Can you tell I'm looking forward to summer?
Thursday, 23 February 2012
Get the deckchairs out!
Can you tell I'm looking forward to summer?
Friday, 17 February 2012
Get knotted!
Quietude on the blog front. I am resting my wrist, I have a new brace which means everything I do using my right hand takes longer. Since my last blogging event, I have had more GP visits and one to a specialist physio.
I have a mild case of De Quervains Tenosynovitis, one of the two tendons in the thumb of my right hand is inflamed, this new brace immobilises the thumb. I've been recommended by the physio to have a cortisone injection directly into the wrist but my GP feels that may be a little premature.
Having been put off by reading about the side effects of steroid injections on-line, I'm in no hurry to have one of these. I'm not much worried by the milder ones such as temporary sweats, insomnia, flushing or discolouration of the injection site but long term tendon weakness, more pain than I'm in now and tendon rupture all sound too scary for me to contemplate considering at the moment it's no more than nuisance value pain most of the time apart from first thing in the morning when it can be quite bad.
Having been put off by reading about the side effects of steroid injections on-line, I'm in no hurry to have one of these. I'm not much worried by the milder ones such as temporary sweats, insomnia, flushing or discolouration of the injection site but long term tendon weakness, more pain than I'm in now and tendon rupture all sound too scary for me to contemplate considering at the moment it's no more than nuisance value pain most of the time apart from first thing in the morning when it can be quite bad.
Apparently it's a self-limiting complaint which will eventually (12-18 months) get better of it's own accord with minimal treatment. I have an agreement with my GP that I will go and see him again in 2-3 weeks, in the meantime, we're trying wearing the new brace recommended by the specialist and taking maximum dose of anti-inflammatory tablets.
I had a half hour therapy session involving ultrasound and then cold laser treatment. If I were David Beckham or Andy Murray and had to get the tendon working again properly in superfast time, we'd be doing that 3 times a day but in the slower, much poorer lane, I think I'll just wait a bit ... £52 for half an hour is a bit beyond an artisan craft worker's means! :-)
I had a half hour therapy session involving ultrasound and then cold laser treatment. If I were David Beckham or Andy Murray and had to get the tendon working again properly in superfast time, we'd be doing that 3 times a day but in the slower, much poorer lane, I think I'll just wait a bit ... £52 for half an hour is a bit beyond an artisan craft worker's means! :-)
Typing is a bit tricky (but not painful), in fact that's pretty much true of everything involving my hand at the moment. As part of the resting therapy, I've not done any knitting or crochet for a month, I'm still working but as I said before, everything takes longer, good job it's a quiet time of year, I am avoiding memory wire and only done a teeny bit of hammering.
I've been looking for new things to do with jewellery whilst I get my wrist better and I downloaded a tutorial on making "love knots beads" from metal wire. I've been practicing making these in copper and here are some examples which I'll have on sale at my stall on All Saints Art & Craft Market in Cambridge tomorrow.
I've also made some sterling silver ones which I've also combined with lampwork beads but you'll have to come along to the stall tomorrow to see these, the forecast is for rain in the afternoon so it'll be best if you all pop along in the morning!
Whether you can come to Cambridge or not tomorrow, have a great weekend!
Whether you can come to Cambridge or not tomorrow, have a great weekend!
Friday, 13 January 2012
More spankle colours and patination experiments
I'd usually be working on new jewellery designs at this time of year and I have got ideas in my head but I've got a poorly hand at the moment, seeing the doctor about it this afternoon. It's been very sore in the mornings since just before Christmas. I think I overdid it on bending memory wire (it's very tough material). I thought I'd just pulled a muscle and with the Christmas break (and not doing much), I expected it would get better by itself but it hasn't. Beadmaking doesn't hurt too much for most of the beads I'm making but any hammering or filing is difficult; basically anything that involves rotating the hand is painful. I'm not having a moan about it (it's my own stupid fault for making 16 memory wire bracelets in one day ...) I just wanted to explain why there's no new jewellery designs so I'm not just writing this for sympathy (but any going spare would be gratefully received!) :-)
In the meantime, I'm experimenting with organic means of patinating silver that doesn't involve liver of sulphur or platinol. I don't like working with chemicals if I can avoid it, both of the chemicals mentioned are smelly and messy. To avoid doing the patination myself, I have been buying pre-patinated items and wire from Daisychain Extra, an excellent Etsy shop but one of my new year resolutions for Sooz Jewels is to make my own earwires and I can't expect someone else to patinate them. I am addicted to Jo's clasps, my customers adore them, so I'll definitely still be buying those!
