Been a long time: Summer catch up.

(Guest blog post from Elliot: 6 months, below.)
saß rtx

And now onto the more serious matter of catching up ...

Firstly, as usual, may I apologise for the sporadic approach to blogging for A Crafty Coffee. No excuses, it's me on my own because, although Emma is back in it ... they have a new addition to the family ... Megan arrived when I was away camping in beautiful Dorset. She's the cutest Tibetan Terrier (don't be fooled by the name, she is not in fact a terrier at all).




Craft wise, the summer is proving to be an opportunity to try out new things. Next to me right now, Stephanie and Alison are teaching Lisa to crochet. She may be a recovering perfectionist, but she's just been told to "love the mistakes" and appeared genuinely relieved to not have to unpick all of her hard work. Result.
At the weekend, my daughter and I tried out a jewellery recycling workshop at The Lounge Café. Go to The Inexpert Crafter to see more on that one.
Then, in the week, Karen and her youngest and myself and my youngest went to Poppies Crafts (no I have not missed an apostrophe) to try out Decopatch. We're beginning to think Chr*stm*s (shhhhhhh), only in terms of an event and some kind of crafty social though, I promise.
I've also observed people sewing in name tapes, which represents a shift in season, lifewise and cyclewise, Steph has one starting pre-school, I have one starting secondary school, Ruth has one in a care home (not a child of course, but a grandparent) ...




More than one of the group are returning to work, which is making them sad in the sense that they don't want to miss out on A Crafty Coffee. Born out of this, Alison and Ruth are looking into the possibility of starting a splinter group, on a Tuesday evening at The Lounge. There is a real need for people to be able to maintain contact with the group, and also for us to patronise local, small businesses to enable them to stay afloat in such trying times. All round, I think this is a wonderful idea. I am happy and confident to facilitate and publicise the second group, and really want it to share the name and identity that we have established with A Crafty Coffee, but I imagine the group will ultimately take its own shape because of the market it will draw. I have high hopes for it, and am thrilled to hear that Jenni at The Lounge is keen to support it too.

Wow wow wow Whata Lota WsiP

Loads and loads of crafters came along this morning for A Crafty Coffee. Two new ladies bobbed by to say hi, one on her day off because she thought if she didn't come then she'd never get to see what she was missing out on, and the other because she usually plays tennis but has had an op on her shoulder so is out of action. I do hope she comes back next week so that we can get to know her better.

Newlyweds Dee and Ron came in for a while which was really quite special and I was literally delighted to see Alison make a return visit, I caught her knitting out of the corner of my eye, but the table layout in Trago Lounge does mean that we are in smaller, more disparate groups than we used to be. Ah well, my positive thinking leads me to believe that we will forge more intimate relationships with a few fellow crafters this way, as opposed to having superficial relationships with lots of people.

Sadly Sarah won't be with us for a while, and some of the group members are very keen to find out how she's doing and to support her where they can. This is where I believe a community like ours really comes into its own. The craft is great, as is the conversation, but the way a group can pull together to help a friend in need is really special, and pretty rare in the society that we inhabit these days.

Want to know what was going on craftwise?
I'm crocheting a camping blanket, and 'Is' took great delight in teaching me Tunisian crochet today which could easily become a project!
Carol was knitting socks, on needles so small and fine that it looks like she's knitting on cocktail sticks.
Alison was working on blanket squares for the project she's been working on since we inspired her back in April. 2010.
Stephanie is cross-stitching Disney Princesses to go in frames in her DD's bedroom.
Su is working on a crochet cardigan for a friend, as well as a lace knit cover-up for her DD.
Karen is crocheting a border on the baby blanket that we were all contributing to for Meghan, a member of Trago Lounge staff who's expecting in September. Karen got carried away with her little hexagons and before she knew it she pretty much had the blanket all sewn up. I do think it is a very special way to show our thanks and appreciation to the staff, to make them a little gift when they reproduce.
Amy was making the Peter Pan collars from Mollie Makes, her friend whipping up sock monkeys at a rate of knots.
Liv chose to work on her crocheted shawl, I'm led to believe it is to be a gift so she needs to get a shift on.
And that's all I can reliably report on, but I know there were other things going on and that there were at least seven crafters present who have remained un-named this week.

I am sorry I don't get round all of you anymore, there is something about that 'bride at a wedding' thing that is so lovely, but also so superficial. And it always meant that my own craft never got touched.

See as many of you next week as can be there.
Love Crafty.

Resolving Conflict

Well hello lovely crafters and coffee drinkers.

