Sorry It's Been So Long

Not even a month.Nearly 7 weeks. Can't believe I haven't blogged for so long. Work is still going great and we have a great buzz going on at Weyhill. We have now been joined by Meg Leach, New Threads and she has bought the most fab fabrics, threads and quilting supplies to our happy team.

We got an ad in Simply Homemade issue 17 page 9 for your viewing pleasure. I spent lots of time last week making an altar front for the garrison church in Tidworth. We celebrated the centenary of our church so I wanted to do something special. The funniest thing was that I didn't think, the padre didn't know me very well, so I turned up on Sunday morning at 9 when the service starts at 10 with an altar front they hadn't seen and a church about to fill with a dozen assorted padres and 2 bishops. The padre was used to seeing an eccentric purple woman with lopsided hair, he'd never seen any of my work and I had said I was bringing a new altar front. Anyway I laid the altar front out on the carpet in front of the altar and waited for Andrew to come and give his verdict. I have never seen such a relieved padre.

The congregation made a great weaving to hang in the chuch. Everyone who visited the church and all the regulars were asked  to do a couple of lines when they had a moment. Best of all we shared our day with loads of great people and had the most fantastic food provided by our Fijian brothers and sisters who share our building and our services and our fellowship.Our meat was cooked in a fire pit and it tasted fabulous. They also decorated our church hall. 

Now I've just had a great day with Hailey. We went and got a new lead for Jeff and while I was there Jeff put on his Please Maggie face and I bought him a big bag of pick and mix doggy treats. Now he has more food in my studio than I have.Then after work we had a meal out and both decided to blog when we got home. I hope she is having more success than me. I can even tell you how many spelling mistakes I have corrected and I'm fairly sure most of the more keen eyed readers will see loads I haven't seen. The trouble with not being able to spell is not seeing your mistakes. And the trouble with being lazy is you can't be arsed to spell check. Happyu correcting everyone. Good night.xxx

Air hugging

Now I have told you about my disfunctional back haven't I. Well just in case I haven't. No normal discs in my lumbar spine( the bottom bit) all degenerated, cause pain quite a lot of the time. Always have a good supply of painkillers in the house, never far from a wheat bag. Lots of associated pain all the way up my back to the base of my skull. Anyhoo, particularly bad day today as I have been overdoing it big time with work and curating an exhibition for a friend and giving talks to local groups and enjoying my gorgeous daughter home from uni. I got home just before 6 after a slight variation in my usual frantic Wednesday routine( in studio 14 Fabricraft for the day to help Lianne get a massive order out to a trade customer.) Popped out for part of the day to do a talk for the local over 60's group. Back to the studio to pick up my paperwork which I should be doing now( sorry Mike). Quickly popped back in to studio 14 to see how the order was going and ended up making tea and taping up boxes so the whole complete and expanded order could wing it's way to Greenhithe via our trusty courier Transplus. Thanks Ian for coming in week after week only to find we haven't got the parcel ready and Lianne runs it to the depot at about 2 minutes to closing.
Sorry, I nearly forgot to stop for breath................ that's better.
Now I told you about my lovely daughter. She had her brilliant tattoo( artwork by Sharp Practice Salisbury) enlarged on Monday. So this evening she was a little sore and I arrived home shattered and in pain. We met in the kitchen as we were tidying from foodfest and  decided we needed a hug. As we embraced we said at the same time "gently" and proceeded to have a massive air hug.We wrapped our arms gently round each other and gently patted each other backs as if we were a pair of old cripples. I love my kids.
Had the most bizarre facebook 6 degrees of seperation moment. Facebook stalking my very good friend Hailey Louise Budding and found that one of her friends is a talented young artist/designer/teacher and if I am right I taught him to sew. Mad.  

Don't worry I'm still alive

Well my lovelies, 2months, 8 weeks since I last blogged. Life is a blur. The buisness is thriving and the site that I work on has the most amazing buzz. The Fairground Craft and Design Centre, Weyhill has a wonderful vibrant textiles thing going on. My studio is always full of people enjoying craft and textiles at their level.  I have a great group of home ed kids in on Thursday afternoons to get crafting. We have the most amazing fun, the age range is 4 to 11 and everyone gets something worthwhile from the sessions.
The last couple of weeks I've been slogging away getting an exhibition ready for a good friend. His name is Ross and he works for the Dogs Trust at Newton Tony. As well as his love of dogs he has a love of wildlife and is the most amazing photographer. So I have taken some of his work and framed it or displayed it in a more creative way and filled our gallery on site. It is the most exhausting thing I have done in a long time but even if I do say so myself, it is bloody brilliant.
We are missing a couple of pieces however as  we have a couple of guest artists. One of them is our own dear Hailey Budding who was doing a couple of pieces to go in our exhibition. Well here is the story.
The opening day of the exhibition was Wed 28th March and as it happened a group of mayors from the surounding area were paying us a visit. The gallery was almost ready apart from Hailey's work which she was just finishing off. So 8.30 in the morning I was working in my studio when I heard Hailey call my name. I asked if she was alright and she said no. When I went out to see why,I found my lovely friend had machined through her finger. So instead of getting ready for our special visitors we rushed to our local minor injury unit for an xray to check the damage. They found that it had not gone through the bone so the nurse quickly pulled it out with her surgical grade pliers. And we made it back to the site before they had all finished their breakfast.
Well that's quite enough blog for one day. Promise not to leave it so long next time. xxx

