Knitting!

So, yesterday I made a little sparkly pink and purple octopus out of wool. It is to be an adornment for the scarf I am making for the Octoscarf contest on the Puzzle Pirates forums. I used a woven square for the head, stuffed with extra wool, and I made legs out of plaited wool. Lastly, I stitched on some eyes and a smiley mouth!

As well as the octopus for decoration, I also made some woolen octopus suction caps/flowers! 

The scarf itself is going well, too! I can't knit using normal knitting needles because my hands are too sore, so I am knitting my scarf using a circular knitting loom! It is about halfway done, I think. 

Unfortunately,  my hands don't like this method of knitting too much, either! My fingers swell and hurt, so I can only do a bit at a time. 

Today, I made another flower, and added a few rows to my scarf. I got too sore to knit any more very quickly, and I was forced to stop making a flower by a cattie visitor! Apparently laps are for cats, not for knitting!

 
~Adrielle =)

Pics, Pics, Pics!

I decided it was time to upload some of the pictures that have been accumulating on my camera's memory card over the last few weeks! Enjoy! 

Scooting!

Firstly, I still love my scooter! Lol! Here are some pictures from a scooter adventure about a week ago. It was SO hot, but my hands and wrists were aching so much, I had to wear gloves. Pirate gloves! =) Yarr!

 My gloves match my flag perfectly! 

Knitting!

As well as scooter adventures, I have begun my attempt at trying to knit an octopus-themed scarf for this contest on the Puzzle Pirates forums. My hands are too sore for me to hold actual knitting needles and knit in the usual way, so I am having a go at looming my scarf on a circular loom. I have never knitted anything on a loom before, so it will be a challenge! 

More Scooting! 


This afternoon, me and Elle went for a walk/scoot. We saw a lot of locusts :S (There has been a plague of them where we live, and recently the next generation of them hatched. They aren't big enough to fly yet, but they hop everywhere!) We saw lots of the usual browny kind, and this green guy!

When we were about halfway around our circuit, we noticed that Moke, was following us... It is pretty worrying that she would walk that far, and that she would go near such busy roads! She had been focussed on following us, and hadn't realised how far she had gone from home. When she did realise, she panicked and got all scared! We had to pick her up and take her home again! She was very grateful, and clinged to Elle all the way home!

After taking Moke home (and putting her inside so that she wouldn't follow us again), we went on our walk again. 

Dinner! 

A picture of my dinner! =D Marinated salmon, sweet and sour cucumber and fried rice!  

Moke!

Snoozing after her long walk... lol!
 

Franklin and Shelley!

My Garden!

This bucket is full of rainwater from the last 2 days! It is a very big bucket...

Honey!

 ~Adrielle =D

The Factory!

Well, I have been working a lot on my factory assignment over the last few weeks. I made the first two pieces of machinery that I had to make (the crusher and the furnace), and had a lovely box and scale marker for the room or building of my factory.

The next thing on the list of things to do was to make my own piece of machinery. The only thing that it really said I had to do was to make something that fitted in with the other machinery, and to make something with at least two moving parts that looked like they could make the machine work. So I made a crane. I made the plans, and collected reference images, and designed and built it. It was kind of fun, but took a pretty long time and a lot of mental energy.

The last tutorial left on the list was for a conveyor belt. I couldn't get the tutorial to work, so I emailed the email address that I am supposed to email with any problems. They didn't reply, so I sent messages to a few of my teachers, who did reply. The website with the tutorials was redone this week, and the conveyor belt one now works. The only problem is that now they have put extra information on the piece of machinery we have to make, and my poor old crane no longer fits the criteria =(. I will have to make something else, I guess (I have been researching saws).


A bit dejected about my crane, and pretty reluctant to scrap it completely, I worked a bit today on the factory superstructure - the supports that hold the building up, windows, (doors - even though it didn't mention those on the assignment sheet - how can the factory workers get in and out without doors?!), chutes and lights. All I have to do now is make another piece of machinery to replace the crane, and make a conveyor belt (although the tutorial looks a bit sketchy on the details...) I kind of think I should make a light switch as well, maybe lol! 

