Carnival: Forty years not out!

Leeds Carnival (official title Leeds West Indian Carnival) celebrated its fortieth birthday on Monday, attracting crowds of over 100,000 people to my local park. It started in 1967 as a local neighbourhood event and since then has grown and grown, as has the influence of Leeds's substantial African-Caribbean community. Notting Hill is better known and larger, but unlike Notting Hill, Leeds Carnival has been a street festival from the very beginning. This year Britain celebrates two hundred years since the kidnapping and abduction of African men women and children to a life of slavery in the West Indies and Britain was made illegal; the abolition of the slave trade formed the major theme of this year's Carnival.

Planning for Carnival begins a year ahead with a great deal of competition between the various troupes and designers, and a great deal of secrecy surrounding the designs. Below is the winning Carnival Queen, a truly amazing costume.



Though there were a whole host of other amazing costumes:


The troupes are formed of both adults and children, the children's troupes being one of the most enjoyable aspects of the events: I particularly liked the blue birds:


The colour and spectacle of the event in local streets is truly amazing:

And age is no barrier to participation:

It can be an exhausting event, though this year not as hot as it often is: masqueraders come prepared with fresh drinks (at one time, in the days when the steel bands had to be pulled along by teams of strong men it must have been even more exhausting)

From a textile point of view, many of the costumes are truly works of art: I loved the detail of the embroidery in this one.
But my overall favourite was this one: first you notice the sheer beauty of it and then the chains:

Then you get the view from behind - the slave ship and the dead faces in the water:

Yes, Carnival is fun, and joyful, full of music and dance and laughter. But it is also serious fun: the celebration of a culture (it has been an important part of validating African Caribbean culture in Leeds, established at a time when people faced even greater racism than they do today even though many had lived in Leeds since the mid-forties) and a shared history. For me it is not only inspirational but awe-inspiring.

What I've been doing - or not!

Apologies to those who've been logging in for not having any updates for such a long time - I can't believe it's been two months since my last post!

Firstly, one of the things I did do was manage some more dyeing:

This is some stitched and gathered (nui) silk habotai - Django didn't get dyed but he wanted in on the act.

Silk chiffon knotted and dyed.

And a length of muslin (cheesecloth for US readers) which already had the white leaves printed on:

As far as quilting goes I've been working on my journal quilt and my offering for the Quiltart "Symbols of our Culture" challenge, neither of which I can post pictures of until the date when they're made public. The journal quilt in particular I found difficult to get started on - possibly a bit scared of what I'd done in committing to it - Houston seems like such a ginormous and important event, especially from this side of the pond, and I was convinced I wouldn't produce anything good enough, so I got myself in a right tangle. Eventually it got started and actually became enjoyable, but that's all I'm saying for the moment... Both are in the process of being finished, so I am at least confident of meeting the deadline.

The studio makeover continues: I've been determined to get it right and keep rejigging and adapting, not to mention some heavy and exhausting work like lugging furniture around (in some cases up two flights of stairs) not to mention reassembling the kitchen units I bought through e-bay which will give me loads of storage.

My work area is just as I want it but at present is covered in stuff:

Ok so it doesn't look very user-friendly at the moment - but there's plenty of sewing surface, places for threads, needles, etc, and the grid on the right is where I'm going to hang all my pairs of scissors: I have numerous pairs of scissors because I keep losing them, give up trying to find them and eventually end up buying more. There's a cutting surface at the right height (spent hours adjusting the legs on the kitchen units - the air turned blue and I probably shocked the builders working on the roof next door the other side of the open skylight); and a pressing surface (the actual pressing board still has to be constructed so for the moment I'm improvising) also of the right height, and a comfortable chair (which is very heavy so I'm waiting for a neighbour to lug it up the stairs for me).

I cannot believe how much stuff I've accumulated: I've unpacked some but still have (at the last count) 44 boxes to unpack:

I'm beginning to wonder if I have a problem here. Is there a cure? Do I need help? Some of it I can give away, but that still leaves an awful lot. Good job I've built in plenty of storage. And there's still stuff in the spare room I'm not looking at yet. Not to mention the books...

However the dyed fabric (loads more still to unpack) is beginning to look nice on its wraparound shelves:

The room is going to be a joy to work in but I shall have to sort it in stages I think: I intend to get as many boxes as possible unpacked by the weekend and clear the decks, then back to finishing off my two quilts before I do more. I think it might be a work in progress for a while yet. What I've really enjoyed is finding lots of nice bits of fabric I'd forgotten about.

