Getting ready to move...........

and wondering where on earth all of my craft materials are going to go!

Believe me, I am the epitome of "Who dies with the most (insert appropriate object here), wins". I couldn't resist a wool sale or a fabric sale and any "Fest", be it fibre, wool or craft-based was my idea of heaven. Oh, and don't get me started on my soap supplies and essential oil stash!

This is all very well, when one is living in a big three-bedroom house with a husband and four cats. There is plenty of storage (big attic), plenty of space to make into a sewing/spinning/weaving craft studio. However, in a few short weeks, we are moving to a cottage in Devon, which is beautiful, but small. Really small. As in "two bedrooms, a small sitting room, a dining/kitchen" small.

So there is clearly a problem - what do I keep, what do I try to sell, what do I give away?

It ought to be simple, but as I survey the gorgeous Shetland fleece that I have just scoured, ready to be carded, I know that there is no way that I can get rid of it. I also have fleece and tops ready to spin - definitely keeping that, along with the natural dye kit that one of the girls gave me for Christmas and the maslin pan that I bought specifically to use as the dye vat for the spun yarn.

Then there is the fabric - a collection of beautiful wools and silks - nope, they are staying, along with yarns that I bought in Italy, Germany and Alaska as "useful holiday souvenirs".

This then brings me to the UFOs - the unfinished objects (mostly knitted items) started with huge excitement and then back-burnered for any number of reasons.

Finally, there are all the raw materials and the equipment associated with my artisan soap, bath and skincare business, Green Witch Crafts, also back-burnered when we put the house on the market.

I know that from October this year, I am going to be devoting the majority of my time to two Open University Level 2 courses. By taking on two courses, I will be a full-time student and there will be little time to spend on crafts and none at all for Green Witch Crafts. And I suppose that I should let someone else have the pleasure of using the yarns and materials but I know that I will never be in a position to buy them again.

So the plan is................vacuum bags for the fleece, wool, yarns and fabrics. As for the rest, well, I'm still thinking about that!

Until the clouds part............

My darling mother died in hospital in South Africa on Friday 30th May - she was 88 years old and immigrated to South Africa when she was 78.

In recent years, her hearing had deteriorated, though she refused to consider a hearing aid because "it would make me look old" but this meant that our telephone conversations were all but impossible and with the financial difficulties that Kevin and I were experiencing, the notion of flying out to spend time with her could never be contemplated.

She LOVED her life in South Africa; her pension from British Airways and her State Pension went far further than they would have done in the U.K. and the weather meant that the arthritis that plagued her back in England bothered her far less in the warmth of her adopted country. The medical care that she received was second to none, albeit that she had to pay for it, and the little house that she bought, with its pretty rose-filled garden, was easy to run and care for.

She had visited my brother in South Africa often and even went out to Tanzania when he was flying there but after my brother's daughter was born, Mum decided that she wanted to move there permanently. Africa had found its way into her heart and soul, and like so many other people, she yearned to return.

 I was heartbroken. Somehow I knew that I would never see her again.

 I missed our phone calls - we usually spoke at least twice a week and sometimes more often and I missed being able to drive over to her house at Leatherhead to see her but how could I deny her the chance to spend time with her only grandchild?

At first, she would write; then she would send emails, but as time went on and her hands became more arthritic, even the emails stopped. Her hearing loss meant that phone calls were frustrating for both of us and (in the end) terribly upsetting for her.

So when Mum finally passed away last week, part of me felt that I had lost her long before.

 My brother, who returned to the U.K. almost three years ago with my sister-in-law and niece, is in South Africa at the moment dealing with all the things that you have to deal with following a death. David, who became an honorary son to Mum and was her carer, companion and friend, is as bereft as we are - perhaps even more so because I think he really believed that Mum would recover from this latest illness as she had done so many times before.

Mum, you did exactly what you wanted to do. You had the courage to leave England and settle in another country at a time in your life when others are looking at retirement homes and you lived more in those ten years than some people do in their entire lives.

I haven't cried yet - not properly. I know that it will catch me when I least expect it - a piece of music, a line of poetry, something will bring it back to me that Mum is gone from the world.

And then I remember, that it is only until the clouds part, until a new dawn breaks, and we will be together again.

Love you, Mum.

From frugal beginnings....................

My parents were pretty traditional, in that Dad went out to work and Mum was a housewife. Dad started as a clerk in the Import Cargo division at B.E.A. and ultimately ended up as a Training Officer with British Airways before his untimely death at just 51. Mum sewed most of our clothes as well as her own, cooked from scratch, and like her mother before her, bottled fruit and made jam and pickles. I was lucky in that I grew up watching her cook and being allowed to help. She also taught me how to alter and cut out patterns and to sew. My Grandma D. taught me to knit, my beloved Auntie Judy taught me to read and write, starting when I was three.

