Last week it was my 40th birthday. Honestly I haven’t really known how I feel about being 40. When thinking about it and mulling it over in my head I started to feel uncomfortable.

I started feeling a bit useless and a bit of a failure. I’m 40 years old and still living at home with my mum and dad (I couldn’t cope in my own without their care and support). I’ve been married and divorced, come out of the closet. I’ve written off a car. Lost my license 12 months later (because of my MS symptoms not the car accident). Become disabled and had my life completely turned upside down. I now need to rely on other people far more than I’ve had to in the past. I really am grateful for everyone that’s supported and cared for me but I still feel like I’m a let down. I know most of these feelings are down to the messed up way my head works now and that they are stupid but still doesn’t stop me thinking and feeling that way.

I haven’t posted in so long because working through those feelings and not being really sure how to or if I should put these things down in writing. But it’s there it’s done I’ve said it. One of the main reasons for starting this blog was to get things like that out in the open and off my chest. For some reason I find it a lot easier to talk about these things here than have these sort of conversations face to face with someone.

Of course crafting and tangling can help me escape the thought and feelings for a while but at some point I still have to face them and work through them. But in the last few weeks I’ve done quite a bit of crafting and tangling it hasn’t all been to escape things there have been a few birthdays and other events.

So here are pictures of the cards I’ve done:

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I have done another card but I’m not sharing that one because it hasn’t been used yet so I’ll share that in the next few weeks

Tangling and tiles

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I’ve worked on a few other tangle pieces in the last few weeks too:

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These are two birds from the most recent Tangled Birds book that Sandra launched on Hobby maker in the last couple of weeks.

On to the Tile Swap here is a picture of the tile I received in the last tile swap.

And here is a picture of the tile I sent in

The latest tile swap hasn’t been done yet. I’ve sent in my tile but they haven’t been swapped and sent back out yet. The deadline for it isn’t until tomorrow so it will be maybe another week or so until I get the swapped tile.

Next weekend is my birthday present weekend from Mum and Dad. It a weekend of workshops at Sanntangle HQ. And on the way there we get to go via the Haribo shop in Pontefract. So from that part of the trip I’ll be stocking up on sweets and refilling my cache of golden bears and other Haribo treats.

It will be great to see some people face to face again this weekend rather than through a tv or computer screen. There will be a few different projects done over the weekend and when I’m happy with them I’ll be sharing pictures of my work on here.

Sewing wise there have been a few things I’ve done I finished the doll for Lucy. But the doll turned into a mermaid. It went that way because the soft flannel fabric I was going to make the body out of had fish on it so it just made sense to change it into a mermaid.

So here she is

Here are a couple of pictures of what she has gone through in the process of being made:

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I haven’t named her as I feel that is a job for Lucy. I gave the mermaid to Lucy when Katie, Harvey and Lucy came round on my birthday. And here are a couple of pictures from when Lucy received the mermaid.

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From those pictures I’m pretty sure that Lucy like her and that they’ll be friends for a good long while yet.

The other bit of sewing I’ve done was making a pouch or draw string bag that we can use for raffles at MS events. It can fold up small when it’s not being used, it’s easy to transport and because it’s lined and reversible it’s easy to empty and it can be used lots and lots of times. And it looks loads better than trying to ask for a tub we can use from where ever we are. It’s also big enough so there’s lots of room to mix up the tickets.

And of course, me being me I forgot to take a picture of it and it’s downstairs and I’m upstairs. because my pain hasn’t been that great recently I’m trying to avoid using stairs as much as I can. When the pains playing up using stairs can make it a lot worse.

I did start writing this post on Friday last week then got distracted by other things like shopping trips to get ready for next weekend, having time stressing about things next weekend I got mixed up with the dates and thought it was happening a week or so later. Then because of the confusion I thought i booked the wrong weekend and told mum the wrong dates and then she booked the hotel for the ring times and date. I really do hate my stress headedness at times and again that stressheadedness links back to the things I mentioned at the start of the post.

And with that I’ll leave it there.

Love and Light