Feeling fruity!

I'm astonished at the abundant amount of fruit in my garden. I remember my landlady mentioning before she went back to Madagascar that I would be inundated with apples and that there were pears, rhubarb and blackberries, but I've also found wild strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries, artichokes and potatoes! I'm also growing tomatoes, peppers and aubergines in the greenhouse and the tomato vines have little green babies that have just appeared so I'm very excited about those too!

I'm not a lover of goosegogs as we like to call them, so my sister relieved me of a huge tub of them this morning, but I'm going to pick some raspberries later to go with some strawberries I already have in my fridge.

The cooking apple tree is absolutely smothered with delicious looking fruit and I can't wait for the blackberries to

ripen so I can make my favourite pud - apple and blackberry crumble. ;o)

I've been avidly watching Andy Murray's progress through Wimbledon and he has just this very second beaten Ferrera in the quarter finals, so is on his way to the semi's! I went up yesterday to see the ladies quarter finals on Centre Court and we were very thankful that we had shady seats as the temperature was unbearably hot yesterday.

I always go with my SIL who has been going for many many years and is very adept at spotting tennis players and famous faces, well I managed to spot one of my own yesterday - Ainsley Harriott was sitting 5 rows in front of me. I did toy with the idea of giving him the contents of my picnic bag and asking what he could do with it in 20 minutes, but decided to resist that particular urge!! For those readers outside the UK, Ainsley is a celebrity chef/presenter on Ready Steady Cook. I couldn't get a photo of his face, but did get the back of his (very shiny) head!

Time for strawberries, cream and a drop of Pimms

Yes, Wimbledon is here once more and I'm enjoying a couple of weeks away from work. I'm going up on Tuesday with Sally, my SIL, to Centre Court. Our seats are right at the back, but at least we'll be in the shade and we will still have a great view. We always take a picnic with us and I always try and pack in something extra special, so I'll be scouring Sainsburys on Monday for something nice.

Dad has been in the rehab centre at the hospital now for a few weeks and it is simply awful. I'm sure it's made his level of confusion worse and even the move itself hasn't helped matters. They put him to bed at 7.30pm and for a man who has problems sleeping, this isn't good. It has been agreed that Dad needs to go for some care for a while. Initially we thought it would be residential, but at the meeting we had to discuss his case, they thought nursing care would probably be better. There's a chance if it's nursing care, that he will get full funding. Otherwise, I will have to sell his house (and my home for 35 years) to meet the costs if it turns into a long term placement. I'm really not sure whether or not he will ever be well enough to go home, but all we can do is hope and pray. I'm still waiting to hear about the funding and as soon as I know, we will be able to view places that have vacancies.

I've been doing some stitching and have actually been working on a Mirabilia! I really reached burnout a couple of years ago with my Miras and haven't really wanted to pick any of them up for a long time. But I had an urge to work to Titania and here's what I've been doing:

I've stitched most of the coral sash and have just started the bottom part of the dress. You may remember that I wanted to stitch her with silver wings and have been looking at silver metallics that might be suitable for this. I noticed that someone else recently stitched a purple Titania with silver wings, however, those wings had some blue in and I wanted purely silver. I'm not sure whether using purely metallics will be a little overpowering or not, so I'm playing with a few ideas at the moment. The fabric looks a little bluer than IRL. It's SMF's Winter Meadow Belfast linen.

I've also been doing a spot of baking and as it was my friend's birthday, yesterday I baked a Cherry Bakewell cake:

And delicious it was too! I got the recipe from Rosie's blog - Baking Cakes Galore, which has lots of mouth watering recipes on offer. Happy stitching everyone!

Wildlife

Yes, I caved and let Catkin outside after a week and since then we've had a live baby rabbit (who was very cute!), who Catkin dropped and then it hopped into my trainer to hide! I took it back outside in my trainer and released it again. Then yesterday and today, we have had shrews. Yesterdays didn't survive and the one today doesn't look too healthy, but I guess it's to be expected living in the countryside and keeping a cat.

Dad is still in hospital. He's now not going to the rehab centre, but is going to a rehab unit at another hospital, which is closer to his house. They're just waiting for a bed to become available, so hopefully it won't be too long now. I saw him yesterday and he seemed quite well.

Not any stitching to share, but I will share a few piccies. These are some gorgeous flowers my DB and SIL bought over last week, when we had a lovely walk out in the sunny weather and then they came back for some delicious homemade fishcakes!

