So today it’s my 4th MSversary. 4 years since I was diagnosed with MS. Looking back I’ve had it for a long time I think my first relapse was in 2007 and there have been others but they were all treated separately. It was only after my first MRI (for the dizziness, vertigo at the time) when an ENT specialist saw there was something else that was causing the problem and not my ears.

It was interesting seeing the MRI though.

Seeing your brain on a computer screen with lots of little white dots all over the place is something you don’t normally see. Turns out the little white dots, and there were a fair few of them, aren’t supposed to be there. They’re all lesions. Basically little bits of brain damage affecting all sorts of different things. There are some lesions in my spine too. They’re caused by the immune system deciding to attack the coating (myelin sheath) round the nerves. That means that the nerves don’t work properly anymore.

A bit of information for you there.

So I know it’s been two weeks since my last update. This last 2 weeks have been a bit weird for me. Some ups, some downs, some lefts and some rights. Last Tuesday was the first MS Group social back together in person. It was a bit strange seeing everyone again and not having a mute button or volume control but it was a good night and I then everyone else enjoyed it too.

There was a pasty and peas involved so that also helped.

I got myself a new set of pencil crayons.

The box doesn’t look much but they are Polychromo pencils from Faber-Castell they are amazing. Because they’re oil based they are so smooth to work with and so easy to blend. I coloured in one of the Lee Holland Digi stamps as a first project using them.

So tangling now there have been 4 Tangles:

I’ve also added more to my board and I’ve actually varnished it. I’ve added a wolf, a dragon, a dream catcher, some flowers, a feather and the little totem animals. as it’s been a while I also topped up the colours as well. With that I found that some cheap watercolour pencils seemed to add the colour the best. I didn’t use water just the pencils. The old pencil crayons I had didn’t do much.

So the moment you probably haven’t been waiting for. I present to you my board:

I received the tile from the last tile swap. It’s a lovely tile from Sue Bellingall

It’s great. It looks so deep and almost hypnotic. I’ve not heard about the tile I sent but I’m sure it’s on its way to a good home.

Tile swap 9 launched last night and I already have an idea of what I’m going to do. If it turns out that way we’ll have to wait and see.

So the last thing I’ve done tangle related is to ink up some more tiles. I’d used up all the others so needed some more:

And now for an extreme close up,

I took that picture to show someone what adding a sprinkle of salt does after you have dunked the tile.

So another confession I need to make is knitting related. On Sunday I gave up on the blanket for a bit. I was getting bored and working on it became a chore. So I have started a new project. Now I’m working on Robyn the Octopus. I’ve only finished the first tentacle so far but it’s coming along.

I’ve made a couple of cards. This one I finished off. We started working on it with Pauline Wheeler on Sandra’s weekend

And this is one I made from the other bits on the sheet.

I have done another card and I finished that today:

That one is for mum and dad to give to someone.

Went to knitting on a Tuesday for the first time today. It has been about 18 months. It was a strange feeling going back to that one. It was so long ago, nothing seems to have changed at all it’s the same people and I’m sure some of them are still doing the same things. They probably aren’t but it just seems to be exactly the same as it was. I know people said they wanted to get back to normal but that seemed a little too normal if you know what I mean.

Some times I feel like things are changing too fast and then there are sometimes things aren’t changing at all. It’s a bit strange how things work out though.they all change eventually but sometimes the change needs to be done with some kicking and screaming.

I’ve had an interesting conversation tonight “with them up there” about some things I need to work on.

Why is it so easy to tell other people what they need to work on but difficult to tell yourself?

Anyway, the conversation was about how to help others to learn new things. I got some interesting suggestions and all of them make perfect sense (it’s very rare they’re wrong). I noted these things down in my book and they will be used in the future. Well let’s just that that if I don’t they won’t let me forget and I’ll get the told you so thing.

I think I showed a picture of it a few weeks ago. Well o found out with that book that because of the number of pages it was really difficult to write in. The pages would fold back properly because of the way it was put together. Well I separate the pages and only bound a few together. So rather than 20 signatures (groups of pages) being sewn together this time I did them in smaller groups. So now they are in groups of about 5 or 6 and I’ve only put one group in the book.

I went larger this time an used some of the pages I put in the other larger book. So gone from a small book with loads of pages that I can’t write in to a larger book with some small and some large pages. This time I went for tan on the outside and on the inside I finally opened one of the packets of American Crafts Card and used a nice blue on the inside.

So here is a picture of my book:

And on that note it’s time to retire for the evening.

Love and light.