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So… Yeah!

We ended up spending 2 hours at the maternity hospital this evening watching “Das Blinkenlights” while they monitored me because I thought that maybe perhaps my waters had broken a little.

No such luck… To top it off she hasn’t even engaged yet… Poot! But Jon was pleased to discover that the TVs in each of the patient bed areas had the Cartoon Network, so glad that he will enjoy his stay then when the time comes.

We came home via Baldock and the 24 hour Tesco and are now about to have some pizza.

At this rate I am now convinced that she’s going to go over dates and I’m going to go nuts due to the immobility and what not.

Not even the camera charger makes up for this :-p Although I did get alot of pieces photographed this afternoon.

Tomorrow I must deal with those dratted table runners…

The following maudlin post brought on by impending motherhood hormones….

This post is a tribute to my most avid and critical reader - critical in either sense of the word. At the moment she is at work while some of her students sit their Schol (Trinity’s Scholarship) Exams, so that she can get down to correcting them as soon as they have finished so that they are all done by this evening in case her first grand-child decides to turn up early. My parents live in Dublin, in Ireland and my mother hates flying - growing up hearing flying stories told by her father’s USAF colleagues will do that to you - so they will be taking the ferry and driving across from Holyhead. Although in this instance its my dad I feel sorry for as he will have to do the driving.

 My mum has had a huge impact on me. I can blame her for my need to have books - bookcases optional - in pretty much every room of my house. Thankfully my husband is an avid reader as well. Her music tastes have rubbed of on me, but then again my father is so amazingly tone-deaf there was no one else who was going to influence that. And she is the reason why I am so addicted to crafts.

Besides doing embroidery my mother quilts like I bead. Its compulsive, she buys fabric like I buy beads. I think there are plenty of crack dealers who chould realise that its probably much safer and profitable to switch to supplying sewing and beading supplies to middle-aged women.

I grew up in a house that had a sign in the kitchen that said:

She who dies with the most fabric wins. 

I think my mother is out near the head of the pack, if not leading it. I’m getting there with the beads -my husband would probably say that I won a long time ago.

Also for someone who has now lived in Ireland for longer than she did in the US and wouldn’t go back for anything, she seems to be currently doing her best to revive the flagging economy. Every evening when I chat to her on the phone, about what the baby’s been up to, whether I’ve blogged, what beady/crochet/knitting I’ve done she is generally online at the same time looking at or ordering fabric! And she hand sews everything!

My old bedroom which was refurbished just before I left home - they knocked the two back bedrooms together and put in  custom storage, is now a treasure trove of fabric and craft books ranging from embroidering miniature soft furnishings to Russian embroidery, Kaffe Fasset Needlework books and home and craft books from the 30’s and 40’s. (She also helps with an annual second hand book sale). I wonder if she was pleased a bit when I left home(finally at the age of 22, I lived at home though uni) because it gave her more room for books and fabric But she does admit to missing the fun of a new parcel of beads arriving and taking over the dining-room table.

So here’s to my mum, and I hope that Amelia will turn up soon so I can see her all the sooner.

After yesterday and my ante-natal funk brought on by being immobile and generally achy I did actually manage to sit down and finish off the bedroom curtains. Hurrah!

Jon came home not long after I’d finished - he actually managed to get out of the office on time and not be thwarted by DLRs, Tubes, or Trains (oh my!) and was in the house just after 6:30. We got the old curtains down and popped the new ones up and tried them out…

And the black out lining does what you are led to believe. Jon exclaimed and I was reminded of being deep in a cave which we had visited a number of years ago outside Killkenny. They take you right into the back of it and turn the lights out. The only thing is with this cave, your eyes *never* get accustomed to the darkness.

Jon was also particularly pleased because the street lamp across the road was no longer able to get a bit of light in at the side that always hit his face.

After that we had a nice tea of Lemon Sole and couscous, only marred by my attempting to choke on a single cous and a cat using this as an opportunity to steal the last bit of fish from my plate. I soon recovered but being heavily pregnant and coughing is not at all fun. Amelia got her own back later by sprouting 3-4 extra limbs and using them vigoursly.

Then it got worse. After we had finished watching the second part of The Colour of Magic (which we really enjoyed - we are HUGE Pratchett fans) we decided to sit up in bed with cups of tea and I’d crochet while Jon was looking at OU certificate courses in Astronomy. Alas this scene of domestic and intellectual bliss was not meant to be as he ended up getting phoned for work (having stupidly agreed to cover someone else’s on call shift for yesterday).

Again Amelia wasn’t playing fair and didn’t give her poor father the excuse of “I can’t help you now, the people who deal with this system aren’t in again until the morning and my wife has just gone into labour…” So he had to make do with everything but the labour part.

In the end he got to bed around 2am. and was called again around 6.

This morning, we woke up to the usual cat/plastic duet which signals that two cats want their breakfast so I got up and shuffled my way downstairs - steep stairs and swollen feet and ankles are not fun and I was prepared to spend the better part of the day languishing in bed feeling sorry for myself. However the post arrived with a spare charger (whoot!) some new pliers, some more ballpins for earrings and some Etsy Felty goodness! Which I had bought from Lupin. I bought a lovely plump little hooty owl pin which will be part of my birthday present for my mother-in-law in July(I think) unless I give it to her sooner in honour of becoming a grandmother, and a tea-addict pin for my long suffering tea-addict husband. For myself I bought the first of the new pincushions and I know I will end up buying one for my mother as well.

This pincushion is fabulous. It is a nice size in *all* dimensions and this is a real bonus if you do beadwork as most beading needles are very long. The cushion is tall enough that you can push the needle in a decent way and not have them poking through the bottom. And as many of the long needles are quite bendy it is good to be able to protect them from getting kinked in transit. Also the circles all over the top seem to me to be a good way of organising all your different pins and needles…

Lupin also has a crafty blog and runs the Craft 365 Group on Flickr, which is very nifty.

I’m now going to drink my rapidly cooling cocoa and tidy embroidery floss into a box before making some more earrings. The new charger is charging so hopefully there will be some more pictures/items up this afternoon.

To further compound my get-this-kid-out-now-funk I’ve just walked to the post box around the corner from our house - it can’t be more than 100 yards, and in addition to the killer back ache I now feel like my calves are about to explode!

Not even the arrival of some beads from FireMountain Gems can make up for this…

I did manage to make a start on turning the final hems on the curtains. I’m now going to have some lunch and decide what to do next and try to not think about how I’ve turned into the StayPuft Marshmallow Woman.