WOYWW 495–Lots of Flowers

I am sorry I didn’t get to visit many desks last week but I’ve been so busy this week. We’ve had a lot on, and I’ve also been making lots of flowers for my current mystery project which has a fairly tight deadline, as well as working on other parts of it which can’t be revealed yet. My stuff arrived from Ebay so I can crack on now.

I’ve made mostly roses, and a few single-piece flowers, in three colour schemes – dark purple, turquoise, and brown. Here is the complete set so far – I am hoping to make a few single-piece turquoise ones as well.

Individual sets.

Please scroll down for posts with further details of these flowers, and more pictures.

These little embroidery frames also arrived from Ebay on Monday – I had used my last one a while back.

They are an ideal size for small cross-stitch projects for gifts.

The outer ring is rubber and clips into the inner ring, and you can work in the frame, then back it, and hang it. You can get them in lots of colours – you can see my other ones – but I like the woodgrain effect best. Smashing little frames! I like to keep a few in stock. A few months ago I got a new cross-stitch programme for the computer as my old one does not work with Windows 10.

Sourdough

Some of my best sourdough this week! Following some online advice about shaping the loaves twice at the end, instead of once, they ended up with a lot more tension and didn’t collapse. Apart from this final shaping, I have found that the less I handle the dough during the day, the better the result. Developing too much gluten makes the dough wet and sticky and causes it to collapse.

On the top photo, you can clearly see the ridges made by the bannetons. This shows up more on a white sourdough loaf.

Health Update

Partial good news on the pants front! My tirade on the phone evidently bore some fruit, because despite them telling me the second pair would not be sent out till Friday, they arrived on Thursday! What’s more, they fit. So at least I was able to put a clean pair on and I can just about manage with two pairs until they get on with the remaining ones. After the GP’s prompt response to my email, promising an instant further prescription, I am hoping to receive the third pair (and even a fourth if the GP has indeed written me a prescription for two more) sooner rather than later.

Kitties

We’ve had more problems with Ruby getting out. My hubby was out on Monday morning – fortunately only locally, and I looked out of the kitchen window to see Ruby on top of the inward-sloping mesh on top of the garden fence, which is supposed to keep them in. She was clearly distressed and couldn’t get down. I went out and called her but she wouldn’t jump, and I was terrified of her catching her paw again, as she did a couple of weeks ago. I immediately called my hubby on his mobile and he came home straight away, went into next door’s garden armed with Dreamies and enticed her down, and carried her home. She was very subdued for the rest of the day.

He had a good look along that fence to see if he could discover where she was getting out, and found that one of the fence panels is quite rotten, and she’d forced her way between the top of it and the bottom of the mesh where he hadn’t put in enough staples. I suggested he looked for forensic evidence in the form of “hair and fibre” (I watch too many detective series!) but he couldn’t find any of her fur on the fence. It was an extremely small gap and I was surprised she could get through, but my hubby said kitties are like octopuses and can squeeze through the smallest holes. They are as curious as octopuses too. Both kitties are now temporarily banned from going outside at all until he can get this fixed. He ordered a new fence panel straight away, which has been delivered, but he will have to work on it to make it fit the space.

Amazingly, each time Ruby has got out, Lily has come to tell us! She was extremely distressed that time Ruby got her paw stuck. Earlier on Monday morning, she was sitting on the windowsill outside the kitchen window, crying plaintively, and I thought she was just asking me to let her in through the window, which I refused to do. I think that Ruby was already out, and Lily had come to tell me, and I was too stupid to realise what she was saying! She gets very distressed if her sister is doing something wrong or is in trouble. She is like the responsible older sister who cares very much about her naughty little sister, and Ruby isn’t nearly as bright as Lily, and she never learns! You’d think that after she got her paw stuck, she would have learnt that she is likely to get hurt and frightened if she goes over the fence. So far the kitty defences have been very adequate, and hopefully the new fence panel will do the trick – she’s only been out that side of the garden.

