A whole (or not whole) new me :)

*whispers* Hello?

 

Well I certainly did not mean to be away for quite so long, gosh, 10 months to be exact.  Though I DO have two excuses…well reasons rather than excuses. The first is called Instagram. I am sure you are familiar with it. I became slightly swayed by the quick-fire instant nature of this wonderful social networking tool and I am afraid it tempted me away from my blog here on the interwebs. I have added a little Instagram feed on the right over there, so you can see what it is I have been doing all this time.  So if you're on there make sure you say hello! :)



From my feed - @snipsnaphappy :)

 

The second reason is much less fun and frivolous and all together more serious I am afraid. I shall adopt a Serious Face and give you the story of the last 5 months. This story will be more quite wordy without much mention of fun and craft-filled times I’m afraid. But once we are done with this update I can then move on and happier topics can once again prevail. This is not an easy tale to tell, and I am going to share some pictures I haven't showed anybody yet (don't worry, nothing gory.) Right. Ready? Here we go...

 

You may recall, maybe, that back in the early months of last year I had begun to get ill. I have had ulcerative colitis since I was 19 and it was slowly becoming less and less controllable using conventional medicines. I had tried every form of treatment available from steroids to chemotherapy and none of it was working. My hair was falling out, my face was rounded and moon-like from the steroids, I was exhausted, depressed and unable to cope with the smallest of dramas. Then my consultant threw into the mix that if something drastic wasn’t done soon I could be looking at a perforated bowel, or cancer. I didn’t like the sound of either of those you will not be surprised to hear : /

 

So drastic measures were indeed taken. When I say drastic I mean Drastic with a capital D.  On 29^th August last year I was admitted to hospital for a "total proctocolectomy and ileoanal pouch construction". In other words my entire large intestine was removed and my small bowel reconstructed in a complicated 6-hour-surgery. I then spent 9 days horrendously ill in hospital before practically crawling out to get home to my family. For two months I had an ileostomy but it was recessed and stomach acid burnt my skin constantly. It was the most difficult time I have ever experienced and for 4 weeks I could barely even walk, let alone look after my children. There were some days when I couldn’t even summon the energy to watch television, and I certainly couldn’t crochet.

 

My brand new stoma bag, given to me a few weeks before the op full of contents I couldn't coprehend.

The night before surgery, waiting in hospital to get hooked up to all the IVs etc.

The morning of the first operation, waiting to be wheeled down to theatre.  My face is all poofy due to the steroids.

3 hours post-surgery & out of it on large doses of morphine.  Hooked up to several monitors and tubes & a morphine pump.

 

On 24^th October I went back to hospital for a second surgery, this time it was to remove the ileostomy and re-attach my small intestine so that I could start using my new “j-pouch”. It’s complicated but essentially my small bowel has been reconstructed to take over the job of the large intestine. This time I was in for a week, it wasn’t easy but it was a lot easier than the first surgery. Once home I could then properly start to recover and get used to my new internal plumbing.

 

1 hour after the 2nd surgery and NO morphine this time! :)

 

That was almost 3 months ago now. It is still early days and I am still adjusting to the new way my body works. But I take no medications, I can eat most foods and I am NOT SICK. It’s all rather strange, and actually despite the whole thing at the time seeming agonisingly slow it was really all rather quick and I sometimes have to stop and take a breath when I think about all that has happened to me. Life has changed dramatically, but I think it has changed for the better.  So far so good.

 

That should of course be the end of the story, but it’s not. I had 7 months off work to cope with my illness then undergo the two surgeries and subsequent recoveries. I returned to work two and half weeks ago and on Tuesday last week I was told I would no longer have a job. My post is to be “deleted” and I am now in a 30 day consultation period before either redeployment or redundancy (I work for a charity and any redundancy will be statutory so this is not an opportunity to rake in a lovely big severance package believe me!)

 

So that about catches us up.  Sickness, surgery, sickness, surgery, miraculous recovery, new start, redundancy...the rest is yet to come and I have no idea what the future will hold. But I do know one thing - I have the energy, the strength and the emotional capacity to handle it. Oh, and there will be crochet :)

Home is where the heart is

Well they released me early for good behaviour. My intestines' good behaviour that is. IV steroids calmed things down, along with the cocktail of other drugs I am now on.  So I was well enough to come home and continue my treatment here, albeit with plenty of rest...yada yada.  I am not good at resting.

