Crafts on Sea

Crafts for grown ups

DIY Pincushion

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As much as I love sewing, I have the attention span of a small child. I generally put this down to bing dyslexic, but if I’m honest a large part of it is just wanting to get something done. I work, I have a small child, dinner to cook, flat to clean, washing up to do, husband to hold polite conversations with. I long to do a huge patchwork throw for our bed, but in all honesty I don’t know where I’d find that time. Or the patience.

So, a pin cushion it is. A pin cushion that can be made between putting the child to bed and putting the dinner on which to me is the perfect length for a craft project.

Designed myself too! Not that its a biggie, but I know how some other people copy things off pinterest and I have gone utterly old school and ghetto here and copied the design from something I’d seen in Real Life and not on a computer screen. No good will come of this, obviously.

So, to make this, all you need is to draw and cut out two big circles on some nice material, preferably something that contrasts nicely, then use a sewing machine to go round the outside leaving a big gap to turn it inside out. Turn inside out, stuff with loads of toy filler and then sew the hole closed.

To make it look a bit funkier I added buttons on the top and the underside, this also meant that by sewing between the two of them I could make the cushion into more of a defined pin cushion shape as opposed to just a little cushiony lump. This was an utter faff. I mean it, large scale faffyness was involved here and some low level swearing too (large level swearing generally being reserved for baking). Obviously, the one I’d looked at had been done by a big machine, probably somewhere in China where as my poor clutzy hands in less exotic Essex were not so well designed for this task. Still, it does make it look a bit funkier, and I had it all finished in time for tea. After my last blog about drunken rock and roll antics, I can feel now like I’m back on the road to domestic goddessness, all be it with the normal vats of wine thrown in on route.

How to make your own blood bag

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What do you mean you don’t want to make your own blood bag?! Nice bit of crochet anyone?? Tsk…. people today….ok, so here’s the story of why I’m supporting The Blood Bag Project and then hopefully you’ll all want to join in with a little craft project of your own.

When I was pregnant with my eldest child I had one of those gloriously uneventful pregnancy’s. Yes, I had morning sickness, was knackered and just generally felt bleugh, but my midwife appointments were always done in super quick time and there were no issues. I was happy, and who wouldn’t be?

The issue was in actually giving birth. I joked for years that we wouldn’t have kids as there was no way a child was coming out of ‘down there’ and typically the joke backfired. Due date came and went and still I was sat on my sofa eating cheese on toast and watching Top Gear on Dave. Eventually the induction was booked and 13 days overdue husband and I braved the snow storms and toddled along to the hospital.

13 days overdue – Prostaglandin. No sign of labour but ‘Help, I’m a Celebrity’ is hotting up.

14 days overdue – morning – Get doctor to break my waters. Surely the baby will arrive now? Having had 5 weeks at home with only mumsnet and Jeremy Clarkson for company (possibly not a common mixture) I have scoured the advice and figured that if I’m not getting my lovely water hippy birth then I want industrial amounts of drugs please. Refuse Syntocinon until I get an epidural, thus pleasantly avoiding any of that rather nasty sounding contraction stuff. Erstwhile doctor still decides though that he cba with a tourniquet and uses a rubber glove, squirting my blood all over the room. Nice.

14 days overdue – lunchtime – Contractions apparently quite hard. Read interesting article in Grazia.

14 days overdue – dinnertime –  Midwives crank drip right up. Not much on tele is there…

14 days overdue – evening – body refusing to comply, not dilating, fed up, nothing on tele, read all magazines, agree to c-section

15 days overdue – in for the c-section, doctors open me up, pull out baby, and then, umm, I’m not quite sure. Because at this point I start to do what I think is fall asleep due to my rather long day reading magazines, but which I’m reliably informed is more likely to be due to me blacking out due to blood loss.

I lost five pints. My husband got told that they ‘wouldn’t like to promise’ that they could save me. I (when I was occasionally with it) got told that everything ‘should’ be ok, but there was a fair chance of losing my womb. I spent three hours on the operating table, which isn’t much fun when you also consider that the poor quality design means you can actually see whats going on reflected on the ceiling.

Anyway, I lived. Which is a good thing. It was a bit dicey for the first couple of days, and it was a while before I had the strength to look after my son, but my son was healthy which I am always grateful for, and if its a choice between me going through that and him then I choose me every time.

The eldest in the hospital, awwww!

I did feel a bit funny though about the whole blood thing. Not enough to really justify talking about generally, and besides ‘I might have died but I didn’t’ seemed an unreasonable moan. But enough to occasionally stare out at the sea and just think that actually, if it hadn’t been for people who I don’t know and who I’ll never meet, my husband wouldn’t have a wife and my son would never get to see his mum.

So I’m thankful, but in a way that I can’t really put in words.

So this is why I’m supporting The Blood Bag Project. Because I can’t thank the people who helped me, but I can help someone else who needs help. If you would be so kind as to look at their website, read Chloe’s story and help to raise a bit of awareness, it would be much appreciated. And if you want to crochet your own blood bag, then that would be grand too.