I more or less survived last week. I’m still alive – which is a major accomplishment. Last week, I wrote about my sister’s yahrzeit and my emotional fallout. Tuesday evening, I lit a candle and said kaddish.
Meanwhile, I’m seeing more and more the effects of the hate crimes and antisemitism are having on me. I’m back on anti-anxiety med. My stomach hurts. I know I need to sleep but I’m wide awake and watching the clock go from 1 AM, to 2 AM and getting more and more anxious as the hands move around the clock.
Clumping around in a boot designed to make sure I don’t aggravate an injured achilles tendon is causing me to have back, hip and leg pain. I’m cleared to go to the gym provided I avoid any machine that involves using my ankles. Except I’m too depressed to go to the gym. I hate this. I’ve had to go back to the full dose of my antidepressant. Being depressed is depressing which causes me to be more depressed. Depression – the ultimate perpetual motion machine.
I have some choices. I’ve contacted an attorney I know who handles civil rights cases. Apparently he’s not interested in my case because I never heard back. I could go to the State Police and ask them to investigate the campus police, but I doubt it would do any good. I could go to the US Department of Justice and ask for help under Title VI, but dealing with the feds means watching cobwebs grow around my case. I could go to the state attorney general although I’ve dealt with the general counsel for higher education who refused to help me. No one cases that Jewish students aren’t safe on campus. I am afraid of being physically attacked on campus. At least my handicap hangtag lets me park next to the door of the art building.
And I’m having a crisis of religion. Not faith – my faith is solid. It’s my temple that gives me pause. It’s a reform temple, and I fit into Reform Judaism. But the temple is now and has been in financial crisis for several years. The board had decided to arbitrarily raise everyone’s dues. They expect 20% of one’s gross income. Unless you earn $120K or more. Then the board expects 2%. Meanwhile, they are squeezing nickels and dimes out of people. There was a Purim celebration and members were asked to bring hamantaschen – special cookies made for Purim. Then, people were asked to pay $7 per family to get in to the celebration. Bring food then pay to eat it.
The only other temple in town is Chabad House. I like the rabbi. I loved the class I took on medical ethics. The rabbi is actively working with the university president to attempt to ensure Jewish students are safe on campus. My rabbi is doing nothing.
Unfortunately, Chabad is orthodox and I’m not. I dislike the separation of men and women under the theory that women will be a distraction to the men. That comes dangerously close to blame the victim. I dislike the limited role women have in orthodox Judaism. Their role is to have kids and have a dead-end job so the husband can spend his days in the library studying. Just one problem….women’s reproductive organs have an expiration date. So what is this woman with limited education and limited skills supposed to do after she can’t have more children?
So what am I to do? I miss going to services but I can’t tolerate the leave it alone and antisemitism will solve itself attitude the reform temple has. I fought too hard to get an education and to be an equally-paid attorney to give up and not be allowed to fully participate in an orthodox temple.
So here I sit. No temple to go to for services. Not going to the gym because I’m too depressed. Clumping around making me more depressed. Bleah.
I’ve finally reached the point where I can start to integrate the crap that happened to me growing up, feel the feelings it wasn’t safe to feel then, and start to heal both mentally and physically. If you’re wondering what I’m writing about, it’s child abuse. My mother was a violent, drunken narcissist who had four children she didn’t want and made real sure we knew she didn’t want us. Her husband was a violent drunk. By the time I was 10, I had myself and three siblings to raise. I mirrored what I was my mother doing and did a lousy job of raising myself and siblings. I grew up hiding in my room so I wouldn’t have to hear them yell, literally, at me and hit me. I had no idea there was anything unusual about my family. At the age of 9, I had such severe depression that even the kids in my class noticed. One boy asked me what was wrong. His words had to go through many layers of water before I could hear them. Then, I had to formulate an answer, and the words had to go through many layers of water before I could say them. I eventually told him nothing was wrong. I wasn’t lying or covering anything up. I truly had no idea that there was any other kind of family.
I’ve been reading The Body Keeps The Score. It’s not an easy book to read and I can only read it in small doses. I’ve been doing micro-dosing with ketamine for little longer than a year and I finally found a therapist who takes my insurance and accepts new patients. The combination is allowing me to feel what I felt at the time the crap was happening. I’m even getting the stress pains I had at the time. It sucks. But it’s the only way to integrate what happened into whole memories and process them into something I can live with. At the moment, they are fractured memories that cause a plethora of physical problems.
Meanwhile, I’m working my way through the current trauma of a hate crime, antisemitism, and confronting terrorist wannabes – students being manipulated by real terrorists and being conned into thinking antisemitism is a good thing. I’m angry. I’m pissed. I want to scream. I’m considering a civil rights suit against the university.
And so I’m not myself. I’m having reactions out of proportion to events. I’m sounding like a crazed woman. I’m not having fun. It sucks.
Art. It ain’t called art therapy for nothing. I can lose myself in art. I can figure myself out in art. So often, I don’t understand what’s going on inside of me until it comes out of my hands. I’m working on a sequel to the novel I finished. Like the first novel, the main characters are a woman who is my age, Jewish, and a criminal defense attorney. Her lover is a police officer. In the first novel, I wrote about an officer involved shooting, mental illness and people who are homeless. (Unhoused is such a sanitary, offensive PC word and I won’t use it.) This time, I’ll be writing about antisemitism and hate crimes. What’s inside of me needs a voice. I’m considering taking a writing class in the fall. That could be dangerous for me. I’m hoping I can bring Brady, my service dog in training and the world’s cutest labradoodle, to class with me.
I’ve been playing around with my embroidery machine. And I’ve been surfing eBay for embroidery thread bargains. I found a doozy and it will arrive on Monday. I’ve played a bit with making my own designs.
The ferns are my design, the border is a stock design from the embroidery machine.
I bought a set of Hebrew fonts and started playing with them. The Hebrew is shalom. Shalom is one of those multi-purpose words. It’s use for hello, goodby and peace. Peace meaning the absence of war, but also a deep personal inner peace. The Star of David is done with variegated thread and I like how it came out.
We had a particularly bright moon last night. It’s a smidge past full, but well worth photographing. I used a 400mm lens. Sure would be nice to have something like a 12,000 mm lens, but that’s far outside of my photography budget.
After a couple false starts, the Magical Mystery Tour commenced last week. I had to be put on blood pressure med only because my blood pressure was reliably in the dangerous range. Now, it’s in the normal range. That’s the good part. The bad part is that it’s taking way longer than I would like to get through med adjustment. I’m exhausted. I have flutters in my chest. I will be so glad when med adjustment is finished.
