Eat it and weep...

This evening we ordered pizza for dinner. Well, Adam ordered it (or, at least, he tried to order it online with my help, but it didn’t work, so I had to phone the order through instead, but it’s the principle of the thing) and he, Ruth and John ate it. But this is probably the last time that Adam will do such a thing.

Last week I took both Adam and Ruth to the hospital to be tested for Coeliac Disease. I’d finally had enough of being fobbed off with being made to feel like a fussy mother whenever I queried why a boy with a good diet and good dental hygiene needs to have 3 extractions and a filling by the age of 6 1/2. So at the end of the Easter holidays I took the pair of them to the GP – I did rather overdo it – “I’m Coeliac, my mother is Coeliac, my father’s brother and sister are both Coeliac, my cousin is Coeliac, another cousin’s son is Coeliac – we have a very strong family history, I’m concerned about Adam and I would like them both tested.” To the GP’s credit he called his secretary straight in and got me to dictate the family history and referred the pair of them to the paediatric gastroenterologist at the local hospital. When we got there last week she was great – she was the first official medical person to agree with me that Adam’s teeth could indeed be linked to being Coeliac, and agreed to test both of them. The blood tests (full blood count, test for active Coeliac Disease and genetic test to see if they carry the appropriate gene) were performed brilliantly – Adam is not a fan of needles, but with one person to ‘do the needle’, one person to hold his arm still, one person to entertain him, me to provide a lap to sit on, and yet another person to entertain Ruth in the waiting room, it all went very smoothly (as it did when Adam and Ruth swapped places).

So, the results. The consultant phoned me this morning. Her opening gambit was that I am “very astute” – Adam is indeed Coeliac and Ruth’s results were normal. I don’t know Ruth’s figures, but on a test where ‘normal’ means 0-6, Adam scored about 87. And it’s not a test that gives false positives. The “gold standard” for Coeliac diagnosis is a biopsy (swallowing a tube so they can have a look and take samples), so he still needs to have that done, and until they do that (which will be under sedation – it’ll be the ‘good drugs’ ) he needs to keep eating plenty of gluten.

I’ve explained it to him, and he’s fine. A bit sad, which I’m quite glad about – it means that he’s taking it on board, but also quite excited to think that he’s going to be like me – no more “Mummy’s treats” – I’m going to have to start sharing! Ruth is more upset about it – I think a combination of being a bit jealous that he gets to share something with me, and genuinely sad for him that he’s no longer going to be able to share food with her. I’m hoping that her genetic test comes back negative, as if it does we can relax about making sure that her ‘gluten load’ stays high. If the test comes back positive she will still be at risk of developing it later, in which case I would rather she were eating a normal quantity of gluten so that any symptoms aren’t being masked – a small quantity of gluten could be enough to do damage without showing up properly in tests.

And me? – I’m a bit shocked. I thought I’d be fine about it – after all, I’ve been eating gluten-free for over 25 years – it’s not as though I need to reorganise everything. But it’s a very different matter dealing with it for myself and dealing with it for a 6 year old. Fortunately I know that there is a member of staff at his school (one of the loveliest nursery assistants you could ever meet) whose son is also Coeliac, so I know that there is someone there who can act as an advocate for him. And he takes a packed lunch anyway, so we don’t need to try to train the kitchen staff. Mainly though, I know that it’s fine – being a diagnosed Coeliac on a strict gluten-free diet means being able to live a full and active life. BUT it is a total pain in the backside. Eating out, or going on holiday requires a whole lot more planning. And it is tedious having to explain it all again, and again, and again, and yet again. And I hate that my baby boy is condemned to a lifetime of it. I know, I know – it could be so much worse, and that we are incredibly lucky to have so much understanding of it and support within the family, but if I was given a free choice I would choose that he not have it.

Knitting content!

