A very cold Craft Fair

I'm very behind with posting about this as it was a few weekends ago when we had all that ice and snow. Now of course we have more ice and snow and I can't actually remember it getting much better in between, it seems to have been fairly seamlessly bitter and cold, at least it's pretty.

Anyway, my craft fair was in this beautiful building which is Leicester Guildhall - I was so busy I didn't get photos of all the rooms but here is where I was, the Lord Mayor's Parlour.
Behind me was very old stained glass - in some panels people had scratched their name and the date, so it was a fascinating place to be:

Last year I'd had a look round as a customer and it was supposed to be one of the best local fairs to sell at, this year someone had taken the decision to charge people a pound to come in - not a lot but that charge featured on all the publicity and I wonder if it put people off coming, that and the weather. So it wasn't as busy as previous years, but a couple of my things went to very good homes. When you've spent a couple of hours or more making a unique piece you do feel a part of yourself has gone into it, so it does make a real difference to sell to someone who actually says how much they like it.

Unfortunately there's no getting away from the fact that it was FREEZING! We had to have the door to outside completely open so people knew to come and see us, so we really were shivering - on the Sunday I brought two hot water bottles with me - one to keep and one to give to someone else. I managed to stuff mine up under my dress and put a belt and my money belt over it to hold it to my tummy - all was going well until about lunchtime when I was in the middle of talking to a customer and it slipped out and fell onto the floor with a big sloppy thud!

Craft fairs are so varied - I've really enjoyed the ones where people want to ask me about how I make felt as I like describing the procedure, but this was one of those ones where most people seemed to walk straight past me, sometimes I think it's a question of perhaps not having quite the right products for the exact customers that come through the doors - the photographer next to me was constantly busy and his pictures had such a wide-ranging appeal that he did really well. I said that I blamed him for my lack of success because as soon as people got half way along the room, level with me, I could hear them exclaiming 'What fantastic photos!' and speeeding past me to get to him! He was lovely, kept getting me cups of tea, and of course knew I was joking! His photos were indeed stunning and he deserved to be really successful.

I was initially disappointed with sales, because let's face it, it is a lot of effort to do a two-day fair - not only your time standing, but all the packing up and transport too, and you do always hope to do well. But what I remember most was what a lovely group of people there were in our room, and indeed in the other rooms, and a good friend gave up a large part of his Saturday to come and sit with me and help out, so I say it was a complete victory for Community Spirit!

A wintery season.

This is our beautiful winter-flowering clematis, it looked so lovely against the very blue sky.

It has been ages since I posted, and I need to tell you why, since life as I know it has radically altered, keeping me away from many things I'd like to do. I have been completely unable to visit all of my blogging friends and I am concerned I may have missed many significant events in your lives and not responded to comments, and if so I am very sorry. The joy of having a blog for many of us is the fantastic relationships we have built up with other bloggers and I hate that I can't be involved in what is happening for you as much as I'd choose.

My 82 year old mum has been poorly for quite a while now, but her friends and I have been increasingly concerned about her behaviour over the past few weeks and I have needed to become much more involved in her life than ever before - 6 months ago she was completely independent, driving, involved in many social groups, even giving talks about her experiences as an actress. Then she developed auto-immune hepatitis, the treatment for which is strong immunosupressants to stop the body further attacking the liver. She's not been right since but very rapidly declined over the last two weeks and has been admitted to hospital, where she is being treated for an infection that is making her body shut down while it fights the infection itself, and she is very confused and hallucinating, totally changed. There is every chance she will recover from the infection in time, but due to complex circumstances I won't go into much, it will be against medical advice for her to go home - whatever happens life will be extremely difficult for a long while. She lives alone in a large, timber-framed, listed sixteenth-century cottage with some small outbuildings and ever such a lot of rooms, filled with an incredible amount of objects/furniture/paperwork/family things/junk mail/you-name-it-it's-there. To her, everything she has is needed. To gently suggest clearing anything produces great distress, it's been like this all my life, but now has reached a critical stage.
So that's about where things are, and why I haven't been here.

We know she will be cared for in hospital for a while and can plan round that for a couple of weeks but I have to say it's been chaos recently, and as soon as she is medically stable and the hospital is ready to discharge her, the real problems will begin as we try and find a workable solution to very tricky issues.

I have fantastic friends, and have been almost overwhelmed with how supportive and understanding my mum's friends have been too - they care about her a very great deal, but are also mindful of the problems we will face to get her back into a more ordered home environment.

I'm hoping over the next week or so to post about some more cheerful things that I've been waiting to share, including how great John Lewis is after the experience I shared in my last post all that time ago! And, of course, how wonderful Archie is!

Winter Walk with friends

Today we woke up to some winter sun, and spent the day with very good friends in their beautiful cottage and village.

We went for an extremely muddy walk, good job we had our walking boots, which you can just see abandoned outside the front door on our return.

It was extremely cold but good to be outside, and we returned to a home-made pasta lunch (making the pasta apparently kept their two children occupied most of yesterday!) and had a great afternoon relaxing in lovely Christmassy-looking rooms while all our children showed each other their latest gadgets!