A tad annoying.....

...but absolutely typical for me 😒  We had some dry and sunny days last week when I could have got out into the garden.  Unfortunately for yours truly, though, I somehow managed to hurt my neck.....just by sleeping, it seems 😏  I woke up last Monday with a bit of an ache in my right collarbone, which by the next day had transformed into a very painful neck!  A regime of Nurofen, paracetamol, Deep Heat, heating pads, plus trying not to move my neck and shoulders too much (easier said than done, as I'm sure you can imagine 😳) over the next few days meant that the pain gradually subsided.  It does feel very much better than before, thankfully, albeit still a little bit "twingy".  I've therefore erred on the side of caution for a change, and not ventured out to do any work in the garden just yet. 

I wasn't totally idle, though, as I managed to get the scrap blanket finished that I mentioned previously.  Granted, it's not the prettiest blanket in the world but by 'eck it's warm and cosy 😊  I used two strands of yarn, and it's mostly Stylecraft Special double knit.  There were also some odds and ends of other yarns, such as Scheepjes double knit and some Aran-weight which I think was Cascade.  I tried using the latter by itself but it didn't seem quite thick enough, so I added a strand of a very lightweight yarn that I had in the stash ~ possibly a laceweight ~ which seemed to create a similar thickness to the two strands of double knit.  I also had some boucle-type yarn, which I was able to use by itself.  I can't say that I enjoy crocheting with this type of yarn as it's not always easy to see where the hook needs to go!

I finished off with three rounds of half-trebles (US half double-crochet) to make a border ~ and to use up a little more of the yarn, of course 😄  

I ended up going from this.....

to this, so I'm pretty pleased to have whittled down the oddments so well.  I shall just keep these to one side and add other odds and ends as they come along until I've got enough to make another scrap blanket 😄

I also finally got round to putting all the bits and pieces into the bathroom basin cabinet.  I told you that I had bought a couple of narrow wooden crates from Etsy, and they now have all the cleaning materials neatly stored in them on the left-hand side of the cabinet.  That's more or less what was stored in our old cabinet, apart from what was in the very small drawer, along with a few things that were kept in the cupboard in our little utility area. 

 Everything else is now neatly stored in the right-hand side of the cabinet, along with the remaining "bathroom" stuff from the cupboard in the utility area.  The bits and pieces on the top shelf are easily accessible, but I've put the things on the lower shelf in a basket to make them easier to access.  The only bathroom things left in the utility cupboard are the towels, as there just isn't enough space in the cabinet for them.  It means, though, that I now have more space for all the spare laundry liquids, etc, that were being stored in the cupboard in the kitchen lobby area.  All in all, I'm pretty pleased with all the rearranging that I've managed to get done 😊

I'm now busy working on Special Project One which I will be able to share with you at a later date.....if you get my drift 😜  I was going to get cracking on the dolls house but have decided to leave it now until the New Year.  I do have some other little projects that I'd like to do, though, which I'll be able to share as I work on them.

The next job, now that my neck is feeling less painful, is not craft-related at all so watch this space for this year's Larkin Christmas Pudding 😍

Slow progress...

...but progress nevertheless 😊  Beverly came over on Saturday and we of course put her to work, despite the photo above seemingly showing her just taking life easy 😄 

I'm afraid that once again not only am I somewhat behind with my garden posts, I've also been a tad remiss with taking photos of our progress ~ oh well, I'm sure you are used to that by now 😉

In my last garden post, we had got the old strawberry bed moved into its new position and the stone chippings paths started.  Since then we've filled what is now the new pond bed with soil and Beverly helped us to get the pond in position.  Unsurprisingly it wasn't easy to get level, despite setting it on a good layer of sand, as I'm sure you can tell!  In the end we decided that it was just going to have to be "good enough"  Hopefully when it's got the aquatic plants in it (which should be arriving by the end of next week) and the plants around the edge have filled out it won't be quite as noticeable 😏

I somehow managed to bruise my right thumb at some point.  I really don't recall doing anything dramatic and can only think that perhaps it was when I was digging out the chunky wooden log that the windchime hook is set into, as it was harder to get out that I was expecting!

I finished planting around the pond, "shopping" from elsewhere in the garden.  I also hunted around in the wilderness on the other side of the garden to find the little frog house that I'd put there a few years back.  It had a fair few snails inside and I don't think any of the frogs that visit/live in our garden have ever used it to be honest, but it looks quite cute set out beside the pond 😊

Adrian filled the second bed with soil from the other two old kitchen garden beds on this side.  There wasn't quite enough of the "good" soil to completely fill it up, so I moved the three rhubarb plants into very large pots so we could start to empty the bed they were in.  The rhubarb will be found permanent positions in the back garden in due course.

