eBay love

I'm going through a phase at the moment - it's called the 'totally addicted to eBay' phase. I fall in an out with eBay and at the moment I'm definitely in. Is there anything you cannot buy on eBay?
This is one of my latest purchases:I bought a small amount of leather when I was in Denmark with the intention of using it in brooches. Whilst I was making brooches at the weekend I used the some leather and really like the effect - although I have to say it wasn't the easiest thing to sew, by machine or hand. You must be able to get a leather foot for machine sewing (anyone?). This little lot is destined for brooches - and maybe the odd monster will get a bit of leather treatment too.

I also wanted to share a couple of other things. First up, these two ceramic pen pots :I purchased these at the Reveal show at the weekend. They were made by Lauren Denney who organised Reveal. I love that she uses buttons in her work, and I couldn't resist these two pots.

Also, I was very lucky to be randomly picked for a freebie from Emma of silverpebble recently.
I was chuffed to bits to be the freebie winner, but even more chuffed when I received this gorgeous charm bracelet:This is just the kind of thing I would have picked for myself. What I find more amazing is that Emma managed to make this just after having her second baby. Amazing!
Pop over and check out her website and blog - you won't be disappointed I promise.

Reveal

Today was the first day of the Reveal Exhibition in Henley on Thames. It runs from 6th-12th July.
Weather wise it was pretty horrible, but the exhibition itself was great - the space is really good and Henley as a location is good too. There is a lot going on in Henley over the next week so hopefully it will drive a fair few people in to see the work on display.

I got very far behind on my schedule of work due to Stevie's unforeseen accident, but yesterday I worked like a trooper to get as much done as possible. My mum and Mr Monda were up with me until the small hours of this morning making sure everything was tagged and labelled and inventoried (they were a godsend really). Here are some of my new brooches:The jumper monsters:and one of the tags which Mr Monda kindly helped me to make for them:Mr Monda posing next to some of my work:and lastly a wet but rather pretty pavement in Henley:
We also went over to the RVC to see Stevie yesterday. She is in the intensive care unit and we were allowed to go in and see her in there. The RVC is one of the best hospitals I've seen - better than many regular people hospitals by far, and Stevie is being well cared for. Her blood tests are slowly showing signs of improvement, which I am encouraged by, but this will be a slow process to see if she if her kidneys are able to cope as they reduce her drip, which they will possibly start to do next week. She looked pretty comfortable in a little bed, and whilst she didn't get up to see us, she was responding to being stroked. I'm still getting a stomach in mouth feeling every time the vet calls but the signs are pointing in a more positive direction, and I'm happy about this.

I'm off to make a few more bits and pieces for my shop - things that have been half finished will actually get finished now!

Stevie

I am thinking that my craft blog is turning into a cat blog, but does that matter?
Well I guess if you are visiting to read about my crafty endeavours then it probably does.The only thing I feel compelled to write about is Stevie, so that's what I'm going to do.

After spending the last 5 days at the vet on a drip, having daily blood tests, the vet has told us that they just don't know why Stevie is so ill. They are still talking about acute renal failure and the possible explanation they can give is that it could be a result of the pain killing drugs they had given her when she broke her pelvis. I find this piece of news totally devastating, although I don't blame the vet, they didn't know she would react badly to a painkiller.

Today the vet referred our little Stevie to the Royal Veterinary College Hospital and at lunch time we picked Stevie up from the vet, and took her on a 45 minute journey to the hospital.
We were at the hospital for an hour until Stevie was admitted. In one way this was nice because we got to see her, and she was so pleased to see us - she was perky and bright eyed, purring and butting our hands so we would stroke her, but she was also quite stressed and jumpy, and I felt so bad to have to leave her in yet another unfamiliar place.
The RVC is the best place for her to get the best treatment - they will ultrasound her, take a biopsy of her kidneys, and if necessary give her a blood transfusion (in an attempt normalise her blood). None of these things are without risk, and I am honestly fearful of the outcome of all these tests.

I feel so strange. I'm feel sick to my stomach, tired beyond belief and so many things seem very trivial to me at the moment - especially my day job, where I have to try to act normally. Today I had to run a 2 hour training session and I found it so hard, because it just didn't mean anything to me.

