thank you

to everyone who commented on my previous post and sent good wishes for my mum :) 

it seems to have done the trick as mum is now out of hospital after a really nasty bout of pneumonia. 

we're hoping mum will be able to travel back to london in the next couple of days so i'll be heading down on the sleeper armed with lots of recipes for warming, healing soups and yummy baking.

thanks also to all of the lovely nursing staff and doctors who took really good care of mum while she was in hospital in stockholm, mum can't speak highly enough of the good care that she received, and i don't just mean the medical attention, the nurses all took time to pop in to spend a little time with mum (she was in isolation and feeling quite scared and lonely) and all patiently spoke in english to my mum and around my mum.  it really helped to make a difference and is much appreciated.

baby news from my brother

well after my success posting a video yesterday, i thought i would try a sound file today but somehow i can't seem to get it to work?!

i got an email in work from my brother and it was a sound file of his baby's heartbeat!

when my brother and his partner went for their most recent scan, j managed to record the sound of their daughter's heartbeat on his phone. this is just the most precious sound i think i've ever heard. cue lots of tears all round and my male boss looking bemused!

i know women have been having babies since time began and women have babies every single day but when it happens for someone you love, it seems very different, like this is the first, the only baby ever to have been conceived.

i can't wait to meet my niece when she's born in august, well, i say 'niece' ... j was told it was 90% certainty their baby is a girl but so were their friends who were surprised but delighted by twin boys!

a wee break

so my little blog will be quite for a while as my mum's coming up today and then we're off for a surprise break - we're going to a cottage but haven't told mum where it is, have only shown her this pic and then i have a few other surprises planned too (one of which may not happen due to the disruption to the flights right now!).

for now, i'm frantically trying to scrub the house from top to bottom - have been obsessed with felting recently and the housework kind of hasn't been done for a while :)

have a good week everyone.

wonderful, happy, joyous, exciting, marvellous news

my brother and his partner are having a baby!!!!!!

j & m couldn't wait to tell us so we've known since just before christmas and it was even more special to get to spend time with them both at new years. my brother just couldn't stop grinning like a cheshire cat, he is totally over the moon.

baby minni is due to be born on august 18th (our grandad's birthday!) and i couldn't be happier for them, they will make wonderful parents and we'll get to be the eccentric auntie and uncle, heeheehee.

august seems like such a long way off at the moment but at least it's plenty of time to make lots of lovely baby gifts.

happy hols :)

i'm so excited, this is where we're going for a whole week in april ...


just hope it's as sunny as it is in the pic!

i'm taking my mum away for a wee break and although she knows we're going away for a week, i'm not telling her where it is or what i've got planned, and there are a few surprises in store too!

oh i'm useless with surprises - i get so excited thinking about the surprisee's reaction and then i want to tell them so they can get excited too, but then that will spoil the surprise! how can i keep quiet for so long?! i'm sure to blurt it out, or explode!

a return

well, it has been a little slow for life to return to 'normal' around here! we have managed to extend the festivities right up until last weekend.

m had a couple of rare weekends off so we used the chance to visit friends we hadn't caught up with over christmas and new year, to spend some time just vegging out together and pottering around in each other's company and it has been wonderful. i hope everyone had a lovely festive period and weren't too affected by the weather. mum came to us for christmas this year and then we all went to mum's for new year, including my brother and his partner who came over from sweden with the fantastic news that they're going to be parents this year!

we also tried a spot of bird watching recently but the water at the reserve was still frozen, however we did manage to see: heron; gulls; canada goose; lapwing; pair of swans; bullfinch; crow; bedraggled looking buzzard and some freezing looking pochard, teal and wigeon. but not the elusive sea eagles we were hoping for.

i have also managed to tidy up my workroom after buying loads of storage boxes while they were on sale, i can finally see the floor and close the cupboard door! not too sure how long that'll last once i get back to working again though.

i always get a little wistful when the decorations have to be put away for another year, planning our year ahead helped to cheer me up though. it looks like it's going to be a busy one but we're so excited because we have so many new things to be working on. m has his first book coming out soon and we've already proofed the first draft and got it back to the publisher, we're starting up a publishing company (which will publish other poets), i've got a few markets booked already, loads of new designs to be working on, i'll be starting city and guilds next month, and we've got plans for a couple of exhibitions too, so watch this space!

what are your plans for this year? how about new year's resolutions ... do you make them? what are yours for this year?

a rainy, blustery summer market

so, i had my first stall - assisted, thankfully, by my lovely mum :)

it was quite a long day and the weather wasn't the kindest - wind and rain, which isn't really the best of conditions for felt. but we did have some sunny spells in the afternoon.

it didn't seem to deter everyone though as the market was quite busy. although i didn't cover the cost of my stall, i did sell lots of my new work (and some of my favourite pieces too - it's always hard to let go!).

it was also a lovely way to spend time with my mum and we met so many lovely people, all of the stall holders were really friendly, passing on lots of great advice too.

with love for my nan

tomorrow it's a year since my lovely nan passed away, i miss my nan more than i can express with words and think of her every day, it's hard to imagine that i've lived a whole year without my nan, but then i look in the mirror and see her smiling back at me.

how to choose the words to tell you about our nan? we can tell you where and when our nan was born, that she had one sister and three brothers. that, at the age of 14, nan went into service and at the age of 18 she joined the ATS, where she was to meet our grandad.

these are some of the happenings from our nan’s life but we would like to share with you our nan, as we remember her.

all of us have so many of our own precious memories but did you know that our nan could tickle a trout? it was quite easy apparently! sundays at nan’s house meant roast dinner with all the trimmings – her roast spuds were THE best, and her apple courting cake really was legendary. nan always had to make extra for us, some for now and some for later.

although nanny never had much, what she did have was always shared. nan’s door was always open and everyone was always welcome through it. anyone who befriended one of the family became one of the family and everyone who came into nan’s home always went away with a full tummy.

nan was always there for us, to listen to us ... to give us advice. but no matter what happened in our lives, no matter what choices we made, nan never judged or criticised. nanny was happy if we were happy and was always so proud of even the smallest achievement.

i do mean this in the nicest way, but if you knew my nan i won’t need to tell you that nan had her stubborn and contrary moments! when nan would tell you about her day, or something that had happened, we would pretend to tell her off, saying ‘nan, you can be so contrary sometimes’. she would look at you, the biggest smile would light up her face and she would say ‘yes, but i am lovely with it!’. and she really was, and that would get her off the hook so many times. nan had such a sense of humour and boy, did she have a wicked laugh!

did you know that nan had a jar of magic cream in her cupboard? when we were little and had bumped or grazed ourselves, nanny’s magic cream would make an appearance and with a little dab of cream whatever hurt had ailed us would be cured. it wasn’t until we were quite a bit older that one of us asked what nanny’s magic cream had been ... it was a tub of nivea! and the magic ingredient ... the one that stopped the pain and the tears ... that was love.

nan shared her love of nature with us, even the shortest walk would have nan passing on the names of flowers, plants and trees and she loved to watch the birds feeding in her garden, the antics of the squirrels trying to steal the bird’s food would have her in stitches.

nan also passed on strength, determination, so much love, the importance of loved ones and i hope, a little of that contrariness! we just hope that we can be as ‘lovely with it’ too!

for every memory we commit to paper, we remember another dozen that we haven’t mentioned here. what a lovely legacy though ... a lifetime of love, laughter and happy memories.

with all of our love, good night nanny, God bless and don’t let those bed bugs bite!