Not posted in ages.....so this will probably be a mammoth one!

I truly can't believe that it's August the 1st already! Where is time going please?! And I haven't blogged in ages!

Been busy here with lots of little things......my grandmother has been in and out of hospital unfortunately over the past few weeks; she's gone so very frail in every way possible since my grandad passed away. I'd only taken her as a day patient for yet another set of investigations this week following her last ward discharge a fortnight or so ago, but she was admitted again last night as an emergency. I really hope they get to the bottom of whats wrong and try to make her more comfortable this time :( It's heartbreaking and very hard to see someone you love so dearly appear almost, pardon the cliche, a shadow of their former self. It was actually a year to the day last week that my gramps passed away (I can't help but wonder if that has caught up with my gran)....my sister and I have are waiting for a nice clear evening so we can mark the occasion and remember him in a special way......damn the great British weather.

Anyway...*sigh* I guess sometimes you just have to get things of your chest and I find it so hard to talk about emotional things like that.......normal blogging will resume in the next paragraph!

Arrrgh we had a nightmare 24 hours last week when one of the kitties escaped! Tootsie - the she/he cat pictured here (we always knew he'd be trouble from the very first journey bringing him home when he continuously tried to escape from the carrier box!) had discovered his jumping legs, and the fact that he can now jump onto the kitchen worktops under the kitchen window......

We decided to nip out for a couple of things late on the Friday evening, and when we returned Dexter was crying and acting weird when we realised that Tootsie was absolutely nowhere to be seen. We checked their usual hiding places and behind all closed doors, before drawing the conclusion that he must have squeezed out of the kitchen window which was open a tiny crack as the tumble dryer had been on. We'd been out of the house for less than half hour.

We immediately went out and trawled our close and the surrounding roads calling for him, but to no avail. I came back and bawled my eyes out, feeling totally irresponsible like the worlds worst cat mamma, given poor Treacle never came home when she went missing a few weeks ago :(

We repeated the search in the morning, whilst my sister contacted the local radio station and community farm, and Gems kindly contacted the RSPCA. I was beside myself - the kittens are too young to have been let out yet so he would not have any bearings in the unexplored world outside.

The Saturday night, we went out for my sisters birthday meal as arranged....leaving poor little Dexter all alone at home :( When we came back, we parked in the residents parking across the street as usual, crossed the cobbles to our house, when I thought I heard a distant little squeak.....Mr T heard it too and turned to me - we were unsure if it was a cat or a seagull but followed the direction anyway!

As we got nearer it was clear it was a cat, so we started calling Tootsie's name...although I was a bit wary of getting my hopes up as I thought 24 hours in the big wide world would be too much for a little kitten to stay local/find his way home....we tracked the noise to a bramble bush at the top of our street, and using the light of his phone to peer inside Mr T happily exclaimed that it was indeed our naughty little kitty!!! With coaxing and a bit of bramble pulling, he managed to reach him and pull him out for a big cuddle! I was so relieved and felt so lucky - if we'd returned home a couple of minutes sooner or later we might not have heard that little squeak come from the bushes up the road! What a palaver but glad he was safe and home!

We've sort of finished our little dresser. It's all painted, we just want to replace the handles, but it's not a straightforward job as the existing ones aren't simply screwed on from behind but are sort pegged and glued to the front, which is gonna make it a bugger of a job getting them off without damaging the doors and drawers.

We've chosen (and bought!) the wallpaper for the living room, we just need to find a decorator to do it now....here's a pic I found online of it as the one I took didn't show the true colours, I'm wondering if it just doesn't photograph well cos it's not right in this either - the background is more olive than cream in real life.

We worked hard on Saturday getting our gallery wall up too (when I say "we", it was actually Mr T who did all the hard work but of course it was under my strict supervision!!), I'm really happy with how our car-booty frames all turned out! I can't show you the full thing just yet as we have one tiny little frame left to put up...but here's a sneak peak cos I like to tease!!

Speaking of sneak peaks...I've been working on next months Sarah's Cards Kit.....I can confirm it's another lush one ;).....

I've also started a ripple thanks to Gertie, and I'm finally getting the hang of it five stripes in! I originally wanted to do one for the lounge, but turns out the colours I bought had a slightly different gauges to them, and found working them into each other was tricky, coupled with the fact I kept getting it bloody wrong lol. It was about a metre and a half long too, so after opening and restarting it three times and going absolutely spare, I gave up and thought I'd try with wool all from the same range!! I still had a few hissy fits and tantrums with it mind (to the point that my niece actually said to my sister "I don't want Talie to do her knitting cos it makes her grumpy, please ask her not to do grumpy knitting when I'm there").....but after opening it and redoing it a few times I think I can see where I was going wrong now...and it's looking like this.....

We've almost finished decorating the bedroom, I've invented two new terms "girlifying" and "chintzifying"...and much to Mr T's horror I feel the room needs more of both *grin* before I can say it's done. It's a combination of cream and all shades of blue so this ripple is going to be a comforter for the bottom of the bed. I have some grandiose idea of adding a strip of the sunburst granny squares in along it too....but that may be beyond my crocheting ability so we will see......

And I just want to add a gratuitous picture of this beautiful little girl who had a sleep over last night as her house is full of workmen making adaptions to her house for her........I awoke this morning to her serenading me with a pretty little tune and the words:

"Eating cheese makes me think of my aunty, cossss I love eating cheese and I lovvvvvvvve my aunnnnntttty!!!!"

Awww bless!

She's a cracker!
Thanks for stopping by, be back soon xxxx