How on earth did that happen???

So much has happened since I last posted, some of it good, some very good and some very difficult, which is why I’ve pretty much been radio silent and not done much sewing. After my last post I welcomed my new grandson Stanley and then went off for a wonderful holiday to the Maldives. It was my first time visiting this truly wonderful place and it lived up to all my dreams, and more. We hadn’t been away for 7 years, and since covid, I never thought I’d be well enough to go abroad again – but we managed it, the journey was a truggle and took it’s toll, but once I was there, I had little more to do than walk a few yards from the villa to the beach and back again. Our lovely butler looked after me very well, and with one call, he would come in a golf buggy and run me around the island wherever I wanted to go. I haven’t been anywhere like it, so very healing, emotionally, physically and spiritually. We went just out of season, so it was very quiet and we pretty much had the beach to ourselves – pure bliss!!!!

When we came home we had to start packing up most of our house for some renovation work. We were kncking out the wall between our bedroom and the spare room, to make one large room. We were replacing the flat roof over the bedrooms with a pitched roof and were replacing the old tiled roof, with a new slate roof. We decided we would move our bedroom into Ross’s barn, which we had just finished rebuilding. It had a shower room and small kitchen and a large room which would act as our bedroom. While we were going to be out of the house, for the most part, we thought we’d replace the bathroom at the same time. There was an old chimney breast in there which was just taking up space and we needed to rejig the layout. We had everything arranged and packed up and then my darling boy Ralph got sick very suddenly. We were back and forwards to the vet, we thought we’d lose him twice during that first week and were besides ourselves. Ralph was extremely dehydrated and anaemic and was going for daily blood tests during the first week, then every other day.  Over three weeks, he went downhill rapidly and amid lots of tears, even from the vet, we had to make the call to let him go. He wasn’t happy and we didn’t want him to suffer – we are convinced he had an underlying cancer somewhere, but we weren’t prepared to put him through anymore stressful tests & scans to find where it was. His loss is a huge blow, he adored us completely, was our constant companion and the best nurse maid I ever had xx

We then started the renovation, expecting it to take a month or so……famous last words!!!! Once the work started we realised what a bodge had been done before in the house. The end of the house where the bedrooms were, was about ready to fall down, I think it only had one good storm left in it!!! We even found some breeze blocks held together with expanding foam, not a bit of cement in sight!!!! The bathroom wasn’t much better. Pipes under the floor hadn’t been fitted correctly and were slowly leaking, causing lots of damage. Joists were rotted and damp was creeping up the walls – everything needed to be ripped out, new floors laid and of course all of that took lots more work, lots more time and lots more money. We ended up living out in the barn for almost 6 months, and I will admit, by the end, it was really taking it’s toll on my mental health. I’d been fighting against depression before all of this and I was losing hope of ever feeling normal again.

There were some highlights though. I managed to enter a few items into our village fair in September and won the Handicrafts section.

I went on a willow workshop one evening and made a lovely willow star for Christmas – next one will be making a willow basket.

When we finally were able to move back into the house and I could remove all the furniture that had been stored in my sewing rooms, I found some wooden rings – can’t remember what I  bought them for – and some leftover yarn and sat and made some mini Christmas wreaths.

Finally, I got an amazing Christmas present from my gorgeous hubby – a new sewing machine!!!! It’s the Husqvarna Epic Quilt 97 and I love it. I’ve alwasy been a Pfaff girl, and I still love all my Pfaff’s, they all do something different and I’m a firm believer in having the right tools for the right job and this new machine will be mainly used for quilts – but you can do literally anything with it. I’m just starting to have a play with her and put her through her paces now that all the Christmas hoohah is over and done with, but isn’t she a beauty???

So there’s my big round up, a few highs and some serious lows but here we are in a new year, so a new start and a hope that this one is quieter, less stressful and far more productive than last year. I think I may even have to do a giveaway soon, so keep your eyes peeled xx