Can't get in the swing

I'm stitching, I'm knitting but I can't seem to get back into the swing of taking photos and blogging about it.

This is a little cardigan I knitted for Jacob before he was born, put in a drawer and forgot about until I was having a sort out.  All I had to to was sew on the buttons.

I didn't have seven buttons the same but I think it came out ok this way :-) when he wore it the other day to the mother and baby group Joanne said she had loads of compliments  on it :-)

I've started to pack some quick knitting into my bag on the day's I pick Oliver up from school.  I had quite a collection of cotton waiting to be made into dishcloths, perfect quick portable, no brain power needed knitting :-)

At this rate I will have used up all my dishcloth yarn in no time :-)

Other goings on....

I told you last time how I had arranged care twice a day for my mum, she was put on an emergency care package for six weeks, here in the UK that first six weeks of care is free, after that there is another assessment to see if you are still in need of that care, if you are, then you are required to contribute towards the cost of care provided, but if they decide that you are managing, then the care is stopped.

Mum had her assessment yesterday afternoon and the conclusion was that she was able to look after herself and the care would stop the next day.  Mum is not entirely happy, but we have been telling her that unless she makes use of the care offered it would be taken away.  She will not let them wash or dress her, she was still doing that herself before they came in the morning, (sometimes no one arrived until 10AM and she will not sit around in her nightclothes until that time), but like the assessor said, they encourage independence and if she could dress herself, great, if she couldn't then she would wait until the carer came in.  Some day they were only there 10 minutes each visit and made mum a cup of tea and warmed her lunch up at dinner time.  I can quite understand why they have stopped the care, it would be a very expensive cup of tea!

We can of course go down the route of private carers, if we chose that option we could be more certain of the times they would visit, but again, mum would not allow them to wash and dress her so it would be an even more expensive cup of tea!

What to do!  I can totally understand that mum does not want a stranger washing and dressing her, on the other hand I also agree that if she is doing these things herself then she is showing that she does not need the care.  That's not to say she doesn't struggle, she does, but even if it takes her half an hour to get dressed, she can do it.

We all help with meals and she has two meals a week delivered but I am in the process of getting her to order more meals to be delivered so that she can have something hot at lunchtime too, that way she won't have to bother doing something herself.   It's all very stressful and mum seems to be getting more confused the more things are in place, we have noticed recently that her short term memory is not what is used to be, she has made hard work of her tablets being sorted into a blister pack, honestly, it's such a simple way of doing it and I'm not sure if she genuinely forgets how it works when I've gone or she is not paying attention because she doesn't want to do it that way.  It's worrying because there were three tablets missing from the tea time section on Wednesday and she didn't know where they had gone!  She was adamant that she had not taken them, but who knows.  

Sorry to go on about this, I know that there are many of you in a very similar situation and know how hard it is trying to get someone to change the way they do things and work with new ideas so that it helps all concerned, it's taking up a lot of my time and brain space at the moment, I hope things will settle in to a better routine very soon, for all our sanity, lol.

See you soon, take care

-X-

Three things

Last year I got a bit bogged down with the stitching and knitting I had on the go, It seemed to take me ages to get anything finished.  This year I didn't want this to happen so I resolved to try and have only two pieces of stitching and one knitting, or crochet on the go at time.

It seems to be a trend, especially with stitching, to start lots of things and work on them in rotation, I admire you if you can do that, but if I had multiple projects sitting in bags with just a few stitches in them, it would drive me insane, besides, I haven't got the space to store them all.

I hope that by keeping it to three things it will keep me motivated and I will see more finishes.

Easter Parade by Blackbird Designs

February Calendar Girl by LHN 

I stitched on this one on Sunday so i'm now further along than this photo shows

My knitting is the Betwixmas Shawl

The free pattern can be found on Ravelry and was offered up by Black Sheep Wools in December, you may remember that I posted about buying the yarn in December.

Obviously I didn't get it finished in the timescale but I did have a few problems and had to rip it back a couple of times before I found my rhythm.  

Not much left to do now so perhaps I might get it finished this week.

I do have a finish of sorts, I made another project envelope to keep my second stitching piece in.  This one is a little bit taller than the one I made for my Calendar  Girl stitching so it will accommodate the larger clip frame.  

As before, the fabric is from stash and something I've had for a while.

I had some lovely post this month.

