Extreme Knitting Redhead: Cute cards

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Cute cards

I had two Christmas cards that made me smile:

This stripey cartoon sheep looking like a mint humbug.

This sweet little knitted reindeer.

This is published by Mint Publishing where I found that the reindeer was knitted by the girls from the Harborough Ladies knitting circle who seem to have produced a whole range of knitted characters for all sorts of cards.

What fun and how very enterprising of them!

Now we're into the New Year my training has started to take over. No more alcohol until after the Brighton marathon in April (crikey!) and my training schedule is starting to look pretty darned serious (gulp!). Last weekend I ran 6 miles on Saturday and 12 miles on Sunday and this weekend will be 7 and 14 miles respectively.

I'm a good way into the front of Two and I like how it's turning out so far.

1 comment:

Shan said...: Mm, humbugs! I love 'em.

Also quite love that knitted reindeer, and agree it's very enterprising.

No alcohol until April?! Crikey is right!; January 13, 2011 at 11:26:00 PM PST

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Mum's Story

In 1997 my mother, then aged 81, had a series of minor strokes. Shortly after that we started to notice behavioural changes notably memory loss and confusion over everyday items. We thought it was just old age finally catching up with her. Then she started wandering and had violent mood swings. Although she already lived with us it became obvious that she couldn't be left alone for long and so I left my job to care for her. The next few years saw a gradual decline into the blackness that is 'vascular dementia'. My normally placid mum became violent and aggressive. She had psychotic incidents where she would see imaginary people (children hiding in her wardrobe, Russians sitting on the stairs, women stealing her clothes) and she would shout at them and sometimes throw things too. She was so convincing that we used to go and check that there wasn't anyone there! When my sister died mum did not know who Judy was or that she was her daughter. There came a point when I suddenly realised she no longer knew that I was her daughter and this was a terrible time for me. In the last 2 years that she lived with us, life for us all became almost unbearable as she needed 24 hour care - she couldn't be left alone at all because she would either wander off or hurt herself, she never slept for more than 30 minutes at a time during the night, she became incontinent and incapable of doing anything for herself. Finally my husband and I realised that we could no longer provide her with the care that she needed and she went to live in a special care home where the team did a splendid job caring for her in the last few months of her life. There she lived a zombified existence unaware of who she was, what she was or where she was. It was heartbreaking. She died in March 2005, the day after her 89th birthday.

Thank you for taking the time to read mum's story and I hope you'll dig deep and sponsor me using the link below to help find a way of beating this destructive disease.