I have two main WIPs at the moment – one of which is having to take a bit of a back seat as I need to spin up some more yarn, and although my back is much better, I’m still taking it very easy. But it’s the really exciting one, so I’ll start with that one anyway:

(click to enbiggen and enjoy the slubby glory)

Cardigan – designed using a mixture of Ann Budd’s basic sweater pattern from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns and the waist shaping from Knitting Daily. Since this is to be a fairly bulky cardigan I haven’t gone for completely figure hugging shaping (at least, I haven’t intended to – it’s not finished yet… ), so there should be about 1” +ve ease over the hips and bust and about 3” +ve ease round the waist. (The piece in the picture isn’t blocked, so it’s rolling like crazy and you can’t see the shaping.) I’m knitting it up with handspun Shetland from bluefaced (there is a problem with ordering stuff from the website, but if you email Andy he will get back to you.) Most of it is undyed, but I’m doing garter stitch edges using the fibre I dyed at Liz’s.

Secondly, partly because I need to get more yarn spun for the slubby cardigan (it’s designer slub – I’m loving it), partly because I have raging startitis, and partly because having bought all that yarn from Stash I need to use it. (Big confession – not only did I misremember when I posted before – I didn’t order 8 balls of the Alpaca Silk, I ordered 10, I also went back on the site and ordered more – 2 more balls of Cathay and 5 more of the Alpaca Silk. Well, it would be foolish to run out, wouldn’t it?) So I started Sylph. Having read around on Ravelry I saw that a number of people have made it using DB Cathay, and they had found that the twisted stitch pattern was almost invisible (possibly because of the multi-stranded structure of the yarn). I swatched, and not only discovered that I needed to go down a needle size, but decided that I could see the twisted pattern, and I rather liked it, so I was going to go ahead and use it. It wasn’t until I’d got further than this far:

that I realised just how much it was biassing. (But lookee – you can definitely see the twist pattern!) I ummed and ahhed for a bit, then decided that although it might block out, it would always bug me, and if it was always going to bug me, it was time to rip it out. So I did, and I’m now back to just an inch or so above the faggotting pattern. Sigh.

Living in luxury...

First of all – thank you for all the daisy chain advice (with recognition to Daisy’s reservations about such items) – I made a beautiful daisychain this afternoon, but it’s recipient managed to destroy it before I could photograph it. Sigh. But thank you to Mary and Rosie for their advice – it worked perfectly.

Yesterday the weather was good and we were feeling lazy so we decided to go for a picnic. I hurt my back on Friday (virtue was NOT rewarded – I’d been mowing the lawn ) and although it was feeling much better I was under strict instructions to do nothing that could possibly aggravate it. So we didn’t just take a packed lunch and a blanket, we took camping chairs and my knitting (duh!) too. We went to Wandlebury and having successfully found the picnic field and persuaded Ruth that the flies weren’t all out to get her we had our lunch, then decided that it was time to move on and do some exploring. Which we did, except that for all our frequent left turns we ended up nowhere near the car – we’d done about 3 miles, and the shortest way was back the way we’d come. The children were definitely not up for that, so John left us while he went back to get the car. So there we were in a layby-cum-driveway, in the middle of nowhere, with camping chairs, remains of a picnic and knitting. We settled in and made ourselves comfortable and had a lovely game of “I Spy” while John hot-footed it back to the car.

Of course photos to illustrate the story would improve it. But I appear to have terminal camnesia these days. Sigh.

Oh, and I’m knitting – only 3 projects on the go at the moment… I will get the camera out soon – honest…

Help!

It turns out that I have a gaping hole in my education. This afternoon, there I was, sitting in the park with the children, making a daisy chain. And suddenly I realised that I had no idea how to get it to join to form a necklace. Can anyone enlighten me? Thank you!

Chain of events...

So Steph noticed the sale at Stash and she fell to the tune of 4 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. And she blogged about it. So Alison fell for 10 skeins of Noro Blossom. And she blogged about it. So I fell for 10 balls of Debbie Bliss Cathay and 8 balls of Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk. After all, it’s much better to get a whole sweaters’ worth of yarn rather than just odd-balls – right?

