Happy birthday to Archie!

My beautiful Archie is now a whole year old - in fact his birthday was a couple of weeks ago but in the middle of the chaos of life I didn't manage to post anywhere near the day itself.
I know from the lady who owned him and his mum that he was the first one of the litter of five to be born. He has been the sweetest kitten we've ever had, no bad temper at all and so cuddly even as an adult. Hard to believe he has changed so much from the tiny black-with-tabby-stripes fuzzy ball of fur here:

to his present sleek self! He is still very stretchy and bendy as you can see:

I couldn't work out how to post videos when we had him, but here are two short ones from when he was tiny - I love the second one where he topples over but pretends it was nothing to do with him!





Now of course he is so much more sensible and grown up. He likes to watch TV with us - Frasier and Grand Designs are his favourites so far, we don't know why:



It's proving to be a pretty grim time for us. My mum is still in hospital, mentally much worse than ever, it's unclear how much she'll recover so we're just trying to take a day at a time and see what happens, while clearing what we can from her house bit by tiny bit. Archie is keeping me going with lots of cuddles!

Felting with silk fibres

Firstly thank you for your lovely comments of support on my last post - it does feel like a grim time but I'm trying to look for some good things in each day, and if you're actually looking for the positives I think you find them more easily.

As well as the situation with my mum's health over the last few weeks, I also had a committment to what was supposed to be a very successful craft fair, so I did push myself to make a good selection of things. I made a lot of felt incorporating dyed mulberry silk fibres and was really pleased with the way they showed up and shimmered against black or other deep colours:

I did this flat piece first to make into a notebook, and liked it so much I made a seamless bag too:


The photo at the start of this shows a shoulder bag I made - I chose the colours of silk in blues and purple to match the fairtrade ceramic button I'd bought earlier, a friend of mine was owed a bag as a present and chose this one when she saw it, so I was pleased it had gone to a good home!
I also used some more dyed silk hanky to make other notebook covers in different shades, as well as a bit more sari silk - that's always a bit difficult to felt in securely but the wispy silk fibres have been really enjoyable to work with and I'll try to think of even more ways to use them in the future.

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!

Autumn at Chatsworth

We have had a very busy half-term week. The place I wanted to go most was Chatsworth as we've been the last two autumns to see the sculptures in the garden, and we finally made it yesterday. It was very cold with varying amounts of sunshine but son no. 1 likes cloud (and rain) and pronounced it was "Just the right kind of grey". I argued that there couldn't be a right kind of grey when it comes to weather but he was happy enough!
We had a really nice walk around and visited the cafe twice to warm up. Beautiful autumn colours were all around us as well as lots of artwork to look at.

This one is a mirrored twirling set of triangles - the reflections are fascinating:

The boys hiding from the camera:

And I love this one of them walking ahead together, talking to each other all the time:

I've been particularly 'hormonally challenged' this week, culminating today in mental shutdown following a trip to Leicester nearby specially to buy crafting supplies for a craft even I'm running at church later on next month - £20 worth of ribbons and all sorts from the John Lewis haberdashery (I love that word) department. Except that I left the bag with everything in it somewhere in the shop and came home without it! So I've got to go all the way back on the bus early tomorrow and buy the whole lot again! Boo, hiss to nasty, bad hormones that seem to completely remove any rational behaviour and thought altogether. I have been self-medicating with some red wine.

Newton and the Fierce Apples

This will appear to be a very random post - well it is a very random post, but there is a reason.
I was reading this post on Wednesday from Fuzzy Tales, and was wondering if lovely Derry the cat was playing with a real or pretend banana (sorry this will only make sense if you look at it). Now this might seem like a ridiculous question to ask - what cat would wrestle with a real banana? Except cats can be a bit odd sometimes. It turns out Derry had a catnip toy banana which must have been great fun, but the reason I was entertaining the idea of it being real was this video I took last year of Newton who I happened upon while he was defending himself against these very dangerous Bramleys. So this is specially for Kim:



We'll see if Archie takes a liking to attacking any other kind of fruit.

Felt Flower Coasters

There's lots of felting going on here, I've got many things to make, which is busy but good.
A friend bought my sample set of four of these coasters in the summer - I thought they'd be a good idea to go with a teacosy I made ages and ages ago but in the end that sold before they did. Now it's coming up to Christmas she asked me to make another three sets for friends, exactly like hers.

Could I find my notes of how I'd made them, what exact colours I'd used, the size of my flower template, most importantly how far apart I'd placed the flowers, any details at all?
No, of course not, because I only ever thought I was making one set. I did manage to find an old photo eventually and the final measurements of the circles, so that was a start.
It's really important to write everything down as you make things, you just never know when you're going to need the information!

After a bit of trial and error I took the plunge doing them all at once:

I did put the flowers a tiny bit closer together than I should have done, but it all worked out ok in the end.

When I'd done the whole piece it made me think about making a table runner - not with such a regular pattern on it but just trying a longer rectangle - mind you it's hardly worth it with Archie around, I think he'd just keep hooking it off the table with his claws or just plain attack it while it was minding its own business.

And finally, since it is now feeling decidedly autumnal and slightly cooler I have selflessly tested out this £2.97 per bottle Tesco substitute Ginger Wine - and I can report back that it's definitely very good value for money. I never realised it's actually ever-so-slightly less alcoholic than some ordinary wines, which presumably means I can have more of it?

Playing with silks

There are so many things I want to post about - the autumn colours, Folksy purchases and supporting other craftspeople, the interesting world of Royal Mail Recorded Delivery (where you pay extra for the peace-of-mind that comes from knowing your item has been delivered, only in my case 75% of the time I've used this service they've not collected a signature thus leading to extra stress rather than any peace-of-mind whatsoever), Special Delivery versus FedEx ( I really will try and fill you in one day because it's all quite interesting if you need to send stuff out), but I am struggling so much with time I'm just going to stick to a bit of felt for now. I'm in the middle of many projects but recently went a bit mad with ordering silks - here are my packs of dyed silk hankies:

I must, must, must look into dyeing my own, but no way is it going to happen quite yet, so I took the plunge and paid for them ready-done. There's also a new hank of sari silk in there - they're from Fibrecrafts, which stocks a more purple sari silk than some other places, although there are always lots of lovely colours mixed up together.
I've used the plain silk hankies over cream wool tops before just to give a bit of texture and sheen but cut these ones up a bit to make a contrast with the background.

I really like the effect although would love even deeper colours - I'd hoped they'd be more jewel-like and that I could use them against black but I think they're a bit pale, but I'll enjoy experimenting, if I can find a parallel universe in which there are 40-hour days.

Here is the card my OH got me for our wedding anniversary last week - 22 years this year. Very like Archie indeed, eyeing up all the butterflies:

Archie himself has taken to watching TV while assisting with any technical computer problems I may be having - he'll be demanding a salary in salmon Whiskas Temptations soon.