This was the view we had on our lovely walk into town - I honestly believe there's no better walk into town anywhere else!

And this is one of the pretty poppies growing in my garden - I love them and have never seen any like it before.

Happy stitching everyone!

Thank you

Thank you so very much for all your lovely, caring messages. We truly have a fantastic support network of stitchers in cyberspace.

I’m still feeling sad about Bobbi, but I now have my other gorgeous girl Catkin here with me. Dad is still in hospital and it’s been agreed that he’s going to go into a residential rehabilitation centre for several weeks, so I didn’t think it fair on Catkin to be left alone, with just the neighbour popping in to feed her twice a day. She’s a people cat and would get very lonely, so I have bought her back with me. I’m going to try and keep her in for two weeks and then only let her out when she’s hungry. I’m right in the middle of the countryside, so it wouldn’t take much for her to get herself lost! We’re on day 2 of incarceration and she’s already tried to escape through the inch gap I left with the top window open for ventilation! She seems to have made herself very much at home already though and the area is a wonderful place for a cat to explore.... I just hope she doesn’t try and catch too many rabbits or birds :o(

Dad is going to receive intense physiotherapy in the rehab centre and the occupational therapists will also work with him so that he can regain some mobility. The idea is to encourage and support him to be able to do more for himself, so that he is less worried about returning home as he will be able to look after himself more. We’re meeting at the hospital tomorrow to discuss when and how it will happen. Andy and I went over to look at the place on Saturday and I was pleasantly surprised. Very clean, nice accommodation with very friendly staff. There’s also a large lounge/diner with an enormous TV which I know Dad will like very much! There’s only a dozen residents of the rehab centre which seems to indicate they receive plenty of care and attention. I’m sure that it’s going to be a really good experience for Dad and I hope that he will be able to return home afterwards.

I have been doing a little stitching, so will share some piccies with you. Firstly The Guardian:

I've also been working on Taj:

And here's how the whole thing looks right now:

I'm hoping to finish my first Taj side soon! Happy stitching everyone :o)

Hi everyone. Life has not been good recently in any shape or form, so I’m afraid this isn’t going to be a particularly happy post and I apologise now.

Dad had a nasty fall at home at the end of March. He fell and hit his head on the wall, losing a lot of blood (which I had to try scrubbing out of the carpet for days without success) and ending up with a 3” cut at the back of his head, requiring stitches. Thankfully the neighbour popped in to see him and found him sitting on the sofa with blood pouring out of his head. Had he not come in to see Dad that evening, I really think he could have bled to death. He had amnesia and has had memory problems ever since. He was in hospital for 3 weeks and for the last few days was in a ward where he received appalling treatment (my subsequent complaint is currently being investigated) and so he discharged himself. He now receives care 3 times a day and the district nurses also come in daily to monitor his blood sugar levels. But here we are 3 weeks later and he is back in hospital. He’s had a really nasty bout of gastroenteritis and the doctors have been very worried about him, but today they seem to think he’s on the mend and should be home within a few days. Work have been very understanding and I’ve been able to take a few days leave when I’ve needed to. I’m also now working flexi hours, enabling me to have every other Friday off, so I can go and visit Dad weekly, rather than every other week. It’s been a very worrying time and Dad is far from well. His brother, who had similar health problems, passed away a few days after Dad went into hospital, two weeks after I’d taken Dad to see him – they hadn’t seen each other for nearly 20 years. Needless to say, we’re very glad that we went when we did. He went rapidly downhill in the last few days, poor thing, as he’d seemed in reasonably good health when we saw him. I also lost a good friend I'd met at my last job around the same time, who was terminally ill with cancer. She’d fought a brave battle and was a fighter right until the end.

It’s also not been a good time for kitties. Joy – the cat I’ve been looking after at my accommodation – was blind in one eye and last week, it suddenly went from being gungy one day to very sore and bleeding the next. Poor thing had an eye tumour. I contacted her ‘mum’, Becky, who is studying at uni, and she returned home and took her to the vet. She was 18 and it was likely that the tumour had spread to the area behind her eye, so Becky made the brave decision to have her put to sleep. The same week, my sister had to have her cat Bertie put to sleep as she had suddenly developed a large mass inside her.