Some friends of my hubby’s in the village where we used to live, who recently lost the second of their two elderly black kitties, have just got two new kittens – tabby and white this time. Next time we are over in their direction we shall call in – I can’t wait to see them! I remember when they got the other two, and I completely fell in love with the little one who has just died, and was tempted to put her in my handbag and take her home! She was always the smaller of the two and utterly adorable. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone and those two darling little black babies are now no more, having lived a good long life. It’s so devastating when they go, isn’t it. They grow up so quickly and you don’t want to miss a moment of their adorable kittenhood.

Have a great creative week, everybody.

Card for a Centenarian–Box for the Card

Having completed the card yesterday, today I worked on embellishing a box for it, as it is too thick for an envelope.

The box was in my stash, and originally contained some samples of stoma supplies! (Nothing goes to waste chez Shosh…)

I painted the bottom, sides and edges of the top with black acrylic paint.

Inside the box, I sprayed it with some pink shimmer spray that I’ve had from when I started papercrafting, many years ago!

I noticed some had got on the bottom of the box and I really liked the effect of it on black (something I’d never tried before) so I ended up spraying the whole thing with it.

I thought the inside needed something a bit extra, so I painted on a thin layer of soft gloss gel medium diluted with water, and sprinkled on some variegated copper gilding flakes, dabbing them into place with the paintbrush.

I wasn’t really happy with it, so I made up a wash of gold acrylic paint with some iridescent medium and painted that on. It was really shimmery but the brush strokes showed more than I wanted, and this was particularly obvious on the lid, unfortunately.

Here’s a detail of the effect. You don’t really get the shimmer from the photo.

In the end, I covered the inside of the lid with some of the paper left over from making the card, first distressing the edges with Evergreen Bough and then Forest Moss Distress Inks. This improved the look of it.

Here is the card in the box. It will be wrapped in tissue paper.

The front of the box completed. As with the card, I added some stickles to the butterfly’s body, and to the centres of the flowers – Holly, and Magenta. In this photo, they still aren’t dry.

I used scraps of the cards and paper used for the card. The circular die cut was one of several in my stash that a friend sent me ages ago. The flowers were more left over from the Floral Mini-Album, and the butterfly is another die cut from the set I used for the card. I used the same two ribbons, and where the “Congratulations” gold card meets the decorative paper, I added a thin strip of gold card from my stash, trimmed when making some other project in the past.

Here is a detail of the floral embellishment.

As with the butterflies on the card, I lifted the wings of this butterfly and secured them in place with a blob of Pinflair gel glue under each one, to stop them being flattened.

Now that the card is fully dry, I can return to it and show you the finished result. Here are a couple of detail photos showing the topper and embellishments.

The sentiment on the inside of the card.

Finally, a photo of the box, the card and the embroidered piece, all for a remarkable lady whose 100th birthday we shall be celebrating with her at her party tomorrow.

I can’t believe I’ve completed this lot in under a week! The trouble is, apart from making bread, that’s all I’ve done this week, and everything else has been neglected!

WOYWW 472

Contrary to my expectations, I managed to do a bit at my desk this week. This coming Saturday we are going to a party to celebrate the 100th birthday of a delightful Jewish lady who regularly attends our Christian Friends of Israel meetings. She is truly amazing for her age and you’d never guess she’d reached 100! I didn’t have much time but decided I must make her a card and a present.

On my main desk is her card so far.

The papers I am using were given to me for my birthday by a friend, and she’s delighted that I am putting them to immediate use. I have used the Die’sire butterfly card dies I bought at the craft show in February – at last I am starting to use some of the stuff I got then! I have cut the mat layers from some of the decorative papers I had for my birthday and the base layer is a thicker gold embossed card with the words “Congratulations” all over it. I will cut a “100” from gold card on the cutting machine and will use one or both of the ribbons you can see on the left.

I have also managed to clear a space on my office desk, which is now marginally tidier than it was before – ready to start last month’s accounts once I get time.

I’ve still got a lot of sorting to do as I’ve got far too much junk in there that should be shredded.

I decided to make a little embroidered frame for the 100-year-old’s birthday present.

