I can’t believe it’s been over a fortnight since my last post, even harder to comprehend, is how quickly the first five weeks of 2017 have flown by.  Unfortunately, I’ve spent most of those weeks worrying about my youngest child’s health and the stress that caused, resulted in rather a bad RA flare up.

The good news is the lumbar puncture gave him the all clear for Intracranial hypotension and now we’re just waiting on some more blood test results.  Bless him, he was so very brave, hospitals are scary no matter how old you are.  The staff at CUH were all lovely and their treatment of Kye was first class.  Once home the headache associated with a lumbar puncture came on and persisted for almost a week.  I know it was bad because he didn’t even game, something that is practically unheard of in this house.  He’s back to school now, just in time for the pree’s, much to his delight.

I want to take you back to the flare up, simply because it really made me reevaluate my illness/condition/balls up.  I haven’t been quite right since catching my first cold in over a year, back in November 2016.  My meds compromise my immune system and as a result I tend to avoid friends and family when they’re under the weather.  I’m also fastidious about washing my hands and touching my face.  No matter how many precautions you take, nothing is guaranteed and having caught one virus, I seem to have become much more susceptible to other nasties.  Point in case, I’m just over the stomach virus that’s been doing the rounds.

Joy!

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes, the flare.  So this last one has been one of the worst ones I’ve had for some time now.  Everything hurt, I was even struggling to put a jumper on.  I’m a stubborn so and so though and made myself walk my dogs every day still, even if it took us twice as long and I made sure I kept as warm as possible, which helps to ward off the stiffness.  I also took the painkillers, that I avoid like the plague the rest of the time.  My hands though – ouch!  My hands were so inflamed that knitting more than a couple of rows made them worse and working rib, was horrendous.  I avoided knitting for a couple of days, but a Lora who doesn’t knits, begins to exhibit worrying symptoms.

• Irritability
• Grumpiness
• Mood swings
• Eating all the food
• Nail biting
• Watching trash tv
• Binging on Netflix
• Internet shopping
• Thoughts of selling my stash and abandoning my craft forever
• Internet shopping
• Did I mention the internet shopping?

You’ll agree it had to stop?

I picked up my needles determined to only knit continental style.  I can, but it’s soooo slow and my tension is horribly uneven.  Having worked a cuff in 1×1 rib using the continental method, I had to rip it all back because it was too tight for a small child, let alone me.

Then I remembered Portuguese Knitting and immediately began watching videos on YouTube.  I knew Andrea Wong champions this style of knitting, having read about looked at it several times before, so I started with her video here first.  I then watched the Very Pink Knits tutorial, Staci’s videos always include very clear instructions and a good close up view of what she’s demonstrating.

So what is Portuguese Knitting and how does it differ to the English or Continental Style?

Find out in  Part 2

Happy Making

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