Wool on Sunday.

Joining in with Janine and Wool on Sunday. Janine’s post features a recent finish; a beautiful cabled jumper! 

Rainbow Hare Blog post

On our recent holiday, I was very restrained in my yarn purchases. I’d done a bit of a ‘stocktake’ of my yarn stash in the weeks before we went away and I’d decided that I needed to use a lot more of the yarns that I already had. 

So I admired the beautiful and expensive yarns in Ireland but bought none. I hadn’t even googled wool shops in London, but just near our hotel in Copenhagen there was a yarn shop. I walked past it a few times but didn’t venture inside. 

Then the day before we left the city, I did go into the shop. 

The photo shows a tiny part of the shop.

Ironically a lot of the yarns were from Ireland 😄. 

Eventually I chose this mohair...Canard does appear to be a Danish company so a good souvenir. 

It cost as much as my meal did the night before in a local cafe...😆 This yarn will look lovely in one of my chevron throws.

One of my friends in K4BN makes these gorgeous little knitted toys called Pookies. A number of years ago I wrote a post about these little ‘pocket pals’ 

here. This post also has a link to the pattern. My friend has made a Pookie for Carrie...

And then the lovely D offered to make Pookies for our other 4 granddaughters and even a Nonna Pookie for me 💕. 

D explained that all 6 Pookies have some mauve coloured yarn in them, so they are all linked together just like our family. Such a generous and caring friend. 

The kindness of others...

Firstly thank you for those caring messages on my last blog post which described how our 21 month old granddaughter went from healthy to fighting for her life in a short time frame. It is now one day short of a month that she was admitted to hospital and although still in Intensive Care, she has made so much progress. It is also one day short of 2 weeks since little Carrie had her left leg amputated above the knee. This was done as a last resort in the hope that, with the leg gone, the rest of her body would start to recover; there was just too much dead tissue in the leg. 

It was very confronting of course but I needed to be strong for my daughter and son in law. The kidneys are still not functioning and will have a permanent dialysis line put in in a procedure this week. This will mean that the little one can then go to a ward. The doctors are confident that kidney function will return to normal in a 6-8 week time frame. Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy and Music Therapy take up a big part of Miss C’s day and best of all is that she is eating and drinking. She wasn’t impressed when a therapist limited her food intake to 10 teaspoons at a time and demanded that her mother keep spooning out the yoghurt...to no ill effect thank goodness 😀. 

Because the life support machine ECMO has been known to cause brain damage, Carrie had an MRI on Friday and results were normal. Great jubilations! 

I mentioned the kindness of others...spiritually, so many people, many are strangers, have been praying for Carrie and her family, her parents’ workplaces have been very accomodating work wise, the daycare centre delivered 3 big bags of food, toys and books and are not charging fees. ( in Australia parents are mostly charged whether the children attend or not 🤨) 

To help with the day to day costs plus extras involved such as travelling to an from their home just to the north of Brisbane, mortgage etc, one of DD1’s friends started a Go Fund Me page. 

A quilt and a book were given to Carrie as a gift from Soroptimist International...beautiful. 

An Australian company which sells a range of sleep toys heard of Carrie’s plight and wrote a lovely message to DD1. 

Needless to say DD1 was very appreciative of the offer of an amputee sleep toy...
Carrie’s beloved ‘Raffy’ the Fox has been with her during this ordeal...there he is on her left side.

And now she also has Raffy the Fawn whose left arm is missing...

And there is a Canberra based group who make superhero capes for children in hospital Capes 4 Kids. I contacted them about their pattern thinking I would make one for Carrie and in the future make some for the charity...

So of course accepted the offer of a cape for Carrie...

As I said, the kindness of others is very humbling and uplifting at the same time. 

This has become my favourite photo. Carrie has been lifted from the bed, along with all the tubes and lines and placed on her mum in the armchair. Those cuddles are just so special. 💕💕

One of those bumpy patches in life.

I haven’t written a post for a while; the last ones were written using hotel wifi in Copenhagen, saved as drafts and then published when our 3 SIM cards worked in various Baltic ports. But those posts were just about Ireland and I fully intend to write posts about the rest of our holiday as they make a great record to look back on. We have been back at home for not quite 2 weeks 

and this post is about what has happened since we’ve been home. 

We arrived home on the Saturday night and on Sunday night DD1 let me know that her little girl had a cough and was coughing until she vomited. The little one was taken to the doctors on the Monday and she was diagnosed with a virus probably caused by teething. The doctor apparently wasn’t perturbed that C’s temperature was 39.9. DH and I visited them on Monday night and C was a bit grizzly and wouldn’t eat. But at 2am Monday morning she woke up crying and was inconsolable. 

Our son in law once again took her to the doctor and this time the appointment was with the family’s regular  GP who immediately diagnosed pneumonia and organised an ambulance to take C to their local hospital. This hospital confirmed the diagnosis of pneumonia and X-rays showed a partially collapsed lung with fluid. 

The local hospital did not have the paediatric specialists that were required so C was transported to the large children’s hospital here in Brisbane. On arrival she suffered cardiac arrest but was resuscitated. 

Within hours she was again heading towards cardiac arrest and the decision was made to connect her to a life support machine known as ECMO. This requires surgery to open the chest and connect the heart and lungs to the machine. This was to save her life. The medical team met with the family late Tuesday night to explain the procedures. 

That was then they broke the news to us that C had developed sepsis. Google it, it is scary. I was the only one in the family who knew about sepsis; my favourite nurse in Call the Midwife died from sepsis. In C’s case hers developed in the fluid in the lung. 

While the ECMO kept her alive, the doctors could concentrate on wiping out the sepsis and the little one was put into an induced coma. The particular bacterium causing the sepsis was identified and so they knew exactly what antibiotics to target the infection with. The sepsis has now been defeated and C came off life support on Sunday. 

It has been a nightmare as you can imagine. The family have all pulled together to help DD1 and her husband. 

The medical team are gradually changing the sedation ready to eventually bring her back to full consciousness. The sepsis damaged the circulation in her left leg, amongst other damage, and the doctors have warned the family that it is a 90% chance that C will lose the leg. We have an extremely long road to travel with our little girl and her poor parents. 

I took this photo yesterday when I was sitting with her. She is well covered up as she is on dialysis until her kidneys start to function again and apparently people get cold during dialysis. 

The staff asked my daughter to bring in loved items so the baby blankie that I made her last year when she was born, is folded ready for when she’s conscious. 

We’ve been encouraged from when she was in the induced coma to talk to her, sing to her, touch her and read to her. I do that each day. I’ve been telling her funny stories about her mummy when she was a little girl. After all, that’s what grandmas do 😉😍. 

And this was today’s photo. 


With the change in sedation, she had been opening her eyes and today she looked straight at me for a few seconds but I don’t think she really took in who I was. Poor little love. 😞

Our Ireland Tour; the Waterford Factory

We nearly missed out on our tour of the Waterford Crystal Factory when one of our tour members became lost while visiting the Blarney Castle which meant we were running a bit behind schedule.  Apparently the factory is very strict about group tours and time tabling leaves no room for negotiation. Luckily the lady was eventually found by a a fellow tour member who jogged around the area between the bus park and the castle. And Dave the driver pulled out all stops to get us there on time. 

While we had our introductory talk I noticed this crystal clock...

Pretty soon we moved into the factory...





We saw some glass blowing...

Then the next section...

The next section the pieces were being trimmed/beveled on machines...it is a very specialised skill...






We watched as this magnificent bowl’s edges were finished. 


This man was using a computer system in the finishing  department...




There was a display of special orders. Apparently the company always makes 2 of these special orders in case something goes wrong...they have a spare! 




Loved this one in particular 😀

The gift shop was full of beautiful crystal pieces but I resisted them all. Lol 😂 

Waterford Crystal has a history of over 200 years but during this time it was endured various highs and some extreme lows...even closing down at times or being in receivership. More information of its history here

Our Ireland Tour; Avoca Woollen Mill

We visited one of the oldest remaining woollen mills in Ireland. There are still some hand looms but also mechanised looms too. 

One of the non mechanised looms...






The mill buildings appear to be built from stone I thought they looked so quaint! ( I found myself using this adjective and picturesque so often during this tour 😀) 







It had a stream flowing through which possibly had been used to wash fleeces etc in the past. 

Pretty little culvert built from rocks too! 

The mill was set in lovely gardens too.

And from the extensive gift shop I bought a soft merino scarf for me and a few gifts for friends. 

The plan originally was to replace a very much loved wool and cashmere scarf that I had bought in Scotland in 2008. Despite caring for that scarf, it had become the victim of a moth or silverfish. Avoca Mill had cashmere scarves but the price started at €122 so it was amazing how quickly I changed my mind about buying such a scarf! The price of the merino was much more reasonable as you can imagine and it is actually as soft as my cashmere scarf. 

The items for sale in the gift shop such as mohair throws, woollen coats, hats, toys etc were all gorgeous but I left them for others to buy! Lol 😂