A little Bird Told Me!!!!!!

I was sitting in the conservatory when I saw a small movement out of the corner of my eye, there was this little blue tit on the fat balls in the tree next to the back door.I slowly went for my camera and managed to catch this expression!!! There are always birds on the feeders, but this one was happy to stay put and grab some food!!

He was persistent and finally managed to prise a nut out of the ball. There is also a little Robin that visits, although he doesn't pose for photos. We also have a pair of Magpies nesting in the tree at the end of the garden. We see the pair flying in and out and they have made a huge messy nest but we can't hear any babies yet!!

The Busy Beader.

This week has been hectic, Mum is still in hospital and looking at having another operation next week. She has had a scan on her leg and they can see that its still bleeding, so they are going to have to go in and stop that. They are worried about another general so will have to look at epidural or worse case local and sedation.I just hope they can get it sorted it has been nearly five weeks in bed now.

Madeline on the other hand (or leg!!) is doing very well, she is up and about and Grace tells me may be discharged later today or tomorrow, brilliant news. I am keeping my fingers crossed for her.

Yesterday I spent a lazy day playing with my glass. I just wanted to try out some techniques and use some of the new presses that I had bought. By and large things came out OK, I am having a real problem using the heart press and I will have to look for further advice on that which is a little disappointing as I want to make hearts. Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Anyway here are a few of my successes.

These were made with my new lentil press they were fairly easy and I made a fair few with the same colour and I plan to turn them into a necklace sometime soon.

Made with the same press and same colours I need to keep practicing the flower shapes!

Same lentil press but red glass .

My first commission!! My friend Hannah asked me to make a few beads for her bracelet, I have explained that I am still in my practice makes perfect stage, but she wanted a couple anyway, so I hope she likes them.

Lastly I watched a tutorial at Flame Off last weekend and decided to have a try, again not as easy as it looks The one on the right is a bit blobby particularly around the dots which have melted into a splodge and not in an attractive way!!!The one on the left has nicer spots but is generally lumpy, so once I have learned how to combine the two elements, I may have a usable button.

Its been fun trying!!!

The Great Recycling fiasco!!

Welwyn and Hatfield Council have got into the recycling game, we have all been issued with Wheelie bins (Yippee!!!) The problem is I have a bit of a love hate relationship with the refuge collection operatives. They seem to forget about the collection bit and I frequently get missed. I really can't believe that it happens so often. I live in a small street with just 7 houses, In the past they have driven down the road, taken the bins from the right side of the road but forgotten us on the left. I was beginning to take it personally. Since the wheelie bins have arrived we are now faced with a near 'krypton factor ' sorting activity every time you want to throw something away. Woe betide anyone who accidentally puts paper where the plastic should be because you will find yourself with an unemptied bin and an attractive swing label telling you of the crime against recycling that you have committed. The real problem that we have is the volume of plastics that have to be recycled. There are 4 of us and I have found myself sitting trying to compress my packaging to get it all in the container. So on a Thursday evening you will find me slaving over my plastics bin......

The problem is that by a Thursday there is about 3cms of space left and a whole load of plastic to get in it. If the bin goes out and the lid is not shut they will not collect it. So all week we have been shoving it down with a broom and a mop, but no room calls for drastic measures.....

So take a two litre empty pop bottle.....

Fine a stick like implement in my case a long handled wood spoon is perfect. Then using your implement of choice, stuff all the plastic packaging you can find into the bottle.

Around half an hour later you find yourself with a plastic bottle stuffed with plastic waste packaging. For good measure you can them put the bottle in a regular bottle squasher to reduce it to half the size.

All that is left of the huge bin full of recycling is........

This little pile of plastic. The problem is I am not sure that secretly stuffing pop bottles with plastic is allowed, there may be some poor worker at the other end tasked with unstuffing my Master piece, so to make sure that my bin is collected I carefully bury the bottle half way down the bin. Shhhhhh don't tell anyone!!!!



In the Interests of Market Research!!!

My lovely neighbour Karen (over the road type of friend) is a fantastic cook, she could really make a living at baking cakes, she bakes a KILLER cake!! I agreed to help her out over the weekend, it seems she again needed a tester to help her check out the quality of her marbled icing. Its a tough job but someone has to do it, so she kindly sent over half a dozen of her test cakes and I tried one out. So the verdict?? The cake was brilliant, tasty light springy and yummy. The case was filled nicely and was very pleasing to look at. The icing was delicious tasted perfect but I am sorry to report that the shade of pink was simply not to my liking. I really think that she needs to try again this week and see if she can produce a cake with icing that is just the right shade, of course I will make the supreme sacrifice and test them for her, I mean if she was to make half a dozen all different shades I could try them all until she manages to produce the perfect cake!!!

