Crafty mum - seed bead jewellery

I first got inspired to try making seed-bead jewellery after a trip to Tanzania back in 2006.  The Masai women that we saw created and sold some incredible decorative jewellery.  As usual I wondered if I would be able to make something, and on the plane ride home started thinking about how it could work.

Photo from www.maasai-asssociation.org 

Seed beads are very inexpensive, and the materials and tools you need to make the jewellery is minimal.  Choose the colours you want, and get started.  I used my own designs and experimented with different techniques, which haven't all been successful, but I've just had a glance on Google and found loads of awesome designs and tutorials on the web if you prefer to have a go at something that's been tried and tested.

Over the last decade I've occasionally dipped into my seed-bead box to have a go at something new, or to make a personal gift for somebody, but I've got so many crafts on the go that I've not really dedicated much time to learning the art properly.

The example above is a poor one.  I made a bracelet and a necklace for my daughter and my two nieces for Christmas, and also painted a little jewel box to present them in.  Unfortunately, one of my nieces, aged 6, broke hers just minutes after she opened it.  I'd fastened it on for her, demonstrating the barrel clasp, but she immediately tugged it to take it off, assuming it was elastic, and it snapped.  I took it back from her, promising to fix it and send it back,  I finally got around to it two weeks ago, reworking it with double thread to make it a bit more robust.  It proves impossible to get four threads through some of the beads though, so the result is a little scruffier than it was before.

Have you made any seed bead creations?  Fancy sharing a link or a picture?

"You're looking great!" - the reality of life with microscopic polyangiitis

I'm told that I have a disease called microscopic polyangiitis, a type of vasculitis where the immune system starts attacking the cells lining the small blood vessels, mostly in the kidneys.  Nobody knows the cause of the disease, few people have heard of it, and (in my case anyway) it presents with few, if any, visible signs that anything is wrong.

Here's how I'm feeling at the moment:

Lots of minor symptoms which don't amount to much on their own, which many people experience and often consider normal.  Added together they make me feel horrible and poorly.  At the moment these include: lost appetite (which has led to speedy weight loss), nausea, tiredness, aches, random unexpected and very long period, muscle cramps, itchy and sore eyes and itchy skin which comes up in a sort of rash which comes and goes.  Quite a lot of this has just developed in the last few weeks after my having been fine for ages since I started treatment.

Sometimes I feel a awful and get home and do a lot of nothing.  

Mostly it's minor.  I'm still working full time teaching a class of four and five-year-old's and doing all the planning, preparation and assessment that goes with that.  I'm still out walking the dog at 6.15 every morning.  I'm still (mostly - sometimes I can't be bothered) doing the groceries, making sure the children do their homework, cooking, doing laundry and housework, going on holiday and even applying for (and getting!) a new job.  

Sometimes I feel completely normal and fine.

Mostly, how I feel can vary from hour to hour.

Here's what the doctors are telling me:

• my blood pressure is too high
• I still have blood and protein in my urine which indicates that my kidneys aren't functioning properly.
• My blood results (about which I'm still woefully clueless) are not showing enough improvement.
• I need another kidney biopsy to see what's going on and what to do next about the treatment.  (Had this earlier this week)

Here's what other people are telling me:

• "You're loads better than you were in January/February" (before diagnosis and treatment)
• "You're looking great!"
• If I'm feeling a bit rubbish then it's, "That's probably from the steroids / treatment / medication."  or "it's just because you've got a cold though, isn't it?"

Which basically leaves me...

Completely confused and unsure, unwilling to trust what I'm feeling at all.  I don't feel right, but I'm not actually poorly (not compared to others I hear about with this and other illnesses).  Maybe this has all been some horrible mistake and there's nothing wrong with me at all?  Perhaps I'm imagining some of these symptoms?

When people ask, "how are you?", I'm answering quite truthfully, "I really don't know,"

That's what life is like for me with this disease at the moment.  I have absolutely no clue whether anything I'm feeling is real, whether it is connected to the disease or completely unrelated, whether its a side-effect of the cocktail of medicines I'm taking, or even just normal.  I'm hoping that after my next clinic appointment next week I might have a bit more idea what's going on.

Just venting really.  Tired of it all.  Fed up and wish it would go away.

Crafty mum - embroidered shorts

I don't know where I got this idea from, but since I have a daughter who likes to combine her love of all things girlie with a propensity to wallow in mud and climb trees, we have to have clothes that will stand up to a certain amount of rough treatment.

 I took a pair of her brother's outgrown shorts and decided to prettify them.

It's taken me over a year, as they've languished at the bottom of my sewing basket and been occasionally worked on in between other projects, and I was dreading her trying them on in case after all that effort they no longer fit her.  

Here they are... some proper tough shorts for adventures, with pretty butterflies and flowers embroidered all over them.  I've now been commissioned by son to sew some bits and pieces on to his clothes too.

I know that you can buy clothes, both pretty and tough, for next to nothing at Primark or the supermarket, so it really doesn't matter if they get torn halfway up a tree, but I like to do things differently, and if that means spending hours embroidering shorts that will only be worn for a few months, then that's what I'll do! ... in any case, I have plans to cut out the embroidered bits and incorporate them into a cushion once they're outgrown, so it won't be thrown out.

What crafty projects have you been working on lately?  Fancy some embroidery?