Year of Ambitious Projects: The First Project

So, I have already not followed the order of things I wanted to do but after staring at the gold dress for approximately forever, I decided to finish the purple hood instead. I attempted to sew the dagged edges and turn them but they are too small, too fiddly and it just looked awful so I compromised and did a zig-zag stitch all the way around the edges and then took a lighter to it to seal the edges. I'm sure the professional way to do such things is by using fire.

I used my eyelet pliers for the first time to punch holes and add eyelets and then used a tapestry needle to thread the ribbon through all the holes because it's just easier than trying to do it without the needle.

The embroidery machine arrives on Friday but sadly I won't have money for thread and stabiliser and needles until the end of the month. In the meantime I will still make the most of the decorative stitches so I can do a top-stitch around the neckline of the gold dress. I keep staring at the gold dress unsure of whether to pull it apart again to try and get the boob right, but it's an under-dress and it won't really be seen and it's kinda okay as it is, I'm just being a perfectionist. I might do it, I'm not sure yet. The tailor's dummy will make it easier to pin and see the shape properly before I stitch it but the shapes just don't fit together like I think they should.

I've also realised that I haven't actually added the sideless surcoat to my project list. I have awesome plans for that and they should be fairly straight forward, right up until the embroidered edges which I will need to learn how to do.

New Year, Same Me

I don't tend to do proper resolutions, I do The Year of.. Last year was the year of crime (very minor crimes like jaywalking and things that don't tend to get you in trouble in case you were worried), the year before was the year of sorting my shit out, the year before that.. I dunno, the year of ruining my life or something. This year is the year of ambitious projects.

I got a tailor's dummy for Christmas and bought myself a secondhand embroidery sewing machine for New Years and I have roughly a million sewing projects that I'd like to do. I also have a list of things that I'd like to do that could definitely be described as ambitious projects so in the interests of keeping things together and written down, here's some goals for 2019 (and maybe 2020)

Sewing Goals
1. Make something beautiful that I am proud of.
2. Sew a garment to wear in the real world.
3. Make Lex's Doublet before The Ball.
4. Finish my gold underdress before The Ball.
5. Finish my purple dagged hood before E1.
6. Make myself a purple doublet.
7. Make a purple sideless surcoat with embroidered accents.
7. Make embroidered gift bags for friends.
8. Make Sian and myself heat packs with cherry stones instead of rice.
9. Learn a new kit-making skill.

Non-Sewing
1. Learn French (again) well enough to hold a basic conversation with my mum.
2. Become a healthy weight (and therefore increase the efficiency of MS Treatment and make relapses less likely.)
3. Take my drugs at the right time every day.
4. Go to 6 Dance Lessons.
5. Enter a competition.
6. Speak to an MS specialist and agree a plan for treatment.
7. Go to my first music festival.
8. Spend time with My People at least 4 times.
9. Play a new larp system.
10. Explore a new place.

Louise's Lovely Little Lesions

It started with a dead leg. You know, the "I've sat on my leg for too long while I've played computer games" kind of dead leg. It didn't hurt, it just felt sort of tingly and numb and not quite right. I figured at first that it was probably a touch of sciatica because my posture is probably awful and I sit on my legs a lot at work; but it didn't go away. It didn't go away for about a week before I decided to see a GP about it. The GP didn't seem too concerned and sent me for a blood test to check for inflammation and Rheumatoid Arthritis. I gave him a list of things that I thought were not quite right and seemed to all be neurological symptoms and he sort of nodded and said to come back when we had blood test results.

But then things started feeling weirder (still not painful, just weird) and it wasn't just my leg anymore. The feeling started to creep up my hip and after reading some information online I decided to pop into the hospital on the way to work to see if there was an explanation for it. I ummed and ahhed for ages about it, I wasn't an accident or an emergency and I didn't have any pain and I wasn't particularly suffering.. But it was getting worse and my GP is useless and my friends, who are sensible and wise, said that the worst case scenario was that they could send me away.

I didn't go to work that day.. or for the rest of that week. I saw a triage nurse, an A&E doctor, a couple of medical students on their A&E rotation, a phlebotomist, a neurology registrar and then I was transferred to the assessment unit and lost count of the nurses, doctors, radiologists, auxilliary nurses and various other staff who make hospitals run smoothly. They did more blood tests than I have ever seen, a chest x-ray, an MRI scan of my brain and spine and a lumbar puncture.. and there we found my lovely little lesions.

Intermission

In today's episode of Louise's Lovely Little Lesions: Louise attempts to shave her thoroughly overgrown leg forest in the shower whilst singing James Morrison songs loudly and slightly out of tune, loses her balance, cuts her leg, bruises her knee and pulls her back muscles in an attempt not to injure herself by slipping.

The Traditional First Post

Ah, a new blog! I promise to post at least three times before I forget all about it and go back to posting everything on Facebook! I mean erm.. I'm aiming to post once a week on a Monday evening with all the updates and wonderful ideas and things that I've found useful or interesting.

I'm Louise, I'm 31, I live in a beautiful little town in South Wales with my boyfriend Lex, 3 chickens (Bokbok, Nimona and Merida) and a gecko called Pinky.

I wanted a blog because I am going through the initial diagnosis and treatment for Multiple Sclerosis and whilst there is a tonne of information online about it, I wanted somewhere to track my own experiences, treatment and bits of research or useful things as I go along. It's a blog for me but I'm happy for you guys to tag along if you find it useful, insightful, or if you have nothing better to read while you're on the loo.

So, the first thing I'm going to share is https://www.mstrust.org.uk/ - This website has been an absolute wealth of information, support and useful links that I can send to friends and family so I don't have to try and explain what Multiple Sclerosis is over and over again. It also has a lot of blog entries that I'm too scared to read yet because I am in a blissful bubble of "Once this relapse is over I can go back to living my normal life like nothing has ever gone wrong" and I'm worried that those blogs will be "My life is so awesome despite this crippling disability, aren't I wonderful?" and honestly, I just can't take the inspo right now. I prefer the Cripple Punk/ CPunk movement started on Tumblr which postulates that cripples can be miserable, uninspiring and generally sick of your shit just as well as the able-bodied. I'm not a pessimist, I have a wonderfully happy and realistic outlook on life, I just don't want the marathon-running, do-gooding, miracle-achieving MS patients to be inspirational at me when I'm a cake-eating, do-okaying, happy-to-just-get-on-with-normal-things MS patient. Maybe I'll get round to the blogs at some point but I'm just not quite there yet.