Tree Fall

Fickle

Oh it was so lovely while it lasted. I ate real food (two main courses at the restaurant!!), I drank a hot drink (haven't been able to handle anything hot for months), I ate cake and I slept better. Lovely.
But short lived. Never mind hey. I'm sure it will happen again.

However, due to the return to regular scheduling I wasn't quite as productive today, but I did manage to finish some hand sewing as well as catching up on some reading. Do you know that I discovered a Japanese book today that I bought in NYC that I hadn't even opened yet?!! (I can hear my mother tutting very loudly whilst saying "well that was a waste of money then wasn't it?").
So I thought I'd share some pretty pics from that with you today as I have no actual crafting to show you and I'm attempting to blog more than once a week  (mainly because my own mother keeps bitching to me about how there are no new posts! And you wonder why I haven't made her a pin cushion yet?!)

I have one of these sewing machine tables sitting in my parents garage and would love to find the space to have it in my studio - but I guess that since space is about to become a real issue around here that isn't going to happen any time soon!

I really want that little wooden till for Bella - isn't it the cutest?

And how about this row of little houses? I would have flipped over those when I was younger.

The book is actually about wooden zakka rather than fabric, but it's full of the most beautiful photo's of peoples homes. The Japanese are the best at combining utilitarian furniture with simple beauty.

I love having a lot of print and pattern around me, but everytime I see homes that are as simple and as beautiful as the ones in this magazine, I wonder if I should start all over again!

Ahhh, sickness my old friend, there you are.....

Pardon?

What's that you say??
You just happened to be strolling past my house today and spotted me working? At my sewing machine?  Using fabric and thread and all manner of notions??
But after all my moaning and bitching yesterday, how could that be??

Well, when I woke up this morning, the very thought of breakfast Did. Not. Make. Me. Puke!
I don't want to say too much because it may be a blip. But today at least, I am feeling ok. In fact, not bad at all. Yup. I feel almost good.
Sssshhhh. My body may hear us and realise that it forgot to make me sick today.

And the fruits of todays relative (it's all relative) burst of energy? Amongst other things, the cushion that you see up there.
It's made from a mix of gorgeous linen (bought in New York) and vintage gingham. And has been quite heavily quilted.
It's for someone special.

And talking of someone special, I am super excited to announce that my wonderful, talented sister-in-law brought my very first niece in to the world this morning!
They've named her Georgia, which I love because it instantly makes me think of Georgia O'Keeffe and things of  beauty.
Congratulations Juliet, I am in awe that you did it naturally, truly in awe.
Happy, happy news indeed!

And tonight I intend to take advantage of this (hopefully not too brief) return to being vaguely interested in food, and go out to dinner with Jim.

Ahh and before I go, can I just say that all your comments on the last post have been wonderful. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed reading what you're all up to. It's made me feel exactly like I've been able to spend the day catching up with so many special friends. Loved them all. And would love to read more, so if you haven't stopped by and told me what you're up to at the moment, please do - it really has made my day hearing from you all. And it's so much more fun than just talking about me all the time!!

Hey there!

I'm still here, I'm still here.  (but I wish I was there  ^  )
Everything's fine. I'm just being completely and utterly slaughtered by this pregnancy. The sickness is still here (yes I am now entering the 2nd Tri and no it shows no sign of stopping) and the tiredness is all encompassing. And to top it all I have a cold that is about to make sure that what little (little, little, little) energy I have is used up with sneezing and sniffing (with the occasional complainge thrown in).
I honestly could never imagine a time when fabric and crafting could  hold no interest for me whatsoever, but boy oh boy that's where I'm at at the moment. When I'm not looking after Bella, I am in bed. That's it. Bella or bed. There is no in between.
Crazy.
As far as the pregnancy goes, we've had a few scares with bleeding - including at the moment. And I've had a few extra scans to check everything, but I am at least off the injections now. And the scans have all been fine - apparently the bleeding is there just in case I start to try and settle in to this pregnancy (bah!!!).
So anyway, nothing at all exciting to say, I just wanted everyone to know we're fine.