The ketamine dosage for the Magical Mystery Tour has been raised because I had minimal response the first Magical Mystery Tour trip. I don’t expect ketamine to cure bipolar disorder, but I’m hoping I can get by with a lower dose of my meds.
I’ve been reading Dean Ornish’ book UnDo It. He writes about lifestyle medicine and has about 40 years of research to back up his assertions. Years ago, I had a nasty cholesterol result and a friend recommended I read Ornish’ book abut reversing heart disease with a low fat vegetarian diet. I dropped my cholesterol 40 points in 6 weeks. I know his lifestyle plan works. Now, we need to go back to low fat vegetarian eating. Jim has clogged arteries and I need to get rid of inflamation as well as getting rid of more weight than I like to admit. Yes, there will be updates. Hopefully good updates.
I’ve been working with a physical therapist to banish my vertigo. Turns out, there are crystals in my ears and the crystals got stuck in a particularly difficult place from which to dislodge them. Two sessions, and I’m significantly steadier. I was steady enough last night to shoot a crooked grin moon.
I used focus merge and cropped the shot because I didn’t think I was stable enough to use my 150-600 mm lens so I stuck with the 18-400mm lens.
Then, I started playing.
Remember when the moon was made of green cheese? The magic of the moon disappeared that day in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong’s foot touched the surface of the moon. We learned, but we lost the magic.
One day, my neurobiology teacher asked the class what they thought about people who were mentally ill.
“Scary.”
“Batshit crazy.” That was said by a graduate student who knew, prior to saying I’m batshit crazy, that I’m bipolar. I know he knew because I had told him.
I’m not scary. I’m not batshit crazy. I’m in pain. The kind of pain that an OTC painkiller won’t kill. The kind of pain that is bone deep. The kind of pain that doesn’t go away. The kind if pain caused by 16 years of child abuse, by a violent, drunken, narcissistic mother who hated me, by her violent drunken husband, by a family that taught seeking help was the worst thing that a person could do. That kind of pain.
The first time I tried to kill myself, I was 11. I stood at the kitchen sink holding the knife in my hand. “This is going to hurt.” That’s what stopped me.
Six times in my life, I’ve been suicidal. People who are bipolar have a suicide rate 20 times that of the rest of the population. I live in terror that my life will end by suicide. Suicide has been called a permanent solution. Bipolar disorder is a permanent problem.
I’m on psych meds. They help. They don’t cure. They dull symptoms of depression and mania. They do nothing to protect me from the ignorance and fear of others. Some of the others are well meaning, but aren’t ready to look at mental illness. Some are repulsed as if I had some horrible, contagious disease. Some are terrified of me. Some try to push me back into a closet. Some, don’t want to hear me when I say that those who stay in the closet are a huge part of the stigma of mental illness.
“If I read the words, why do I have to keep looking at this painting?”
You have to keep looking, because I have to keep living in this mental hell. I make you look because I refuse to live in a closet. If my painting were about a broken leg, would you have the same criticism? You have to keep looking because that painting isn’t abstract; it’s realism. It’s my reality.
May is Mental Illness Awareness Month. Look at me. Listen to me. I am not batshit crazy. I am not scary. I am scared. I am in pain. I’m locked in a mental hell from which I cannot escape.
My doctor knows I adjust the dosage of my antidepressant from time to time. Most of the time, I only need 100mg. When the depression gets bad, I go up to 150mg. When the depression is really bad, I go up to 200mg. Yesterday, I started with 150mg. When I felt dangerously close to suicidal, I took another 100mg for a total of 250mg. I’ve never taken that much before.
If there’s a reason for my depression, antidepressants don’t do much. If the depression is a function of bipolar disorder, I need as much antidepressant as necessary to keep me above suicidal. A couple hours after I took the final dose, I felt normal. That’s how I know it was bipolar depression. My brain didn’t work properly. Why? Who knows? Certainly not the drug companies. Although they aggressively market selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, no one knows if there is an increase in the available serotonin. Or if any of the reuptake molecules are inhibited.
It’s unsettling to live with a brain that has a mind of its own. To live with mood swings that aren’t caused by anything that is happening in my life. To constantly wonder if my reaction to something is a function of bipolar disorder or if “normal” people would react the way I’ve reacted.
For years, I’ve wanted to do an art piece that shows what bipolar disorder feels like. So far, I’ve been unsuccessful. I’ve a final painting assignment for my painting class. We’re supposed to do something that’s post modern. I’ve talked with my teacher and I’m doing something that’s….I’m not sure what it is. I want to show what manic feels like. I want to show what depressed feels like. I want to show what the dreaded mixed episode – simultaneously manic and depressed – feels like. I want to show the thoughts that inhabit those episodes.
The photo marked #1 is where the idea for the painting started. Using a brown sharpie, I wrote some of the crap my mother said to me. Using a blue sharpie, I wrote how I deal with that crap. I thought about braiding the strips. Then I thought about sewing the strips onto fabric. I’m not sure what I will do with the strips.
The photo marked #2 is a more or less final sketch of what the painting will look like. Most people who don’t live with a mental illness aren’t aware that there are levels of depression below suicidal. A depression so deep, you have to feel better in order to kill yourself. It sucks being that far down, but at least I’m safe there. With bipolar disorder, the choices for the mood swings are: Manic, Depressed, Mixed – where one is both manic and depressed. Mixed episodes suck.
I have a form of synesthesia. I see energy flows as colors. When I see purple flooding into my brain, I know I’m healing.
Does anyone really know who they are? I certainly don’t. I am forever a woman. I am forever an attorney. I am forever a wife. I am forever an artist. I am forever a writer.
I never get to be all those things at once. It’s as if my life were pieces of a broken mirror. Each piece is both the whole and a part of the whole.
All of those pieces. None ever changes. None ever leaves.
Floating above all the broken bits of mirror is bipolar disorder. I am forever mentally ill. I can medicate my illness, but I will never be free of moods that have a mind of their own.
That’s the difference between me and the people who think they know what being mentally ill is like. I live with mental illness that will never go away. I will die being bipolar. I may die because of being bipolar. People who have bipolar disorder have a suicide rate 20 times that of the rest of the population.
I wonder. What precipitates the deepening depression that takes me down and down until I must fight the thought that were I dead, I’d never again have to deal with bipolar disorder crap. Sometimes, I’m lucky. The depression takes me down below suicidal. It’s safe there. I’d have to feel better to kill myself.