We're still just hoping and praying that we will get some kind of positive news from the RVC.
We told Stevie when we left her at the hospital how much we loved her and how she had to be brave and strong. This pic is of our baby just a couple of weeks ago - she was hiding behind the garden fenceThanks once again for all the lovely supportive comments, especially from those people who have never commented on here before. The people I meet in blogland are truly caring and thoughtful and I'm very appreciative of the kind words and well wishes.

trying to get back to it

I sometimes think (well often think) about becoming a full time designer/maker. These thoughts are usually along the lines of 'wouldn't it be nice if...'.
Something that occurred to me today when I was thinking about the fact that I haven't been in the least bit creative this week is that when you have a week like the one I've just had and your livelihood depends on it, you just can't afford to have an 'off week'.

A Stevie update: She has spent the weekend at the vet. After doing blood tests and more x-rays the vet has surmised that there is something wrong with her kidneys - and in the various conversations we have had with the vet this weekend, the awful words 'acute kidney failure' have been mentioned a few times. Her blood tests have revealed that she has high potassium levels (dangerous for her heart) and high urea and creatinine levels (indicating a problem with her kidneys). She has been on a drip all weekend, and on a slightly positive note she has been going to the toilet, but she is still not eating - a typical side effect of kidney problems.
We are now playing a waiting game to see if her bloods get more normal in the next day or two. The vet has suggested that perhaps her kidneys are bruised - possibly due to being crushed - if she was run over or possibly because something has fallen on her. Needless to say, lots of crying has happened here within the last few days. We'll get another update from the vet tomorrow to see if she is well enough to come home for some TLC.
Thanks to all for the lovely supportive comments and well wishes for our baby. We're just keeping everything crossed right now and hoping for the best.

Despite all this, I'm trying to get back to the making, as the show I'm taking part in is just next weekend. I really couldn't feel less like I wanted to be making things right now (my heart just isn't in it) but whilst Stevie is still at the vet I should try to use this time effectively.
This is my desk today:4 more jumper monsters all cut and ready to be sewn - three more have been 'blog finished' a great term I have stolen from my blog buddy Jodie - where something looks finished, but is pinned at the back or has a gaping out of shot seam to sew etc. Here is a classic example. This monster looks finished but he has an out of shot seem which needs to be sewn up. Look away now if you are easily offended. Here is a gratuitous gusset shot: I shall sew up this monsters gusset this evening.

on crying

a while ago, I entered a freebie draw on LuSummers blog to win one of her lovely prints. I didn't win, but the reason I'm writing about this is that Lu asked us to comment about the last time we cried. I'm not a big crier really - I can only recall the last time I cried as being the last time I threw up, but today, I just feel like crying.

It's been a tough week. Me and Mr Monda feel totally exhausted - the stress and the effort of looking after a poorly cat, whilst still trying to go about your normal everyday life is having an impact on us. This sounds dramatic but it's just so emotionally draining. If only cats could talk, then poor Stevie could tell us how she is feeling.
This week we had to take her to the vets on Wednesday - just for a routine check up, and for the most part Stevie was fine, except that she had to have an enema to help her 'go'. It worked whilst we were still at the vets. We also had to go back to the vets this evening because Stevie has stopped eating and going to the toilet, and she spent the last 24hrs being sick.
The vet wants us to take her back in the morning for more x-rays, and maybe an ultrasound, which just means another anaesthetic and potentially a weekend stay at the vet for Stevie. The vet we saw today was not particularly sympathetic and seemed to want to pull Stevie around until she yelped and cried, which made me feel quite cross honestly.

I feel stressed because of the stress she is going through - constant trips to the doctor and being left in an unfamiliar place with people you don't know whilst feeling sick would be awful for a person and I can only imagine it is the same for a cat.

Aside from my cat woes, a fairly busy deadline driven week at work, and a trip to the Dentist for me this afternoon has left me feeling like I want to cry. I wish I could just blub as it would probably make me feel better but I can't, like I said, I'm just not a crier - I don't even cry properly, I have no tears when I cry.
I have also achieved nothing creative this week, and that also makes me feel crappy, so all round I would say that this week has been one I don't want to revisit in a hurry thank you very much.