Andrea (who's blog is The Craft Room) had offered up a giveaway on her blog of nine Farmhouse Christmas charts by LHN.  I put my name forward and won!  I never win anything, not even on the tombola, lol so I was very happy when my name got drawn from all the entries :-)

I'm looking forward to stitching these and will do my best to fit them into this years stitching.

Thank you so much Andrea :-)

Once I've stitched them all I will be paying the kindness forward and offering them up here on my blog in a giveaway.

I think that's me all caught up for now, I've been trying to find time to post for the last two weeks but life keeps getting in the way.  I've been sorting some care out for my mum, she's 91 and doesn't get around very well anymore, she wanted help in the mornings but the emergency care package they put her on was four visits a day, she didn't like all the comings and goings so we have cut it down to twice a day now, mornings and lunch time.  She is still finding it hard to adjusting to having help, it's a case of her needing help but not wanting to give up doing anything, It's hard work. 
Up till now she has been sorting her own tablets out every day but it's getting to the stage that she can't see what they are unless she holds the packet right in front of her eyes (she has macular degeneration) and has a hard time even opening some of the packaging, now the chemist will supply all her medication in a blister pack that will be set up for morning, afternoon and evening for the week.  The first pack will be delivered tomorrow so after work I will go up and make sure she knows what she's doing.  Something else for her to get used to and she won't like it but it is the safest option I think.

There is always something to do and someone to worry about isn't there?  Fingers crossed she will settle into this new routine and get used to the people going to help. 
Mum does have a lot of help from us besides this care, there are four of us and we all help her in one way or another, my cousin also visits and does a few jobs for her once a week, she is very lucky really compared to a lot of elderly people.  Anyway, I'm sure we will all get back to some routine soon.

-X-

January's Calendar Girl

A very Happy New Year to you all, a new decade, I wonder what changes we will see in the next ten years?  The years go by so quickly, I said to Jenny the other day that the next time we are at the beginning of a new decade Oliver will be 17, that's scary, but I will be 68 and that's terrifying, lol

Anyway, lets not dwell on that rather large number, we have lots to fit into this decade first, we need to make the most of our time don't we.

I got around to fully finishing my January girl on New Years Eve, I had everything ready, it was just a case of setting the time aside to do it.

Instead of using glue, which I seem to get everywhere, I laced the stitched piece onto the backing board and then used a small amount of glue to attach the fabric to the back of the second backing board.  I whip stitched all around the edge of both pieces before attaching the cord.

It was a bit more time consuming doing it this way but I think I managed to get the edges neater than I do when I just use glue.

I did fiddle about with that bow and attaching the button for far longer than It should have taken!

This is the way that Vonna finished them while model stitching and finishing them for LHN, and I think it's perfect for them, so why change it :-)

 Oliver stayed over on Wednesday night so we had a day out on Thursday to two local National Trust places.

We have been to Packwood House a couple of times, once with Oliver when he was small, he can't remember, but we went in the summer and had a picnic in the lovely grounds, you can see more photos of the inside of the house in my post from 2016  The upstairs was closed to visitors due to refurbishment works and it was not picnic weather but we still had a lovely walk around the less muddy parts of the grounds.

They still had the Christmas decorations up and it was nice to see how they used things from the garden and handmade things to decorate the trees.

 Baddesley Clinton is a moated Manor House dating from the 13th century and is just a five minute drive down the road form Packwood House.  It has a very interesting history, It has three Priest holes and was raided in the Civil War where solders spent four hours searching the place, I would have liked to read more about it but Oliver had other ideas.

This was my first visit to Baddesley and I would love to go again in the summer, I loved the kitchen garden and the grounds.  Again they still had the Christmas decorations up.

The Inner court yard

 The kitchen garden, even in Winter looks lovely and neat!

It was nice to get out in the fresh air, even though it was cold, I've been cooped up too much over Christmas, It helped to clear my head of this cold, and yesterday I felt so much better for it.

It's back to work on Monday, I really don't feel as though I've had a break, I had so many plans for stitching and knitting and I've hardly done any!
I will be glad to get some routine back into my days though, I do function better with routine, when I'm off work there is no structure to my day and I feel like I waste time.  

Give me a week or two back at work and I'll be wishing for a holiday again though, lol

Hope your year got off to a good start

See you soon

-X-