That night around bedtime, Emma and Jack were playing roughly and Emma smacked her head hard on the kitchen floor.  Much screaming and crying later, she finally calmed down.  I was still a bit worried though, and then she started vomiting.  There was no blood on her head or anything from the fall but you start to ever so quietly freak out once there’s vomiting in a child after a head injury.  There is a great phone service called Health Direct so I called them and answered a ton of their questions and everything was alright and we knew what to watch out for.  We wanted to put her to bed as it was getting late but there is a worry about going to sleep right after a bump on the head (as it could cause complications if there was concussion) but after further checking by the nurse on the phone, we were advised to put her to bed but wake her after an hour and get her to walk and talk to check her neurological signs.  To get to the point, she ended up totally fine - another little vomit when we woke her and then back to sleep and all was well.  One drama over with.

At the same time as all this, Paul started to have a problem with his eyes.  They were extremely bloodshot and getting quite sore by Melbourne Cup day (Tuesday) but it was manageable, and then got a little worse on the Wednesday.  He took a day off work and went to the GP on the Wednesday.  He had swum on Monday night so he figured he may have picked up something at the pool, or he had a problem with his contacts or something.  The doctor agreed and gave him some eye drops to put in and said it should clear up soon. 

So he puts the drops in every few hours and is surprised that his eyes seem to be getting worse.  He now has a massive headache the entire time and he is extremely light sensitive, to the point that we have to close all the blinds and cook, eat, dress, everything in darkness.  He is now spending all the time in bed, or sitting miserably in a darkened room.  His eyes are getting worse and he is starting to wonder if putting the drops in should be killing so much.  Ever notice how when you are sick, your judgement is off?  So he didn’t quite get that he was slowly going downhill and that maybe something was going wrong.  I was busy with the kids and housework and trying to leave him alone (he is one of those people who doesn’t want to be fussed over when sick) so I missed it at first too. 

On the Thursday afternoon I happened to see him putting the eyedrops in.  He was in real pain, but (with impaired judgement) thought that Doctor knows best.  I saw him put one drop in and really have to steel himself to do the next drop.  He had to do 5 drops in each eye and it was taking over 10 minutes because he was dying each time.  I got really alarmed and he told me that it felt like his eyes were on fire and that every so often someone was jabbing them with pins.  His headache was massive by now and one eye had really swollen up.  He just wanted to go to bed, so I organised dinner for the kids and then checked again after that. 

I asked him if he thought we should go to hospital and he agreed.  So I put Jack and Emma to bed and left Sam in charge, and I drove him to Casualty.  This was about 8.30pm by now.  Of course it was full of people and we ended up waiting about 3 1/2 hours to be seen.  We thought that an eye problem would get us in quickly but it turns out that they assumed something like Conjunctivitis despite having not seen him, and didn’t triage us as urgent.  I passed the time by describing the bogans and their injuries to Paul who could only sit in silence with his eyes screwed shut and his head down.  We waited and waited and waited.  Finally we were seen and Paul was taken for a few eye tests and things, before the doctor told us that it looked very likely that Paul had suffered an ALLERGIC REACTION to the eye drops that were supposed to fix his (initially very minor) eye infection. 

He was given new eye drops and he has slowly, slowly been improving since.   It’s now been a week since the initial problem and it should have been only a few days of discomfort, instead of this big problem.  What a drama!  By Sunday he was slowly coming back to normal, though he was still hugely light sensitive and of course the whole week he hasn’t been able to read, watch TV or go on the computer.  His headache is only today starting to subside and he watched a bit of telly last night and tonight. 

He is now having a lot of trouble sleeping at night - at first we thought it was due to sleeping so much during the day, but then we realised he has had almost no sunlight for 5 days now!  No wonder his body clock is confused!

Photos above were taken about ten days ago (before all the dramas).  I had just gotten a haircut and wanted to take a few self-portraits with the tripod.  I kept having people wanting to get in on the photo shoot!  Love this family! 

Where’s Sam in these photos?  Where he always is - holed up in his room.  Teenagers…

You probably know that October is Breast Cancer month and that the last Monday in October is Pink Ribbon Day.  It was a great night, with nearly 150 people, and a few social photographers were there as well.  We ended up getting our photo in a local magazine called Canberra CityNews and they put a few pics up on Facebook.

I’m famous!

Small World Story:  I know that Fiona has been reading my blog for quite a while now and she even lives right here in Canberra, like me.  In fact, my son Jack used to see her for Speech Therapy about 6 years ago and after we had finished the sessions, she found my blog somehow and we’ve been saying hi to each other ever since.  She’s also come along to many of the markets that I have done around the place, so I’m really glad she won!

Speaking of Jack - he would love it if you would all visit his brand new blog:  Jack’s Lego and other stuff.  He is really excited that his mum FINALLY set one up for him.  Pester Power works, I guess.

He wrote a great post about these towers he drew in MS Paint.  Leave him a comment and you’ll make his day.  This is what he wrote on his Blogger profile page:   I’m in third grade. Love LEGO! And I’m the 2nd smartest in my class.