You can see the original one on the right, which is normally hanging in the bedroom. I started the other one at the weekend and finished the cross stitch last night – been working flat out! – all that remains is to outline it all in black back-stitch and to tidy up the back. I am sure I shall get both this and the card finished in time for Saturday.

The design in an original one that I did several years ago – the Hebrew word “Shalom” in English and Hebrew, the central letter of the Hebrew becoming the “L” in the English, worked in rainbow colours, mixing the threads on the needle to get the graduation of colour. I designed it using a programme called EasyCross, which I have not used for years, and which I have subsequently discovered does not work on Windows 10, and which has been discontinued, and the company has gone out of business. I have purchased another cross-stitch design programme which I have yet to get to grips with. I managed to open the original “Shalom” design and do a screen grab and print it but it was covered with dotted lines and the colours weren’t right – I’ve had to edit it quite a bit with coloured pencils and notes. Eventually I shall redo this design, and my other EasyCross designs, into the new programme.

Ongoing Computer Stuff

The sorting out of my various hard drives and back-ups has had to take a back seat until after the weekend as I’ve got to get this birthday stuff finished first. There are still hard drives and cables all over the sitting room floor! At least I’ve managed to sort out the recovered back-up that I did last week.

Bread

On Friday I went to an Erev Shabbat (Sabbath Eve) meal at a friend’s. We had a wonderful evening and I made some new friends. He had done the table most beautifully.

I offered to make the challah (two plaited loaves of enriched egg bread) as he would not have been able to get any locally.

Somewhat lumpy at the ends! Next time I must remember to taper the ends of the long sausages of dough before plaiting them!

This is the challah cover that I made many years ago.

The Hebrew words are the blessing before bread: “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”

This week I also made my first attempt at making sourdough bread. This is the starter I made, from organic rye flour and kefir whey (I had made some kefir cheese by straining the kefir and reserving the liquid whey which is full of goodness).

The starter takes several days to develop, during which time you feed it daily with more flour and water (or whey).

Here is the resulting sourdough bread that I made yesterday evening – I started it on Monday evening, leaving it to prove overnight, and knocking it back yesterday morning, and leaving it for its second prove all day in the fridge until we got back from our day out – sourdough takes longer to rise than normal bread, and long slow proving improves both the flavour and texture of the bread.

It was so successful that by the time we’d finished our supper, there were only two slices left!!!

This is definitely something I shall be doing regularly. It’s not much trouble to make, but you just have to think ahead a bit and allow extra time for all the proving. You can keep the starter going more or less indefinitely, like kefir.

New Stash

Today, the friend who gave me the lovely papers for my birthday, turned up with a carrier bag absolutely full of craft goodies that she’d bought for me at a coffee morning – it was like Aladdin’s Cave opening it all up!

Lots more papers, cards, stamps, embossing stuff…

Also in the bag was this gorgeous Docrafts folder, absolutely stuffed with clear stamps.

I am overwhelmed – so much stuff to play with, and also with her kindness, thinking of me and buying me such a fabulous present! She said she got it all for an absolute song. What a treat, and what a lovely surprise.

Kitties

Can’t leave you without a kitty picture. Here are Lily and Ruby watching me intently from outside the kitchen window.

Ruby in particular likes to jump up there, in the hope that I will let her in through the window – which I don’t want to encourage!

They are both still really enjoying being in the garden all day, and doing quite well with the cat flap, but Ruby keeps forgetting how to use it! They are better at going out than coming in, probably because they have more incentive to go out, as they are both little garden addicts these days.

So you can see I’ve been very busy this past week, and this will continue for a while until I can get on top of things again. At least I’m being creative again!

Have a great week, everyone.

2017–The Year in Review

Warning – Long post, photo rich

Another year has flown by, and my goodness, what a year it has been. Here is my annual review of what has happened in my life over the past twelve months.