But how about you? How are you?Tell me something, anything about how you're all getting on - I'm missing you.
(Apart from the dickhead that keeps leaving me end of the world, we're all damned comments - you are a pain in the arse that needs to get a life and get the hell out of mine!).
The rest of you though, I would love to hear about!

Misc.

Should I worry that people have started gasping when they see my tummy?? And one of my midwives today couldn't stop herself from patting it!
It's not so much that people think I'm big, it's the look on their face when they hear I'm only 12 weeks that gets to me!
We had what we thought was our final scan today (it isn't) and everything looked fine. M-P2 was hopping and jumping like crazy, but although it's grown a lot, it's still not big enough to account for my impressive girth!
I did have my last HCG injection though. Hurrah, no more needles in the bum.  Good times.

I forgot to say yesterday that one of the other things that I bought at the Quilt show was a gorgeous little red work piece, that I've already started. I am determined to master embroidery this year (I just don't have enough on my plate) and this piece uses lots of interesting stitches but is only small, so it's not overwhelming.  All though the fact that all the instructions are in French does add a certain je ne ce pas!

The weather here has been lousy again this week (hence the lack of relevant photo's) so I'll leave you with some photo's from a few weeks ago when England was pretending it was actually summertime.

Beautiful babies!

Festival of Quilts

I have to admit it, I'm just not as young as I used to be. After spending the entire day walking around  the stands at the Festival of Quilts, I'm still not fully recovered and it's two days later! I don't remember feeling quite so exhausted this early on in the pregnancy with Bella. Of course I was a mere 34 back then!

The Festival was good overall, but Jim and I did come away feeling a tad disappointed. The atmosphere wasn't really there this year and it all felt more than a little deflated.
Of course, we rallied round and still managed to spend a small fortune on fabrics! Unfortunately most of it was restocking of fabrics that I've almost run out of. Which is never as much fun as buying lots of new fabrics.
My favourite stand for buying cheap Mini Boden fabrics didn't disappoint though.

The top floral fabric is a cotton jersey, which is a bit of a departure for me. I've never actually sewn with jersey before, but I have quite a few patterns that call for it so I figured I'd give it a go (one day!). I even thought that I might go crazy and try making a maternity top out of it.
And that bottom pink and red stripe is a Paul Smith cotton. It has a beautiful texture and will (again one day) make some great clothes for Bella, amongst other things.
The rest of the pile are Boden fabrics that I use for various baby playmats and quilts. The blue cowboy fabric is one of my favourite buys from last year, so I was really pleased to see it still available - and even more excited to see a new pink version. It's been such a useful print to have in my stash and I was beginning to worry that I was going to run out of it. Not any more!!

I also found some very nice Lecien fabric on a Spanish stand  (uh huh, I drive to Birmingham to buy Japanese fabric from some Spanish women! Makes sense to me.).

It's part of the Kyo Yasai range that features various small vegetable prints on cotton that almost feels like a linen/cotton mix in texture (it's actually 100% cotton though). I only bought these two prints, both of which have a background colour of a beautiful slate grey, but there were some vibrant chilli prints and a really nice artichoke.
I haven't seen this collection before, but I know that if you're in Europe you can get them here.

I also managed to pick up a couple of Etsuko Furuya fabrics as well as one of my favourite Amy Butler prints.

I know this is useless for this year, because the  Festival has finished now, but if you go next year, then I recommend that you seek out the Japanese man that usually has a corner stand and sells half yards of various Japanese  fabrics for £3 each. He's one of my favourite sellers and over the last few years I've bought some fantastic prints from him. This year he had mainly Etsuko Furuya prints, and last year it was mainly Lecien, but there's still always enough variety for you to find some real gems.

The stand that I was most disappointed with this year was the Rowan stand. I know that Westminster have been supposedly ironing out the kinks for the last year after their takeover of Freespirit, but I have to say that I was really surprised by how little effort they put in to their stand. There were basically no new fabrics this year, even though Kaffe Fassett, Martha Negley and Amy Butler have all had new collections out. It was very lack luster and yet more indication that Westminster have absolutely no interest in the British market. Which is something that I could rage at great length about - but won't. Today.

