I teach knitting classes
Most popular:
• specialized sock-heel workshops
• plaited cast-on class for socks, hats, and coffee cup cozies
• certified Knit Companion trainer
I travel to book readings and signings.
You can schedule a class or event on my Shoppe page.
As I’ve been plagued lately by lower back pain, I, of course, assumed that everyone else had the same issue. Thus I thought it might be good to bring in a guest blogger with some actual information.
Back Pain 101
In a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25% of Americans over the age of 20 reported having suffered pain that lasted 24 hours or more at least once over the past year. Among people over the age of 65, almost 60% had pain that lasted a year or more. One of the most common forms of pain is back pain. In fact, the average American can expect to suffer from back pain at least once in his or her lifetime. For many people, back pain becomes a long-term problem.
The back is a miracle of engineering. It helps us to stand upright but also gives us the flexibility to bend and twist. It protects the spinal cord and is able to withstand the tremendous forces of walking, running, stepping, and lying down.
The back bone consists of a stack of 24 individual bones called vertebrae that rest one on top of the other. If you’ve ever studied anatomy, you know that these vertebrae are of different shapes at different points along the back. The vertebrae around the neck area (the “cervical spine” area where the vertebrae are typically labeled C1, C2, and so on) are much smaller than the vertebrae of the lumbar or lower back region. The vertebrae around the chest or thoracic cavity have the least flexibility and are anchored or stabilized by the ribs. At the end of the vertebral column is the sacrum and the tailbone, which do not look like the other vertebrae. In fact, the sacrum and the tailbone consist of several bones fused together.
Working together with the vertebral column are muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves. Considering the complexity of the system, it is no wonder that the back can be vulnerable to certain types of injury.
Back pain may seem simple, but it is actually exceedingly complex. There are many causes of back pain and, as such, not all back pain will respond to the same treatment. People with back pain must consult with a physician in order to get the right diagnosis, that is, to learn the cause of the problem.
Some back pain may be caused by a muscle sprain or spasm. Characteristics of this type of back pain include a sudden onset and the fact that it usually diminishes and eventually goes away over time, typically in a few days or weeks.
Some other things that can produce back pain include arthritis, osteoporosis, and sciatica. Arthritis is a degenerative disease meaning it causes the joints to wear out. Osteoporosis is a condition where the bones get thin, porous, brittle, and susceptible to injury including fracture. Sciatica is a condition where the sciatic nerve becomes inflamed. The sciatic nerves run from the back on each side over the buttock and down the leg.
Back pain can also be caused by a skeletal abnormality, that is, being born with a vertebral column that has some kind of curve or malformation that produces pain. Scoliosis, for example, is a condition where the spine curves to one side.
The vertebrae have discs in between them that act like shock absorbers to cushion the stress the vertebrae undergo when a person walks, runs, or moves around. These discs are made of a soft material that can be damaged. If the disc ruptures or bulges out of place, it can put pressure on a nerve and cause pain. Not every ruptured or herniated disc causes pain and the pain caused from such a problem varies widely among patients. It may be mild or it may be severe.
There are many other conditions that can cause back pain. When the damage to your back is caused by some trauma or injury, you need medical care so that the damage can heal correctly. However, if your back pain is caused by a chronic degenerative condition or a skeletal defect, you may always have to deal with some degree of pain.
Pain management tactics that have worked with some back pain patients include an ice pack on the affected area or a heating pad, warm showers, topical pain relievers, and massage. Many people find relief for back pain by seeing a chiropractor. When you are well enough, you may benefit from exercises designed to help strengthen the muscles that support the back.
There are situations where you may need to take a pain reliever for back pain. This is a good topic to discuss with your physician. While over-the-counter pain relievers can provide relief, these are real drugs that must be taken with care. Read the instructions and do not take more than you should or take them for a long period of time. If you need long-term pain relief, you must discuss this with your physician to find the best solution for you.
Back pain is not uncommon. But it can be complex, and you need to find out all you can about your particular type of back pain in order to get the most appropriate care.
About the Author:
If you or a loved one suffers from chronic pain, join the community at http://associationofchronicpainpatients.org/ to help raise awareness about chronic pain. This article was written by Jo Ann LeQuang of the ACPP.
Original Article URL: http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/easypublish.php?art_id=126180
I don’t care how you vote (okay, I do, but not for the reasons you think) and I don’t get political on this blog, but I do get “family” on this blog.
So.
Please encourage your friends and family to vote today. Just not with their feelings. Encourage everyone to vote with their heads. Ignore the hype. Ignore the attack ads. Look at the documentation from the League of Women voters–they’re sane. If you know swing voters, encourage them to examine their minds, not their hearts. Remind them to think.
