April Calendar Page & Life

Hi and welcome to my blog (or welcome back if you’ve visited before).

It’s the start of a new month and time for another calendar page to be decorated, so …

Jump to the “Crafting” section of this blog post to see that if you don’t want to read the next bit through.  The photos of the calendar are right near the end.

Life

I’d like to say that March has been better for me, health wise, than February was – but no!

Unfortunately, with just one dose left of the oral antibiotics I was on after coming out of hospital, in the space of a couple of hours my temperature spiked to higher than it had been the previous time, I could barely move, was wretching, vometing and not totally with it.  So Mam had to call for an ambulance for me again and back to hospital I went.

They were thinking septicemia, but it hadn’t got quite that far thank heavens.  I do remember sitting in a wheelchair in a side ward of A&E and seeing two drips going into my arm – from what was said afterwords I think it was paracetamol in one and fluids in the other, but I’m not sure.  Couldn’t get blod so easily this time, I do remember that.  After sitting most of the night, until 9am, in a wheelchair in A&E I was moved to a recliner chair in a day ward in the CDU – but the recliner didn’t work – which meant I was sitting upright from when I was collected from home in an ambulance around midnight to 5pm – when they got me a bed in the stroke ward.  I was not so good when they finaly got me into bed – a whole night with no sleep, and that length of time sitting in a chair without having my damaged and infected leg elevated (which is what I’m suppose to do for a good portion of the day even without an infection in it) meant my spine and hip were in agony and my leg was very swolen and very red.

I did sleep that night, but it was a very disturbed and intermittent sleep according to my fitbit – which doesn’t surprise me.

It took them a couple more days to organise for an ART (Acute Response Team) nurse to come out to my home on a daily basis to give me an intravenous antibiotic drip.  Between the 3 days in hospital followed by nurse visits at home I was on having an intravenous antibiotic drip for 14 days.  Then the doctor decided to change it to oral antibiotics again – which worries me slightly as I was prescribed the second type I had way back in February that didn’t clear the infection back then, and I know I’m still not right.  Been on them for a week now, and I have spoken to a Nurse Practitioner at the doctors surgery who said that one of the nurses would be out to take another sample of blood to see whether I’m showing signs of improvement or getting worse since a sample was taken a week Monday – it is Wednesday night as I’m begining to wirte this and no sign of anybody to take blood yet. And Mam isn’t well either and is on antibiotics and the Nurse Practitioner said that she’d have a blood test to see whether her infection is showing signs of clearing as well.

So I’m praying very hard at the moment that Mam’s chest infection and my leg infection clear up with the latest antibiotics, and that neither of us get the dreaded COVID-19.

Other than our carers and nurses nobody has been into our house for over a fortnight as the doctor told us, when he was out to see Mam just after I got out of hospital, that with our bad immune systems and ongoing health issues we had to isolate ourselves in our house.  I did tell him that complete isolation was impossible as the ART nurses were comming in at that time as well as neither Mam nor I being in any fit state to manage without our carers, which he realised was something that had to continue.

But we’ve had to stop everybody else coming into the house – no immediate family, including the two nephews that seemed to spend half their time here prior to the lockdown going online doing homework, and video editing and playing on the computers; no cleaner; no wider family or friends.  And of course – no leaving the property for us, which isn’t that big a deal as Mam is mostly bedbound and doesn’t go out, and with my leg infection on top of my usuals I haven’t been out a whole lot (other than to drive a nephew home once and twice to the hospital in an ambulance) this year.

So that’s been my month.

How has March been for all of you who are reading this blog? Worrying no doubt.  Pretty much everywhere in the world is settling in for a stay indoors unless they are key workers as far as I can tell.  I hope that you are all keeping well, and keeping occupied.

If you are already a crafter I bet that you will have a good stash of crafting consumables already, so you will have at least one hobby to keep you occupied, if you can do anything with the rest of your family around and under your feet.  Unless you are home alone of course.  If you are reading this then you obviously have an online connection, which I think will be the saving grace for many who find themselves stressed by the current situation.  Keeping connected with the world outside and family will be very important for keeping sane I think.

It goes without saying that those in the medical proffesion and those that support their work in hospitals and the community are working in difficult and dangerous times.  I find it shocking that there are medical staff dieing because they are contracting this virus when doing their day to day jobs, because proper procesures and adiquate protective equipment are not in place.  They all deserve a medal, including a postumous medal for those who have passed.

But I also think of everybody else who has to keep working.  Those who can’t just stop – farmers who keep the milk flowing, the eggs in our baskets, the fruit in our fruit bowls, the veg on our plates, etc., but also all those involved in the chain in getting those items from the farms to the packers, to the stores, and for us (so far as I’d pre-booked a couple of Tesco Delivery slots) getting them as far as the doorstep.