My blog birthday was actually yesterday but that pesky Blog Action Day got in the way again!   According to their website, there were 27,000 blog posts about Climate Change yesterday!  What an amazing job!  Love being a part of the blogging community.

Today, 4 years ago I started this blog and I’m still going strong.  I can actually say that I’ve been blogging since way before it was even a word.  Yes, I really am that cool.  Or maybe I’m just that old.  I remember when Blogger FIRST LAUNCHED.  I was one of the early sign-ups and I loved it.  Everyone did.   I had it hosted on my own site (you had the option of doing that back then) and I knew a revolution was on the way.  Before that, I had to write a freshly coded page (by hand, people!) and FTP it to my server each and every time I wrote a post.  Eh.  Back in my day and all that…

Anyway, enough about that - here’s something for you!  In honour of my blog birthday I would like to give away one of my bags to a lucky reader. This is a great bag - it holds everything and you can just sling it over your shoulder and go on your way.

I love my readers and I love getting comments, so bring it on.  Let’s see how many we can get here.  Just leave a comment on this post to go into the draw to win.

I would LOVE it if you would also post about this contest on your blog to spread the word.  Let me know if you do and I will give you another entry, so you can double your chances.  The competition will close on Sunday Tuesday night at midnight (Australian time, that’s +10 hours) and I will draw a random winner and post the name on Monday Wednesday.

You can see more of my bags (and zip purses, bracelets and art prints) at RED INSTEAD handmade and lucky you, there’s 20% off everything right now so even if you don’t win, you win!

Nearly 8,000 blogs have already signed up for Blog Action Day 2009.   If you looked at one blog every five seconds, it would take take over eleven hours to get through all the participants!

At the end of this year the United Nations is sponsoring a major summit on climate change where world leaders will gather and try to reach an international agreement on avoiding the worst consequences of the climate crisis.  The negotiations in Copenhagen will be the biggest and most important world gathering ever addressing climate change and is the culmination of a series of preparatory meetings over the past year held at locations around the world.  That’s why groups like the nonprofit organizations that have come together to form the (featured Blog Action Day partner) Tck Tck Tck campaign are pushing to express public support for an “ambitious, fair, and binding” agreement in Copenhagen.

Last week in New York world leaders spent one day at the United Nations General Assembly meeting talking about climate change and right now representatives are meeting in Bangkok trying to make progress on draft agreements and work out as many differences as possible before December.  Right now, as world leaders prepare for Copenhagen, is clearly a particularly important time for the people of the world to speak loudly about the need for lasting solutions to climate change. Of course, the bottom line is that when it comes to finding and implementing those solutions, the sooner the better.

So today I’d like to offer some links and resources where you can learn more about the upcoming negotiations in Copenhagen and events leading up to them:

•  Official UN climate change site
•  globalwarming.change.org the blog focusing on climate change from the folks running Blog Action Day
•  Tck Tck Tck campaign central site
•  Coverage from a civil society perspective on this week’s Bangkok climate negotiations
•  Recap of global action last week from avaaz.org members including a phone conversation with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown about Copenhagen

This post content taken from the Blog Action Day blog post about posting blog postson Blog Action Day.

 
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I’m sure he’s having the BEST FUN EVER but I miss him.   More than I thought I would.  I hope he’s warm enough.  They are doing all kinds of fun activities like archery, cooking their own dinner outside, rock climbing and probably the best activity of all - having a sleepover with 90 of your closest friends!  For the first time, the Year 3 - 6’s are all going to camp together (it’s a small school) and I say, good luck to the teachers! 

For a bit of light relief, here is Jack being silly. Yes, it’s another scrapbooking layout.  I swear I will get time to do more of these soon.  I did this over at Rebecca’s house on Sunday - we had such a great time hanging out and making art and I got to cuddle baby Ben lots.  Here, I present Jack’s BIG EYE: 

The journalling reads:  “Ever since the day you were born you have been doing your big eye, first by mistake and then (once you worked it out) as often as you could!”  And it’s true, he would be breastfeeding away as a newborn, and one eye would just open really big then back to normal then really big, over and over in rhythm with the sucking.  We didn’t know what it was but we were assured it was nothing, by people who didn’t really know what they were talking about, as it turns out. 

He worked out a long time ago that he could make it happen by sucking on a straw or sticking his tongue out, but we had no idea why this happens or what it is about.  He thinks it’s hilarious and we call it his “party trick”.   Every now and then we would get an eye doctor to have a look or tell a GP or some other medical person and they all dismissed it as nothing.  Then one day a few months ago, Jack was getting a few headaches so we called into a glasses shop for a quick checkup…

Jack looking like such a big dork - getting his eyes checked

So while we were there, I again told the story of “Jack’s big eye” and this time the young guy, triumphantly said Yes!  I know exactly what that is! and grabbed a huge big book and started flicking through the pages til he found what he was looking for.  I could not believe it when I saw pages and pages of kids with just the same thing as Jack!  There was even a name for it - Marcus Gunn Jaw Winking Syndrome.  It turns out that the nerve that should go to the jaw is miswired and instead goes to the eye so that a jaw movement will make the eyelid open and close.  I nearly fell over!  

