Time on my hands

So I'd forgotten, or tried to blank out, how useless you can feel post operation. Such a lack of energy, both physical and mental, can really get you down but I had the advantage of being prepared (ie it wasn't emergency surgery) so I could have a few projects ready to keep me occupied.

The first few weeks I basically sat on the sofa feeling a little bit sorry for myself and really not being able to focus on anything but wanted to do something with my hands. I can't just sit and watch TV, it's just not what I do, I get too restless. Don't get me wrong I LOVE watching TV but I always need to be doing something. And so I got some balls of wool and started to crochet.

I started with a cover for part of my sofa. That took me the first week.....

I then decided to make something for someone for Christmas and managed to make this during the second week:

Yep you read that right, I did this in a week. As mentioned before I was basically sitting on the sofa for most of the day except for going for my walk every day (part of the recovery programme) and crocheting is so therapeutic. And I felt as if I wasn't wasting time. I was able to do something despite being so feeble...

Week three and Christmas was starting to rear it's ugly head and I hadn't actually finished making my Christmas cards. If you don't know me I make my cards every year, have done for nearly 20 years now and I tend to send over 100. Luckily I had prepared a lot of the elements so it was just a case of putting them together so here is a selection of this year's cards:

 

Toward the end of week three my mental 'fuzziness' was improving so I ventured into cross stitch. Yet another of my favourites which I find so calming but you really need to be able to focus on the pattern so I started with something small which was a lavender bag for an old family friend:

I then also had to finish something that I was doing for my cousin to give to a friend. I had done everything before the op except about 3 hours worth of work but couldn't focus until quite late on in order to finish it:

and also finish something I plan to give to OH for Christmas. Was originally for his birthday but I ran out of time. Can you guess who he supports.... Yes I'm a football widow.

I also wanted to design a card which didn't involve stamps as the main focus and came up with this:

And I have also been wanting to design something in felt for the Christmas tree. It's basic but I really enjoyed making it and was quite chuffed that it was an original design of my own rather than copied from a book:

So that it was I've been up to for the past week. My op was on 19th November and here we are on 19th December so am very pleased to have created so much despite sleeping alot!

Finally while taking photos for this post I was inspired by my embroidery threads ready for the next project. Hope you like!