52/4

Tears Of The Giraffe

by Alexander Mccall Smith

The premises of Judgement-Day Jewellers were tucked away at the end of a dusty street, alongside the Salvation Bookshop, which sold Bibles and other religious texts, and Mothobani Bookkeeping Services: Tell the Taxman to go away. It was a rather unprepossessing shop, with a sloping verandah roof supported by whitewashed brick pillars.

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Thanks to everyone who joins in with this, btw!

If you want to join in too, here's how:-

Pick up any book, go to page 52, then go to the 4th line. Give us whatever sentences cross the 4th line. i.e. you may have to go back a bit or forward bit, but the 4th line is your guide!

Either put your finding on your blog and tell us in the comments to this post, or just write the entry itself in the comments. Simples!

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Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

52/4

A little chuckle this week....

 Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

by James Finn Garner

"What Snow White didn't know was that this was really the queen in disguise and that the apple had been chemically and genetically altered so that whoever bit it would sleep forever."

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Thanks to everyone who joins in with this, btw! 

If you want to join in too, here's how:-

Pick up any book, go to page 52, then go to the 4th line. Give us whatever sentences cross the 4th line. i.e. you may have to go back a bit or forward bit, but the 4th line is your guide!

Either put your finding on your blog and tell us in the comments to this post, or just write the entry itself in the comments. Simples!

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Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

yet more cards...

I've trawled through my picture files and I THINK these are the last ones to show you!

A few Easter ones that I missed the other day:

More stitchery ones.....this first one was for my Aunty Pat's birthday. She used to have a Yorkshire terrier called Pepper, so when I spotted this design I knew I had to try it for her!

MAY have got a tad  OTT with the adhesive gems on this one. I sent a similar one to Asta for a Good Luck In Your New Home card!

I like the simplicity of this one:

I like this next one, even though it took longer than most because of all the different 'bits'. 

I love the cat looking in the window, and the blossom!

 I sent this one to Feronia, in Australia.

This was a thank you card for friends of Bob's in the USA:
They sent him stuff.
Lots of Bears/dogs/cats/people sent Bob stuff.
(And Dilly).
They get more mail than me!

here's the reverse:

An old 'Penny Black' image finally used, with puffy stuff in the middle of the flower:

OK I *think* that's it, all up to date now.

I have LOTS more toppers done but would you believe I've run out of blank cards?! (But not envelopes, strangely!) I have tried to fold A4 card that I have but it splits along the fold, so not suitable, blast!
I shall have to go shopping!
I can't remember where I got the best ones from..... Paperchase used to stock some lovely ones but the branch here doesn't any more. I'll go windowshopping online one evening! Let me know if you know of any bargains anywhere, won't you?!

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Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

a few more cards

Continuing my update on cards I've made quite recently.

I made the 'toppers' for most of these last year; the images are from 'Lily Of The Valley' I think, and came free with a magazine as uncoloured images ready to colour and cut out.

I made these cards just after Scooter was ill at the beginning of this month, when I was first staying up nights with him. That first night, it helped me focus on something else.

Luvbug took most of these with him to Ireland, where his mum bought most of them, and kept others to sell on. This greatly helps with materials, and paid for the online art course I signed up for; thanks, Mrs M!

First a few more stitched cards-

Now the LOTV ones.
I love this first one, it was one of my favourites.

I kept back this next one and sent it to my cousin, Emma, last week for her b'day:

This one is a little different but because of the many metal brads it's heavy and, as unsuitable for youngsters, I kept it back from the pile that was to be sold....

Here's the pile that went to Ireland.

Still a few more to post....
next time!

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Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

Update on cards

I've been posting photo's of cards on my Facebook page, as it is quite quick to do. 

Blogger keeps urging me to switch to the 'new interface' and even put me there once, but I switched back! I don't like the new editing thingy! But maybe this is why it is slow to upload photo's, and even crashes sometimes.

Anyway, here I am, up at 4am again (oops) with Scooter on Mouse Watch at the kitchen door (every now and then he comes over and moans at me cos apparently there's something I CAN do to produce mice I'm just NOT doing it). Thought I would try to upload a few card photo's.