Of course the gap in my blogging hasn't all been down to doing lots - some of it has been about sheer idleness, and some the result of feeling under the weather (what a strange expression - wonder where it came from?) much of the time, generally feeling down and extremely tired, falling asleep all the time and so on. This now, I'm pleased to say, seems to be on the wane.

Another reason is that one of my other cats has been ill:

Nibs arrived as a stray two years ago: attempts to find his owner were unsuccessful, and though there were difficulties for a while he eventually fitted in with the rest of the tribe. He's an older cat but of course I don't know how old he actually is - the vet thinks about twelve but he may be older. Soon after his arrival he was diagnosed as hyperthyroid and since then has been treated with a daily tablet. However his thryoid levels have gone up recently without him exhibiting any noticeable symptoms.

One evening he woke up and went to jump off the sofa and stopped - he wanted to jump off but couldn't bring himself to do so. To check whether he'd hurt a paw I pur him on the floor and he started walking around in a very disorientated way. Then I noticed his eyes were all pupil and rang the emergency vet (by this time it was midnight) who reassured me about what it might be, said there was nothing he could do tonight and to keep him quiet and get him to my vet the next morning.

Once I'd made up a comfy bed for him on the bedroom floor (he normally sleeps on the bed but I was scared he'd fall off) he settled down quite comfortably, which was more than I was able to do. Four hours later he jumped onto the bed for a cuddle; I dozed a bit and was woken at six by him jumping off the bed and demanding to go downstairs to use the litter tray: it was obvious a miracle had occurred and he could see again.

To cut a long story short, it was thought he had had a minor stroke. His thyroid levels have been retested and his medication adjusted, and he is now taking two other tablets including betablockers. He had another episode a fortnight later when a blood-vessel broke in his eye, but after his tablets were adjusted again he had no further problems - fingers crossed. His eyesight is now improving though he seems to have no peripheral vision (he gets taken for a prowl round the neighbourhood twice a day - three times if he's very persuasive - which keeps me up to date on all the neighbourhood gossip). He's now also beginning to regain his confidence but I don't want to let him out on his own as he still has impaired vision. I'm planning a fence so that he can go in my tiny garden on his own with no risk of him getting out. His blood-pressure is now beginning to get back to normal. Sighs of relief all round!

a coupla nice bits of fabric

Got round to doing some dyeing this week, including these nice bits of fabric:


This one's may favourite type of fabric - silk velvet - in fact silk with a rayon pile: the rayon takes the dye beautifully. Real luxury.


This one's silk habotai - not my favourite fabric for working with as it's too fine, though lightweight iron-on vilene helps to give it enough body and fray-resistance to work with. Same technique as the first one - colurs are blue 2R, yellow 4G and a tiny amount of red 5B for the purple.

The others I did were less successful, but may still have their uses:

This one's calico (muslin for transatlantic friends) dyed with left-overs from the velvet: soda had already been added to dye the velvet and by the time I got round to this one I think the dyes had already begun to fix on the water, hence the faded look.

This is cotton poplin, but again left-over dyes produced the same faded look, and I fiddled too much so the colours merged rather than producing stripes. But still very usable.

They were all done as part of Marjie McWilliams' Shibori class at Quilt University, which I highly recommend. I haven't gone into detail about the techniques because they are Marjie's not mine - you'll have to take the class to find out. Yes I know I've dyed fabric professionally but I can still learn from other dyers, and I haven't got much experience of Shibori techniques! And anyway the class is FUN! as well as being highly informative.

And this is Django being his usual helpful self, supervising the photography!

BIXY UPDATE!!!

He seems to have acquire a number of fans over the last few weeks so here's an update on progress. Blood tests absolutely clear - YAY! - seems to have been a one-off episode. Not so good - he discovered once again where I was feeding the other cats, managed to get there, and when I found him he was muching his way along three breakfasts (in addition to his own): not surprisingly, he has gained weight. Needless to say, all moggy mealtimes in this house are now strictly supervised.

studio - before the makeover

Have been uninspired and stagnating for the last few weeks - not sure why. Anyway I decided that if I could lose a large white cat in my studio it must need sorting and signed up for Myrna Giesbrecht's Quilt University class, Studio Makeover.