Then today, I had to say goodbye to my beautiful baby girl, Bobbi. She’d not been eating and was drinking lots of water. She was skin and bones, poor thing, which happened very very quickly. So I made the best, but difficult decision to have her put to sleep. I feel so sad. I knew her from when she was a week old. She sat in the palm of my hand and mewed at me, before her eyes were even open, her beautiful golden eyes. She loved sitting in the garden in the sun and in the wintertime, loved to be curled up next to the fire. When she was happy and contented she would purr deeply, curl her tail around her legs and suck the end till it was soggy, like a child sucks its thumb for comfort. I will never forget her.

A lovely afternoon

It's been a beautiful day here in England today, well, down in the south anyway! I've had a house warming shared lunch with most of my immediate family today - 2 of my sisters, their children / husbands / wives / partners. 14 of us squeezed into my little house, but thankfully I also share the garden and am able to use the large conservatory at the back of the cottage. It was lovely to share lunch together - everyone contributed something and I was busy baking lemon & lime cupcakes at 10pm last night in preparation...

Then my niece Ellie (you can tell we like baking!) made a beautiful 'Country Cake' decorated with cows, sheep and flowers! She is such a clever girl. I love all the little details, the fence, the flower stems, everything! :o) It tasted pretty good too. We polished off most of the food, but there's still a little cake left over which I may take into work with me tomorrow.

I seem to have lost my stitchy vibe at the moment. It could be that I can't see the tv from my only armchair in my little house (I like to stitch and semi-watch films). I can't site the tv anywhere else and don't think I can move the chair anywhere close by. I can see the tv from my bed, so may stitch temporarily sitting on my bed for now. In the summer I'm looking forward to sitting in the conservatory and stitching there. I have an urge to pick up my neglected Taj Mahal WIP at the mo.... Have a great week folks!

A long hiatus

Yes, it's been longer than I can even think about since I last blogged. My life has taken another turn of events and I apologise now that this post may be a little long, a little rambly and there may even be a healthy smattering of photos!

I left my old job at the end of January and much as I was sad to say goodbye to the people, I wasn't sad to leave the company - it was definitely time to move on. I started my new job at the hospital on the first day that the UK was covered by its worst snow in 20 years! I think it took me nearly 2hrs to get to work for my induction and they were very kind to us and let us go by about 2.30 in the afternoon. I've been there for 5 weeks now and am working with a great team - the other HR Advisors are all very experienced and have much knowledge between them. I'm sure I'm going to learn lots from working alongside them. I've been involved with a few of their cases and eventually I will have casework of my own. I think I'm going to like it :o)

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, my sister, who works as an administrator in our church office, emailed me at work to tell me about some accommodation that was going to be advertised in the weekly church bulletin and that she thought it might be suitable for me. It was a little further from work than I had wanted, but looked nice from the photos my sister sent and she arranged for us to go and see it that evening. It's an unusual setup, to say the least. The owner, Mary and her husband, spend most of the year out in Madagascar, working for a Christian organisation and are abroad for 4-6 months at a time. They own a big cottage in the Sussex countryside, in a very quiet and peaceful village. Mary's husband (a builder) has extensively renovated the cottage in the 20yrs they have been there. Next to the cottage is a large building, which was originally some outhouses and a few years ago, they totally renovated them into a studio house for their daughter to live in, who subsequently went off to uni 200 miles away and decided she didn't want to live in it. They then began letting it to help pay the bills whilst they were out in Madagascar. The deal is that all bills are included in the very reasonable rent and the tenant also feeds their elderly cat - Joy. Joy is 18, going blind and deaf and is very sweet. The tenant also needs to make the main cottage look lived in - turning lights on & off etc. I went to view it and fell in love with the place, so just a few days ago, I moved in and here I am!

This (l) is the studio (the taller part at the front is a garage) and the strange black stuff on the ground is covering vegetable patches. There are many fruit trees in the garden (which I also get to use) and I can help myself to as many fruit and vegetables as I like!

(r) An inside main view. There's also a separate bathroom and LOTS of storage areas, even for all my stitching stash! The pink and blue throw on the chair is made by the villagers Mary teaches crafts to in Madagascar.

So at long last, I have a beautiful little home of my own. It's early days yet and I'm still settling in, but I'm looking forward to being here all through the lovely summer days coming up.

There has been a smidgeon of stitching going on, but hopefully when I'm more settled, there will be much more! I finished another page on Snow Princess & the Polar Bear:

and there's even been a tiny bit of progress on Midnight Hunting (I finished off the lower part of his wing):

That's it for the moment I think! I will attempt to catch up with blogs over the next few days and my apologies if I haven't visited yours in a while. Have a great weekend folks!