Seriously Karen, you are the perfect neighbour and I would be lost without you!! (((hugs)))

Last night we called into see Mum, things are still not brilliant with her leg, it is still bleeding on and off two weeks after the operation, they are talking of having to go back in and see why its bleeding.  They are very worried about giving her another general so they are now saying that perhaps they will give her a local and look from there. Some of the wound has held together but any strain is causing it to bleed. They may have to take out the clips and add stitches.

Tomorrow my friend Madeline is going in for a hip replacement at St Albans City Hospital. I want to wish her all the luck and good wishes in the world and hope that she is back on her feet very soon.

My Glassy Haul!!

I have a fair bit of glass now, Laura bought me this stash,(thank you Laura) its quite a substantial haul of some very thick rods. I have used a couple and they melt surprisingly easily considering their thickness!! I really want to get set up and try a few of them out but its hardly worth doing all the set up for the middle of the week. I am planning ion making some sets of beads this time. I feel as if I am at that point, sets instead of odd beads!!!

I want to perfect some shapes so I have bought a couple of presses. I think that's going to be another whole brand new learning curve. I hope to be soon producing lentil and heart shaped beads. I also want to make button and so much more.

We went into hospital to see Mum tonight she seems very bright and she is still positive. They have said they are fairly happy with her progress but if the wound has not made considerable progress by the weekend they will take her back to theatre to clean the wound and try to seal it up again. Fingers crossed that she continues to get better.

Last night we went around to Mad and Johns for the evening. We had a great evening, (I think) I am not absolutely sure a I drank rather a large amount of port. It was always on the cards as we were celebrating the last weekend (hopefully) before Madeline's hip replacement operation. It was the first time that I have suffered as a result of drinking port so either it was a couple of bad bottles of port, or Mad and I are losing our touch and our ability to drink!!! Good Luck Madeline I hope your operation is over and done with as soon as possible xxxx

The Luther Blissett Experience!!!

Today has been a good day for lots of different reasons. I am going to start at the end and work back to the start!! I have for a long time been a fan of Luther Blissett, this stems back to my days of working at Watford Football Club and watching him score a hat trick in one of the first matches I ever saw him play in. (pretty sure it was against Southampton) Despite moving around Luther to this day holds the record for number of appearances for the club and number of goals scored - 503 appearances and 186 goals.

Despite playing for Milan, he kept coming back to Watford and remains there today still at the club in a promotional role. I have always found him to be a very 'attractive' man and happened to mention that to my brother who goes to the home games and has a box at the ground.

Well tonight he gave me a little gift .........

Luther Blissetts autograph!!!

We its pretty clear it is ' To Liz'  and its obvious that its signed by Luther, what is not so clear is the bit in the middle. I am pretty certain that it says;-

 'If you want to pop out for dinner with me one night, that would be great'

Or perhaps not!!!! What ever it says I am happy with it, specially for me.

He is still looking pretty good!!!

We have been in to see Mum, she has had a further two blood transfusions and they seem to be helping her. She is still very tired but is slowly picking up. They have moved her onto an air mattress to prevent bed sores, she doesn't really like it as it keeps everything moving and she keeps drifting to the bottom of the bed. They have changed her dressing and it has just about stopped bleeding and has started to heal up - Hurrah!!!! Today I also received a letter from the complaints department at the hospital, I had to get a signature from Mum so that they will start their investigation. I put the letter into my bag to take into the hospital and managed to give myself an enormous paper cut which bled like nobodies business!! (sods law???)

This morning Tom, Debbie and I went to 'Flame Off' at Towcester Race course. It was a flame workers show, with all that was good and new on display. Deb and I bought a few bits, a couple of presses (hearts) plus some reactive glass to try out. We watched some demos and came away with somethings that we want to try out. When I got home I had a big surprise, a huge package arrived for me and it was packed with glass rods, I had no idea where that had come from, but found out it was from Laura she had ordered it before Mothers day but it had been late arriving!! I now have to try and find a decent storage system for my glass! Happy Days!!

Nearly the Weekend.

Thank goodness its friday its been an extremely long and hard week its difficult to balance all the emotions flying around and continue to do the day job!! I am looking forward to a bit of rest and recouperation this weekend. We are planning on seeing Madeline and John on Sunday and Tom and I are going out to a bead fair tomorrow. Because of all the going on's we don't seem to do anything together anymore.

Popped in to see Mum last night and she is definately looking better her log is still leaking fluid and they do not want to move her off of the bed in case it breaks down completely. She seems quite bright in herself although she is fed upstuck in bed for the foreseeable future.