You may recall that way back-in-the-mists-of-time we had a soil mountain that had to be sifted to get out all the pieces of rubble that was mixed in with it.  We did make use of some of that rubbly soil though as a base layer in all the old kitchen garden beds, except for the ones where we relocated the strawberries and the rhubarb bed (pictured above), as an added layer of drainage.  We've used some of the rubbly soil in the base of the second new bed but what is left will simply be spread over the ground to level the areas out. 

It's not a very good photo, I know, but I thought you'd like to see the flower on my pink ornamental dandelion (taraxacum pseudoroseum) ~ it's very pretty and I'm hoping that the white one I have in the same tub will flower this year, too 😊

Very pleased...

and a little amazed, to be honest!

I haven't posted about my weight loss journey since back in February but I've still been plodding along.  I've had plenty of weeks where my weight has just stayed the same, along with small losses of 1lb at-a-time, but since my last post I'm now down a total of 29lbs 😊

I realise that "slow and steady wins the race" is a good adage when it comes to trying to shed excess weight and I've definitely been taking that road!  However, I'm also very much aware that my losses would be much more consistent if I were actually following the Slimming World plan as it's meant to be rather than my somewhat lackadaisical approach 😏  My aim going forward is to knuckle down, as it were, and properly get on board with the plan.  Whilst I am, of course, thrilled with my total loss so far I'm also well aware that with having such a lot of excess weight still to shift, dilly-dallying around with the plan won't be so helpful in the long term.

The next step, therefore, is to take time to actually get my meals properly organised and planned out, as per the Slimming World plan.  That way, hopefully I'll be seeing you in the not-too-distant future with news of further weight loss 😊

 

A sharp intake of breath...

I swear I could almost feel our credit card "wince" when Adrian paid the bill at the opticians on Tuesday ~ a little over £1,000 in total for our four new pairs of glasses 😲  To be fair the bulk of that was for my new specs, which are always expensive with the lenses that I have 😏

Neither of our prescriptions had changed very much at all, so in theory we could have just carried on with the specs that we already had.  However, I have two pairs so that I can alternate between them (I wear glasses all the time) and one pair had a scratch right across the middle of one of the lenses so I thought I might just as well have the new prescription put in them.  Rather than just replacing the lenses in my other old pair, I decided to have a new frame as well which in the scheme of things really wasn't the expensive part!  Adrian, likewise, had had his old glasses for a number of years and they were looking a tad battered hence his two new pairs.

We had our eye examination a couple of weeks ago and whilst Adrian's was generally okay, mine threw up a couple of things *sigh*  My eyes in general are healthy enough but the optomotrist told me that I have a freckle on the iris of my right eye.  I can't really recall a time when I didn't have that little speck there, to be honest, but wasn't aware that it was actually a freckle.  She said that she sees them regularly and they are pretty common, just like having freckles anywhere ~ I certainly have them elsewhere about my person!  She told me that it was certainly there on my last eye examination a couple of years ago, but their more up-to-date equipment has shown it in much clearer detail.  Because it has now been shown to be a freckle she wants to monitor it for a while to ensure that it doesn't change, in much the same way that one would keep an eye on freckles or moles anywhere on one's body.

Slightly more worrying is another issue that the examination showed up ~ I am apparently in the very early stages of developing cataracts.  To be honest I haven't noticed any difference to my vision and the optomotrist said that it will most likely be a number of years before I do.  So fingers crossed that I won't need cataract surgery for some time to come 🤞

I had my 65th birthday last Saturday ~ the joys of getting older, eh 😒   

Still weeing for Britain...

 ...albeit slightly less than in my last weight-loss journey post 😉

Having lost a further 8lbs since my last post ~ 15lbs in total so far ~ I am now a quarter of the way towards my first target, which I am very happy about as I'm sure you can imagine!  Ultimately I have a huge amount of weight to lose, but breaking that down into interim goals does make it a little easier.  It's less overwhelming aiming for smaller goals than to be constantly thinking about the "big picture", in other words just taking baby steps along the journey 😊

Obviously I don't look any different at the moment, but I have noticed some changes within myself.  I'm feeling less bloated, and my feet, ankles and calves are very much less swollen than they were.  I guess I've been retaining a lot of fluid.....which would, of course, explain all the weeing since altering my eating habits😏  I think I'm due for  another of my regular appointments with the Nurse Practitioner at my GP surgery soon, and it will be interesting to see if this is having any effect on my high blood pressure.

