75. Threads

The last couple of weeks I have been doing a lot of sewing, some of it Christmas presents, some of it for fun, some of it for a thank you gift, some of it for meditation.  (k3n clothtales - a channel on YouTube has become a favourite.  I am really enjoying slow stitching. Check out her channel for some relaxing stitching and some great tutorials too.  I also still enjoy The Last Homely House and The Last Homely Garden too with Kate and her lime green sofa…if you know you know! And of course, can’t forget John Kanell on Preppy Kitchen.)  Most of the sewing has been hand sewing but some of it has been on a sewing machine.  With each thread I have used there have been different colours and different types of thread.  Sometimes I’ve used two or three strands together.  Sometimes I have an easy time threading the needle, and almost always it takes me at least 10 times or more to thread the sewing machine needle!!!  Having eyes that don’t work well mean I sometimes use a needle threader.  

It struck me last night that life is like sewing in a way, different threads coming together and being sewn into a garment, quilt or decoration.  Sometimes the threads tangle and knot.  Sometimes they can be untangled easily and other times they snarl together and after being sworn at you just have to cut them and start again.  Sometimes you sewn something wrong and it needs to be unpicked.  Though with slow stitching there are no mistakes, just design opportunities.  In order to complete the project threads are very important.  But, you need tools to make the threads be useful otherwise they will just sit on their spools, either in a drawer or on a shelf until they discolour and perish.  Needles, needle threaders, scissors, pins, sewing machine, hands, fabrics etc are the tools to use to create something of beauty or something useful.  

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve.  Part of me is going to be very happy to say goodbye to 2023.  It has been a full on year for me personally but also there has been a lot of general life shit that has happened with family members and some of my friends too. 

However, I’m not going to dismiss or throw 2023 into the past.  I’m not going to wish for things to go back to before my cancer diagnosis.   Even with all the trauma and treatments, 2023 has been a blessing too.  The threads of my life have gotten tangled, they have broken, some have been cut.  Sometimes I have sworn, sometimes I have cried.  Sometimes the spools became unraveled and rolled away under the bed or table and were lost for a while.  The tools in my life have been my family, friends and medical team that have helped weave those threads, helped to untangle them and supported me.  When the threads were broken or cut they have helped me find new spools, new threads, new colours to use and weave into my life.  Looking back I can see that these new and unexpected threads have also caused me to know myself more, to understand myself more.  

2024 is just another year.  I have never been a big New Year’s Eve party person or a ‘let’s make a list of resolutions’ person.  Do I have some goals I would like to complete?  Sure, I’d like to get back working next year. I’m not sure what that will look like yet.  Will I start out casual or part time?  What type of job will it be?  Will I jump right in with a job using my dementia degree training or will I ease back into it.  I guess I’ll take things as opportunities come.  

Physically I’ll keep up with my exercises and my new eating plan.  I went slightly off that plan on Christmas Day, having some chocolate rum cheesecake and at 1am for an hour that night I regretted that decision when I was sitting on the toilet with gut pains and diarrhoea.  I’d had a whole week of feeling ok and no 💩 episodes and haven’t had one since.   

I’ll keep losing weight as it happens but won’t obsess over it.  At last count I was 8kgs less than I was at Nov 1st.  My clothes getting looser is usually my indication to weigh myself.  On that front, next year I’m going to look at making clothes for myself.  It’s always been something in the back of my mind for a number of years.  When I had boobs it was because most tops only have a B cup factored into the pattern and I was far from that for most of my life.  Now I don’t have boobs so I have the opposite issue in some respects.  I had gone to spotlight and looked through the pattern books there, thinking I might find something I like and then adjust the pattern. I’d taken some photos of the pattern to go back to them later..  Mither is very good at adjusting patterns.  However,  I did happen to stumble across a new fabric and clothing adjustment shop at Sutherland, Suzannah’s Sewing Shop.  I popped in there a few weeks ago and met Suzannah.  She is a lovely person and we got chatting.  We looked through the photos of the patterns I’d taken from Spotlight and she was able to tell me which ones would work to be adjusted and which ones wouldn’t.  I’m going to book in a few classes with her in January so we can come up with some patterns to adjust and I can start making my own clothes,  I’d also like to use some of the fabric I have designed in them too.  I got a Christmas present for Suzannah’s (A Stitch & Bitch class) from Ange so that will come in handy too!  Another ‘thread’ being sewn into my life story.  

My pain levels have decreased. I visited Jon Gamble a week or so ago and he has me on symphytum and Calc Carb homeopathic remedies for my bones and ligaments.  He also mentioned that there is a tablet called Boswellia Complex which is four ingredients, boswellia, turmeric, ginger and celery.  It is a natural pain killer and anti-inflammatory.  He said to take two of them before bed to help with the bone and joint pain that have either been keeping me up or waking me up. It works!!  It works really well. I haven’t had to take any pharmacy pain meds since I started on the boswellia complex.  Not having that deep bone pain as strong as it had been has been such a relief.  It’s another tool to use in the sewing basket of life.  

I’ll continue to write my blog. It has been invaluable this year to reflect and heal.  Reading back over it recently I can’t say that I had forgotten some of the things that have happened but seeing as I have been writing them every week or two all year they are raw, almost unedited and I am glad I was brutally honest in some instances.  For all those who have been following along since the start, those who have dipped in and out and those who have found me later on and have desperately been reading each blog post at record speed to catch up to the present time I thank you for your comments and support too.  In the last couple of months I started up an Instagram channel (it’s just my first and last name) to log my creative outlets mostly.  I post photos of the projects I am doing and pictures of nature.  Feel free to follow along there too.  

So with that I will sign off for this year and catch up with you all again in a week or two.  I still have a number of appointments in January but I do hope that they are starting to slow down a little so they don’t have to be such a main focus of my life.  Those threads can start to become muted colours that fade into the background instead of bright raw red threads that have been stitched thick and haphazardly through my life past 14 months.