MUM

Just to let all of you know that Mum passed away peacefully tonight. She had a heart-attack at around 5:30, and by about 6:30 all of her pain was over. It all seems to be unreal at the moment. But she doesn't have to struggle anymore.

I received the call tonight at church during Luke's confirmation, which his Nan was mentioned during his little speech.

I am going to be with my Dad tomorrow, and I am not sure when I will be able to post again.

Thanks for all of your kind thoughts and prayers over the past week.

A Mum update, and an Award

I saw Mum the weekend after her stroke, and I must say that I was a little shocked, but also surprised at how well she seemed to be coping.

Her speech is slurred, but she is able to be understood.

She has regained movement in her left leg, but is not standing as yet. Her left arm is pretty much immobile, but she is able to shrug her shoulder. All in all she is making progress and some progress is definitely better than none at all.

Her spirits are amazingly high, she is giving cheek and complaining about the food she says that the food is 'S#!(' LOL. Her swallowing reflex has been affected and her food has to be the consistency of honey to prevent it going straight to her lungs, this is highly undesirable as she has a lung infection on top of everything else. She is very thirsty and is always asking for a weak black tea with a dash of cold water, or a beer LOL.

She has been dehydrated and has had a nasal-gastric tube put in place to increase her fluid intake, and the silly bugger pulled it out. It has been re-inserted, along with a trip to the hospital, she is now in a place that specialises in re-hab, for an x-ray to ensure that the positioning is correct and her right hand is now sporting a sock which has been taped on to prevent her from pulling it out again.

While I was visiting her she complained that her dentures had not been cleaned since the stroke, five days, so she asked me to clean them for her. Now, I am the only one in my family the youngest of five, that has their own teeth, and of all the people to ask, she asked me LOL. Well I gave it a shot and did the best that I could, she said that they felt better.

I would sincerely like to thank each and everyone of you that have left comments about Mum, it is so comforting to know that so many people are thinking of Mum and my family during this time. While talking to Dad on the phone one night, I told him that I had blogged about Mum and I told him about the messages that I had received, he was so touched he was actually crying and he said that it was wonderful to know that so many were thinking of us. Thanks everyone.

Ann has very kindly bestowed an award on me and my blog. On her blog she said that she was impressed with my cake decorating abilities, see previous posts where I made a Pirate Ship cake for Joel's birthday. Thanks so much Ann.

The 'rules' of the award are as follows:

1 Put the logo on your blog
2 Add a link to the person who awarded you
3 Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4 Add links to those blogs on yours
5 Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

I am not going to nominate any blogs, sorry Ann, but everyone who is a regular reader, or those who have left a comment regarding Mum, please accept this award from me.

My next post will include a prize, and some wip pictures.

A Gift and some not so good news.....

This has taken awhile to post about, sorry Ranae.

Here is the prize that I won on Ranae's blog. It is called Offering From the Heart and it is by Ewe and Eye and Friends. The verse says "Please now accept this little gift an offering from the (heart picture)". It is a gorgeous design, and Ranae also included some DMC Pearl thread, Thank You so much Ranae. I love it, and I am looking forward to stitching it.



















Now for the not so good news. Yesterday I was at a cafe having a coffee with some friends and my mobile rang. It was my Dad and highly unusual for him to call me on my mobile and in the middle of the day. He said that when he got back home from walking their little dog, he found Mum had fallen over in the bathroom, he called an ambulance and the driver suspected that Mum had suffered a stroke. Dad was so upset, understandably, and I just broke down crying. A friend called DH and he came and calmed me down, as all I wanted to do was get in the car and travel the five hours to go and see Mum.
Dad rang later that night, after he had been to see Mum in hospital, half an hour away from where they live, and said that her spirits were high and she had regained some of her 'cheek' while he was there. She has paralysis down her left side and her speech is a little slurred.
She will be in hospital for some time, as she has to have physio and speech pathology. But the best news is that there appears to be no permanent brain damage, there was no bleeding on the brain. Apparently Mum was brushing her hair and dropped her brush, and while picking it up, slipped on the mat. It is not known if the fall caused the stroke, or the stroke caused the fall. Either way it seems that she has fared rather well, Thank God. Now just the long road to recovery.
Please keep Mum in your thoughts and prayers as she begins her recovery, she is a strong and determined woman so we are hoping that these traits see her through this difficult time.