But what precipitates the depression? Is it a brain chemical composition that bypasses the need to survive and sends me soaring into mania or plunging into depression? Or is it the crap I endure at the mouths of those who both fear mental illness and have no clue what living with a mental illness is like. The subtle pulling away when I disclose being bipolar. The not at all subtle backing away when I disclose being bipolar. The people who exert a tremendous amount of energy in a futile attempt to shove me back into the mental illness closet. Don’t talk. Don’t disclose. Don’t upset my world with your brain. The jackass who told me he admires how I accept no shame for being bipolar.
Damn fucking straight I don’t accept shame.
The only difference between a mental illness and a broken leg is the location of the pain.
The jackass’s stupidity belongs to the jackass. Fear belongs to the ignorant. Shame belongs to the jackass. Shame belongs to everyone who doesn’t fight to kill the stigma of mental illness.
Shame doesn’t belong to me. Shame has never belonged to me. Shame will never belong to me.
You can be part of the problem. You can be part of the solution.
To be part of the solution, listen to me. See me. Accept me when I’m in med hell with a med that no longer works for me. Accept me when I’m going through the three-month long withdrawal that always comes after discontinuing an antidepressant that no longer works for me. Accept me when I’m going through the three-month long adjustment to a new med. Accept me when I’m soaring. Accept me when I’m plunging.
Being part of the problem is easy. Being part of the solution is hard.
I’m having a rough day. There’s no particular reason for it; it’s just part of being bipolar. I have limited energy, but I seem to be manic. Bipolar disorder doesn’t have to make sense, but I have to live with bipolar disorder. Meds help dull the extremes, but they don’t cure bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is always with me. Sometimes just under the surface. Sometimes exploding through the surface.
Brady, the Australian labradoodle puppy I have, did something remarkable today. She could smell my distress and instinctively leaned up against me – something psychiatric service dogs are trained to do. Of course a couple hours later, she decorated the kitchen floor with poop and pee. It’s not easy being a puppy. Not easy being the puppy’s human, either.
Good thing Brady didn’t like the doggy wading pool Jim found in the garbage. The pool grew legs the other day. Now, there’s a security camera covering the back of the house.
The sciatica is still hanging around. I’m able to walk farther, but farther is a relative term. It means I can walk out the back door with Brady, so 10 feet to her potty spot, and then come back in the house. I need to exercise. Brady gets separation anxiety whenever I leave the kitchen. She’s not ready yet to have the run of the house so I have to keep her in the kitchen. I’m sure the healing process has stretched out because of how inactive I’ve been.
We seem to be surrounded by randy quail. So far, I’ve counted four batches of day-old baby quail. When I shoot quail, I have to do it through the sliding glass door. As long as the quail aren’t aware of me, they don’t run off. While I would have liked to have my 150-600mm lens on the camera, what was on the camera was my 18-400mm lens. Taking the time to change lenses would have meant missing the shots. I played around with cropping the shot when I was editing. The John Prine fuzz on the baby quail’s head cracks me up.
The original shot. While this is the quail version of Where’s Waldo, it’s easy to see how tiny day-old quail are.
The first crop. Quail are easier to find, but they look bigger than they are in real life.
The second crop. Almost there. There’s more detail, but the edit didn’t seem right.
The third crop.
My Spoonflower order is now about 40 miles away and I likely won’t get my package until Monday. Sigh. I really want to start making undies although my time in the sewing room is limited to when Jim is home. There are too many places in the sewing room where Brady can get into trouble. I’d go into the sewing room, which is off the kitchen, and close the door, but Brady has severe separation anxiety. I’m trying to help her with that, but I don’t seem to have made much progress.
Brady likes to hide out in the pet carrier in the kitchen. I think it’s because it’s dark inside the carrier and she feels safe in her den. She’s not fond of the crate we have for her. I decided to make the crate more den like. I took a sheet, crudely attached the sheet to the crate, and created a darkened den. I put Brady’s toys in her new den. She refuses to go inside the den.
I’ve been playing around with designs that might make interesting fabric. Here’s the latest:
On March 13, 2020, I got an email telling me the university would shut down at noon. Noon was when my geology lab ended. A few days later, the state shut down.
As difficult as this pandemic has been for mentally healthy people, it has been far worse for people who have a mental illness. Pre pandemic, approximately 20% of the adult population of the United States had a diagnosed mental illness (National Institute of Mental Health). Two months into the pandemic, nearly half of Americans report their mental health is deteriorating (Washington Post, May 4, 2020).
I am bipolar.
Before the pandemic, I was well medicated and about as stable as I could manage to be. Each morning, I traded a portion of my brain for the incomplete promise of getting through the day without screaming.
Once the state shut down, my mental health immediately deteriorated and continues to deteriorate.
I don’t mind describing what happens in my brain, but you need to understand that there are no metaphors here. Here is reality as I perceive it.
I’ve had chronic insomnia since last March. I average 4-5 hours sleep a night. Every couple months, I crash and sleep for 8 hours. I have a prescription for sleeping pills, but I don’t like taking them. I get so little sleep that I’m groggy when I wake up if I take a sleeping pill. I want to go to sleep early, but I don’t get tired. Then I get anxious because I’m not getting tired. Then I don’t get tired, and the cycle repeats itself at least until 3 AM.
Before this past November, I had been on the lowest dose of klonopin since August 2007. I took klonopin when I needed it, and didn’t bother when I didn’t need it. In November, I asked my doctor to raise the dose. My current dose is twice what I had been taking. Sometimes, klonopin helps. Frequently, it doesn’t help enough. I have music that’s supposed to trigger specific brain waves. I’ve no idea if any brain waves are triggered, but the music does help me calm down when the anxiety is severe enough that I can’t calm down otherwise.
My temple has services via zoom. While I appreciate that, there’s no real interaction with others. The High Holy Days services were unsatisfying. I was alone. The rabbi was alone. Everyone who attended the services was alone. I’ll skip the Passover Seder via zoom.
My human contact is with my husband and in classes via zoom. I appreciate classes via zoom, but I miss being with other students. I’m nearly 50 years older than traditional students, so there isn’t much to talk about. I miss those tiny conversations. One way for me to combat anxiety is to bake. Baking is fun when I can bring cookies or other goodies to class. I miss the cookie experiments and seeing other students enjoy my baking.