I hear so much vitriol and so much insanity, but it’s all obfuscating the obvious. Whether politicians are good communicators or not doesn’t matter. You can go look at the Congressional Record. We have that power. If you see a vote that makes no sense to you, don’t blow the politician off as an idiot (as I often find myself doing). Go look at why. You’ll be surprised by the things that are hidden in votes that look like no-brainers. There are non-partisan sites that help you parse this stuff. There are good people out there just like you and me (well, better than me, anyway, because they’re doing something). We need to be encouraging them, not the screamers.
Encourage sanity. Encourage thought. Encourage people to look at platforms and voting records, not hype and commercials. Don’t let the Media Monkey sit on your friend’s House Hippo.
And hey?
Let’s be careful out there.
The Honesty Bookstore, Hay-on-Wye, Wales, UK
(no, really. There’s just a box for you to put money in)
New Theme.
I got sick of the constant work with the old one.
It was CONSTANT.
I’m loving the help pages with this one though. May be a keeper!
So’re our NaNo Salons–during the month of November.
Whoot!
My knitting/dying friend of the blog Cross Pollinating with Linda McKittrick has offered up The Chiltepin Challenge: Write a Creation Myth. Take a gander and give it a shot–and let her know I sent you!
We went to Apple Annie’s last week. It’s not exactly New York Apple Picking Weather, but it WAS under 80 when we were there, so no few complaints were heard from any of us.
We picked: pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers (many varieties), green beans, did I mention tomatoes, cukes, butternut and banana and zucchini squash, and apples. Lotsa apples.
Mmmmmmm.
Chili Sauce and Jalepeño Jelly
Last night began the extravaganza—Grandma Ruth’s Chili Sauce and jalapeño jelly are done. As are the Fried Green Tomatoes (GF of course–sorghum fl and corn meal)
Now on to pickles,
Bread and Butter Pickles
apple pie, apple chili jelly (courtesy of Brenda at Cast-On at he partner Tonia–though I didn’t have access to crab apples)
and apple/green tomato chutney.
Chili Apple Jelly (needed more fire)
Liquid under Jelly Bag
Genius Contraption Connection
took a large soup-making cheesecloth bag and dumped all the apple/chili goodness inside, then hung it up on a cup hook. It was getting obvious that the colander was actually hampering the draining process. Who knew?!
Fresh Jalepeños to Add
And if that weren’t enough, I also had to bake some bread.
GF Boule from Artisan Bread in 5 Min folks
Open Boule
Of course, there’s a ton of knitting I still have to do for a couple of upcoming books…but I’ll get to that again later. Since getting back I’ve had the DH drive everywhere so I could knit. I’m sure I’m making headway but I’ll be blasted if I can see it.
The boys are off of school this week so getting back into the blogging/writing/work vein has been a challenge, but jet lag got me up at 4am, so you’re the beneficiaries.
I decided to put the InterWebs to good use and will be collecting some of the recipes I came into contact with whilst over there.
(You saw the whilst, didn’t you. Classy, eh?)
So, today we take a look at Welsh Cakes or picau ar y maen (bakestone cakes). I’m linking you to Stephanie Jaworski’s recipe on the Joy of Baking site for Welsh Cakes. This is NOT a gluten-free recipe, though taking a look at it, I believe if you substituted one of the all-purpose gluten-free flours on the market (my fave is Jules), added a bit more milk, applesauce, or a banana* (something to add more moisture), and a tsp of xanthan gum or so, you’d have a fine GF Welsh Cake. I’ll be experimenting with this after I finish canning and preserving. As soon as I can get my pics loaded I’ll show you the bounty of our season.
But back to the cakes. Why Welsh Cakes, you may ask? Or What the heck is a Welsh Cake?
I think these are Wales’ answer to British scones. Same basic ingredients, same type of use, but these–historically–have been griddle cakes. I don’t know if this is because the Welsh were more mobile, or more economically challenged, more stubborn (I know a few who’d go with that one), or just liked their food fried in butter (I’m leaning toward the latter). Either way, these were getting passed around the coach by Lucinda (Jennie the Potter‘s Mom) whilst we drove and, while the ones in the bag looked (and smelled) very nice, they were nothing compared to the look of the real deal in the bakeries. Lucinda had been singing their praises since Salisbury, so it was good to see them out and about.
If you’re salivating but not in the baking mood, you could check out The Welsh Griddle Company for recipes, griddles, history, and cool dragon motifs (dragon and daffodil are symbols of Wales).
Lechyd da!
Viva Cymru!