I’m actually rather annoyed to read that some people, who are admittedly following goverment guidelines to have one form of exercise outside and walk their pets, are using public footpaths that go through farms – I know that there’s a right of way on most of these footpaths, but that does mean on the footpath – not leaving dogs go loose and create havock in farmers fields where there be ewes lambing, or any other farm animal.  You may know that your dog would come back if you call it – but to a sheep, especially one who’s been subject to sheep worrying by a dog before, a dog in their field is a predator that is to be feared and causes stress and often a stampeed – not good if animals are just about to give birth.  Worse still if the dog isn’t quite as obedient as the owner thinks, and seeing running animals gives chase.  Farm animals collapse and some die this way.  And dogs can get shot this way as well.  I don’t think any farmer likes to have to take this extream measure, but if they are looseing sheep, either because of a direct attach, or because sheep are collapsing and dieying after being chased then the law does allow that a farmer ‘may shoot a dog which is attacking or chasing farm animals without being liable to compensate the dog’s owner’.

There are other reasons that I’m not too keen on the idea of people wondering around the countryside at this present time – one person doesn’t know how long ago another person has wondered through the same place, touching gates, styles, etc., on their way through, and the way I understand it, COVID-19 stays alive on hard surfaces, such as metal gates, for quite a while after contact transfers it there, so in all honesty, the next person through, could catch the dreaded virus.  With some of these paths going through farm yards, or close to them, the next person through could be the farmer who owns the farm, or any of his or her family, and if all who work the farm goes down with the virus who’s going to look after the stock then, who’s going to milk the cows, tend the sheep, etc. Get the food from the farm to the supermarket or local shop.  Not the person who thought a nice walk in the country would be a good idea and spread the virus I bet.

Crafting

I have done very little crafting this month but have tried to do a little.  Having a canula in my arm inside the elbow meant not bending the arm a lot, and I had to have it taken out and another put in the other arm before the end of the fortnight, so most crafting was impossible.  I did manage to, one handedly, write up a few blog posts about crafting I’d done previously, such as orders for cards that I couldn’t put up pictures of until they were handed over in any case, but those took some time to do as I find it very frustrating to work one handedly on a keyboard when I’m a touch typist.  But once I could use both arms again I did start doing a few bits, including planning the April page for my mother’s calendar.

If you haven’t seen the previous month’s pages you can see what I put on the January page – here. February page – Here! and March page – Here!

What I Did

You can see what I put on the February page – Here! if you want to find out what I did. And if you haven’t already seen it, you can see what I put on the January page – here.

My mother wanted something different this month, so rather than go searching far and wide through my stash I decided to use what was out and what was closest to hand.  As I’ve not long finished my Inky-Wizz and putting a lot of my inks in it, I still had that out on the kitchen table, so my first thing to use was my ink pads.  I also still had a sheet of stamping cardstock out as I’d used some to make the labels on the side of my ink pads.  I’d started sorting out a couple of my crafting totes and so had one tote with lots of stencils in and a drawer with makeup brushes.

So basically, what I did was dip a bit randomly into my tote of stencils and picked out an assortment.  I got raindrops, trees, sun, inkspots, aftrican outline and animals, spots.  So off I went to create a picture using something from all those random stencils and inks, using makeup brushes to apply to white cardstock to build up a picture.

And before you start getting critical – I am not an artist, it isn’t the best creation every made, but it has created something that’s different from the die-cut image I put together for the March page.

I then finished off by drawing around the page with an alcohol marker to frame it a little before sticking it to the April page on the calendar and adding the title “Mis Ebrill” which is Welsh for April.

What I Used

• Papermill Direct – 2020 Create-a-Calendar
• 1 Sheet 120gsm good quality paper – for printing out month title
• 1 sheet Stamping Cardstock
• Assortment of Stencils – inc. Artisan Design UK “Raindrop” stencil, sun, tree, giraffes, spots, inkspots.
• Assortment of Dreamies Dinky Inkies
• Makeup Brushes
• Purple Alcohol Marker
• Fingerlift Tape

The Finished Page

Mam is quite happy with what I managed to put together using ink, brushes and a random selection of stencils.  This is what it looks like.

The calendar as it looks hung up on my mother’s wall.

A closer look.

Just the A4 sheet I inked and used stencils to create.

Closeup of one area.

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I had been working on several cards over the period I wasn’t so good prior to getting rushed to hospital, I need to finish off the blog posts on them when I’m feeling a bit stronger, so keep an eye out for those – they include some more fancy ones that were made on for an order.

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• You can see my Gwyneth George area on Facebook by clicking – here.
• Crefftau MAES MIERI Crafts Facebook Page – here.
  Please “Like“, “Follow“, and even “Share” if you think any of your friends might be interested.
• Crefftau Maes Mieri Crafts YouTube Chanel – here.
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• You can see the cards I’ve made using design sheets from CUP in my “Crafter Showcase Area” on Craftsuprint.com – here
  (Just scroll down past the top boxes to see the cards.)

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Thank you for reading this blog post – I hope you like what you’ve seen and read.
And thank you to everybody who’s left a comment on my previous blog posts – I really do appreciate you taking the time.

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