I WON, and some WIP pictures.

Ranae had a competition on her blog a little while ago, and I WON!!! WOO HOO!!! Can you tell that I am excited!!!! Thank you so much Ranae for your generosity and kindness. Here is a link to the post with details of the competition and a picture of the chart, http://crazyxstitcher.blogspot.com/2008/06/its-finally-beautiful-day.html. I have e-mailed you my snail mail address Ranae, and hope that the e-mail gets sent as I have been having problems, need to get DH to have a look at it soon.

Now that I have managed to compose myself, here are some long overdue wip pictures.

The first two pictures are of HAED Faery Tales. I am really enjoying stitching on this one at the moment. I am doing the forth row of ten stitches and I can see a pathway on the top of the cliff, the beginnings of a person's coat. The second Faery Tales picture only has three rows completed and I can see the beginning of a wall, of which Cinderella and her Prince are dancing on the top, and the beginning of a ship flying through the night skies. I am assuming that the ship has Peter Pan and co. aboard. Please feel free to correct me if this is not so.

My next wip picture is of a little design that I started recently, and is a LHN design from their collaboration with Crescent Colours and is called Patience. This is a gorgeous design, and the colours in the photo are pretty true to life.

I would like to thank everyone for the lovely comments about Joel's birthday cake. Yes we did eat and destroy the cake. Funnily enough not many of kids finished their pieces, it must have been the black icing putting them off combined with the chocolate cake mix that I decided on, not to worry, the chickens enjoyed it LOL.

I would also like to thank everyone who commented about Georgina and looked at her blog and left a comment there, I can't even begin to understand what her parents and siblings are going through. It just must be heart-breaking for them to see their sister and little girl going through so much and at such a young age too.

That is all from me for the moment, almost time to get the boys from school.

Hope everyone is well and getting lots of stitching done.

"Ahoy there me hearties"

Well here is the cake. It was pretty easy to make, it is amazing what skewers/kebab sticks can do to hold a cake together. Joel was very happy with it and at the end of the day that is what is important. The pirates came from a toy which Joel has had for some time and I also added a treasure chest with some of Caitlyn's toy jewellery.

If you are a religious person could you please keep this young girl, Georgina, in your thoughts. She was struck down by a mystery illness over a year ago and was placed in a medically induced coma. Whenever the coma drugs were eased off, she would begin fitting. I learnt of her blog at our old church not long after she became ill and have followed her plight via the blog set up by her father and a family friend. In his most recent post her father has particularly asked for patience.

Such a long time.....

Where did the rest of April and May go? Are we in June!!!!
WOW, so long between posts, huge apologies everyone.
I have been reading your blogs, my bloglines is a very manageable 72 feeds at the moment, just not posting on my own.
So what has been happening!!! Joel had his birthday on the 6th of June and is now 6 years old. He is such a delightful little man, and so funny. (His antics deserve a post all on their own). He is the class comedian and seems to be very popular amongst his peers and teachers. He had a small accident on the slide at school and managed to put a cut on the back of his head, the school rang me, I took him to the hospital emergency department, and while he was describing to the doctor what had happened he said that he had "broken his head". The doctor was quite amused at his description. All is well now, they didn't stitch his wound, just used some glue, which is still in his hair.

Joel's birthday fell on a long weekend for us in Oz, and since he has never had a birthday party before, we decided that his first year of school would be a great time to have one. So Sunday is the day, about 12 kids are coming . I just keep on telling myself that it is only for two hours. I am attempting to make him a pirate ship cake, first time for everything, and will post some pictures of it if it turns out okay!

I have been stitching and made progress on Faery Tales, A Love Song, Celtic Banner and VOHRH. I have another new start, just a small one, a LHN design from their scriptures series, would eventually like to stitch them all and make them into a quilted wall hanging, one day!