Frequently, I don’t understand what I’m feeling until the feelings come out of my hand. I’m a multi-media artist. Quilts and clay are how my feelings are expressed. Frequently, my emotional art is dark. It’s art no one in her/his right mind (as opposed to left mind) would want to own. It’s art I have to make the same as I have to breathe.
It isn’t easy to have a mental illness. Mental illness hurts, and it hurts worse than any physical illness I’ve had.
When I made this quilt, I was thinking about a man I knew who killed himself and how he is gone from my life forever. When I look at the quilt now, I think about my loss of contact with others. Zoom is better than nothing, but it’s not a substitute for human contact.
Isolation.
I try to climb out of the box, but I’m not successful and there’s nothing outside of the box, so there’s no reason for climbing out of the box. I still try. I still fail. I’m still isolated.
Because of my age, I’m high risk. My risky behavior consists of: standing in line for more than an hour in order to vote, grocery shopping once, eating in a restaurant with friends and discovering a few days later that one friend and her husband had Covid-19 although both were asymptomatic when we met for lunch. I’ve had my hair cut twice by a hairdresser. Now, I cut my bangs and my husband cuts the hair in back so it’s not hanging down my neck. Now, my excursions consist of doctor visits and going to Starbucks, buying a drink, and immediately leaving the store. Although I want to eat in a restaurant, it’s too dangerous so I eat at home. I want to have a hairdresser cut my hair, but it’s too dangerous. I want to go to Barnes & Nobel, but it’s too dangerous.
Leap by leap, I became more depressed. At first, adding an extra half pill of my antidepressant when necessary was enough to get me out of a depressive episode. My doctor knows I tinker with my dose. She also knows why I won’t agree to a permanent increase in dosage.
Most of the time, art heals. Maybe making art is helping me, but I can’t know for sure. I think it would be dangerous if I stopped making art now. I’d have no way to express what’s inside of me. There’s no one to talk to, so I speak in fabric.
I worked on art because maybe it helps. I worked on art because I had to – the same as I have to breathe and eat. I do photography. I edit the photos and manipulate them. I make quilts. I am still depressed.
This is the Buffalo Psychiatric Center. It once contained the best treatment of mental illness. It eventually contained the worst treatment of mental health. Now it contains a defunct hotel and dust bunnies. I could have been a prisoner there.
Sometimes, I manage to make pretty art. I thought if I worked on some pretty art, I would feel better. This is a manipulated photo that I had printed on fabric and then quilted the fabric.
When I figure out how I want to bind the edges, I’ll finish the quilt.
I tried working on another manipulated photo that I had printed on fabric.
I need to finish quilting this one. It’s a manipulated photo from a happy day. A day when we could go to Bosque del Apache and I could photograph sandhill cranes.
Making quilts helped, but not enough.
I photographed whatever looked interesting in my yard.
Photography helped, but not enough.
I still got depressed. I still had to take an extra half pill of my antidepressant sometimes. That helped, but not enough.
This is what depression feels like. I think that maybe the depression is finite, but I can’t find my way out of the dark space.
The depression worsened until I had a mental health crisis. I had a massive, major, all-encompassing depressive episode. I couldn’t stop crying. Oddly, I wasn’t suicidal.
I considered going to Memorial Medical Center, the only hospital in this area with a psychiatric ward. I’m a criminal defense attorney. So many of my clients have mental illnesses. My clients tell me stories of how they were mistreated in hospitals. Similar stories from a multitude of clients about mental hell facilities across the state. Forced medication. Barring visits from family members. Being drugged into oblivion because that made it easier to control the patients. People obviously needing help, but were considered too unpredictable so they were dumped out of a facility. All of it illegal. All of it happening every day.
I was desperate to the point where I was willing to enter the mental hell system.
I discarded the idea of inpatient treatment when I discovered what my insurance, Presbyterian, and Medicare won’t cover. Presbyterian requires prior authorization for inpatient treatment and inpatient treatment must be approached via the emergency room. Apparently, I need to know about six weeks in advance when I’m going to have a mental health crisis.Otherwise, my insurance covers nothing. Because of the pandemic and because I wasn’t suicidal, I doubted I would have been admitted to the psychiatric ward. Even if I were admitted, I wouldn’t be there long. I’m an attorney. You’ve heard of a jailhouse lawyer? I would have been a psych ward lawyer.
Because I couldn’t go to the hospital, I increased the dose of my antidepressant to two pills. That worked. Sort of. After three days, I turned into a zombie. The Zombie Apocalypse is over rated. I tried to find a schedule that would allow me to stop crying but not turn me into a zombie. I took two antidepressants on one day, and then two days with my usual dose, then back to two antidepressants. Repeat until oblivion. I wasn’t a zombie, I was more or less functioning, and I was still severely depressed. Rather than a more or less steady state of mood, I had wild mood swings between all-encompassing depression where I could minimally function and severedepression.
I was in such a deep mental health crisis that I considered electric shock treatment even though I know better than to agree to electric shock treatment. Electric shock is barbaric. The victim is given a sedative so the psychiatrist doesn’t have to hear the victim screaming in pain while the psychiatrist fries the victim’s brain. The victim is given a muscle relaxant so the psychiatrist doesn’t have to watch the victim have a grand mal seizure. The theory is the brain frying must continue until the victim has a seizure for electric shock treatment to be fruitful.Electric shock causes memory loss. Sometimes, the memory loss is permanent. I know of one victim who forgot he was married. I have an Advance Psychiatric Directive. One paragraph states I absolutely do not agree to electric shock treatment.
I watched One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. I almost felt better.
I considered and researched transcranial magnetic stimulation. It’s effective for depression and migraine relief. Because it can also cause worsening of symptoms for people who are bipolar, I rejected that idea.
I considered ketamine infusion. In desperation, I made an appointment to discuss ketamine. I also did research on ketamine infusion. Ketamine blocks the NMDA receptors which, in theory, should reduce brain activity. In real life, ketamine does block NMDA receptors, but it also causes new neural connections to form and increases glutamate. Ketamine is a hallucinogenic and highly addictive. I was warned that the hallucinations might not be pleasant.I’ve had hallucinations during withdrawal from an antidepressant. I learned that if I let myself look at the hallucinations, and recognize the hallucinations weren’t reality, the hallucinationswere enjoyable. Until I kept trying to kill an imaginary spider that was crawling up the bathroom wall. That wasn’t enjoyable.
I agreed to try ketamine.
I watched Easy Rider.
