“Week in Review” is a bit too dry, so I’m changing the name of these personal posts to “What I’ve Been Up To”.

Sadly, what I’ve been up to this week has been mostly pain.

Back in March, when I was 41 weeks pregnant, I woke up in the middle of the night in terrible pain. And it wasn’t labour. I was admitted to hospital and spent three days being filled with morphine before Willow was induced. I had an ultrasound that revealed I was full of gallstones, but everyone was more preoccupied with my pregnancy than my pain, especially when it completely disappeared again after the birth. (It wasn’t a pleasant labour – lots of people say gallstones are worse than childbirth, but I’m pretty sure that both at once is worse again!)

In hindsight I probably should have followed up on the gallstones, but they had stopped hurting, and I had a newborn baby to look after, and I spent the first couple of months wrestling with post-natal depression before seeking help, so it really slipped my mind until about 10 days ago, when I woke up in suspiciously similar pain. Uh oh.

It wasn’t so bad at first, but gradually the attacks became more painful and more frequent, and I nearly headed into A&E a couple of times. By the time I got to see my doctor on Monday I was very uncomfortable at all times, taking far too many painkillers, and having trouble with every day activities like carrying Wil around, not to mention sleeping very poorly.

I’ve now been referred to the hospital to have surgery to remove my gallbladder, but we don’t yet know how quickly that will happen, so I’m in management mode. Fortunately the ultra-low-fat diet I adopted a few days ago is helping a lot, and I have been prescribed some Serious Business painkillers to take when necessary, so I’m no longer panicking about how I’m going to get through the next little while, but I’m still quite tender.

Also, I miss chocolate – though marshmallows have no fat, and I am also very fond of them!

Willow in her “knobbles and stripes” ensemble, one of my favourites!

Today I did the big bathroom rearrangement, moving everything potentially harmful from the cupboards under the sink to the wall cabinet. Wil is getting very close to crawling so I’m working my way through the house dealing with the most obvious hazards; I don’t intend to go overboard and purchase every baby-proofing product on the market, but medicines and cleaning products have to go up high! I also have baby gates waiting in the garage to block off our offices, which are full of cords and sharp things and tiny objects on low shelves. It’s so exciting to think we will have a little mobile person soon! I wonder how mischievous she will be?

Eggplant! Cheese! Hot Dogs! Buses and Trains!

I’ve just added five new buttons and magnets to the site, three food buddies and two to show your public transport pride.

(Buttons are SO hard to photograph, the colours are full and smooth in real life. I must work out how to do a better job of capturing them!)

01) Dog Sculpture 2010 by Akane Takayama, a socially inclusive art installation event involving cardboard dogs. Wonderful. (via Dude Craft)

02) The horrors of long-distance flight, hilariously illustrated by Christoph Niemann.

03) Your regular dose of Zooborns, this time it’s a curious baby gorilla. Love that last photo!

04) Charming stop-motion plush lake/sea creature.

05) Patterns for Colouring – for when you just want to colour something in! (via Thunder Chunky)

06) Beautiful giant bubbles.

07) How steady must Dalton Ghetti’s hands be to make these sculptures out of pencil graphite?!

08) Giant (and I do mean giant) kitty couch.

09) My thoughts about bread crusts indeed.

10) Who would have thought that navy and salmon could be so pretty together?

Another fun, quick project! Last week I crocheted this amigurumi brain slug, as seen in Futurama, from a pattern by Alicia Ramirez of Hook and Needles.

Technical details of the yarn, hooks and my pattern changes on my Ravelry page

The Guinea Pig A-Go-Go sticker set features six guinea pig designs to stick about the place.

These little guys may be familiar to long-time Nut and Bee fans – of all the designs I’ve discontinued, I think they are the most requested for a reprint :)

I’ve decided I’m going to start releasing new designs individually as they are ready, instead of making a large monthly update. This way I can give each new item its own little spotlight, and given my current rate of production there will be a release about once a week.

The mailing list emails will now come out at the end of each month, and include a summary of everything new from the previous month, plus a special offer as usual :)

I think it’s fairly unlikely that I will be producing any one-off items in the near future, given the busy nature of my current schedule, but if I do I will give a heads-up here on the blog a day or two in advance so nobody interested is caught unawares.

(If this doesn’t work out I might go back to monthly updates, but I think it will help me with boring behind-the-scenes logistics and provide more regular fun for you as well – I hope the change won’t cause anyone distress!)

I made this photo of Señorita Beañorita the wallpaper for my iPad so I can see it over and over again. So much love.

The Plunket nurse gave us the go-ahead last week to try some solids, and Wil has really taken to them. The first few spoonfuls were confusing, but she got the hang of it very quickly and now gobbles up apple, potato and pumpkin purees, plus banana in her mesh feeder. We’re introducing new foods slowly, and I think kumara will be the next one.

Last weekend I cooked up five batches of baby food for her, which are now stored in our freezer in little ice-cube-blocks. It’s a very convenient system – I wish I could make 80 of my own lunches and microwave them up each day! (Actually I probably could if I picked the right foods… hmm, will think on this… I do like to cook, but during the day I’m juggling Wil and work and making a proper lunch is fairly low on my list of priorities.)

The weather continues to be chilly and wet, which suits me fine, and means I have fuzzy companions most of the day, though I feel sad for the local stray cat who is often huddling under the eaves of our house to keep dry. I put food out for him; I wish he would just move in already! We’ve already named him (Tanuki, due to his, er, assets, usually shortened to The Nook) so I think he’s obligated to accept our hospitality :)

While I am definitely a kawaii collector I’m not particularly methodical, or a completionist – I just pick up little bits here and there that tickle my fancy. I don’t tend to get uptight about rare or expensive items, after all, there’s lots of other cute fish in the sea. Sometimes I’ll put a little time into searching out something specific, but generally I pick and choose from what’s readily available.

With exceptions.

Years and years ago I came across a small, blurry photo of some stationery featuring a character that was simultaneously a monkey and a soba noodle. It was reportedly by San-X and definitely seemed like the kind of character they release but it wasn’t on their website, which is quite comprehensive, and I couldn’t find any additional information about it at all. Googling combinations of descriptive English words revealed nothing, and the picture wasn’t clear enough to identify any of the Japanese characters. (I can’t read Japanese but I’ve been known to consult charts by shape to try and figure out words!)

I began to think perhaps it wasn’t a San-X item after all, but even widening my search produced no results. Every now and then I’d run my searches again, try and think of some other places to look, but I never had any luck.

Then a couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a picture of a sheet of stickers on flickr. It was the noodle monkeys! And… could it be… they were for sale?!

The package arrived this morning and I am overjoyed! I still don’t know anything about the character, including its name, though it definitely is San-X and appears to be dated 1999. I’ve sent a scan over to the folks at Quirky who translate San-X character information, to see if they can help, but if there happen to be any Japanese speakers here other translations are also welcome.

Look at them! They are monkeys and also noodles! How brilliant is that!

(Does one of those illustrations show them… in a stomach? Man, I love San-X!)

One of my awesome stockists, The Green Apple, is considering licensing one of my designs to produce as a t-shirt.

They’ve narrowed their choice down to this shortlist of four options, and have asked me to run a little poll to see which would be most popular. Please take a moment to vote and let us know which design would be of most interest to you!

A little meerkat goes above and beyond in his duty to be a good lookout.

Available as an 8×10″ print!