Lego Lighthouses and A Celebration

Hello All.
We met again on Friday, Trago Lounge have rearranged the furniture again and this way is really not conducive to a social space for us crafters. Especially as we welcomed two new members who found us on the Stitch 'n' Bitch site. It was really hard to physically include them though I do think we were welcoming so I expect them back one day.

I was rather hoping Emma might make her return this week, but she has been fighting a nasty virus since before William died and she is truly exhausted.
In her absence, can I extend her invitation to you to come and celebrate William's life? The celebration service will be held this Saturday, 14th, at 11am in Highfield Church and there will be refreshments afterwards. It will be entirely family friendly.

Perhaps you are sat wondering about the Lego® lighthouse? William wanted to be a Lego® designer when he grew up (just like my own son wants to be) and he planned to invent a Lego® lighthouse. Little did he know that Lego® are already bringing out a lighthouse in June, they must have read his mind huh? Anyway, that is the significance of the image.

Love to you all, see you Friday and I hope on Saturday too.
C (&C) xxx

Untitled

I have no idea what to call this post, it's been a few weeks since we last wrote and it's been a trying time. I have bad news, slightly less bad news, and some crafty news which is always good.

Let's start at the start shall we?
Last time we posted we had babies to celebrate and baristas to miss but not too much to concern ourselves with other than Coffee's ongoing mental health problems. Thank you so very much to all those of you who do pray because we have seen an uplift in her mental stability enabling her to be able to enjoy her family and look after them well. This has never been more poignant than it is right now.

Sadly, last Thursday, the bone marrow results came back showing that William's marrow was really full of leukaemic blast cells. It meant that the chemo had barely touched it and that a transplant was out of the question. Being so close to Emma (Coffee), I understood that this meant they were running out of options, but nothing could have properly prepared me for how I might feel when she broke that news. We cried together. What else could we do?
The family have now moved to Bristol to take part in a medical study using a trial concoction of chemotherapy. Earlier this week, liver screening potentially ruled them out of the study but thank God, they didn't have to abandon hope so quickly and the chemo has now started. The chance of this working is very slim, but there is a chance, and therefore there is hope.

As a group, ACC have wanted to support the family as best we can at a distance. Obviously, I shall go and visit, and people within the group are meeting to pray. One of our number has made a couple of 'hope' bags for the boys which people have contributed books and toys to. It feels like there is little more we can do at such an uncertain and traumatic time but at least we are all there for each other too.

Now that I have got the bad news and the slightly more hopeful news out of the way, we can move back to the crafts of the past week or two.
We've had usual numbers of 20ish people in attendance with knitting, spinning, crochet, cross-stitch, chat, coffee, clothing alterations etcetera etcetera and we've been so privileged by people's willingness to share their craft in the form of tutorial. No longer is it down to Isobel to do all of the teaching, though I am incredibly grateful that she got me started on the crochet! But now, Eddie has been teaching me unravelling, skeining, and ply balling of yarn, Cecile will share with anyone who's interested how to spin yarn, even I found myself in the position of showing Jill how my wool-eater blanket worked! As a novice myself, it tickled me that I was showing someone how to do something, I don't even know the terms but Jill is a visual learner so it mattered not.
On the whole, the crafting is going very well, and the community, through such desperately tough times as sick children, bereavement, ill-health, difficult finances, unemployment ... well the community is fused. We are supportive, close knit (pun intended) but not closed, loving, generous, caring. I am so thrilled to be a part of A Crafty Coffee and hope all members feel the same.

C x (&C from a distance)

Happy Birthday William

Emma and William are still in hospital and today William celebrates his 7th birthday. He was pretty excited about it by all accounts so we all wish him a very special day.

Needless to say, although Emma is now in a position to consider leaving the hospital and leaving W in the company of a grandparent, today was NOT the day that she would make a return to ACC. William is relatively well in himself at the moment, experiencing some pain and he tires easily but nothing unmanageable which is a comfort. Emma and Steve are 'as well as can be expected' and are making the effort to spend some time together, and little brother E is a little ray of sunshine, or a little burst of energy, depending on how you look at it. All in all, prayers are being answered so far.