2 weeks

What is happening to time. I think I'm turning into a grown up. I keep saying things like "where does the time go." "Surley it's not February already." To coin a phrase of these youngsers WTF. Sorry that's very rude. The weeks seem to blur into one. Having great fun with work, have done 3 parties since the last blog, 7, 7 year olds then 10, 8 year olds. then this saturday 9, 8year olds........................
That pause was because I have just taken a phone call from my lovely daughter. Caught up with all the news from Liverpool. We have snow, they have sheet ice.
 My party last night started with a few flakes of snow and by the time we all left there was about 2 inches on the car park. Becuaes of the nature of our car park I didn't open today. It just compacts the snow and makes it more dangerous and takes longer to defrost. I was in need of the break and today I did something I don't think I have ever done before. I spent the day in my pyjamas. I have this thing about being washed and dressed before I go downstairs in the morning. Now I am getting my head around the strange things that go around in my head I can persuade myself that the world will not end if I go downstairs in my PJ's,(I still can't go down without cleaning my teeth.) The other bous about today is that I finished a willow sculpture I have been trying to do for ages, done some free crochet and rearranged the furniture in the living room and dining room. If I'm left in the house too long I rearrange things.
Off to James' Place tomorrow too see if Dan has had her twins safely. Babies are so presious and so fragile. A very good friend from church had a beautiful baby girl 5 weeks early and she is thriving. Another good friend went for a scan at 8 months to find her baby had died. We are all so devastated and can only think to send all our love and support. So if you are out there reading this could you all please look after each other and treat each and every life as preciuos. A little tear ha sjust escaped and run down my cheek so it's time to say goodbye for today. x

A Trip Into My Mind

I have let you slowly into little parts of my mind so far but I'm going to let you into a place my friends and family go. I suffer from depression, it is part of a cycle because of the degenerated discs in my back causing me pain for quite a large part of my life. So the cycle goes, the pain gets me down and triggers the depression, the depression brings me down to a level that stresses me out which makes the pain worse. There are other factors but that would take about a day and a half of reading and a phsyc couch.
Sunday was a very mixed day. I went to chuch (sorry forgot to tell you about my friend God.Will catch you up on that one in another blog.) I'm a good Anglican girl so I sat at the back in my fave spot. All I wanted to do was cry, I can't tell you why. And that is the thing with depression. It's frustrating to try and exlpain it to people who haven't experienced it. It would be great if you could just "pull yourself together" as some people think you should be able to, but it doesn't work like that. So there I sat with tears starting to roll down my cheeks. Anyhoo to get a grip of the situation I went and did the kids activity which perked me up a bit.

The afternoon was a complete swing in the opposite direction. I took delivery of 34 rolls of furnishing fabrics which my dear friend Lianne found for me on Ebay. I was sooooooooo excited that a young girl asked if I had had too much sugar.Then my beautiful nieces came for an afternoon crafting. We did clay work and painted shells and made all sorts of tresure. Liss and Rose went shopping on site on their own and we set stinky the stag beetle in resin (he was a dead stag beetle.) On a crafting high I went in to Lianne to say goodbye for the day and she told me I had missed 3 bow ties from an order that had to go out the next day. This is not a major drama, it is not a huge ,mistake. Things like this happen and we put them right and move on. But because of my wobbly day it was like a punch in the gut and I went back in my studio and cried.

I know my triggers and I have ways I now deal with thing which it has taken a long time to perect. So despite my day of massive mood swings I have chosen to take the best part of Sunday and firmly fix it in my memory. Stinky the stag beetle will help me with this by sitting on my printer.
Quick rundown of todays events before you get blog fatigue.
Church outing with Beth the verger and chritine her 2IC and our very great friend (and my spare mum when mine is not available) to Ikea. Had a budget to get crocery for our lovely lunch events.