For my friend Marla, who reads my blog and thinks that everything that I write is 'nice' and 'happy'- finally you get to read something real and quite depressing - proof that I am a normal person after all :o)
All being well, normal happy service will resume next week!

cat care

thanks for all the well wishes in my last post for poor little Stevie. We picked her up from the vet yesterday afternoon looking very sorry for herself and a bit drugged up. She usually cries in the car but we didn't hear a peep from her all the way home.
We're trying to give her lots of love and TLC without really moving her around too much. Here she is in her cage - her home for the next 4-6 weeks Most important job for us right now is making sure she eats and goes to the toilet. We have to give her water and drugs via a syringe straight into her mouth until she can manage to feed herself. She managed to drag herself into the cat litter, but it was such an effort for her she just slumped into it. It's heartbreaking to see her like this but she's really being quite a brave little thing. Fortunately Mr Monda is working at home so he has been on hand to care for her.

Cat care has meant my crafting excel spreadsheet has gone straight out of the window - I'm very behind now and have to try and play catch up for the rest of this week. Eek. Still I'm happy that Stevie is still with us, and she is well worth a few lost crafting days.

I'm still working on the wedding card commission I have. This is one of the feathers I have used in one of the mock designs - it's really lovely isn't it. The fabric wrapped around the end is the silk from the brides dress - a lovely blue/green petrol colour.

a day when things don't go according to plan

Today was this day.
This morning, after much searching around of bushes and neighbours gardens, we found our poor baby stevie lying in a neighbours garden unable to move her back legs.
We called the vet immediately, they made us wait an hour and a half until we could go and see them (it was 8.30am at this point) and we left our baby with them not knowing what to expect.
She was dehydrated and in shock, so she was straight on a drip, and then anaesthetised so they could take x-rays.
After waiting with a sick stomach for the best part of another 2 hours we found out that she has a broken pelvis in 2 places - which cats can heal from pretty well we're told, although they needed to keep her in the vets overnight on a drip and to see if she is able to go to the toilet (so to speak) by herself.
If she is OK - she will have to be confined to a cage to recover from her broken pelvis, possibly for 4-6 weeks (who knows?).We don't know how this happened, it could be a number of things, but the vet says she was possibly hit by a car. We're not quite so convinced however, because if you have a broken pelvis, you wouldn't have made it from the road to the place where we found her - she would have had to jump a pretty high fence, and it was pretty far from the road too. We think it's more likely that she has fallen out of a tree. She likes to climb trees and we've witnessed her falling out of a tree before (the branch broke under her weight).

I'm not really sure why I'm blogging about this - it's not really an inspiring read - more of a ugly snapshot of a day that didn't go according to plan. I'm so emotionally drained and I just want to sleep. We love our baby cat and we're keeping everything crossed, and hoping that she has a comfortable night tonight at the vets.

We still managed to get to legoland for a couple of hours late afternoon with my nephews but even that didn't go according to plan - my sister got a puncture on the motorway on the way here and had to call the breakdown people, and then stand on a motorway embankment with my nephews (who are just 1 and 3 years old) until it was fixed.

What a day.

can only a mother (or maker) love this face?

I'm having such fun with these faces - these are a couple of the latest ones:When I'm in 'making for a show' mode, there is lots of the same kind of making going on, but I find I can turn things around fairly quickly and I'm quite focused - I actually have an excel spreadsheet task list on the go - with targets and everything. The day job is clearly getting to me.
The problem with this is that my blogging pics are very similar. Next week is 'brooches week' in the schedule and I'll be making a few more rosette style brooches so I'm looking forward for this.

Tomorrow I have more monsters to make, and on Sunday I'm off to legoland with my sister and her family for my nephews birthday.

If you happen to be in London on Sunday, check out the 'we make- London' craft fair
Date: Sunday 22June 2008
Time: 11.00am – 17.00pm
Where: Dragon Hall, 17 Stukeley Street London, WC2B 5LT

on my desk on a wednesday

more of the same is on my desk today I'm afraidcompleted monsters, monsters in progress and some felted jumpers waiting to be chopped up and made into, you guessed it, more monsters.

I'm also loving this flickr group called faces in places.
Here are some of my recent faces in places pics:

a bit of a mish mash

Apologies to start with for this mish mash of a post today.
I'm just sewing away at the minute - some more monsters. Pink Monsters - good colour don't you think, for a monster I mean.These little monsters were a couple of Laura Ashley jumpers until last week. I'm having a problem (affirmed by Mr Monda) with felting jumpers, the problem being that I can't stop. I saw a lady in the supermarket the other day, and thought - ooooh that jumper would make a great felt. I also get a bit over excited when I open the washing machine and see the shrunken jumper waiting in there for me.