During the infusion I had hallucinations. I saw colors and shapes although the colors and shapes had nothing to do with one another. I heard sounds that no one else could hear. I watched a long, stringy, multi-colored blob come down from the ceiling then recede and melt into the ceiling. I felt that I was turning my head left and right although my husband, who stayed in the room with me, told me I didn’t move my head. When I thought I was looking to my right, the colors were brighter. When I thought I was looking to my left, the colors were darker. The hallucinations were neither pleasant nor unpleasant. They were just interesting. I kept waiting to see purple because when I see purple, I know that healing is happening. I waited to see the brilliant, golden white that I interpret as the presence of the divine. I saw fleeting bits of purple. I didn’t see the brilliant, golden white.
After the infusion, my brain felt full and I could feel something that was almost a buzzing sensation in my brain. I felt almost happy. I also felt a craving for more ketamine. I’ve been through withdrawal from psych meds several times. I’ve had to do a step down to get off some antidepressants. That involved cutting pills into halves or quarters and relieved most of the withdrawal. I had never before experienced a craving. Ketamine works, but it terrifies me.
That’s about how my brain felt. I haven’t had a chance to have this printed on fabric. If I can figure out how to quilt it, I’ll have it printed on fabric. I’m thinking quilting with holographic thread might show what I felt.
The customary protocol for ketamine infusion is two infusions per week for three weeks. I know I cannot tolerate ketamine that often. My brain would explode.
A week after the infusion, the depression is still almost gone, although I can feel the effects of ketamine dissipating. I fear the return of the massive, all consuming depression. I’m considering having an infusion once every two to three weeks.
Right now, people know what it’s like to be depressed. People know what it’s like to have anxiety. People know what isolation feels like. Right now, it’s okay to be depressed, anxious and isolated. Eventually, life will return to what it was before. People will go back to being normal. I will still be bipolar. There will again be people who think they are better than me for no reason other than unlike me, they don’t have a DSM-5 label.
I will remain screaming in silence. My screams cause the air to vibrate, but the vibrations never reach ears.
This week wasn’t easy for anyone watching news out of Washington DC. It’s less easy for someone with bipolar disorder.
On Tuesday, I was severely depressed. I know why, but it’s not something I’m comfortable writing about. I took an extra antidepressant. My doctor knows I do this when the depression gets severe and I get close to being suicidal.
On Wednesday, I made the mistake of watching some of the news about a mob storming the Capitol Building. Seeing the horror triggered severe mania and severe anxiety. Working on a quilt helped a bit. I considered taking an extra mood stabilizer but wasn’t sure if that would help.
On Thursday, I was severely depressed after being rejected by a someone who breeds labradoodles. The breeder refuses to sell a puppy to someone who has never had a puppy. That’s like saying you can’t eat green beans because you’ve never eaten green beans. The plan was, work with a trainer on puppy training – don’t pee on the rug, don’t eat the furniture, the cats aren’t chew toys, how to walk on a leash – and when the dog is 18-24 months old, work with the trainer to train the dog to be a psychiatric service dog for me. I have adult cats and they’re not going to accept an adult dog. I think it would be far easier for them to accept a puppy – especially after learning the puppy won’t eat cat food.
Today, I feel….kind of neutral. I don’t feel at center, but I also don’t feel manic or depressed. More like feeling subdued or like being a muted color. I don’t feel energy flows although I know energy flows exist. I see energy flows as colors. Today, muted colors.
Rapid cycling is defined as four or more episodes within a year. I had three major episodes in three days. Maybe my energy is a muted color because I’ve had the emotional equivalent of running a three-day marathon.
I’m at another stopping point with the isolation quilt. I figured out I wanted to do wavy lines that echoed one another. Now, I’m left with bits of unquilted space. I was going to do meandering free motion quilting, but I forgot how to attach that foot to my machine. When frustration, mania, and anxiety reach terminal velocity, it’s time for me to take a break and do something else. I’m considering leaving the empty spaces empty.
I grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, NY. For 22 years, I lived in Lockport, a city on the Erie Barge Canal located about 30 miles east of Niagara Falls. From mid-November until Lake Erie freezes, the sky is dull gray. I wouldn’t see the sun for weeks at a time. In mid-January, there would be sunshine, but the high temperature was 10 degrees for days on end. I never had SAD. I never had cabin fever. Cold and gray were a part of life. Driving anywhere required extra time to shovel the driveway, chip the ice off the car, and navigating unplowed roads because nothing closed down. We went to work or to school no matter what the weather. Unless at least a foot of snow fell overnight, schools and places of employment stayed open.
I moved to New Mexico, and my gloomy weather skills disappeared. If we have three cloudy days in a row – something that rarely happens in southern New Mexico – I get depressed and anxious. I haven’t been able to resuscitate gloomy weather skills, and I’m being held captive by a virus. New Mexico has been shut down since mid-March. My last day at school was March 13. A week later, the governor shut down the state. Gas is cheap, but there’s nowhere to go. Hotels are empty. Restaurants are empty. Some of the hiking trails on BLM lands are open, but the restrooms are locked. We have to wear masks when in public. I made masks with elastic to go around my ears. The mask was okay, but the elastic didn’t play nice with my hearing aids. The elastic kept flipping my over-the-ear hearing aids off my ears. I made hearing aid friendly masks with ties. I started wearing masks long before the governor ordered masks to be worn in public. My mask is hot, makes it harder to breathe, and my glasses get fogged up. I wear my mask anyway.
I have severe depression, chronic insomnia, elevated anxiety, can’t concentrate, can’t think like I used to, and I’m overeating. I’m an artist. I should be making art. Instead, I’m making bias binding, reversible masks with ties, and playing computer solitaire. I should do a deep clean in the sewing room. I did clean the bathroom last week, but I had to force myself to do so. I should work on the novel, but I don’t feel like it. I never had this problem when I lived in Lockport even when the high temperature was 10 degrees and we had a 50 mile an hour wind blowing in from over a frozen lake.
I know Jim and I are significantly more fortunate than many others. We’ve had no loss of income, the bills are paid on time, and we have plenty of food, tissues and toilet paper.
I still have severe depression. Severe enough that I had to increase the dosage for my antidepressant. Yes, my doctor is aware of what I’m doing. I munch on a piece of medical marijuana infused white chocolate bar in an effort to relieve the anxiety and worry about becoming addicted to marijuana. My antianxiety med doesn’t work well enough to block the anxiety I feel and I worry about becoming addicted to my antianxiety med.
