Charity Auction in aid of Japan

How do you fancy treating yourself to a beautiful piece of jewellery, a fabulous set of designer lampwork beads or a piece of textile art and helping to raise money for Japan at the same time?

Mel Poxon of Kookie Designs has organised an auction full of fantastic lots, some of which you can see here, and you have until 8.30pm GMT on Monday 4th April to place your bid. Just follow the email link on the auction page and email your name, the auction lot number (or numbers!) you are interested and your bid in £ sterling.All of the money raised will be paid into a PayPal account which will then paid into the Japan fund via the Oxfam website.

Please do help us to raise as much money as possible!

You can find all of the items on offer and the full details on the auction page here.

BTW

No, not by the way, which is what I thought it meant when it started appearing on some of the other jewellery blogs I read. It's Bead Table Wednesday! There's a Flickr group full of photos that jewellery designers, bead makers and the like have taken, well, of their workdesk every Wednesday - and I thought that now I'm finding a bit of time to get out into the workshop that I'd jump on the band wagon.

My desk is it's usual messy self as you can see. I do tidy it up every now and then, honest, but then I start working on four projects at once (so I can sand one while the others are cleaning in the pickle pot etc) and organised chaos rules again! If you look closely though you'll be able to see a couple of magazine projects in the making and a pendant waiting for it's stone to be set.

Reasons to be cheerful

In no particular order....

• The sun has been shining beautifully for nearly a week now - and I find it very difficult to be anything other than cheerful when the sun is shining!
• We had a lovely afternoon today walking through part of Southampton Common taking part in a treasure hunt raising money for the Wessex Cancer Trust.
• Jamie is sleeping for longer between feeds at night now - thank God! I'm sure that my memory of the first few months of Ben's life was sanitised somehow - otherwise I may have had second thoughts if I'd remembered how little sleep we got at first!
• I've been able to spend a little time in my workshop over the last few days, mainly finishing off a couple of pendants and a magazine project. It was so good getting out there again! Very theraputic!
• The potted miniature rose bush that Ben gave me for Christmas has one beautiful deep red rose in full bloom.
• I finally managed to get to back to the craft group that I first went to last November - I went to one morning and then couldn't make any more until last Friday as T needed the car, then it was Christmas, then Jamie was born and then, well, I was slightly busy with other things! I had a lovely morning, even if I did spend far more time feeding Jamie than knitting!
• And last but definitely not least...

They got all of the cancer!

All the tests carried out after my surgery last month show that the cancer hasn't spread.

It hadn't even spread to the lymph nodes that they took out as a precaution.

This means that I don't need to have radiotherapy, but I will (like all cancer patients) have to go back to the hospital for regular check ups for the next five years or so.

Thank you all of you for all of the good wishes that you have sent - and to those of you who emailed to double check that I'm ok as I hadn't posted for so long! I've been doing well, just busy juggling having a new baby with hospital appointments for physio and speech therapy. I'm getting tired easily, but that's only to be expected. My speech is coming on really well, and I'm hoping that it will be good enough to teach again sooner rather than later. So watch this space for a couple of workshops in May and June!

Home at last.

Thank you so much for all the positive and wonderfully supportive comments, emails and cards that you have sent. They are really helping both me and my family get through this.

I came on home late on Wednesday afternoon, 9 days after the operation which lasted most of the day on Monday 14th. I spent two nights in Intensive Care with a tracheotomy to help me breathe and tubes all over the place - mainly because an operation in the mouth causes so much swelling they have to assume that you'll need help with everything afterwards. Most of the time in Intensive Care thankfully passed in a bit of a blur, but my strongest memory is of the ward sister saying that there was no reason why Jamie shouldn't be brought into my room for a few minutes for me to hold him - I will always be greatful to her for that. In fact, I'm so grateful to all of the consultants, doctors and nurses who have looked after me, and will continue to look after me, probably for several more years. They have been wonderful, caring for my family as well as me.

So, I'm home.