* The banana trick: I made oatmeal cookies this week off of the Quaker Oats lid. I subbed Jules GF flour, added at tsp. of xanthan gum, and a banana. I think I may have added a splash more milk (more than a tsp, less than a tbsp), too. The banana added to the moisture nicely and didn’t change the flavor overly much, but I always add more cinnamon and chocolate chips, so the banana would have had to be super pungent to override.
1 October 2010
Because Dianne from Holiday Vacations is a genius, Lucinda and I woke up
to a charming (really) scene out our window. This was the back garden (remember, this is Oct 1) full of flowers and RAIN. Lots and lots of rain. And ducks. And a river rising steadily while we had breakfast in a lovely little skylight room–the white roof you can just barely make out in between the trees.
Love the “whilst.” Just do.
Ominous, no? It was serious. Lucinda almost took an ear off unwittingly in the shower. Nice to have the warning, though, even if we thought it was poppycock.
Once clean and fed, we trotted over in our overcoats (and over-plastic-poncho) to Salisbury Cathedral. Here are the grounds. It looked a bit like an Oxford Commons to me.
But that similarity ended pretty soon. I’ll be posting more pics of the cathedral proper in a bit (the internet is a bit wonky and this is the fourth time I’ve tried posting these pics.
This is the spire, as a model split in half. Note the extra fiddly bits around the outside AND around the inside. The extra reinforcement was necessary many years ago, but that created a new problem which I’ll mention in a bit.
I thought of the boys and how they would have loved looking at this model. It was like a David Macaulay book come to life.
This is the only working medieval clock. It was keeping time while we stood there and I took a video I will continue to try to upload. It didn’t SHOW the time, but it would chime the hour.
Nifty!
This is the most amazing baptismal font. I think this impressed me most about Salisbury. The way they unabashedly blended the modern art (like this reflecting pool) and the ancient (Like the floor and ceiling, below pic, as viewed in the font).
If you look at the pic below and think you’re losing your mind because the marble pillars seem to be bending–you’re not losing your mind. They are. The new spire (see above) which was placed there many years ago (I’ll look it up and add in later) was HEAVY and is listing. The whole thing is quite off kilter now. Not falling down. Not Pisa. But off…and it bent the supports.
In another brilliant move by Henry VIII–there were so many–this little chapel was vandalized. The colors have been restored somewhat, but you can still see where damage was done. Lovely little place though (below left, right).
It was a very dim day and hard to see, but this is a commissioned 1980 Prisoners of Conscience window. The lack of light made it harder to see, but there is a definite head at the top of the center column and two “hands” in the side panels, outstretched and…dripping blood. Any patches of light you see below the mid point are faces etched. Faces of Prisoners of Conscience.
This tomb has been cleaned so that you can see the remnants of it’s original state (see below). The dude had quite the hapnin’ tomb.
After Salisbury, Lucinda and I returned the car (no blood, no harm, no foul) and hoofed it back east. I stopped in Basingstoke to have lunch with old SOAR buddy, Meg, then went into London, Waterloo. Then back to Paddington to get my luggage out of hock. That’s when I discovered this taxi queue.
But it was efficient.
Then I realized that adjusting back to a humid (if cool) environment had left ALL of my clothes beyond the pale, I decided to put the whirlpool tub to use.
With a little laundry soap. (Video pending)
Monday, September 27, 2010-Tuesday, September 28, 2010
DH drives me to airport after spending frantic morning at last-minute self-employment deluge. Appear to have left without hair brush. Figures.
Trip begins auspiciously with gluten-free beer in Delta Terminal bar/sushi bar of the Tucson Int’l (snort) Airport.
Guess I shouldn’t snort. They have GF beer. Surrounded by happy travelers with lovely smiles. Sat next to only funny Jewish Couple from Detroit, MI. They tell me about website: Old Jewish Men Telling Old Jewish Jokes.
Land in MN airport on-time (go Delta!) with no travails. Lured to Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant by siren smell of pizza. Happy to settle for a Chinois Salad which may (or may not) have GF dressing. I have faith and am rewarded.
Money exchange around corner staffed by an engineering/creative writing dual-majored young man. Praised him up and down–more smiles. Armed with British Sterling (or at least paper with Queen’s face) I depart from gate 6.
I sit next to the nicest missionary ever. Indian by birth, but has lived everywhere and before becoming a missionary, ran architectural firm in New Delhi.
!
Watched Ewan MacGregor in Ghost Writer. So. There it is.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Managed to get about 2-1/2 hours of sleep. There was no gluten free meal for me on the plane, regardless my confirming it twice, so was happy for the Chinois Salad as there was no breakfast on the plane.
