WIP-been crocheting

Last week Julia gave me a little present, this book. I have been trying to make the dress for Lucie. I am not very good at crochet though, I only learnt a few years ago, and have never really got going with it.

I am also very bad at following instructions, or indeed sticking to them, I have a rebellious nature, i can't help it.

So, anyone with half an eye for crochet will see I havent been following the pattern, but rather making it up as I go along. I did try, but I couldnt understand it, so I undid a lot, and have simplified it. I do one row of the holey pattern, followed by 2 rows of half double crochets. this gives me a repeat of 3 rows rather than the 9 they were suggesting. seems to have worked so far, but then I hit another problem. I ran out of yarn!

I am using Patons cotton rich in apple(I know the pic doesnt look like apple, but the light must have been bad), and I do have another ball of this SOMEWHERE?? I bought it from ebay and cant see any online today, so I need to extend my search of the house for it!

pretty

I found this lovely wrapping paper at paperchase. Look, it has pretty trees and owls and birds, I wish they did it as wallpaper, I would like to do a whole wall in it!

blackboard projects

A while back i saw this great idea for canvas squares painted in blackboard paint, so you can draw your own pictures for the walls and change them whenever you like.

Yesterday I painted 4 of these square mdf pictures I had hanging around (originally modern art things from ikea that i dont know why i bought) for my daughters room. look, we got pink blackboard paint, she approves.


after I had painted them there was paint left so I started looking for more things to paint.

like a half-wall in the playhouse outside. also a great success!!! I had to paint the rest of the insides of the playhouse white then, to brighten it up and make it pretty.



Now I got paint on my jeans and I think I am over my painting spree.

Mrs Noahs quilt-along

two posts in one evening, I can't remember the last time that happened!!

This week Duniris and I have just set up a new flickr group called Mrs Noahs Quilt-along. It is for people who have this book by Janet Bolton, or fancy getting it and doing some applique and mini-quilting. Also if you have any of her other books,or have been to workshops by Janet Bolton, or if you just like her work, please feel free to join our group, post any relevant pics, and tell us what you are up to. We would love to see you!!

You can get the book on Amazon or sometimes on ebay shops, and it comes with fabric pieces that you can just applique your own fabric scraps straight onto. I finished my quilt a bit back, and have begun another one called my grandmothers patchwork quilt.

They are easy to pick up and set down when you get interrupted by small children (just my experience!!) and are great for summer as you can take a couple of squares and scraps of fabric virtually anywhere, a needle, some thread, just slip it in your bag!! Come on, you know you want to - join in!!!

fab retro pinny and bangs

Hmm, I never look good in photos, or at least I never look like I think I look in my head, maybe this is as good as I get in real life!!

anyway, I wanted to show off this fantastic pinny that Anamama thrifted for me and gave me as part of an easter gift. Isn't it beautiful? I love it as a piece of clothing, but dont know if I quite have the gall to go out about town in it, I think the old ladies in town might give me some hard stares! I would like to alter it maybe to turn it into something i could wear, I will have to have a think. (any ideas???).

Here's a close up of the pinny fabric, it is black when its out of the sunshine.


Hey, I have a new haircut too, I have a fringe (or bangs, and isn't bangs just such a great word?)), though it is clipped up in this photo. Its the first fringe in 14 years, and not without good reason as it is very unruly and I either have to use straighteners or clip it back, or it ends up going like this:


uh-oh!

...anyone else having flashbacks to those fringe trims that your Mum used to give you that always ended up being a bit short as you wouldnt sit still to let her cut it level, so she had to cut a bit more and a bit more, and it was wet, and when it dried it was so high above your eyebrows....

Oh, and contrary to the first pic I do have feet, just my trousers are long and my feet are bare , and yes that is yesterdays washing still on my line!

birds nest and cake time again!

Last night I was tidying my house like mad in an attempt to make it visitor-worthy. In among the general house debris that builds up, I found this bird that I made last year, crocheted out of fabric, but what struck me was that my bird had found herself a nest!

She was sitting in another crochet project, this time made out of crocheted plastic bags. It will one day become a bag like this one by my Sister-in-law, or I was thinking, perhaps a funky waste basket. So far though, it is only about 5 inches high, and waiting for me to cut, tie and ball up more plastic bags ready to crochet.

For now, it makes an ideal, colour co-ordinated nest though, dont you think???

All my tidying was in preparation for our 3rd Cake day, this time at my house. As hostess I didn't have to make a cake, but I did make lunch; lots of cheeses, biscuits, salad, fruit and other nibbles. There were 5 of us today, and 4 children. We had a lovely day as the sun came out and we spent nearly all day out in the garden while the children played around us and we chatted, drank tea and nibbled cake.

