Sick children and school do not match. So you call Grandma.
Luckily they are pretty sick because Grandma isn’t too good either, so we all sleep together.
But we made some pumpkins for Halloween.
And wrote our letters for Santa. ( Santa is a long way from Australia and these have to be in the post by November 1st to catch the mail.)
I would never have thought that it would take me so long to stitch such a simple design. But this RSI injury is very restricting. This is going to be my last piece of hand stitching until after Xmas. (I hope those are not famous last words!) The stitching is just not good but I don't have the control I had before this injury.
Because I got this design from Kelly Fletcher, who is South African, I have used my South African fabric, given to me by my friend Cora, which she brought back from a recent visit to her home country, as the lining.
So, that is the samples finished for the January 2019 Children's Class. I still have a lot of computer work to do for this class but it will just be a little each day. I do have enough fabric etc for the volunteers to stitch their samples and hope to get that delivered this week.
My health is still giving me grief. This time a simple accident has put me out of commission. To cut a long story short I managed to break a vertebrae in my back when the boot door on the car came down on my back. It was the metal lock that hit exactly the right part of the bone to break it. It didn't hurt much at the time but it does now. That adds another 6 weeks to the recovery which will take me right up to the time when I leave for Thailand. Oh yes, I am still going no matter what. I will just have to be extra careful with myself.
My other problem has been typepad. My blog has not been displaying properly. I noticed that about 20% of all the blogs I have on my list are having the same problem. It is more annoying than anything else.
And I have finished all the kits for the Children's Classes in January 2019 and this is the poster.
Sorry about the lack of posts but I now find that I have been fighting viral pheumonia, which my husband brought back from Ireland, and a dose of pleurisy. These viruses certainly took my name at the beginning of 2018 and have just kept on. Still, I am still here and as the song says,
"I get knocked down but get up again, they are never going to keep me down".
I just wish this RSI injury would hurry up and heal, I so miss my stitching. But at the moment my focus is getting to a point where I can go on my trip to Thialand. That is 6 weeks away, I can eat again and that was the greatest difficulty I had to over come. One plus to not eating was the amount of weight I have lost. I am back to a size 12 again (from a size 18). The down side is I have had to give all my clothes to St. Vinnies and buy new ones. Next is being able to handle the pain and then the tiredness. I have cancelled all my teaching and only have a couple of judging commitments. Getting ready for this trip is my No 1 commitment.
Thinking about the trip has made me realise that I will have to get all my Xmas postage ready before I leave! Maybe I will not send presents this year? And then I have thought about leaving this house for my children to use for the holidays and my husband and I just taking to the road for a while? Hopefully by then I will be able to stitch again. Still, the old brain is working again, and the RSI has improved so that I can type without my shoulder freezing up. So maybe the stitching may return even sooner?
Work is very slow and not the best I can do with this RSI injury. My limit is one length of stranded cotton divided into 3 x 2 strands and I have to stop.
Still the class isn't until January next year so I am keeping ahead.
I signed up for Kelly Feltcher's newsletter after finding this free designs and am finding it very interesting, as I'm sure other embroiderers would. It promotes her products but there is lots of other information in there as well. Here are just two.
The society for Embroidery Work.
They discharged me from hospital and I went straight to the Stitches and Craft Show down the road. I'm not sure it was the soundest decision I have ever made but I got there when it opened and only spent a couple of hours doing some shopping. By this time I was ready to get home to bed.
I now have a raft of medical appointments I have to attend but hopefully this will get me back on my feet again.
I spent a whole heap of money on very little. Things were very expensive but as I only shop here once a year, and I really wanted and can use the things I bought I think the expense was justified.
A couple of metres of Japanese fabric,cord, a mould for a broach and webbing plus some extra threads. That little lot was over $180.00! I can't buy these machine threads anywhere in Australia and I do love wonderfil threads, those two boxes were $100.00.
And then I got to meet Cecile Franconie. (http://www.facilececile.com) Her English is a bit better than my French but we managed to chat for over 30 mins. Luckily for me she didn't have any kits with her or I would have broken the bank.
I would have loved to attended her workshop but knew I wasn't well enough so I just bought her book. I took a flyer for the Quilt Show in Nantes next year. I think that would be a good trip, then, as I would be in Europe I could include Sweden and some other places?
I am going to be out of action for the next week as I am going into hospital for a raft of tests. I have been ill since February this year and although the Doctor thinks it is just one virus after another they are going to do the tests to be on the safe side. See you next week.
I am working on the Children's Classes for 2019 under the theme of "how to find embroidery designs using the internet."
The first project is a small bag and I have selected two free designs from the net for this. (As we are a non profit organisation and we are using them for education we fall under the 'free catagory' of use.) One of the learning outcomes for this class in addition the learning of basic stitches will be about responsible use of free patterns and even though they are free the designer needs to be acknowledged.
Design one is from "Annie Beez' annie beezfolkart.blogspot.com Annie mainly designs cross stitch patterns.
Design two is from "Kelly Fletcher" kellyfletcher.co.za Kelly's work will really appeal to the teenagers in my classes. She has some great kits that would appeal to them as well.
This design is taken from an old iron on transfer. That has got me thinking. The Guild has a large collection of iron on transfers to which they own the copyright. I am thinking that this will make a wonderful source for the 2020 classes?
I have also purchased one of her kits as a raffle prize.
I managed to get ill again just when I was about to start a new on-line course, and one I really want to do. So much so I paid for a Certificate of Attainment before I started, just to make sure I finished it!
It is a free course from the University of Newcastle New South Wales Australia. One of those tasters that Uni's offer to attract paying students to their degree courses. My daughter, who is a University lecturer, tells me these courses really do attract paying students. Because of this they put a lot of funds into the making of them. This one is very well put together and although I am a bit behind I am looking forward to getting into it.
It is a six week course, so doable. I may even be persuaded to undertake the full course if it was offered on-line. It will all depend on the cost!
The last couple of weeks have been a kind of a blur. I hate being ill, but sometimes it just lays you low and you have to give into it. For the first time, ever, I have had to leave the children's holiday classes to others. I just had to take to my bed. But they did send me a photo of a finished embroidery.
I am always blown away with what kids can do. I gave them the design and said choose your own colours. Look at this. Just fantastic.