I sure wish I could give you some suggestions but I don't have a creative bone in my body. My daughter does but I have no idea where she got that from...lol

I always enjoy reading your posts. They always make me 'think' a little deeper than I normally would. I myself am just a silly 55 year old woman but what you are going through is not being lazy my friend.

You have done so much in your life. The list is amazing to me.

Hopefully someone will come along with some really good suggestions for you.

And you are sooooo right about these Georgia summers. They are LONG and HOT. My favorite time is when I can open the whole house up and have a light breeze come through. Those days are so few here

Take care

Debi in Georgia

My mom has vision loss, she had to give up her sewing, gardening for the most part, still can cook & bake w/ special magnifier for recipes..
We are trying to think of activities she can do at home too, it is hard to come up with ideas..

Hmmmm.... such a tricky thing, when it comes to vision loss... it's harder to aquire new skills when you can't see well enough to read the directions and when working with something unfamiliar. If it was the eyes going on me rather than the hands, I could still play my instruments, or knit and crochet and some hand embroidery, like sashiko that's done in repetition more on feel than staring it down, but only because of how long I've been doing it. I couldn't imagine trying to learn a new craft without being able to see what I'm doing. Not that one couldn't learn, there's plenty of blind people out there who can sew, knit and crochet, even paint but it's been my experience that the ones who have an easier time of it were either born blind or lost their vision very early in life, once we gain that dependency on sight it becomes our all.

I suppose I should be glad it's the hands and not the eyes all the same... I can still read as much as I like to at least keep my brain from going completely idle, and I'm sure with that reading I'll eventually come across some sort of solution to my current predicament.... speaking of which I wonder how deft your hands must be to do bobbin lace? I've never tried it before, but I can tie my shoes with my right hand only because of the number of times I've injured the left and a general despising of slip on or velcroed shoes, just need to be able to get the pins into the pillow or board, and print out my patterns rather than drawing them... I don't really care for lace on the whole, but I do have a GD who would probably be able to put it to good use. Now is it worth the $40 for bobbins to find out?

Ahhh... better still, before spending the money I could probably fashion a close enough proximity to a bobbin from some old pencils and rubber bands. Yiiippppeeee a project!!!

Have you tried paracord braiding?

I know you're having problems with your hands, but so was I when I started trying out paracord braiding. I was basically using it as a physical therapy.

It's kind of like macrame...actually, it is macrame, just on a smaller scale. You can use just about any thickness of cord you want. The thicker cords might be easier for numb fingers to maneuver.

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Wow that really takes me back to the totally 80's friendship bracelets Gosh I must have made thousands out of embroidery thread back when I was a kid. And the 90's hemp bracelets and necklaces... but I never thought of doing it out of paracording before.... what do you do with them when you're done though? Untie and try another knotting? Make a rug? Dog collars? I can't picture tying paracord around my wrist or neck, though I believe I have some left over from my camping days to play with.

I'll have to hunt it up tomorrow afternoon, sort of fighting with the DH tonight so I'm naturally suffering the effects of insomnia while he's blissfully asleep. Hot day, had to go food shopping and my wheelchair had a flat tire, I didn't want to use the store chair, silly of me I know but I despise the motorized carts especially when I have tunnel vision and poor coordination now, and he had a bad day because his work kept bothering him even though he was off and we both just basically got snippy with each other. Which even carried over when we got back home and he criticized my attempts at putting groceries away which was really just succeeding in throwing half of them on the floor because left hand kept reaching to grab stuff though it can't hold anything. And he thought I was throwing them on purpose thinking I was still mad at him... honestly I was ready to bean him by the end of it.

Hot, tired, sore and my left hand refused to listen to me and stop picking things up, while my right hand just sat idly by, not even trying to help. But then to I was rushing to get things put up because I was hot, tired and hurting and wanting nothing more than to hop in a nice cold shower and lay down, so I wasn't focusing enough on which hand was doing the work till the bread when skittering across the floor, followed by the DH's soda, the cats food, the DH's chips and when I reached for the meats he stopped me and kicked me out of the kitchen. And from there we've been in the silently seething at each other point of our argument and to which tomorrow afternoon he'll call me to apologize while he's at work and I'll feel guilty for having never once in 17 years of marriage being the first one to apologize and after dinner tomorrow we'll be cuddled up on the couch together like the whole day never happened, and once more I won't have learned my lesson to simply say I'm sorry first so I can get a good nights rest, because he always lets me win any argument... sooooo infuriating.

This is why I need hobbies!!! I need challenges and conflicts... better they occur by paint brush or thread than my poor DH, who agrees that a bored me is a very very stubborn and ever so much a *^%#~ me.

I made a few bracelets, a heck of a lot of keychains, and I was going to start trying actual macrame with actual macrame cord when exboyfriend dumped me and I basically ran out of steam on all my hobbies for a long time. (he dumped me in 2014, it's taken me a bit to start back up with any enthusiasm. MS has also kind of sucked the crafting enthusiasm out of me for a bit too)

I'd really like to get back to playing with paracord and trying out some macrame cord but since my dad died in April I just haven't had time, or money to do much with the hobbies. I'm trying to work on a scrap afghan right now, but haven't really gotten all that far. Been mostly trying to help my mom who's been super depressed about my dad. Usually I'll sit down to start crocheting, and I think that's when my mom takes her cue to start picking on me because she's sad and bored.

I found several packages of keyrings the other day in my desk. I keep hoping I'll find a magic stash of paracord, so far nothing. I did play around with some crochet thread (not really thread, it's cotton yarn that's a step down from worsted weight) and the knots that the paracord braiding uses. At least the cotton yarn was easier on the fingers than the paracord is.

Well couldn't find any paracord laying around the house, but I have combined the "lace bobbin" technique with some old embroidery thread and am finding that I can make little friendship bracelets with it. Just used pencils and elastics to hold the skinny threads that I otherwise would have a problem in manipulating and I can "weave" away.

So the next thing I guess is convincing the DH or my mom to make me some bobbins out of our scrap wood. Saving myself a pretty penny on buying them and also hopefully making them so they can clip into my sewing machine's bobbin winder so I can wind them easily.