Today we had Banana cake, Orange and Lemon cake, Wheat-free Chocolate cake and Coffee and Walnut cake. Yum.


click on the pic to see it bigger.

Two shoes, New shoes

bright shiny blue shoes!!


We have been shoe shopping today, and got these lovely shoes. I had some dilemma about which colour to get, I am always naturally drawn to red, but these are such a pretty blue, and Lucie liked them, so I plumped for these. I haven't ruled out running back and getting the red ones too!!!

As we left the shop I remembered a book we have by Shirley Hughes that both I and the children love. I searched high and low for it, and found it where I expected - under the bed!


Recently several people have mentioned that my children look like they are from Shirley Hughes books, I like that, they are happy and free to play and be creative and look a little messy in the process if they like!

T-day!

Friday was T-day! I went over to my friend Julias house and we had tea (and later coffee - is that allowed?!) and biscuits. She has much prettier teacups than me, more photogenic! Oh and has anyone seen my saucers, as they are not in my cupboard, not one of them. Anyway, we drank some of the tea Bonny from Canada sent to me in her swap parcel, I just realised I only put photos on flickr and didn't show on here (I think I was saving it for now). She sent me loads of goodies anyway, have a look.



And this is what I sent to my partner Suzi of justbeyou.


It was lovely to have a mini tea party and to know that internet friends were sharing teatime too!

braved using my cronky sewing machine

and made a dolly sized quilt. My sewing machine really needs looking at, its not very well, poor thing, though it was behaving well enough last night to let me make this. I was aiming for log cabin, I haven't tried it before, I dont have much patchwork experience really, only the odd bit of simple stuff. I dont know whether this is log cabin as it is a bit symmetrical, so it might be called something else. anyway, it started and finished in one night, and is a big hit with my littlest in particular.


So much so that I found her in the toy cot with dolly and playing like this. Though if I think about it now I understand why, we let our kids sleep in with us and havent used a crib since Esme was born, so thats just what mummys do!!

a slight pause

I seem to have taken an unannounced break this last week or so, what with Easter holidays, visiting and being visited, and child sickness (yes, all of them in turn). normal blogging should resume within the next week, see you then!

a proper spring day

Today we went to the beach for the first time this year. it was so mild we didnt even have to wear the extra jumpers I had taken along with us. The children scrambled over the rocks and looked for shells and crabs(finding 5 and none respectively). After, we played in the country park and the children found yellow butterflies and daisies and other wild flowers. what a lovely way to spend the first day of our Easter holidays.


and on the way home, we saw Scooby Doos van!!

Happy Birthday Mum!

Today is my Mums 60th Birthday, so happy birthday Mum! Here are a couple of pictures of her and me when we were both a bit younger.

one last time

Here is a bit of my finished blossom branches (blogged for the last time I assure you!), sorry about the fuzzyish photo, the light is not good in my dining room, and it is actually in my window but those photos didnt work at all.

When I went out to collect branches from my usual place and trees, the pussy willow, which is usually not out at all at this time of year, looked like this:


So I had to rethink, as it was so far on and all full of pollen. I found some other branchy tree, but on pulling down a high branch I discovered it had thorns (ouch). So I had to snip off all the prickles. I am happy with it now though, and along with the fine weather we have been having it makes everything feel like springtime has arrived.

spinning it out

oops, so we havent got round to getting twigs yet, but i thought you might like to see how pretty the white blossom looks in its bowl, nevertheless.


Busy doing nothing today, or so it has felt. We went to ikea for lunch, I bought a new muffin tin and some washing-up brushes, oh and a new smoke alarm, and thats about it. They had nothing Easter-y in, which was disappointing. We ate our lunch on a table next to a new mum who talked loudly and incessantly to her baby in high pitched motherese, completely driving me crazy, was I ever annoying like that? no im sure I didn't gush at my babies in public.

I have just been bought a cup of tea, it is green tea with mint, and is a different brand I am trying. This brand reminds me of my Grandads house, and I haven't been able to think quite why, it has a smell that haven't been able to place, until just now. It smells of fresh mint as you chop it to make mint sauce to accompany Roast Lamb sunday dinner. Rather disconcerting considering I have been vegetarian for 18 years, but funny how smells and tastes stick in our minds over time.