Mum

The most significant event was the death of my mum on 9th December. She was 96 and was ready to go. Over the past few years her quality of life had deteriorated greatly and she spent the final couple of years in residential care, almost completely deaf and unable to do much. I often think that the progress of modern medicine may have succeeded in prolonging life, but if the quality of that life has deteriorated to the extent that it no longer holds any pleasure, what is the point? I am absolutely against euthanasia, but do not hold with “striving officiously to keep alive…”

Although during my adult life, my relationship with Mum was not what it might have been, I have many good memories, and am grateful for many things – during my childhood she was always there for us, with a hot meal on the table when we would arrive home hungry from school; she was always taking us out for walks, outings to the seaside with our little friends, and providing memorable birthday parties and so on. I learnt my home-making skills from her and am so grateful for the knowledge passed down through the generations from mother to daughter, so often lost these days when economic pressures make it necessary for mothers of small children to be so often out of the home in paid employment.

My hubby

All through this year my hubby has been far too busy, rushing around and hardly being at home. This has made him very tired when he has been home, dropping straight off to sleep in front of the TV etc.! I had been on at him for taking on too much, and the need to remember that he is no longer 30 years old! Then, at the end of November, he slipped and fell, and broke his leg, and he has been immobilised since then, walking with difficulty on crutches and not being allowed to put his foot on the ground. It has been touch and go whether he would need it pinned but they seem to think he’s doing OK for now, but he’s going back to the fracture clinic in four weeks’ time and they will make the final decision then. He is going to be in plaster for a long time, it seems. During this whole time he is unable to drive, and we have been very stuck, but our wonderful friends, neighbours, people from church and family have been very supportive and helpful, taking us out when necessary for hospital appointments and other engagements, doing odd bits of shopping and helping with things at home.

One friend said it was a good thing he was immobilised for a while because it would make him stop and rest a bit! Also, being unable to rush around all the time, he now has time to sort through all Mum’s papers and deal with things following her death.

I have found this whole period a great strain because I can deal with our normal life OK, managing what I have to do and factoring in the necessary rest times, but with my hubby so out of action, I have not only had him to look after, but have also had to do a lot of the things that he would normally be doing, and there have been times when having to keep constantly on the go, and simply having too much to do, it has all got too much for me and I’ve lost the plot and thrown a wobbly. I find that with my ME brainfog (and probably residual chemo brain – this has definitely affected my memory and concentration as well) that I tend to cave in under too much stress and don’t deal with it too well. I have also been carrying the anxiety about my present state of health, not to mention the stress associated with Mum’s death and all the extra things to do because of that, and then Christmas in the middle of it all.

I yearn for a period of peace and quiet and our lives returning to some sort of normality.

Health Issues

It has been another significant year for me, health-wise. In 2015 I was successfully treated for bowel cancer, and throughout 2016 I enjoyed better health than I had done for years, with the eradication of my ulcerative colitis after the removal of my entire colon. My ileostomy was very settled and easy to manage throughout the year, and I believed that this would be the story of the rest of my life, but in the autumn of that year I developed a parastomal hernia.

At the end of January this year, this caused an obstruction which necessitated emergency surgery and a two-and-a-half week stay in hospital, very poorly, and taking quite a long time to recover. A simple sutured repair of the hernia was performed by a general surgeon and as anticipated, this failed, and by the autumn the hernia had returned, and it is now in the same state that it was at the beginning of the year, causing me to be fearful of another blockage, and history repeating itself before my specialist colorectal surgeon can perform a proper repair and insert a reinforcing mesh.

I was due to see him before the year’s end, but this has not happened, and I now have to wait till mid-January to see him. I am hoping that now that the hernia has returned, and knowing my history, he will be prepared to have me in for elective surgery before it causes me another obstruction.

My system remains free of cancer, which is something on the plus side. I have seen the oncologist twice during the year and she is very pleased with me. I continue to suffer from peripheral neuropathy as an ongoing side effect of the six months of chemo I had in 2015, and this may or may not clear up; whatever happens, it is a small price to pay for survival!

