Nayu's Craft Tme #235 Medical Mayhem

 

Mikuru from Aikatsu! anime

Feeling sleepy today(nothing new)  so not quite in the mood to take pics of my latest craft projects so I will do that in the next post but wanted to do a little catch up. 

The other week I had a routine hospital appointment for my contact lenses. Upon arrival I was a bit a anxious as the waiting area for the covid screening was busy and almost everyone in front of me was given a pager to wait. Thankfully I wasn't. I was instructed to go to the purple waiting area. Usually it's the green area, so I double checked in green and yes they were full so it was purple. Off I went to the pretty coloured chairs in purple. I waited a while, nothing new there. My phone rang, I felt bad I had turned it off but it turned out that was a good thing: the caller was the hospital reception asking where I was as they were searching everyone for me. I had become a missing person!!! 

Madoka from Aikatsu looking horrified

It turns out there were two purple waiting areas in that section of the hospital. How stupid!!! I apologised, and all was fine they were just relieved I was ok as the doctor knows I'm super reliable and don't usually wander off without letting someone know. If i'm directed to a different coloured section I will double check I'm in the correct. 

Mizuki collapsed in Aikatsu 

 

 

The second medical drama was far less pleasant and partly my fault. I'm not naming the provider who I get my medication from, but the short version is due to the app not having an automated system to catch double orders I was without my opiate medication for almost a week. It was extremely unpleasant and I felt awful. I thought the situation was sorted, until the Saturday I got a message and of course it was a bank holiday weekend so I had to wait until the Tuesday to sort it out. I thankfully had a few tablets spare so simply halved them as half was better than nothing, although a quarter of my usual dose made an unpleasant few days. I have been recovering from that drama, medication arrived safely, and life is back to what counts as normal for me. Going to be playing a lot of the new Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom once it releases tomorrow but plan another post next week with craft updates so be sure to tune in then! 

Sora from Aikatsu

Happy 2022!

Ichigo (left) and Akari from Aikatsu! in their new year kimono (Ichigo almost never has her hair up) Happy 2022!!

 

A new year, a new location! Well, sort of. Half of 2021 was on the awful side due to previously mentioned events that I will not elaborate on again. I thank God all that is in the past. Then in the later half I got to move to a beautiful new flat and that's where I'm starting my year! 

Tulip and Snow having floor time

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that mid December I adopted 2 beautiful rescue guinea pigs, Tulip and Fluffy. Fluffy got renamed to Snowdrop, although her full name is barely used now and Snow suits her a lot. I love Tulips so Tulip remains Tulip. And extremely greedy! Tulip for sure is the most confident piggy of the two. They both eat a lot, Tulip could eat far more veggies at veggie time if I let her but I don't. She is so greedy that initially occasionally she would almost cough when eating. I thankfully found an article online that was the same issue with other piggies - they do scoff their food too fast. So now I make sure any veggies are in smaller pieces and hey presto, no coughing! Obviously if she does cough continuously I will take her to the vet but so far the smaller food works. I do regularly check for any lumps and bumps just in case its something a bit sinister, but so far so good.

I can trust Snow to take a whole bit of bell pepper or lettuce, run away with it as they tend to do even though they then both choose the same spot in the cage to eat it. Snow doesn't gobble her food! She is extremely nervous though. She has gained confidence in the cage, and happily takes food from me in the mornings when I hand feed. Laptime in the evenings when I give evening veggies is a different matter. Neither like being picked up - guinea pigs are herd animals after all, but Snow does not like being in the cuddle cup. I like hand feeding the veggies as it means I know they both get the correct amount and that Tulip won't steal it all, plus it will help with bonding. As they much away I gently stroke them. I think Snow tolerates this - if she were truly scared she wouldn't eat - initially it would take a few minutes on my lap before she would start eating, now she eats almost straight away. But when the veggies run out she likes to do her ostrich impression, burying her head in the cuddlecup and hiding from me. I stroke her for a little bit longer then put her back. She quickly goes to munching hay so is not traumatised from it. 

I think Snow's nervousness dates to why they ended up at the rescue. They are around 2 years old and were together, but whoever had them couldn't care for them: Snow is long-haired, and her hair/fur was double the length it should have been, horrendously matted and they both had mites plus their nails were never clipped. So when they entered the rescue Snow would have had a lot of work done to her by people. I think she associates being picked up with awful things. Now I do brush her regularly - I have to as part of her care. My family helped me cut her fur. While it's winter I'm happy for it to be long, but come summer to keep her cool and safe from summer hazards she will get a very short haircut! Until then I will cut a little here and there as I can. Nail clipping will happen by the end of the month, trying to build up more trust before I start and I will undoubtedly have to do a paw a day to reduce the stress for them. 

Tulip up to no good!

