Slowly getting it together

So here is a sample of the gifts I've finally starting making for Christmas....

Squirrel and acorn coaster

I am working from my lovely new book 'Super-Cute Felt' by Laura Howard of Lupin Handmade, who has a blog over at Bugs and Fishes.

Hedgehog phone cover

Still lots to do, and I haven't quite worked out what to do for the boys in the family...

Jess played an angel in her nativity play, which was really lovely.

Thankfully I'd managed to persuade her not to go in this rather fetching outfit she was sporting earlier in the week:

Mainly by turning her worn-out shoes into sparkly angel disco shoes! They just about lasted for the two performances; here they are looking slightly less fantastic, but still rather fun!

And the lovely sun-filled but frosty days we've had lately have returned to the more usual grey rain :-(

Luckily we made the most of this glorious morning to have a quick frolic on the beach before school started.

Slightly belatedly joining Fiona at Raindrops and Daisies for Green Day xx

Hello sunshine!

Hey there! Been a while, so sorry.... mostly we have been busy partying... 

Birthday flowers for me :-)

Birthday celebratory dinner at an excellent pub with most of the family in attendance 

(sadly no pictures yet of the Milly's Monster bash, but it was Berilliant!!!! - I was too busy to take pics, so I'm relying on sis-in-law's phone pics when she returns from Goa - no I'm not in the slightest bit jealous... 

Birthday girl being chomped by the Enormous Crococdile

enjoying the brief bursts of glorious sunshine between the grey rainy days... 

More birthday flowers! 

buying books (eek! - don't tell Jude!)... 

and watching the flowers grow :-)

Another lovely birthday gift for me and an early Christmas present bought for Tula peeking out on the left: slippers from Funky Feet

I've also been given a rather handsome stack of old magazines to snip up - yippee! At over three quid a pop, this is quite a haul! So that'll keep me and the girls busy for a bit....

and of course, it's nearly that time of year again....

Home again!

Slowly slowly we're getting back into the swing of things at home. We had a lovely time away staying with family, despite the girls' various ailments which all seemed to come at once and in quick succession over the Christmas break. Jude's mum said that her four were always ill during the holidays when she went home to visit her mum too. Nice to be back though. I appreciate our space when I see it with fresh eyes again. We enjoyed the last of Jude's holiday by going to the Eden Project today, which was a wonderful way to while away a ropey old grey blanket of a day. There was a storyteller in the Mediterranean biome wearing the most marvellous patchwork coat, telling an old Cornish story of Jack and a Giant called Burdock, which the girls enjoyed. Somehow it always feels as though you've been away in another world when you return to the misty Cornish country roads after a visit to Eden.

The fantastic storyteller in his patchwork coat

A gorgeously scented shrub - the fragrance wraps around you in the cold air - winter flowering Jasmine I think, but not sure.

I think this is the stump of a tree fern - I love the intricate pattern 

The dancers in the Mediterranean biome

 

 

I'm busy working on some new baby projects: a multi-coloured crochet blanket out of my stash of recycled yarn, and a patchwork quilt out of a pair of funky curtains I found in a charity shop in town. So far I've made up two squares just to test materials, but I may have to actually buy some co-ordinating fabric for once rather than just use random scraps. I think if you're using a very boldly patterned or coloured fabric throughout a quilt, it only really works with a set number of plain colours, or at most one equally vivid partner. So that may have to go back on the shelf for a while. As you can see in the pic, I'm pretty rubbish at getting my seams to match up neatly; I don't know whether it's me or my machine who is at fault - as I know little more than how to thread the thing & press the pedal - but my perfectionist side has to just take a break when I do something like this. Same with crochet: to get it done at all I have to accept the wonkiness and just take note of things to be improved upon next time. I can't be doing with unravelling and re-doing every single mistake - except for the size of the red/pink square on the second strip below, which I have now extended slightly to balance the squares up a little. The orange square next to it is overlong but I can't face unravelling that much! Baby won't mind.

Somehow my belly snuck into both pics...

On the plus side with the creative stuff, my homemade gifts were well received (now those I DID re-work to get absolutely right!) Here's a photo of Aunty Boo in her new head wrap thingy on Christmas Day.

And our few sunny days in winter always warrant a trip to a beach:

One of our gifts this year from Jude's mum was National Trust membership for a year, which is thrilling... when anything re-opens that is. 

Here's a random photo of an enormous tree in the grounds of Stroud's Stratford Park - sadly I don't know what breed of tree it is (though I could probably look it up)

And just by way of scale, here's a pic of Jude and the girls beneath it - I couldn't persuade Jude to climb it, sadly.

Happy New Year to you all x

And a Very Merry Christmas to You Too

Seems like a long time since I last wrote here as I haven't felt I've had much to say about anything, but as that feeling could end up carrying on indefinitely I decided to break the silence and dive right in....

We are heading inexorably into the festive season, which for me always brings a strange mix of heady childish glee coupled with an increasing sense of alienation from all the joyless hurrying hordes, shopping their little hearts out every weekend. Don't get me wrong, I've spent many a year scurrying along with the best of them, my hands twisted out of shape by the plastic strings of bulky carrier bag handles. The older I get however, the more I struggle with this rampant, ugly consumer frenzy.

http://joshybug.com/2011/11/22/tis-the-season

An example of this is last weekend when we all took the Park and Ride into Plymouth to do our Christmas shopping. On the return journey, I watched as every single passenger struggled on board the bus clutching armfuls of enormous packages, each in a separate plastic bag, as I sat with our total purchases that day contained in two small paper bags. At home I have a pile of plain white tissue paper with which I intend to wrap our presents, which will no doubt be decorated by me and the girls with painted snowflakes and glitter. I bought a pack of cards from Jess's nursery featuring a snowman she'd drawn herself, any more that I need I will make myself. I have made as many gifts as my new-found craftiness and six-month-pregnant-looking-after-two-little-ones state can manage.