And so to this morning. Portswood Primary School is on INSET day so myself and a couple of other ACC-ers brought along our children. My mini-me and I were making peg dolls, the mum and daughter next to us were making a knit and felt patchwork bag ... the knitting from 8 year old A was simply brilliant!
We had Cecile next to us spinning some silk yarn, according to my daughter it felt "lovely", silk is her favourite material so it was great for her to see it being spun into a useable yarn.
Lesley was opposite us knitting something in a beautiful, vibrant turquoie colour.
Jill was talking about a quilted bag she might make as a gift.
I saw some crochet (Carole) and much knitting (Karen, Eddie, Liv, and more) and coffee drinking going on around me, there was a general buzz of love and support and I just about remembered to share the big news of the week ...

Our fourth (I think) A Crafty Coffee baby:
Stephanie gave birth to Elliot Fyfe on valentine's day, he was 7lbs 11oz and they are both doing great at the moment. Hopefully some of you ACC members will chip in with cooking the odd meal and generally looking out for the family?

Love to you all.
C&C
xxx

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

That's what we're here for, a community of loving friends, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Last week, the only thing I had to concern myself with was the lack of camera at A Crafty Coffee, things have changed a lot since then.

It has been a rollercoaster ride of emotion this week for everyone who knows Crafty, Coffee, A Crafty Coffee and Emma's family.
William went to hospital on Sunday, he'd been under the weather and his Mum and Dad became increasingly concerned that his leukaemia may have returned so they took him to the ward for an early blood test. NOBODY could have predicted the outcome. When he was diagnosed the first time round, William had a white blood cell count of 250 which was excessive and dangerous. This time the count was 470. For the leukaemia to have returned to soon and so aggressively after remission was a really bad sign, and with his counts so high, a night in PICU was in order.
Now, you will all know that Emma (Coffee) has herself been wrestling with ill health, she was in fact still in hospital when all this happened but, needless to day, the staff have been supportive in allowing her to be there for her little lad.

On Monday evening, Emma called me to tell me that they had spoken with the consultant and that the outlook was bleak, she was clearly devastated, as was I.
Attempting to support someone through this is painful and difficult, you are helpless and powerless, yet you know you could say or do something that could upset or offfend.
It is good that I've had to wait until today (Friday) to be writing this blog post because, since Monday evening, things have changed slightly for the better.
William's leukaemia has responded (somewhat unexpectedly) to the chemotherapy, his white cell count was down to 1.7 last time I heard, he has been well and stable enough to have a central line put in (which was necessary, but that looked like it may be difficult) and there is some hope that they may be able to do a bone marrow transplant.
The future is by no means certain, and the family are aware of this, but a glimmer of hope is something to hold on to.

A Crafty Coffee plays host to some wonderful, supportive and loving people. The group have rallied round setting up prayer sessions (those who pray), communicating news as it arrives, supporting the Grandmothers (both attend ACC when they can), supporting the family as best they can etc
So today, I should have known to expect the quizzing and questioning from those who want to help and support, and from those who haven't had the information filtered down to them in detail. I didn't expect it though, I wasn't prepared. As I said earlier, it is really painful to attempt to walk through this with someone so close, so I guess I was hoping for a teeny tiny escape this morning.
Nonetheless, I think I did a decent job of keeping people filled in without breaking down on them, and I even knitted a little more of Baby Chapman's blanket so that was good.

I was even treated to being party to more frivolous conversation about hand spun yarns, crafts and costings, Folksy, Etsy etc. These matters are actually important, how we price work if we want to sell it, how we can be undermined by people underpricing their work or overpricing their work when they use lower price materials and the like. But the perspective was definitely there this morning, these things do matter, but in the grand scheme of things, they're not really worth being stressed over.

If you pray, please pray for Emma, Steve, William and Edward, and all of those in their extended families, and the friends attempting to support them.

Thanks
Love C&C xx