But my goodness it is good to be home.

This week has been a little life-altering.  I have had ulcerative colitis for a long time, I have taken various drugs and a lot of steroids for a long time.  I didn't expect to end up in hospital for a third time though and it has started me on a rollercoaster of thinking about the life I currently lead and the life I would prefer.  I am just so damn sick of being sick.  I am an angry coiled up ball of fury right now, liable to blow at any moment.

So completely ignoring all the instructions to rest, and the protests of hubby, I headed straight for the new Cath Kidston shop at Bluewater this morning.  My logic for this excursion was that I bloody well deserved a treat...and I just wanted to get out of the damn house and into the world for an hour, then I promised I would have a hot bath and go to bed.

The problem with feeling horribly sorry for yourself and being in a lovely shop full of gorgeously over-priced things is that you will end up spending money.  And spend money is what I did.  It felt pretty good.

I came back with a modest but tasty haul of goodies...

Lillia got the heart keyring that she fell in love with, and the sheep pencil because I fell in love with it.

I treated myself to a rather pricey new purse.  Pricey but so worth it, so preeeeeetty...

I will smile every time I go shopping now, even if I am buying drain cleaner.

I also got a new underbed storage bag. It sounds trivial but I already have one of these for the girls' bedding which I keep under Phoebe's cot and it looks so pretty I am almost pleased at my lack of other useful storage.  Who needs to hide things in a practical airing cupboard when you can have a gorgeous flowery storage bag on display, eh?

Because we were one of the first lot of customers I got a free reuseable bag too which was an unexpected bonus...

A successful little trip, finished off nicely with a croissant and a cup of tea before heading home.  I am now in bed with my new best friend...my new Fujitsu laptop :)  A working laptop, release from hospital, a body full of drugs and a haul of CK goodies all in 24 hours...I need a lie down.

I have lots to share with you of course.  Three days in hospital is a LOT of time with nothing but a bag of yarn to keep you occupied. But for now I shall leave you to drool jealously over my new goodies :)

A Crochet Colon

Yes you heard me.  A crochet colon.
Wanna see?

Ok then...

This work of art is not mine.  It is the handy work of talented crochet and knit designer Alicia Kachmar.
You may have heard of Alicia - she runs the Etsy shop Eternal Sunshine, she designs and makes some truly brilliant crochet critters, and she has written some books on crafting, the latest being the rather beautiful looking Microcrafts: Tiny Treasures to Make and Share.

I stumbled across Alicia's blog quite some time ago during one of my drooly trawls of crochet on the internet, I was happily gazing away at pictures of her crochet when there staring up at me was the unmistakable shape of an infected colon.  Instantly recognisable to me as I have seen so many pictures of my own innards beamed back at me on wobbly hospital screens, and so many diagrams and pictures presented to me in order to explain the pain and the debilitation of my illness.


You see, Alicia has ulcerative colitis.  In fact she is about to undergo the third and final surgery required to cure her of this illness.  Her writing on her experiences of this illness is incredibly detailed and poignant. I've re-read a lot of her blog the last week or so.

I have pushed away surgery since I was 19 years old, which means I have either been ill, on steroids, in hospital or on other strong drugs for 15 years.  Twice I have been in hospital in earshot of the sound of a surgeon's knife being sharpened, and twice I have recovered enough at the final hour to convince them to give me one last chance to beat this on my own, with all my organs intact.

The last couple of weeks I have begun to get sick...again.  I am back on steroids, a lot of them...again.  But this time around I just can't fight it anymore.  After 15 years I am literally getting to the point where I don't want this damn colon anymore, they can take it away, I won't miss it.  I have got myself a degree, succeeeded in all my jobs, got married, had two healthy children - all in the shadow of ulcerative colitis, all whilst in and out of hosptial wards, day units, blood testing units, assessment units, consultant appointments, GP visits....there has to be a life beyond this.

Tomorrow I am being admitted into hospital so I will be away from my blog for a while.  I will be in for about a week probably, being pumped through of IV steroids and various other hideous drugs to try and get everything under control.  Then I will have to make Big Decisions about the future and how this is all going to pan out.

