Jane Dallaway

Dementia: Reasons to be cheerful 

Last week I went to Professor Sube Banerjee's inaugural lecture (named "Dementia:Reasons to be cheerful") at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School. I don't think I am the target audience but I still gained something from it. It has been well written up here by someone with a more academic/medical background.

One of the most interesting things I took away was about using quality of life as a measure of successful treatment. This makes a lot of sense. And is a refreshing change from any other measures I've seen. A key thing I hadn't realised was that the majority of dementia patients present many illnesses. This shows how important it is to take a holistic approach to the treatment. For instance, some standard anti-depressants aren't shown to affect dementia sufferers in the same way as non-dementia sufferers. Mum was diagnosed with dementia and diabetes at the same time, and did have some incidents of depression. I hadn't considered before either how common this was, or what the impact of the combination of these would be.

An interesting observation from Professor Banerjee was about the naming of the disease. In the Japanese language, the name of the disease was a combination of the terms Idiocy and Stupidity. Little wonder that there was stigma attached to having a diagnosis. They renamed it to be a combination of the terms Cognition and Disorder. And as a result more sufferers came forward. There were a few mentions of the stigma being the same as that for cancer in the late 70s. This is something that I have heard mentioned a few times in the last few weeks. And an internet search finds this 2012 report from Alzheimer's Disease International focussing on Overcoming the stigma of dementia.

The lecture was well delivered, and I found Professor Banerjee to be engaging, and interesting. And yes, I did leave the lecture theatre feeling cheerful. Feeling that maybe a dementia diagnosis doesn't have to be the most depressing news ever. There is a long way to go, but I left feeling optimistic.

A padded camera bag and a woven phone case 

I decided over Christmas that a padded drawstring bag would work well as a camera bag. Usually my camera just ends up being stuffed into the bottom of a normal bag, and I thought that maybe some additional protection wouldn't go amiss. So I ordered some of this amazing filmstrip fabric. I cut the filmstrip fabric, and reached for the flannel I'd bought and realised that there just wasn't enough flannel in a fat quarter for the size the bag needed to be to take the camera body and my largest lens. So I ordered some more, different flannel. By the time that arrived, my camera had stopped working and I'd had to replace it. With a different sized camera body. Oh, and the largest lens no longer works either. Brilliant! Ho hum!

I followed the usual pattern, but added a piece of batting to the main film fabric outer to give some padding. This worked well except it made it a little bit trickier to get the gusset corners to line up as it was more difficult to feel the right spot. So the corners aren't quite as tidy as I'd have liked.

The second project was another phone case, again using hand woven fabric as an outer and a flannel lining. This time I used some undyed WYS bluefaced leicester DK in ecru, light and medium and did a simple 2 x medium, 2 x light, 2 x ecru pattern. Which I love. I've already started thinking of different ways I can use this pattern again and again. I love the shadow effect of the two browns, and the way that the ecru stands out against it. The wool itself is lovely to work with too.

This was a sample project for something larger, but, as I've said before, I really like to make something usable out of my samples. I made the new phone case using the same principle as the first one, only I made it a little bit longer so it actually covers the top. It's really soft, and I kind of wish it was larger, or I was smaller, and I could snuggle into it as a sleeping bag. I've been using the case for a few days now and it is really lovely. Except that the wool is pilling a bit already. The project I have in mind won't be affected by this too much, but it does make me wonder if there is anything I can do with my sample squares to work this out ahead of time.

HTTPStatus Code generator 

I've been writing some Unit tests this week to try and get good test coverage over a piece of code. And I was failing to cover an area that was concerned with the HTTP status codes returned from a web page. Whilst I thought my code worked, and I could test it on successfully returning web pages, I couldn't work out an easy way to test some of the error conditions. I looked around the web a lot and finally tracked down httpstat.us via this stackoverflow question which just generates the appropriate page response. So a call to http://httpstat.us/404 simply returns a 404 Not Found response.

A great resource. (And blogged here mainly so that I can find it again next time I need it!)

