Christmas Knitting

Sorry I fell of the face of the earth in December.  I am pretty sure, that if you are regular reader, you understand the craziness of the Christmas season for someone who has poor health.  I concentrated the whole of December on creating Christmas gifts.  I also went up to York to see my family and a consequence of this visit, was my inability to think straight for the next 3 weeks.  I didn't even manage to spend a weekend with my OH's family, which I was so sad about, but couldn't face sitting in a car for 3.5 hours on the day of travel.  In the end I was glad I didn't go, because that journey took my OH more like 4.5 hours which would have been hideous for me.

As a result of my painful Christmas and New Year I have decided that I need to see the doctors about tinkering with my pain medication again.  Whenever I have an increase in pain levels it always takes me time to adjust mentally and physically, which is why I disappeared.  I'm hoping that changes in medication (when it happens) will help me quickly and not leave me too spaced out.  In the meantime I will try and catch you up with the stuff I created for Christmas.

I made 5 gifts, 4 of which were for children. The non-child gift was a shawl for my sister-in-law that I made earlier in the year, so I'm only going to focus on the children in this post.  I used Cascade 220 Superwash for all of the children's gifts. It has become my "go to" yarn for children's knits because it is a nice bouncy yarn, that is machine washable, but is also wool so it is warm and breathable. It also comes in lots of colours and is reasonably priced. I get mine from Nutty Knitting Supplies.

Firstly I made a whale for my niece, who's favourite word seems to be FISH at the moment.  It was a crocheted whale made from a free pattern by Stacey Trock, who is my favourite amigurumi designer.  The pattern is M.Richard the Whale.

I used embroidery thread for the face and I am really happy with the way it turned out.  I used less than 50g for the whale, so I'm tempted to make another one for me ;-)

For nephew A, he needed more clothes as he keeps growing in spurts. He hates having anything pulled over his head and he suits nice rich brown colours, so I decided to give him another Beyond Puerperium, but in worsted weight and with long sleeves for the colder months.  Apparently it is a little big but I think that is much better than being too small, as he'll grow into it, and it means he can have layers underneath.

The button bands were knit simultaneously with the body of the garment, so I used intarsia to make the button band in a solid colour.

The buttons are made of plastic but they go really well with the cardigan.  I used embroidery thread to attach the buttons and I found a really good match in my old cross stitch thread collection.

I make a shaft by wrapping the thread around several times underneath the button, but above the knitted fabric.  This means that the button doesn't pull the cardigan out of shape.

For my other two nephews, O and K, they requested more monsters!  There was discussion about colours and types and there was several mentions of Mike Wazowski from Monsters University and I had to say that there weren't any patterns for Monsters University because of licensing issues.  THEN I discovered this blogpost.  A FREE Mike Wazowski pattern from Stacey Trock.  I was so pleased that I didn't have to disappoint the boys and got crocheting.  It took ages to make because there were lots of fiddly bits and, in fact, this quick snap was taken on the evening before it was wrapped to be delivered.  I cut very close to the wire.

I used a safety eye instead of felt for the pupil, because I think that gives more life to crocheted creatures.  I used black fleece for the mouth, because at the last minute I discovered I didn't have black felt (I'd already decided not to use it for the eye).  I decided not to put the teeth in, as I like this look better.  I'm really pleased with how he turned out and I was assured by my OH on his return from his family that K, loved his monster and wanted to make sure that my OH told me so.

O's monster was from Big Book of Knitted Monsters by Rebecca Danger and it was the Toothy Joe the Mailbox Monster pattern that I chose this time.  I decided to make my version toothless though.

He looks slightly sad from this angle, but from above he looks like he smiling (honest).  I love his long limbs too.

