They are Out

 The stitches came out today. I feel so much better now that I don’t have a mouth of stitches. I still have 13 weeks of recovery left.  You know the routine, swish with warm salt water twice a day.  No eating anything hard on the right side of my mouth. The right side only gets soft food.  The best news is that the 3 weeks of the mash diet ( think baby food) is over.  

I did not lose as much weight as I had hoped for.  I did however lose more inches.  Some smaller clothes have been ordered.  I have noticed that since the Covid days certain clothing items are not longer in physical stores, they must be ordered online. So that means that every 2 inches lost around my waist or rib cage means a new serge of ordering clothes.  This will definitely keep the delivery services busy.. 

I have also noticed that the more inches I lose, the more my  muscle mass seems to to increase.  I can no longer pinch an inch anywhere on my legs, my arms are coming close. The rest of me is a work in progress.  

Well it was a very busy and long day.  TTFN

The Trouble With Deep Cleaning

 I was cleaning the sewing room today, yes, I said the sewing room. What did I find that is not related to sewing? Well, the simple answer is nine different spinning projects. Some have hours to go before they’re done. Some have weeks to go before they’re done. What they all have in common was they were hiding in the sewing room 

Now that I know that I have nine projects that I didn’t know about or forgot about. I actually think I forgot about the projects because they got moved in some other cleaning spree. I was aware of four Spinning projects that I haven’t completed. That leaves me with 13 unfinished spinning projects. So I am going to bag them all up. Then put them all together Eight projects in one basket. With the last project, I will have to finish making some more roll lags and I will put it in its separate package because I think I have about 2 pounds left of fiber to spin. For that basket, I found a couple extra drop spindles that I will add because it speeds up the process by allowing me to spin a bunch of spindles, then ply them, then spin a bunch more.

My husband suggested I make a list and put them in a book and check them off as I go, and put all my unfinished projects in the book. The only problem with that suggestion is I have misplaced the book that I keep my unfinished project list in. Probably in another cleaning spree. So the conundrum is, do I spend time looking for the old book to keep everything in one place, or do I Start a new book. and say “say la vie“ to finding the old book? I think for the moment I will go with the most efficient way by starting a new book, and if I find the old book, I’ll put them in the old book, or maybe not. I haven’t decided yet.

Okay, in looking for my old unfinished project log, I managed to find another bag of spinning that will take at least a month to complete. So I officially give up, and I’m starting a new log. I will start with these 14 unfinished projects. and then I will go list all my other projects so I can start knocking them off my list. My guess is the completed project log will work for two weeks to a month. I’m hoping I’m wrong this time.

My immediate goal will be to log them. Bag them. Then put them in the appropriate basket. The picture below is what I found in my sewing room today. 

A Weighty Issue

 I finally realized just how out of touch my mom was with body types today. All it took was 3 friends walking by while we were waiting for our food to come to the table. They all had very different bone structure. They were all looked good in their bone structure and weight. A pound or two would have not made a difference in how they looked. My mother was always telling me that being overweight by a mere 2 pounds was a deadly sin.  I just would not look good in clothes. I would not be able to get a husband ( I got married to  y husband since so last century) it was the 1970’s when early marriage was still a thing. That just one or two pounds less was always better. Ten or 25 pounds less would have been ideal. I would like to say that a pound or two would not have changed the fact that my body was curvy more like Marilyn Monroe’s, than a thin wisp of a teenager. 

What my mother thought is that enough dieting would allow my body to literally change bone structure. and look as good as Twiggy did.. By the way, in my humble opinion, Twiggy looked much better after her modeling career ended when she added a few extra pounds, even then she was never that heavy. 

What my mother failed to understand is that bone structure is a genetic thing.  No amount of dieting will ever change a person’s bone structure. A pound or two will not change anyone’s bone structure.  Instead I opt for a lifestyle that relies more on fresh fruit,  vegetables and lean cuts of meat. (excluding the present moment in which my mouth is full of stitches due to dental issues brought on by Sjögren’s),  Food is just not that appealing when my mouth hurts and everything that I eat has to be mushed or blended to death.  The least amount of processed foods in my diet the better I feel.  The one exception I have changed is that I no longer eat whole grain bread and instead opt for locally baked sourdough bread. Without the extra preservatives that most grocery store bread contains. For some reason it is easier on my tummy.  I think it may have to do with the sourdough starter being fermented, that might take a research deep dive into bread.  

Anyway I have noticed a big uptick in body shaming.  I would like women in particular to ignore these less than kind people and just realize that these people are very broken if looks are the only thing that matters to them.  

Just remember that all print ads are altered for the models to look better, just ask your friendly neighborhood graphic artist.. a lot of tick tok is altered so much, it is just AI sloop.  

The best revenge for all of this is to eat a wide array of fresh foods. Exercise as much as you are able to do comfortably without overdoing it. Don’t hurt yourself. Start off slowly. Tell yourself every day that you are the best person you can be. That the people who are not nice are just broken and it is not your responsibility to fix them.  

