Manchester show and stitching update.

Well I went to the Manchester Show and it was rubbish! There were only 3 or 4 stands selling cross stitch items. The rest was mainly card craft. I did spend a pleasant 10 minutes speaking to a lady about her Japenese embroidery which was amazing. Have a look here to see some of their work. In the end, I only picked up a few bits and bobs from Trudy Anne Designs. There were lots of stitched models of L*K, CCN, LHN and others in the same vein. I absolutely adored all the LHN and CCN and I can now see why they have such a huge following. I succumbed and bought one for now but have a couple on order too. I also bought some double sided tape, card for the children, 4 little plastic craft boxes and 2 ribbons. The charts are LHN - Snowflakes, The Trilogy - Gardening and L*K - Winter Crazy.

Yesterday, when Rachael was at her party, I finished this teddy design into a glitzy ornament for her. I had bought some pretty ribbon but she preferred the tinselly look.
I also received the mount for Colin's Sunday Cricket from Smartart-mounts. I was really pleased with this. They sell on ebay but didn't have what I wanted. However, the guy got back to me with a price for it being custom made which was really good. £6 including packing and postage. Well when it arrived yesterday it was in a jiffy bag with about 2 metres of bubble wrap round it and sandwiched between 2 generous sized pieced of mount to protect it. The mount was absolutely perfect and one piece of mount board packing was easily cut to the right size to lace the design to. I was so pleased with their service!

Sunday Cricket is done!!

A few weeks ago at Girls Brigade, Rachael made little pizzas with oven bottom muffins. I promised the children that they could do this one might for tea. Rachael chose to make cheese and tomato whilst Luke used brown sauce for the sauce, pepperami and cheese for his. Judging by the way they both wolfed them down, they were a great hit. There is a photo below of their pizzas.

Sunday Cricket is finally completed and a picture is added below. It's funny but I never get a buzz from finishing a design. I think it is more of a journey with cross stitch. Colin seems pleased with it. Now the search continues for a suitable mount ready for framing. A lot of the online stores seem to charge the earth for postage for mounts.

First set change today

Today was the first set change with Rachael's new pump. Rachael was a little upset because she was worried it would hurt as I have never done it before. Unfortunately I think she had convinced herself it would hurt and so it did. Everything went smoothly otherwise. The adhesive of the old set was quite difficult to peel off and I wonder if that is what started her worrying. Next time I think we will put in the new one prior to taking out the old. If anyone has any hot tips on how to make removing it a bit easier I would be grateful for the advice.

Rachael and Luke have been off to a new play area this afternoon with one of Rachael's friends. They had a great time there and then went for a McDonald's afterwards as a bit of a treat. Colin and I took the opportunity to go over to a local garden centre and get some bits for the garden. We got 4 new pots that were BOGOF's, 2 Hebe's in different colours and several other bits and bobs. We also bought some big tubs for growing potatoes in. I had a hugely embarassing moment when I took out my credit card to pay and found that I had in fact brought my Nectar card with me.............oops. Luckily Colin had brought his wallet with him so he paid.

Rachael's new pump pouch arrived today - well one of them. It was the pouch with the dogs on and it is 'mint' in Rachael's words. We got this from Pumpwear Inc and I have to say it seems well made and feels like it should wear well. Rachael is pleased that she doesn't have to keep unclipping her pump from her trousers or skirt every time she needs to pull them down.

I have been having a big push on getting Sunday Cricket finished. It is annoying me at the moment as I am still working on all the squashed stitches and it feels like I am getting nothing done. When I look at it, I am finding it hard to see what progress I am making. I think when this is finished I will have to find something that is small and with blocks of colour for a really quick stitch to recharge my batteries a bit.

Pumping saline

Today Rachael was finally attached to her pump and is now pumping saline for about 2 weeks. She was quite excited but understandably nervous about the first ever cannula insertion. She wasn't phased in the least by it. She has bolused easily for her tea and is quite happy so far having it attached to her. I think she is quite proud of it secretly. We had a bit of a mad panic at bathtime. We weren't sure if we should prime the pump when she reconnected or not. Needless to say it came as quite a shock to find that from p111-p142 of the pump manual which had all the troubleshooting section in it was MISSING! I think tomorrow I will be on the phone to Medtronic getting a new pump manual ordered. We got to meet the Medtronic rep who seems nice and gives the impression that she will be helpful. Marie the PDSN will be coming into school to give pump training so that they are aware of what care and precautions need to be taken with Rachael.