He is a perfect sitting monster, which I thought was more suitable for my eldest nephew.  Again the recipient made sure to tell my OH that he loved his monster and to tell me that.  They are both such polite boys as well as being great in all other ways too.  I am so sorry I missed seeing them at Christmas because they are getting quite mature now, and though I'm looking forward to getting to know who they become as teenagers and adults, it makes me sad that this might be the last time O admits to wanting a monster for Christmas.  He will, however, always be knit worthy as he has always loved my knitting and the knitted gifts he's received.

For O and K's younger brother who is a toddler, I got a long sleeved t-shirt in the same green as the knitted monster, with big scary monster eyes on it, so the boys all matched, gift wise.  I just didn't have it in me to do another crafted gift and he got a whole quilt last year.  I'm pretty sure he didn't mind ;-)

I hope you haven't fallen asleep with this massive catch up, and I hope that my next post won't be quite as long in coming, because that way I don't have as much to write ;-)

I hope you had a great end to 2013 and I look forward to spending 2014 with you.

Home Again

Just thought I'd do a quick post to let people know that I am home and ok after my surgery on Wednesday.  I had an overnight stay as they messed with my normal pain medication due to a slightly longer surgery than normal.  It meant I suffered a lot more on waking than I should have done and it took a good 12 hours to get my pain properly under control again.

I probably won't know if the surgery has improved things or not until the pain from the surgery dies down, so maybe a couple of weeks.

I'm just so happy to be home and have a good night's sleep under my belt, as my night in the hospital was punctuated by lots of people being properly ill.  It was the first time I had tried to sleep on this type of ward as I have either been lucky enough to be in a single occupancy room or on wards where people were like me and only had to stay a few days in hospital for small and planned procedures.

I feel much better now I've had a good meal (hospital food still isn't improved at all), a good night's sleep in my own bed and a lovely hot shower.  I am so grateful to have my new laptop as I can lounge on the sofa and get up to date with my favourite blogs, it makes feeling back to normal much easier.

Hopefully in the next week or so I'll be back to normal, but I do have a post scheduled on Monday, 8th October, so please come back and check that out.

A Bit of a Change

For the last few years I have had long hair.  I love my hair.  It is long and thick and is pretty healthy due to reasonably frequent trimmings.

However, the very things I love about it have made it increasingly difficult for me to maintain it.  I takes me over 20 minutes to shampoo, condition and rinse.  This is 20 minutes of holding my arms above my head.  This involves using my stomach muscles - this is very bad.  This means my adhesions get pulled all over the place which leaves me in pain and exhausted.  It has begun to feel, to me, that my vanity is really getting beyond a joke and it is time for a change.

So, I went to the hairdressers and explained my plight.  I wanted something that would get rid of most of the weight of my hair but didn't need masses of styling, if I was tired.  It also had to still look ok if I didn't make it to the hairdressers every other month.  This is the result:

I really like it.  What I like, even more, is that it didn't take very long to dry.  I like it just blow dried and I like it straightened, like this too.

This is going to be so much easier to look after and I think I like my new look, even if I didn't like the reason it was forced upon me!

More Shawl Progress

I am feeling a bit out of sorts at the moment.  I went to see both my consultant and my GP 2 weeks ago.  I've been put on the waiting list to have more surgery to remove my new adhesions.  I've been told the waiting list is "a few months" long by the consultant.  The letter confirming my place on the waiting list is equally vague, telling me that they will "contant me to nearer the time" to book a "mutually convenient time" for my surgery.  It appears that I am seeing the changes to NHS funding in effect.  I had the same surgery last April, with the same consultant and I only had to wait 6 weeks for my surgery.  I am not looking forward to this vague, open ended wait.

I went to the GP to increase my pain killers again, which he agreed to do and this is what has left me off kilter.  I'm a bit disconnected from everything, my body, my intellect and the rest of the world.  It is great from a pain management point of view, not so great from a crafting and blogging point of view!  I'm hoping that within the next couple of weeks I will start to feel a bit more myself again.  Until then, I'm carrying on with fairly simple projects.