By no means am I saying that I'm leading some single-handed crusade against consumerism, I know there are many others who feel the same way, I think it just hits me harder when I do venture out into the tide of humanity because living as we do without TV and in quite an isolated rural situation it is very easy to build your own little world without being constantly bombarded by the need for material things. What I find most frustrating about this whole season, apart from the sheer quantity of crap that is heading straight into landfill in a few days' time and the senseless, guilt-ridden pressure to buy crap for people who just don't need any more crap in their lives, is the almost complete lack of warmth in the whole process - which is what the whole festival should be about.

This is how I probably look when Christmas shopping

In the bleakest, most dismal part of the year, a festival of twinkly lights and fires and colour which brings everyone together in warmth, love and companionship to share food and gifts and have a laugh together is surely a quite brilliant idea. Instead it has devolved into a grotesque mockery of a party, where people feel pressured to spend money they don't have on all this stuff. We've lost all sight of what we should be enjoying most and I don't see any way out as long as people continue to let themselves be sold the idea of Christmas and Santa's bulging sack.

The girls and I were in a charity shop last week and the elderly lady behind the till loomed over Jess and yelled "Are you looking forward to Christmas dear? And what have you asked Father Christmas to get you this year?" to which Jess looked at me then back to the crazy lady completely dumbstruck. Not only does she not have a clue who Father Christmas is (am I a bad mum? She's only three) but she wouldn't have the faintest idea what to ask for anyway. All she absolutely totally needs is to watch her daily three episodes of Charlie and Lola on BBC iPlayer for her little world to be complete.

http://www.luxist.com/tag/illumination

Tra-la!

A finished project! Yay!

I'm really pleased with this little basket, it took a day to make from selecting the fabric to finished piece. Now I just have to decide who to give it to for Christmas! If I had planned everything properly I'd have made some pretty little soaps to put inside, but there you go.... looks like a visit to Lush is in order...

And here are a couple of pics of the process to show just how easy it was:

All the pieces cut out

Stitching the patchwork panels in a line to save thread!

We all had a lovely day out to the Eden Project on Sunday - well I say day, but we didn't get there until about 3pm so it was brief but lovely! They are offering Cornish and Devonian (?) residents annual membership for £5 which is fantastic so I'm looking forward to going back many times over the next year. It's really nice to be able to do things with the girls during the week when it's less crowded - it was packed on Sunday which was a shame as there were some great kids craft activities going on but there were too many people. And as it is one of my favourite places to go anyway, I don't need much excuse!

In the Mediterranean biome

And here's my next project to start:

It's going to be a patchwork cushion for my sister... yes, another Xmas present! I was quite happy with this layout until I started playing around with some bits of yellow and green silk to make it a bit more interesting, then realized I'd have to find something to stiffen the silk up with - interfacing maybe? - or it will drive me crazy sliding all over the place and I don't think it would work in conjunction with the sturdier pieces. So maybe I should just keep it simple.

Nice to be sewing again after so long!

Snowflakes & crochet

Been busy making these paper snowflakes: Mil's 2nd birthday is coming up and my idea is to hang these in her bedroom so that when she wakes up in the morning she sees them. They'll also double up as wrapping decorations for Christmas presents or just to hang up and look pretty! There's a great website which has some lovely designs and I was also inspired by How About Orange and her very pretty designs.

I'm getting a bit obsessed with them so I'm breaking off every now and then to work on a crochet box I've started (taken from Kirstie's Homemade Home); bit of a blurry pic, but you get the idea. This is the first 'proper' crochet project I've attempted apart from granny squares, so it's quite thrilling.... and I think I've finally got the hang of it now I've done the fourth side! The first three were all a bit wonky as I was just making it all over-complicated.... I had to borrow a book from the library to learn how to do the stitches properly, as lovely as Kirstie's book appears to be, it is very lacking in detail for a beginner.

Anyhow, that's on hold as I've run out of the wool I was using..... so I may have to finally start a fabric project, which I haven't been interested in doing for a while now. I thought I'd try this lovely tutorial by Ayumi from Pink Penguin which I bookmarked ages ago.

Generally I've been feeling much more positive since taking Bach Flower Remedies. Even after just a couple of days I felt more confident and calmer, quite amazing. The midwife was very reassuring when she visited and she also phoned to check on the progress with the doctor - none - which was kind of her. I rang the surgery and was told a doctor would call me back at some point that day, which he did, but I didn't manage to get to the phone in time.... he called back later that day and said he "didn't have time to deal with me as he was off to Cambodia for ten days" and that a colleague would call me back the next day - nice. As it happened, apparently she did try to call, but couldn't get through (?) and left no message so I had no idea she'd tried until the midwife told me. So, after wasting two days sitting by the phone waiting for a call I decided that it was just a waste of time.

All I had expected the doctor to offer was counselling or medication, neither of which I think would be particularly beneficial for how I've been feeling anyway. Aside from the rudeness of that first doctor who called, they are a pretty good bunch at the surgery but I do think I'm better just getting on with things as I am. At least I know that the midwife is understanding and she has offered to come and visit anytime I feel I need her to, which is really good, as I know how overworked they are.

As much as I hate feeling as shitty as I have been, I also think it's kind of healthy to go through this kind of thing: there are many shades of emotion in everyone after all, and what would be the point of forever being a sort of squishy pale pink? I'm not suggesting that it's a good idea to wallow forever in a pit of self-despair, but it is a part of who I am and it would be more unhealthy to just ignore it.

And here's a pic of my lovely smiling girl, who helps make my grey days feel much sunnier!