The first thing we've been asked to do is send in photos of studio before sorting it out. Oh the shame of it! My studio was possibly the worst it's ever been. Partly because of the large white cat hunt which involved pulling out stuff everywhere. (BTW Bixy is now pretty well back to normal but has to have more blood tests on Friday to make sure there's no pancreatitis lurking - luckily the previous blood tests showed no sign of liver or other problems. My only worry is that he might be eating too much of his diet food, though he's much livelier and lighter than when he started the diet. The scales at the vet's will tell all on Friday). Anyway, this is what it looked like after the Bixy hunt:

Bixy himself was holed up under the bottom shelves. My sewing table was just as bad, though, and I can't blame Bixy for that:

Seeing this I can understand why I haven't been doing much sewing lately - no space left!

Had decided to cheat and tidy up before sending photographs, but by the end it looked so suspiciously tidy (for me) that I sent in both lots. Now the sewing table looks positively inviting:

And the storage area looks distinctly improved (though I'm not sure I know what's where, having simply stuffed it all in boxes - one of the things I do need to do is to work out a more user-friendly system:

I have found a home for films, Angelina fibres and so on - at least for the time being until I improve on this:

The remainder of the room is the narrow portion of an L and houses more storage plus cat-beds:

There's a cutting/design table (you can see the paint and dye) plus a stand that holds fabrics for dyeing:

The pile of white fabric in the corner is a bolt-end of fabric I bought from a Lancashire cotton-mill for a price too good to miss: trouble if it has to be taken off the roll and stuffed into a black plastic bag to fit in the coach home, there's at least a hundred metres (the person who sold it me thought it had got in the wrong bin by mistake and must have been a full bolt but let me have it for £5 anyway - no-one in my quilting-group coule believe I got it for that and just thought I'd been really spendthrift). Since getting it home I've never been able to find the beginning or end of it and have just kept chopping lengths out of the middle, though it doesn't seem to have gone down much at all. I keep promising myself I'll at least cut it into 10-metre lengths one day.

Target areas now are sorting the stash and weeding out what I'm never going to use: there are people in my quilting group who might want it, and there's some suitable for children's quilts for Project Linus, making quilts for children in hospital, hospices, refuges and so on which is a project we're involved in as a group. A friend has already offered to take my Laura Ashleys off my hands (though I feel a bit guilty about this as her house is even more cluttered than mine! - sorry Elaine but you know it's true). I also want to display my stash most of which is left over from when I had my fabric-dyeing business, and have some inspirational stuff like photographs around as well as finding space to shelve the books (I have to sort through those too).

I expect great things from Myrna's class and judging by the others of hers I've taken I don't think I'll be disappointed. Watch this space!

Bixy update

Have been asked what's happening with Bixy, so here goes:

He came home on Sunday very traumatised and hid for much of the day (I eventually found out where and as a result of the search have a more orderly studio); eating Ok from the syringe but sick Sunday evening (bringing up food and water); worried about him dehydrating (especially as he seemed to be bringing up more water than I'd given him) and brought forward Monday's vet appointment, so instead of Neil, the vet he's been seeing, he saw the equally good and extremely gentle Kate - he even let her shave his neck and take a blood sample for testing with scarcely a murmur; luckily no problems with dehydration; arrived home very affectionate with everybody and a changed cat, but after a day of eating tiny amounts of babyfood from a syringe he was violently sick at night; eventually left him looking very relaxed back in his hidey-hole. I realised the water-level in his dish had gone down so he had been drinking so I refilled it and eventually got to bed well after midnight (am somewhat sleep-deprived)

Next morning he wakes me at 5.30 using the litter-tray on the attic landing, then heads downstairs and guzzles quite a lot of water. I try him with some more babyfood (he's obviously feeling better and has had no problems keeping the water down ) then feed the other cats - no work today so I hope to fit in a couple of hours sleep before my vet appointment. Bixy is obviously feeling better - he makes a beeline for the Whiskas and grabs a few mouthfuls before I take it off him (he's supposed to be eating only low-fat foods) and give him a bit more babyfood to take care of the hunger-pangs. Resigned, he slips off back to his cave in the studio, where he settles down and looks happy.

When I wake again he has been sick, mainly water but (don't read any further if you're eating) also some gritty bits) so I don't feed him again but clean him up so he's presentable for the vet and off we go. Neil's pleased his temperature has stayed down, says he can have Whiskas but only small amounts of fishy/chicken flavours.

