Playing Catch Up

I hadn’t meant to be away for so long. Sometimes though, life just seems to get in the way!

I left off blogging in October last year and am trying to rack my brains thinking just what bits of life have prevented me from writing here as frequently as of old. Nothing terribly exciting springs to mind, I'm afraid.

Ian's 92 year old mother seems to be taking up a lot of our time of late. That sounds a little resentful of me doesn't it, but I don't really know how else to say it as it is.

Widowed for the last 30 years, she's always been a fiercely independent woman and refuses point blank to consider moving to any form of sheltered accommodation, despite her increasing poor health and frailty. 'Independence' for her these days means that Ian and I do all her shopping, make most of her meals, do the washing and ironing....all the usual mundane stuff in life, whilst two of her granddaughters clean for her each week. It's time consuming and I have to confess gets a little wearing at times, particularly when she insists on ringing us at 6.30 am on a Sunday morning as she did yesterday asking us to add certain items to her shopping list! Thankfully she has carers go in three times a day to help her bathe and dress in the morning, to prepare a mid day snack for her and to help her get ready for bed, but lately she's taken to try doing it all herself which has led to the carers finding her on the floor on more than one occasion. She then won't see a doctor because she's terrified that they'll, in her words, 'put her away.' Old age is a cruel Mistress.

My own 78 year old mother, who was widowed a couple of years ago, is managing to cope reasonably well although, as she repeatedly tells us, she finds the evenings particularly lonely. We try address this by having her up for an evening meal twice a week interspersed with the occasional trip out to break up the monotony for her. On a very foggy day in October we took her to Sudeley Castle just outside the beautiful Cotswold village of Winchcombe. The light that day was terrible, but I did manage to take a few photos before the fog suddenly grew denser, completely enveloping the castle in fine mist;

Hmmm, what else have I been up to? Well, I've been trying very hard to keep my hands active as the arthritis and now tenosynovitis in them has really begun affecting my ability to use them as I would like. Some days are better than others. On good days I've been busying myself doing things like this;

trying to teach myself how to give an original image a 'painted look.' The original image;

was provided by http://nastiaosipovastock.deviantart.com/

and I used a great frost texture by http://jenna-rose.deviantart.com/ to provide a hopefully interesting backdrop.

Craftwise I've been busy adapting a lovely knitting pattern I found on Ravelry;

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/yuletide-scarf

into something a little wider;

using a 70 stitch cast on, instead of I 'think' a 32 stitch one.

Oh and as you can see, I've been trying my hand at needle felting again, inspired by the wonderful designs of Gretel Parker in her blog http://allaroundus.blogspot.co.uk/

Here's a close up, in case you didn't quite catch it in all it's 'ahem' glory the first time around!

I think I rather overkilled it on the beading a little but hey ho, it's all a learning curve, not to be repeated next time!

Ooooh and I have to show you this treasure which I bought after hours spent viewing wool porn over on Etsy;

Isn't it beautiful? So beautiful in fact, I'm almost scared to use it! I'm hoping to learn to properly spin this year, so I'm saving it for when I get a better feel for it. I bought it from Candy and Lora who are co owners of Nunoco who you can find here;

http://www.etsy.com/shop/nunoco


I'd highly recommend them for speed, efficiency and great communication, and even better, they send out little sampler packets of other products in with your order, which of course, makes you want to buy even more........which I did, but that's currently a closely guarded secret, else my newly wed husband is likely to roll his eyes at me in exasperation!

Have I mentioned that I got married two weeks before Christmas yet? After living together for nearly eighteen years it was a small very casual affair with just my daughter and Ian's youngest daughter as witnesses....it was so casual in fact that Ian wore jeans and a cardigan to the tiny box of a registry office room we got married in, and I ended up looking like I'd been dragged through a hedge backwards because nobody told me the wind had made a mess of my carefully straightened hair!

I'm now officially a mother to one, step mother to seven children and step grandmother to fourteen grandchildren.

Life is good.