Woven sample squares: the start of a study in finishing 

I've recently been watching Know your wool, a free craftsy video series about wools. As part of the series Deborah talks about how she goes about sampling yarns. And I thought that it seemed like a good idea. Up until now I've either sampled them in a small weaving project, or not sampled at all and hoped for the best. I've also recently been considering a more scientific method of determining the best finishing for a yarn/combination of yarns, as this is something that, Meg aside, few people seem to blog about but can make such a huge difference to the finish of the project.

I decided to buy a small square loom for this purpose, and so have been busy weaving sample squares in the yarns I've got in my stash — both already used and new, awaiting a suitable project. The loom is somewhere close to being 10dpi, so some of my finer yarns are a bit sparse, whilst some of the thicker yarns are a bit squished, but I'm still hoping it'll help me out.

Having made my first 6 squares — the first not so successfully, the next 5 much better - I used a combination of these instructions with the finishing from this video - I figured it was time to finish them. Especially as one of the squares are needed to determine how to finish weaving project 49, and one will help me decide how to use the lovely undyed blue-faced leicester wool.

Here's the method I have used for hand wash finishing:

• a little bit of normal clothes washing detergent
  
• water at 36 degrees C (the temperature you'd bath a baby at - I bought a baby bath thermometer for this purpose)
  
• some agitation of the item — nothing too vigorous
  
• rinsing in a sink of cold water
  
• squeezing in the hands — not wringing but squeezing
  
• rolling in a towel to get excess water out
  
• drying flat unpinned on a blanket
  

Each sample, once dry, has been labelled which these things on the front:

• Yarn label name/weight
  
• Fibre content
  
• WPI
  
• Finishing method
  

And on the back:

• Projects used in
  
• Notes
  

To get the WPI value I'm using my yarn llama — a tool I got for Christmas which is an inch across its underbelly (technically it is an alpaca, but yarn llama trips off my tongue better)

(Apologies for the photo quality, there have been a mixture of cameras used to get these photos due to the demise and replacement of my d80)

Weaving project 46: Fabric for a phone case 

For Christmas, my lovely husband bought me a new mobile phone. It's a fairphone (on which more here). Obviously a new phone means a new case is needed. Which sounds like as good a reason as any to get weaving.

I've been trying to work out if I could make a shawl for Mum. She lives in a home, and the laundry there seems to be done on a single programme without regard for the washing instructions. This isn't surprisingly when you consider the logistics, but it does mean that the last time I saw this blanket I made her the wool had started to felt. I'd been considering whether a cotton yarn would stand a better chance and I'd spotted this at a reasonable price and so bought a few balls to give it a try.

I used my Dad's Black & Decker workbench, one of the bulkier items we brought back to Brighton when I emptied the family home, as a warping peg holder and it worked pretty well. Admittedly, this was a small project but it still offered a better level of stability than the patio table did. And it clamped the peg nice and tightly.

This was my first tartan style project, and I planned it using this to get an idea for what would work. I had a piece of flannel that I planned to use for the lining of the case, so I chose colours to work with that. In the end I did 4 x beige, 2 x brown, 4 x beige, 2 x orange, 4 x beige, 2 x brown etc for both warp and weft. This has resulted in a reasonably pleasing design.

I found that the cotton yarn feels a bit like string whilst working with it, which stopped the weaving experience being anything like as pleasing. It softened up on wet finishing but I realised that I prefer to work with things that start off soft as well as ending up soft. I'll use up the rest of the yarn sometime but I don't think that this is the perfect shawl yarn.

Lessons learned during the weaving process:

• the weaving process isn't as enjoyable if the yarn isn't soft and lovely whilst working with it
  
• the workbench as warp peg holder deserves further experimentation
  
• making a sample of this size is fairly quick

I waited until the phone arrived and then quickly stitched the case together (Richard said I couldn't use the phone until I had a case for it). I followed the same rough pattern as for the glasses cases using the woven fabric as the outer, and the flannel as the inner. I got a fringe twister for Christmas so I decided to twist some of the yarn together to make a cable for tying. And I bought some super cute buttons too.

It isn't the perfect case — it ended up being such a touch short, and a bit bulky — but it'll do and should certainly add some protection. I'm already working on making the fabric for a second case but for now, this will do the job nicely.