Bluesbaby ...

I'm still busy drawing hands ...but I'd totally forgotten that I'd also done these flyers for our dance club recently... thought I'd share them...

Signs of progress

Work in progress ... have several hundred to do! Crikey ... better get on with it then ...

Link love

A quick note to say thank you to Craig at Fishink for doing such a lovely feature on me last week ... (click banner image to go to article)


And to the lovely pattern fanatics at Paperbicycle who voted my Bristol Ships pattern as their winner for last month's pattern design contest... (click banner image to go to article)


Thank you!

More hands...

... and some faces ... and lots of references (yes, thats multiple pictures I've taken of my hands on the webcam...)...

Hands

Been drawing hands lately. Commission for a friend and want to do it well :)

What's the sign for "update"?

Sorry its been so quiet around here - we have been mega busy since we bought our house! Have a look at all the new house DIY posts over at my other blog.

Also, have been asked if I want to do some illustrations for a baby sign course run by a lady I met when I was pregnant with Little Wind. I've always been interested in the concept having seen friends communicationg with their toddlers pre-speech with it. Hope to one day be able to do the same for any kids we may have.

Anyways, here's some samples I did for her - not the best - but had to try and fit it in in between all the DIY!

Phew!

Oh my goodness ... my computer has been pretty dead for the last month or so. I've had internet access on the laptop - but its the desktop I use with Potatoshop etc so image handling has been non-existent.

ANYWAYS, in the mean time, the exciting news is WE ARE BUYING A HOUSE! .... infact, we are buying OUR house!!! Yes, after living here for 4 years we are going to transfer from being tenants - to being homeowners ... how exciting! To commemorate the occasion I am going to do a drawing of the house when we exchange/complete the purchase (should be in the next few weeks), but in the meantime, here is a drawing I did of it when we first moved here back in September 2007.

Cards

Have really gotten into the hand-made-cards-for-friends groove recently...

Looking for creativity

Well, its been 8 weeks since we lost Little Wind. How quickly time flies ... I could swear it was much slower when I was pregnant. Yesterday I spent the day making these two new-baby cards for the two new arrivals in our friends' circle. Felt good to be doing things with my hands again ... but also re-inforced the fact that we won't be getting any 'happy new baby' cards in July...


Also in April (since this is the blog where I was cataloging creative endevours), it was Sunshine's birthday and I made him some birthday bunting to go on his cake - which I also made (with the help of Sunshine's sister as I had never attempted making cake before); and we went for a vintage velo cycle ride here in Bristol on Bramble the tandem (see our photos here)... Bunny had to come with us too so I made him some vintage wear as well (tweed waistcoat and cravat!). I have a few more outfit ideas for Bunny - he's become a bit of a family mascot since we lost Little Wind - so more sewing is on the agenda for the summer. And hopefully a few more creative projects to blog about. And who knows, maybe even some illustration ...

He had such beautiful hands...

This morning, Sunshine and I attended a funeral. It was just us, the chaplain, and the funeral director. We were saying goodbye to our Little Wind.

Two weeks ago Sunshine wrote this to tell our friends the news:

He had such beautiful hands.

On Monday morning there were some complications with the pregnancy, and we had to go to the hospital. At around 2:45pm on Monday 7/3/2011 Mithi went into labour. At 22 weeks there is no chance of a baby surviving, he did not open his eyes, nor took a breath. We spent some time with Little Wind, to say goodbye. He had such beautiful hands, with long elegant fingers.

There were no signs of problems before Monday morning, and there was nothing that we or the doctors could do. The doctors and midwives at St Michaels in Bristol were fantastic.

It was the worst day of our lives, in the worst week of our lives. There are a lot of tears here.

Thank you to our many friends and family who are supporting us.
For Adam and Corrina, Mark and Nic, and our other friends who are expecting at the moment, we wish you all the best, really we do.
Lots of Love
Drew and Mithi

After the last post, I really wish I had something positive to write here. Life had indeed got a bit better over February. My sickness had settled down; we had our scan at 19 weeks and Little Wind was looking wonderful and healthy; I'd even had my folks visit for a couple of weeks - and bump had really started showing in those two weeks too. I had grand plans of how I was going to re-start posting here.

As you can imagine, those plans are on hold now for a bit while Sunshine and I try and get to grips with what has just happened to us. Sunshine has been my rock - despite having to deal with own grief, he has constantly been here for me. And so have all our friends and family - thank you everyone. And thank you to all those people who come and read my blog and join me on Planetmithi.

