"Normal" service may be resumed

So I've gone back to work part time on a phased return. I am not better, just rested. I still don't have very much to say for myself, except that if you would like to see what I am doing in the knitting world then go here.

Signed off

At the moment I am currently signed off with depression. I feel guilty for not being in work, even though they are hiring a temp to cover my work. I feel like I have let it beat me because up until now I have carried on going to work and taken only the occasional day off. My boss was actually quite sympathetic which did surprise me a little. Although I feel a bit crap about it I am also quite glad because I don't have to cope with work, I don't have to keep plodding on and gritting my teeth as I am so tired because I'm sleeping very badly at the moment. Hopefully being off will give me space to heal rather than make me more miserable.

p/hop

Dreaming of Ravelry

Thank you Kings of Leon for almost writing a song titled after one of my most visited websites!

Long time no blog

Why? Overcome with depression, by Facebook, ravelry and knitting. I am coming out of blog hibernation to make an important announcement for charidee.

If you support the causes of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) then please do your bit to help out. Part of their fundraising is through a knitting initiative called p/hop, or pennies per hours of pleasure. You can get knitting patterns and many other lovely knitting related things for donations based on how much enjoyment you will get from them.

p/hop is one year old this November and they are having a mega blog-athon. All they ask is that instead of blogging on your usual site you post it on their blog instead, of course leaving a note to say where you've gone! It doesn't have to have anything to do with knitting or MSF at all. Just put up what you would have said anyway! Just post sometime during the week of 23rd November, and you can visit their site beforehand to find out more information.

Flower Arranging for Dummies

In May I had tonsillitis. My grandparents sent me the lovely bunch of flowers above. Now I don't know if any of you watched Kirstie's Homemade Home but I saw the easiest way of arranging flowers with very short stems, or preserving ones that have been in a big bunch for a bit longer. It's so simple that even Kirstie Allsopp could do it. OK, being a bit harsh there as she's not stupid, just a bit irritating. I think it's the way she gets so over enthusiastic about things.

So all you need are a bunch of flowers, a dish that is wider than it is deep with some water in it and some sticky tape:
Arrange strips of sticky tape over the top of the dish to form a grid pattern, and put flowers into the holes:

Keep doing this until you can't see any of the sticky tape:

Et voila! Sadly I only had a Pyrex dish to put my arrangement in but once it was full of flowers you couldn't tell anymore.

My Five Minutes of Fame

Vince and my favourite radio station is BBC 6Music. When we get up we always put it on to wake us up a bit. This couldn’t be done without the help of the breakfast DJ Shaun Keaveny. He plays good music and is very amusing. Plus he likes to get the listener involved and has several daily features which requires stuff from us at home.

A popular item is Toast the Nation where listeners are encouraged to email in facts about their hometown or where they live now and celebrate how wonderful the country is. The more amusing or spurious the fact the more Shaun loves it. I think the only place that had been toasted in Cumbria was Carlisle but after today that is no longer the case. This morning I toasted Whitehaven, the town where I was born.

If you’re interested in hearing what I had to say then you can listen again for seven days if you follow this link. I encourage you to listen to the whole show if you can (it’s three hours long) but if you want to hear my bit then you need to fast forward to about 1hr 14mins.