Yesterday I received an email from my MP he had written in complaint to the health authority and they had replied to him. I think the standard of their reply is an indication of how little they care about our complaint. To start with they got my name and the MP's name wrong!! They then went on to say in one part of the letter they had received only one letter of complaint while further down they admitted to having both letters of complaint from us. I think that they are not sure what they are doing. I have given the MP all the letters we have ever sent them and he will continue to deal.

Last night while in hospital visiting we got chatting to the other relatives in the bay (there are 4 patients in each bay) turns out three out of the 4 have made complaints about the treatment. One lady has had the same take you to the theatre and then not operate scenario that Mum has had she has been down 6 days now. The other lady has a fractured hip and they want to discharge her so that she can go on a waiting list to have it repaired!!! Her daughter is ready to kill and Mum said that there had been a very heated 'discussion' between the family and the consutant about her lack of treatment. The daughter had a huge list of people she had complained to and she had also gone to her MP.Its an absolute shambles. They have taken the decision to pay for the hip replacement privately and have had to take a loan to do so.

So the question is will all this get worse before it gets better?? or is this as good as it gets??

Up and Down Day.

Today has been another up and down one, I have been at work, the weather has been beautiful and my foot has been playing up. Perhaps I am allergic to summery weather. I was in meetings all afternoon, so I had my phone on silent, once I was able to check my phone there was a message from the hospital asking me to go in. So Tom and I went in to find that Mum had experienced an 'episode' They were going to get her out of bed using the hoist, all was going well until they started to lift her she was barely off of the bed when she suffered a major bleed from her wound. The nurse said she was not sure how much blood she had lost but she described it as 'a lot' They stopped immediately and called the Doctors from critical care down.

She has now been put back on a drip and has had another blood transfusion. They have stopped the warfarin and need to give her a clotting agent to try and help the wound to heal.

When we got there she was being seen by a very nice Doctor who explained that they were not sure what was going on, she might have a urine infection, it might be the sudden loss of blood that had put her body into shock. Although she looked pretty rough when we got there, the staff said that she had been much worse before hand. By the time we left she was looking a fair bit better but she was exhausted and really needed to sleep. I have called the hospital tonight and they say that she has told them she feels better, which is good. They are about to start another transfusion of blood and they are re hydrating her with saline. She is stable and they are keeping their eye on things.

On speaking to the Doctor who was tending her, we have found out other snippets of information. He said he had no idea why the repair had broken down, he said that the notes said that there was evidence that the bones had started to regrow, but in elderly patients that could take 6 months and she may have put the repair under pressure before it was fully ready. He estimates that she may be in hospital at least 6 weeks with this operation and that is if there aren't any further complications. So keep saying a prayer or two and hope that she makes a recovery.

Last night I had dinner out with my friends, Madeline, Sue and Sandra. Madeline is having a hip replacement next week if she doesn't get cancelled, fingers crossed. Sue gave me a belated birthday present of a lovely sweet pea candle and a bead making/ jewelery making book. Very useful it is too, I had wanted to learn how to knot between beads and the book has a whole chapter on it!!

Getting Quicker

I have not had a lot of spare time recently (Amazing I hear you all cry!!!)but I did manage to get an hour to  myself Saturday afternoon and made a few beads. Its quite addictive. These orange and black beads are quite striking lots of people who have looked at them love them. They are a little garish for my taste!

This red and white bead is equally garish but I love it, the other two are for practice and have turned out to be almost a matching pair - result!!

These are my favourites the two outside beads were turquoise base with alternating ivory and turquoise dots, the centre bead is an ivory bead with turquoise dots!! I have made a few of these now and I like the combination.

I am hoping to have more time to do some more.

On The Mend..

After a rocky time, Mum has finally made it out of ICU. We are so pleased, she seems so much stronger. Today she is back on Lemsford ward and they are looking after her. All the signs of recovery are there, kidneys working, pain under control, bleeding stopped and mental ability seems to have returned.Most of the lines have gone including the central line and the wound drain. The only slight spanner in the works is that they have now found an irregular heart beat which the consultant thinks might as a result of the blood transfusions. (she has had rather a lot and it can have odd effects) They are getting that sorted as well. In fact she is now making such good progress that they are likely to have her up on Tuesday to see if she can stand. Fingers crossed.

Today is Mothers Day, so we took Mum her presents in tonight. I gave her a necklace made with my own beads and a vase of silk flowers, that look so realistic that she must have asked half a dozen times if she needed to give me the vase back once they had died!!

Laura gave me a flowering plant in a pretty pot and a heart shaped charm with my name on it.