I'm battered, bruised, scarred and stitched up all over the place, and most of the day is spent in bed resting. I'm having to learning to eat and speak properly again, but they're really pleased with how I'm doing. The average stay in hospital after this type of operation is 10 days - T says they let me out a day early not because I was doing so well, but because they wanted to get rid of him! I seem to have a little more energy each day, but I'm having to be careful not to take things too fast. I also seem to be able to eat and speak a little bit better each day too. At the moment it's mainly pureed and other soft foods, and I'm starting to get bored of them! It's going to take a while, but I know I'm going to get there, and I am so grateful to be home with my boys again.

Mummy's had her surgery

Hello, it's Jamie, well actually it's my Daddy writing cause I can't reach the keyboard, I just wanted to give an update on how my Mummy is.

The surgery went well and everyone was happy with how Mummy has been since coming out of Theatre, she is now in Incentive Care for a day or two just to ensure she has 4* treatment and her own Nurse for a while.  I went to see her today and we had a cuddle and she was smiling, joking and then frowning at Daddy - but the frowning happens a lot anyway!!!

Mummy does have some tubes coming out of her but the Doktor said it was to help make her better so thats OK.  There was a funny green button which Mummy could press, but no one else could, which made her feel a little better, I think it was called More Feen. Anyway the plan is for Mummy to be out on a proper ward, where I can visit lots, very soon. I can't wait, all this bottle feeding is OK but you can't beat the real thing.

Got to go, will post again if I am allowed to but maybe Mummy will be up for making her own paste!!!

Jamie -  Aged 1 month, 1 week and 2 days.

And now for the not-so-good news....

As I said below, there is another reason why time seems to have gone really quickly in our household recently. We've been having a rollercoaster ride at the moment - joy at finally having two beautiful boys, and, well, tears as well.

I haven't been very well recently, and this has been the main reason I haven't post on here for a few weeks. I didn't really feel able to post anything else until I was ready to tell you what else was going on in our lives. A few weeks ago, when Jamie was 6 days old, I was diagnosed with a thankfully treatable, curable form of tongue cancer. I had had mouth ulcers for years, had a biopsy on them (which showed that they were just ulcers, most likely caused by stress) and treatment for them 6 years ago, and they almost disappeared once I left teaching fulltime. They flared up again late autumn, which I put down to the stress of the miscarriages. The dentist referred me back to the hospital, and the news wasn’t so good this time. I’ve had biopsies, CT scan, MRI scan etc etc, and will be having an operation to remove the tumour (which is mainly sitting on top of my tongue) tomorrow. I will have to stay in hospital for up to two weeks, but the good news is that the hospital are moving very quickly and the intention of the operation is to cure me, and Southampton General is a great hospital.  There may be some radiotherapy afterwards as they are tackling this with both belts and braces, to quote the consultant, to make doubly certain that the cure is complete. I will also probably have to have some speech therapy afterwards as well. As you can imagine, it’s all a shock, but the main reason that my consultant has a policy of getting things like this sorted as quickly as possible is to reduce the amount of time that people have to worry. My parents have come to stay while I’m in hospital to help T with the boys.  At least Jamie is too young to realise that anything unusual is going on and Ben is young enough that in another year he probably won’t remember any of this. Being away from them is going to be horrible though, but they will come and see me as much as possible. 

So, not the usual jolly news that you might expect to read on my blog, but this blog has always been about my life as well as about my jewellery, and I can't completely separate the two. I will be back soon, but in the meantime, prayers and positive thoughts for me and my family would be very much appreciated.

I will be back soon!

Gorgeous

The last month has gone so quickly! Partly because of something that's been going on that I'll tell you about in a separate post in a little while, but obviously also because time does seem to go quickly when you have a new baby to care for!

Jamie is absolutely gorgeous! Ben is still besotted with him, especially when he sees someone he hasn't introduced Jamie to yet. He is so gentle with him. Jamie has just started smiling, although as you can see from this photo, yawning is a common occurance!

I have knitted a couple of things for him already, the vest top and booties he's wearing here and another vest top as well. Small projects are good at the moment!