Feed him again when the anti-nausea shot has had time to get going. he goes to his cave to recover but comes down again later for more water and has a bit of Whiskas (though he's made it clear he will only eat from a full plate). After a day of doing various bits of chores and feeding Bixy I go up to the studio to discover he has been sick again but (WARNING - DO NOT EAT WHILE READING THIS) also that it is more plentiul than the food he ate and somewhat gritty: conduct brief forensic examination involving soaking kibbles in water and then crushing and realise he had managed to get at the other cats' supplies of kibbles - NOT what he should be eating at all and he's obviously had a lot of them. Must be getting better - I thought they were well out of his reach.

Since then he's taken his anti-nausea tablet very nicely, had some more whiskas and has also (YAY!) decided he likes the low-fat kibbles he sould be eating so has had several small meals of these without further disaster.
He is now curled up in a nice comfy bed under my sewing table having a nice long sleep (which is what I plan to do now!)

Hopefully in the next couple of days I shall get some sewing done and be able to blog about that!

an eventful weekend with Bixy the feline delinquent

When I first got Bixy (who'd been brought in as a stray and repaired by the vet after a road traffic accident) he said to me "You'll like him - he's quite a character, this one". And so it has proved this weekend. He's been in and out of trouble in various ways.

Friday night he started vomiting up small amounts of water and managed to keep me awake most of the night in the process. By morning he seemed fine again and his temperature remained down. He had started drinking again for himself and took his food from the syringe quite nicely (for him) and settled down for the day. By the time I got home again it was a different story - there was a pool of diarrhea in the litter-tray, he'd brought up most of his food and the water he had drunk. On the other hand he was wandering round all friendly, rubbing up against things and trying to persuade me to let him go out in the garden with the other cats. No. Let's be honest, demanding to be let out and geting very cross (lots of tail-swishing and a bit of stomping) when I told him it was no go.

Thought I'd better ring the emergency vet, a very nice man with a reassuring Scots accent (why is a Scots accent so reassuring in a vet I wonder?) who thought it sounded like an emergency and told me to bring him in (to another branch of my usual vet practice). So into cage and car with Bixy who has a fine tenor voice with a range of at least three and a half octaves which he made the most of all the way there - nothing unusual there except he did sound extraordinarily healthy for a cat needing emergency treatment. The vet said his temperature was normal and he seemed pretty alert (a vet understatement for downright bolshie) but he seemed slightly dehydrated so for safety he should be kept in on a drip, probably for the rest of the weekend.
He rang later to say he settled down comfortably.

After a peaceful night in the Wyman household (myself and the other three felines were completely exhausted so it could hardly have been otherwise) I got up and settled down to wait for news. Unfortunately I also decided to get more information by googling in "pancreatitis+cat" and "hepatic lipidosis+cat" and I expect you can guess the rest. Remember those old medical books you had at home when you were a kid - the ones you opened feeling healthy but curious and ten minutes later you realised you had a whole battalion of incurable diseases? Well it was like that - I started imagining all the things that could have happened or might (he doesn't actually have lipidosis, though there is a risk).

By the time the vet rang I'd got myself into a right old state. And when he began with "We've had a few problems..." I composed myself for bad news: "He's obviously quite distraught at being in a cage and he keeps pulling the drip out... most cats are much quieter, probably because by the time they need a drip they feel really ill and he by contrast is very alert" Then on a more positive note: "He is well hydrated now and will drink water on his own. We gave him something to stop him being sick and I'll give him a dose of antibiotics shortly. We force-fed him last night and he kept his food down without any problems, and though he's had some diarrhea this morning this could be because of the antibiotics. We think, given that we aren't able to get him to keep the drip in, he'll be better off at home".

I didn't ask how soon they wanted me to come and pick him up. I didn't need to. I know Bixy well. He's the most stubborn cat I've ever had. And big and strong with it. When he doesn't want something that's that. He'd probably been yowling, loudly and continuously (even the most patient vet has been known to tell him to shut up and it is embarrassing to be in a waiting room with him) He had probably made innumerable attempts to get out of the cage, flinging himself against the door, trying to chew through the wire, upending his litter tray, dish and anything else in sight.

When I got there I could hear him before they even opened the door. He was singing like a drunken tenor on a Saturday night. They had him in his carrying-cage ready, plus all the things he'd be going home with - syringes and a plentiful supply of special catfood, with full instructions. Even the bill was ready (my credit card is much heavier than it was before). They were very apologetic and had obviously tried really hard with him: the drip had been reinserted several times but each time he had managed to chew it out, and they apologised about the bruising on both legs where they had inserted drips. The nurse had tried to clean up his rear end and had mostly managed it "but he didn't like it so in the end I had to do the best I could ... it's not too bad actually". I asked if he was still using the litter tray: apparently he scratched it all up, tray, litter bedding and everything into the corner of his cage. They told me to ring up if I was worried about anything no matter how trivial, and reassured me he would all right till I saw my own vet the next day.

