Button-ey love

 
A little while ago I posted about a set of square nesting frames I got for Christmas that are in need of filling.  I thought this would be the perfect chance to use up some of my lovingly hoarded buttons.

I laid them all out in the frame, the easy part.  But then the transferring them to fabric was a little bit tricky.  I didn't want to freehand it because that was just a headline for disaster so I outlined a square to keep the heart in and then laid out the outline of the buttons and ever so very carefully stitched them on, trying not to shift their arrangement.  Then I filled in the inside.  There was a bit of reshuffling because it wasn't quite the same but I'm relatively happy with the (slightly wonky) results.  To frame it I just trimmed it and folded the linen over the glass of the frame and the back of the frame was enough to hold it in place.  Lovely! I like easy solutions!  Two more frames to fill and two prints to buy frames for and then they can go up on the wall!

Linking in with Make : Grow : Thrift this week for something different!  Head over to The Haby Goddess for more home/hand-made/grown loveliness!

I Am Home!

Oh, the relief!

MR flew in at 10.20, got a taxi home and then jumped in the car to come pick me up.  Taxi fares are not what our budget needs at the moment but it couldn't be helped.

Now if only the Meow would come out from wherever she's hiding at Dad's house so she can come home.  MR and I looked and called twice! Once before doing food shopping and once after. 

Silly camouflauge meows.

She was not hiding here, we checked.

 

I am NOT going home today.

  
All my optimism came to nothing.

Stupid doctors.  Apparently my kidney function is up now, which they would have seen if they had have looked at my blood tests this morning when they came back.  The only one they have to wait til 4 for is the anti-rejection levels.  And why are my kidney functions up?  And how high are they? Who knows, because they didn't bother coming and telling me themselves, they just passed a message through the nurse and ran off home so they didn't have to answer their pagers for them to come and actually explain the problem to me.

I am really fucking pissed off.

As far as I'm aware, contrast dye for CT scans and MRIs is processed through the kidneys.  I've had three doses of contrast dye this week and today when I had the scan I mentioned it and the radiologist asked if I had been put on fluids to flush it out, which I hadn't.  I mentioned it to my doctor today and he said just drink lots of water.  My blood test this morning was before the CT scan. So tomorrow it's only going to be higher if that's what's causing it.  And if that's what's causing it I am going to be well and truly ropable.


Soooooooooooooooo SOOOOOOO tempted to just discharge myself.

I'm going home today!

I may still be waiting here and it's 5pm but I am going home today.  I've packed my bags and everything!

My doctor is not keen on sending me home until my anti-rejection meds level stabilises after it was pushed up by the antifungals.  Today my levels came down to 12, from 15 so I think they are pretty close to stable.  They should be around 11.  Luckily, they decided I didn't need to be on intravenous antifungals for another week, I got to start the tablet form last night.  

They got me up early for a CT scan of the head, just to make sure there are no mushrooms growing in there. (Looks all clear.)  Since then I have been waiting, waiting for this morning's blood test results to come back, they take a while to process so they don't come through til 4ish.  And then since 4 I have been waiting waiting waiting waiting for the Professor to get out of clinic, hear my results and approve my going home.

Because I am going.

See?

 

Knitting knots

On the back of my small piece crafty success I decided to have another go at knitting.  I brought some needles and wool into hospital thinking that maybe I could spend lots of time learning hows it done properly, so I don't forget again this time.

After you tubing videos on how to cast on, I remembered how to knit, and then watched another video on how to purl and I was off.  Except unfortunately I cast on too tightly to get the needle through so I had to start again.

So I recast on, looser this time (or so I thought) only to find that it wasn't really looser at all.  I persevered, until I dropped a stitch, couldn't work out how to pick it back up and unravelled again.

Third time I thought surely by now I will have cast on nice and loosely.  No such luck. Still tight as ever.  What am I doing wrong?  This time I just soldiered on through, forcing my needle into teeny weeny spaces.  I managed a few rows but I missed a stitch or something somewhere because it wasn't looking how it should.

By this time, I was feeling very disenchanted by the whole thing.  I had one more try, equally as unsuccessful as the first three.  Maybe I'm using the wrong needles or the wrong wool or maybe I am just not cut out for knitting.  I think I'll stick to crochet for a while longer.


Many, more successful, crafty endeavours at Our Creative Spaces.
 

I finished something!

But I can't show you.  I really want to but it is a surprise for Christie of Describe Happy.  We are doing a private swap, my first!  So I am quite excited by this finished thing, so much so that I think I might just make one for myself as well.  Small projects are the way to go.  No more big projects for a while I think.  I like finishing success!

Instead, tonight I thought I might leave you with a list of thoughts that have been popping into my mind that really don't ever get thought except when you are in hospital.

