A Thank You and A Giveaway!

Firstly, I would like to say a huge Thank You to everyone for all the good wishes and bloggy hugs that were sent our way when my daughter went in to hospital for her operation.

I am pleased to report that the operation went very well, and although there were some hysterics before the pre-med, she managed to cope very well with the procedure. They decided to use "sleepy" gas to put her to sleep and then did what they had to do with needles whilst she was out for the count! Everything is healing up very nicely and she returned to school yesterday complete with a set of crutches. It will still be a few weeks until she is running about again but I am just so glad that everything is done now and we will just have to keep our fingers crossed that the legs grow at the desired pace and sort out their differences!

Last week ~ on 21st of November to be precise ~ I noticed that I been blogging for four years. I can't quite believe that it has been that long ~ but it has! I love being part of this lovely bloggy world ~ it truly is a wonderful place to be ~ packed full of inspiration and ideas and lovely like minded crafty souls like you!

To say a big Thank You to all of you that take time out of your day to read my ramblings, I am having a little Christmassy giveaway. Up for grabs is a copy of the new Mollie Makes Christmas book and I will also add a few other Christmassy bits and pieces to the parcel ~ although I haven't quite decided what they will be yet!  All you have to do to enter this giveaway is to leave me a comment on this post ~ it would also be lovely if you were a follower of my blog too.

I will leave the giveaway open for a week ~ until Thursday 6th December ~ so that the lucky winner can enjoy the book and hopefully have enough time to make a few things from it before Christmas arrives.

Good Luck and I look forward to reading your comments :O)xxxx

Tomorrow

About three years ago my daughter's dance teacher took us aside and told us that she thought that there was a slight difference in the length of my daughter's legs. She had noticed this because she was paying particular attention to the posture of the girls in the ballet class. Up until then we hadn't noticed that anything was wrong ~ but when we looked more closely we did see that she definitely had problems when she was trying to stand up straight. We promptly made an appointment with the doctor and the doctor did indeed confirm that there was definitely a difference in the length of her legs by about 1.5 centimetres. The correct term for this condition is Leg Length Discrepancy.

We were then referred to a Paediatric Orthopedic Consultant so that her legs could be monitored by X rays and MRI scans to see if the discrepancy became worse. Unfortunately, over the last couple of years it has now gotten to the stage where the difference is 3.4 centimetres ~ which is now fairly significant.

Whilst this is not really bothering her at the moment ~  it could have major implications later in her life if it starts to affect her back and spine.

Tomorrow she is being admitted in to hospital to have an operation to take growth cells from the knee joint of her longer leg so that hopefully her shorter leg will catch up when she takes her biggest growth spurt as she approaches puberty. She is absolutely terrified! She has a huge fear of all things medical ~ mostly needles ~ and although we have managed to successfully avoid these things in the past she will obviously need to have an anaesthetic which will obviously involve a needle.

I know that she is going to find this whole experience incredibly difficult and there is no doubt that she is going to be in some amount of pain afterwards. I really wish that I could change places with her and that it was me instead of her that was going to have to go through the operation tomorrow.

I am trying desperately to remain calm but inside I am terrified too! xx

Half term and Halloween

Life has been pretty hectic around here recently, what with half term and lots of extra time spent working in the library. There has definitely not been an awful lot of time left over to indulge in much crafty stuff ~ although I have managed to snatch a little time to knit up a bit more of my lacy scarf and am now on to my third and final ball of yarn.

I am desperately trying to have a bloggy catch up before some of the moments get lost in the camera ~ never to see the light of the day!

We had our half term a couple of weeks ago here in Scotland and we headed off to the beautiful little village of Alton in Staffordshire to visit family. And of course, a trip to Alton would not be complete without spending a day up at Alton Towers. We scared ourselves completely silly on some of the bigger rides ~ in fact after going on some of them it was almost impossible to walk!  

We were really lucky with the weather the day we visited as it was a beautiful Autumn day ~ very cold but thankfully no rain! The leaves on the side of the Towers were a spectacular colour.

There were lots of Halloween decorations dotted about the place as it was the start of the annual Alton Towers Halloween festival ~ Scarefest.

We hid in giant pumpkins!

And came across some very strange residents!

Who were driving some very spooky vehicles!

The following day we had an enormous amount of fun at Splash Landings ~ which is a water park inside one of the hotels at Alton Towers. There were lazy rivers, crazy cannons and a VeRy fast and VeRy scary Master Blaster water coaster. This is an extreme water ride and definitely not for the faint hearted and most definitely NOT for me! Once was more than enough and I will never venture on it again! Needless to say the kids loved it!!

Tonight, following in our own Halloween traditions, the small people will be dressing up in some scary Halloween outfits and we will play hide and seek in the dark with torches. We will get absolutely soaked dooking/bobbing for apples and then we will get cosy and snuggle up on the sofa to watch some spooky Halloween movies with maybe a little bit of Scooby Doo thrown in for good measure.

I hope you all enjoy your Halloween happenings as much as we will!! :O)xx

Weekend away

I spent last weekend away visiting my best friend who lives in the beautiful Scottish Borders.

