It’s been quite a while!

I didn’t mean to stay silent for so long, but life has had other plans. Let me start with a quick update on my father’s health. Dad came home from hospital in March. He’s not so mobile now – he can’t walk – but he’s recently got an oxygen machine, which helps with his breathing, and he’s started working on his computer programming again, and showing some interest in life. My sister has been staying with him to help him. I took over for ten days at Easter, to give her a brief break, and I am usually there on Saturdays, so she can go out, but Frances has done the lion’s share of the caring and I don’t know how I’d have coped without her.

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Not Bad News

Dad and I had an ‘interesting’ Christmas and New Year. He was very happy and alert for the first few days of my visit. He got to the village church on Christmas morning, which he had been looking forward to, and enjoyed his Christmas lunch of chicken curry (his request) and opening the presents. All was well.

By New Year’s Eve he was not quite as good, and over the next couple of days his condition worsened. By the Saturday morning, it was clear he needed urgent attention. The local First Responders turned up, provided oxygen and other treatment and he was soon off to hospital in an ambulance.

To my relief, he went to the RSH in Shrewsbury, which is much easier for visiting than Hereford. He was in a poor way when he got there, but here he is less than a week later, out of  bed and eating a banana. (My sister took the picture. She bought him those elegant pyjamas for Christmas, too.) Next week, Dad should be well enough to go to Ludlow Community Hospital until he is well enough to return home, where my sister will be waiting to look after him.

The hospital doctor said she’s never known anyone of his age recover from full-blown pneumonia quite so quickly.

“Well, I’ve had plenty of practice.” said the Amazing Eric.

Dots, Stripes and Good News

Let’s start with the very good news: my father is home from hospital, and is doing very well indeed. Apart from a slight slurring of his speech when tired – and he gets tired very easily – along with a slight slowing down, his recent stroke has left little evidence. He’s still not able to write very legibly yet, but he was working on his computer program within three hours of being home. Not bad for nearly 94!

Getting his house ready for his return was a chore as the central heating boiler needed repair, but that was fixed just in time to warm things up before he arrived. And his friends and neighbours and carers have been brilliant. A huge thank-you to Hereford hospital for their marvellous work in getting him through this. He is truly grateful to them, and they looked after him well, but oh, he is so very pleased to be out of there and back in his own home!

Well past Year’s Turning

Here we are, already beyond the middle of January, so about time I popped in a quick everyday life and stitchery update before I post anything else.

Christmas at Bucknell was very wet and gloomy weatherwise, but very pleasant. Dad and I were both getting over norovirus, so it was a quite event, but we managed to tuck into a fine Christms dinner cooked by Alan, my sister’s partner. We spent a lot of the time looking at old family photographs that Dad’s mother had put in a box, most of them unlabelled. (We’d come across them while sorting paperwork.) Frances, my sister, is working hard on the family tree. She and Dad managed to put names to quite a few of them, and Dad had lots of stories to tell about uncles, aunts and cousins.

Too wet for my usual excursions with the camera, and not much light for stitching, but I managed to get a little further with ‘ The Curiosity’ – the chain stitch picture on silk which I have been doing for several months. I posted the first work-in-progress picture last year. Here’s another teasing little section (you’ll have to wait a good while before I show you the whole picture). As you can see, it’s grown another foot!

Since Christmas, I’ve been back in Shrewsbury, back at work and being rather lazy outside of work. I’ve been dabbling with a new stitch. It is a slight variation of French stitch, a canvas-work stitch, adapted for counted thread embroidery on fabric. I call it ‘pineapple stitch’, because the texture reminds me of the outside of a pineapple. It’s surprisingly quick and easy to work, and doesn’t require a frame, so this small mat is my current carry-about project for odd moments and wet lunch breaks (or, currently, snowy ones).

I’m using a small oddment of fabric from my stash for the pinEapple stitch mat, and various colours and makes of pearl cotton 12, also from stock. I have to use what’s in the house – I don’t usually make New Year Resolutions, but I am banning myself from buying any more fabric or thread or needlework books before Easter. That’s a hard resolution for me to keep (especially as I’ve also banned non-essential stationery purchases) but necessary: I can hardly move in here for stuff and it needs using-up, not just storing. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to see that I’ve chosen spring flower colours for this piece of stitchery – I call it ‘Spring is Just Around the Corner’.

I’ll be back in a day or two with a bit of family history – and the Station Master’s Dog, as promised.

May Contain Nuts

It’s May. Time For another update on recent activity. First up, on May Day itself: Eric, my father had his 90th Birthday. Here he is on his special day:

My sister was visiting from London. So along with my mother and I the whole family were together. Friends kept turning up with presents and cards, relatives phoned. After lunch – Dad’s birthday choice of sausage, mash and peas, cooked by my sister – he found it a bit overwhelming. So he went off to his den for a spot of quiet computer programming.

‘Tis of a fair young maiden, and she lived down in Kent,
Arose one sunny morning, and she a nutting went….

You can’t have May without a spot of morris, can you? So I’ve been adding The Nutting Girl to my guitar repertoire. I am enjoying learning new songs and tunes, especially when I have worked out the chords for myself, as I did with this one. Thanks to inspiration from Graham Higgins, I’ve been tackling La Mer – now that’s tricky to master! But I am getting better at it. I started with chords off the web for La Mer, but Lady Franklin’s Lament is another one I have worked out for myself. It’s a real joy to have a guitar on hand again.

Shropshire Community Flickr Group are doing a ‘Photo a Day’ challenge for May. (Last year we did one in April.) I’m not always remembering to take a photo until the light is fading, but so far I’ve managed to keep up, although they’re not all quality shots! Here are a couple of them.

The rest are accumulating here.