yummy cushions

Oh wow oh wow oh wow. How beautiful are these woven cushions by Karen Barbe, the lady whose tutorial I followed to make my woven circular patch a few weeks back? I just can't fathom how you sit down at a weaving loom with some strands of thread (it's not even thread, is it?) and end up with these beauties. I am so ignorant of how real weaving actually works and I wish I wasn't, but it does seem kind of impenetrable to a total outsider. If I won the lottery, I'd give up my job, buy myself a loom and fly Karen over to the UK to teach me how to weave. In the meantime, I could save up some pennies and buy one of these cushions instead - available here.

I think it might have been about this time last year that I blogged about how much I loved Donna Wilson's house cushion. It's the winter cosy craving kicking in, obviously.

I haven't felt very connected to my blog here lately. Time is just flying by. I think it's been because my work has been going through an unusually Monday-to-Friday phase and I'm back in that frame of mind where you count down the days during the week and then cram in as much as you can at the weekends and then find it's Monday morning again before you know it, when you start counting down the days to Friday night again. Also, by the time I've been getting home of an evening, I have been fit for nothing. I am really quite exhausted. Graham and I have been trying to watch a film most evenings since that only involves collapsing on the sofa before crawling to bed, but still counts as doing something with your evening. My request to watch nice films that won't leave me traumatised has not been fulfilled in the main (too many people getting clubbed to death by hammers and stabbed in the neck with stanley knives for my liking) but I was allowed to watch Danny Deckchair the other night, an Australian film about a man who ties balloons to his deckchair and flies off to another town where he finds true happiness. Apparently it's based on a true story (what?!) and it was just the easy-going nonsense I needed to banish all the previous film violence from my brain.

Today I have some tidying to do before working a late shift since my parents are coming to visit this weekend. I'm really looking forward to seeing them, but am dreading how tired I will still be come Monday morning with Friday an almost imperceptible dot on the horizon and the danger (danger!) of being on call next weekend too. I shouldn't grumble, really. Other than extreme tiredness and incredibly sore hips and the related leg cramps, it's all good. The baby is turning into a crazy kicker and I love it, even though it kicks me in the bladder every time I have to do something mega-urgent at work. It also seems to be reacting to the outside world a lot more. The other night Graham spoke to it through my tummy and it went crazy and kicked him in the head about ten times at the sound of his voice. Yesterday morning Poppy was leaning against my tummy and purring for a good 45 minutes and the baby was fluttering about the whole time. When Poppy finally jumped off my lap, the baby started kicking so hard that you could see my belly jumping about in all different directions. I think the baby was wondering where the lovely, warm, purry thing had gone and was looking for it.

We still haven't got to the bottom of my wonky heart, but the doctor has reassured me I'm not about to drop down dead from a heart attack, not imminently anyway. It might be caused by (look away if you are squeamish) my diaphragm being pushed up so much by the baby that it is literally rubbing against my heart and irritating it (eugh!) but it could be something else, so I am having to go for blood tests etc. next week. Pregnancy is making me so aware of all the amazing things bodies do every single day, which is very fun and interesting...until your heart packs in. Ha!

Anyway, I had better go and make a start on this tidying. If I don't do it, I know I will wake up at 5am tomorrow to find my mum on her hands and knees scrubbing our kitchen floor and cleaning behind the cooker. If you've read right to the end of this post, I hope you have a lovely weekend. You've earned it!