One week to go....

I got this card from my FB and knitting friend Marjoleine and this represents in a way my dealing with everything happening over the last weeks...

Last Monday Bram and myself had a talk with the doctor, physiotherapist and head of the department he stays and we came to the conclusion that on the 1th of November he can go home...So very good news. Of course he needs to have treatments to become stronger, so he will go 2 mornings and 1 afternoon to the Rehab centre for as long as it needs. I think after he gave up the feeling that he really didn't liked it there he became stronger and accepted the fact that it was necessary to stay there for a while and make the most of it. But.. the end of staying there is at the horizon.No more living alone for him in a small room and no more living alone for me in our house..Really looking forward to that!

To make this step going well we are doing it step by step. So we made a little trip to a restaurant for coffee, a trip into town to the hairdresser (I wrote on Facebook:has brought his Hubbie this afternoon to the hairdresser.... and from an over aged old Hippy with too long hair he became a sweet little boy...) with a coffee at our favourite place. On Friday (his birthday) we had again coffee with cake of course and than he stayed the whole afternoon at home laying on the couch and I could see he loved it to be home.Yesterday was more or less the same with the exception that he phoned me in the morning if I could come and pick him up. The reason for that was that he didn't feel at ease due to the fact that a dear friend of us who also stayed in the centre passed away on Friday and he had seen the big black car driving. We are both very sad but relieved for him because the state he was in was very sad. So I changed my plan, picked him up and he had a lovely afternoon at home. I made some soup, we had tea...and it felt as a Saturday as we used to have. Today will be more or less the same I think.

I am doing fine with ups and downs and with the help of my psychotherapist I will do steps to come over it and to deal with the fact that things will be different. Together with her and with time I will feel better. Now there are still so much tears when I am with her...still don't feel confident about everything deep inside.

On Wednesday I had a meeting at the after-care poli in the hospital to hear more about the operation and the consequences. One of the things that touched me was that after such an operation you will never be the old person you were before but you will be a kind of new, different person: a "new-old-one". You will also consider your life again and the way you deal with it. I feel that is really true. This whole experience has to bring something to our life. Not sure yet what that will be.. but the future will tell and learn.

After the autumn-break (this week) I will start working half a day a week which feels good.Do some tasks and not teaching yet. And than I am sure I can pick my life up again with working more when the time is ripe for it. In a way I miss my work, my colleagues, my students but on the other-hand I can't force it to feel 100% better and to work 100% right now.

The coming week I hope to make some new things for our house. I have brought the sewing-machine home a few weeks ago to make some new curtain in the bedroom and some cushions on the sofa but till now: nothing and no energy to do it. Strange in a way because they are really simple things to do but it seems that my days in the past weeks had no time to do those things. Probably the reason is that I am sometimes so tired and over the last 2 weeks I also had a tooth inflation (still there a little despite the fact that I use antibiotics). But the plan is to do it this week......

As for knitting and what's going on on the knitting front: I did finish my Wisp. Still not sure if I really like Noro yarn. There are always knots in it and than the colour-scheme changes. Really would have had more blue in it...Now I have the Clockwork from Stephen West on the needles in beautiful yarn from Sanguine Gryphon from the USA. Such a special yarn with very unusual colours and names. The yarn itself is a 100% superwash merino and the 2 are named: Hellenexi and Skeptic. It knits up beautiful and the yarn has a fantastic feel.Their site is beautiful and really worth to look at.

And than there was the long awaited book with my first sock pattern in it. I was asked by Madeline Weston (after my holiday last year on Shetland where we stayed in a cottage from Margaret Stuart:a friend of her) to design a pattern for the book with the name: Country Weekend Socks. Her first book was called Country Weekend Knits and that is one of my favourites. So I was very pleased to do this job. Asked my knitting friend Jon from Easyknits to dye a special colours for me in a soft merino bamboo yarn. I struggled a while because I wanted to use 3 colours but at the end I made the decision to use 2 for a stronger look. The pattern came from a pair of gloves I did see in the Shetland museum in Lerwick. For me the socks didn't need to be filled up totally with a pattern so I only did part of it. Don't think it feels always so comfortable to wear double thick socks in your shoes. So out came these and in the book they look really stunning if I dare say so. The styling is great (love the red stockings added to my socks) with garments from Toast and the overall look is very fashionable and "with a twist" to make it modern.

And I get spoiled so much with receiving yarns. There as a lovely hank Evilla yarn from Evelien, a little ball in various blue colours (thanks Hilly and Carla), a beautiful hank Blue Moon sock yarn from my FB friend Amysue ChaseMy Scottish colleagues gave me this big ball Big yarn as a gift.They had bought it in London..and wondered what I could make out of that. So I asked a local shop to make me some big needles and off it went.. Will be a cushion cover at the end!! And there was something really special. One day I discovered that Jared Flood and Debbie Stoller where having their own yarn-line and I wondered on FB when I would get one.. And yes: I got one!!! The very sweet Yvon from "Storm op Zolder" decided to name a new yarn after me. So here is "Jan". It is a very soft Aran weight yarn in a combination of Alpaca, Bamboo and Bluefaced Leicester. She was so nice to send me to hanks and I possibly will dye them. But for now they lay proud in the living-room.

To tell you the truth: I also ordered some yarn from Jared named Shelter in a red colour (called Long Johns) to knit his Wayfarer scarf and that all reminds me of a post I really need to write about my meeting up with him and more famous knitters last summer in the Shetland Museum in Lerwick..Perhaps the coming week I will find time to write this...