Beth treated me out to dinner so we all went to Aroma. Carl made me chocolate strawberries and very nice they are too!!!!

Confusion Reigns.

Tonight Beth and I went in to see Mum, she was totally confused mentally, she kept switching between present and past and she assured us that she had been up and around sitting in a chair. Apparently she even got off the bed under her own steam. Sadly its the drugs talking. She was also able to see a bloke with a black hat sitting in the cupboard and she was pretty cross with the ambulance ladies for leaving her at the hospital recently. On speaking to the nurse it seems that she is suffering from the morphine and tiredness. Morphine really screws with her and she can't work things out. Tonight they are going to switch to something else and add a sedative to give her a decent nights sleep. She has had to have further blood transfusions during the day and the wound is still bleeding. On the positive side she is not in pain, the blood pressure has settled and her kidneys are working. Tonight she remains in Intensive care but that's not a bad thing.



Looking Up.

After a terrible couple of days things are starting to look up, Mum has been in Intensive care for a few days but they are now talking about moving he to High dependency and them hopefully back onto the ward. She is conscious and understanding what is going on. Her kidneys seem to have kicked back in, although not fully so they are keeping an eye on that. Blood pressure has been up and down but they have that under control. So all those prayers and finger crossing has really helped.
The whole recovery is going to be a long hard slog but this is a start and more than we thought we would have a few days ago.

Not a good day...

Poor Mum finally got her operation today, after a couple of weeks of pure mental torture where they prepped her for the operation to repair her leg but didn't carry it out. Well today she had the op, but it has not gone smoothly. She is tonight in intensive care having lost a lot of blood. The shock has affected her kidneys and there is serious concern that they have been damaged.

All we can do tonight is hope that she picks up and stabilises over night. Its been a dreadful time for everyone involved. Please say a prayer or two for Mum.

On A Roll

Yesterday was another beautiful day, not so warm but sunny and a little sun just seems to lift your spirits. A little sun also helps dry the washing and again this weekend I have have had loads and loads of that as well!!

I have been busy bead making, its fast becoming an addition, I make one bead and then think, I'll just do one more and before you know it you have been there for a few hours!! Yesterday I found a lovely black glass which melted like a dream and behaved beautifully on the mandrel. This glass made bead making easy. I am now the proud owner of a dozen multi coloured beads.

Laura came over for lunch and she asked me to make her a pendant, so I am pleased to show you her pendant made with my own hand crafted beads!! Basic but its a start.

Been Creating!!

Yesterday started off on a downer, I had planned on going to London for the March, but got up with a pounding head and feeling quite sick. I didn't feel up to getting the train and such likes so decided to watch it all from home. I dosed myself up and waited for it all to go away. The night before Carl had been rough, high temperature and shivering and then boiling hot. By the afternoon I was feeling a lot better although still not right. Poor Tom had to do the shopping and I didn't feel like cooking so in the evening they all had a Chinese and I didn't feel like it (I know unheard of!!) Today I feel much better. I just have to get myself organised to do the lunch, roast pork, Mmmmmm!!!!

I bought some new glass during the week and I tried it out and managed to make some beads that go together nicely as a set. I have some plain white beads that I can add and I plan to make them into 'something' later on!!!

Carl has a few things planned to publicise his sponsored climb, he has a mail shot going out to all the parents who have children at the church scouts,cubs and beavers. He is looking at other ways of getting his name out there. Thank you to everyone who has sponsored him, I know times are tough but its a good local cause that will serve lots of kids. If you are able to sponsor him please check out the following link -Kilimanjaro

Thank You.

Not Sure What is Happening....

Mum is still in hospital, they still have done nothing since she was admitted over a week ago. On the night she was admitted she was X-Rayed and since then nothing, they have told her that she would need a scan and an operation, in fact they have prepared her for an operation 5 days this week and nothing. We have no idea what is happening and no one seems to be able to tell us. Keith is going in this morning to sort things out, but its madness. I would have thought its in their interests to get her up and about and out of bed, they are always moaning about lack of beds. My concern is that they don't seem to have a plan of action of any sort. I will have to wait for Keith to report back...

Yesterday I had a very nice time playing with my glass, I now have some other things I'd like to try on the glassy front. I tried out a brass glass press, which was quite hard to start with, but I did get better the more I tried it, I will have to keep at it.

Beautiful weather today, bright and sunny. I am off to capture some blossom shots!!