Whilst, as I say, I don't look any different my clothes are already feeling a little looser, which I'm pretty sure is because of being less bloated.  My jeans and dresses are suddenly a tad longer than they were ~ a slightly less swollen stomach to hold them higher, I presume 😄

It's been a very good start, I think, but I'm well aware that the weight loss will slow down ~ I just have to keep taking those little steps one-at-a-time.  I'll be back with another update when the next 7lbs has gone. 

Weeing for Britain!

Is that Too Much Information, my lovelies???  Oh well, you should know by now that I try not to shy away from the less salubrious aspects of my life 😄

In my last "weight-loss journey" post I mentioned that I would share with you how things were progressing, although I had already privately decided that I wouldn't be posting about said journey every week.  Instead, I'm going to post when I reach certain milestones along the way ~ I'm pretty sure you don't want a blow-by-blow account of my weekly weigh-in 😉  I have personal goals to aim for that I will post about as I (hopefully!) reach them, as well as letting you know each time I lose 7lbs.  So I guess now is as good a time as any to let you know that I have in fact lost 8lbs!

Although I have rejoined Slimming World as an online member, I haven't actually started following their weight-loss plan yet.  Since the New Year I have been making slight alterations to my eating habits, though, whilst using up the things I had in the freezer that had a higher fat content than I want to consume going forward.  The main change has been in the amount of bread that I've been eating ~ note that I say "bread", not "grains" 😉

We already have porridge three times a week and I  add a good handful of frozen cherries to mine, plus a level desert-spoon of lemon curd.  Previously the other mornings would be a couple of slices of toast topped with butter, one slice with marmalade and the other usually with Marmite.  Then lunchtime would usually be something-on-toast, a sandwich or other bread product.  I've now made a conscious decision to only have "bread" once a day, plus I'm no longer buying the goat butter that I used to have.  On the non-porridge days I'm instead now having a couple of Weetabix, topped with milk and a good dollop of my favourite yoghurt ~ FAGE Total 0% yogurt.  If I do decide to have toast for breakfast, I now have one slice just with marmalade and the other with a thin smear of the spreadable butter that Adrian likes to make it easier to then spread some Marmite over.

I am still having bread at lunchtime on the porridge/Weetabix days if I fancy it, but I spread over a thin layer of Hellman's Light Mayonnaise instead of using butter.  If I could trust myself to only spread a thin scraping of my beloved goat butter I would still be using it, but alas I know myself well enough to realise that that's not going to happen 😏  On the days that I have had toast for breakfast, though, I don't have bread at lunchtime.  Instead I will have stir-fry vegetables with, say, tuna, or perhaps a cheese omelette.  We really like Cathedral City cheese and have recently changed over to their lighter mature cheddar ~ we like it just as much as the full-fat version.  Some days I will have a really big bowl of soup, but now omit the bread that I would previously have had to accompany it!  I've also rediscovered a taste for celery and often have a couple of sticks with whatever lunch I'm having ~ it's satisfyingly crunchy, and much better for my health than a packet of crisps 😉  Actually, to be fair to myself, I cut waaaay back on my crisp consumption some months ago because of the high blood-pressure and pre-diabetes issues.  I'm also eating more fruit and a good deal less chocolate than before.

All of which, I suspect, is what has lead to the marked increase in weeing that I am currently experiencing.  I'm sure that once I get more into the swing of the Slimming World plan, everything will start to calm down a tad!

So watch this space for news of the next half stone loss which, fingers crossed, won't be too far off 😊  

 

Downsizing.....

.....myself, not my craft room this time 😏 

I had to think long and hard about whether or not to talk about this publicly as it's a journey that I've attempted to make so many times over the last 50 years or so.  To be honest, I couldn't even begin to tell you how many times I've started a new weight-loss regime, none of which (obviously!) have lasted longer than a few weeks at most and with any weight I managed to lose rapidly piling back on again.  Actually, that's not entirely accurate in that I successfully lost about five stone back in around 2002.  However I got totally knocked off track and put all that weight back on again, plus a whole load more *sigh*

My health, though, over the past few years has not been good, with 2025 in particular seemingly being just one bloody thing after another 😒  It's become very apparent to me that each time I have a new health hiccup I'm just not "bouncing back", as it were, in quite the same way that I would have done when I was younger.  Now, I do realise that some of being rather less resilient than I might once have been will probably be down to getting older, but I'm also very aware that being so overweight really isn't helping my health situation in the slightest.