So now he's lying on the bed, looking fairly comfortable. His best friend Pepper was glad to see him back and Bixy has given him a very comforting head-licking. He's had some more food and has kept it down. The diahrrea seems to have settled down for the moment. So now once again it's a case of fingers crossed...

Bixy - the good news, the bad news

Apologies for the long gap between posts. Life has got in the way soemwhat over the last couple of weeks.

Updating on Bixy - he has lost 600 grams in the last few weeks. The bad new is that this is mainly becuase he is ill, first of all going off his food then running a high temperature. My vet has diagnosed pancreatitis, which is potentially very dangerous. He is currently getting a series of shots every couple of days, which seems to be helping in that his fever is coming down, though he will still not take food or water. I have been feeding him babyfood with a syringe and giving him water in the same way: as you can imagine he doesn't enjoy this one bit, poor boy, though usually he seems to feel better afterwards. The same with the visits to the vet.

At least now I am able to think about when he gets better and not if he gets better - hopefully things will improve over the weekend.

Bixy has a problem

It's a fairly common one - I suffer from it as well - he's overweight. He went to the vet for a routine check-up and jabs last week and his weight came out at 10 kilos - he is a very large cat anyway but that's about 2-3 kilos more than he should be and it isn't funny. The worst is he risks diabetes which is serious enough in humans but even more so in cats apparently because it's more difficult to manage. He also has other problems - there are bits of him he can't reach well enough to groom effectively (don't ask!) and some of his fur is beginning to mat - though he's a short-hair his fur is very thick - though I am gradually (at some risk to life and limb - he's very firm about what he doesn't like) getting the matted fur out a bit at a time.

He's about nine years old now. He arrived from the vets as a six-month old fully-grown kitten/young adult with a broken leg. The police had found him and taken him in for euthanasia, but he was such a nice cat they decided to repair the leg instead, and pinned it. I'd lost two cats due to old age in the previous year and was left with a comparatively young tabby who was used to having other cats around and craved feline company, so the vet contacted me to see if I'd be interested and he moved in with us later that week.

From the start he was extremely characterful, not to mention musical, with a vocal range of about four octaves. It was hard work trying to stop him doing the things he wasn't supposed to do like jumping onto and off things. After a period of the usual animosity you get when a new cat is introduced to the household he and Hoagy became firm friends. Once his leg healed he became well-known and liked in the neighbourhood though he proved to have a talent for getting locked into places (on one occasion 36 hours in a neighbour's cellar - and the first thing he wanted to do once he'd eaten was go back out again).

He's also been amazing with younger cats, mothering both Django and Pepper who arrived as kittens, really impressive in the gentle way he played with them - Pepper still regards Bixy as his mum and they're usually to be found curled up together somewhere. Hoagy eventually died of cancer and spent his last evening with Bixy having his head licked...

Bixy's love of adventure subsided as he got older. This was a relief at the time but his weight-gain is an unfortunate side-effect of this, together with his liking for good food and his willingness to clear up the other cats' left-overs. It's difficult getting him to diet while there are three other cats in the house, but I'm trying to do it by feeding them all small portions (no left-overs for him to scoff) whilst sneaking the other cats extra snacks between meals (though I'm having to be inventive about this as Bixy keeps finding their secret stash and demolishing it). On the other hand he is getting a lot more exercise hunting everywhere for food!

Any ideas and tips gladly appreciated!

more angelina!

Before I start on my latest angelina project, let me say thank you for all the e-mails and blog comments wishing me a happy 60th. I intend to take all your advice about enjoying life and making the most of things very seriously and have already had a week of celebrations (unusually for an introvert like me) and a couple of days recovering and getting back to normal. Just to quote one thing I was told (I think the quotation originally came from Garfield) "Life is short - eat dessert first!" - this appealed both literally and metaphorically!

On to the more serious business of the day: latest experiments in stitching. Using angelina was set as a challenge by the Self Expressions Studio group I'm a member of (a group of us who all took Myrna Giesbrecht's class at Quilt University). The earlier pieces have already appeared on this blog. However, after the deadline a parcel containing more angelina - which I was beginning to give up hope of getting - arrived, and I couldn't not play with it could I?