There is something quite nice about going away by yourself for the weekend. It's not something that I do very often, in fact hardly ever, but when I do I find the whole experience very enjoyable indeed. The very fact that you can completely do what you want to, when you want to, without having to stop for a minute to consider the needs of others is quite wonderful! Of course I did miss my little family very much ~ but I made up for that with lots of cuddles when I returned back to the fold on Sunday morning.

My friend and I had arranged a little bit of retail therapy for ourselves, and as we were in the Borders we headed off to the Gretna Green Outlet Village. Before we went shopping we decided to stop and have a look at the Blacksmith's Shop at Gretna Green, which is famous for marriages and for the place where Scotland and England meet.

We had a stroll around the sculpture garden and stopped to admire this lovely sculpture of two hands clasping. The sculpture was designed and created by County Durham artist Ray Lonsdale. It only took two months to create and is made from weathering steel and standing at 13 feet tall it is rather impressive to look at.

It can be interpreted in lots of different ways ~ are the hands coming together? Parting? Meeting up or saying Goodbye? Is it a happy or sad embrace? Are the hands joining in friendship or is it an embrace of love? Personally I like to think that it is an embrace of love.

There was also a wedding taking place at the Blacksmith's shop whilst we were there and as is often the tradition at Scottish weddings there was a lone piper playing his bagpipes. There is nothing quite like the sound of the music which comes out of the pipes. I really do love it!

Which is quite fortunate really ~ because for the last few months my little boy has been learning to play. He started out learning on an instrument called a chanter and he has now progressed rather quickly onto his first set of bagpipes ~ he is aiming to get his full set of pipes complete with drones, which are the really noisy part sometime very soon. I think the reason he loves his music so much is the very fact that he is allowed to do something noisy without getting told off for making a noise!!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend too  :O)xx

Thirteen

I am now the very proud owner of a Teenager!

My beautiful little girl was thirteen yesterday. Thirteen!! I am not sure how that happened quite so quickly ~  I really don't feel old enough to be a Mother of a teenager, but that's what I am.  It doesn't seem like all that long ago since she was born and whisked away to Intensive Care in the Special Care Baby Unit where I sat holding her tiny little hand through a little door in the incubator and didn't even dare to dream about birthdays. However! Here we are celebrating her thirteenth birthday and what a lovely day we all had too.

The present of choice this year was an ipod touch.

Yesterday was an extra special day for our family as it was also our wedding anniversary. I have been married to my wonderful husband for twelve years!  All those years ago we thought that it would be a lovely idea to get married and have our daughter christened on her first birthday. A little unconventional perhaps ~ but something that is very special to us as a family.

We tend not to do very much to celebrate our anniversary as birthday celebrations are obviously much more important in the minds of children. Our anniversary night out was a trip to The Handmade Burger Co. accompanied by the birthday girl, her little brother and her best friend. All very romantic I must say, but very enjoyable none the less :O)xx

It's been a while!

But I think that I'm just about ready to get back to blogging again.

Life just kind of took over in the summer months ~ what with school holidays, family trips away and trying to keep the small people entertained. And to tell the truth, whilst there really wasn't that much time available for any woolly stuff I really didn't have much inclination to put wool to hook or sticks either.

I am even more ashamed to say that I haven't done anything remotely hooky or even picked up the knitting sticks once since my last post which was WAY back in the middle of June.

I'm not quite sure why! I think that perhaps I had just become a bit bored with all of my WIP's and that maybe all I needed a new project to kick start my motivation again. The project I eventually decided on was this one ~

A lacy scarf designed by Debbie Bliss ~ which I decided to knit in double knitting wool ~ namely Sublime extra fine cashmerino wool in a lovely blue shade called Clipper. This wool is an absolute dream to knit with and very snuggly too which will be just right to keep me cosy in the winter months.

I have also signed myself up to take part in this wonderful Advent swap which is being organised by the very lovely Hookin' with Laalaa.

The idea of this swap is that you buy, make, thrift or share 24 little gifts for your partner to open each day of Advent and then one larger present for her to open on Christmas day. Sounds like amazing fun and I am really looking forward to taking part. There is still time to join in if you like the idea ~ although the closing date is today so you'll need to be quick! :O)xx

Sock ~ tastrophe!

I had been getting on so well with my Jubilee socks ~ in fact I had nearly finished the first one ~ when disaster struck and I noticed I had a dropped stitch!



No problem I thought! I'll just unravel the offending sock until I reach the dropped stitch, pick it back up again and then carry on my merry way.

Unfortunately, the knitting had other plans and that is not how it worked out at all! I did some unravelling and I did try to pick up the pesky little dropped stitch, but no matter how hard I tried I just could pick it up and it would slip further and further down the knitting. At one point I did think about ripping the whole sock out and starting all over again but I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

I think that I have now managed to catch that slippery little stitch up ~ but to be honest with you I'm not totally convinced that I've done it properly and I am really hoping that I don't spot any more ladders in my sock when I get my momentum going again.



Wish me luck and hopefully I'll be back with a fully formed pair of Jubilee Socks sometime soon :O)xx