Nine things

The week that was; the week that will be...

Eleanor Grosh's 'Zoo Menagerie' fabric, found here

1. We went to the zoo. Oh my. It was fab-u-lous. Purely through luck, we picked the only dry day amongst days of wind and rain. The boys, especially the Little One, loved it. The animals were just awe inspiring. There were a few uncomfortable moments when we thought they'd be happier free. But they'd also be less safe too, which is why the zoo's there in the first place. I can't recommend the zoo highly enough: Chester Zoo. Go!
2. It has been rainy, grey, and on occasion seriously windy, for weeks now. We've done some puddle-splashing and some indoor playing, but our patience is wearing thin.
3. I feel like I've been getting my mojo back again after a bit of a wobble.
4. It is my lovely husband's birthday this week. I have lots of plans, but none sewn - he likes things sewn for the house, but not for him (grrr!). House presents seem more of a joint present, so I will instead put my making energies into the baking realm. Probably also a bit of a joint gift!
5. My ironing pile can no longer be called such. Even 'mountain' is a bit of an underestimation. I should feel stressed about it, but I know it's been caused by too much sewing and I can't seem to find any guilt hanging around. Just glee!
6. I have sewn a mobile for a friend's boy that my last-year self would have given, but now it just looks too amateurish. Really not happy with it. I've given an apology, promised a late birthday present, and tonight I am going to attack it with the seam-ripper and start again.
7. I have quite a few baking plans on the rise in my mind. Watch this space.
8. I've only got about a month until the Little One's birthday, so I think it's time to start quilt planning again.
9. Now the day is calling me - a rare day of sunshine and just the barest of chills. I have a rosemary bush waiting to be planted, a honeysuckle to wind round a spiral staircase, and yet more grass invading the flower beds. So goodbye for now!

First non-commission commissions!

When's a commission not a commission? I suppose by its nature it must be remunerated. So let's call these requests instead!

Firstly, my brother needed a plastic bag storage solution for himself at home, and two for school (he's a nursery nurse, or whatever you call them these days). Ta-dah!...

Plastic bag organisers. It's basically a vertical windtunnel of fabric, gathered very slightly at the top with a ribbon or cord for hanging, and gathered a lot more at the bottom with an elastic ankle to it. Scrunch up your plastic bags, pop them in the top, stuff it up with more, and pull a new one out the bottom whenever you need it. My mum made a similar one donkey's years ago and this is my remembered attempt to duplicate it.

Okay, they're not very glamorous. But they are so useful. I'll be making two for myself when I get round to it - one for supermarket plastic bags and a narrower one for the clear plastic fruit/veg bags that we reuse for all sorts. Yet another thing to go on the 'to sew' list!

Request number two: The Big One needed a drawstring bag for his sports kit. It had to involve blue, not be 'showy', and I had to not mind that it's going to get beaten up, messed up and torn up in no time. Ta-dah!...

I'm pretty impressed to say I made it from two cut-up pillowcases. Impressed because it was therefore free (minus the thread and electricity) and seemed quite inventive to me at the time (my small world!). The bulk of the bag is a pillowcase cut in half down the middle, sewn up again and with a drawstring tunnel at the top. The drawstring came from the second pillowcase, cut all along its length and folded to make four layers of fabric (anticipating teenage brutality). When you knock something up from over-washed old pillowcases I don't think you mind as much that it's not going to be treated with tenderness.

I hope to start a sewing business one day (not a big surprise!). Step one: make stuff for free - it encourages me to be inventive and creative, to solve problems and try out new things before asking anyone to pay for what are, essentially, amateur first attempts. Step two: get your wallets out!

A reel happy ending

You may think this is an uneventful, uninteresting picture. From your point of view, you'd probably be right! But this is the first spool of thread that I've ever got to the end of. And it feels sort of monumental (if any monumental thing can ever be a 'sort of').

Suddenly I feel like a real sewist. I feel like I have experience behind me. I feel like I've gone from novice to beginner. Okay, beginner's still a long way from experienced, but it's also a good leap on from novice.

I have an idea about what tension is (tension to a sewist is like the offside rule to a football/soccer fan). I can make a guesstimate about appropriate needle size (though I've only just learnt about it). I know what a fat quarter is. I could manage a couple of different seam finishes. I've sewn a buttonhole, though not yet a zip. I've sewn a quilt, I've made toys and mobiles, I've made cushions, and - oh! - so many bags. My fabric stash is toppling over, my sewing books are multiplying, my sewing machine's always out and waiting.

A page has turned, and the story's afoot.