So far I have run trials using uncooked and cooked egg yolks. The former doesn't work at all. The latter worked but the tutorial said it would only take 24 hours. My earwires and headpins needed 4 days imprisoning in a little plastic container with mashed up egg before it became dark enough (I'm after gun metal grey, something that looks vintage). After 4 days at room temperature, this was just as smelly and messy as the chemical means (but at least you don't need a Health & Safety sheet when you buy and cook eggs!) The patinated finish from the cooked egg method is also quuite uneven which is disappointing (I might do a photo when all my experiments are finished).
The instructions say to make sure the silver is very clean in order to get an even finish using the cooked egg method. I degreased the silver using alcohol, tumble polished with mild detergent, and then rinsed very thoroughly, only handled the silver using plastic tweezers. If the silver needs more cleaning than this, then I don't think this is the system for me.
I have read that you can use old kitty-litter (the ammonia produced by the decaying cat's urine is the thing that colours the metal apparently). Anyway, I don't have a cat, both my sisters have two but they live well over half an hour's drive away. So I've used my own wee (is that shocking?!) This is just out of interests sake to see if my urine is effective. Please be assured that even though the silver isn't directly touching the urine (it's just in contact with the fumes), I have absolutely no plans on using urine-patinated silver in jewellery that I sell!
I also have some silver hanging up in the shower to see if that will do it. These latest two experiments have only been running for two days though so I'll report back on results as and when anything happens!
And so my thoughts turn to the weekend, it's very strange for me to have a Saturday where there's no Art & Craft market to go to. Normally I'm running around like a mad thing on Fridays! The market starts back at All Saints on the 28th so I'll have to think of something nice to do instead; I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Merry Christmas!
With this message, I send everyone my very bestest wishes for a peaceful and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to follow next week.
Monday, 19 December 2011
Science -v- spirituality; why can't we have both?
I'm fascinated by science. I dropped science subjects at school when I was 14 which I regret profoundly.
I have read a few science books in the (many) intervening years. But as we all know, a little knowledge is dangerous and therefore I am always keen to gain more. I have enjoyed all of Prof Cox's previous TV science programmes and I therefore looked forward to A Night With the Stars last night. The trailer billed it as explaining how things can be in more than one place at once, I assumed he was going to talk about super positioning which I learnt a bit about when reading Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife during the summer.
But he didn't touch on that really. In reading the above book, it helped me to (VERY) broadly follow everything covered in the programme but that wasn't what disappointed me. I don't think there are enough television programmes about science so I'm not criticising the content, quantum mechanics is a gigantic subject to summarise in an hour! Even though I was already aware of the things he presented, I'm sure there will be many who will have enjoyed it and were enlightened by it.
What irritated me was the way Prof Cox dismissed things like spiritual healing as "wishy washy" and implied such things were only practiced by people with tattoos on their bums!
Having savoured both his Wonders series, I didn't realise he was a closed-minded reductionist. I felt quite stung by his ready dismissal of such things as I quite like him.
As I said above, I am very interested in science but I am interested in spiritual matters also - not necessarily in a religious context, until very recently I considered myself a died-in-the-wool-atheist-God-Delusion-zealot-who-will-never-ever-change. I'm also quite superstitious, which I realise is totally at odds with scientific thinking but then that's me, an individual.