 
- Nurses are amazing people, imagine having to deal with all those disgusting bodily fluids from every possible orifice.

- How do they remove people who died from their rooms without everyone seeing?

- How many people died here today? (It's a hospital, thoughts are bound to get morbid.)

- How can the catering team still have their jobs when the food is so bad and everyone complains about it?

- How is it possible to stuff up bread??? (my bread for breakfast came toasted on one side and soggy on the other)

- When can I go home?

- Why do I have to stay here when here is where I caught all these germs (5 so far) in the first place?

- Is there a Mexican Wave of toilet flushes throughout the night as one person goes then another hears the toilet flush and decides they need to go too?

- How big is the hot water system that they never run out of hot water for showers?

- Why aren't the beds longer? (they are too short for me and I am not even 6 foot)

- Why is there a door into the room next door to mine with a window on it that doesn't have a curtain? (We have taped pillow cases over it)

- What do nurses do on really quiet night shifts? Are they allowed to read a book? (I asked, and apparently, yes!)

- How do all the people who are too sick or injured to move get downstairs in a fire evacuation?

- Why can I not have a salad but I can have a salad sandwich?



Have you had any all consuming random ponderings of late?

 

post its + list = bliss

 

As soon as I get home from hospital I am so whipping up one of these.

Total awesomeness.  And a good use for the overabundance of post it notes I have.

Imagine the pleasure of tearing one off once you're finished and screwing it up into a teeny tiny little ball!

And very convenient that once a post it has been there for a while, it might just fall off and get forgotten about you can change the goals so easily and add new ones as you finish one and not have a really huge list that you look at and give up before you've even started it's that long.

 

Band wagons

  
I have spoken before about my belated band wagon jumping so you may remember that I just don't really go for any old trend, just to be trend-y.  Trendy is a ridiculous word anyhow.

So the latest band wagon I've decided to climb aboard is Pinterest.  Mainly because I am sitting here in hospital twiddling my thumbs and refreshing the blogger dashboard waiting for new posts to come up to read.  How sad.  Yes, I could read a book but I'm not in the mood at the moment.  And with the canula in my inner elbow of my right arm there's only so long I can crochet for without it getting sore from bending it too much.

However, when I just tried to jump on the Pinterest bandwagon, they sent me an email telling me I was on the waiting list.  WTF?!  How snobby do they think they are? Is it some prestigious elite private boarding school? No.  How rude.  I feel a bit indignant.  When I want to join and start something I want to do it straight away!

Now I don't know if I want to join it afterall. (But I probably still will if they hurry up and send me an 'invite to join' sometime soon)

Have you ever been in a similar situation?  Are you on Pinterest and if so, did you have to wait and how long?

Edit: got my 'invitation' from pinterest at 1.30am.  Not too long a wait, luckily!

   

Back to the drawing board

Don't hospital blankets make a great background.

 This morning I have been hooking away.  Back to a pattern rather than unsuccessfully attempting to branch out on my own.  Differently though, this particular pattern is in German, which I don't speak, so I was a bit at loss as to how to follow it.  It is in pdf so I couldn't do the translator button which seems to have disappeared from my firefox anyhow.  I scrolled a bit further and saw that the pattern was also drawn out, similar to the photo below, so I thought I'd have a go at following it that way.  It was a fairly easy pattern and there was success.  Yay!  Now I need to get to work with the natural coloured wool to bring it all together.

On being prepared

  
I am not a naturally organised person.  In fact, I would say I'm a highly disorganised, fly by the seat of my pants, wing it sorta gal.  Sometimes I have little forays into being organised.  They usually involve my sister helping me, but sometimes they are solo.  They generally don't last long but I always feel so proud of myself for the short amount of time it lasts.

When the doctor told me I needed to go into hospital the next day I had a mini moment of preparedness.  I packed all the stuff I needed into my case and there was even enough room for my pillow to fit.  Apart from that I only took my laptop bag and a bag of essential nibbles to get me through the truly shitty hospital food.  My sister gave me the ferrero rochers for Valentine's Day to cheer me up about hospital stays and bronchoscopies.  I also bought a bag of stone fruit.  Can't go without my fruit!

I even managed to fit a little bag of crafty stuff into my case.  However, not much has been happening on that front.  I thought that maybe I would be skilled enough now to just make a bit of a laceyish scarf myself without any pattern needed.  After three attempts I gave up that idea.  Back to patterns and copying stuff other people have designed for those not so talented.

Hospital wise, I'm here for another few days at least.  They've found some bugs in my lungs and started treating them but still haven't worked out what's going on with my liver.  I had a CT scan of it today and tomorrow I am off for an MRI.  I'm hoping they will let me have day release on Sunday to go to Brown Owls.  Apparently it shouldn't be a problem so long as I'm feeling ok.  Fingers crossed!