It's a bit sad, really, that I've allowed myself to just get bigger and bigger over these last 50-odd years, and I've often wondered if I would be as big as I am if I'd never actually tried to lose weight when I was young.  The photo above was taken in about 1983 (I was 22 years old) and at the time I thought that I was hugely overweight, even though I patently wasn't.  I was about 12 stone (168 pounds), which I realise would have put me in the overweight BMI category for my then height of 5'6" (I've since lost over an inch in height as I've got older 😳), but I certainly wasn't as big as I had convinced myself I was.  However, each time I attempted to get slimmer I just didn't seem able to stick with it and ended up being bigger than before.

Since I was a teenager I had compared myself unfavourably with my school friends, most of whom did indeed weigh less than me.  However, what had also never dawned on me was that I was also a fair bit taller than most of my friends, in fact during my early senior school years in particular I was taller than a lot of the boys in my year group too!  I think what cemented this feeling of being huge compared to the others was a maths lesson we had in our first year at senior school.  It was teaching us about averages, and the teacher in his wisdom decided that the ideal way to do this was by weighing every child in the class and dividing the total amount by the number of pupils.  Of course we all then knew how much each of us weighed and I was quite mortified to discover that at 8st 12lbs I was the second heaviest girl in the class!  Even now, over 50 years later, that "lesson" has stayed in my mind!

And I can also see that it didn't help growing up with a mother who was somewhat obsessed with being overweight herself.  I don't think I can really remember a time when Mum wasn't trying to lose weight on some diet plan or another.  But conversely she was also very much a "comfort-eater", a habit that I picked up too.  She was bigger than she perhaps should have been but again, like myself, she really wasn't as huge as she imagined herself to be.  Looking back I think that she was rather hung up on the fact that she was so much slimmer when she was first married, forgetting that she had three pregnancies over the course of five years and wasn't very well for the first two ~ I'm the eldest, with the child between myself and my sister sadly being stillborn ~ which I think triggered depression which she tried to damp down with comfort-eating.  There seem to have been a fair amount of overweight women on my Mum's side of the family, and whilst it would be sort of comforting to think that perhaps it's genetics, I rather suspect it's more of a learned behaviour and lifestyle issue!

So the upshot of this rather long post is just to say that 2026 has got to see me seriously tackling my weight issues.  I shall be 65 years old next June and I know that if I don't get to grips with this as a matter of some urgency, it really may become too late to change things.  The run-up to Christmas, though, is definitely not a good time to start a weight-loss campaign but what I can do over the next few weeks is carefully plan out what direction I should move in.  That way, once Christmas and the New Year are both out of the way, I will be ready to start the journey with no excuses 😉  I'm not sure if I will be brave enough to share with you my actual weight, certainly not to start with anyway, but I will share how things are progressing.  I'm hoping that there will be plenty of "ups" to tell you about, but I will be honest about the not-so-good times too 😊

Not a lot going on...

...mostly just crochet, to be honest 😏

I came down with a cold a couple of weeks back, and didn't start to really feel better until this last weekend.  It seems to have been just one "health" thing after another this year, although I shouldn't really complain about getting a cold I suppose.  I haven't had much energy so have kept myself occupied with crochet and reading!  

I've made good progress with Beverly's sweater, though, despite feeling sorry for myself 😉  I confess that I've been putting off sewing all the pieces together, but I really must get on with it.  Because of her shift patterns and no public transport on Christmas/Boxing Day, we won't be spending Christmas Day with her.  Instead we are having Christmas dinner early, on the 20th, which will be a combination of both Christmas and Adrian's birthday which is on the 18th December.  I'd really like to have the sweater finished by the 20th, so I really must stop procrastinating!

I also managed to surprise myself by getting Beverly's annual "Christmas-Every-Day" packages wrapped and numbered in very good time!  I didn't feel well enough to take the little packages over to hang them up this year, so instead I put them all in a very large Christmassy bag for her to take one out each day which Adrian delivered when he went over to Kirkwall last week.

