At 9:34pm Monday 20 May 2019 my life changed forever in one heartbeat when I had a stroke. Apart from snippets I don’t remember much for the following couple of weeks, but the outcome was devastating. I lost the righthand vision in both eyes (hemianopia) and this has seriously affected my ability to read. As a result, I can no longer hold a driver’s license.
There have been several other issues but none as serious as the vision loss. To say my life has been turned upside-down is an understatement. On the upside I’ve lost a huge amount of weight and am now fitter than I’ve been for twenty years!
My career had been in construction and property development with projects ranging from bare land development to building multilevel apartments. At the time of the stroke, I had just completed a land subdivision and was selling the last three lots.
Things I’ve learnt over the past six years… ‘expect the unexpected’ and ‘make today a good day, as it may be my last’
And so, the story continues...
We’ve all heard of occupational therapy and my wife Caroline, and my doctor encouraged me to get out and find a venture that I could ‘get my teeth into’
With Caroline’s massive experience in knitwear to draw on it didn’t take too long to come up with the idea of making and selling specialized knitwear and from that the idea emerged to manufacture and see top quality knitwear for shoulders up
First steps
Caroline took over a bedroom and soon had it overflowing with knitting machines and dozens of coloured spools of yarn off different animals
I commandeered another room and soon had it full of camera equipment and lightboxes; the lounge became and photo studio
We called on family friends and even acquaintances to become models for our range
Meanwhile, with the help of a close friend I undertook the task of building the website, which turned out to be a massive undertaking for a novice with very limited reading ability, but perseverance paid off and it’s now before you…