...What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday

One of the upsides of my post hip replacement recovery period is the amount of time it has allowed me to while away (guilt free) on blog browsing. I came across Julia's blog at the weekend and I so enjoyed taking a virtual peep over other people's shoulders at all their different workdesks that I decided to join in with the fun by offering a glimpse of my own. 

The desk is in a comporatively tidy state today, in that there's enough clear space for me to just sit down and pick up where I left off (apart from those pincushion flower heads that I picked this morning and left to dry for seed gathering). I'm having another low energy day so have just been knitting this morning and catching up with a friend from work this afternoon, but you can probably make out the teeny-tiny footballer waiting for his Subbuteo team mates to join him when I'm feeling less fatigued again.There's quite a lot of stuff just out of shot in the photo above, so for full disclosure here's what the end of the desk currently looks like ... 

...it might appear very cluttered but there's a place for everything and everything's in its place. I've been listening to First Aid Kit on the CD player this week - highly recommend their gorgeous silver-voiced harmonies for a relaxing musical accompaniment. Tucked underneath is one of the several XXSCat dog beds we have scattered around the house so that our pampered little pooch can always keep us company in comfort. She makes a great foot warmer in colder weather.

...teeny-tiny footballers

Recently my husband and his brother have been spending a lot of time constructing a wooden frame/base for their old Subbuteo pitch - ostensibly with a view to introducing my husband's 10 year old nephew to the thrills and spills of this table-top game (but actually a very thinly veiled opportunity to take an extended nostalgia trip down memory lane). Given my own fondness for childhood memorabilia...

 ...(ok, so every spare nook, cranny, corner and shelf in the house is crammed with dolls and little creatures in hand-knits) I feel it's only fair to support him in this project. So last Friday I started the Herculean task of hand painting his favourite Hibernian home kit (from 1991, as any self-respecting football anorak will instantly recognise) onto 11 miniscule model footballer blanks. This little fella took over an hour to bring to life, but my husband was thrilled to bits with him when he got home from work, and I'm hoping to adopt more of a factory-line-assembly approach for his team-mates. I was quite pleased that I even managed to get a slightly wobbly approximation of the iconic Adidas '3 stripes' on the sleeves, but had to admit defeat when it came to the top of the socks!

On Sunday I managed to walk a little further at the park, and was rewarded by the breath-taking sight of one of this year's wildflower meadow beds in full bloom. I'm obsessed with these gorgeous lilac thistles - 'Blue Eryngo' - and will be returning to collect seeds. I NEED them in my garden!

I was very achy after the extended walk (hip replacement recovery is two steps forward one step back in my experience), so I was more than happy to curl up with some knitting for the afternoon - another 'Nurmilintu' scarf in a different Lang Yarns 'Milton' colourway that will get a lot more wear than the last one. 

...pretty little things

After my successful experiment with the decorative prosecco glass for my daughter's best friend's wedding, I started looking for opportunities to put the special oven-bake glass pens to use again. Of course it wasn't very long before one presented itself. 

It's a well-established fact that I have hoarding collecting tendencies, and it just so happens that one of my weaknesses is the dear little miniature jam jars that so often accompany a fruit scone when one is indulging in a cream tea. More often than not I end up slipping them into my bag or pocket and bringing them home "to store tiny things in". This is how I came to have a miniature jam jar pyramid containing beads, buttons, safety pins etc.on my craft room windowsill (and, on reflection, may also hold a vital clue as to how my waistline disappeared). 

At the weekend I was collecting some pincushion flower and cosmo seeds from the garden to store in my miniature jam jar pyramid (for planting next year) when it occurred to me that I ought to store the white cosmo seeds and purple cosmo seeds seperately, as it was highly unlikely possible that I might want to plant them in accordance with some kind of colour scheme. Since white and purple cosmo seeds are indistinguishable from one another, there was only one thing for it - labels - and what better way to label a miniature jam jar than with a special glass pen doodle of the flower in question followed by a brisk 25 minute bake in the oven? They're a little rough and ready, I'll admit, but very cute nevertheless.