Reflecting on 2010

Gosh, has it really been 2 months since I posted last? I don't know how many of you are going to be reading this - you must all be bored of my absence by now and given up coming here. But I thought it would be good for me to explain my absence, and also do a bit of reflecting as we head into 2011...

I knew 2010 was going to be a tough year. It started off with us handing in all that we'd been up to in the first semester of my final year studying illustration. I'd worked really hard and was determined to concentrate wholly on my degree and nothing else this year. Unfortunately I wasn't really happy with the feedback I got from the tutors. I felt I hadn't quite achieved what I had wanted to and that made me quite sad. But I thought I still have another (my final) semester and I was going to pull myself up through it all.

I worked really hard that last semester - but it always felt a bit unsatisfactory. My coursemates were all jumping over personal hurdles, and I just felt stuck. I worked so hard I exhausted myself. Eventually, during Easter break, Sunshine took me away to Milan for a few days. We were one of the last planes out before all the airports were shut down due to the Icelandic volcano eruption. So although Milan was great, it took us three extra days to get back to the UK travelling over land and sea. Somehow I felt I never quite managed to catch up with work after that.

I wasn't particularly happy with my graduation grade; but I was too tired to care. We also had a really strong year so no matter how good you were, most people were ignored and the same handful of about 5 people kept getting all the interest from commisioners. Now don't get me worng - I'm not bitter ... those few people DID deserve to get all that interest. But having gone round lots of other shows I realised that most of our even mid-range students were more talented and creative than some of the best in the other colleges. Anyways, lots of other little things happened within college those last couple of months that left me quite disheartened by it all, and I didn't end my degree in a particularly happy place.

Summer I was determined to get my life back and reconnect with my Darling Sunshine who'd pretty much just seen the back of my head in front of a screen for the last year. It was a good summer. We didn't really go away anywhere, but bought a tandem and spent lots of time just cycling around and having quality time together. It was a wonderful few months.

As the new academic year 2010/2011 started in September/October; and Sunshine had to get back to his university lecturing job; I thought I'd take the time from then till the end of the year to re-do my portfolio and have a re-think about what actually I wanted to do with this illustration degree. I definitly wanted (and still do) want to become a freelance illustrator - but I needed to work out within what specialisms and whether I wanted to do stuff for myself (designer-maker) or commissions, or some combination of the two.

Then at the beginning of October we got the awful news about the death of our very good friend (and wedding photographer) Burning Dan. Within a day I also received some upsetting news about a family crisis too (which is still unresolved). I spend days crying as one thing would remind me of the other and it just spiralled. I tried to distract myself with illustrating - but was having real self-confidance issues and just couldn't bring myself to produce anything decent.

So there I am trying to keep it together, when we find out that I'm expecting! (bravo to you those that have read this far and managed to get the news!). We had been trying, but with all the rubbish news, it still took us a bit by surprise ... The hormonal imbalances meant that I lost all creativity and was just feeling tired all the time. Then at about 8 weeks the symptoms really hit and December was pretty much a washout with me having all-day sickness; Sunshine catching the flu; me catching it off him... etc etc. No cards or greetings for anyone.

We had the dating scan just before Christmas and got to see Little Wind for the first time. He/she seems to be doing well (despite momma being so ill). Started telling family over Christmas and friends just after that. Happy news all round.

Sunshine and I spend New Year's Eve at a dear friend's who looked after us very well and we vowed that 2011 was going to be a much better year than 2010. And with that thought we went to bed. On New Year's morning, just as we were getting up and having breakfast, I got a phone call from my Dad. "Happy New Year dad!".. "Mithi, are you alright?", "Yeeessss ....?", "You sure you're alright? I have some bad news ..." Oh dear! For a second there I thought it was to do with that unresolved family crisis from October ... but it turned out to be that one of my dear cousins, only 27, had died tragically in an accident the night before. I put the phone down and cried on Sunshine for a while. Is this how 2011 was going to start?

So, I have't been really 'here' physically or mentally. I've been meaning to blog since Christmas ... but its been one thing after another ... I haven't given up on PlanetMithi, but it will still be a bit quiet here for a while. I'm getting much better but the pregnancy symptoms seem to attack quite randomly at times so I'm not quite there yet. I'd love to start crafting for the baby and showing you all what I'm doing here - but I've been mostly just curled up in bed fighting fatigue and nausea and sadness. Writing this post has been my achievement for the day.

Thank you for reading this far - may you all have a Fabulous and crisis-free 2011!

Love
Mithi

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