And an echo from Easter

Has it been and gone already? Easter was over in a flash. I had so many ideas that stayed in my mind's eye and made it no further. Decided not to beat myself up over it - no one knew, no one minded. Rather than let them disappear, I have postponed. This Easter was a little underwhelming, but sort of lovely in its simplicity and ease.

This year...

• Friends visited. Lovely, old friends. We caught up, shared surprise at rapidly ageing children, and dished out Easter eggs.
• I made an Easter cake - Nigella's Easter Egg Cake from 'Feast' (sorry, can't find an online link). My boys and my friend's boys planted the eggs in it. It was good. But rich. Too rich really - will probably make a more child-friendly chocolate offering next year.
• I made bread. Somehow it seemed Easterly appropriate. Something about the yeast I imagine.
• We bought the children Easter gifts rather than chocolate. They get enough from elsewhere. The gifts came in egg packaging - how cool are these?!

Next year...

• I'll make the felt bunnies and chicks that I bought felt for (it's still sat there staring at me), and garland some too.
• There will be egg decorating, and French toasting with the blow-out.
• I bought the ingredients to make my own hot cross buns this year (made them last year - worth it for the annual smug joy). Made none! Next year then.
• And there will be more Easter eating. The boys will be the right age for nest cakes. And those cheap (boom, boom) fluffy chicks on everything.
• I didn't get round to the Easter tree this year (it must be two years since I made one) - it required a walk with secateurs to find good shaped/sized budded twigs (but it kept raining). And me digging out the little pastel-coloured wooden eggs (but I know the Little One can't leave them alone). Next year!

I quite like this 'if I don't do it now, I'll do it someday' vibe.

An echo from mother's day

It was Mother's Day quite a while ago, wasn't it? But I have been waiting for a photo to tell you a few things about the present I made my mother, and the presents she gave me.

This is the bag I made her. We chose the fabric together, but she didn't know my plans for it. Then, when she and my dad went for an hour's walk, I quickly made her a new peg bag (hers is broken). She was pretty chuffed! It's the sort of thing we both love but some people wouldn't consider much of a gift. We're not 'some people'! Here it is hanging in her garden, pegs on board (and yes, if I make another I'll make the hole more oval and higher up).

The presents she gave me? I'd need the space of a book, really. But here are a few that come to mind:

• When we were little, she made us feel she lived for us. We didn't do enough to help her, because she didn't ask. She always gave of herself, found it hard to say no, made our home a place to be safe and happy and crazy in.
• She taught me the best things a mother can be: she was loving, giving, and most of all she took the time to listen to and be with us. She made us feel big and important. All the lessons I learnt from her, I try to live in my motherhood.
• She was my domestic goddess. She sewed our clothes, baked, made chutneys and jams, grew flowers in the garden and cut them for the table, helped us dress up as Victorians (me) and wizards (my brothers). The older I get, the more I find myself either inadvertently or intentionally turning into her. I quite like it.
• Her house is always haphazard but somehow so lovely that it belongs in the pages of Country Living. She dresses like she threw it together but it belongs in a fancy, yummy mummy catalogue. You should see all the necklaces and dresses she has. It's lovely to know your mum is stylish without meaning to be; happy and glorious. I don't think she'll ever look old (And yes mum, I'll tell the world that you've been mistaken for my sister before. But I maintain that it's because I look haggard and old as well as you looking sprightly and young. Wink).
• Everybody loves her. Everyone wants to be her friend. Everyone goes to her with their problems. Everyone uses her shoulder to cry on. Everyone invites her to their parties. I don't think I have any of these gifts naturally but I try to learn from her all the time - to be more selfless, to be a better friend, to be an optimist.
• Family is her everything. She looks so happy when we are all there together, eating the feast she has made, all cheerfully ribbing each other and settling into old ways. She makes me feel that she always has time and space for me, that my children light up her life, that she would come to my aid at the drop of the hat. And she has. No more so than in the last year. I know so many people who need their families but their calls aren't answered. I know how lucky I am.
• When I finally told her, still only on the cusp of adulthood, that I was to be a mother myself and I was alone, she didn't judge and she wasn't angry. She held my hand all through it. She was the template for motherhood that I lived with every day that I made my own motherhood picture. She was the echo of how to love your little ones, how to enjoy them, how to trust in yourself as a mother. When I showed her the mother I could be, the mother she hoped I was but didn't know was there, I hope she knew that I was the reinvention of her.
• Yes I have learnt motherhood from other sources. There have been other ideas, other ways of doing things. But these are like learning the spelling of a new word, or reading a new piece of prose. She was the Dictionary, the works of Shakespeare, the library. She was the language I spoke, the poems I sang, the stories I retold.
• I don't say thank you to her enough. I am saying thank you a lot here, and still it is not enough. I hope she reads it. x

Nine things

The week that was; the week that will be...