Today I'm setting up a run beside their cage - I will be making it bigger soon, I just got 1 packet of supplies in case the quality was poor. I think it's ok, It's a similar style grid cage system like the C&C cage I have for them which is the biggest that Kavee Cages provide (6x2) 6 grids long and 2 grids wide. I did let them run around most of the kitchen, but setting that up takes a lot of energy from me, so having a slightly smaller permanently in place run will mean they get time outside the cage so I can clean up the poop - they poop an insane amountn - and also air their beddiing to help the fleece liners last longer. I use pee pads on the most used areas to lengthen the main fleece liner's life even longer before it has to be washed. Not having to set up a run means they can be put out their cage no matter how rough I feel, and I know they will be safer: with the boxes method Tulip managed to escape 3 times! Where there's a hole she would find it and Snow would try to follow her. While funny after the event, at the time it was nerve wracking as I didn't want her to get near wires or pee on the carpet.

I don't make new year resolutions anymore. I am trying to read a bit more, and working on jigsaw puzzles too. I try to make Friday's my quiet craft days where I sew as I rewatch Little House On the Prairie dvds. Anyway, that's it for now, I will try to blog at least once a week here or/and on Nayu's Reading Corner where my book reviews go. Time to go make a guinea  pig run! 

Ichigo from Aikatsu! in casual gear

Over on Nayu's Reading Corner #25 Let's talk about the anime Aikatsu!

 

 Find out my thoughts on the 2021 latest Aikatsu! anime series over on Nayu's Reading Corner. Sometimes shows go on too long! This is Ichigo from the first series.

Nayu's Craft Time #126 Spring crochet facecloths, Cat antics, Investigating black rooms & mystery food!

Spring colours!

Hi everyone! Yesterday was a quiet-ish day. Rain doesn't always agree with me so I spent the morning working on these crochet face cloths/face flannels. These are made of a much softer cotton than my dishcloths, which look like this and can always be used as an exfoliation cloth, lotion not included! 

Lemon & white = bright & cheerful!

At the moment I'm undecided if they should have loops for hanging them up, so may have it as an option so you can choose to buy them with or without a handy loop to suit your preference.

Not the cover of the book mentioned, but it's at least the title. I find the cover a bit creepy.

I had a delicious salad and jacket potato yesterday which I will chat about tomorrow because 1 key ingredient is a new favourite food of mine.. I wasn't in the mood for gaming, so fiddled around with anime books and Youtube. After dipping into a reread I read quite a harrowing experience of child abuse for review, and recovered with happy go lucky anime Aikatsu. Paper Butterflies by Lisa Heathfield is out in June, I highly recommend it, but make sure you have tissues and something fun to do after. 

My kind of fun is seeing Otome glomp (hug with fangirl love) Ichigo in Aikatsu

Not mine but I'd love a cat with this colouring!

I just had to get up to let my cat know she isn't allowed on a certain spot in my room, not that you need  know that as this isn't a vlog, but I felt like sidetracking you! Who doesn't like a cat interruption?

Sample of camoflage patterns - I have to research a lot when writing!

Today I was up rather early, so once I woke up fully I got stuck into writing. I finally finished making notes on the seemingly endless chapter 13! It's not mega long, but because there were a lot of details to the environment my characters are in, I had to note it all down for future reference. Doing this has helped identify impractical items, as well as make me think about decor in a way I never did in previous edits. I end up searching all sorts of random things like various camoflage colours, black rooms and the lowdown on holograms! It's fun writing science-fiction for children!
 

Time to head off and see if I can finish notes on another chapter by lunch, since I take a long afternoon break to recharge myself. Be sure to come back tomorrow find out which food I'm in love with at the moment! 

It's not watermelon, although that would be really refreshing right now!

Nayu's Project Progress #16 Experimenting with check patterns!

Made this yummy fudge this week - can you guess the flavour? Look at the non chocolate coloured bits...

I hope you've all had a good few days. The weather is unpredictable, which does in some ways mean how I feel is up and down. It's nice being able to post a proper post! 

While resting and between doing other things, including making chocolate orange truffles which I will talk about in more detail in another post, I've been experimenting with colour. Here's the yarn I've got: 

It will be a pretty pink and purple blanket. I can't remember whether I this when I bought the yarn, but the reason I'm experimenting is because I want to come up with a check pattern blanket. I could do a simple two colour check blanket, like this one: 

On closer inspection it isn't a simple 2 colour one, but pretend it is just pink and white please! Not different shades of pink as I'm almost out of online time....

but I don't want to. There's no way I'm going to do a complex pattern, involving rectangles and random lines of colour.

These are beyond my current crochet skills to recreate.

The kind of pattern I want is one found in some outfits in my favourite anime Aikatsu. 

As you can see it's a simple check pattern using a few colours, and I'm working on replicating this, minus the separating white stripes. One day I may use these exact colours, but for now I'm just using the pattern idea. Here's my first trial with colour: 

Not quite a check pattern but pretty enough I'm tempted to use it in a future project (with the same yarn!) 

So I'm on attempt #2, and here's what it looks like now. 

 I might be on to something! Promise to give you updates when I finally settle on a pattern for the blanket: it won't be this small, I'm only using small squares for figuring out the final pattern. 

I hope you're having fun with whatever craft/diy project is on your agenda!