I'll do a few here, then schedule some more to come up on other days.

First, here are some of my Easter cards:

 (this went to Miss Peach's mum, Karla. That's Peachy up among the stars.)

 (This went to my cousin Jacky who is almost as cat mad as me. It's a Lesley Anne Ivory decoupage. I so pleased to find out that her designs were available like this at last. This was a very deep 3D card, with about 5 layers, I think.) 

Right now I have to find what file the others are in.....




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Love, tea & cake,
Helena

Art Course progress, and sinking with stressors all around....

I signed up to an online art course last month.
It's run by Suzi-Blu, the author of this book-

The course I'm on teaches you to draw a stylized portrait, first in pencil, then building up to mixed media on wood. Click here for more info on this course.

Here is my second attempt at a basic face, using a measuring system, e.g., an inch wide for each eye, an inch in between, then a inch down the middle to the end of the nose, and so on.

There has been teaching on shading, and cross-hatching as a way of building up shadow value.
This picture was done with just a 2H pencil so that you have to build up the shadow gradually.
This is interesting to me as previously I would have used several pencils and would have used the softer, darker ones for shadow, like 2B or 3B at least. I have never been taught shading and cross-hatching this way.

In the lesson, she took the picture at this stage and stuck it into her journal to return to at a late date. I can't do that because the journal I bought, the one recommended, is too small ;) so I have glued this to a piece of wood and have started to colour it with Prismacolor pencil and acrylics.
This evening I found out all my white acrylic is dried up though, so I have stopped there.


I'll try to steer to the art shop when I am in town with mum tomorrow, where no doubt she will be noisily horrified at the price of a tube of white paint.

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Meanwhile tonight I am very low............
Mum was panicky today about the noises she is hearing. The doc said it may be tinnitus, but she says it is very loud. We don't know if it's tinnitus associated with her hearing aids/ the mini strokes she had/ stress or whether it's a return of hallucinations to do with the vascular dementia.

I found a page on the internet about tinnitus and got her to sit with me and we read it together. Then I printed it out for her. She said she felt a bit better afterwards, having talked. But I felt drained as she had been so upset and talking about losing her mind so I had to calm her down and reassure her over and over....

Then, because it was getting a bit cold outside, mum went into the garden and pulled Scooter out of his tent and carried him indoors. I told her not to do this, but she said he was cold. The disturbance and the being carried (he hates it) caused him to have a funny turn, wobbly, twitchy and 'not quite there' again, a tiny seizure or the echo of one. Any sort of stress seems to be the trigger now. I won't even hoover unless he's out of the house.

After a stress and worry-filled evening my own mood sank. I am sipping brandy to settle my head. I tried my back-up pills but they had no effect.

Tearful now, and empty, and can't believe how uninterested I am in the art course. I hope it doesn't become another thing that ends up dropped. But this empty feeling of......nothing, and then I thought, even if I succeed, what will it do but give me a pile of pictures to clutter up another bit of this house and collect dust...... suspect a lot of this is hormones ;}

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Love, tea &cake,  
Helena

Well now he's just showing off!

Scooter caught another mouse!!!!!
Here he is on the windowsill, feeling very pleased with himself-

"Ahhhhh nothing like a nice stretch in the sun with Bear...."

Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

52/4

I can't believe that we are half way through May already! 

OK here's this week's book:

Round Ireland With A Fridge

by Tony Hawks

 Continuing rain the next day meant a return for completion of the sketches, and the farmer was even more perplexed by the women's decision to put in another full day's staring; "Who are they? And why are they staring at my barn?"

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Thanks to everyone who joins in with this, btw! 

If you want to join in too, here's how:-

Pick up any book, go to page 52, then go to the 4th line. Give us whatever sentences cross the 4th line. i.e. you may have to go back a bit or forward bit, but the 4th line is your guide!

Either put your finding on your blog and tell us in the comments to this post, or just write the entry itself in the comments. Simples!

Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

My Sketchbook's online!

I'm so excited!!!
The sketchbook I sent off for the 2012 Arthouse Sketchbook Tour has been digitised at last &; is online!!!
If you want to see it go to my page at Arthouse here:   
http://www.arthousecoop.com/users/HS1/artwork
Scroll down till you see the sketchbook pages (thumbnails)- click on the title, ZigZag, The Sketchbook Project 2012. It will then come up big and you can scroll through each page.
They have scanned it so well!
I'm definitely going to do it again this year!

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Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

SCOOTER seems back to his old self!

BEANIE!!! DON'T READ THIS!!

I thought Scooter must be feeling better as he managed to climb the stairs and get into our bed for a sleep on Friday. His back legs have been wobbly on and off so I was thinking he wouldn't be able to go upstairs anymore. But, up he went, and meowed when he got there, cos he couldn't lift the duvet, so I went up and lifted it for him so that he could get in an make a cave.... 

The last few nights he's been on guard at the kitchen door. Some time ago, maybe nearly 2 years, when his sister was still here, one of them brought in a mouse, dropped it, and the pair then stalked it for weeks. Its last foray came from under the fridge. Now, cat logic seems to dictate that if you're going to get a mouse, it'll come out of where you last saw it. So Scooter sits at the kitchen door staring under the fridge. 

At least we THOUGHT this was all it was. 

I've still been sleeping down on the sofa to be near him at night. I came downstairs with my pillow and cover the other night and... there was Scooter, in hunt position, and.... there was a mouse sitting in the middle of the kitchen. OOoops. I tiptoed backwards upstairs and whispered to K, "There's a MOUSE in the kitchen!!!" and I decided to stay up there still we heard a pounce. About 10 minutes later there was a really LOUD pounce. I do't know what happened, maybe he skidded into the fridge! But I came down to find annoyed cat and no mouse......

 

LAST night though, he caught it. I was dozing on the sofa. 5am-ish I heard the pounce. Then he walks in, chortling, mouse in mouth, chortle chortle.... I could tell it was already an EX mouse so I thought, hell, let him keep it he's hunted it long enough. I don't usually let him eat them. In fact I didn't know he COULD with only about 3 teeth. After a bit more chortling he walked into his box with it and I sighed and went back to dozing. I heard some yucky noises. Come morning, all I found was a mousie foot.......... 

Scooter was all proud and confident, tail up, talking, once he saw I'd found the foot. It was as though he'd saved it for me as proof.

The rest of Saturday he enjoyed asleep in his box with a paw on his catnip mouse, maybe dreaming of the hunt. By 1pm he realised the sun had appeared and slept outside on a blankie. I moved his tent into the shade as he was getting too hot. He slept on his brains, totally oblivious to very noisy baby starlings all round the garden.......

NOW tonight, he is on watch again. But do we *have* mousies? Or was that one just one that had been carried in and dropped? To find out, I put a piece of biscuit in 3 corners of the kitchen..... they've all gone. Oh dear. I think we have mousies. And not nice little woodmousies, either, you know those little brown ones. This was a grey, which means house mousies, and they are smelly. Bleagh. Good job we apparently have a mouser. Can't let him eat them though! He needs worming now! The poo patch is going to be interesting for a few days........

ANYWAY it must mean that he is feeling more himself, and over the seizures for now!!!!!

 


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Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

52/4

 The Interpretation of Murder

by Jed Rubenfeld

I had never realised how splendid City Hall station was, with its crystal chandeliers, inlaid murals, and vaulted arches. 

This book has its own website:

- http://www.interpretationofmurder.com/

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Thanks to everyone who joins in with this, btw! 

If you want to join in too, here's how:-

Ppick up any book, go to page 52, then go to the 4th line. Give us whatever sentences cross the 4th line. i.e. you may have to go back a bit or forward bit, but the 4th line is your guide!

Either put your finding on your blog and tell us in the comments to this post, or just write the entry itself in the comments. Simples!