It had only taken EIGHT YEARS to find this out!  Luckily it’s not a big deal and really nothing to worry about, but it’s so nice to have a name for it and know that there are other people with this same condition.

Did I mention I am missing him???

I bought a new banner for the market - thanks Vistaprint.  Very cheap and great quality - the postmark said it came from a printer in the Netherlands, and yet still way cheaper than I could get locally.  You can also see my friend Rebecca’s banner top right in the photo above. - we had asked to have our stalls next to one another, thinking we could chat the day away but we barely said two words to each other as it was just so busy! 

I ended up with a huge amount of space as Bek didn’t need much room - 4m wide I think.  My stall looks a bit spread out but it is better than being cramped!   Lots of room to move when it filled up with shoppers.

Bags and zip purses went well - lots more to make for the next market now!

These (above) are gift tags - punched scalloped circles with stamped messages on them (Hugs & Kisses, Love You, Wishing You Rainbows etc) then tied with white embroidery thread.  Would you believe I had some spare time and whipped these up at the last minute?  Almost literally. 

Button hairclips and button rings, button necklaces and crochet/yoyo/button brooches. 

Hard to photograph due to all the reflective cello packaging - handmade cards and prints. 

Postcards for my online shop - RED INSTEAD handmade, also from Vistaprint.  They really are cheap and once you buy one thing from them, they send you an email every five minutes telling you about this or that free offer and cheap as chips deal.  NAYY.

Since last weekend, and more particularly the lead up to it (all that sewing and making) I have been soooo lazy.  Every day after work and every night I just wanted to sit and watch TV or lay in a hot bath with a magazine.  By the end of the week, I wasn’t even up to reading the mags - just so worn out.  I gave myself until Friday to snap out of it and here I am…  I’ve almost finished tidying my studio up and I’m making a blog post at last!    

I have to get back to it soon though - the next Handmade market is on the 20th and 21st of November.  How many bags can I make in 9 weeks?

I’ve been busy, busy, busy.  Here are some handcrafted cards that will be debuting at the market this weekend:

above: cute birdies in trees, stamped and handcut elements

above: loveheart trees, stamped and handcut elements

above:  stamped Babushka, or Matryoshka family.  Hand-cut and hand-coloured with watercolours.

above: little Asian girls, stamped, handcut, features hand-coloured with watercolours, cheongsam handcut from special paper

above:  single Matryoshka dolls, handcut elements, scalloped circle raised with dimensional adhesive

above:  happy HELLO stamped cards, scalloped circle raised with dimensional adhesive

I’ve also been making a new shoulder bag - large and roomy enough to fit a stack of papers or folders for travel or commuting.   You could even use it as an stylish overnight or gym bag.

above:  large pink and green circles

above: pink and green swirls and floral elements

above:  pink and green circle cutouts

I am loving these and hope you do too!  If you are local, please come along to Handmade in Bloom and say hello!  I love to meet my blog readers.  If you are not able to make it to the market, you might be able to buy these at my Red Instead online store after the market.

Here are a few handbags that I have been making lately for the market…

Graphic typography in black, white and red.  Love this colour combo.

Owls and other feathered friends teamed with polka dots and ric rac - yummy!

One of Shannon’s origami cranes fabric (now out of print) with a bit of classy white ricrac.

Apples and Pears with pink check and of course, ric rac!

Floriade and Handmade in Bloom

To all of you in Canberra (or close to Canberra and up for a weekend away) both Floriade and even better, the next Handmade Market - Handmade in Bloom - are coming up very soon!

Of course, you must know that Floriade is Australia’s celebration of spring and the biggest flower festival in Australia, set in Canberra’s Commonwealth Park.  From Saturday 12th September to Sunday 11th October, you can see over one million  bulbs and annuals in a spectacular show of colour and festivities.

On Friday 11th and Saturday 12th of September, come along to see over 100 of Canberra’s best and brightest designers and makers at the region’s only handcrafted designer market. This time around,  Handmade in Bloom will be held at the brand new venue, Yarralumla Woolshed which is about 15 mins drive from Floriade.

Opening on Friday night for the first time, enjoy champagne and shopping at the Twilight Market from 6 - 9pm on Friday 11th September or come along on Saturday from 10am to 4pm. Saturday will showcase over 100+ retailers, and sees the launch of the new Fashion Walk (over 35 stalls just focusing on fashion). The food will be plentiful with the addition of EAT@Handmade, and there will also be a wine bar and plenty of seating. If that is not enough, there will also be a new “Chill Out Zone” - an outdoor lounge room!

It is a unique event to connect the makers of beautiful things to people who appreciate the quality, handcrafted and locally designed.  Free entry. No ATM facilities on site so bring your cash.  Just another reason to prove that Canberra’s Got Style.