More Birthday Loveliness and Swaps too :-)

Another blog post that's taken a bit of doing! Still, here we are, so many lovely things to show you which only serve to remind me how fortunate I am.

First up - the lovely terri sent me a voucher to use with Socktopus and this is what I chose. From The Knittery, this yarn is a 20% cashmere, 20% nylon, and 60% merino blend, the colour is Passion Fruit. I already had skein of this stashed away and had been waiting for Alice to restock. I have PLANS for these two skeins!

My friend Yvonne made me this fabulous wall hanging. Yvonne's quilting skills never cease to amaze me, she is a very talented lady, and I love the attention to detail in this. Yvonne has a regular column called Wondering the Web in the British Patchwork and Quilting Magazine.

We have had a Spring Secret Santa Swap on CTNY recently and this was my wonderful gift from Farmgirl.

Isn't this a wonderful box.

Full of wonderful things :-)


And the yarn is Fyberspates - just lovely colours.

A simply stunning gift - thank you Farmgirl.

Normal service has been resumed! Well you haven't seen a FCS from me for some time now have you! This was part of Gilraen's present from me in the CTNY Spring Birthday Exchange. Knitted using Cashmere and Merino from The Knittery again, this one is # Water Lilies, and was bought from Socktopus at the I Knit London event last year. I used 5mm Pony Straight needles, and let me tell you this yarn is FAB!

And finally - as some of you are aware by now I am not feeling quite myself at the moment. Things are happening all round me over which I have no control, and this last weekend it's all caught up with me.

I WILL deal with it - but I hate uncertainty. I hinted a while ago at changes at work, but felt it inappropriate to share too much while the tender process was ongoing. However I now know that from July onward I will no longer be working for the NHS. Out of Hours provision was put out to tender last year and after one of the most drawn out and protracted processes it was finally announced last week that a Private Company had won the contract.

We have to wait until after May 14th to meet with our prospective new employers - cue more rumour mongering - but have been told the following :-

We can take our existing Terms and Conditions of service with us except for certain occupational pension rights.

When the transfer takes effect we will automatically become an employee of xxx and therefore our NHS service will stop.

We can’t take our pension with us, we could opt to freeze NHS pension/explore with new organisation how we can invest in their scheme.

I am currently liaising with the NHS pensions Agency. I am looking at all my options at the moment, including looking at other posts. Sadly opportunities for nurses with back problems are few and far between, but it will do me good to be "doing something" iyswim.

I don't feel at all sociable at the moment, so forgive me if I neglect blogland for a while. I really wanted to write this post though, because there are so many lovely people around who made sure I had a very special birthday and I wanted to show everyone just how lovely people are. My cyberfriends are just as real and important to me as "real" friends, indeed some of you have become "real" friends and your support and wise words recently have helped a great deal.

I will be back when I've sorted myself out.