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Love, tea & cake,
Helena

Uplifting video from my online tutor :)

This is a video from the art tutorial site that carries the course I'm signed up to.

(God, what a clumsy sentence that was. There must be an easier way to put that.)

Anyway. I'm still on lesson One, as I can't get going, even with time on my hands-

Kevin left for Ireland 6am Saturday and isn't due back till tonight, and I haven't seen mum since about 8.30pm Saturday as my brother picked her up yesterday and will being her back about 6 this evening (yes miracles, it seems, can happen, especially if your brother is under the impression that YOU are off to Ireland too and so he NEEDS to take mum for a day or two. LORD knows what he thought I was going to do with Scooter. I would NEVER have Scooter left alone or with strangers.......)

But I digress..... well I've been digressing since Saturday night. I HAVE NEVER FELT SO RELAXED AS I DID SATURDAY NIGHT!- Knowing I was FREE for 48 hours. OMG. The quiet. The quiet quiet. I had a long, long bath with bubbles and a magazine. I tripped about with wet hair and downloaded a film from BT Vision. I spread cushions and a quilt on the floor to sleep,  and Scooter climbed in.

I had imagined I'd be doing lots of arty stuff this weekend. But nope. But I have enjoyed watching other arty people and reading my arty books. And I've enjoyed just doing nothing. And not having to say things three times to people who either don't hear or don't listen. And not having to sit on a chair cos both sofas are taken. And sleeping close to Scooter, and being present when he fell off the windowsill (!!!) and cuddling him all better as he sneaked under my quilt.

I want to get going on my art course but I am suffering from inertia. If I do the course and find I can't do it, that's disappointing. I need to throw myself into it and dismiss such pessimistic nonsense. It's only a bit of art, Helena, get dabbling. Sod what the critics in your life will say. In fact f~~~, don't even show them!

Hey ho, here is my tutor on an inspirational video she made......

Do watch, It'll cheer you up!

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Quick Scooter update-

He is ok. The fall off the windowsill (in his sleep) just winded him and i was there straight away so he was ok. It didn't bring on anything bad, which I feared might happen. No, he just hurt his pride, I think!

One thing though- he has really, really bad poo- like, liquid poo. I keep digging over his patch in the garden and devising new ways to disguise it and get rid of it and mix it in and bury it (LOL) LOOK if you think this is disgusting, did you ever have a baby? Well then. I didn't, but I do remember my kid brother's nappies. So I know what you've been clearing up. So I'm ok with Scooter poo, cos I love him :) even when it gets on me and my jeans have to go through two bio-washes at 60 to get it out (talk about toxic).

Anyway I have been online- ages yesterday- on Vio Vet and a couple of other trustworthy online pet shops. I've ordered what I hope to be better quality dry food specially for oldies, and some "palatable" (yeah, right!) stuff to stop the diarrhoea, similar to what th vet gives out.

Should arrive Wednesday or Thursday. Hope it helps. Just realised that the colour of his poo is the colour of his dry food so I don't know that much is being digested. Bleagh.

Last night and today he has had steamed chicken and steamed white fish. He was nyom nyom nyom. Now he is outside in his tent. HIS tent. Did I tell you that I bought a BIG tent? A TWO MAN tent? It's so me and Scooter can stretch out in there on sunny days on blankets with cushions and books while mum and K are inside wacthing tv. We've tried it once. I put the big tent up, then called Scoot out of his little 'pet tent'. He stood there with is mouth open when he saw the big tent. He couldn't believe it. Not til he got it in with me and stretched riiiiiight out. Didn't want to get out. Do you have a pet? Do you have a garden? Get a tent for you both in that garden now! Why should kids have all the fun?????

Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

Scooter

Poor Scooter had a bad seizure the other day. He had another episode this evening, a ripple of after-effect from the big one I think, just a small one this time,but notable, and scary.

I posted details on my Facebook page the other day but I'm cutting and pasting it into here for people who care about Scooter and who won't have got to see it... maybe if you've had cats with seizures you'll be able to advise. I can find tons of info about seizures in cats on the net but not about what to do during one, other than keep YOURSELF calm, keep them safe, and don't let them get too hot. I went on kitty-mum instincts mostly, and remembering what happened with his previous ones....