This was my cobbled together meal–leftovers from First Class and Steerage. I love that he left me the pat of butter even without the bread. Nice of him to take the bread off, anyway.
Landed in Heathrow without a worry. Tramped along, queued up for Passport Check, meandered off and got bags, got lost looking for Heathrow Connection as opposed to Heathrow Express. Found that they left from the same track.
All was good.
The hat was a lucky guess. It’s turned out to be very handy in misty rain and wind. That, plus it looks pretty nifty.
The double D is pronounced “th”. So, yeah…Wales was neat.
This was taken on the train to Brenda and Tonia’s place.
It got dark and cloudy enough that trying to take a pic out the window really only took a pic of me. Here I am on two hours of sleep. I think that’s not so bad.
What you can’t see is the sign that says “Potatoes Filled To Take”–I just wanted to take the whole shop back to the US. A corner Deli with a take-away potato service. Ah me…
This is the tidal bay in southeast Wales. I’ll have to look at a map to point to the exact location, but the two ladies you see looking out the window were…yes, knitters. Shortly after I took this, they turned to me and asked what I was doing as they were fascinated by a stitch I used. They were LOVELY and we had quite a nice time until they had to de-train. Shortly after I de-trained myself and found a pub at which to wait for Brenda and Tonia.
. 
The pub. They had some excellent Welsh Cider, for which I cannot recall the name, and were absolutely NOT, “and keep off the Moors…” to me at all. I’m always a bit nervous in a small local pub. Don’t want to ruffle the locals or intrude too much. The chap at the bar was quite lovely, though, and impressed that (a) I was in Wales and (b) had wanted to come to Wales for a good bit.
Truman the Wonder Pup. I was quite smitten.
Then again, I didn’t have to get up with him at the crack of O-My-God-Not-Now every morning.
The drinks trolly. I didn’t get a pic of the really nifty one. It had a spout and a button and the trolly captain would push the button to get the hot water for tea or coffee. It was a rawther brilliant design. 
Okay, the double L is pronounced “th” as if Sylvester the Cat were saying it but with a bit of a wider mouth. I’ll try to phonetically present it here: thla-ne-thly. I’ve been practicing since I heard the train announcer say it.
Someone left behind a paper on the train…
The horror… the horror… More in the next post.
What kind of cool thing is this! USB Typewriter.
The latent steampunky side of me would SO love to have one of these, but the practical wussy side of me notes that my fingers would get tired and I’d have to return the carriage over and over and over…
I’ve become weak.
I also don’t have an iPad, so…
In other news, I leave for the first ever Annual CraftLit Tour Extravaganza
–this year to London, Bath, and Wales.
I am beside myself with glee…and fear of packing. I’ve ironed and packed three different times.
That’s never happened before.
So here we are, nine years out from–for better or worse–the most exciting thing to have happened to me, ever.
And I wanted to talk a bit this year about the “exciting” thing.
The word exciting has come to take on a positive meaning. The original meaning of “excite” was slightly different. Let’s check with our friend, the Oxford English Dictionary.
(ksat) [a. Fr. exciter (= Pr. and Sp. excitar), ad. L. excitre, freq. of excire to set in motion, awaken, call forth, instigate, f. ex- out + cire to set in motion.]
1. trans. To set in motion, stir up. a. fig. To move, stir up, instigate, incite. Const. til, to, unto; to with inf. or that (with subord. clause); also simply. Now only with mixed notion of 5, see below.
a1340 HAMPOLE Psalter Prol.,
e sange of psalmes..excites aungels til oure help. Ibid. ix. 25 Antecrist sall..excite him [God] in his synn to punysch him. 1398 TREVISA Barth. De P.R. V. xxiii. (1495) 131 Oxen ben excited to traueile more by the swete songe of the heerd than by strokes and pryckes…
b. To provoke, challenge. Obs.
c. In physical sense: To set in motion, stir up (so L. excitare harenam, Sallust.) Obs. rare1.
2. To rouse, awaken. a. lit. To rouse from unconsciousness. rare.
b. To call up (a departed spirit). Obs. rare.
c. To call forth or quicken (a faculty, feeling, etc.) from potential into actual existence; to rouse up, awaken (what is dormant, sluggish, or latent).
3. To induce, elicit, provoke (actions, manifestations); to bring about, occasion (active conditions).
4. To affect by a stimulus (bodily organs or tissues), so as to produce or intensify their characteristic activity.
5. In modern use: To move to strong emotion, stir to passion; to stir up to eager tumultuous feeling, whether pleasurable or painful. Also intr. and absol.
6. a. Electricity and Magnetism. To induce electric or magnetic activity in (a substance); to set (an electric current) in motion; also absol. b. Photography. To render (a plate, etc.) sensitive to light; to sensitize.