Forest Floor fabric by Central Park, found here at Fabric Rehab

1. The Tiny One is coming on in leaps and bounds, quite literally. In the past few weeks, he has learnt to walk along holding onto his ride-on car, to turn it round a corner, to sit on it and push himself along - and backwards, climb the stairs, get down the stairs, stand without holding on, and screeeeeeem!
2. My sewing is coming along too. I am getting onto the sewing machine several times a week, often in the afternoons while the Tiny One sleeps and the Little One plays around, next to or on me. Even then, I love it.
3. We have had some lovely short walks, the two littlest and I, despite the drizzle. The secateurs come with us and I try and get a few sprigs of this and that for my kitchen table.
4. Speaking of which, there are buds everywhere. The uncommonly warm, dry March has given way to a cold, drizzly April. But the dip in the weather has taken the turbo-charge out of spring and let it take a more leisurely pace. I'm glad. More time to enjoy it.
5. We've visited our local Bluebell Wood twice in the last week. The floor is carpeted in bluebell leaves and there is the occasional fuzz of distant blue as they begin to bloom. So excited! We'll be going again before the week is out. And I have this post by Dragonfly in my mind as I try to keep patient.
6. Not much baking here lately, other than the burst of Easter bread and cake making (watch this space). I have plans to change it. A cake a fortnight, anyone? It's part of the plan to keep connected with my teenager. The Big One is increasingly independent and responsible for himself. But I don't want him to only be an annex to the family. Or continue being surly! We are trying to find ways to include him more without boring him, spend time with him on his terms, and talk to him with reasonable, adult conversations rather than just being cross with each other.
7. More card plans for the week to come. And present making. A dear friend has had a baby, and babies must have mobiles!
8. Shock horror, I plan to actually put some of my pinterest pins into action. That's where I'm heading after this.
9. And lastly, I have almost finished reading Alison McNicol's Craft Business Handbook. I have lots of ideas and plans, but I am forcing myself to take it very slow: it is two years until the Tiny One goes to nursery and I have mornings without children around. Until then, I have to pace myself. I don't want to wish their youngest years away. They may be hard, but they are also the loveliest years we'll have.
 

Felt better

Just look at that! A rainbow of felt. It's thicker than the sort of thing you can pick up in any old shop. In fact it's got a lot more than thickness to show off about: it's eco-friendly and a wool-blend (doesn't shed or bend out of shape). I felt embarrassingly excited at just ordering it, so it's arrival had me grinning like an idiot and I think I actually clapped my hands. Applauding felt, I ask you! The Little One helped me open it and as he is my main fabric audience, he now thinks that fabric is very exciting. Oh how that will change one day.

I can't go on without crediting the supplier: Sue Eggen of Giant Dwarf, and ordered from her Etsy shop.

And here's the first thing I made...

... a one-strand mobile for a new arrival. I hope she likes watching it in her room, and swiping at it when given the chance! I cut the flowers out, sewed each one with a running-stitch centre on each side, then machine sewed them together, stuffing as I went. The leaves are sewn half-way along their length with the embroidery thread that makes up the one-strand.

It has lots of flaws to remedy next time, as all first-time projects must (or at least mine do). But I loved making it and how it turned out, and I hope to make more on the same theme. I thought I was just a fabric addict but it seems I have a felting weakness too. I can't imagine using any other felt than this though. It is such a treat just to receive it in the post, let alone use it.

PS I had grand Easter felting plans that fell by the wayside. If you watch this space almost a year from now, I hope I'll be pulling out the Easter felt shades and wowing you with my strings of bunnies, chicks etc. We can but dream!

Greetings

Hello! I have some photos to show you...

Remember the greeting cards I was making? Well I'm back at it. And the new method involves PVA and fabric. More fun than it should be. All the above were for birthdays except the obvious stork arrival one.

A few interesting things (by which I mean 'I found them interesting' but 'you will most probably be bored out of your mind but kindly pretending otherwise')...

• Fabric really soaks up the glue. You go through a fair bit. But it's oddly satisfying brushing it on.
• Use a stiff brush. Or get one of those plastic glue-spreaders you used in nursery school.
• Lots of glue means damp card. And often slightly warped card by the time it dries. I'm sure there's a solution (spray-on glue?) but I quite like the inelegant handmade-ness of it.
• The brush with its last gasp of glueyness can be used to tease all the stray threads from the unhemmed fabric into place.
• To text or not to text? I like writing on the cards but I'm not sure whether they are more effective and tasteful in their simple, word-free state.