The rest of the weekend has been a blur of tiredness, children's parties, two year old's indignation, two year old screams, and general further two year oldness - which I'm very relieved to say not only consists of sudden fits of tears but also lots of unsolicited declarations of love! Which at times has been the only thing that has stopped us listing her on Ebay!

Scuppered.

The plan was to quickly upload the new pincushions in to the shop, during the day when no one's looking and then write a post to let anyone interested know that there are finally some available.
That plan didn't work so well. So now I'm left feeling that this post is a little redundant. And it's the only one I've got.

And since this is the only crafting I've done in about a month, I'm going to have to share it with you anyway.

The only problem is it's been so long since I've written a normal craft post that I can't remember how to do it! I've just had to delete a whole paragraph that read like some dodgy 70's craft book!

So not too great a post then. Sorry about that!

Jim and I are off to The Festival of Quilts tomorrow. Which is always good fun, if a little violent around some of the stands! Never try and get between a group of octogenerians and some reduced price Lecien, it's always a mistake! Oh and if you're a man, really, don't even bother trying to get to the front of that stand - as Jim has discovered on a number of occasions if you're not Kaffe, then you've got no reason being there! Bless them, they're a crazy bunch! 
So if you're going to the NEC tomorrow and you see me (I'm not being all big headed - there's a photo of me at the top of this page! I wouldn't expect you to just recognise me!) and Jim (he's the one one trying to keep smiling at all the women that make comments about how he's just there to carry the bags!), do say hello! We'd love to meet you and Jim would love to show off about how many fabric designers he can recognise (it really is quite impressive - I swear he must actually being paying attention!).

If you didn't get a pincushion this time around (and that includes you mom - no favouritism here!) I do promise to do more soon.
Honest.

Hey!

Say hello to McGrory-Patton number 2.
Measuring spot on. Heart beat fine. Placenta working and in the right place this time! (Bella's was anterior, which was a nightmare in labour). In short, so far so good.
One more week with my specialist and I get discharged (and then it's on to my obstetric coliastasis specialist - nothing's ever straight forward).
So little M-P2 seems to be thinking about sticking around. Which is a good thing because I'm the size of a house - and not one of our measly British houses, but one of your huge American ones - and I need to have the excuse that I'm pregnant!
Still feeling sick with the added bonus of constant indigestion, but never mind.
So  anyway, now that we've all said hello to M-P2 I would really appreciate it if we could get back to some crafting around here sometime soon. How about you? And actually my mother pointed out to me today that I used to manage to blog every day even though I had nothing to say, so why can't I now? Thanks mom!
But we shall see.
Oh and just quickly, if you have emailed me and asked a question or for permission to use my work etc and you're still waiting for an answer, I truly apologise and please know that you are not alone in being ignored by me. I am in fact being rude to everyone at the moment (with my lack of responses) not just you! And I do promise that I'm working my way through my inbox.

So. Phew.
Phew.

9 weeks, 3 days

(the water's that funny colour because of a clay bed)

