The Bluestocking - Invoking Split Pea Annexe B

[Magpiecomplex]

Welcome all, pull up a gerbil and make yourself comfortable!

Hey loves, saw this fretting. Please don’t worry. Yes away since early Friday. Back on Monday. DH is on collection duty. He is WELL TRAINED and will do this with panache.

😘

Why do posts sometimes disappear when I go back a page to check somethings, and sometimes they don't? Well it's just happened to my post about:
Magpie interrupting a holiday because tractor misidentification😁
Android and Alexandra understandably worried about their squares being in postal limbo - hope you find out soon that they are save and sound at their destination.
LiveAid - oddly I haven't a strong memory of it, except for Freddie Mercury owning Wembley and the world, Geldof saying 'fuckin' live on TV, thinking it was a pretty amazing achievement, and that's about it.
It wasn't perfect as a response to the famine, but at least it was a response, and fair play to Bob Geldof and Midge Ure for acting instead of angsting.

Aw, thank you K1&P1, as someone here christened you the other day.

I was a student nurse, when Live Aid happened. I was working on the Men’s orthopaedic ward, and we had it on, on the tv.

So much wonderful talk about tractors! Sorry about your eye, Errol, it sounds very ouchy. I also have a high pain threshold - I think it stems from male doctors not taking women's pain seriously.

I am in the garden with tea and knitting. I tried to upload an image of 11 squares I'd knitted up to the 5 July. I have another 10 or so in different colours now. I'll be sending them to Woolley Hugs as Little Hugs for premature babies.

DSD was born at 25 weeks and has serious vision problems because she was given pure oxygen which caused retinal detachment. Coincidentally that year I worked at a research institute that had successfully conducted trials on preemie babies that gave them oxygenated surfactant instead of oxygen. Their lungs don't have to breathe so they get respite from the effort and they don't go blind. Because DSD was brought up in Spain, she missed a lot of the help she would have received here. I am going to get her a referral to a low vision clinic to see if she is actually sufficiently sight-impaired to get help.

My interview went really well and I should be sent through to the next stage in early August - before my operation. Thanks to the cheerbils for their very good routine! It genuinely helped. I had some immediate feedback which helped and my confidence has surged as a result.

Knotty has said she's away and her DH is collecting but not opening parcels.

Oh, she's already posted this! Slow Puffling. Soz all!

My recent contribution to the Bluestocking has been small because
No knitting
No tractors
No Irish

Also feeling a bit out of sorts. Back soon x

Wassup, @FuzzyPuffling? Anything we can do?

<<<sends hugs>>>

Aw, take it easy and keep well x

I will confess here that I don't knit, my Irish is sometimes very erratic and I know very little about tractors.

One of my grandfathers did have a farm, but thanks to Irish inheritance laws it was one of those wee tiny farms that was just two or three fields. One winter, about a hundred years ago, the river burst its banks and he had to carry the pigs out on his shoulders. And that's what decided him that he wasn't meant to be a farmer.

Thanks to all for your kind thoughts. We came home from north wales a day early (were thinking we would anyway as it’s too hot there today which is just wrong!) so I’m reclining in a darkened room, found the merkin thread so now I understand various of the posts on here, 😂while DH has gone out to buy nice food.

Just realised that I should not admit to being "erratic", in my accent it might sound like something else

Excellent mishearing!

Friend of mine heard a comment that she thought was "she's notionally the king of Ireland" which later turned out to be "she's no shrinking violet"

Too much drooling there, she must have heatstroke

Yes, me too.

I donated £20 to live aid. That was a lot of money for me then. I've been quite a bit stingier in my subsequent donations to similar causes.

I posted my squares yesterday.

Oddly, Marie, I was going to say that my lasting memory of LiveAid was Freddie Mercury. A bunch of us watched it at a friend's, and the set before was good, as was the one after, but Queen were superlative. He strutted out onto that stage as though he owned the whole arena, and had the crowd eating out of his hand.

For the tractor fans, were you aware that New Hollands are made in Basildon? Fun fact acquired today.

