WOYWW 169

It is time once again to join me as I hop around the blogs of a very friendly group of crafters, to see what they are getting up to this week. To find out more, pay a visit to our host Julia at her Stamping Ground, and join in the fun.

Apart from a few Christmas cards I haven't done much crafting this week. I have spent every morning at the vet with poor Baggins, who is still very unwell. He did pick up really well last week, but at the weekend he went downhill again. He had an X-ray yesterday which confirmed his broken jaw, but also showed he has a lot of fluid collecting around his lungs, which explained why he was struggling to breathe. However last night and today he has stayed 'in hospital' at the vet clinic so they can feed him intravenously, and inject antibiotics. I thought he looked a bit brighter today. So I shall be off there again tomorrow to see how he is. 

That did mean that this afternoon I was able to spend some time in my craft room, so I had a die-cutting afternoon. I started off with a Christmas die that a friend of mine bought, and she had not been able to get a good cut with it. I ran it through my green bug with some aluminium foil, and with several passes through the machine, turning it 90º between passes, I did manage to cut it all. However it is a very intricate die, and having cut it I had great difficulty removing the piece without tearing it. So I then tried again with a sheet of 'papel vegetal', which I think is like English baking parchment, between the die and paper I was cutting, and this time I was successful. But I did find that with some weights of card I had to put a thin piece of acetate as a shim over the centre of the image. Otherwise the middle bit didn't cut, however many times I turned it. I don't think it is really faulty, just one of those awkward dies, and she will need a bit of patience to use it. I will be able to give her a few tips when I see her at our group tomorrow morning. Fortunately we meet for our sewing group in a building immediately opposite my vet's clinic, so hopefully I can get to both!

I then moved on to try a couple of new dies that arrived in the post for me today. I bought two of them when I saw a lovely card made by our host Julia, earlier this week. I cut out each of the butterflies in the Joy craft set, and compared them with the Sissix/SU embosslit ones. I love that little grey folder which manages to give me five different butterflies within a two inch square. Those tinies are so cute, and now I have some larger ones as well, so 'butterflies for all occasions'. And lastly I bought the memory box prim poppies die. This didn't strike me as being anything very special when I first saw in online. but I have now seen it used on cards on various blogs and I love it. It is so elegant and delicate. I am sure I will find plenty of uses for it.

What else is on my untidy table? Well there is the big black folder where I store my cutting dies. The white folder at the back with black squares all over it is the plan for this month's photo-board which is almost complete of course. Then there is a sketch with a pen and pencil on top of it. I have just followed an online tutorial to draw an image I wanted, and now I have to tidy it up and make it into a digistamp. More of that another day I hope.

It also looks a bit like a chemist counter with a bottle of 90% alcohol which I use for cleaning up everything from alcohol inks to glue to permanent markers. Wonderful stuff! The baby oil I use in parchment craft and I am about to sort things our for my class on Thursday, and the lavender water is out for me to refill my little spray bottle. Nearly everyone out here carries one of these in their handbag. A quick spray on the back of your neck is very cooling and refreshing, and they do say it keeps the flies at bay too, but the jury is still out on that one!

So that's it for me for another week. I will visit as many of you as I can, but it will depend on how much time I spend at the vet. Thank you for all your kind messages about Baggins. As you know he is very special to me, and I appreciate your concern.

POST SCRIPT.

I am very sad now because I went to the vet this morning and Baggins' condition had deteriorated over night, so I made the very difficult decision to let him go. They have been wonderful to him there, and couldn't have done more to try to save him. But it had reached the point where we were keeping him alive for my benefit and not his, and he didn't deserve that. He is at peace now, but my craft room will never be quite the same again.