The main culprit in my simple knitting is the Color Affection KAL.

I love this project.  It's soothing garter stitch stripes are perfect for a crafter with very little brain.  It is also perfect for the start of Wimbledon fortnight.

I did think about swapping the centre part of the shawl to the other side, but I left that decision too late.  The only way to swap the sides is to purl either the centre section OR the short rows.  The short rows take up the vast majority of the shawl, and I didn't want to purl that big section.  If I was to do this project again, which is looking increasingly likely, I would do the centre section in purl, and then the short row section could be done in knit.  This is the only way to avoid the stripes looking funky, as they would be RS on one part and WS on the other part of the shawl.

The twisting of the yarns as they are carried up the side gives a nice neat finish on the edge, but causes a knotty mess in my lap as the threads get all tangled.  The cat thinks it's a great game as I unravel the mess that the twisting creates.  Still, it's worth it for the neat edge.

I am still adoring the subtle variations in each of the yarns.  It really softens the striping.  I think the above photo shows the colour variations better than any other photo I've taken of this project, it is also the truest match to the colours of the yarns in real life.

I'm now getting quite close to the end of the short rows and then it is on to the border.  I might get this shawl finished this week, you never can tell.  Mind you, even if I don't, I have a finished object to share on Friday!

The Name Has Been Changed.........

...(not) to protect the innocent, but rather to reflect that I am moving in a new direction.  The CraftyCripple has had her surgery and is now Stitched Together!  If you visit the blog rather than reading your posts in a feed reader you will have noticed the new header and possibly the new web address.  You will now find me at www.stitchedtogether.co.uk.  Yes, I splashed out and bought a new domain name.  I have not changed hosts, however, so if you have subscribed to this blog at www.craftycripple.blogspot.com, you will still get the same posts you always did.

At the same time as updating the website name I have tried to update most of my online names but have failed miserably, in a few places, namely Twitter and Ravelry.  The following are the places you can find me online, which shouldn't require you to make any changes to existing links, but you never can tell:

Ravelry (individual) - Stitched-Together
Ravelry (designer) - Stitched Together Designs
Twitter - CraftyCripple
Facebook - Stitched Together
Flickr - Stitched Together
Email - stitchedtog@gmail.com

I have been unable to change the name on Twitter, as yet, but I'm sure most people won't notice the name change very much, but I did feel it was time for a bit a re-branding exercise. 

Up until recently I couldn't think very cohesively about where I wanted to go with my blogging and designing because I was too bound up in just getting through each day the in the best way that I could.

Since my surgery, my pain levels have dramatically decreased and freed up some capacity from the "ow it hurts" part of my brain.  This spare capacity has made me think that I should be designing more knits again and also start working on drawing up some of the sewing patterns I have developed for making bags and purses.  As I have become less crippled by my pain, I have found that I want my online identity to reflect that fact. 

The name The CraftyCripple was chosen in 2008, when I was just beginning to knit and crochet and all the name had to do was reflect me as a person.  Since that time I have become a blogger, a tweeter, a knitting designer and now I am branching out into sewing patterns.  Those things are not just about me as a person but also about a "brand".  I know that The CraftyCripple as a name has caused some negative reactions, which I don't care about as an individual, but I SHOULD care about it if it puts people off using my patterns.  I don't write the patterns to make vast sums of money, but it would be nice if they reached a wider audience than they already have.  This is even more important if I want to design new patterns as well.

The new name I have chosen - Stitched Together, I hope, reflects my love of all stitching be it knitted, crocheted, embroidered or machiine stitched.  I also hope it reflects that this kind of stitching has held me together until the surgeon's stitches had a chance to work their magic.  It's a name that refers to both the crafts I am hoping to write more patterns for, and also the state of my health.  I am also pretty sure that this new name, while reflecting that I am literally Stitched Together, won't create such a visceral reaction when it is first seen.