Today I got this cute (and big) postcard through the post from Megan of Beetlegrass. It really is sweet, Red Riding Hood looks rather worried, like she knows what might be about to happen to her. I love the toadstools, and her knobbly knees! You should go and check out all the finger puppets she has been making recently, I love all the googly eyes on Mcfly, Thanks again Megan!!

spring blossoms

For the last week I have been trying to work out how to make the paper blossoms that I remembered from spring last year. They were from Martha Stewart Living last April, but I did not have the magazine, and on the rejigged Martha website there is only half the instructions. So all I had to go on were these (great) flickr pics.

I was stuck on how to make a 5 petal flower out of a square piece of paper with 4 corners. However, the internet has the answer to everything and I found this great site that had a pentagon fold. Then there was no stopping me! I fixed the flowers to my fabric wrapped tree with a little wire and a shirt button.


So there we have it, the winter tree has blossomed. And I love making these simple flowers, tonight I made a whole load more to do some branches like the original Martha Stewart idea on twigs. They are looking gorgeous in a little bowl now and I hardly want to disturb them.

Tomorrow I am sure the children will love to go out searching for sticks, and then they can help me fix the blossoms on, watch this space!

want to see my odd sock collection?

Confession time. The odd sock situation in our house has been spiralling out of control, so I bravely decided to tackle the heap of socks that was overflowing its basket and taking over my bathroom floor. I emptied the pile onto my bed to search for pairs.


This took some time.

ok now, how many odd socks can one family have? Well, there weren't many grown-up socks so I took them out, as there wasn't enough space on our (5 foot wide!) bed. After matching 43 pairs of kids socks, all that was left was these few...


132 odd socks!!!!

I have thrown out all the hopeless causes and saved only the few socks I think might have friends lurking under bed edges, in the bottom of the laundry and places like that. I have hidden them in the bottom of this basket, with the pairs rolled together on top.


ssshh, don't tell anyone, this can be our little secret.

the new girl

There has been a new girl round these parts! She has been finished for a week but Blogger has not let me post her picture until today. I made her for a friend and she has left now to go to her new home.


She is pretty similar to Bea, in fact I think they are cousins. She has lovely stripey hair and turquoise legs, and a skirt made out of Amy Butler fabric. I have been making her for ages, I am not very good at doing something twice so I must apologise for her taking me so long to finish!!


Glad shes done, she turned out ok I think, and now I can get back to the 3 different spring baby tops for Lucie I have on the go, oh and to try and find somewhere where I can get my sewing machine serviced, or I will be doing them by hand!

problems with Blogger

thats what I have got!

it looks like lots of Mac users are having blogger issues the last few days, as Blogger is not uploading pics for us.

so please excuse the temporary blip in posting while we wait for them to fix it.

3 days I have been trying to post - uurgh!!

look what came in the post!

Chocolate!!


As modelled by the most fantastically strawberry scented dolly borrowed from my daughter for the photo, she was sitting on the windowsill and every time i see her I have to pick her up and sniff, she smells great. She loves chocolate too, she even has a chocolate scented dog!

The chocolate has come from Maria, also in the UK, for the latest round of Candyswappers. Thankyou Maria!!! Lots of yummy goodness from Thorntons, you might be able to tell I have already eaten the littlest bar!! She is way ahead of me, as I am usually a posting-on-the-deadline girl and havent sent out my parcel yet, but be patient dear Maria, it will be on its way this week!
It is so great that Candyswappers is up and running again, as this is the first swap since autumn, and now with a new co-ordinator Amber.

We also got a new toy at the weekend, and, as Hubby has pointed out, it doubles as a mirror too look.

St Davids day and a blog birthday!!

I have put this on here largely because today I went to visit my friend Julia and we were talking about putting photos on blogs that our kids will hate us for when they are older, this one surely fits into that category. oh yes, and its St Davids day, so lots of welsh celebrations going on.

back to my day,one spent sitting and chatting, and I helped unpack and set up Julias new sewing machine, as she doesnt like instruction manuals!! We ate a large amount of Welsh Cakes and Bara Brith, yummy!! and she cooked me and Lucie the most fantastic pancakes for lunch. While there we were talking about how it must be nearly a year since I started my blog, and I just looked, and it is exactly a year! strange huh??!! I have never kept a diary consistantly for this long so I feel this is quite an achievement, and it is interesting to look back on this time last year and what was going on.

So, Happy Birthday Blog!!


I couldnt resist this beautiful heather picked from Julias garden as I left there today, don't worry, I did ask first if I could have some!! It is such pretty colours, and I bought 2 jumpers in the sales today, also in shades of purple and deep pink. Then I noticed Lucie was wearing Lilac, she is the blur in the background, I am definitely going through a purple phase right now.