Diet

I began the 5:2 diet in the summer of 2014. I had to take a break from the diet throughout 2015 while undergoing cancer treatment, but I resumed it in 2016, and this year I reached my target weight, having lost a total of 4 1/2 stone, and losing 10 inches around my waist! I have a tremendous sense of achievement over this as it proves that it can be done, and through diet alone as well, because with my ME I am unable to take sufficient exercise to make any difference to weight loss.

I am absolutely delighted to have been able to get rid of clothes that are now too big for me (trousers and leggings that wouldn’t stay up!) and to have an excuse to buy some new things, but above all, to be able to get into some old favourites again! For years my friends were telling me to get rid of these clothes because I should be realistic and accept that I’d never again be as thin as I once was, but I have proved them wrong. I had a lot of clothes that I really loved, and couldn’t bear to part with, and they are now wearable again. This makes me feel good, good, GOOD!!

Here’s me in my Afghan Nomad Dress (which I made years ago – definitely in the 1990s as this photo was taken when we lived in Plymouth:

And again, on Christmas day this year:

Here are my “before and after” pics – the first was taken in 2013 (the year before I started the diet) and the second was taken this May. I  can’t believe I looked like that…….

Kitties

Another significant, and sad event during this year was the death, only three weeks apart, of our beloved old kitties Beatrice and Phoebe.

Phoebe, aged nearly 14, developed bowel cancer and had to be put down; she had also suffered from grand mal epilepsy for the last couple of years of her life, which was extremely distressing. After she died, Beatrice, nearly 17, seemed utterly lost without her, despite the fact that they were never that close. She lingered in all Phoebe’s favourite spots as if looking for her to return, and went completely off her food, until she became so weak and obviously heart-broken and grieving, and she was put down three weeks later. We knew that both of them, being in poor health, would die this year, but we never thought it would happen so close together.

Then followed six weeks with no kitties in the house. This is only the second time this has happened to us in over 30 years of marriage, and it was very hard!

We found our new babies online, and at the end of July we drove over to west Dorset to collect them. Amazingly, they were born on our wedding anniversary (24th May)! We won’t forget their birthday in a hurry.

Here they are at 5 weeks, when we were first introduced to them (we couldn’t have them till they were 9 weeks old).

This is what they look like now – I can’t believe how much they have grown!

Lily and Ruby are now (unbelievably!) seven months old, and so much part of the family that we cannot imagine life without them. They are an utter delight, full of personality, and so pretty too! I’ve done lots of blog posts about them – far too many to provide links for, and I have also made numerous videos of them which are on my Youtube channel.

House

Back in March we discovered dry rot under the kitchen floor, which was a worrying thing because we knew it would be very expensive to deal with.

It turned out to be only in one small isolated area and although costly, a lot less so than we’d been led to believe, which was a huge relief. Work began in April.

It meant that the old-fashioned cupboard in the kitchen had to come out (it was a pain to use anyway, so no great loss) and we then had to wait until July before the carpenter was free to come and make me a beautiful walk-in pantry.

During this time I used the kitchen in Mum’s flat (which occupies half the downstairs of the house) – very small and cramped, but perfectly adequate!

The new pantry completed:

The whole unpleasant matter of the dry rot turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the new pantry has made my life so much easier, and I continue to be thrilled to bits with it. I made some extra shelves to house all my supplies, and I made some decorative labels to go on my jars, and the whole thing looks fantastic!

Food

Considering what else has gone on, I’m happy to say I have been able to do some baking and cooking this year. I find this very therapeutic.

I went on a bread baking day too (my hubby won the ticket for that).

Finally, I cooked my first Christmas dinner for over ten years.

For our annual family get-together after Christmas, I made four puddings:

Cancer Group

Our monthly cancer Cakeathon continues but we are now meeting here at my home instead of at the cancer support centre. Numbers have dropped off somewhat over the last few months because people have been busy with other things. I bake regularly for these meetings. One of our members had a coffee morning in aid of Macmillan’s this year and several of us attended that, and we baked for it too. I am perpetually grateful for all the wonderful friends I have made through getting cancer.

