Update

Well, I haven't posted for 3 months, been very busy, so now for an update.

We had to have Mollie put to sleep as she was having difficulty getting in the litter tray and wasn't eating very much, losing weight again, so we took her to the vet in Lutterworth. She said her time had definitely come, so I stayed with her. The vet put a cannula in and then the drug. She was gone instantly, obviously clinging onto life by a very thin thread. A shame, but we gave her an extra 18 months after her owner died, and although in the first few months she didn't seem to be really interested in whether she lived or died, she gradually settled in. After 6 months, she was part of the family, and was a stubborn old lady, very determined. We were sorry to lose her, but she was ready to go. Down to 8 cats now, very strange.

Eddie has been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Disease due to chronic diarrhoea. He has been with the PDSA for the last 3 months and they gave him 3 different antibiotics, steroids, worm tablets and said put him on chicken and fish. Nothing made any difference, so they eventually put him on a stronger dose of steroids. After a week on these, he was much better so they are keeping him on the steroids, just trying to get him onto as low a dose as possible.

We have been selling quite a few sewing machines through Sarah's website which is very good. Lots of hits from Google so we have to keep up the number of machines on the site. I did a Google search on vintage sewing machines for sale and Rowan Tree Studio came up third, which was very pleasing.

We put the Peugeot through it's MOT and it failed on a few monor things and we thought we got away with £220 including the cost of the MOT, but then we had to buy a headlight which was £190. Now last Saturday the clutch release bearing went. For a garage to do it would be about £450 which we don't have, so we got a brand new clutch kit from eBay for £60 and Phil is trying to fit it. It's a big job as the sub frame has to be dropped, the drive shafts come out and the gearbox dropped. I'm sure he can do it, but it is a worry as he has never done such a complicated job before. We have been calling in a few favours from friends for transport to Claybrooke Animal Feeds. We don'r need anything now for a couple of weeks, we can order from Tesco on Saturday or go in to Lutterworth on the Post Bus to get urgent food.

On a lighter note, we have both been going to the craft group at St. Mary's Church in Lutterworth. Phil has learnt to use a knitting loom and made Rowan a scarf, He has also learnt to crochet, which I would never have thought possible. I have just started using one of the knitting looms to make myself a scarf in a nice red pure wool which I bought to do some felted slippes and never made them.

We went down to Devon in August as Rowan was Carnival Princess in Hartland Carnival. I ended up having to dress her as Sarah was stewarding and Casie got caught up in the Carnival traffic and couldn't reach the house where we were waiting. She looked gorgeous in her long white dress and tiara.