I forgot to take a picture of the cake I made at the weekend - it was great tasting though.
These chocolate coated strawberries were part of the decoration, they also tasted great:A little while ago I received this not so little fabric stash. This was a 'thank you' from Emma and Spanner (no blog sadly) for the freebie she won from me recently. It's not the way a giveaway usually work is it - it was more like an unofficial swap really. Thanks Emma - I have plans for the pink felty fabric alreadyEmma also made this lovely card too:and lastly but not leastly (is that a word?) today is my big sisters birthday. Happy Birthday sisterella - go and check out her shop and her blog - she makes fab knitted and fulled goodies - this is a brooch she made for me recently which will be a perfect addition to the outfit I'll be wearing to a wedding I'm going to later this summer:

apples and pears

I saw these cute little ceramic dishes today on daily candy. You can get them from YoYo ceramics

I've got a busy weekend ahead - preparing for the craft exhibit I'm taking part in, and coming up with some designs for a wedding card commission - it's not all work and no play though - I have an unusual wedding to go to tomorrow night, where the bride dresses as the groom and the groom dresses as the bride - it's really more of a fancy dress party. I'm off to the supermarket now to buy the ingredients for the wedding cake!

on my desk on a wednesday

A couple of things are on my desk today
This little house tape measure landed on my desk this week. It was made by Laurraine of Patchwork Pottery. Isn't it great! Lauraine makes some really lovely bits and pieces - check out her flickr

Also on my desk is some more felted jumper love. I'm not sure if the photographs of this really do it justice - this is one fab felted jumper let me tell you. It was, in it's former life, a fat face jumper - and now it's half the size, thick, felty and lovely. It may well become a bag.

this weekend I was mainly...

Why does the weekend always zoom by so quickly?
I've had a lovely weekend. On saturday I did this:Have you ever wondered what 86,000 people looks like? Well it's kind of like this:


Wembley stadium is amazing and the foo fighters totally rocked (as you would expect). I'm not usually into rock, I'm more of an indie/alternative kinda girl, but I am partial to a bit of Foo's. I was sitting quite high up, but they had a revolving stage so we did get to see quite a lot - the top of the main stage was also surrounded by screens so if we couldn't see the stage we could watch the screens. The sound was immense, and the evening finished with the loudest fireworks I have ever heard in my life, sadly because we were still in the stadium we didn't see as much of them as I would have liked. All round, it was a fab day.

Today started like this:Egg on toast with love (from Mr Monda). How nice.
It has been lovely and sunny today, so I did what most brits do and went firstly to the DIY store and then to the supermarket.
In the afternoon, I did some sewing:and we finished off the day with a BBQ dinner in the garden.
If only every weekend was like this one. I'll go to bed tonight tired, but happy :o)

Mini quilt swap - this is what I got!

This is the lovely lovely mini quilt which my swap partner Jodie made for me. I LOVE it!
We exchanged quite a few emails thoughout the swap and I asked Jodie if she would incorporate a bird somewhere in the quilt for me (you know how I like birds) and I didn't want any hanging element to it as I'm planning on framing it.The photo's I've taken really don't do it the justice it deserves (I blame the inconsistent June weather for this).

Also in the package was this little owl:these ricrac cards and a great selvedge keyring:and stash galore:and it all came wrapped in this package:All this loveliness is only made better by the fact that I have now made a great virtual friend too :o)
I must also thank Mrs Lucy Locket Pocket too for organising this swap - top swap job Lucy!

Lastly, can I just say TFI Friday!

Reveal - A Showcase of Quality Handmade Craft

I have kindly been invited to take part in 'Reveal' an exhibition of quality handmade craft - hmm, why was I invited to take part then? :o)
It will be taking place in Henley on Thames from 6th-12th July and it is a showcase of work from local artists and crafters in the Berkshire area.

The website for the exhibition is here, and whilst you are there, take a peak at Lauren's ceramic work (I love her pot with the button on), she is the clever lady behind the exhibition.

In readiness for the exhibition, my to do list is growing - and more monsters are on the horizon - this little fella was created earlier this week - he's the first of many more to come...In other rather exciting news (of weeing your pants in excitement proportions), my mini quilt from the Lucy Locket swap arrived from my swap buddy Jodie in Australia - I'll share that loveliness with you tomorrow if you can bear to wait (yeah I know, I'm such a tease)