Bible Study Group

This has been ongoing too – our numbers remain small but they are so faithful and I am grateful for that! We completed our course on the Tabernacle, and have done occasional sessions on the Feasts of the Lord to coincide with the calendar dates on which these fall, and we began a major course on Prophecy, interrupted by a short course on Salvation (since the subject was raised by one of our members – we are very flexible about what we do!) – to be completed in the New Year. There is a lot of work involved in preparing the sessions, including designing the PowerPoint slides (which are creative and fun to do) but I find it very fulfilling, and just lately it has been something which has encouraged and built me up in the middle of a lot of troubling events.

Art

As a result of everything that has gone on this year, I have found it very hard to find the time, energy and concentration to do much art at all, and my studio has lain neglected, a sad, dust-gathering dumping ground, for far too long. I have got new stash which has been sitting around for months not even opened. I hate the fact that it is always my creativity which suffers the most when the pressures of life encroach. When time has become available, I have found that I am too tired to do anything, which is an ongoing frustration.

However, I have managed to achieve something!

Mamhead Album completed:

This was a project I worked on for several months in 2016.

I made another little book as well, this year, called “Second Wind”:

which was my first attempt at a Coptic binding.

I had hoped to finish the other book I have been working on by the end of this year but with the pressures on me over the past few weeks, this hasn’t been possible. This is a book giving examples of all the different techniques you can use with Infusions.

I also made a selection of simple stamped cards to replenish my stash:

I made a couple of cards for my hubby, one for his birthday and one for our anniversary, both mixed media with Infusions.

I have done some Zentangle in the iPad Pro this year. This was my best piece.

I did some other digital art using the Procreate app as well, including this picture, following along with a Youtube tutorial, and adding the silhouettes of some trees to make it my own:

I also continued with some digital mandalas which I save as outlines, and can then colour  as I wish.

This year I acquired an excellent video editing app for the iPad Pro called Luma Fusion, and have been able to make a lot of videos (mostly of the kittens) to upload to Youtube. Very convenient, very user-friendly. One of the best things is being able to use the iPad as a video camera so no transfer of video from one device to another is necessary. All I have to do now is rig up the iPad over my work space instead of my normal video camera.

Continuing with my ongoing embroidery project to make drapes for the bed half-tester, I’ve done a few more pieces, including these:

I’ve also done a bit of knitting, getting involved with a project at church to provide socks for the homeless.

This was supposed to be completed by the end of November, but with everything else going on, I haven’t finished the rainbow pair yet. However, I have been reassured that the project is ongoing, and someone will make sure my socks, once completed, will find a recipient!

That’s pretty much the sum total of art done this year. Not a lot to show for a whole year, is it, but other things certainly have intruded in my life big time this year!

Looking back on last year’s annual review, it’s interesting, as always, to re-read my intentions for the coming year and see how well I’ve done. As usual, the answer is, not very well!! Perhaps I should cease from this unprofitable exercise because every year, I fail!

Here’s what I intended. And whether I succeeded.

• Not making so many cards. Yes, but I didn’t do much else either!
• Books. Yes, to a limited degree.
• Boxes and 3-D objects. No.
• Textiles in my mixed media work. No.
• Felt. No.
• Finish all those UFOs (UnFinished Objects). No, no, no. Hopeless! They remain UnFinished.

So as usual I didn’t do too well on the resolutions scale.

Oh, I can’t help myself – I’m going to list some of my intentions for the coming year, despite what I’ve just said!!

• Finish the Infusions Mini-Album.
• Start using my as yet unopened Distress Oxides.
• Make more books.
• Make more boxes.
• Do more mixed media stuff and incorporate different materials including textiles.
• Make some upcycled clothing from all the bits I bought in charity shops several years ago.
• Definitely finish some of those lingering UFOs.

We shall see how well I do in the coming months!

After such a rollercoaster of a year, I am hoping for a more peaceful year ahead so that I can draw breath a bit, and get back to normal, and have more opportunity to develop my creativity. Also, now that Mum is no longer with us, maybe my hubby and I can have a bit more time together and go on more outings as the weather improves.

Wishing all my loyal followers and friends in Blogland and beyond a very happy and fruitful year ahead.