My newest favourite sweater I made myself...

...is this one.

I made the sleeves a little short as this makes it less of a hassle when I need to wash my hands, wash dishes or whatever.

It's nice to have a hand knit that is light enough to wear on a not-quite-freezing day.

TLM's 2015 winter cardigan

I made this for TLM from a fair isle-effect self striping yarn which I'd been wanting to try because it's a non-scratchy mixture of wool, acrylic and cotton. If I use it again I will knit the item in pieces instead of all in one, to get the maximum fair isle effect.


I freely acknowledge it's imperfectness e.g. the way it opens out below the last button. I don't care -she likes it. See my Revelry post.

Home, but not as we know it

On Monday, the rehab unit at the hospital will discharge my mum into a rest home. Hallelujah.

I hope I'm not jinxing the whole thing by talking about it before she's actually moved in, but it has been a long and arduous journey and I can't wait to get to the destination.

First, there was the assessment at the end of last year, in which the lady from the Care Coordination team asked mum how things were and mum insisted everything was fine (until she left - then mum's tune changed).

Then there was the in-home care programme which consisted of three daily visits by mostly lovely carers - but the visits were short, often mis-timed (e.g. the morning visit at 10.30 was sometimes followed by an 11.30 lunchtime visit), and - for a period of two weeks - hideously inadequately scheduled.

Then we decided that we had more trust in mum's ability to take her meds correctly that we did in the ability of the administrator to ensure that someone would actually turn up when they were supposed to (to get mum her meds, among other things). That resulted in a reduction in the number of daily carer visits, but at least I didn't have to chase them up when they didn't show up for one reason or another. By now mum had decided she wanted to live in a resthome, but in New Zealand you don't get to live in a resthome until some authority says you need to.

Then there was the heart attack that landed mum in hospital again, and this time mum got her wish which was to be allowed to move into a resthome.

And today I got a text from my brother which (to paraphrase him) said something along the lines of "Great news! Someone died! There's now a great room available at the most recommended home in the city!"

But the best, best thing about this is that for the first time ever, my mum told me how good my brother and I have been to her. It felt good to hear.