I showed them to my friend when she came to visit yesterday, and one thing led to another, as the saying goes. My friend runs a small business in her spare time, hiring out wedding reception accessories  - large illuminated letters (L-O-V-E, and M-R -&- M-R-S, M-R-&-M-R, etc), candy carts, prosecco carts, card/letter boxes - all the kind of one-off, decorative, extra stuff that adds to the 'ambience' of the occasion and provides a nice back-drop for photos and so on. She adds little jars and vases of artificial flowers that match the colour scheme of the wedding as a finishing touch. What better way for me to while away an hour or two of my convalescence than by decorating some jars for a rustic wild-flower-themed wedding? Sooooo pretty!

...reaching milestones

It's now been six and a half weeks since my hip replacement surgery and I'm beginning to feel more like myself for longer periods of time. I can now watch TV in the reclining chair downstairs reasonably comfortably (without my leg going numb) and have managed to complete a little Nurmilintu shawl in a cotton mix yarn (Lang yarns, 'Milton') whilst watching the 'Patrick Melrose' box set on Netflix. It's a great pattern for convalescing with, as the garter stitch panels require no concentration whatsoever, and the simple lace panels are created using a three row repeat. I like everything about this scarf except the colour. It looked gorgeous in the skein, but I'm not a big fan of the relatively large expanses of tan/beige in the finished fabric. I will wear it, but I don't think it will become a favourite.

The front garden is an absolute jungle, having been left untended in alternating summer sunshine and heavy rain for the best part of two months. I know I'm on the mend because I'm planning to get out there with the secateurs this week, if only to cut back the trailing brambles and hawthorn shoots now threatening to block the path to the front door. It is attracting plenty of bees and butterflies, and I spotted a bright eyed frog hopping through the wet grass yesterday, but some judicious pruning would definitely not go amiss

The hardest part of the recovery process has been dealing with the level of fatigue I've experienced, and the setbacks that have occurred when I've try to do too much too soon. Last week a minor mis-step on the stairs jarred my hip horribly as I landed awkwardly on the operated leg, and resulted in two days of pain and several sleepless nights. 

So I'm trying to take a leaf out of the Tortoise's book, and remember that "Slow and steady wins the race." Today I handed my hospital issue walking sticks back to the physiotherapist, and reverted to my snazzy blue folding stick for outdoor/longer distance use. Progress indeed!

...wedding fancies

Working on the principle of "just do a couple a day" I managed to finish all 25 painted pebble place settings for my daughter's best friend's wedding with nearly a week to spare. Once I got into the swing of it it really wasn't a chore, and I was really pleased with the finished product. My only quibble was with the irregular sizes and shapes of the pebbles - I would have preferred a more uniform set - but I had to work with the raw materials the bride provided! 

Feedback from the wedding was that everyone loved them, and from the photos my daughter sent me I do think they added a unique personal touch to the romantic table setting.

Given that I had finished the pebbles with days to spare my daughter decided to keep me occupied by commissioning me to make a decorative prosecco glass for the bride to drink from on the morning of the wedding. I was simply forced to order a set of special glass painting pens, and after much experimentation (turns out curved glass is tricky to write on, but the perfect surface for wiping clean and starting again), followed by a nail-bitingly tense baking of the glass in the oven, this was the finished result:

"Self praise is no recommendation", is what my Granny used to say, but who cares? I think it looks absolutely lovely!

...recovery

It's been three and a half weeks since my hip replacement surgery. I'm getting about with one stick indoors and two sticks outdoors and making progress, albeit slow. There has been a lot of bed rest with the XXSCat dog:

A lot of sleepless nights and a new hobby - capturing nocturnal shadows and sunrises when discomfort drives me from my bed in the wee small hours:

4:54am one day

3:14am another day

4:31am this morning

 A lot of finding simple pleasure in the flowers I grew from last year's seed gatherings:

Cosmos

Pincushion flower - Scabiosa

A lot of gritting my teeth and making myself do a little bit more every day - if only because there's a deadline looming:

Through all the 'New Hip Roller Coaster' highs and lows - the box-set binges, the pill-popping, the ice-packs, the ankle rotations and leg lifts, the tea and toast in bed, the biscuit-and-flower-bearing visitors, the tears of frustration and laughter - the XXSCat dog takes everything in her stride. 