We replaced the chicken that died. The bird that we got is quite young and she is so tame. Just as well, as she decided that she like our neighbours yard better than ours and kept on 'flying' yes 'flying' over our fence. We trimmed her wing and some of her tail feathers, and she still manages to escape by first flying onto part of our compost bin and then on to the fence. Rotten bird. Where she came from she was free range so she just doesn't like being in the pen. Now we have roughly covered the pen with some bird netting and this seems to be working so far. And after the trauma of some time ago, they have started to lay again, YAY fresh eggs again.

We have been to our beach house and while we were there we took the kids to the Scienceworks Museum, they had a wonderful time. We went into the planetarium where we watched a short film about our southern skies and learnt where we could find Mars and Saturn, and some constellations.

Well I had better get to bed as I have a cake to make tomorrow, and a house to make presentable.

Hope everyone is well and getting lots of stitching done.

Sorry everyone.

A few people have asked me in the comments if 'chooks' are our chickens, yes they are indeed our chickens, sorry about that.

Time to drop the children at school and kindergarten and then I have a day to me me me. It will involve some stitching, perhaps a walk and some horrid house work. Oh well, house work does need to be done sometimes, doesn't it?

Stay safe everyone.

Trouble with chooks, and Faery Tales

I would like to thank all of you for your kinds wishes and comment on my last post, stitching bloggers are some of the kindest people I know, I smile inwardly every time I read comments that you make.

Last Saturday night when Luke fed the chooks, he unfortunately neglected to lock the chook pen properly, and on Sunday morning while we were at church one of them apparently became adventurous and wandered into the back yard with the dogs. Our neighbour heard all of the commotion, jumped our back fence and managed to lock the chooks away. When we came home we saw all the feathers and checked on the chooks and they were all huddled into their shelter. Our neighbour told us what he had found and we thanked him for all that he had done. We kept a close watch on them, put water and food in their shelter, but unfortunately one died through the week. The other 3 have survived the shock and are now venturing out of the shelter for food and water.

Poor Luke he felt so bad, but there was little anyone could do, so we just gave him lots of hugs and reassured him that we knew he would never do this intentionally. If you remember I was struggling with a medication change and got quite upset over the poor chooks, but am now relieved that the 3 remaining chooks are now alright. I think it will be some time before we see any eggs from them, a person at hubby's work said around a month.

A stitchy update: here is Faery Tales.

Hopefully the photos are clear enough on your monitors. In the larger photo, the brown blobby bits are the beginnings of something exciting, something other than sky and water that is LOL!! The second photo is from the blobby bits to the bottom. I have stitched ten rows from top to bottom and this totals 4530 stitches all up.

I am going to do the same with Land of Enchantment, so all you can see at the moment is lots of black tree, and then I would like to go back to VOHRH.

I hope that everyone is getting in lots of stitching, stay safe and happy.

How on Earth Did That Happen, and I have a wonderful Hubby

The 'How on earth did that happen part'!!!!

Over Easter we went to our holiday house on the opposite side of Melbourne from where we now live. Some time ago, I decided that whenever we went there that I would allow myself a new start, or three HEHE. So before we left, I looked through my kitted projects and thought that I would like to start Miribilias Lady of the Mist. I did this, and all was fine until I went and paid a visit to Vicstitch. I had noticed on a visit to their website, that they were stocking some HAED and one of them was Faery Tales, which I instantly fell in love with, and it became a must have. On visiting Vicstitch I was disappointed to learn that they were having difficulties in sourcing this chart from their suppliers but were more that willing to show me the 'new' charts that they had just received, they hadn't even had a chance to load them on to their website. Amongst these charts was Land of Enchantment, and I thought to myself that if I couldn't get Faery Tales that this one would do!!!!! So another new start.

