Work Madness

Well the working week is really in force with a vengeance. I have so many projects on the go at the moment that it is ridiculous, the first of which is a grant application to do with wound healing. This is of relevance to the medical community as many patients who undergo surgery end up struggling with non-healing wounds, and it costs over £1000m to the NHS each year to treat these patients. The aim of the grant is to investigate the factors involved in normal wound healing with the hope that it may identify potential new treatments for patients undergoing surgery. Let’s hope we get the money, as I heard today that a grant application I made in April wasn’t funded which is very disappointing. The next project I am currently doing is writing an application for a PhD studentship to do with research into non-malignant lesions in the breast and how they develop into breast cancer. Interestingly enough, this actually involves some similar factors to wound healing leading to the suggestion that ‘Cancers can be thought of as non-healing wounds’. Not sure I agree with that statement fully, but I can see where they are coming from. Other on-going projects are reviewing an article on wound healing for the journal ‘Molecular Medicine’, editing a review article written by a member of my research team, and finally I had a two hour meeting today to discuss the final experiments needed for another research paper detailing the discovery of a potential new drug. All this is on top of supervising my research team of 7 people…no rest for the wicked as they say! Alex has been hilarious these past few days and helped to keep me sane. His latest discovery is shouting, not because he is upset or even for attention, although he does try that sometimes, but simply for the joy of it! His repertoire of noises is increasing as well and some of them are so cute and funny that they completely crack me up. He is also trying to sit up and can balance with the help of his arms for a few seconds at a time now. My favourite thing is to try and get him to giggle. There was a time when the same things would make him laugh, but these days you have to do something new and it is often something very unexpected that results in a laugh. Tim was miming eating from a spoon to try and get Alex to eat some more and it completely cracked him up! He has also started to turn around in his bed…last night I went in to find him lying sideways across the cot (as in the photo above), and the night before Tim found him not only sideways, but lying on his tummy!
Despite being totally exhausted in the evenings I have been playing with some of my birthday presents. This set of ATCs was made using the resist technique, by stamping the Chinese writing stamp in versamark ink all over glossy paper, allowing it to dry and then washing across in Adirondack cranberry so that the writing shows through. This was then cut up into ATC sized cards. These were then edged with sparkly gold embossing powder, and the Chinese coin stamped and embossed in copper on it. They were then finished with the Japenese ‘stamp’ images, stamped in black on matt paper and then coloured in using Mica pigment powders with a waterbrush pen. This leaves the images all shimmery.
I have also made a set of ATCs based on the one made over the weekend with the Adirondack Lettuce washed over glossy paper in the background, then writing and postmarks stamped as a background with white and coloured leaves and flower HeroArts images stamped on top. I can’t decide what to call this set of ATCs, but they will be available for swapping.
Time to put Alex to bed, so more soon,
Love,
Caro
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