It is now two weeks since I started Kelly's online course and I'm finding it hard to keep up but SO loving it! There are so many comments and what a wonderfully warm and supportive community. It is good to be united by a love of creativity with people from across the world. YAY!
Tonight I have just typed my letter of resignation to the surgery where I work as a practice nurse. I have been so stressed since a nurse left last November and wasn't replaced so I have decided to finally turn my back and go. I have been fair...I have given them till the end of August to find a replacement. I have SO enjoyed working there...it is such a pity no-one noticed how stressed I was despite how hard I tried to tell them.
Ah well.....it means that I shall finally make my living from craft work again. I have had plenty of practice in the past...the trouble is I am so much older now!
It is interesting...I was talking to friends recently about what I used to do and I surprised myself when I looked back on the little knitting business I had called Tiny Tiger. By the age of 30-something I had 40 out-workers making my designs. Tony and I sent our squeaky jumpers all around the world. I wrote four
squeaky children's 
books about Tiny Tige
r. Here is the first one
written in 1985ish. (MY!!! I have just seen the price they want for it!) I used to go to trade shows several times a year....Oh so many stories to tell there!In 1989 we could see the writing on the wall that there was a recession coming and I applied for nursing and was accepted as a mature student. I started training in 1990 after we sold the business.
Once I'd trained I wrote a book on salt dough
then took a city and guilds patchwork and quilting course. My next adventure was to write a book on glass painting
and then another on china painting
. There wasn't a plain bit of glass or china in my home! Here is another glass painting book
I wrote too. I was still nursing during this time too.I was invited to be a guest on Jane Asher's programme and to be an 'expert' on The Generation Game. How ridiclous! But it all added to a very exciting life.
Oh! I nearly forgot; I also wrote over 300 article for Popular Craft magazine and some for Popular Patchwork as well as childrens craft publications. I wrote on all types of crafts from cooking soda bread in terracotta pots to making barbeque sets from salt dough. It was a great time and we built a studio for me to work in. Sadly, within 6 months the magazine had folded and before that, the lovely girl Debbie Moss who was the editor until the previous year, took her own life. I was thrown into a deep depressin for two years and finally went back into nursing.
Now, life has come full circle, and I'm leavig the job I love due to stress but I know I can go back into crafts and share some of the many things I enjoy like making mini scrapbooks which I teach a couple of times a year at Belstead House. THE perfect retreat (I go there with patchwork friends for weekends filled with fun and laughter)
I think I am going to feel so much more energised when I have handed in that letter and get thinking about the future and the fun in store. Fingers crossed....
