Of Daily Patterns, Dentists and Bead Hunting

I've done really well for calendars this year. Sue bought me the bears calendar I've already shown and I also had a Knitting Pattern a Day desk calendar bought for me from the Calendar Club.


It is, literally, as its name suggests, a calendar with a pattern for each day of the year. Each pattern is on a separate removable page. The page with today's date on is placed at the front of the stand which holds the pages and then transferred to the back to show the next day as appropriate. There are lots of scarf, hat, wristlets and sock patterns but, also, garments such as jumpers and even a game where eight different textures and colours of yarn make up a scarf according to how the dice are thrown! Here are a few of the patterns I picked out at random (photos only so I don't breach copyright regulations).

Vintage Style Victorian Beaded Tea Cosy

Child's Lace and Beaded Socks

Intertwined Cables Seamen's Scarf

There's even a Yahoo Discussion Group that's been set up for people who've bought the calendar to discuss the patterns, etc.

Anyway, enough of calendars and daily patterns, let's move on to dentists. On Thursday, we went to London as I'd arranged a dental check up and the plan was to also take the opportunity to check out the beads in Creative Beadcraft's London shop, Ells & Farrier. The dental check up had been prompted by pain in one of my back teeth when taking hot food or drink and, because I was unable to book an appointment with my regular dentist, I made an appointment at DH's dental surgery in London. DH's dentist was holidaying in Australia but I saw another dentist at the practice. I explained the problem to him and, after some investigation, he said he couldn't find a reason for my pain. He then said he would try to reproduce the pain to ascertain the problem and proceeded to squirt the area with a very cold spray. I'd already explained that it was only heat that caused the pain and the cold spray didn't reproduce it. He then asked the assistant to pass him the tooth wrench. Did I hear that right?? The tooth wrench??!! I must admit, by this time, I was slightly dazed but, anyway, he asked me to bite very hard on this plastic thing and kept telling me to bite harder and harder until I was worried that my teeth might break and, at the point I was biting the hardest, he kind of pulled this plastic thing or made some sort of movement with it which I found quite a shock. He did this on several occasions and, although it felt uncomfortable and very unnatural to be biting this hard on something, it didn't reproduce the short, sharp pain that I'd had with the hot food and liquids. He then started hammering on the base of my teeth with something in an attempt to reproduce the pain and this didn't work either.

By this time, I was thoroughly fed up and, although I hadn't experienced the short, sharp bursts of nerve pain that heat had produced, my teeth now felt very uncomfortable in a sort of nagging aching sort of way. He then asked if I'd mind if he took an x-ray, to which I agreed, and the x-ray results also showed no reason for my pain in that the roots and gums appeared healthy. At this point, he told me that he thought the pain was caused by a slight crack in one of my back teeth which had a filling in it. He thought that the amalgam filling was acting as a conductor of heat which was then being conveyed to the nerve due to the slight crack. This was the first time he'd mentioned a crack. He said that this could be remedied in the long term by placing a crown on the cracked tooth. At this stage, I just wanted to get out of there!

Anyway, the upshot of all this was that at no time after my visit to the dentist did I again experience that sensation of pain when taking hot food or drink that had taken me to the dentist in the first place. Instead, I had this awful nagging constant pain which I presume was from all the cold spray, biting hard and hammering that was done to my poor teeth. This pain lasted for four days - it has only just died down today - and I've had to take painkillers to numb it somewhat. Strange that the original pain disappeared. Perhaps, it was some weird kind of homoeopathy at work - treating like with like - or creating one pain to get rid of another!!!

After the visit to the dentist, we went straight to Boots the Chemists to buy some Anadin Extra and then to Liberty's where DH had a nice lunch and I gingerly chewed my way through a piece of apple tart. When the painkillers kicked in a bit, I decided that I wasn't going to waste my trip to London so I had a look in Liberty's yarn department. John Lewis's yarn department was also visited but, after my mammoth buying session at Bluewater only days before, I couldn't bring myself to buy more than a couple of balls of Noro Aurora which I saw for the first time and liked so much I couldn't resist buying.

Concerning the bead hunting I had planned, for those who haven't heard of Creative Beadcraft, you can see their website here and their London shop, Ells & Farrier is situated at 20 Beak Street, London W1, near Liberty's. I'd been meaning to have a look at their shop for some time as I'd like to incorporate beads into my knitting more and the choice of beads suitable for knitting available in department stores seems, generally, to be very limited. However, it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment because Ells and Farrier were closed for Xmas/New Year holidays. We did, however, take some photos from outside the shop so I'll leave you to peruse these for now.

Sign Outside Ells & Farrier on Beak Street

Looking Through the Window 1

Looking Through the Window 2

Looking Through the Window 3

Looking Through the Window 4

I can't wait to have a closer look at the beads on my next visit when, hopefully, I'll be able to take some better photos from inside the shop and give you the lowdown!

Question now is what do I do about my tooth??!!