Over the next few weeks I intend to update my older knitting patterns and unify all the formats and layouts I have used over the last few years, so everything is clear and they all have updated contact details on, that reflect the name change.  After that I really want to start exploring all the design ideas I have sketched out over the last year or so. 

Thank you for sticking with me over the last few difficult months, it meant, and still continues to mean, a lot to me, that people were interested in the things that I make.  I have had such supportive comments and messages that at times I got a teeny bit emotional.  I hope that you continue to stick with me as I (hopefully) become slightly less whiny and grumpy!

Missing in Action

So sorry I seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth this last week.  I promise that I am doing really well, but I still haven't felt inclined to take photos or model nice knits.  My surgery really was a great success and the cuts are nearly all healed over now.  I'm still a little bruised (both inside and out) which is one reason I haven't been blogging.

The other reason I haven't been blogging is my lovely man has been home all week with me.  This is because in the UK, with the extra Bank Holiday because of the Royal Wedding, he could take 3 days leave and be at home for 10 days.  Why would anyone miss up this opportunity unless they weren't allowed to?  My OH (which means Other Half to those who haven't heard of this abbreviation before) had reserved this holiday before my surgery was booked, but it turned out nice to have him around this last week while I was recovering.  We have also had glorious weather this week in the UK so we have been lolling about outdoors. 

I have now been out the house twice since I got home.  Once, when we went out for lunch and then again yesterday we went to a friend's house.  These friends live just round the corner, and there were lots of lovely people we hadn't seen in a while, and I got to play with a couple of gorgeous babies.  A lovely afternoon out, which didn't end in me screaming in pain - WIN!

As today is my birthday (and my OH's too!) we are hoping to go out for dinner this evening to our favourite Indian restaurant, that is if they pick up the phone and let us make a booking!  Before my surgery I would never have considered going out two days in a row, it just wasn't possible, so you can see how much of a success the operation was.

I just hope that once the OH is back at work on Tuesday I will get my proper blogging mojo back and I'll start catching up on my photography.

So thank you all for your best wishes and inquiries after my health, I'm doing great.  However, it makes me feel even better, knowing that I have lots of good thoughts heading my way from all you lovely peeps around the globe!  What a fabulous lot you are.

Hopefully normal service will resume shortly, and my output may well increase in line with my lower pain levels!  Well either that, or I'll be constantly going out and won't have time to craft...... nah, I'll always have time to craft!

I am HOME!!!

This is just a quick post to say I'm home surprisingly early from hospital.  I was guessing I would be in for 4-5 days like the last time I had this procedure, but I could have gone home the same day as my op, if I hadn't started throwing up when my OH came to pick me up.

Ah well, after a good night's sleep my second day in hospital was actually quite a laugh.  I was on a ward with some really lovely ladies, who all admired my knitting, and I handed out my new MOO.com business cards.  They were on special offer a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't resist.  They look really good, and I had meant to show you them (but I forgot).  As most of these ladies wanted to see my finished Recovery Sweater I thought they could look it up on the blog.  I also got a couple of the members of staff on the ward talking about knitting too.  I felt by the time I left, my crafting evangelizing was done!

I have no pictures to show you in today's post (I'm certainly not going to photograph my four little wounds on my tummy) as I'm not really up to taking pictures, but I felt I should let folks know that I am back and doing ok.

I am feeling really positive about how much this operation is going improve things for me (at least for a while).  I know my new tablets really helped with the pain management too.  Only one little morphine jab for me in recovery and then just back on to my ordinary meds.

I'm hoping I'll be able to cut back on some of my heavier duty pain killers (Tramadol I'm looking at you here) as the wounds heal, which would mean I would feel safe to drive again, YAY!  However, with adhesions there is a very high risk of them growing back after surgery, so I'm not going to get too ahead of myself, but I AM going to try and really enjoy this Summer while I can.

So hopefully I'll rest up this week and take it easy while I heal, then I intend to get cracking with my posting proper again.