Grandma and Grandpa D. and Aunty Judy lived next door and we spent most Sundays with Grandad and Grandma P. a few miles away. Grandad P. had been blinded and partially paralysed in WW1 and never really worked again, although he had been taught to read Braille and a number of craft activities as one of the first St Dunstaners. So Grandma had borne the burden of raising and providing for the family as well as stretching Grandad's War Pension as far as it would go. These lessons were passed to my Mum, who passed them on to me.
Somewhere though, in the following years and with an excellent salary from the oil company where I worked, all of the frugal, thoughtful lessons that I had learned went on the back burner and I became a pretty good example of a Material Girl. Every so often, I would have a twinge of conscience and by the time that Kevin and I married, I owed very little on credit cards, money was never really short and we both had reasonable savings.

The fire, Kevin's kidney cancer, the mess-up with another operation that left him with biliary sepsis and kept him away from the business for two months while we were fighting with the insurance company for our Business Interruption payments - all of this really messed up our plans and our finances.
Our production manager, backed (we believe) by a competitor, left with 6 of our staff, and set up in competition. He also told our customers that Kevin was terminally ill and that I was closing the company. Nevertheless, we battled on through; our son-in-law left his job to act as our production manager, we engaged a really good guy to manage the plating shop and began to get back on our feet again.

We had always had six months income saved up but that had gone during the period following the fire in order to keep our staff paid - the insurers had said that we could not lay anyone off or they would disavow the claim. So when we did finally reopen, we owed money to HM Revenue and Customs for PAYE/NICs and VAT; then we discovered that our landlord had received no rent payment from his insurers and was looking to us to pay £25,000 for the period that we were out of action. Although the Revenue were happy to help and make a deal, the landlord was not, so we had no choice but to put the company in to liquidation and make ourselves and the rest of our team redundant.

We suddenly found ourselves unemployed and apparently unemployable. We visited the Job Centre, applied for every job going, signed on with every temp and permanent agency, but we didn't get to interview stage and only two places had the courtesy to contact us to say that they felt that we were both too well qualified for the positions that we had applied for.

The final kick in the teeth was that we had signed Directors Guarantees on plant and equipment and the leasing companies wanted their money. Rather than go bankrupt, we remortgaged the little factory that we owned as part of our pension scheme, released the funds and offered all of our creditors a one-off payment as an Individual Voluntary Arrangement. 

So, debt-free apart from  the mortgage and with credit scores damaged for the next six years, we started to put our lives back together again. I had been given an Ashford Traveller spinning wheel and learned to spin just after the fire - it was the only thing that kept me sane during the weeks and months of Kevin's illness and the fight with the insurers. I had a good stash of fleece from my cousin who bred Shetland sheep and also a large wool stash, so it made sense to invest in an Ashford Rigid Heddle loom.

As for shopping, I would take the minimum amount of cash with me and go to Aldi (had to go to Tesco for cat food, they wouldn't eat the Aldi one :( ). I had always cooked from scratch and the internet became a valuable source of information on frugal living. I am ashamed when I look at what we used to spend on groceries and what we spend now! All of Mum's and Gran's old lessons have come back to me

We cancelled every subscription, changed suppliers for utilities where we were able, made sure that we only heated the rooms that we really needed to and got a water meter fitted when it was offered (that REALLY cut our water bill, because we were paying for what we actually used!). We were able to get the house insulated (cavity wall insulation) which has made a difference. 
We have made our own beer and wine, although we don't actually drink that much (Kevin, bless him, suffers with gout and alcohol aggravates my arthritis).

The move will finally see us mortgage-free - and living in a beautiful part of the world with a garden that should provide us with fresh vegetables and with access to farm shops and produce markets.

I can't wait :)

Well, I've decided................

I signed up yesterday to restart A230 (the compulsory module for my degree) and A215 (Creative Writing).

It was a no-brainer in the end - I hope to tutor students in English Literature and English Language and although Worlds of English looked fascinating, I felt that I would derive more benefit from Creative Writing and possibly enjoy it as a change from pure academic study.

So what am I doing now? Well, I deferred just before the need to submit TMA03 (Shelley) so have re-read that section of the course book and am launching myself in to Wuthering Heights. I will basically follow the module programme that I printed out from the StudentHome website before officially deferring, so by the October start date, I should have more or less caught up. I am hoping that by doing this, I might find running two modules in parallel less stressful.

I have a fair idea of what the Creative Writing module involves - the Facebook groups are incredibly helpful in this respect - it will be challenging but then, anything worthwhile usually is.

I could not be doing without the help of my husband. Kevin has always supported me in my decision to study, has put up with my occasional tantrums, my highs and lows, my exam panics and has never failed to tell me how very proud he is of my achievements so far. He has listened patiently to innumerable readings and re-readings of my assignment essays. When I do finally graduate some time in 2017, I really should share my BA with him - he will certainly have earned it!