A new project in the works…

This blog post could be long and drawn out, but instead I will make it short and sweet[ish].

Because October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, I thought it was a good time to make something in memory of my four angel babies.  I hate that I don’t have anything physical to hold on to (until recently anyway, Lauriel bought me a few little items because that is how awesome she is!) and I thought it might be nice to make a blanket in memory of each of them.  Nothing too extreme or big, just something simple that I can put away and take out when I feel the need to be ‘close’ to my babies.

I am going to do individual granny square blankets for each of my angels and perhaps a little hat for each.  I know a lot of people probably find the idea a little over the top, perhaps even plain ol’ weird, but it is what I feel I need to do to remember my babies.

I will, of course, post update photos along the way… my aim is to get the blankets all finished in October, hopefully it is manageable with exams to study for!

The Project: progress update #2

I’m making progress a lot faster than I thought I would!  As of right now I have 28 squares of differing sizes.  When Lauriel did the math she worked out I had to do about 500 squares for the blanket to be big enough to fit our king size bed.  I am not sure what the number is now, because some of the bigger squares are the equivalent of 16-25 small squares!

I quickly got bored with plain colours and recently have only been working with variegated wool… I love seeing the patterns that are created using the different brands of wool!  I have a lot of solid coloured wool coming though, and am looking forward to doing squares with different colour combinations.

There isn’t really a lot more to report, so here, have some photos!

All of my squares to date

The same variegated wool, the top one is from the middle of the skein outward, the bottom is from the outside of the skein inward

The colours in this skein remind me of Autumn

Retail therapy of the woolly kind

The first time I went into one of the local wool shops I fell in love with some variegated wool.  There were about six different blends and I have never been able to decide which I like best.  Yesterday I dragged Lauriel into the wool store and decided I was finally going to give in and buy some of the wool I have been lusting after.  Generally I like buying cheap wool (mainly because I don’t think my skill level is good enough for expensive wool… and because I’m cheap!), but decided it was time to get myself a bit of a treat.  I ‘hmmmm’ed and ‘ahhhhhh’ed for a while and eventually settled on four skeins, two of the pink and purple blend, two of the autumn colours blend.

Last night I sat down and began to do a square out of the pink/purple blend and I have to say I love the outcome!  The only problem I have is that one skein equates to an uneven number of the small granny squares I am doing, so I may need to do another row or two in a plain colour, a border of sorts, so that it becomes the correct size.  I think I may need to get another couple of skeins in two different colour blends so I can have a square of each blend in each corner of the blanket, or perhaps in the center around the big pink and white square I have done.  Plenty of time to figure that out!

The orangey colour was in the middle of the skein and I had no idea it was there until it arrived on the hook!

The wool for this square

The wool and the square

The Project: progress so far

I figured it would be a good idea to post a few photos of the progress I’ve made on ‘The Project’ so far.  It isn’t terribly interesting at this point, I have made 13 small granny squares (okay, 14, but the first one I did I really fucked up, so I’m not counting it) and am working on one large granny square that will be the centrepiece of the blanket.  I started using scraps of wool left over from my other projects to date (55 butterflies for preschool, four pairs of slippers, a finger puppet), but yesterday bought some wool especially for the blanket.  It was cheap, one ball is even sparkly.  How could a girl resist?

Now, I give to you ‘Progress: part 1’

The 13 little granny squares. I love the pink and green combos

A slightly closer view

The big square so far, the equivalent of around nine small squares

47c wool? Yes please!

The sparkly wool!

 

So there you have it.  Progress to date.  Perhaps when I can be bothered I will line the squres up on the bed so you can see just how much work I have to do!

Thanks for reading,
have a beautiful day xxx

Not THAT type of hooker

What can I say, I love a good play on words!

I started this blog for two reasons.  First of all, I want to share my experience with anxiety and depression. I have suffered from both for around 12 years now, the depression was triggered by a pregnancy loss (a termination to be more honest), while the anxiety was triggered by my beautiful nephew dying of SIDS when he was four months old.  Then there were the traumatic Christchurch earthquakes in 2010/2011.  THAT was really what set me off.

