get together to organise for my liver's first birthday.

I have downloaded some new music to exercise to but have not yet exercised to it.



The list is growing.
And I am completely uninspired to do anything about it.


How's your list looking lately?

Wood Lovers Anonymous

Hello, my name is Megan and I really love wood stuff. 

Any wood stuff - be it in its natural state of tree or chopped down to make furniture or little bits of pretty.

I love it all!

I also really love clocks.  Cuckoo clocks to be precise and I have always wanted to get one - one day.  But then Amanda very kindly offered me one that used to belong to her father.  It was destined for the op shop pile unless I wanted it.  Did I ever!!!!! 

How gorgeous is this clock?! It was also really nice to go over to Amanda's place and meet her for the first time, she has an amazing home - the type that looks like it belongs in magazine pages it is so beautifully decorated.  You can check it out on her blog, Homely One.

I love the pendulum blur in this shot

In its new home next to the wooden bookshelf and the wooden bookends...

The best shot I could get of the cuckoo

I feel so lucky to have been offered such a gorgeous piece, I love listening to it cuckoo and counting what time it is.  MR is a big fan as well, so much so that he took over setting it up and hanging it when I wasn't even home to join in.  Thank you so much Amanda!


My other latest wooden piece I got down south on my birthday trip.  It is a hand turned mushroom made out of a banksia nut!  Isn't it gorgeous?  I love facing it this way because it looks like a little face and makes me think of May Gibb's Banksia Men (even though when I was little I thought they were scary)  I am quite in love with it.

It is also a little container, although goodness knows what I would put inside?  Some potpourri maybe?

With some of out other favourite bits of wooden stuff

 Unfortuntely, my love for wooden stuff does not make for very colourful display shelves.  I need to do something about that!

  

Back to the stitching board

I've had a little bit of a break from the knitting lately, namely because one knitting needle got lost down the black hole that is the side of the couch and even after pulling the couch half apart MR and I were not able to retrieve it and the other project I was working on, one knitting needle got broken in the first second of a knitting needle war with MR.  Note to self: do not use vintage op shop purchased plastic needles for swords, apparently they are fragile.

Also, it really was time to get a few project closer to being finished as I thought about it and haven't finished anything of note since late June.  Dreadful.  So this past week I've been dutifully stitching away on the couch and I've finished the stitching part of two projects.

On the left is my sashiko panel which I had planned to turn into the first ever throw cushion for my bed and on the right is an embroidered bit of ink and spindle's birch trees line, destined to be a clock for a friend's engagement present.

Of course, now that I see them next to each other and realise that they are about the same size, my mind is thinking how cool a sashiko clock might be?  Oh the decisions!!! Turn this one into a clock too or make this one a cushion and stitch up another panel for a clock?  I am really liking the idea of it being a clock, and lets face it, the throw cushion will never stay on my bed because I hardly ever make it.

 I tried to make the red robins look a bit feathery by doing little stitches and using three strands of browns in different shades to add a bit of depth.  

I'm catching up with my friend this weekend so I need to get gluing and decide whether to use small wooden numbers or buttons to finish off the clock.  

What do you think?

creative spaces