I'm convinced that spiritual healing (I prefer the term energy healing actually but not many people have heard of it) can work, and that positive thinking can help with everything in your life but not as a total substitute for medical assistance or doing practical things to make what you want happen. I was so sorry to learn during a recent TV programme about his life that Steve Jobs delayed surgery on his cancer for 9 months whilst he tried to heal himself, I wish he could have tried both at the same time.
Just because we don't understand the physics or mechanics of how the mind can affect the body, doesn't mean it should be waved away with such certainty by people who haven't tried it or experienced benefits from it.
Last month, my husband caught a cold, one of those nuisance factor ones that are just annoying, your nose runs, you get bunged up, cough and just generally feel unwell but not enough to stop you working like flu does. Last time he had a cold was in early October so this latest one was only a matter of weeks after the last.
Last time, I tried visualising a bubble around my mouth and nose to stop me catching it. It didn't work, In over 30 years of marriage, I have caught every cold that my husband has ever brought home (and he mine). I've always previously seen catching each other's illnesses as an inevitability I can do little to prevent. However, I caught it a couple of days after he did, my symptoms were less severe and I got better before him. I am convinced that the visualisation helped me to have an improved experience of the illness than his.
The end of November was no time for me to catch a cold, it's the busiest time for my business, I could not allow myself to be slowed down in the slightest. I point blank refused to accept the idea that I was going catch this latest sniffle. I steadfastly would not entertain the idea that I was going to be ill.
I put some mechanical preventions in place, I ensured that I didn't share a towel with him, I cooked all our meals whilst he was in full coughing and sneezing mode and made him sleep facing away from me. I changed my visualisation technique, instead of the bubble, which you can't keep up at all times because you do have to think about other things during the course of the day, I decided thats'probably why it didn't work. This time, whenever I was near to him and he sneezed or coughed, I imagined a bottle cleaner going up and down my nose removing any viruses that had got lodged in there since last time I did it. When I was visualising, I could feel a slight tingle in my nose so I was sure it was doing something.
Result - NO cold, I didn't catch it. Geoff has been well for a couple of weeks and I got all my work done. It could be it was just sheer bloody-minded determination and singled-minded focus that helped me avoid it but this in iteself is a kind of visualisation.
My lack of a cold will probably be dismissed by peremptory scientists as a coincidence and that the mechanical measures I put in place were the way I stayed well. That might be so but I am not sure so I'm not dismissing it. I am convinced that without that visualisation, I would have got it the same way as I did all the others. Making sweeping statements saying that things like spiritual healing don't work without KNOWING whether they do is a bit like all those people who dismissed Darwin's work who now look like right berks. I do hope Prof Cox doesn't regret his repudiation at some point when we have more knowledge.
I'd like to remind him that Richard Woolley (a UK astronomer) said Space travel is utter bilge in 1956 (one year before Sputnik).
Cox himself used a Humphry Davy quotation during the programme: Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer. (Humphry Davy invented the first electric light).
Whilst I was watching Professor Brian Cox's programme (for some reason I thought it was live), I tried to visualise him sneezing and concentrated on it for around ten minutes ... I jumped when Geoff sneezed (I kid you not!) and I stopped.
So Brian, if you're reading this and you sneezed at around 9.30ish last night - my wishy washy brain made that happen! (And before you ask, I don't have any tattoos!)
I have read a few science books in the (many) intervening years. But as we all know, a little knowledge is dangerous and therefore I am always keen to gain more. I have enjoyed all of Prof Cox's previous TV science programmes and I therefore looked forward to A Night With the Stars last night. The trailer billed it as explaining how things can be in more than one place at once, I assumed he was going to talk about super positioning which I learnt a bit about when reading Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife during the summer.
But he didn't touch on that really. In reading the above book, it helped me to (VERY) broadly follow everything covered in the programme but that wasn't what disappointed me. I don't think there are enough television programmes about science so I'm not criticising the content, quantum mechanics is a gigantic subject to summarise in an hour! Even though I was already aware of the things he presented, I'm sure there will be many who will have enjoyed it and were enlightened by it.