For a long time the depression would come and go, but the anxiety has always been relatively constant.  I was a single parent for six-ish years, and I think this forced me to ignore the depression, to sweep it under the ‘too hard’ mat and hope it would go away.  I convinced myself it had, but I realise now I was in denial.  It took the love of a beautiful, funny, wonderful woman (Lauriel) for me to get out of denial and start to accept my depression was more existant than I believed. 

It seems stupid, doesn’t it.  Meet an amazing woman, fall in love, move in together, get married, start the rest of my life… and fall into a deep depression.  It confused me for a long time.  I didn’t understand why I was suffering so badly when in reality I was the happiest I had been in… well, forever.  It was as if there was two of me.  Depressed Emma and blissfully happy Emma.  Over the past year things got worse and ‘depressed Emma’ became more prevalent than ‘blissfully happy Emma’… I was still happy, but there was this persistant fog, this horrible cloud that just wouldn’t lift, no matter how happy I felt in the other part of my brain.

Things came to a head about four months ago.  I had a breakdown in the shower.  I got out, sat on the bed and cried.  And cried.  And cried.  And cried.  I was numb.  I couldn’t feel anything.  I couldn’t think.  All I could do was cry.  Lauriel informed me we were going to the doctor, and I didn’t say no.  Like a child I let her get me dressed, get me out of the house, walk me into the medical centre, walk me through to the nurse, walk me through to the doctor, walk me through to the pharmacy.

Ninety minutes and a three month supply of Fluoxetine later, we went home.

I started seeing a psychologist not long after that, and finally feel as if I am starting to get on top of my depression and anxiety, though I doubt either will ever be gone.  I recently had my third appointment with my psychologist and he told me he is proud of the progress I made. 

Most days I think he is right, I have made great progress.  But then there are days where I feel like I am right back at step one.

Oh yea.  The second reason for starting this blog.

Crochet!

One of the worst aspects of my anxiety is I am terrified of being a passenger in a car on a long trip.  Around town, fine.  Onto the State Highway?  No fucking way.  We had a birthday party to attend in June and I had a major anxiety attack before we left.  Crying, shaking, imagining crash scenario after crash scenario.  Lauriel eventually said we didn’t have to go, but I KNEW we had to.  I KNEW that I had to push on through and that I had to test myself.  My psychologist had spoken to me only days earlier about exposure being the most effective form of treating anxiety. 

Lauriel broke the day into small chunks for me.  First off all I was to concentrate on getting dressed.  Then having breakfast.  Then getting ready to go.  She had me choose a book to take.  She suggested I take my crochet.  I decided it wasn’t a bad idea, but doubted I would be able to concentrate on it.  We got in the car.  I did up my seatbelt.  Lauriel started the car.  We were off.

I started crocheting immediately.  Know what?  I didn’t take my eyes off my crochet until two minutes before we reached our destination.  A WHOLE trip had passed by without any anxiety.  There were no freak outs, there were no crash scenarios racing through my head.  I concentrated on my crochet and that was it.

It was then that I realised crochet was something I could do to calm mysef, to focus myself, to divert my attention away from whatever it was I was fixating on (along with being afraid of being a passenger, I also convince myself on a very regular basis that I’m dying of some horrible disease).  Crochet almost became my saviour… well, after my wife anyway.

I have a few hard months coming up with various dates which have bad connotations… so I have decided I am going to make a blanket for our bed.  It is going to be huge.  I am doing granny squares that are little and to make the blanket big enough for our bed, it is going to require 484 granny squares.  

My plan is that when things get tough mentally/emotionally, after talking it through with Lauriel, I will pick up my hook and start working on the blanket.  I might get a couple of squares out of the way and feel okay, I might end up at it all night. 

This blog isn’t going to be all depression and anxiety though, I also plan to share the good stuff, because part of what I have learnt in the last four months is the importance of appreciating the small stuff.  Cliché as hell, but incredibly important.  Who knows, maybe I will do a daily ‘3 things I am grateful for’ post.  I probably won’t.  But maybe I will.