Hope to see you soon with some pretty photos!

Surgery Knitting

I have been thinking a LOT about my up coming surgery.  It is so soon.  Did I mention that my date has been set for 20th April?  In order to avoid thinking about how scary it all is I have been dwelling on a much better topic - post operative knitting!

The last time I had surgery I wasn't a knitter.  However, I do remember how I felt after it.  The surgery I am going to have this time is pretty much the same as the last batch I had, so I kind of know what to expect.  I know that when I first wake up I am going to be groggy and feel rubbish.  I am not going to be able to do anything except lie still and try to sleep in between being poked and prodded by the nursing staff as they take my vitals.  However, by the next day I will start to be a bit more restless.  I will still be pretty immobile but I will probably be able to sit up slightly in bed and will want distracting.  When that happens I want to have something to distract me.

I am currently developing my plan for post operative distraction.  I intend to take the following equipment with me:

• Books (real, ebooks and audio books - thank you iPod Touch, I love you!)
• Magazines (craft ones for when I can't focus beyond a paragraph of writing)
• Podcasts
• Knitting!!!

The knitting requires a lot of careful planning.  I want to have some knitting that is completely mindless for when I first start to get restless.  It needs to be something I can do while on a lot of morphine.  Personally I believe that knitting will definitely help with my pain control so I want to make sure I have enough to keep me going.  I am definitely going to take socks in with me.  I will make sure that I have got past the toes, when I go in so I can knit round and round for a day or so.  Then when it comes to the tricky bit I'll leave it to one side for a day or so and when I am more alert I'll pick up the leg and finish the socks.  I haven't decided on the yarn or the pattern, but I will pick them out nearer to the day.

In addition to the socks I have found a project in the latest Interweave Knits.  It is called the Heliotropic Pullover.

Heliotropic Pullover, Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark, Interweave Knits Spring 2011

One reason that this sweater jumped out at me is that the yoke is done firs,t and is the tricky and twisty part of the project.  After the body is joined after the armholes, there is just knitting round and round in stocking stitch.  I plan to get to the part after the armholes and take the started project in with me, so I can do some very basic knitting in soothing and pretty yarn.

This sweater is knit in Rowan Lenpur, which is a double knit weight yarn and is something I have wanted to knit with for ages.  This project is the perfect excuse to treat myself to some nice yarn.  After all, I'm going to hospital to have nasty things done to me, I deserve nice yarn dammit!  I decided to go for my favorite colour of lime green - YUM!

I also wanted to knit something that would be loose and comfortable to wear when I got out of hospital - see my forward thinking there!  Plus it will be a useful summer staple.

I also want to to take a project that is slightly more tricky than knitting in circles for when my brain stops going ARGHGHGHGGGH!  I'm thinking maybe a nice scarf.  Perhaps using this:

It is Artist's Palette, Gleam Lite.  It's a pure silk 4 ply yarn.  I bought this for myself last year after making a lovely scarf for my mother in law, shown below.  I plan on copying this whole project, but keeping it for myself.

The yarn shade is different, but that is because I have different colouring.  This photo really does not convey the beauty of this scarf.  I covet one for myself, so I shall make it, using exactly the same pattern.  The Wakefield Scarf is available for free here.  The pattern is fairly simple but you need to concentrate a little bit to make sure it all lines up properly.  I thought the pretty silk would also distract me a little bit.

So I think with a pair of socks to knit, a top and a scarf, I will have enough to keep me going while I am in hospital.  There will also be enough projects to swap out for when my hands cramp up and I need to change needle size and yarn weight.  It also gives me a decent amount of choice to keep me from getting bored.  The unfinished projects will carry over to be my recovery projects for the first week or so when I get back home.

I like my plans so far.  Now all I need to do is make some more pyjamas for the visit!

