Goodbye Dear Friend

A month ago today we in the Blogging Community lost a fellow blogger and for many of us, a friend too. I felt truly heartbroken the day I found out that Cathey had passed away. I started following Cathey's blog a few years ago and considered her one of my true blogging friends, despite having never met in person. I remember reading one of her posts where she was describing some 'strange' symptoms she had been experiencing. I was smiling to myself and saying to the screen 'you're pregnant Cathey!' Lo and behold, several months later, Junior arrived.

When I discovered that Cathey's latest battle with cancer wasn't going well, I felt, as I'm sure many of you did, totally helpless. I wanted to do something to let her know that, despite being hundreds of miles away, I was thinking of her and willing her to get better. I saw on her wish list that she wanted to stitch Brooke's Book Publishing 'Spring Baby'. I figured that with other things on her mind, she probably hadn't got around to stitching a baby sampler for Junior. So, having never stitched on perforated paper before, I ordered the kit and gave it a go. It took me several weeks as I wasn't really a fan of perforated paper (and I told Cathey as much when I wrote to her!) But finish it I did and got it sent off to Canada at the beginning of September. The post office assured me that it would only take 5 working days. After 2 weeks I emailed Cathey to see if my parcel had arrived yet. Unfortunately it hadn't. :0(. And unfortunately, that was the last email I received from Cathey. I naïvely hadn't realised how close the end was. In that email Cathey had told me that she was pretty much house-bound but wanted to know if I knew the gender of our new arrival as she wanted to buy him/her a gift. Doesn't that just sum Cathey up? I'm so upset with myself that I didn't pull my finger out and get the sampler finished weeks before. I just hope that it did eventually arrive and that Cathey knew how special I thought she was.

Anyway, here are some photos of the sampler. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, even though I  turned the air blue when I was stitching it. ;0) I told Cathey that despite extensive research (via Google!) I'm still not sure if Canadians write the date, day, month, year - as we do in the UK - or if they use the American format. Anyway, I erred on the side of caution and went with the American way.

Anyway, I'll leave it there. As the title suggests, Cathey - I will miss your blog posts, your emails, your updates about Junior, but most of all I will miss you.

I will be back soon with an update of the latest exchange I participated in (it was a good one!) and hopefully, news of our latest addition! I'm 4 days overdue and beginning to think it's NEVER going to happen!

Regards,

Christina