Whispers <much better, thanks Android!>

Obviously you've never seen KB get his top off & go at the ground with a pick axe.

... 'scuse me a minute, I feel overcome by the heat, or something...

I can't contribute much on tractors (other than what I've picked up from my brother in law, which is mostly about how to cook baked potatoes so they are ready for your lunch when out in the furthest field) but I can claim to have driven a combine harvester once - under careful supervision thankfully.

Currently knitting square no 24 in green. The red is lipstick. Most are 50 rows by 30 stitches, which makes them a bit bigger than 6" x 6". But some of the patterns have been longer or narrower. I think I'll get a couple of nice blankets from these.

I have more black wool (but maybe not appropriate), another ball of gold, one of cream and the green and lipstick were from new balls. So maybe another 20 squares before needing more wool.

Found a brilliant website for patterns just using knit and purl https://www.knitpurlstitches.com/?m=1 some patterns didnt work because I was using 30 stitches on patterns that called for multiples of 8 or 12. I just added additional stitches from the pattern, then realised that knitting the original pattern on the other side skewed the patterns. I have now added borders (and in one case knitted 29 stitches) to compensate.

Really loving the knitting and it has displaced book nooks for now.

Hope you feel better, Fuzzy, take it easy, and pop back in whenever you feel like it, on any topic at all, or just to catch up on the usual array of weird topics going on here

Myrtle, that's fascinating about oxygenated surfactant for premature babies - and a coincidence that DSD would have benefitted from it, what a pity she didn't have access to it.

Well done about the interview, and gosh August is going to be a busy month!
It'll keep the Cheerbils on their toes, literally😀

The squares are lovely, what a stunning range of textures you've managed to get in the different squares!

Myrtle, was it really you who only just learned to knit? I mean, wow. Look at you go! Although you did say you loved experimenting, didn't you?

My DM knitted a lot when I was a kid so I did learn, but I couldn't really coordinate my hands, needles and wool and stopped 40 years ago in my mid-teens. When I thought I'd give it a go for Swashy's blanket, I thought I would manage a couple of squares very slowly. I was amazed at how quickly and suddenly it all clicked.

There are several mistakes in the squares. If I drop a stitch I'm likely to unravel or start again and I don't fully understand the mechanics behind the stitches and how to make the patterns. I am good at following them though!

So yes, I started exactly a month ago today on bamboo skewers. 🤣🤣🤣

I now have two sets of needles and I've knitted about 37 squares.

I have become a bit obsessed and it helps me actually watch TV rather than just have it on and ask DH what's happening.

Wow!

I've just got my two in the post. So I hope they'll arrive in time. I dropped them off at the PO/Spar in Beaumaris. We were going to carry on to Penmon but fella realised he couldn't find his credit card. So back we went to the Tesco in Bangor that we'd got the groceries from this morning. His card had been waiting anxiously for him. Their reunion brought tears to my eyes.

Didn't see much of Beaumaris but they had a human sized puffin costume at the end of the pier advertising the boat trips. It wasn't moving so i think it'd just been propped up on something, hopefully without the person inside who'd have been dead of heatstroke.

That website looks excellent, Myrtle.

Thank you!

The trial was revolutionary and it's been used ever since to support breathing.

It is a shame DSD wasn't given surfactant but she was at an excellent hospital. One other baby died and another lost a lung, so the fact that she's alive is amazing.

What has become clear is that everyone was so focused on the "miracle" of her survival that she hasn't had the care needed to support the disabilities she has as a result of surviving. We're trying to rectify that now.

I was also involved with the trial that gave women antibiotics automatically if they had a c-section rather than wait for an infection to develop. The trial leader was awarded a PhD for the trial without having to submit. Today millions of women, some of whom may be reading this, have benefited from being given antibiotics automatically following a section through reduced infection and death.

I’m finding it too hot to do much knitting at the moment - even though it isn’t as hot here in Scotland as it is down South. I am knitting the lace border onto a baby blanket and it’s taking a lot of concentration, because every row is different - and even though it’s only a 10 row repeat, I can’t seem to commit it to memory. My brain is full, and the processor is overheating!