I began by making a large sheet of angelina that I could cut then fuse. I began by cutting off a piece of bondaweb (wonder under in the US) and laid strands of angelina in different colours across it, blending as I went to try to get an effect like a variegated watercolour wash. I put parchment paper over the top (I had already put some under the bondaweb) and ironed just enough to begin to bond the angelina, then turned it over to iron the underside enough to melt the bondaweb film (doing it this way presented less risk of overheating the angelina), then peeled it off the backing and laid it down on more parchment paper (ordinary baking parchment from the supermarket).

I planned to make up designs just using squares and oblongs, so out with the rotary cutter ruler and mat, and I had a number of squares and oblongs in different sizes, which I arranged on a p0stcard sized "sandwich" of backing fabric, wadding and base fabric then ironed down. Then it was merely a matter of finishing off with some stitching (Madeira Metallic 40 - a thread I love to sew with, which generally behaves itself well). This is the result:

I love the way the colours change with the light.

For the second one I began by taking a single larger square which I exploded (i.e. cut into pieces) then added some small squares at either side, fused the pieces, and finished off by quilting with the same thread as before.

I still have some angelina left over, and really fancy the idea of trying it in 3D (the cats, who have a knack of always choosing the right present bought me a heat-gun for my birthday) and of making some angelina beads. I've already been asked to do a workshop for my local quilting group on using angelina so I also need to design a few small projects that are flexible enough for those who prefer to design their own to do so. I'm looking forward to it - should be fun!

Whilst I love making postcards - together with journal-sized pieces an ideal way to experiment - I think I'm going to have to attempt something larger soon!

I am sixty

I woke up this morning to discover I am sixty (though still nineteen inside my head - I still don't feel grown up). Not sure how this happened or what to do about it. Tracking back over the decades...

At ten I lived on the Isle of Wight, attended a school I loved and spent my time roaming the countryside, painting, writing poetry, reading, and either on the beach or at the swimming-pool with my best friend Elizabeth. Later that year we moved to deepest Oxfordshire - an unhappy wrench but that's another story.

At twenty I was at London University. I met my husband-to-be at a poetry reading and had ambitions to write (I was doing an English Lit degree and enjoyed student life so much I delayed going out into the real world, two years later by doing an M.Phil in Cultural History at the Warburg Institute). My twenty-first birthday party was wonderful - someone brought along John Mayall and he played for us.

Thirty came as a bit of shock - as it does to all of us. By that time I was teaching in Leeds in a so-called "tough" school, Foxwood but I really loved it. Turning thirty seemed to mean the end of my youth but as both my husband and I had vowed never to grow up if we could help it it wasn't too bad.

Forty was a different matter. Decided it was high time I stopped letting others decide for me - from now on I would live life my way. Became very active politically (in the days when there was a local Labour Party worth joining) and in the National Union of Teachers (became area President and served on several national bodies and even gained the confidence to speak at a national conference). I really felt I was a force to be reckoned with during that decade.

By fifty the workload (meetings every evening in addition to my full-time job which in itself demanded on average 65 hours a week) had taken its toll. I had been diagnosed with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and had had to retire from teaching on ill-health grounds. Fortunately by that time I had learnt to quilt and that is what kept me sane (the muscles in my hands couldn't last long enough to knit, and concentration levels were such that I couldn't read for long either but I could, with frequent rests, do hand-sewing and could think better in pictures than in words). By the time I was fifty I had already won awards at shows and been featured in magazines and had partially recovered (I still get some bad days); I was planning to set up my own business hand-dyeing fabrics - working for myself I would have long working days but I could take the regular rest periods I needed to keep going. My friends threw an amazing surprise party for me.

The last decade has had its ups and downs. The business prospered for a while but really only kept going through will-power and being subsidised by my teacher's pension and lump sum: it can be difficult to make money through craft, and at that time I wasn't exactly a genius with money (my brother had all the money brains in the family having run his own highly successful business for years). My husband died suddenly two days after my birthday in 2000 and though I kept going for a while things started crumbling around me. I also was diagnosed with cancer two years later - fortunately treatable with surgery and radiotherapy and I'm pretty sure I'm clear now. So most of this decade has been about reconstruction. Paying off business debts, taking a job to do so (I have a part-time job at a local supermarket where the people are great and keep my feet firmly on the ground and where I can walk out the door at the end of the day without having to take work home with me). I've also done an amazing amount of work on the house (though it still needs a lot of redecoration and the garden still needs work) and - most importantly - got my head together.

My focus now is to turn myself from a reasonable contemporary quilter into a quilt artist. I'm not sure if I'll get there but the journey will be fun.