What irritated me was the way Prof Cox dismissed things like spiritual healing as "wishy washy" and implied such things were only practiced by people with tattoos on their bums!
Having savoured both his Wonders series, I didn't realise he was a closed-minded reductionist. I felt quite stung by his ready dismissal of such things as I quite like him.
As I said above, I am very interested in science but I am interested in spiritual matters also - not necessarily in a religious context, until very recently I considered myself a died-in-the-wool-atheist-God-Delusion-zealot-who-will-never-ever-change. I'm also quite superstitious, which I realise is totally at odds with scientific thinking but then that's me, an individual.
I'm convinced that spiritual healing (I prefer the term energy healing actually but not many people have heard of it) can work, and that positive thinking can help with everything in your life but not as a total substitute for medical assistance or doing practical things to make what you want happen. I was so sorry to learn during a recent TV programme about his life that Steve Jobs delayed surgery on his cancer for 9 months whilst he tried to heal himself, I wish he could have tried both at the same time.
Just because we don't understand the physics or mechanics of how the mind can affect the body, doesn't mean it should be waved away with such certainty by people who haven't tried it or experienced benefits from it.
Last month, my husband caught a cold, one of those nuisance factor ones that are just annoying, your nose runs, you get bunged up, cough and just generally feel unwell but not enough to stop you working like flu does. Last time he had a cold was in early October so this latest one was only a matter of weeks after the last.
Last time, I tried visualising a bubble around my mouth and nose to stop me catching it. It didn't work, In over 30 years of marriage, I have caught every cold that my husband has ever brought home (and he mine). I've always previously seen catching each other's illnesses as an inevitability I can do little to prevent. However, I caught it a couple of days after he did, my symptoms were less severe and I got better before him. I am convinced that the visualisation helped me to have an improved experience of the illness than his.
The end of November was no time for me to catch a cold, it's the busiest time for my business, I could not allow myself to be slowed down in the slightest. I point blank refused to accept the idea that I was going catch this latest sniffle. I steadfastly would not entertain the idea that I was going to be ill.
I put some mechanical preventions in place, I ensured that I didn't share a towel with him, I cooked all our meals whilst he was in full coughing and sneezing mode and made him sleep facing away from me. I changed my visualisation technique, instead of the bubble, which you can't keep up at all times because you do have to think about other things during the course of the day, I decided thats'probably why it didn't work. This time, whenever I was near to him and he sneezed or coughed, I imagined a bottle cleaner going up and down my nose removing any viruses that had got lodged in there since last time I did it. When I was visualising, I could feel a slight tingle in my nose so I was sure it was doing something.
Result - NO cold, I didn't catch it. Geoff has been well for a couple of weeks and I got all my work done. It could be it was just sheer bloody-minded determination and singled-minded focus that helped me avoid it but this in iteself is a kind of visualisation.
My lack of a cold will probably be dismissed by peremptory scientists as a coincidence and that the mechanical measures I put in place were the way I stayed well. That might be so but I am not sure so I'm not dismissing it. I am convinced that without that visualisation, I would have got it the same way as I did all the others. Making sweeping statements saying that things like spiritual healing don't work without KNOWING whether they do is a bit like all those people who dismissed Darwin's work who now look like right berks. I do hope Prof Cox doesn't regret his repudiation at some point when we have more knowledge.
I'd like to remind him that Richard Woolley (a UK astronomer) said Space travel is utter bilge in 1956 (one year before Sputnik).
Cox himself used a Humphry Davy quotation during the programme: Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer. (Humphry Davy invented the first electric light).
Whilst I was watching Professor Brian Cox's programme (for some reason I thought it was live), I tried to visualise him sneezing and concentrated on it for around ten minutes ... I jumped when Geoff sneezed (I kid you not!) and I stopped.
So Brian, if you're reading this and you sneezed at around 9.30ish last night - my wishy washy brain made that happen! (And before you ask, I don't have any tattoos!)
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