Crafty here, was rather hoping Coffee would be back at the helm soon, partly for her own benefit, but also so you could all hear from her directly since it's been an age since she's managed to blog anything.

Anyway, for the time being you are stuck with me I'm afraid. And I have two weeks to catch up on with you all.
We have finally welcomed Coffee (Emma) back into our warm embrace. I think, with what she, Sheena and Sue have been through, it is important that we are all as loving and 'normal' (whatever that is) as we can be, whilst still obviously acknowledging that they are grieving.
For me though, it's just nice to have my partner in crime back, no matter what else has been going on, it is just wonderful to have my old buddy back nearby.

So, crafts I have seen over the last couple of weeks are as varied as usual, and I myself have been inspired by Eddie to do a spot of refashioning (InexpertCrafter). I've seen crochet and knitting, obviously. But also cross stitch and jewellery making which was refreshing.
Being part of a crafty community has its benefits when you come to planning an event. Our Steph is planning a bit of a Fairy Gathering for her little Roo's 3rd birthday, and lovely Lesley has given her some Flower Fairy bits and pieces which will go on sticks in the garden to enhance the ambience. How lovely?

Now, onto a slightly more difficult matter ... since the staff of Trago Lounge have undergone a complete turnover, I have been very remiss in my duties of getting to know everyone. This was an error on my part and has resulted in one of the assistant managers being a little offhand with us on more than one occasion. Now, I decided to do something about this because A Crafty Coffee is a very important group of pretty vulnerable people and we need to have a comfortable environment and a happy atmosphere to continue.
What I have done is pointed out that there is a problem, introduced myself and helped to put a new strategy in place so that there is less difficulty delivering hot drinks to the right customer amongst the hubub of chattering and cackling women.
And this week, by way of a thank you and an apology, the coffees are on The Loungers.
When asked at the till for your name, it is to enable the waiting staff to get your drink to you and not just loosely to the area in which you are sat. Please help us to help the team get this right, service with a smile is their aim and our desire.

Anyway, enough of my gabling for today. I do really hope that you will have a change of author in the next few weeks.

Much love
C&C xx

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

Coffee, Craft & Conversation, but NO Camera ...

Whooooooooooops.

Crafty strikes again with her complete inability to organise the proverbial ...
Armed with three 'on the go' knitting projects, having dyed my hair at about 7.30am and delivered the children safely to school, I was pleased to arrive in the oasis of calm that is Trago Lounge before any other crafters turned up. Very pleased indeed, until that is, I remembered that I had intended to bring the camera in order to be able to beautify our blog with some stunning works of craft.

Nevertheless, I approached the bar, ordered myself a large americano with space for milk, sat myself in the window sofa (comfort AND light), and proceeded to continue with my [no laughing please] knitted veggie bag. I was able to enjoy a few minutes to myself before Helen arrived bringing with her a few waifs and strays who weren't otherwise planning on coming. It was nice to welcome Sarah who has only just been introduced to the delights of A Crafty Coffee. She confessed to having started a granny square blanket and a crocheted scarf for her daughter, but having finished neither. We chatted and I hope I have persuaded her to come again with her blanket (or could it be a cushion cover, more instant gratification) or her scarf to finish off.

Helen also dragged in other regulars like Ali and Jilly, but she was primarily meeting with Bex and Sarah F to discuss plans for a Bollywood dance film that should be taking place at our children's school. I'm seriously hoping to get the chance to dance, I love a good boogie, me.

I was able to sit and chat with Emma and Celia for a bit, all three of us were knitting which, since Emma's now completely hooked (pardon that dreadful pun) to the crochet, was a bit of a surprise. The crafters this week spread over 4-5 tables which means there were somewhere between 20 and 30 people in attendance. With that in mind I am sure you'll forgive me not knowing exactly what was going on where. Suffice to say I saw many busy hands, many empty cups and many wagging chins.

Now, in terms of 'family news', Emma is a voluntary patient which means she can come out on leave so long as it is deemed safe, so she was able to be there this morning but is still very unwell and struggling.
Stephanie is only four weeks away from delivering her little lad into the world. Her little Ruby is a proper little treasure and will make a great big sis, I hope we will be a good support to them when the time comes.
Priya is spending many hours feeding Kezia which is very trying. Kezia is still very small, but is reaching all developmental milestones so we're just hoping that Priya and James will find the best solution for all three of them.
Emma N has had a bit of a low patch. Her not so little lad is drinking her dry and she has lost an alarming amount of weight, between that and running around after a very fun and active daughter, she really has her work cut out for her.

So, for any of you praying types. Do keep the above, and their families, in mind over the coming week(s).

C&C
xxx