One of the reason's that I haven't been blogging much recently, is that every time I've written a post about the pregnancy I've felt like I was putting you all on the spot to comment yet again.  But there hasn't been anything else to write about because this pregnancy has created a bizarre vacuum, where nothing but the pregnancy exists yet I can't think or talk about the pregnancy to anyone because I've been heavily in to a severe case of denial. I have been managing to simultaneously think of nothing but this awful morning sickness whilst still denying  that there is or ever will be an actual reason for it. No-one in the last 5 weeks had heard me talk about my baby. No-one has heard me make a single plan for when I have this baby. And apart from on here, almost no-one has heard me say the words "I'm pregnant" and every time I have said them I've felt guilty because I'm fooling everybody. Being pregnant means having a baby, and at no point have I acknowledged that I'm having a baby. Even too myself. Especially to myself.
Jim and I have not had one single discussion about any of this. We've left each scan with a little shrug and not mentioned it again. The closest we get to talking about any of this is when I point out that I feel so bloody sick because I'm pregnant, not because I'm a bitch!
I have spent most of the last 5 weeks being angry with this pregnancy. I've been angry that it's been lasting longer and longer which means that it's going to be harder and harder to cope with when it does end. I've been angry that it's made me feel so sick when there isn't even going to be a good reason for it. I've been angry that I've had to go to hospital every week and be treated like I'm nothing more than cattle. I've been really angry that it's taken away my ability to work. And most of all I've been furious that it's affected my relationship with the most important thing in my life, Bella.
I've had some truly horrible thoughts about this pregnancy. Not the kind of thoughts that you would expect someone that has been through 7 miscarriages to have. Not the kind of thoughts that you would think someone who must want another child so badly would have.
But there hasn't been anything I could do about it all. To think positive thoughts was to open myself up to the possibility that I may not be able to cope if I lost yet another baby.
And whilst I could have shared all this with you many, many times over the last few weeks, I just haven't felt it was the right thing to do. And I've felt like a bit of a fraud. Because whilst I can not convey how much your support and understanding means to me,  I also couldn't explain to you that I haven't had any hope and that I haven't been feeling the way I should have been feeling. I haven't spent the last 5 weeks scared I was going to lose my baby, I've spent it furious that the miscarriage was taking so long to happen.
I know that makes me sound like a bad person but it is truly how I've been feeling.
But that has changed. Because now I can start worrying that I'm going to lose my baby. Because today I saw my baby. I saw it's arms and legs waving around and I saw it measure the exact right size for it's age. Today the doctor acted like I was going to have a baby, instead of a miscarriage (occupational hazard I guess of working in a recurrent miscarriage clinic) and for the first time Jim and I talked (however briefly) about the fact that we might be having a baby.
Of course, I guess this could be where the worry really starts (as I type this I'm having some mild, probably completely normal pains that are making me think that this whole post is doing nothing but tempting fate!) and I am by no means at the stage of acceptance. But I guess I'm a damn sight closer than I have been for the last five weeks. And that must be a good thing.
Thank you for all the times you've all repeated your lovely words of hope and support, they have been the only suggestion that something possibly good has been happening and for that I couldn't be more grateful. And I hope my admittance of my denial hasn't made you all feel like you've been wasting your time and energy. You truly haven't.
But I guess it's time for me to start having a little hope now too.

Fun

We still know how to have fun though! A day at the river.
Just what we all needed.

(me looking very chubby indeed!)

Bella makes new friends everywhere we go!

That's not Jim with Bella. No, that's a family that we've never met before, but that we ended up befriending because they had the all time best toy in the world (as far as Bella is concerned) - a brand new baby!!!

(if we ever get to the point where we can tell Bella that we too are going to have a brand new baby I think she'll just about explode with excitement!)

It was a lovely day and I'm so glad that we made the effort, even though Bella is covered in urticaria (but doesn't have the virus that we thought - phew) and has a skin infection (poor girl). She still got a lot of admiring comments about her outfit though!

Fraught.

I think the word fraught sums it all up around here these days. Everything seems to be complicated. Nothing feels simple. It's all a little tiring.
I didn't have a scan this week, but I have my next one on Monday. The baby has measured small every week and that makes me nervous. Very nervous.
A good friend had her first scan this week. She was due two weeks ahead of me. She got the worst possible news. The worst.  Breaks my heart.
Bella has a virus that can cause miscarriage. It is impossible to stay away from her. She feels lousy. I feel lousy for her. And I wish I didn't want to be somewhere else.
This is not a happy house.

On a somewhat more positive front. I finished, yes, finished 6 pin cushions the other day (I'm not feeling as sick and I'm not needing the medication - more worry), so there will be an update to the shop next week. I'm not sure what day. After Monday. Everything is after  Monday at the moment.
Everything could change on Monday.

But finally, on a much, much more positive note. I'm lucky enough to be getting together with this lot again this month!

I can not wait! Are you ready Kristy?  Huh? Huh?
Can. Not. Wait.