Sorry I’ve not posted for a while. I’ve had a rough couple of weeks mental health wise. I feel a bit uncomfortable telling you about this but mental health is really important and the only way we’ll smash the stigma is by talking about it openly and honestly. The last few weeks I’ve had something playing on my mind and it keeps churning over and over and over, again and again.

I haven’t fully made a decision about giving it up yet but things are looking more and more likely that will be the way I go. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what it is yet because I still need to discuss it with a few people. So for now all I’ll say is that there are 2 parts to something I’m doing and 1 part of it is making me resent and no longer enjoy the other part. And because of this it’s stressing me out. I said it keeps running round in my head so because of that it’s affecting my mood and affecting my sleep. If you didn’t know but now because of my MS I find dealing with stress extremely difficult.

Another thing I’ve found out about over the last few weeks is I know now how people with indigestion and reflux can sometimes think they are having heart trouble. To start this bit off for the past year or 2 I have been having issues with swallowing. Food getting stuck in my throat and not going down properly so there are times when there is food in my throat and I need to breath so I end up breathing round the food while it’s still in my throat. So a after appointments with the gp and having my medications messed about with I was referred to a specialist. So after the appointment with the specialist they are going to do some more tests. They booked me in for a barium meal and a camera down my throat, that’s happening in September. There was another test he wanted doing, he said I would need to be off my reflux medication for 2 weeks before hand. I didn’t even make it a week.

The day after the specialist appointment I stopped taking the reflux medication in preparation for the test. Day 1 was ok but that was because the medication from the day before was still working it’s way through my system. The day after was uncomfortable and things got worse and worse and worse from there. As each day came and went the uncomfortable feeling changed to bad reflux which then turned to pain which then became agony. So after only a couple of days I was getting really bad chest pains, if I hadn’t been having reflux issues for a few days I would have been convinced I was having heart problems.

It got so bad I got mum to call the specialists office to find out if there was something I could do to help deal with the problem. The specialist wasn’t available but thankfully mum spoke to a nurse on the specialists team. The nurse said we didn’t want me in pain so she said I should restart my reflux meds and use antacids if needed too. She also said she’d get the specialist to call the next day. The specialist called and told mum exactly the same thing as the nurse. So the first day or two back on my meds I was drinking gaviscon almost as if it was for fun but pretty much straight away I started feeling better. And after a couple of days my reflux was back under control.

In the last few weeks I got myself a new toy. For this one though I can blame Katie. She was round one day and I was saying I was thinking of getting a digital cutting machine. I needed to explain what one was but she just said do it and then sent me some money for my birthday. So the next day I ordered a scan n cut SDX 1200 from Hobby Maker. I ordered from there because I had a 20% discount code from the back of a badge. So please allow me to introduce Martha:

I’ve no idea where the name Martha came from but it just popped in my head when I was thinking of a name. But I thought that Martha and Doriss would work really well together.

There are loads of different things you can do with it and honestly I don’t think I will ever fully understand how to work with everything on the machine. It might be a bit complicated at times but I am learning as I go by playing with things and a bit of occasional help from YouTube. I’ve done a few different things so far but one of the most important things was making vinyl name badged for Martha and Doriss.

I’ve done a couple of other things with vinyl:

And I made a door sign for my craft/sewing room:

That sign had hung there for about 48 hours before it was noticed by mum and dad. Mum even stood in front of it while having a conversation with me at one point and she still didn’t notice. When she eventually did she just called me a cheeky git.

Other here are some pictures of other things I’ve done with Martha. She doesn’t just cut but she draws too

I’ve also used Martha with some of the cards I’ve made. I’ve used her to cut out stamped images write messages inside the cards. Talking about cards here are pictures that f some of the cards I’ve made:

There are some others but me being me I’ve forgotten to take pictures.

Moving on to Tangling. Here are pictures of the tiles I’ve done

There have been 2 tile swaps here are the tiles I’ve received:

Both tiles really are amazing.

On to knitting I’m still working on the comforter and I’m doing the stuffed toy bit. So far I have a head and 2 ears just need the arms next so when it’s finally done I’ll add pictures.

I think that’s about all I can remember for now so I’ll leave it there.

Love and light.