The Apple Pencil Pro

When I got my new iPad after I wore out my last one, I had to upgrade to the Apple Pencil Pro. Generally, I have been very happy with the pencil pro. Except for last night. My Apple Pencil Pro stopped working entirely. So I googled what could be wrong. I went through pages of incorrect information. I was in my settings for over an hour trying to fix it with my settings.. Even as good as I am with my iPad, I could not figure out the instructions. One step instructions even said the pencil was not compatible with my new iPad, which I thought, gee, this is really odd, because it’s been working up until this point.

After about an hour, I stumbled upon a random page that it very simple. Unlike the previous Apple pencils, the Apple pencil pro has a screw on cap covering the point that you write with. Well, apparently even if you screw the cap on correctly, the cap can come loose. When the cap loosens by itself,  the pencil stops working. Now here’s the tricky part: you can’t screw the cap on too tightly or you’ll break the pencil. And you can’t have the cap on where it’s not tight enough or the pencil doesn’t work. So I have two pictures of the pencils below: one with the cap in the position where it wasn’t working. And one is how it should look. Now you all know I’m a fiber artist and I am not going to explain this in technical terms, but let’s just say a 16th of an inch here makes a huge difference. In whether your pencil will work or not. I hope this blog gets a lot of action because I’d like this blog post to be up near the top so people have a simple explanation on how to get their pencil working again. This way you won’t lose an hour of your life trying to figure out what you did wrong and why your pencils not working. Or the other thought, do I need to go to the Apple Store to have my new pencil fixed, the answer to that one is no. This gives you more time to do what you need to do or to play with your fiber or your other art medium. 

My personal wish is for the Apple Corporation redesign the pencil tip so it does not unscrew so easily. Perhaps giving the product to a mechanical engineer might yield a better design in which the pencil tip would be a little more stable and resilient.  

Please be aware that the Apple Pencil Pro is a registered trademark of the Apple Corporation. My husband bought my Apple Pencil Pro and Apple M4 iPad Air for me. This is my personal research into how to fix the Apple Pencil Pro without going through pages and pages of nonsense. By nonsense, I mean going into the settings, uninstalling and reinstalling the pencil. Going into the settings and to find and flip switches. I am receiving no compensation from the Apple company for this blog post. The content and opinions are entirely my own. 

I Am Really Trying to go Slow

 Today was a pretty laid back day. I took time to do self care and a short trip to the grocery store.  I only made one mistake at the grocery store. I purchased pre cooked dark meat turkey that looked very tender and smelled wonderful.  The on.y problem with the turkey is that it had enough salt to qualify as a salt lick for farm animals.  I stopped at five bites.  I figured that those 5 bites had over a week’s worth of salt for me.  There is absolutely no excuse to use that much salt in anything but brine.  

After my morning activity and lunch my body required a three hour nap.  I was honestly so tired that I don’t remember my head hitting the pillow.. my dear husband woke me up for dinner.  Unfortunately what I brought was not worth eating.  To compensate for not eating much dinner I had oatmeal and a banana before bed.  

I am trying to finish projects this week, so I pulled out a Tunisian crochet scarf made with fingering weight yarn.  I managed to crochet about four inches.  This scarf will be my television crocheting until it is finished.  Then I will work on the next item in that project bag until the bag is empty.  

It’s getting late so TTFN.  

A Change Up for Me

 Today I made a decision to put off more complex knitting or crochet projects until after my stitches are out.  This has not been an easy recovery for me.  I can also clear out a lot of UFO’s. This will result in the greater possibility of bringing more hats and scarves over to the Flowing Wells School District Clothing Bank before the holidays. 

I am keeping the patterns simple so the two scarfs in progress are going fairly quickly.  As soon as I finish the couch scarf, I am going to try to get a few more hats knit up.  Think of this as me being in slow production mode. More completed projects, however, not enough to hurt my hands. 

It has been a long day so TTFN.  

A Book Series Recommendation and more.

 We have had super crazy winds here in Tucson the last couple days. The winds were so bad last night that the whole house was rattling. I was afraid to go to sleep because the gusts were over 60 miles an hour. I’m not sure how much that has to do with climate change or if it’s an El Nino phenomenon. The air was so thick with dust yesterday that we could not see the mountains around our house. Some of those mountains were only 2 miles away. Forget about seeing anything in the valley. Now that the wind has stopped, it looks like rain clouds are coming in.

It’s a good day to stay inside to craft and clean. I am Almost finished reading book number 31 in the Bobbi Holmes series Haunting Danielle, mystery series. Bobbi Holmes is also know as Anna J McIntyer..  Since I am so far into the series of books, I would like to recommend this series of books. Truth be told, this is the series books I listen to while I’m knitting. or crocheting. Since I am feeling better being on the right medicine, I have been listening to the books faster again. I don’t know how many books are left of the series, but it’s one of those that, even if there were 100 books in the series, I would read every one of them. 

Now that I’m done with my 5 to 10 minutes of cleaning a day. It is time to kick off my shoes, put my feet up on my mushroom footstool, that doubles as warp storage for weaving supplies. Would you expect anything less from me? My current project for this particular knitting space involves what was once a 3 pound cone of cotton yarn. I am still making scarves from that 3 pound cone of yarn and I am at the beginning of the second year of working with the yarn. All the scarves are going to the Flowing Wells School district clothing bank.  I’m just using up different color yarns that go with the cone on yarn.  In the pattern that I want to do at the moment.  

TTFN