So right now I am packing up my crochet bag and digging out some decent books, because it's going to be a long and difficult week.

See you soon.

Ali
x

Granny Square Therapy

There are days when nothing goes right. With full on ulcerative colitis, a daily barrel load of steroids and the endless of pressure of juggling work and home life I have had more than a few of Those Days recently.

On Thursday last week, after a bad nights sleep and hours of pain before I had even left the house for work, I found myself sat at my desk at 8am drained and exhausted.  I got the important work done, then jumped in my car and drove home in a daze to sit on my sofa and rest. 

Living with chronic illness is hard.  But this has never stopped me before, I've come through worse. Besides I'm treating myself with a new therapy - Granny Square Therapy...

I got home, I picked up a hook, found some Kentish alpaca yarn and just started making mini squares, loads of them.  I lost myself in the repetitive hooking and endless weaving in of ends. As they are so teeny, just two rounds in each, the are very satisfying to make; no sooner have you started than you have a little pile of finished squares.  I made 48 squares in all.

Then I crocheted them all together, added some edging and my favourite picot stitch and...

I now have a pair of soft, cosy hand warmers to get me through autumn and winter!

I crocheted together my mini granny squares leaving a small thumb gap, then I edged the thumb and top edge with a simple single stitch (I am talking in US terms here).

For the bottom edge I used my favourite picot edge stitch, pretty!

Of course no less than three days later the weather turned and instead of the lovely autumnal drizzly fresh weather we are SUPPOSED to be experiencing, we are now in the midst of a heatwave.  You have me to thank for that.  Just think what might have happened had I made an entire jumper.

All this talk of Crochet as Cure reminds me that I need to share with you the progress of the Big Happy blanket, I haven't forgotten of course :)

Right, best make the most of this blasted heat and get the next load of washing out.....

Ali
x

Horge - a crochet creature

Sometimes I come across a crochet pattern I just have to have.  My eyes go all starey, I get the look of a hunter about me, my debit card twitches in my purse... Horge was one of those patterns. 

The pattern is from Mr Fox's Toy Emporium on Etsy, a UK seller whose shop is stuffed (geddit?) full of wonderous, and sometimes scary, crochet creatures.

 

Horge is small so is incredibly quick to make - I made mine over the course of two evenings in front of the telly. I couldn't find the recommended 16mm eyes, so mine are 10mm (from Hobbycraft) but I think they work just as well (dare I say even better...)

 

If you too now have the starey eyed look of one desperate to make your own Horge you can buy the pattern here.

Thanks for those who left comments on the last post, at least now I know it is possible...even if I can't do it myself.  I am still trying to sort out my laptop problems, in the meantime I am stealing time on my mum's and...sssssh...at work (during breaks of course...ahem). 

Speaking of work, I am still slowly trying to find the balance between working four days a week, commuting, doing the school run, being a mum in general, crafting and blogging...as well as being rather unwell with this blasted ulcerative colitis.  Will there ever be a balance?  Probably not.  In the meantime I am finding lots of cheats to get through.  Today for example I took these pictures using my iPhone 4 on the window-sill at work...the light is pretty good at 7:30am. If you look closely you can see the London Gherkin building...

Horge is now off to live with his new owner, K, who writes over at Grillyfish.  K is my friend and co-worker (and talented children's book illustrator/writer) who is selfishly abandoning us in return for nothing more than a higher salary and a better job, pffft, some people...

:)

Ali

x

Monkey madness

Hello hello! And how are you enjoying all this delicious rain, hmm?  Just right for me, warm and rainy...perfect. 

Things here in the Snipsnaphappy household are Busy (note the capital B).  But fear not, I have still found the time to get some lovely things hooked up!  When I made this little fellow for Mr Snipsnaphappy's birthday earlier this year I knew that more would inevitably follow, the pattern is, after all, so simple and fun and I'm a simple kind of gal.

This time around I had a little help beside me as I hooked away, Phoebe is by my side chilling out with her fat little legs kicking away...

With her help I finally managed to finish the latest pair of monkeys, resplendent in girly pink this time...