Tomorrow the teachers are on strike, or at our school some of them are on strike! That means that some classes are in, some aren't. I have ended up with one child in and one off. As I still have to be in, it means that Colin has got to take a day's holiday to look after Luke. It seems a huge waste of time. Let's face it the Government are never going to meet their demands as if they do, they then have to give police and everyone else an equivalent pay rise. I think the teachers risk alienating both non-striking colleagues and parents by striking. However, I think my biggest bugbear is the fact that the teachers won't/can't/aren't picketing so they in effect just get a day off work.

As for cross stitch, it's back to Sunday Cricket and a final push to get that finished. Some of the squashed stitches are a little tricky, especially where they are in a block with different colours but I will beat the little devils!! I got my first ever chart for a biscornu in the post yesterday and I am itching to have a go at it. I MUST FINSISH SUNDAY CRICKET FIRST!!! The totals were posted for the crossstitchcrazy stitchathon and I got 3rd in the stitches stitched totals. As I have never participated in a SAT before it gave me a real buzz.

Pump Training

Today was our 4th clinic visit for pump training. The DSN asked Rachael what colour pump she wanted!! Needless to say the answer was purple. Tonight we have been looking at pump pouches and skins for the pump. The diabetes team are great the way they are aiming the training at Rachael and not at us. We always said at the old hospital, there was no point in taking Rachael really as no one hardly spoke to her. It will be great for her to have more say in her diabetes and to understand more of why we make the decisions we do to keep her healthy.

Both the children are dead tired this week with going back to school. I start my new hours in school this week. It is hard getting back in the routine of mornings after having 2 weeks of doing what we want to when we want to.

Obviously being back at work means that my cross stitch time is more limited now so progress on Sunday Cricket will be limited to evenings and weekends. I have been picking out my next WIP/UFO to work on when Sunday Cricket is finished. I am thinking of doing a rotation of Cotswold scene from a back issue of Cross Stitch Collection, Cat's Alphabet from Janlynn and Petal Fairy by Mirabilia. Cat's Alphabet was the one that got me back into stitching about 7 years ago and I would love to finish it as it is a really gorgeous design. Petal Fairy will be for Rachael when it is finished and the Cotswold scene will look fantastic in our hallway.

Sunday Sunday

Rachael had a sleepover at her friend's house last night which turned into a bit of a disaster. Her blood sugars were 6.8 at 8pm - brilliant! They were still in the 6's at 10.30 which is not so good. At the moment Rachael needs to be going to bed at least 10.0mmols to get through the night and even then we would test at 3am to make sure she hadn't dropped too low. Another phone call at midnight to say that she has had 2 slices of toast and 2 custard creams and was now finally creeping up towards the low 9's. Hurray!! A phone call this morning to discuss breakfast carb ratios found Rachael with a reading of 2.3. Yikes!

Rachael has been very subdued since she came back from the sleepover. I hope it is purely due to lack of sleep and not her blood sugar readings upsetting her.

Luke had a good evening last night. We decided as a treat we would have a buffet type tea meal with lots of sweet things that are normally rationed a bit as it isn't fair that Luke can have them when Rachael is restricted by what she can have, or rather how much she can have. He also stayed up until 9.30 pm.............really late for him.

Luke's behaviour today has been awful, is it due to the late night or sugar overload?

Cross stitch wise I am a little cheesed off. I am stitching a design for Rachael's teacher when she leaves his class in July and have just realised that I am one row off for about half of what I have done...........grrrrrrr.

I have decided to leave that for a few days whilst I cool down about it before starting the frogging. Instead I am concentrating on Sunday Cricket for a few days. I am about half way through this now. There is only about 200 stitches in the top half left now.

Rachael's swimming challenge

Rachael is doing her Silver challenge award in swimming this week. Today was Section A. For this she had to do a 100m swim in under 3 minutes, tread water for 2 minutes with hands behind her back, feet first and head first surface dive to retrieve a brick and head first/feet first sculling for about 10 metres. SHE DID IT!!! Rachael's worry was that she wouldn't be able to do the swim using front crawl (her worst stroke) but she did one length front crawl and the rest breast stroke and finished well within the time allowed. Tomorrow is 800m using 2 strokes one on front and the other on her back. As she already has her 1500m badge this should be easy for her!! I am so proud of her. By the way Rachael is only 8 and is about 2 years younger than all the others in the group who are also doing their silver.

We will be back at the pool this afternoon to watch Luke do his 100m. Update to follow on that one!

Back to important things like cross stitching!! I had a small finish last night of a kit that I bought about 3 years ago to do for my best friend. It has be a WIP, well more of a UFO, forever! So now it is back to a concerted effort on Sunday Cricket which I really want to get finished soon.