 

I know it's a tad naughty but I've started another project, which has sidetracked me from the sweater 😄 I'm still trying to use up more of the leftovers stash, so pulled out an assortment of the colours that I have the most of to make a patchwork blanket.  It's a Dottie Angel pattern, her "ordinarily extraordinary blanket", which I have made before.  It's a simple pattern and grows satisfyingly quickly.  My squares are 23 stitches wide by 14 rows high which isn't as large as those in the original pattern, but I like the way these smaller squares look so "patchworky" ~ very satisfying 😊

In other news we've had our first proper snow of the season, which gave me the ideal excuse to continue hibernating 😏  Thankfully it didn't hang around too long but I expect we shall see more before next spring.

We've also been lighting our log-burner in the evenings.  It's so lovely, very cosy, and nice not to have to sit bundled up in thick cardigans/sweaters!  We were very thankful for having this extra source of heat last week when we had a power cut one evening.  It didn't last more than a couple of hours but it's amazing just how quickly the house cools down once the heating goes off 😳

 

Stupid o'clock...

from Clipart Library

I've been awake since before 5am this morning, so by 5.35am I admitted defeat and got up 😒  Sadly for me I am much more of a night owl than an early riser, so methinks I may need a little nap this afternoon 😴  At least I've got the Christmas puddings steaming earlier that I would otherwise have done, I guess!

Probably what has contributed to my interrupted snoozing is that my toe is yet again painful with another flare-up of gout, albeit (like previously) not as severe as that very first attack.  Luckily (?) for me, after a follow-up appointment with my GP to discuss the blood tests I had a couple of weeks back, I have just started another course of Colchicine.  She is a new-to-the-practice GP and is young (to my aged eyes, anyway LOL), keen, and very thorough!  She went through all the "numbers" associated with the blood tests, which quite frankly I cannot now remember in detail, the upshot of which is some good news and some not-so-good news.

On the plus side I am not anaemic, don't have any infections, and have now just dropped back out of the prediabetes zone.  She was happy with my last blood pressure reading ~ 136/80 ~ and that my "chronic kidney disease" is maintaining a level that is satisfactory.  Now this was the very first time that my kidney issues have been referred to as CKD and it came as a little bit of a shock to hear those words to be honest.  However she said that it is often associated with getting older and simply needs to be monitored, and to continue with the medications I am taking to help with the high blood pressure.  With regards to the latter, whilst I am to continue with the Ramipril, she has taken me off Indapamide and prescribed Dapagliflozin instead.

Not so good are the uric acid levels, which are very high.  To treat this my GP has prescribed a lower dose of Colchicine which I am to take for 28 days to "zap" the uric acid, for want of better terminology!  She has also prescribed Febuxostat, which I think I will be taking long-term providing I don't get any unpleasant side-effects.  It's very much a juggling game with medications, isn't it?  What's good for one problem doesn't always play nicely with meds for other conditions, and she had to double-check a number of the options that are available.

Which just leaves the issue of my leaky left leg 😲 Perhaps I should explain 😉

I woke up the Saturday-before-last to a damp patch in the bed ~ nope I hadn't peed myself, it was much further down the bed and my left leg was decidedly wet.  As you can imagine, this was pretty unnerving especially as it continued to leak for much of the day.  However I looked up the symptoms and whilst it obviously wasn't ideal, I didn't feel that I needed to seek urgent treatment.  I put a dressing on the area where it seemed to be leaking from but this was soon soaked through.  I had a brainwave, though, and bandaged a bladder leak pad to said leg which soaked up the leakage very impressively!  At the risk of TMI, whilst I don't actually have a big issue with a weak bladder, at my age I'd rather be safe than sorry and usually slap on a pad when I go out 😏  Thankfully the leaking petered out as the day wore on and it went on my list of things to raise with the GP when I saw her last week.

I did notice that a small area of skin had broken on my lower leg; quite possibly I'd unthinkingly scratched it when my leg was feeling particularly itchy, as I've had Lichen planus for a number of years.  I duly showed my legs to my GP and explained about the leaky left leg.  She has prescribed a different, milder, steroid cream (Eumovate) to the one I've been using since I was first diagnosed (Dermovate), which is a very much more potent one.  I am to use the new cream once a day for two weeks to treat the flare-up of itchiness, then gradually wean it off to occasional use.  I also regularly use a very good emollient cream, Epaderm, which helps with the dry skin on my legs.

So there we are, my lovelies, even more tales of health woes ~ basically I'm just falling to pieces 😏  I have to go back for another round of blood tests in a couple of weeks, and hopefully things will start to look a tad brighter soon! 

You s