If you listen carefully, you’ll hear Warren Zevon singing Worrier King.
I have the parts all drawn out. I know what I want this quilt to look like. Now, I’m auditioning fabric. I’m not sure about the fall print. All the other fabrics I auditioned today don’t look right. I wanted one fabric to be muted and the other vibrant but the original muted fabric I thought I would use looked terrible against the teal background.. Maybe if I borrowed from the movies and had sex with my fabric I could find the right fabric.
This is for a quilt about suicide. A year ago, someone I knew committed suicide. Since then, I’ve written my feelings, I’ve quilted my feelings, I’ve lectured about suicide, and I’m still trying to find reasons why. What was happening in this person’s life that was so horrible that death was preferable? I want the universe to make sense. I know from all the biology classes I’ve taken and all the times I’ve stared into a microscope that there’s a phenomenal amount of order in the universe. I can’t find the order in suicide. I know it’s there; I just can’t find it. Maybe suicide is the entropy all things are rushing towards.
Every personality test I’ve ever taken has shown I’m equally introverted and extroverted. That goes along with bipolar disorder. When I’m manic, everything is magnified. I can talk to anyone about anything. I have no social anxiety. When I’m depressed, I isolate. Isolation seems to be my default. Maybe that’s because for a huge chunk of my life, I was depressed. The introverted part of me is having no problem with staying home, not dealing with people, and only venturing out occasionally to go to Starbucks. The artist part of me went to Baylor Canyon to photograph the Mexican poppies. These flowers only bloom if there’s sufficient precipitation in late winter. It’s a spectacular show of brilliant color and the show doesn’t last long.
Covid-19 has made me exceptionally anxious and that much anxiety causes physical pain. Yes, I’ve had the pains checked out. Every doctor, with the exception of my dentist who suggested I may be clenching my jaw, has found nothing physically wrong. I’ve decided to increase the dose of my mood stabilizer. My doctor knows I do this. The extreme anxiety is gone. I’m not in pain. Instead, I have Zombie Brain. This will be helpful in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse.
The increased dose of my mood stabilizer doesn’t seem to be helping with depression. I find I’m being hit with rolling depression. I’m not suicidal, but I am depressed enough that I want to curl up into a ball and cry. When this happens, I need to immediately start making art. Then, the depression goes away.
I have an online store that I built with the help of Wix. Something is wrong with the site because I can’t upload photographs. Without photographs, I can’t upload jewelry that I want to put into my store. It took quite a bit of internet searching to find a way to contact Wix. I got an email back saying they couldn’t help me because they weren’t employees of Wix but here’s the secret phone number. I have to wait until Monday to call.
I learned how to do focus merge in Affinity. I take several shots of a necklace and focus on a different spot for each shot. After downloading the photos, I merge all of the shots into one shot where everything is in focus.
This wasn’t supposed to be complicated. I ordered proofs of 30 fabric designs I had made from Spoonflower. I got the proofs back this week. I attempted to list a design for sale, and couldn’t. I verified my address. I followed the steps to verify my email address. I tried to fill out the W-9 form. After much frustration and swearing, I accidently managed to get the vile form signed electronically. Hint: you can’t sign the thing using an iPad and iPencil. Thinking I had everything worked out, I tried to list a design for sale. I can’t because I’m in an infinite loop. As soon as I try to list a design, I’m told I have to follow the verification process. When I try to follow the verification process, I’m told my address and email have been verified. The problem is the W-9 form for which there’s no way to submit. Why can’t I just have a form to print out, fill out, sign, scan and upload? Why do I have to be stuck in an infinite loop? Yes, I have sent an email to Spoonflower. No, I haven’t gotten an answer yet.
I’m having a bad bipolar day. I’m snarling at Jim. I get impatient over nothing. And this episode is coupled with introversion. Every personality test I’ve ever taken shows I’m both introverted and extroverted. This makes sense. The extrovert comes out when I’m manic and the introvert comes out when I’m depressed. No, there is no specific reason for being depressed. If you know someone who is bipolar, if you love someone who is bipolar, if you live with someone who is bipolar, spend time learning about bipolar disorder. It’ not easy having a brain that has a mind of its own.
I have ordered beads from Lima Beads. Lima is the only online store with semi-precious gems I trust. What I see is what I get. With Firemountain, the semi-precious gems are C and D quality. In my opinion, they aren’t worth buying. I’ve been buying pearls from Lima and I’m amazed at the quality. First rate at extremely reasonable prices! I had run out of amethyst beads, was running low on sodalite beads, and wanted to have some goldstone beads. I also splurged on pearls of assorted colors and sizes.
Larimer used to be affordable. Gem prices float just as gold and silver floats. At the moment, Larimer is expensive and I was surprised to find these so reasonably priced. So far, Larimer has only been found in the Dominican Republic.
Feldspath is something I bought a while back. I liked it more than I thought so I bought larger beads this time.
Goldstone. I have magpie tendencies and I love things that sparkle. Maybe because they reflect the extroverted manic part of me.
When I was picking out beads, I concentrated on size, color and price. I didn’t think about the name when I ordered peace jade. Now, I think about having beads that are both pretty and a political statement.
When I was a kid, I had nightmares about the hydrogen bomb and skeletons burning. The nightmares are back. This time, the nightmares aren’t about gut terrors of an unthinkable event as when I was a kid. Then, we had a Cold War and the certain comforting knowledge that if both sides had nuclear weapons, no one would be silly enough to start a war. Now, there is no comforting knowledge. Now, I have nightmares about a narcissistic sociopath president who thinks starting a war with a dangerous, fanatical, and likely mentally ill leader is a great way to get re-elected. Long ago, I decided if ever there was a nuclear war, I would kill myself. I’d rather die fast than die from radiation poisoning. Even if there were an antidote, there would be no medical care available. Doctors and hospitals aren’t immune from nuclear attack. Don’t kid yourself; hospitals will be, as they are in all wars, a major target. Thoughts of suicide mixed with bipolar disorder is terrifying. Do I need an extra antidepressant? Do I need a permanent adjustment to my psych meds? Am I having an abstract conversation with myself? Or am I suicidal? I don’t have an answer. Instead, I’ve decided to be extremely careful what I read in the New York Times each morning. I can’t stop what’s happening. I can’t change what’s happening. I don’t have to make myself physically sick by reading about what’s happening. Instead, I’ll make beautiful jewelry with peace jade beads.
