Some fun things :-)

My health continues to be pretty dicey, but I've been trying to make sure I include some fun things in my life day to day.  That's definitely helping me to feel more human!  Here's some pictures of some of those :-)

A felt picture I made for my nephew's birthday

The Himalayan orchids my friend Muriel gave me years ago are in bloom :-)  There's even more flowers on them now than when I took the photo a couple of days ago.

I mentioned earlier that I've been learning patterned darning.  I'm enjoying it so much, and have now progressed to more complex patterns.  I'm amazed how making something I've always found tedious into something harder but more interesting has been so addictive.

This houndstooth weave turns out to be simpler than it looks.  It takes a bit of thinking to keep the threads tidy as you keep alternating colours every second row, but then you just go over the two threads of the same colour + the next thread, then under the fourth.  As your repeat that, back and forth, it turns into a cool pattern.

I'm experimenting with dropping losec (a drug that stops my stomach producing acid) and am trying several strategies to keep my stomach contents where they should be whilst also going back to being acidic.  One of those is taking home-made Acidex four times a day.  Like gaviscon dual action, Acidex forms a float that rides on top of your stomach contents, but unlike gaviscon it doesn't also contain an antacid so doesn't neutralise your stomach acid.  It turns out I really dislike the taste of acidex, so I decided to have a go at making my own: it has fairly simple active ingredients, after all, and lists the relative quantities on the label.  Homemade also turns out to be a lot cheaper!

After taking my own concoction for a bit, I was curious how it matched up with the commercial stuff.  The image below is a dollop of my acidex, then real acidex, and lastly gaviscon dual action, each in malt vinegar.

It seems my acidex works pretty similarly to the real thing, but gaviscon dual action formed a much fluffier and better-dispersed float.  It also kept on fizzing for ages, what with all the antacid.  I suspect gaviscon's significantly more effective than acidex, but for now I want to keep my stomach acidic, so I'll be sticking with acidex.

It was quite cool watching them work.  The dollop of acidex/gaviscon initially sunk into the vinegar, then quite suddenly popped up to the surface as the acid activated it :-)

And lastly, for the first time in ages (since March?) I went swimming at Blockhouse Bay Beach today.  I'm pretty tired now, and I mostly just floated etc. rather than actually swimming, but it was so delightful to be there.  And, after the dry spell we've been having, the water was astonishingly clear as well as millpond still.  Such a joy.