Took my new car...Had coffee...Filled 3 trolleys...Had lunch...Filled the car to the brim...Christine gallantly took the back seat and we drove back to church taking each corner with great care so Chritine didn't have to wear any of the vast stack of mugs as new earrings. All shopped out, all blogged out and my lovely brother created a link from my facebook page to my buisness so I  had to do some techy stuff. Now I have techno meltdown. Goodnight.

Blur

Today my mind is soooooooooooooo disorganized that I can't even blog. So I will leave you with my new mantra.
To live is to breathe....To breathe is to craft.....To craft is to live.
Now I feel like a true artist. I can spout s..t with the best of them.

I'm Stuck in the Toilet

I have had the most fantastic, most crazy weekend but first I have to tell you about my toilet adventures.On Monday mornings I go to a wonderful place called James' Places. It is a beautiful manor house in a little village called Penton and they have opened their home so that the disabled comunity can enjoy crafts and activities without feeling instituionalised { I am aware my spelling is pants but as I can't see when I have spelled something wrong you are just going to have to put up with it. I also write very long fragmented sentences which drives the spell check mad, but anyway where was I} So I was enjoying my morning of creative textiles with the members when nature called and I had to visit the little girls room. These are on the other side of the house out of earshot of anyone. I shut the door which put up a bit of resistance, but hey, it shut I did what I needed to do then tried to open the door. It did not matter how far down I pulled the handle the catch would not go far across to get out.
Now I'm not a panicer I see the funny side of most things so I just laughed. The only trouble is I have several degenerated discs in my lower back and it doesn't take much to put my back out. So I laughed so much I really hurt my back which although it hurt like hell it made me laugh more. It took 20 minutes before anyone started to worry but thank you Michael anyway for rescuing me, which incidentaly took no time at all as the door opens perfectly from the outside.
Well my lovely weekend. I work with a lot of young people on the weekends so to keep things simple and because of child protection I will only ever use an initial letter instead of a name. Saturday mornings a teenager called A comes in for a sewing session and she has the best imagination and design brain. She always sketches her own patterns and then we cut them together and A gets on and makes her creations. So that was a great start. Then 2 boys who have been coming to the studio for a few weeks now had booked in to do spray painting. We had the best time out in the barn in our attractive masks and goggles painting and masking and painting some more. We also found an old table that was going to be thrown out so we got permission and sprayed that too. J & J had such a good time they begged there mum to come back Sunday.
As soon as J & J had finished a lovely girl J came with a friend S to have some fun for her birthday. We got out the oven bake clay, put up the birthday bunting and modeled away til mum came to collect them. As we hadn't had time to make the photo frames we wanted to I invited the girls back the next day to finish off. So Sunday J,J,J &L all came back to craft some more. We all painted our hands to leave our mark on our fab table we started os Saturday.
So now I'm all worn out. The pain killers are starting to take affect and one of my guard cats is telling me it is time to go to bed. They are excellent at rounding up the family for bed time. Goodnight.

Crazy Day

Tuesday. My only day off. Went downstairs to be faced with 4 loads of wsashing, the Christmas tree still in the living room even though I had asked both of the male of the species in the house to take it out to the garden and another mega mine in the litter tray from the smallest cat in the house. So I ranted at the kids, then I phoned my mother and ranted at her. Then instead of doing all the things I was going to do I hacked the Christmas tree to bits, changed the litter tray so I could eat lunch without my eyes watering then went in to the giant cupboard of doom in the kitchen. The big cupboard of doom houses everything that doesn't have a home anywhere else in the house. Everyone has one of those right, it's not just me? So I started to empty the cupboard, which is very large and slopey as it goes under the stairs. I did this by wading in and throwing everything behind me. By the time I was bent double at the back thinking I ought to get out and be sensible because my back is not up to doing stuff like this I couldn't get out because me way was blocked by all the crap I had thrown behind me. So I had to tidy my way out. 2 hours, 1 binbag of rubbish, 2 bags of recycling and loads of assorted goodies for the charity shop later I was done. Lovely Charley hoovered through for me as my body was starting to shut down. And after we had taken Ginger to the vet for her all clear Charley cooked and Matt washed up only for the man of the house to come home and ask why the kitchen side was wet and the house is always a mess............................................................................................
Deep breath, count to ten. put the kitchen knife down, theparutically refill your pincushion with a degree of ferousity that wasn't strictly neccessary and have a little blog.
Lianne if you are reading this yes all the urgent orders have been done. That was the best part of my day apart from watching Sammi fall in love with my hairdressers work bag anf trying to go home with her. Charley also nearly came home with another cat as the yard cat had climbed in her car without her knowing. She only found out when she got as far as the gate and heard the meeow. So that is what my deranged brain makes me do when I'm having meltdown. I wish it wouldn't. I hate housework it is the work of the devil.
Anyway, did find treasure. A dead stag beetle in a box. Obviously a present from grandma. I'm going to set it in resin, I've been waiting to find something interesting to start using my new stash of resin on. Anyhoo Sammi is sat at my feet reminding me that I need sleep. This is always fairly difficult as as soon as I get into bed she jumps on my chest and sits nose to nose with me until I point out the this is an invasion of my space  