These two girls are currently in a box (with airholes of course) on their way to their new owners, who I hope will love them.  I very nearly kept them, it was hard to let go!  If you are looking for a first arigurumi pattern this one really is worth a go, it's really easy to follow and good fun to do.  It was my first one and I really enjoyed it.

In non-making news I have been unbelieveably absorbed in daily family life.  Plus I have been into hopsital for my drug treatment to bring my ulcerative colitis under control.  I did take a picture of the IV line into my arm to share with you but then I had a moment of clarity and suddenly realised that it would be a bit..well..a bit eeew.  So far so good on that front, getting slowly better :)

And in making news I have more to share!  I am back on my Happy Hooker Backwards mission, oh yes!  I am very excited to share with you my next project as I actually had to modify the pattern so much I ended up writing my own!  My very own crochet pattern!  Tune in here tomorrow for more...

Hats

My step-mum is currently undergoing a very aggressive form of chemotherapy for an aggressive form of breast cancer.  As a result she is losing her hair and has taken to wearing hats.  I made her a lovely pink crochet hat which I then promptly forgot to take a photograph off before she headed off on a mini-break to Paris with it! 

But now I have a bit of a hat bug and Ravelry does nothing to curb the problem with all its lovely free patterns.

So first I used up the rest of the Wendy Serenity yarn I had left over from the Li'l Monkey blanket and made myself a lovely winter hat using this pattern....

My mum then tried it on and has requested one for herself, so I may have to attempt a trip into the Outside World today and get some more yarn.

I love this pattern, it is utterly fabulous, and it only took about two hours to make.

With all the hat making going on Lillia felt left out and requested a new hat for herself.  So last night I used this pattern that has been lurking in my Ravelry favourites for a wee while and ran up this cute little butterfly beanie...

The early morning frosty light and my inability to function much before 10am didn't help with the photos!

But trust me this hat looks super cool, and most importantly for out little lady - super pink!

It's been nice to pass the time with some leisurely crocheting.  I now 38 weeks pregnant, so due any day, and very uncomfortable indeed.  The baby seems to sit on every internal organ at the same time leaving me breathless and pretty miserable.  Although I remain at home for now my illness is still flaring up quite badly and draining me. Whinge whinge...  I could do with this baby arriving very soon!

£40 voucher winner!

Sorry sorry, I am so tardy in revealing the winner of the £40 voucher giveaway! 

I numbered the comments 1-14, then I used the good old random Random Number Generator and extracted a rather blurry snapshot of the result...

And lucky number 13 is...Claire of The Hookery!  Congratulations Claire!  I will forward your email to CSN who will email you your £40 voucher so you can get shopping!

Thanks so much everyone who commented and left me positive vibes - it seems to have worked as for now I still out of hopsital and actually seeing some improvement to the blasted condition that makes me so unwell!  Still no sign of baby, I will keep you all posted!

xx

£40 Voucher Giveaway!

The lovely people at CSN Stores have given me another chance to do a little giveaway for my lovely readers - I have a whopping £40 voucher to give away to the lucky winner! Not heard of CSN yet?  They're a UK based online supplier of..well..pretty much everything from wardrobes to wall-art, lamps to cookie cutters.  If you win you can use the voucher in any of their online stores and treat yourself (or someone else if you're feeling really generous) to something lovely in time for Christmas!

I wanted to do a little giveaway of this kind for purely selfish reasons - I need a little good karma to come my way.  I am having a Bad Week.  Considering it's only Monday night you can imagine how rough my day has been!  I am not well at all and could end up being admitted to hospital for the remaining 3 weeks of my pregnancy...I don't want this obviously so I need all the postive karma I can get!

In the absence of any of my own photos to accompany this post, and in honour of winter fast approaching, here are some lovely frosty things I picked out from CSN..stuff I would definitely be buying if I were lucky enough to have a £40 voucher...

Marvell's Ltd Winter Tree Scene Wall Art

KitchenCraft Star Shaped Cookie Cutters

Dar Lighting Gazetta Table Lamp

This giveaway is open to UK readers only I'm afraid as they only ship to the UK, sorry lovely US readers!  All you have to do is leave me a comment (and send a little luck and positive vibes my way of course).  Make sure you leave your email address please, if I can't get in touch with you I can't send you your online voucher!