New wheels

Yay! I finally picked up my new wheels and took them out for a spin today. I didn't get very far as the garage had put probably around a cup of petrol (gas) in the car, so it promptly ground to a hault, nowhere near a petrol station, but thankfully my good friend was off work today and drove over to pick me up and took me to get some petrol. Thank goodness for friends!

Welcome to the new look blog by the way - hope that it is as clear to read as the old layout, I just fancied brightening it up a bit :o)

I'm spending a few days at Dad's as he had a cataract operation on Monday. All has gone well and I'm trying to teach him how to administer his eye drops, which is no easy task at all.... he seems to have managed to swallow (yes, swallow!) more than he's got in his eye so far!

I've nearly finished the page of Snow Princess I've been working on, so won't add any photos until I've got there. I can't not add any photos at all though, so let's see what I can find.... here's a pic of two of my sister's cats Bertie (l) and Kitten (r). Kitten is Bertie's mother, though is absolutely tiny. They both seem to like sleeping on my bed and snuggle up together, washing each other and helping me on my laptop ;o)

Frrrrrrosty!

It's been a bit nippy down here lately and last Saturday there was such a lovely layer of frost in the garden, that I took a few photos.

Everything looked so pretty as if it had been covered in icing sugar! It's been a bit milder this week but it's gonna rain pretty soon I think.

Thank you all for your lovely messages following my car accident. Would love to hug you all! My bruises are healing nicely now (had some nasty black ones for a while). I managed to find a little runaround car on Weds to get me mobile again and I pick it up next week after they've finished servicing it for me. I've been relying on friends, family and the bus to get about. I don't like travelling by bus as it makes me feel quite ill, but it's been very efficient in getting me to and from work.

I've also resigned from my old job. I leave in 2 weeks time on 30th Jan and start my new one straight after, on 2nd Feb. They asked me to start then as there's an induction scheduled for that day and half of the next, so it'll be good to get the induction done and out of the way and then crack on with the new job.

It was my sister's birthday yesterday, so we all went out for a delicious Italian meal last night on my BIL. I had tagliatelle with salmon which I really enjoyed and even managed to squeeze in some Italian ice cream for dessert. Have a good weekend folks ;o)

Happy new year!

Happy new year everyone! Hope you all had a great Christmas and wish you all the very best for 2009. I've not updated my blog for a while, as I've had lots of things going on...

I haven't got the new year off to a very good start. Yesterday I crashed my car into the back of another. I was driving reasonably fast at the time - there was a truck on the side of the road, obscuring a short traffic queue in front of it, caused by someone who had stopped to let horses cross the road. As I came past the truck I only had a few seconds to try and stop the car but still went into the back of the other car with some force. Somehow, miraculously, I walked away from the accident with nothing more than shock, a small cut on my knee and lots of bruises. I'm still pretty sore, but had it not been for my airbag, I think it could have been so much worse. Unfortunately my car was so badly damaged at the front that it's been written off :o( The other car was a Volvo and hardly had a scratch and the 2 passengers were absolutely fine. It's really strange - I can't remember the actual impact, but can remember the few seconds before very clearly. It is starting to feel a bit surreal now, as if it were a dream, but my bruises are very real!

I had a quiet but nice Christmas. Lots of time spent with various members of my family and we also all went out on the 27th Dec to celebrate Dad's 76th birthday. Somehow the restaurant managed to pull enough tables together to sit all 18 of us and Dad had a really enjoyable day.

I mentioned my impending redundancy in my last post. Well, the good news is that I have been offered a new job at a local hospital as Assistant HR Advisor with much better salary than I had hoped for! It's a conditional offer though and it can't be confirmed until my references, health clearance and CRB check have all come back, so in the meantime I'm working part-time in my old job, probably until the end of January. The job sounds very suited to my skills and my new manager seems lovely. I can't wait to get started and wish the paperwork would be sorted out sooner!

Snow Princess has been back on the Q-Snaps during the last few weeks and this is my most recent progress:

A little close-up too of the area I've been working on. I've nearly finished page 12 now and am looking forward to starting page 11 which has some of the princess's robe on. I've been stitching this for so many years now - I'd love to get a nice substantial chunk completed this year. My stitching resolutions for this year? Stitch long and prosper sums it up for me I think ;o)