~Adrielle =)

Bone Scanniness!

Well, I actually slept ok last night, for the first time in a pretty long while! This was a very good thing, as I had to get up early to go to the hospital for my bone scans this morning. The hospital in the town where I live doesn't have a nuclear medicine department, so mum had to take me to the bigger hospital in the next town over. I got realllllllllly car sick on the way there, and the nausea from it stuck around for ages! It was very unfun! Eventually, it passed, though! 


There was a very long wait to get my first scan done, and to get the dye injected (around an hour). I was feeling really sick, and sitting up waiting was really hard. The air conditioning at the hospital was very cold and drafty, and made my joint pain a lot worse :S (especially in my elbows and hands), and I was all nervous! Murder She Wrote was on the tv in the waiting room, but the sound was too low to hear. Therefore, we decided to give the characters voices of our own! We decided on a couple of possible murderers (because they looked shifty, had a toupee, or wore too much eye liner). It is hard to believe that people actually had some of the hair styles from that show! Hairspray it til it's concrete! Hehe! Eventually, I was called in. Mum came with me to push my wheelchair, and to keep me company! 

The lady who did my scans was really nice! Although she said that I had "deep veins", and she had trouble finding one, I didn't even feel it when she put the drip in my arm :) The first lot of scans didn't take long. It was all rather interesting! I had scans done of my knees, and then a full body one. I had to lie on a thin bed with an odd pillow which gave such a weird deflating sensation when I put my head on it! I giggled! The machine was so mechanically! It moved me around and moved itself around me robotically! It was pretty cool. I had my arms strapped to my sides (which was surprisingly comfortable, as it took all the pressure off of my shoulders and arms!) The scan didn't seem to take that long, and I almost fell asleep during it! 


After scan number one, I was allowed to leave the hospital for four hours. We went to Spotlight (which is a large craft and fabric shop) to look for cross stitch and long stitch kits, but they had very few... They seemed to have stopped stocking a lot of the crafty things I like to buy and do! I was pretty disappointed with their range. I think I will be shopping at Lincraft or the local craft shop instead in the future! 


After not buying anything at Spotlight (for like the first time EVER), we went across the road to a fancy-ish cafe restaurant for lunch (YES! We did get to go out! I was so unbelievably happy, I could have cried, seriously!) I had a chicken Caesar salad that was divine!!! I also had a really nice drink called a blood orange Frou-Frou. It was made from boiled fruit and spices, and had lots of awesomely cool ice. (It was above 40 degrees Celsius here today!) I also had iced tea and water because I was supposed to drink a lot after being injected with the dye for my scans. After lunch, we came home for a short sleep before my next scan. I got to sleep for about twenty minutes before I had to wake up and go back to the hospital. 


When we went back to the nuclear medicine department, there had been an emergency and we were told that my scan would be half an hour late. The nice lady suggested that we go and have a drink or something while we waited, so we did! I had apple juice and this marvellous invention that I had never seen before today - a double chocolate fudge wagon wheel... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm =D (Yep, it tasted as good as it sounds, or even better!) After our little snack, we went back to have my last scans. 


I had to have a lot more of them than in the morning. I had a lengthier full body scan, then scans of my feet, knees, hands and elbows. The feet scan was the hardest, because I had to sit up on the thin little bed and stay completely still with my feet on the scanner. I was really tired, as it had been such a full on day for me! I was all shaky, achy and exhausted! Luckily, it was over within a few minutes. 


So now that all my scans are over, I have to wait until next week to find out what the results were. In a way, I hope that they find something that can be easily fixed so that I can feel better. In another way, I am very scared that they might find something bad that they can't easily fix, or that they won't find anything at all (and they can't fix something that they can't find). I don't really feel nervous anymore, though. The nerves about the results will probably hit me later on! Tomorrow, I have to go and have about a dozen blood tests. I am a bit nervous about their results! They are to re-assess my inflammation markers, and to see whether or not I have rheumatoid arthritis, or various other conditions. 


I guess no matter what the tests say, I will survive somehow =). I always do! 


~Adrielle =)