A mixed week

After a disastrous start last week with the hot chocolate incident, as described in my previous blog, I did think things were going to get better.  The next night saw me continuing on my cross stitch, only to find that some of the confetti stitches in Natalie's leg had been done in the wrong colour, thanks to my dyslexia reading the numbers around the wrong way.  However, after unpicking the stitches out and re-stitching I have now seen more progress and have almost finished her legs.  This progress has been even more remarkable as the kids have been off school for the week due to half-term holidays and the usual comments of being bored and don't know what to do have been in abundance......they soon found things to do when I asked if they wanted to do some housework to keep them occupied so I could continue stitching. 

This week also involved tidying out my sewing box, due to my brother staying here from London and wanting buttons sewn on two of his jackets.  Inside I found a stash of cross stitching kits that I had brought years ago with the intentions of doing.   At the minute I have one UFO (intended for Father's Day a few years ago too) on the go of 3 Labradors, however I find it difficult to work on two projects at the same time, part of me wants to get as much done of the photo but the other part of me says this one won't take as long and get out of the way.    





On the job hunting front, I did get an email from a job vacancy I had applied for to say that I was on the shortlist. Considering the amount of qualified social workers who have lost jobs over here in England due to budget cuts I did not think I would get that far.  However, the local authority emailed me later on this week with bad news....it appears the job is no longer being advertised so its back to the drawing board.  So I am now contacting various agencies and uploading my CV onto sites in the hope that I can pursue a career in social work with children and young people. 

To enhance my future career prospects I attended the first day of a two day course entitled Young people, alcohol and substance misuse, what should I do?  which was really interesting and full of information and am looking forward to attending the next part of the course on the 28th February.  This is the area I would like to specialise in with young people, ensuring they are aware of the risks they take both legally and health wise.  With the recent tragic death of Whitney Houston this course also highlighted that we shouldn't judge people taking substances as we never know their own insecurities or past events such as learnt behaviour from parents, domestic violence etc that has led them to become dependent or even down to peer pressure to fit in with others they socialise with.

Hopefully the more courses I can attend, both in my fostering and Newly Qualified Social Worker perspective will reap the benefits in the long run.    The downside will be less time on my cross stitch.  Time to relearn those time management skills we were lectured on at uni so I can achieve both .

Aargh....

Today any plans I had to continue with my cross stitch has gone totally out of the window.  For the past two weeks Steve and I have been decorating our dining room, and whilst he is quite good at wallpapering, we have learnt how to laminate a wood  floor.   Today we decided to try our hand at hanging a new door (with no carpentry skills between the pair of us, and me saying it looked easy to do).  Since we moved into this house almost 12 years ago the dining room door never shut properly or had a door handle.  After 6 hours of cutting the door down to size, trying to work out what way the hinges have to go on the door and putting the door onto the door frame, we have a new door with a proper door handle on it.  Which we thought was not bad for our first attempt.  After that my plans were to get dinner done and then sit down and then start stitching some more......However, plans never go how you want them.   Whilst carrying the empty cups through into the kitchen from the dining room en route to getting dinner ready the cup with the cold remains of my hot chocolate slipped out of my hand and emptied all over the kitchen.  You would not believe the mess.......hot chocolate on the floor, the walls and over the cupboards and worktops......half an hour later and......looking up to the ceiling hot chocolate had even splattered up there.  So cross stitch has been abandoned for tonight, instead I have the cleanest kitchen in town, every cupboard door has been washed, the walls and the ceiling.  Biggest surprise was whilst the cup landed on a stone floor its survived to be used on another day.  However, lessons have been learnt, never try to carry more than is possible, never have kids coming into the house  asking why is the kitchen in a mess,  why did I decide to splatter everything in sight with hot chocolate and why is dinner not ready and what is for dinner!!!!  Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and I will be able to sit down and continue cross stitching.

First Post

Welcome to my very first post.  After a four year absence completing my access course and social work degree I have finally returned to the world of cross-stitch.  However, still at the moment, the times I want to settle down and stitch I have either my two children (15 & 11) or two of the young people my husband and I foster (17 & 16) asking us to be permanent taxi drivers, cooks, cleaners etc.  As part of this first post I (hopefully) have uploaded photos of some of the past cross-stitch I have done and managed to keep within the household.  Currently I am completing a cross stitch of a photo I had taken when my two step-children were teenagers (now 25 & 26) and two children were 3 months old and 3 (now 11 & 15).  Hopefully (kids providing) I will be able to enter up a weekly log and show progress on my favourite and most relaxing past-time.  I hope that this log is found interesting, along with any ancedotes on trying to apply for my first social work role and why it is often said 'never work with children'.


I started this for my youngest daughter when she was 6 and starting ballet, I finally finished this in time for her this Christmas........after she stopped attending.  One good thing was she loves it.




Everybody loves a bit of pooh bear



This was Cassie my English Springer Spaniel, her pedigree name was Spring Fun....and she was.

My other love is horses, if I had the money I would have my own horse



Memories have now come back to me, as a new parent (single at the time) and snatching any available time when Ben was asleep to stitch



My current project, as you can see a slow process, I suppose its due to me choosing the 20" x 16" option instead of the smaller 10" x 8"