Anyone else want to browse round their sale – go on, you know you want to…

A new hat!

Chevron Lace Beret by Katya Frankel (from Magknits) made with 100% cashmere sent by Vikki from her etsy shop for the UK Swap.

Oh, and if you’re a praying person – our church desperately needs prayers right now.

A very random hotchpotch

Well, Sareth tagged me, so here goes:

The rules are:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

So, 7 facts:

1. I love eating frozen prawns – if I don’t put a few into a little pot I could easily eat a bagful.
2. My favourite word is “sift”.
3. I always panic slightly when everyone is introducing themselves in a group in case I forget my name and what I teach by the time it gets to my turn.
4. Now that spring is pretty much here, there’s nothing I want to knit more than a great big squooshy jumper/cardigan.
5. Magic Loop is one of the most annoying techniques ever…
6. ... apart from using two circular needles – why? Why? WHY?!!! Dpns are just lovely – once you’ve tamed the porcupine he stays tamed.
7. On Fridays we have home-made oven chips, fish and peas, followed by icecream. It’s easy and everyone likes it.

I’m not going to tag anyone, but if anyone does feel like having a go, please leave me a comment and let me know. (In fact let me know if you’re not going to do it – I love comments )

Today Adam had a filling – this was yet another episode in the ongoing saga of Adam’s teeth. (He’s already had two extracted under general anaesthetic and needs to have another one taken out as well.) Apparently they won’t do fillings under general anaesthetic, so this had to be done under a local. Which means a needle. Adam REALLY hates needles. John took him this time – I’m laid up with a cold – not too bad, but I’m wiped and fuzzy-headed and achy and didn’t want to have to drive and look after a potentially hysterical boy. And it was fine – Adam still doesn’t realise that a needle was used – they gelled his gum and then put the needle in and out by sleight of hand. I really wish I’d seen it. Lots of kudos to the dentist! So the next extraction can be under local as well

Monday was our little princess’s birthday. We had her party on Saturday – it was supposed to be an outdoor picnic, but with snow forecast we decided to hold it indoors instead. John spread a groundsheet over the dining room table, a rug was laid out under it, with cushions, and they had their picnic there:

(Ruth’s friend isn’t really a blur, I just don’t want to post pics of other people’s children.)

The cake was another combined effort (I bake, John decorates):

Knitting? Yes, I’ve done some. I’ve finally finished a pair of zebra socks that I started as mindless knitting at SkipNorth last year. I’ve made a pair of knees socks and matching fingerless mitts for Ruth (Miss Potter works out exactly the right size for her using sock yarn and 2.5mm dpns.) I’ve done one solitary zebra sock for Adam, and then today I started the Chevron Lace Beret from Magknits. Ironically it was only because it has been closed down (see here if this is news to you) that I was hunting through Ravelry to see which patterns I wanted to retrieve from Google’s cache that I found it. And it’s perfect for the red cashmere that Vikki sent me as part of the UK Swap. I’m sad to see Magknits go, but I think I understand why.

What? You want knitting pictures? Sorry. Not tonight. I’ll cheer you up with the thought that John has a new iPod Touch – very very nice. He’s got pictures on it. There’s a (really really unflattering) photo of Ruth, a photo of Adam and… a photo of a large cow we saw at Woburn. Hmmm…

And there's more...

You remember that delicious box of yarn that Vikki sent me for the UK Swap? Well apparently that wasn’t enough, because look what arrived in the post on Thursday:

– Yay for Debbie Stoller (to whom I’m eternally grateful for my 15 minutes of fame) and some oh-so-cute stitch markers – I keep picking up the blue ones and saying ‘SOooo pretty’ to myself, but then my eye is caught by the bunny ones and I’m distracted ’ SOooo cute’. Thank you again Vikki – and again, your timing was perfect – I was utterly flattened by hormones.

I’ve been making references to crocheting slugs, and people have been asking me – it’s for this (and for more inspiration see here). Anyway, here’s my contribution:

(Rosie – I’ll put them in the post… )