It took about three years, but I finally filled up my external storage disk. When I do photography, I shoot in RAW. A lot of my work is outdoors, and I want the most amount of digital information my camera will give me. I have more and better editing options if I shoot RAW. However, RAW files are HUGE and it takes almost no time to fill up the space on the laptop. I’ve been putting RAW files on the external storage disk, then changing the photos from RAW to JPEG, dumping the RAW version from Photos and replacing that with JPEG version. That way, I have a portfolio of photos without using much space. Once photos are edited, there’s no visual difference between a RAW edited photo and a JPEG edited photo. I also backup my laptop to external storage.
Yesterday, I bought a 5 TB storage disk for less than the 3 TB cost me when I bought it on sale. Storage is becoming remarkably cheap. Today, I’m busy creating folders on the new disk and transferring files and photos from the laptop to the storage disk.
On Friday, I gave a talk on suicide – from the perspective of nearly killing myself, and my emotional response to the suicide of someone I knew. There were only five people in the audience and, rather than attempt power point, I used two quilts I had made. The first quilt was made when I was suicidal. The second is what I saw in my mind after someone I knew had killed himself. I’m used to working without a net and never write out what I intend to say. I speak from the gut. Sometimes, from the heart. The talk went well although I didn’t have time to say all I intended to say. I suspect for me to get everything in, I’d need an hour. I only had a half hour. I was asked what to say to a 20-something person who is suicidal. I stressed the necessity of taking the person to the hospital. If you take a person to the hospital and you are wrong, you get embarrassed. If you don’t take a person to the hospital and you’re wring, you’re going to a funeral.
I got home and depression snuck up on me and grabbed me. Friday was rough. I found myself looking for Amazon Prime movies about suicide and mental institutions. Now, I find myself looking through Amazon to find books about mental institutions. I don’t know why this fascinates me. Maybe it’s because there but for having junk for parents, go I into a mad world run by mad men and mad women disguised as psychiatrists. Maybe I’m looking for validation for my refusal to be dumped into a locked ward.
Bipolar disorder sucks. For so long, I didn’t mind being bipolar. I finally had an accurate diagnosis that explained so many of the confusing bits of my life. I finally had proper meds. And then I nearly killed myself and bipolar disorder started to suck.
I’ve discovered that once one admits to being suicidal, one needs to speak carefully. I’m having wild mood swings and something is clearly out of whack. Either my thyroid med needs adjusting, or – please, God no – my mood stabilizer has stopped working. Coming off a psych med means going through withdrawal hell that lasts three months. This is followed by four to six months of med adjustment. Please let it be my thyroid. I saw my doctor last Wednesday and saw the bloodsucker on Thursday. Later this week, I’ll pick up the lab results. I described the mood swings and told my doctor I can’t live like this. I then had to tell her I’m not suicidal. I’m frustrated. I’m scared. I’m waiting for the next mood swing to arrive and blow through my head like a hurricane blowing through Florida. But, and this part is critical, I don’t want to die. Today, I don’t want to die. I’ve no idea what I will want tomorrow. That’s the terrifying part of bipolar disorder. I know my mood will swing wildly; I don’t know when or in what direction. Manic and more insomnia? Depressed and worried about becoming suicidal?
We went to Bosque del Apache on Saturday. I like the nature preserve, but I dislike being restricted to only a few roads. I’d like to do some serious exploring. The sandhill cranes have arrived and I had fun shooting them. I use a Canon rather than a gun. I worked on photographing birds in flight. It’s harder than it sounds. I use manual focus and it was tough to focus fast enough to get a clear shot.
I also worked on composing the scene when I’m doing landscape photography. I want to move away from snapshots and start taking photographic art.
What passes for fall color in New Mexico
Looking for cool, art stuff? Please stop by my store, Deb Thuman Art http://DebThumanArt.com
I needed new oversized tee shirts to sleep in. It’s cheaper for me to buy from Dharma Trading than to make a tee shirt. That leaves me to experiment with color and dyeing technique. I wanted to shoot these experiments outside, but we are having WIND. Spring in the desert features wind gusts of 50 mph. One day, the wind got faster than 100 mph. Indoor shooting has restrictions because I put the experiment on a piece of white board and shoot while standing up. These are hardly great art.
For my Shibori experiments, I tied one tee shirt in knots, used bulldog clips on another tee shirt, and clothespins on a knitted piece. Shibori is traditionally dyed indigo blue. Not my Shibori. I’m a color junkie and need to be surrounded by lots and lots of different colors. Fortunately, color is legal and doesn’t affect my ability to drive.
Clothes pinsBulldog clipsFabric tied in knots
For hand dyed yarn, I knit a blank from 100% cotton yarn, dye the piece, unravel the piece, then knit something. I’m curious to see what happens when I knit a piece from the Shibori experiment.
I made the mistake of rinsing out the orange piece with the purple piece. It’s going to be interesting to see how this knits up because this isn’t the only purple spot on this piece.
I have mixed feelings about the oversized tee shirts. Manipulations were only on the bottom of the red tee shirt. I like that idea and I’m thinking about how to expand on it. The purple tee shirt was a surprise. I didn’t realize the dye was going to separate and dye the tied parts a light red. I like the effect, but I’m not sure I want to have clothing that resembles tie dye.
There are six more clothing blanks to dye – 1 tee shirt, 2 caftans, 2 blouses. I’ve been thinking about how I want to fold the fabric and what I want to use as a resist. Clothespins are nice, but once the clothespins are dyed, they shouldn’t be used to hang laundry. I’m afraid if I used dyed clothespins to hang wet clothes the dye would bleed into the clothing.
Once I finish dyeing the rest of the blanks, I’ll work on dyeing yardage and I’m thinking of folding the fabric on the diagonal. A Shibori scrub top could be interesting. So could a pair of boxers for Jim made from the leftover fabric. The blanks and the yardage are from Dharma Trading. The quality is good, but the blanks and fabric aren’t pre-shrunk. This time, I’m going to be hanging the tee shirts on the line each time I wash them. Maybe that will keep the shrinkage to a minimum.
I’m not in a chatty mood today and I’m not sure why. I may be just a bit below center – a bit depressed. Earlier, I was doing some online research for the novel and found some sad pieces. Thus, the depression. This isn’t a serious depression and I’ve no suicidal thoughts.