Not for the Squeamish

DISCLAIMER:

This blog post will contain graphic description of my medical condition and also contains photos and links that may disturb.  Also if you are a crafter and you came for pretty photos of wool you probably don't want to read this post.

END OF DISCLAIMER

I decided that this week, I won't be doing a Work in Progress Wednesday post.  Instead I'm going to do something that is very rare for me, I am going to share information about my health.

This blog makes no secret of the fact I am disabled.  The explanation is in the name!  I sometimes make passing reference to "having a bad time" or the pain being worse and also mention needing the wheelchair or scooter, but I have never been particularly explicit about my condition.  That was a conscious decision my part as this blog was always meant to be about the "crafty" bit of the title.  This blog was supposed to be my escape from pain, but somehow this blog and the readers of it have become a big part of my life. 

This week I went to an appointment with my new consultant.  I was amazed to say that it was a great appointment and he has consented to operate on me to try and alleviate some of my pain.  As he was poking and prodding and asking questions I found myself answering them very openly and without embarrassment, which is normally very hard for me.  He treated me like an equal who knew her own body and knew about the medication etc that I was taking.  I was part of the decision making process.

When I came home I was so excited about the appointment that I had to share with my online friends via Twitter.  When everyone was pleased for me I realised that they didn't really know why I was so happy.  I decided that would share just this once, the medical condition that changed my life.  It is ADHESIONS.  I used to say it was endometriosis, but now I know that condition is just a part of the problem.

Adhesions are scar tissue that forms inside the body, usually as a response to surgery, injury or inflammation.  The scar tissue usually ends up sticking things together that shouldn't be stuck together.  This can cause organs to be twisted or constrained. I won't link to pictures here, because you would probably feel very sick indeed.  If you have a tough constitution, you can do a search for photos.  Considering how common this problem is, there is very little publicity or support for it.  There is an International Adhesions Society but not a lot else.  Strangely enough it is actually Endometriosis Awareness Week.  If you want to know anything about this condition there is quite a lot of information available these days, through the magic of the Internet.  If you are in the UK, Endometriosis UK is a great support network.

People with endometriosis are highly likely to be susceptible to adhesions.  When endometrial cysts occur, often this damage turns into an adhesion.  I was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2002, following surgery to remove a fallopian tube damaged by an ectopic pregnancy in 2001.  You are more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy if you have endometriosis.

After being diagnosed in 2002 with endometriosis, that became the target of my treatment.  I was being helped by the gynae department.  That treatment was really helping me and I was improving significantly, when in 2004 I was admitted to hospital.  I went because I was throwing up and couldn't keep my pain killers down.  I wanted pain management and to stop throwing up.  I thought it was a bug or an infection.  The hospital agreed with me and put me on antibiotics and a drip, gave me some morphine and an anti-emetic.  But I didn't get better and finally after 3-4 days they decided it was appendicitis and they were going to operate.  I was told to go nil by mouth from midnight and someone would collect me in the morning for surgery.  I did as I was told but nobody came.  I was in a room on my own and had to go wandering up the corridor for help.  They had somehow forgotten me.

I was moved to the surgical ward that afternoon and told I would be operated on that night.  Then my surgery was pushed back, because there was a big motorway pile up and the ONE operating theatre that was open over night had to be used to save lives.  At 1am I felt my appendix rupture.  I was finally operated on the next morning.  I woke up with a massive wound held together by staples.  Originally I was going to have the appendix removed via keyhole surgery, but because the appendix ruptured they had to have open surgery.  After this surgery, instead of getting better, as I had been doing before hand, I was getting worse.

By 2006 my pain was unbearable and after keyhole investigation it was decided that I would have my adhesions removed, again via keyhole, to minimise any further damage.  The appendix surgery combined with the endometriosis had created a mass of adhesions. In 2007 adhesiolysis surgery happened.  It took 5 hours.  The surgeon was visibly shocked at how bad it had got in in the 9 months since his investigations.