I have another batch to do one evening in the next week.

PS I like the train one best.

Addendum

So I wrote a whole post on the trials and tribulations of being a mother, wife, housewife, family-member/friend, woman and sewist all at once. I was drowning. A little.

It seems I have learnt how to swim. I'm sure it won't be long before I tire and start gulping for air again (it never is). But gosh, how lovely it feels to glide on top for once. What fixed me?

• The simple things, like the fluffy buds above. If in doubt, find your walking boots and head out. Child's pace is best - you notice so much more, and you wonder about so much through their eyes that you would otherwise see past.
• An evening tidying up and sorting out. The jobs you've still 'to do' weigh down on you. Once you can grab a tranche of time, devote it and you get the joy of ticking them off and feeling free again.
• I made bread. Though the kneading hurt my wrists by the end, and the finished result wasn't spectacular, bread-making is such a primitive, nourishing (in all senses of the word) thing, that it can't help but bake a bit of contentment in your heart.
• Sewing. I have been doing some sewing and when I get the chance to sit down in front of the machine (even with a toddler playing around and often on me), inside I settle, soften and quiet. I can't wait for a bit of sunlight (other than the rain and grey we've been having for days or weeks) so that some photos can be taken and shown to you.
• And the troubles, the problems, the nuisances (a.k.a son one, son two and son three!) can - if you remember to try - be turned into joys. A few better nights sleep, getting the other four points above under my belt, and suddenly I feel fixed. My patience is back, their funny little saying's and doing's are being paid attention to and enjoyed again. They are all my number one's.

PS One thing that's still eluding me a little, though, is the inspiration to post on the blog. I still love it, but it reflects my life and sometimes I'm not in the reflecting zone, just the doing and living. Plus it would help to have some illustrative photos! Anyway, that's why my blogging has been a bit sporadic of late.

Once, twice, three times a lady

What is this? It's Hermione Granger's Time Turner (picture found here, explanation here). I'm a bit old for the Harry Potter books to be a part of my childhood, but the Big One and I read through every one at bedtime. Good memories.

Why this? This is what I need. I am trying, in my head at least, to live the lives of three different women. Three lives to be lived each day, and only one me to live them. I am aware that this is impossible. Which is why I constantly feel like I'm not achieving enough or doing enough or enjoying enough of any of these lives. If anyone knows of a muggle version of the Time Turner - other than having to spend hours on American time organisation 'mom' blogs - do let me know.

Who are these ladies?

One: I am raising three lovely boys, married to a lovely man, living in a lovely house. But you could fill a whole person's day with playing with the children, spending quality time with the husband, and going out for child-friendly activities. And the mundane refereeing between them, getting them ready, nappies, errands, general mothering. Then of course there's also being a good daughter, sister and friend. Add the phone calls you feel you ought to be making, the birthdays you need to be remembering...

Two: This house needs cleaning - four stories of vacuuming, cleaning, dusting, mopping, polishing. Food needs cooking, three times a day (sometimes more), for varying degrees of faddy eaters. Menus need planning, food needs buying. The house needs tidying, every day, often several times a day. Oh and don't forget the laundry and ironing. And the bigger house jobs, like the wall painting, the garden planting, the inbox sorting - they all apparently need doing one day...

Three: I want to start a business sewing. I am trying to sew as much as I can. One day I will get around to reading the sewing books I've bought. Then there's the business research, the online sewing tutorial and blog reading, the fabric hunting, the present making. You may have also noticed I like to write a blog about all the above. I could just write 'whatever' but I like to try my best, to write something worth reading. I like to research similar blogs online for inspiration and comparison. The time I spend online researching the things I don't get around to doing, oh my...

I am not over-exaggerating: these are three full-time ladies. Inside one me. The last few weeks have seen little blogging, partly due to the Easter holidays, but mainly due the paralysis felt when these three women can't get everything done! I don't want to compromise anywhere - they are all me. Oh someone tell me what to do!

Coming and going

Just look at these beautiful spring bulbs in bloom. Yes, it was spring. In fact, it was practically summer.

Two weeks ago, we were sat in the garden all day, short-sleeved tops on, ice lollies in hand. I was slow in remembering the sunscreen and the Little One got slight sunburn on the back of his neck. The Tiny One crawled in and out of the house like the outside was a second room. I dug out my flip flops.

This morning we woke to arctic temperatures, snow everywhere, fierce gale force winds and a blizzard blowing. The snow continued all morning. The power kept cutting out, the mobiles and TV went down and have yet to work again. