Tuesday, September 30, 2008

In The Doldrums

Things at work since I went back after my op have been getting steadily worse again and this last week I've spent a lot of the time near to or in tears, and taken to having early nights as all I want to do is hide away and sleep, which I know for me is a sure sign I'm depressed again.
There were more redundancies at work last week and everyday we seem to hear more doom and gloom about the housing market etc, so everyone I work with is at rock bottom and the atmosphere is awful. I think my job is probably safe for a while due to my length of service, experience and qualifications, but dealing with the atmosphere on a daily basis is getting hard to bear. When you spend so much of your life at work it becomes impossible to turn off after work when things are so low whilst you're there and I have to admit that I'm really struggling. I'm trying to take it one day at a time but earlier today I was so close to handing in my notice and just throwing in the towel...
I have had one nice day though. At the weekend DH and I took Erin to Gulliver's World in Warrington which is a theme park for young children. Erin absolutely loves it there as she can go on the rides as many time as she wants. This time she was also tall enough to go on the three rides she's missed out on before, a roller coaster, a runaway mine train and the log flume, and loved them, especially when I got soaked through on the log flume lol. We had an absolutely wonderful day, the weather was gorgeous, the queues were short for the rides surprisingly and it was just so nice relaxing and being a family with no worries for a while. DH and I said we definitely need to get away for more days like that, as I felt like a weight had been lifted off me for a few hours.
Stitching wise I've nothing to show I'm afraid. I have done the stitching for the Just Nan Boo Tin, but have yet to pluck up the courage to attempt the finishing. I've done none besides that and to be honest the rotation has fallen by the wayside, so I've decided for now that when I do actually feel like stitching I'm just going to grab what's calling and see how it goes. It's typical that when I'm stressed or down I usually turn to my stitching, but at the moment I can't even be bothered with that.
Here's hoping I'll snap out of it in a few days.

Monday, September 22, 2008

How Does Your Monday Go?

I've got the usual Monday blues, not helped by still worrying about the Paypal fiasco. We managed to get all the cards stopped so now it's the waiting game while the new cards come through and we see if we will get the money back from Paypal. We have decided that if/when it is resolved, if we get our money back we are in future going to use an old bank account we have never got around to closing just for Paypal, and just keep a small amount in it for that purpose only, so this can never happen again. Thanks for all the messages I received, it makes me feel a bit better at least knowing people care.
Now onto what this blog is supposed to be about, stitching! Here are my HAED Alisha QS and the Papillon mystery How Does Your Garden Grow with Part 4 now complete. I've also done a little more on Cirque but want to wait til I finish the page til I take another pic.




The past couple of weeks I've carried on with my rotation but have missed quite a few nights of stitching which isn't good for my sanity lol. Anyway, I've finally finished the round and I'm pleased with what I've achieved, especially on HDYGG.
I've been wanting to start the SALexandre with Sally and we had planned to begin this month, but I couldn't help thinking that I shouldn't be starting another big project at the moment when I want to make more progress on my wips. So we've decided to put it on hold for now and we'll see how we're both set in another few months or so.
In the meantime I've decided to keep my slots in the rotation as they are, but rather than a set time on each project I'm just going to stitch on it for as long as I'm enjoying it. If it's one I'm not particularly enjoying I can move on, but have to have at least put in a few stitches. I'm hoping this way that I can make much more progress on my focus pieces, Cirque and HDYGG, and maybe even finish one of them before the end of the year so I can free up a slot, whilst still making some progress on my others and mostly not getting bored.
So it's back to slot 1 today, which is smalls, and I get a new start which I'm really excited about! With halloween coming up next month I couldn't resist the new Just Nan Boo Tin and Needlebook when they came out, and have been dying to start one of them since they arrived. I have plumped for the tin first and now have everything laid out at the side of me on the sofa for when Erin has gone to bed!
Hope you all have a good week. Thanks to all my readers and those who take the time to leave a comment. And welcome to my new commentors, it's lovely to see some new faces here. I've been very lax in reading and commenting on blogs this past couple of weeks, have just been finding it hard to settle, but I hope to rectify that soon.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Argh! Paypal Fraud!

Sorry for my screaming, but this afternoon has been a complete nightmare. This is nothing to do with stitching so please feel free to ignore my post, I just need to vent.
I got an email earlier from Paypal to confirm that a payment had been sent and my bank account debited.... Now only DH and I use the account so I wondered what DH had ordered. When I looked at the amount, $1,150.00! I knew immediately that it couldn't be DH, but by this time my bank account had already been debited with £659.57!
I then got an email from Paypal to say that they had flagged it up as a suspicious transaction and I immediately followed this up by reporting it as an unauthorised transaction, which will take 10 days to either resolve and for us to get our money back, or we're over £650 out of pocket.
Now I don't know how you girls that use Paypal use your account, but for ours when we buy something the money comes straight from our bank account, and if there is not enough money available it is charged to a backup credit card.
So we've had to ring our Bank and credit card companies to stop our bank and credit cards, and on doing so we found that someone had tried to charge £6,000.00 to our credit card as well! Thank god they had immediately flagged it up as suspicious and when we rang it was then rejected. It's going to be 7-10 days before we get new cards, so until then we can't get any money out or buy anything!
In the meantime our Paypal account has also been frozen and I don't want to give anymore bank/credit card details until I know if this is going to be resolved.
I feel totally sick to my stomach right now, can't stop crying and am really worried that we're not going to get the money back.
So another reason for my posting this is to ask if anyone can give us any advice to help stop this happening again. How do you use your Paypal account? Do you have a bank account registered as well as a credit card, or just a credit card? Do you use a separate card that has a small limit on it specially for things like Paypal and Ebay? Right now I just want to close the account I'm so worried and scared because I don't know what I'm supposed to do....

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Finishing Fun

Well, my first week back at work wasn't too bad thank goodness. I was a nervous wreck last Sunday and then Monday morning I felt physically sick, it was like being the new girl again! Anyway, once I'd been back a few hours I settled down and now it feels like I've never been away.
As it's DH's and my Wedding Anniversary on Wednesday I thought I'd better try to get Always & Forever finished finished this weekend to give to DH.
Now I've only made one flatfold before so was still quite nervous about doing this one. I had to choose backing fabric from my stash and didn't really have much choice of suitable pieces, but didn't have time to go shopping for something else. The finishing took less time than I expected and although it's not perfect I am pleased with the finished result on the whole. I have to say that flatfolds aren't my favourite finishing technique, can't quite seem to get on with them like I do with pinkeeps etc, but as an alternative to framing a smallish piece of stitching I think they're a great idea.

This week I've been working on Celtic Autumn for the first time in a LONG time lol. The pics are before and after so I'm pleased with the progress I've made this time around. The most recent pic is also a much better colour match to the real thing, the original pic was awful. I have Spring, Summer, Autumn and Xmas in my stash and would like to stitch them all eventually, so I figured it was time to give Autumn some regular attention so at least one of them might get finished one day. I'm not a great fan of beading so am trying to do it as I go along. I've tended to do a bit of stitching then add a few beads and so on and it's not too bad that way. She will be up again in my rotation in about a month so you'll be seeing more of her then.
Yesterday I stitched on Cirque and made good progress, but don't want to risk boring everyone with a pic showing just one day's stitching every week so think I'll probably post a pic every couple of weeks instead.
Next up in the Papillon mystery again for a couple of days. I'm hoping to finish Part 3 this time around!
Hope everyone is having a good weekend and all my fellow UK'ers aren't suffering too badly in all the rain we're having. It's sunny here right now but daren't put any laundry out as it's sure to be raining again before I know it.