When life gives you lemons................

I'm feeling rather fed up with life at the moment, it's one of those periods where just about everything seems to be going wrong  :0(

I received a phone call on Friday evening that absolutely knocked me sideways and has really left me reeling. As you probably know from my previous posts I've been really really exited about my new community project and accompanying market stall, in fact the last 3 months of my life have revolved around researching it planning it, choosing the best suppliers etc and then with one phone call to tell me there had been a mistake, the town hall clerk shouldn't have told me I had a stall, it was down to the market committee to decide and they'd decided someone else could have the stall, everything came crashing down. All my well laid plans now lie in tatters and the dream of starting my own little local business gone. 18 months of hard saved savings, spent on stock that is no good to me now. Completely derailed is an understatement :0( 

The saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade and after a weekend of despair (what am I supposed to do with £800 of stock tailored for a little town market stall) I have picked myself up, dusted myself off and.......................... Shelved everything, for now.   After the health problems I've had the past few weeks, some of which I can say was probably caused by the stress of trying to get a business started, I have decided to be kind to myself and give it all a rest for a bit and go back to what I know and love and what makes me happy, crochet, sewing, crochet, sewing! And then when I've made enough lovely things, I'll run a few little craft fairs in the summer for me and my fellow crafters to sell our wares.

I've decided to forget about the town hall, forget about the committee that has destroyed my all plans, forget about the market and for now forget about the craft group and instead use those lemons to make medicinal lemonade and get myself back up on my feet and firing on all four cylinders. I truly believe everything happens for a reason, at this moment in time, that reason is unclear as yet, but in time I know it will reveal itself when the time is right.

What a disaster!

Note to self: Do not ignore a headache

I wish I'd taken my own advice as I very nearly caused myself a major problem. If you remember back along I was complaining of a pain in my neck and shoulder on the left hand side that was really painful. I thought it was just a pulled muscle or I'd slept funny, then I kept suffering with the worlds worst headaches and was taking to bed early every evening as nothing was helping to ease the pain, then my left arm kept going numb and tingly, yet I still ignored it. Well on Wednesday after a fabulous walk along the beach with Jasper dog I experienced excruciating stabbing pains in my head, started being sick and was terrified by what seemed like a shower of glittery iron filings slid down the side of my eyes. I don't remember driving home but headed straight for the doctors surgery who immediately sent me to the emergency admissions unit where they performed a lumbar puncture and brain scan and discovered the source of my pain. 

(How about this for a bruise! This is where they did the lumbar puncture, it got worse and went through a beautiful range of rainbow colours but now is starting to fade.)

And what a good job they did, I have been suffering with chronic migraine which contributed to intracranial hypertension for several weeks and had it been left, long term could have seriously damaged my eyesight. Now who feels like an idiot! Why oh why did I leave it so long, but then again, who dashes to casualty with just a headache? I guess I just thought it was maybe a stress type tension headache as my eldest is waiting for heart surgery for the third time on his mitral valve, and my youngest is waiting on an appointment at Great Ormond Street for his genetic anomaly, and both of these have been playing on my mind somewhat.

So after 5 days of morphine, anti-sickness drips, rehydration fluids and bed rest they have finally discharged me home and I am trying to take it easy. What a palava, and next time I will take my health far more seriously!

To be fair, I did feel very rough and I must have been bad as although my husband brought my crochet in for me, I just couldn't concentrate on it and completely lost all interest in it. Wow, serious alarm bells ringing when I don't want to crochet!

Since being home I've picked up a project that I started before I got ill and have been slowly plodding along with it, but to be really honest I'm a bit fed up with it, I think it's more me than the pattern, I'm sure if I felt 100% I'd be brimming with my usual enthusiasm for it. When I saw this beautiful bear I just had to make one.

Isn't she beautiful! She's Lollo the African flower bear by Heid Bears.  She has a lovely blog which is really worth a peruse but beware it will make you want to make everything!

So far I have done my body

And my head

She's still waiting for her eyes, but I can't drive due to my stupid head at the moment so I'll have to get them later, and my little man insisted I use a black bear nose as it looked like Jasper dog's!

And I've just started on her left foot

I bought a big batch of unbranded bamboo yarn for my stall, but when it arrived I realised I hadn't read the details properly and what I thought was DK was actually 4 ply. I panicked a bit, thinking people wouldn't want to buy 4 ply so I decided to make Lollo out of it to show my customers how lovely it is when worked up. It is soooooooo soft and smooth and such a joy to work with, it's 70% bamboo and 30% pure cotton and just beautiful. As it's un branded by the manufacturer and the care label is completely in Chinese have had to put my own labels on it. I'm working it on a 3mm clover amour hook. The pattern calls for lots of different little crochet hooks which I didn't have and in my haste just wanted to get going so decided to do it all on a 3 and its coming out OK, I'm sure the designer would want to shoot me though!

If you would like to make a Lollo you can purchase the pattern very reasonably on ravelry:

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lollo-the-african-flower-bear

And the blog can be found here:

http://heidibearscreative.blogspot.co.uk

Enjoy! Xx