Often, I hear form friends admiring words about the huge amount of needlework I do, how much I can knit, crochet or sew. And although I know these words are genuine prise or even a bit of envy of my possibility (free time) to follow my passion, there is a drop of sadness hidden for me. And today I want to explain why.

Over the last weeks I have refashioned a blouse, sewed a sweater, crocheted a vest and a cardigan (I will write about these two in the next posts, promise), and altered clothes for my mother. And believe me, in no way am I fast in any needlework.

So, why do I have the time to do all these things besides my daily routines? Because there are periods in my life where I have no daily routines to speak of. And the last month was such a period. I had so many days with headaches that it was difficult to keep up with simple things like cleaning or doing groceries or even to enjoy our new garden. A recent development of my migraines is, that I have less often extreme intense migraine but therefore much more days with a constant headache (and no, its no medication overuse). These constant headaches get worse with painting, reading, watching or hearing something and even worse is movement, so my answer to this is crafting. Knitting and crochet is sometimes the only thing, which is possible, hence the huge number of garments I produce (Not sure why I have this change, perhaps pre-menopause??? Anybody experiences with this?) And being able to have a finished piece of garments in my hands feels like an accomplishment to me (although not the same as being able to teach and earn proper money).

But I did not write this to make your eyes wet, no I write this, because in the last week I have crafted nearly nothing… because I had a complete week without headaches.

This means a lot for me and I perhaps overdid it with other pleasurable activities instead of chores at home ?: I went jogging two times, made one HIT workout and was almost everyday in the garden fighting brambles, mewing the lawn or cutting trees, I baked two breads, some mini muffins and I read 1,5 books…. all things which are not possible or pleasurable while having headaches.

The one thing which I nearly neglected was crafting, nearly…. ??? I suspect I have developed a tiny addiction to knitting and crochet, so even if I am able to also do other things, I worked some stitches in the evening. And instead of starting something new I picked up an old project with the honest intend to finish it.

But…. I need your help. First to the project. As always, it’s a cardigan and maybe you even remember it. The pattern is Boardwalk from Sarah Dallas. A classic bottom up construction with set-in sleeves in stockinette. And exactly these sleeves are the problem (and the cotton yarn which hates me and bites me into the fingers with every stitch, which splits and is stiff like hell). The pattern has some wordings I find tough to understand and while starting the sleeves I again encountered one of these parts.
The pattern asks for:
Dec 1 st at each end of the next rows
Then on following alt row
Then on 6 foll 4th rows
Then foll 1 alt rows
Then on every row until 24 sts remain.

AHHHHHHHHH!!! Does ‘decrease on alternating rows’ means I should decrease only on the knit row and not on the purl row? Then I would have decreased unevenly on the one side of the sleeve (and the sleeve caps are not formed differently on front and back like in sewing).
Does ‘on 6 foll…’ mean I should decrease 1 stitch at the end of every 4th row and repeat this 6 times? Then I would again only decrease on one side of the sleeve…

Please dear #needleworkmonday community, help. Although I hope my headache free time increases, I want to get this carding done.

Besides my wallowing in self pity… how are you all? Do you plan to participate on #memademay2020? Are you still ok despite corona limitations?

Thank you @crosheille for iniciating and @muscara, @shanibeer, @marblely for hosting the #needleworkmonday. If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday on hive blog. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community. You can read more comments on this post on my hive blog. 

If this is not enough, you can find my post also on Handmade on Tuesday and read even more about knitting and sewing, but beware most post are in German.