Happy days

Had a great night last night. My lovely neice was 18 and we went for a chinese then unleashed her and her best friend on the nightclubs in Southampton. It was the first time I had met her best friend and it turns out I went to school with her mum. If you get to read this Honor I think you are amazing and I hope you looked after Elana for us. I also had to do my bit of leading astray so I have given her some money to get her first tattoo. Don't worry I have been a completely responsible grown up and went with her to book it and check out the place first. Quick plug for them, Sharp Practice in Salisbury. They did my daughter Charley's tattoo and it is a fantastic piece of art work.
Talking of art work I had a studio full of boys this afternoon and we had such fun. We all did oven bake clay as I had to show them my lovely oven. We all made bugs and monsters, they all had such great imaginations. Then we did artroc which is the messiest most wonderful art product. Jake covered my hand,james covered his own hand and Mason made a mask then covered his mums' hand. I'm going to ask permission to use some of the photos on my blog cause they are all great. I can get away with this one as it's just my hands.
Ginger is feeling much better. She has just left me a giant cat landmine in the litter tray so she must be feeling better. It's making my eyes water so I'm going to go and deal with it now as I can't hold my breath much longer.

New friends, oven, cats & dogs, purple.

Now a bit of insite into how my mind works. As you can see from my blog title I quickly jot down during the day things I may blog about as I have a mind like an extra holey sieve with bonus holes drilled in it. So, new friends, while I am in my studio poeple come in and chat about what I do and what they can do in the studio. When they leave they never feel like customers or clients it feels like I've made a new friend. Today a lovely lady called Vonney came in and we chatted and got all enthusiastic about all the stuff we could achieve together and now I hope she will be one of my Monday ladies.
Cats & dogs, My little beautiful cat, Ginger has been really off colour today so we ended up taking her to the vet. She hasn't got up to eat or drink all day even when I bought the water bowl to her. So now she gets to have a sleepover with a vet nurse, a drip and a large dose of antibiotics. Animals really are a huge part of the family if you are an animal person. A lady came in to the studio today to ask if I had seen her dog. The dog is a very old black lab, very poorly and had got out because the postman left the gate open. All I could think about all day, apart from my poorly cat  was, I hope they find the dog. I'm going to have to phone her tomorrow. I know it is nothing to do with me but things like that really get to me.
Well, oven. I had a really good day as I bought a mini oven for my studio. That is not particularly exciting if you don't want to bake clay and ceramics with kids so they can take home there great work. I may even use it for it's intended purpose and make lunch in it occasionally. So I thought this was great news to share with my sister as she knows I am easily pleased. As I was sharing my great purchases she trumped my spending with, "I've just bought a piano." This is fantastic news as she used to play when she was young and I had a really weird moment in the studio today as I was remembering the music she used to play and at the time I didn't even know about the piano. You may notice I write very long sentences with very little punctuation as this is how I would bombard you with speech if I were talking to you. You are at an advantage.If you are fed up with me you can stop reading. Imagine if you were stuck in a room with me.
Final thought for the day. Is there such a thing as too much purple. I THINK NOT

Lovely Monday Ladies

Have just come in from another great Monday evening. Monday and Friday evenings in my studio are given over to ladies who have to work all week and want to have some time just for them. We work on any and every project that they want. If we can't think of anything else to do we put the kettle on and make more coffee. Tonights projects cushions, pigs and handbags. Don't usually have an evening without a handbag. We also have a great time putting the world to rights and generally using the session as therapy without the price tag.
Random act of the day. I was having a day off, which actually means nothing when you are self employed. It just means you take work home with you and sort of do it at odd hours. Then I realised there was something seriously wrong. I found myself cleaning the bathroom. It wasn't just an average clean, I removed everything that wasn't fixed by an extraordinary amount of silicone sealant and put it in the hall and scubbed everything. If you know me you know this is a big event. I have degenerated discs in my back so it's just plain bloody stupid. But I've done it and now everything hurts and to celebrate I went out and bought purple hair dye, dyed my hair and had to clean the bath again. Will I ever get the hang of housework. I hope not.