So the last post, two whole years ago, suggested I was battling with some medical issues.  Then things on here went quiet.  What I had not mentioned in that last post was the fact that I knew exactly why I was so ill.  I was pregnant and sadly my body was not coping well with that fact.  Issues continued in that pregnancy up to the day my daughter was finally delivered and so I had to quickly withdraw from accepting and documenting my work as I worked to complete what I had on my books already for my clients with significant medical issues.  But our child was fine.  Measuring a little small but not unexpected given my ex-dancer frame.  Or so we thought.

There are multiple ways to measure time.  The exact aspect of it or the things you go through in the space of that time.  A busy time goes faster, we all know that.  Suddenly and with no warning my waters broke at 30 weeks gestation.  Three hours of our child coping in utero suddenly became life or death.  A textbook pregnancy suddenly became a true emergency traditional c section with no consent forms and not waiting for consultants to answer bleeps as they were that worried that they had no time. The second she was born, it became increasingly clear that our daughter was and had been very unwell from the very beginning and had been significantly asymptomatic, a trait she has carried on to the current day.  Her first surgery was at around 10 hours old.  She was not expected to survive for the first two weeks of her life.  I could not hold her until she was almost three weeks old and even then only once or twice a week.  For the first time at 5 and a half months old we were able to disconnect her from the wall and take her to the hospital coffee shop.  First bath was at 6 months.  She didn’t come home until 6 and a half months and only with our house becoming full of medical equipment.

If this business was a larger one, things would have carried on regardless but as a small business with ever changing medical goalposts my only choice was to step back from the company for the foreseeable future.  I had no way to know what would land next and so could not guarantee fittings and deadlines.  Indeed due to the sudden nature of the birth I did not have the time or ability to post here what was occurring in my personal life.  But my daughter, Squid as she will henceforth be known here, is becoming more and more medically stable, more and more family and carers are now being trained to share in my daughter’s care and so my attention has started to turn back to this company.

This excites me.  Knowing what I have missed, the dancers I have not had the pleasure to continue to costume for, I am champing at the bit to get back.  And so to the future.  I am hopeful to start to work with both old and new clients this year and am planning to devote a proportion of this year to reach out to new dancers and dance schools.  I have always been able to sew more than tutus, previously making costumes for friends and family beyond tutus to character, national, Greek, modern, tap, acro, etc and I am hopeful to work with some talented dancers and dance schools this year to expand my portfolio of evidence in these costumes.  I am also looking to find a dance school to partner with this summer to create a portfolio of my work being danced in.  If you think this might be your dancer or dance school, get your teacher to drop me an email.  I am only planning to do it once in the foreseeable future.  I also still have a wide range of stock tutu sizes, mainly stretch, ready to sell, as well as a couple of men and boy’s tunics, and a couple of leotards.

So this year, expect things to slowly return to normal though I will be taking less work in line with the reduced hours I can currently reliably devote to this, my labour of love and longer to update this website.  Expect a number of UFO’s (un-finished objects) to be finished and then a number of new projects to be started.  And, very occasionally, a photo of the lovable rogue who has already taken all my future plans to the shredder!

From Sam (and the squid)