Hat & Mittens & Church

Since starting my sick leave I have been devoting a lot of time to knitting.  I just finished a project that I've been meaning to do for ages: a hat and matching pair of mittens.  This is just in time because my favorite hat & mittens got lost at the end of last winter.  But I'd been meaning to make these anyway and it was fun to do.  Here they are:

Working on them helped pass the time as I'm needing to be pretty sedentary because of my back.  I've got lots of yarn left over and am planning to follow these things with a scarf. 

If you're a knitter and want to know about yarn and patterns, I'm marglamb on Ravelry (link).

My pain is less awful since I went on sick leave.  Being quiet really has helped.  But the pain is still a real issue.  I still need to be careful where & how I move and sit and still take the pain pills which make me tired and fuzzy. 

I went to church for the first time in quite a while.  It was really wonderful to be back after so long away!  I stayed away because sitting still in a church pews is torture for people with this kind of back issue -- even worse than most hard, straight chairs.  But our church is very understanding and our pastor encouraged me to feel free to move around and do whatever I needed to to be comfortable.  So I spent part of the service lying down on my yoga mat in the "prayer room" next to the sanctuary.  During another part of the service I stood up and stretched in the hall -- and ran into some old friends who were visiting from our of town with their new baby, who I hadn't gotten to meet yet.  That was a real treat!  And for more of the service I was able to get comfortable sitting sideways on a pew.  It was really good to be back, even if it required some creativity to keep from hurting myself.

Going to church was part of accepting that this back thing is a long-term issue and not just a short illness.  I can't live a completely normal life until it is resolved, but at least I can figure out some ways to do things that are important to me.