Magazine Love.

I was browsing the magazines at my local bookshop last weekend, when I found this.

My little pink shoes appearing in Australian Homespun "The Pink Issue". You can follow the link to see how I made them.

They found them here at Magpie Chic and asked me to email some text and photos.

I'd used one of their patterns, with my own vintage interpretation.

Pretty exciting to see it published.





Also in the pink issue, this cute pattern for a garden angel that I might use for a certain project that I have been cooking up with Catherine from An Angel in the Garden. You'll know what I'm talking about Katie. But my lips are sealed Blog Chics!






My other lovely magazine experience this week has been receiving my magazine swap from the UK. My partner was Liz from Rose and Bird.


I sent her the October Issue of NZ House and Garden.

I hope you enjoy it Liz. I hope it has arrived! NZ post is not known for it's speedy service between here and the UK. Mine arrived within a few days of Liz posting it.

I had a quick look through it during the week then saved it till today to read from cover to cover.

Just lovely. Thanks so much Liz.

Ok, time to just get on with things.

This week has been gloriously sunny here, and it has meant I could just walk and cry at the same time, for as long as it took to start to feel in control again. I had a nice job to return to, and lovely supportive comments on my blog, and I drove our big van up to Hamilton to pile two weeks of dialysis fluid into and bring my boy home and look after him. That felt like doing something positive, and it's enough for now anyhow. Normal transmission has resumed LOL.

I'm cooking nice dinners for him, which he's enjoying, and he meets his sister in town for lunch, and talks to the cats, and it's just lovely to have him here.

Time enough to worry about what next when we get the final verdict on weather they can still use my kidney. We are not expecting it to be good news though.


I pulled this completed quilt block out of "the cupboard" and took photos of it and thought about maybe getting it quilted with a long arm quilter, or weather to hand quilt it.

And found my little pink shoes featured in this mag (got a blog post planned to tell you all about that).

And got out my vintage sheet inspired quilt pieces and admired them. Haven't actually done anything but admire them yet, but I'm going to in the weekend. I am very pleased with how they have turned out.

You know; when I read in other people's blogs that all the lovely support and encouragement and hugs and prayers that other bloggers send you in a crisis really help , I secretly wonder if it's true or if they're just being polite and gracious. Well, now I can report that it is 100 % true. It really does help. Mostly I suppose because you know everyone has been there in some form or other, maybe even started their blogs as a way of dealing with the grief, as I did.

So thank you all so much.

When life hands you lemons...

When the renal physician rings you at lunch time on Sunday, you know it is not good news.
Unfortunately the final crossmatch has come back positive, so the transplant cannot go ahead on the 13th. There is a small possibility that it is a false positive or that it is a harmless positive, but they need to go through each and every antigen to work out which one is the problem. That will take a few weeks. It defies logic that this should have happened when it was not present in February when we did the last x match, so I am still holding out a little bit of hope that it may still be ok. But it is a remote hope. If it is definitely a positive cross match for an antigen that matters, then they cannot now use my kidney. So I may take a small break from the bloggisphere for a while, depending on weather I have the constitution for making lemonade with my lemons over the next few weeks. It is a big hill to climb, as there is no plan B.
I started this blog after the transplant was cancelled in February, and it saved me from absolute despair, as I found a whole new world of kindred spirits and loveliness. But sometimes things like this happen and I just have nothing to say for a while. But I will be back when the worst has passed.

I can't decide.

An impulse purchase. A moment of indecision combined with limited time and vintage covetousness. I bought it. Now where oh where do I put it? Where will it fit amongst my other more purposeful acquisitions?


I spent some time moving it around the house in the usual manner. Back and forth, ending up where I started. Still of the opinion that I really don't have a place for it, but still loving it soooo much.

Probably the most useful place to put it, but it should be bigger to look right.

Too crowded?

Too utilitarian beside the rubbish tine and the cat's dinner!

Swamped and superfluous, but I like the photo.

Maybe...

This is a definite possibility.

I don't know. What do you think?

The Sparrows of Greenlane.

A ninety minute trip up the motorway from Hamilton in the Waikato mist, in the dark; finds us at Greenlane Hospital. We have appointments starting at 8 am, and I am nervous about getting stuck in the Auckland Motorway traffic, so we actually arrive about 7.15!

We have the final blood tests, X-rays and anaesthetic clinics before Callum's transplant takes place in two weeks. There is time for "Muffin Break" in between the twelve tubes of blood they took off each of us, and the chest X-rays.

I will be nervous about the final cross match until I hear that it is all ok in a couple of days.

There are always sparrows when you sit outside at cafes. I love them, and feed them, and generally create a health hazard for those who disapprove of bird shit on the cobblestones!

I don't care. I'm not afraid of bird shit!

Lucky my friend Connie isn't here. She's not afraid of hiking in the back blocks of Vietnam or jumping out of aeroplanes, but she is most discombobulated by sparrows.

We sit outside and enjoy the sun on our faces, and the sparrows. Callum says I have to add a disclaimer like they do on films that says something like...

To protect the innocent, some sparrows are composites! I ask what this means. Apparently, to protect the sparrow's identity, in the absence of pixel fuzzing, I must use composite images of at least eight sparrows and morph them altogether somehow. ....Right......

I can see how the weeks of recovery will be filled with such conversations, which is good, because they are silly, and it makes a change from when he will be grumpy, which will happen .

And I will be super woman and leap tall buildings in a single bound within three days of giving away my kidney. Not... I'm not allowed to entertain any such thoughts because I have the pain relief police and Sister Funnell reading me the riot act about trying to go back to work early, let alone leaping any kind of buildings. Maybe I will be excellent at shopping quietly. Riding the escalator at 277 in New Market, and wandering through the Domain to the Trelise Cooper fabric store in Parnell. With the sun on my face. But probably I'll just be grumpy too!

But I won't blog about being grumpy, promise. It'll just be about the Trelise Cooper shop and the gardens in the Domain, and a few graphic pictures from ICU which may or may not be composites LOL!

And enjoy the odd cafe, outside with the sparrows.