Carl Davidson is fundraising for 1st WGC (StFrancis) Scout Group

Carl Davidson is fundraising for 1st WGC (StFrancis) Scout Group

Carl has decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in an effort to raise funds for the 1st Welwyn Garden City Scout Group. The group would really love to restore an electricity supply to the Scout hut in Brockswood lane, after the spur supplying electricity to the hut was disconnected by a neighbour. Previously the house had been owned by a family who were more than happy to allow the hut to be supplied via a spur on their land. The new owner is not happy to allow that hence no electricity. So please support Carl in his effort to raise around a tenth of the total required to electrify the site again!!!!

Good Weekend.

My Babies !!!

This weekend has been a pretty busy one, hospital visiting and making beads. I am not really sure what is going on with Mum and I don't really think she knows for sure either. She has been in bed since she went in last Thursday and one Doctor has said they need to operate and another has said that they don't. The latest plan is for them to do a scan today to see what is happening. On the positive side she doesn't appear to be in a huge amount of pain and she seems to be 'with it' which helps as she can fight her own corner a bit more.

In the gaps between visiting I have been fiddling around making beads. I definitely think I am making steps forward, on the plus side I can make 'similar' sized beads, although patterns are a bit more hit and miss, but practice makes perfect. I just want to be able to make pretty beads NOW!!!!!

Another thing to learn is colour combinations, some glass changes when it is heated and others interact and make pretty effects, so its trial and error until you find something you like. At the moment I am liking dark ivory and turquoise, it goes all crackly and lovely.

In my attempt to run before I can walk I have tried out silver wire (they grey and black beads in the middle) Again that is much harder that it looks. First of all I managed to vaporise most of the piece I was using then I got a load of squiggles, eventually I made some stick and melted it in to silver spots. Nearly melted my fingers at one point!

The one above are the ugly ones, the ones only a creator could love and to be quite honest I am not that struck either!!!Particularly ugly is the one on the far right, its huge, its orange and its UGLY!!!

This last lot are some of the first off of the production line (apart from the eye one which snuck in) You can see I hope that I have progressed from this motley bunch of odd shaped glass blobs.

Hope you all have a nice day, off to work, preparing for an office move which is the 4th time in 2 years, its hard labour, I hope this is the last time.

Here We Go Again....

You know how it is, just when you think that things are getting back on track and you can relax and have a few evenings to yourself again, bang it all goes wrong . On Thursday evening I got called around to Mum and Dads as Mum was having bad pain in her leg and couldn't walk on it. We eventually had to call and ambo and mum went to A and E at the QE2. I stayed with her all evening until around 1am, she was waiting for an X ray but at that stage they suspected that something had gone wrong with the repair.

Eventually she was Xrayed and the repair had shifted and needs to be done again, so she is back to square one, she is now waiting for the warfarine levels to reduce so they can operate safely. It is likely to be Monday before that happens. Its such a shame that we are starting over again.

I was not very impressed at the way she was walking her left foot instead of pointing forward was splayed out at a right angle so I am sure that must have been putting a huge amount of pressure on her injury, he leg was twisted and to be honest its no surprise that she has done further damage, I am not sure why they didn't try and correct the twist, Mum has tried to tell me that they were happy with her posture, I just can't believe that.

This week has been a tough one so I am going to chill out and make a few beads!!

Made something half reasonable!

I have spent sometime this weekend  bead making, Its a real learning curve trying to work out how the glass reacts to the heat and to other glass. I think I have just about mastered the basic donut shapped and round bead, so the next thing is to experiment above are my first attempts at making a cup cake bead. I have the basic idea but the execution needs refining!! Next time I will try a different technique and see if I can make the bead more ballanced.

I am pleased with this little lady, again I need to refine the choice of glass and frit but again its a start and hopefully I can only get better.  I think next time I may well start with an opaque bead underneath and see if I can encase it in a clear glass. Thats another art I am yet to master.

Last night we had a great night out with Raymonde and Colin, we went to a quiz night where we amazed ourselves and came joint second out of 15 tables. We may even have won if we had read the question catagories, because then we would have seen that there was a round on Fruit and Veg which without a doubt Raymondes specialist subject. Anyway when that round arrived we were handed plates and boxes containing all sorts of fruit and veg to identify. Raymonde did a fantastic job and identied every single one of them (we should have saved our joker!!) Anyway Beth decided to play a trick on her, while all the produce was being handed around she made up one of her own by taking some lettuce from the buffet and putting it on a plate taht she numbered herself. She handed that to Raymonde and she identified it, the only thing was it wasn't on the list that we had to choose from. Raymonde was very enthusiastic and just didn';t hear me telling her it was a joke!!!eventually she realised, so we handed it on to the next table for them to identify!!

It kept us laughing for the rest of the evening (hysterically!!!)