After the last major depressive event wherein I found myself thinking that being dead wouldn’t be so bad, I talked to my doctor about tweaking my meds. She doubled the dosage for both Lamictal and Wellbutrin. That solved the depression problem, but left me stoned out of my mind. I’d be driving and wonder where I was. I went back down on both prescriptions and felt weird feelings in my head. It took a couple days to figure out I was going into withdrawal. I went back up to my previous dosages for both meds. That eliminated the withdrawal symptoms but left me snarling at Jim and the cats. I doubled the dose for Wellbutrin putting me back on the dosage my doctor recommended. I’m not snarling, but my brain isn’t working all that well. Words get lost in my head and I haven’t figured out where they hide. One time, I couldn’t remember “body wash.” I described the word I wanted by saying it’s a liquid and you use it to wash yourself. Today, Jim was driving us home, and I was bewildered. I couldn’t figure out where we were or how we got there. I may have to cut the Wellbutrin back to one and a half pills a day rather than two pills.
I’ve been going to the gym a couple times a week and doing yoga on the non-gym days. It’s helping and I feel like soon I won’t have to worry about a relapse. Which is dangerous because this is the time when I push myself too far and cause a relapse. It’s hard to know what I shouldn’t be doing until I do it and start to hurt.
I’ll be back up to center tomorrow. Or maybe after I start working on my new gym shorts later today. I’m using a cotton/lycra blend with 4-way stretch and I’ve got the fabric cut out. Just need to start sewing the pieces together. The gym shorts are necessary because the management of the gym I go to hired a man to clean the locker rooms. He’s the world’s slowest man and he’s always cleaning the locker room when I get to the gym. My solution was to wear gym clothes to the gym, work out, and go back home to shower. It’s a good solution, but I need pockets to hold my keys while I work out and to carry my iPod to and from the gym. I have two pairs of shorts that are both stretchy and have pockets. I’d like to not have to do laundry each time I go to the gym so I’m making gym shorts.
If you have ever wondered just how accessible the world is, try getting into and out of a restroom without using your hands. Putting a blue sign outside a restroom does not make the restroom accessible. There is only ONE restroom I can use on the entire New Mexico State University campus. It’s on the first floor of Foster Hall. The handicap entrance to Foster Hall is on the second floor. I have to be careful how much water I drink and when I drink it. It can be a long walk to the only restroom that has a door opener.
Sidewalks are death traps. Expansion joins that have moved will stop the walker’s wheels. Then I try not to go flying over the top of the walker. Elevators are death traps. There’s a gap between the elevator and the building. That gap also stops wheels. Area rugs are death traps. Try wheeling over the edge. The rug lifts up and refuses to lie flat. Throw rugs are death traps. They are worse than area rugs. Construction zones are death traps. A main road on campus is torn up. There’s an 8” drop to the exposed dirt that used to be under the pavement. I’m not supposed to try to use the walker on stairs. Getting across that road was a near death experience.
For some reason, the handicapped entrances for buildings on campus are the farthest from the sidewalk. Go to the college book store? Nope. The parking lot is on one side of the building and the handicap entrance is on the other side. The curb cutout for the sidewalk that will take me around the building is on the far end. I’d have to wheel myself across the parking lot, walk along the entrance to the bookstore, walk down the side of the bookstore, turn the corner, and there’s the handy handicap entrance.
I got a cup holder for my walker. That allows me to bring tea from the kitchen to the office. I have to put the tea in a travel mug, but at least I can have tea. I thought the cup holder would allow me to go to Starbucks by myself. I could order my drink, put it in my cup holder, and wheel myself to the table. That works if the Starbucks isn’t crowded. Not that Starbucks has a door opener. I’d have to wait for someone to come along and open the door for me. The never crowded Starbucks is on a road that has been ripped up for the last year. It’s quite the driving experience. That’s why that Starbucks is never crowded. I tried going to Starbucks without my walker. My leg feels better and I can walk short distances without the walker. I discovered that I can’t stand long enough to get my drink. I was in pain by the time I could hobble to the table. I had an hour in which I could drink my mocha and hope my leg recovered enough to get out of Starbucks. Fortunately, I could get back to my car.
I wanted to go to Sprouts, a wonderful grocery store here. It’s got the best produce, a large organic produce section, and a large selection of fruit. Except I can’t push my walker and a cart at the same time. Yes, they have the little motorized things for people who have difficulty walking. I need the walker to get from the car to the store entrance. So what do I do with the walker if I use the motorized thing?
Taking the shuttle bus from the free parking lot to near where I have a class is…..interesting. The newer busses have a ramp that unfurls and makes it easy to roll onto the bus. The older busses have lifts. The bus this morning had a broken lift. My choices were: try to get up steep stairs (not in this lifetime) or wait for the next bus. I waited. Frequently, I have to tell the driver to unfurl the ramp. No, I can’t jump from the sidewalk to the bus while pushing a walker.
I had a botany lab this morning. The lab isn’t designed for a walker. I managed to get around without the walker catching on a cord and knocking a microscope off the table. Getting prepared slides was easy. Prepared slides have the specimen and the cover slip permanently glued to the slide. I got the slide, put it in my pocket, and wheeled my way back to my table. A slide I prepare by cutting a thin piece of fruit, putting it on a slide, adding a drop of water and putting a cover slip over the wet fruit required imagination to move from the counter to my table. Which is across the room. The ability to hold onto a slide and the walker simultaneously is a useful skill. I managed. I’m pretty proud of that accomplishment.
This week, my leg is significantly less painful. I can take a shower standing up. I can get from the living room to the bathroom without using the walker. No, I can’t ditch the walker. I’ve tried. And regretted it each time when the pain returns.
Three weeks down, three to go. I will be bitching a whole lot for the next three weeks.
My psych meds have been tweaked so I can avoid serious depressive episodes. Last week, I had brain fog. This week, the fog is gone but I’m having a hard time remembering how to do things.
I finished another scarf. And I can’t stand long enough to block it and photograph it. And so it won’t go in my store for a while.
Having exhausted my supply of Shawl In A Cake yarns, I got out my hand dyed yarns. I did the hand dyeing. I knit a length of what looks like a scarf. Then I dye the length of what looks like a scarf. This requires measuring water, salt, dye and fixative and taking the bucket out to the back yard. Put the length of what looks like a scarf into the bucket and wait. Eventually, fetch the length of what looks like a scarf, rinse it, wash it, and let it dry. Then, I unravel the length of what looks like a scarf and wind it into a ball.
I worked out a lace pattern and I’m now knitting a for real scarf with one of my hand dyed yarns. Yes, this scarf will be priced accordingly.
Deb's Art 