Heat at last!

Well, we are finally warm again. The boiler is fixed and working properly which is a huge relief as I don’t get icicles on my fingers and toes when going into the kitchen to make a sandwich! Work has been busy again this week as I have finished the wound healing grant, and made significant progress on the breast cancer treatments grant. I only hope that one of these is funded as my research team is desperately short of money for all the chemicals, proteins etc that we use in the lab. Some of our research used to be funded by a Breast Cancer Support group who arranged coffee mornings etc to fundraise, sadly most of these women have now died of their disease and the group has disbanded so there is no more money forthcoming from that source for research. Having mostly finished these two grants I have been editing an article on the development of blood vessels on early cancer (pre-malignant and pre-invasive) which discusses the possibility of treating lesions before they get cancerous thus reducing the risk for patients with these early non-cancerous/benign lesions of developing full cancer. This is an interesting new idea in cancer research and I will be intrigued to see how it develops in the future.
One of my work colleagues, Marie, is going on maternity leave today, so instead of sitting through a lunchtime seminar at which I would have fallen asleep, I joined her and a large group of friends for a celebratory meal at the Hui Wei Chinese restaurant. This is the third time I have been to this restaurant and the food was again superb. This time I had ¼ crispy aromatic duck which was extremely yummy. I am still full now! We gave Marie a great send off and yet again everyone liked my card. This is only the second card of mine that work have really seen and so I may get requests to make some more which will be fun.
We had a lovely surprise yesterday as the family who owned the skip phoned us and have offered us some more things including a tricycle for a 1 year old and a push cart, as well as the most enormous playhouse, which will fit into the top right hand corner of our garden and will be great for Alex for next summer. Isn’t it wonderful how generous people are…as of yet we haven’t had to buy a single item of clothing or toy for Alex. Alex is still snuffly, but doesn’t seem quite as bad with his cold today which is nice. He has started to try and initiate games a lot more including noise games where he makes a noise and I copy it making him giggle. He has also started to clap my hand with one of his much to both of our amusement, although he is still some way off clapping his own hands. In the past week or so, he has started to really enjoy a much more developmentally challenging toy which is a cube that has things to rotate and move up and down and contains beads which make a noise when he shakes it. He can spend ages lying on his tummy playing with this happily as this picture shows (a very thoughtful expression!).
Craftwise, I am still working on Tim’s birthday card, and so there is nothing new to show you. It is coming on well, although I have found that the mica pigment powders can be a bit tricky to use. I have received some lovely ATCs over the past two days and this one from Linda Brunton is great. I just love the sheer number of elements in 'The Potting shed' as it is so true to many garden sheds...such a jumble of forks, spades, seeds, trowels etc.

Kath Wilson and myself made an agreement to swap some ATCs simply ages ago and we have finally got round to it this week. I love all three of these fabulous works of art which are so different from each other and show such attention to detail that is evident in all her craft work. These are cards to be taken out and admired again and again and treasured carefully. The metal leaves have been painted giving them a true Autumn feel that I love as Autumn is one of my favourite seasons. The second one has an acetate background that I am just longing to have a go at as it is so luxurious and sparkly with glitter. The let it snow one has a metal background that has been intricately embossed and them had snowflakes layered under the metal and embellishments on the top. Gorgeous. As a little treat she also very generously sent me some Christmas images and some stamped word art which I will have fun using at a later date.

More soon,

Love,

Caro

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