After this surgery they kept treating the endometriosis and finally in 2010 they felt they could say that my endo was controlled.  My endometriosis will probably remain controlled for the foreseeable future.  We finally found the magic bullet that stoped my periods that I can also keep taking for years.

Now we know that the endometriosis is controlled, there is nothing more the gynae department can do for me.  They have referred me across to a keyhole surgeon.  A real specialist in gastro-intestinal work.  I'm going to have my adhesions removed!  After this surgery I'll probably still be in pain because of all the damage done to my body over the last 10 years.  I know this, because that is what happened the last time I had my adhesions removed.  I will still suffer from chronic pain, but I can find ways of managing that.  What I can't manage is the pain caused by the adhesions.  I have to be careful as adhesions pulling causes swelling and pain that can take days to calm down.  If the pain I am experiencing, is NOT being caused by actual damage being done, then I can push through it and work at coping.  When you know damage is being caused, you  have to stop when it hurts.  When you hurt all the time, though, at what point do you say, "I have to stop now".  It's a hard path to walk,when you don't know what kind of pain you are experiencing.  When I know that the pain is just chronic pain and I don't have to worry about causing damage I can work around it.

Now I only have to wait between 4-6 weeks and I should be in surgery.  I should be getting a date soon.  The waiting list is meant to be 6 months but the surgeon told me I had been waiting long enough and bumped me to the top.

I am hopeful that my pain will be reduced and that I will be able to start increasing my activities, rather than cutting them back.  It will be nice to spend time with friends and family without having to go and lie down all the time.

After all that health information, I am going to talk about the Weekly Photo Challenge.  It is related, I promise.  Since starting the Weekly Photo Challenge, I have found myself digging a bit deeper into myself to meet the challenge.  Craft is all about the useful and the attractive, whereas photography is all about the interesting and challenging.  As I am limited somewhat in my location choices for photography I have found myself looking closer to home for my subject matter.

This week's challenge subject was Messy.  My first reaction was, point the camera at pretty much any corner of my house and click.  Strangely enough this didn't work out very well.  Messy is a hard thing to photograph well.  Messy by its very nature is untidy and cluttered and unfocused.  This doesn't work as a photograph.  After all my thinking about my health, there was one subject matter that sprang to mind.  The scarring on my navel.  I have had 4 keyhole procedures through my navel and one laparotomy (open surgery) that went around it.  My navel is very messy.  I took a series of photographs.  I came up with three that I was happy with as photographs.  This is where is gets a bit grisly.

 

I think this one is strangely beautiful.  The scar almost looks like an ink spot, or an asteroid strike on the moon.

I really like the texture of the skin on this one.  It felt very strange to be sorting through these photographs of a part of my body that I hate.  This area is the outward symbol of the damage that is inside, that no one can see.  I never show these scars to anyone.  The only people that have seen them are my partner and medical staff.  In a way, photographing these scars made me realise that in the abstract they are not ugly and detestable.  They are just part of me and who I am.  It was very liberating.  The photograph I actually submitted was this one.

This photograph really captures the scarring very well.  I decided quite early on that a black and white photograph was going to be the best way of portraying the scarring as an abstract form, rather than a graphic medical shot.  This photograph still shows the skin texture and the feathered scar above the navel.  The other two photos didn't translate well into black and white, which is why they weren't used.  This photo also shows the scar running down my abdomen from the appendix surgery, which the other two do not.  Making this photograph in black and white makes the viewer think about what they are seeing.  My partner didn't know what he was looking at until I showed him the colour photos.  That is what I want the viewer to do, look at the photo and then wonder about it.

I don't want this blog to become a health blog.  This is about my craft.  But at the moment my health and my craft are entwined, so I decided to share with you.  The surgery will probably be filling my mind for the next few weeks, so expect some posts along the lines of "post surgery crafting" and "knitting for hospital stays".  But hopefully there will be no need to give such graphic information again.  I promise I won't show you post op photos!