Then when we got home, I spoke to my DH about rrreeeaaallllllyyy 'needing' this chart (Faery Tales) and he said as long as it was only one chart and no other necessities, like thread and fabric, that I could get it. So that afternoon I hurriedly ordered it and thanks to the wonderful service that is HAED, I was down loading and printing, and collecting threads and fabric, which I already had, sneaky or what, and before you knew it, I had another new start. OH MY GOODNESS!!!! Three new starts and all of them BAPS. Is it any wonder that I hardly ever have any finishes when I keep on starting really large projects. I do have smaller charts in my stash and do hope to stitch them one day.

Ordering Faery Tales was not the wonderful Hubby part of this post. A week or so ago I spoke to him about getting a new clothes dryer as the one we have keeps on setting off our electrical safety switch and therefore there must be a fault with it, and as it is around 13 years old I thought that it had done its job. Today he and Luke went to Melbourne to see a friend of Luke's, who had been staying with us, onto the train so that the friend could get home to Bendigo. When he comes home he drags me away from my stitching to have a look at the car, and in the back seat was a new dryer. What a man!!!

I am feeling somewhat better since my last post, but my doctor decided to change my depression medication due to some long term side affects, high blood pressure, and coming off the old medication is quite problem some as my blood pressure, hopefully returns to a lower level. Once I start the new medication on Monday, I am hoping to feel more like my old self again. Thank you everyone for your comments on my 'down' post, I really appreciate them all.

I am rather chatty at the moment, 1.30 in the morning, I should be asleep instead but having some issues due to the above. While DH and Luke were out of town today I took Joel and Caitlyn to the movies and we saw Horton Hears a Who. It was quite enjoyable, and it managed to entertain the kids for the length of the film. Joel and Caitlyn were so well behaved, the worst things that they did; Joel decided that he wanted to see the what the movie looked like whilst sitting on the floor instead of in his seat, and Caitlyn was leaning on the back of the seat in front of her, such great kids.

I think I might go back to bed now and see if I can get some sleep, good night all, and happy stitching.

Some WIP Pictures

Here is a picture of A Love Song. It is by Fouroaks Designs. It was one of the first designs that I had to have when I first started looking at cross stitch on the internet. I tend to work on this when I am travelling, and when it calls to me, as it is a very enjoyable piece to stitch for me, no colour changes and it is easy to keep track of where I am up to. I am stitching it on antique white linen, I think it is 32 ct, and I am using Vicki Clayton's silk in the colour way of Garnet. I am loving stitching on this and seeing the different motifs appear on my fabric. The chart for this is divided into four parts, with the bottom portions being smaller that the top. The very left hand side of the border is where the bottom page ends. So I will say that I have done a quarter of this.

I would also like to share where I am up to on my Village of Hawk Run Hollow. I am trying to complete one square per month and have been successful so far except for the grave yard square, which took about two months because of the solidly stitched block. I do have breaks from this if I need to during the month by stitching on something else for a night or two if I need/want to. I am stitching this on 40 ct Lambswool linen and using Vicki Claytons silk again, this is a great conversion by Vicki and I am enjoying stitching this design with the silks.

This is a closer picture of the block that I am currently working on, nearly finished, so well on track to completion for this month.














I have been feeling a little flat lately, and my old 'friend' (or foe) depression has come for a visit. It seems to be worse when I am pre-mentrual, (sorry if this is TMI) but I am mainly putting it down to the move, and not being successful with a number of job applications with my current employer. With moving I am not guaranteed a position, but have to apply for them as they become available, I am okay with this, but I am limited to two branches which I can apply for, and need to wait until other employers move on. I asked to be put on leave with no pay while waiting to be appointed to a position, but first of all I have to use up all of my other leave entitlements. I am so not happy about having to use my Long Service Leave as I have worked for a long time to be able to have this and was hoping to use it for something pleasurable.
This is the main reason for no posts the last month or so, but I do love the stitching community and the people in it, looking at every ones pictures and reading about what they have been up to. So I have decided to let all of you know what has been going on. Sorry for the rant :(
On a brighter note, both boys have settled into their respective schools very well, and Caitlyn is enjoying her two days per week of kindergarten.
I think this is long enough and thanks for all of your wonderful comments on my last post, I really appreciate everyone for stopping by and I hope that you all get lots of stitching done.