I first started knitting this on Feb 29th.  And then ripped it out three times for various reasons (love the yarn but it’s not easy to fix mistakes in!  Particularly not when you drop the whole damn project off of the needles!)

However the fourth time was the charm and I started it on Wednesday night and finished it this evening.

I used slightly less than 2 balls (25g each) of Sirdar Firefly and 12 mm needles.  I think the colour is called Aquamarine, I bought the yarn in September and truthfully can’t remember.  Actually I think the aquamarine might be the one with greener tints to it, kinda turquoise.  Whatever.  It took way less yarn that I thought it would - going by how much was in each ball weight wise I bought four balls (and have two and a bit left) but it never occurred to me to look at how much yardage there was per ball - and this is a very light yarn.

It’s not as neat as I would like but I love it and am very glad I persevered.

I think I will probably make another scarf with the remainder as a gift for a friend.  But I think Zeeby’s Bag is probably going to be my next project.  For knitters, if you are a ravelry member look it up on there.  It’s from the Stitch n Bitch book by Debbie Stoller.

On Monday I opened the door to let a new carer in and was greeted by the words “Do you remember me?”

I hate that question. I meet loads of people through having carers and CAB and other stuff and they always remember me and either I don’t or I do once they mention knowing me and I get a few minutes. I can meet three or four new people every time I’m at CAB but of course I’m the only person they deal with and with my disability being visually obvious I get remembered either by name or as “the disabled girl”

Anyway I looked at her and I thought she looked familiar and figured it had to be this very very occasional carer I have but haven’t had for over a year. So I said yes I remembered her.

“blah blah Sophie”.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“Wow you really look like Sophie.”

OK, time for a rethink, it’s someone who knows my sister. ARGH

“Hi. It’s Jess isn’t it?”

She smiled and said yes and I sighed with relief that I figured it out (I HATE having to admit not knowing who people are when they know me).

I’ve had carers my own age before. I’ve had carers younger than me before. I’ve got an occasional carer now whose only a year or so older than my sister. I’ve had carers old enough to be my mum and ones old enough to be my Nan. I’ve had carers I went to school with. But for some reason have one of my sisters friends from primary school come and do care for me was really strange.

I don’t think it’s necessarily because she’s the same age as my sister… just because I remember her as someone who used to run around playing with my sister when she was a child, they used to make lots of noise and bug me, get in my way.

It’s easily 10 years since I saw her and I can’t say I’ve thought about her. But it was just hard to take her out of that box and move her to another one.

I got on well with her and I was texting Sophie trying to get her to guess who was with me. And although I don’t think she will be here regularly (she’s working during uni holidays) I’d be happy to have her back here.

***

I went for a walk with Soph and Milo yesterday. And Soph was telling me that Jess wrote on her facebook wall about coming to do my care. I did have to laugh.

“She wrote that she met you and was like ‘oh your sister’s lovely.’ I was like “what’s that all about?! Where’s she got that from?!”***

I love you too little sis!

***Edited to add a small disclaimer:  I just repeated that to my mum and Soph swears she never said that.  I however swear she did.  So that may or may not be true.

I bumped into Phil on my way home from town a little while ago.  He was driving and pulled over to talk to me.  We did the how are you, how was your holiday general chat thing.  He asked if I needed something to which I went “that’s a very open question…” and he said he’d take that as a no.  And as he was leaving I said “love to Pat”.

But how strange and how hard it was not to say “how’s Stevie? Did he enjoy the trip? love to him”.

I’d been thinking about how it’s nearly a year as I was wandering back from Sainsburys but seeing Phil and thinking that… it almost hit me again, it brought it’s realness home.

How I wish things weren’t like this.

And, changing the subject slightly, I must comment on the fact that I never know what to think/say/feel when people refer to my friends with disabilities who have died as being “all better now.”  I’m not sure I like it or agree with it.

But I have knitting to finish and a new episode of Torchwood to watch so I shall leave that topic to another day.