I bolded the ones I’m talking about (and of course, I left out most of the cool OED dates and quotations and things. Love that stuff though. Old habits die hard).
So, I’ve been feeling awfully awkward about thinking of 9/11 as an “exciting moment” in my life. It was a horrible day. Of course, for our school, the next 6 months were worse, but for so many—many too many—families 9/11 was life-changing in the most obscene ways.
However, those of us who came out alive, we experienced the largest—and probably longest continuous—adrenaline surge we’ll ever have. Even the memory of a drug-free childbirth (also looong) has been mollified by endorphins, convincing me that it wasn’t so bad and that we should, perhaps, do it all over again in a couple of years. (Um. No. We’re not going to. I’m just saying).
We didn’t get endorphins with 9/11.
Unless I’m misremembering my anatomy/physiology class, I believe one of the results of adrenaline is that you experience things in a heightened state. This is why being in a car accident we all say, “and then everything went in slow motion…” Just like a movie camera, our minds speed up so we can process things quickly—and save our lives. When a camera speeds up, it uses more frames per second to capture a given image. That means if you play it back at a normal speed, everything will slow down.
So my memories, even nine years later, are still shockingly distinct. One picture, one airplane overhead, one blog post, and I’m absolutely back there. I think that’s the adrenaline too.
Yet I still hesitate to call it exciting—even though it was, living on the edge like that. I imagine battle is similar, though I know 9/11 pales by comparison if only in it’s relative brevity. But there’s something about not knowing what will happen next in a life-or-death situation that focuses your mind so amazingly.
Yet there’s no comparison to other more appropriately “exciting things”:
These kinds of things are exciting in acceptable ways, I think. And they are all wonderful.
But they too carry the same weight—if we allow them to—of the original meaning of “excite”—to set in motion, to provoke, rouse, and awaken. All of my bulleted moments above set in motion the framework of much of my life. Exciting stuff to look back on.
I had hoped 9/11 would provoke a new spirit of openness, generosity, and harmony among those of us who are still here. I had hoped life would slow down, people would take more trains and drive gas-fueled cars less, we would linger over a meal out of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” with family, friends, and a bottle of really good wine.
And some of that has come true.
Mostly it hasn’t.
People still work insane hours, don’t have enough down time to recover from work, fly and drive everywhere, seem to be forced into faster and more and harder at every turn.
That sounds exciting, though, doesn’t it. Provoked, Set in motion.
So I guess 9/11 was a moment that excited us all—not in the happy spirit-of-a-new-baby, but in some kind of race. Are we trying to cram it all in because we don’t know when the next hit will come? Or are we just propelled along by the sheer grand tonnage of our society’s lemming-like need for speed?
I don’t know.
I still wish we’d all be a little less excited and a little calmer. I know I need the down time to be with my kids and recover—frequent mini-recoveries
I wonder if we need to come up with a word for survivors of harrowing moments? What do soldiers say? How do they describe surviving an IED attack? Even though they’re trained for those experiences, and we weren’t, I can’t imagine the human body would respond differently. I know we’re calling the aftermath PTSD, and that’s fine for what it’s worth. But that’s not what you call the experience itself.
All I know is everyone at my school was lucky—blessed. Not everyone associated with our school was so lucky. There were tangential losses of family members and friends. And those losses affect me to this day, which is odd. I can think about the death of my own grandmother who helped raise me with nary a tear, but people we lost that day who I didn’t even know—that chokes me up.
I was lucky enough over this last year to have a chance to work with the 9/11 Memorial Museum. The good work they’re doing has been calming to me. Just knowing they’re out there, cataloging, charting, collecting, saving. They’re piecing the story back together and rescuing it from the crazies who do things like quote my students in their insane screeds trying to “prove” it was a bomb and not a plane (dude. I saw the planes. Really. P-l-a-n-e-s) that brought the towers down. Someday—God willing and the creeks don’t rise—we’ll get to see the museum and the memorial fountains and the park. I don’t much care about the tower. But I do care about the fountains. It was wonderful to work in Lower Manhattan for a time and it will be wonderful to have such a lovely green space to find peace in.
Someplace a little less exciting.
MamaO is Heather Ordover, author, designer, mother and knitter... not necessarily in that order. You can get posts from this blog sent directly to your inbox by signing up below, Follow her on Twitter and Like her on Facebook if you're feeling friendly-like.
Vogue Knitting Winter 2013/2014
Hugely gratifying beyond my capacity for speech is having Vogue Knitting Winter 2013/14 give praise to my new book, Grounded. Read more...
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