After all, there is nothing that a quick power nap in a comfy spot can't fix.

...catching up

The past few weeks have been hectic. I had a hospital appointment when we got back from Seahouses, and came away with a date for my hip replacement surgery - 20th June! Which was wonderful and terrifying in equal measures, especially as we had just arranged for a bathroom and downstairs loo refurbishment to take place in late July/early August. The timing will be far from ideal, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... allegedly. Recovery post-op takes around 6-12 weeks and there were lots of loose ends to tie up at work so as not to leave too much of a tangle for the rest of my team to deal with while I'm gone. I ended up booking some leave for the pre-op period so that I could literally and metaphorically get my house in order - with so much to do at work there wasn't time to draw breath, let alone prepare myself for major surgery. 

The past week has been a mixture of "jobs I won't be able to do for a while after the op" - taking the car to the garage for repairs and the XXSCat dog to the vet for annual vaccinations, emptying our glass recycling bins at the dump, and cutting the hedges - interspersed with bouts of cleaning, tidying, laundry and anxious list-making. I had hoped to do some relaxing and unwinding too, but it turns out that (for me) getting ready for an operation feels very similar to preparing to go on holiday (I suffer from Pre-Holiday Dread Syndrome). Essentially this means stress levels increase exponentially right up to the point that the car leaves the driveway (or the anaesthetic knocks me out) and there's no choice but to surrender to whatever comes next! So rather than feeling serene and well-rested, at this point I actually feel completely frazzled.

Creative activities have helped to distract me a little, and will hopefully help a lot more in the weeks to come. The dolly below belongs to my friend's great niece, who lives in Poland. She is a wistful little thing who apparently has only one item of clothing to fit her - some well-worn pyjama bottoms! 

I have been working on a new wardrobe for her, using my own thuggish-looking baby as a model. When I was trying to find a doll with similar measurements to the photo I discovered that although their faces are very different, their bodies are identical - literally cast from the same mould. I have been promising poor thug baby a wooly hat and cardigan ever since I rescued her from the charity shop, so I will make her a set of her own once I've finished the emergency clothing parcel for her Polish twin. I'm not sure that red is really her colour though - perhaps a soft violet would bring out the blue in her fierce little eyes.

I did a bit of decorative patching on some comfy new jeans - they are intentionally well-worn, vintage-looking, and came with an artful rip in the right knee which (apart from being annoying to wear) was just a bit too "out there" for someone in their mid-fifties, even if I am a bit of an aging hippy type. I didn't have the patience to mark grid-lines, so the stitching isn't perfect, but I really like the effect.

I also embarked on what was intended to be a post-op long term project to use up all the random double-knitting yarn that has accumulated in my stash over the years - a rainbow coloured mini-mania-scarf blanket! This was (almost) a complete failure. Not only did I end up buying MORE double-knitting yarn in order to complete the rainbow spectrum (little or no red, orange or yellow-green in my stash to begin with) but after a couple of rainbow sequence repeats I realised that it was going to be far too garish bright for an entire blanket. So I cast off and turned it back into a scarf. Which I actually really love, but may have to wait a while to leave the house in, as my husband's tactful response was, "Hmmm. It is quite bright - maybe you should save it to wear in winter, to cheer you up!" Unfortunately he followed this up with a far less tactful remark - "It's a bit Tom Baker in Dr Who!" A quick Google search might have told him that it's actually far more Jodie Whittaker in Dr Who, but nvertheless, point taken, it's quite high on the quirky spectrum .

I started work on some painted pebble place settings for my daughter's friend's wedding in July. She wants 25 in total, and I've completed 4 so far. I think this will be a good project for post-op convalescing. I'd just spray varnished the Groom pebble in the photo below - it has a matt finish like the Bride's when dry.

There was also great excitement last week when my friend had a Little Free Library box installed outside her house. This is a wonderful, positive, community-based project which has resulted in a growing network of Little Free Libraries across the city. Our excitement was bittersweet because the lovely lady who championed the scheme in Leeds died (after a long illness) just a few days before the box was installed. This was the last box she decorated (it's a beauty!) and we hope to honour her memory by keeping its shelves well stocked for many years to come.