Poor Scooter had another seizure yesterday.
We had taken him to the vet just for a check up really, and because he has had a weepy eye for over a week. Not snotty or anything, just weepy.

All went ok. Fine at the vet. Trip in car fine too....

Got in, opened the door to his carrier and he came out slowly, wobbly, fell down. Tried walking again and again, wobbly, fell. No strength in back legs. I recognised what was going on and picked him up and lay him in my arms. I held him and talked to him for 40 mins,holding him still and trying to calm him.

He was purring fast- they purr not just when they're happy, but also when they are scared or stressed, to calm themselves down. I was worried he was hyperventalating at one point. I stroked him slowly and talked to him and took big, deep breaths myself. Soon he was copying me! HE slowly calmed.

Twitching all the time, his head and front paws.

It's best to leave them lying flat when they seize, but only if they're in a safe place and warm. Hence I picked him up and held him, rather than leave him in the middle of the floor. This way I could judge the severity of the twitches, too. In my arms, I tried to hold him flat across my lap, leaning down with him, so his head wasn't far above the rest of him. I tried to sound and feel calm for him, but inside I was breaking up. He never lets anyone hold him normally. He just isnt a cuddle cat.

At one point he burrowed his head under my chin and held on with his front paws.

He lay across me again and tried to walk, but still nothing there in his back legs. We were getting scared hed had a stroke. Then, poor love, the muscles gone, I'm afraid he emptied all his bottom all over me and the cover I was sitting on. K and I quickly found a way to roll all this away so he wouldn't get distressed, and we tucked a towel there.

I spoke with the vet on the phone after 40 mins of this (K called earlier- they called back) and while I was speaking Scooter wobbled a few steps. A few wobbly steps at a time and he had reached his food bowl, where he took a few mouthfuls. Delighted he was in recovery, the vet said to just keep watch.

Over the next hour he was wobbly and walked a few steps a time on his haunches. He couldn't interact with me or make eye contact. Then he crawled along on his belly, sniffing around the place to investigate it. Loss of memory of place and loss of eyesight can happen afterwards, so I just followed him round, talking to him. At one point he walked into a pile of books and just stopped. For 5 mins he just stood there, looking asleep. Then he 'came to', backed up, and went into his box.

His been ok since, quiet, but pops out to lie by the fire now and then, and has been out to use his wee patch in the garden (he won't use litter trays though we leave a clean one down for him).

Today he is sleepy, eating, but not interacting much, and I wonder if his eyesight is stil not back right.

All this just for the stress of a trip to the vet and a ride in the car. Nothing else. Just for a checkup and a weepy eye. What on earth shall we do if he ever shows something more in need of urgent attention?

Poor old thing. He's past his 19th birthday and I guess he is wearing out. My heart breaks at the thought of it. Though, when the time comes, if it's an irrecoverable seizure that takes him in my arms, that might be preferable to any long drawn out illness...... I am trying to see a good side.

The last thing the vet told me was 'spoil him' :) she should come see the house. His blankies and stuff are everywhere.

I've been sleeping downstairs to keep an eye on him since so I'll  be down here again tonight....

I do hope he settles down and becomes stable as Luvbug is away from early Sat to late Mon as he is going to Ireland for his mum's 80th.        

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Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

52/4

I've never actually finished this book. Really must have another try....

 Life of Pi

by Yann Martell

The vestibule had clean, white walls; the table and benches were of dark wood; and the priest was dressed in a white cassock- it was all neat, plain, simple.

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Thanks to everyone who joins in with this, btw!

If you want to join in too, pick up any book, go to page 52, then go to the 4th line. Give us whatever sentences cross the 4th line. i.e. you may have to go back a bit or forward bit, but the 4th line is your guide!

Either put your finding on your blog and tell us in the comments to this post, or just write the entry itself in the comments. Simples!

**** *** **** *** **** ***

Love, tea & cake,
Helena