You have until 7pm GMT this Friday (12th Nov) night to enter.  What are you waiting for?

Gloomy side...Bright side...and crochet...

Gloomy side...

Early mornings leaving at just gone 6am whilst my little family still snores.  Long drives stuck in traffic.  Popping pills that do no good.  Limping towards maternity leave slowly.

Steoids and me have a long thorny history but they are the only available option whilst I am pregnant (aside from homeopathy and yoga, which I am already doing).  I am not responsive to them, I have just taken too many over the years - pills, more pills, intravenous...any way they get them into me in large doses, in a constant battle to avoid the surgeon's knife.  They've brought me back from the brink a couple of times though, I have to give them that.

Bright side...

The darned pills might just work, given more time, so there's always that hope.  My last work day is next Friday then I am free of early starts, London traffic, work stress and bother.  Most importantly the pregnancy is going brilliantly well with no issues or complications despite my illness.

Aaaaaand, I am at the beginning of the next big crochet project!  Always a fabulous feeling.  Want to know what the Happy Hooker Backwards Project no.38 is?

The Colour Bay Blanket by Cat Mazza!  A nice big simple blanket, and this one is definitely for us grown-ups!  There are ten colours to choose for this blanket.  I am not using the colours suggested in the book as I want the blanket to match our bedroom, which is more muted browns and greens than rainbow brights.

Lots of fun to be had with this one!  Best get started....

"Ahhh, nature! It’s all over me, get it off!"

The title of this post has to of course be credited to the great Melman the Giraffe, from Madagascar.

It started well enough, a lovely red leaf on the side of our path, the first sign that autumn is well and truly in full swing...

But then it all went a bit wrong.

As I was emptying the washing up bowl the biggest spider I have ever seen fell out from between two plates.  It was dead and scrunched up in that creepy dead spider way.  It scared the heeby jeebies out of me!  I didn't know what to do with myself, so I just darted about the kitchen for two minutes going "eeeeeyyyyyeeeeeerrrrrrrgghhh"!!  Then I soaked some kitchen towel and dropped it on the beast, just in case it was playing dead and waiting to strike once I had been lulled into a false sense of security.

So now I have a load of washing up that I can't do until hubby gets home and removes the creepy corpse from the sink.  *shudder*

After that brush with nature I headed out to pick up a prescription.  I stopped on the path to take a picture of some lovely autumnal looking berries to share with you.  Just as I was snapping a gigantic beetle buzzed out from behind a neighbouring bush and flew at my head.  Hence the displaced focus of the photo...

THEN as I got in the car I was met with a squatter setting up home in my wing-mirror....

I let him be.  No spider I meet from now on will ever scare me in the same way the tarantula in the sink did.

Nature is also against me in other ways.  I have been taking my homeopathic remedies for two weeks now and although I am seeing subtle improvements its not enough to get me fully back to the real world.  So today I had to consider something a little less natural...

This is just a third of my stash of steroids for an eight-week course should I choose to take them.  For now they are sitting on the shelf taunting me, we could make you better, we could do nothing at all, either way we definitely make you fat...

Decisions decisions.

Every cloud...

Ok so I may be unwell and in a slight limbo while I decide which route to take to, hopefully, better health...but being stuck at home with a few child-free hours a day has its advantages.

Like having the time to make some of my favourite lemon cookies...

And of course having the time to eat them :)

I've also had a bit of sofa time to complete my "background" crochet project, the one I keep for when I'm between "proper" projects, like now whilst I am waiting for a stock of yarn to come in to finish my Li'l Monkey blanket.

This bag came about for two reasons - firstly as I needed a yarn bag, and secondly because I need to use up my stash of acrylic wool to free up space before the baby arrives.

This was made up as I went along - a continuous round of double crochet, handles worked in single crochet (I'm talking US terms here) and then edged with some bobbly picot edging.

I'm rather pleased with the edging as I had to apply a little of my crochet experience to figure out the best way to space it out and how to do this.    It's the perfect size for all my yarn...

Now I just need to work out what my next project should be!  Better head off to Ravelry for more baby hat patterns I think :)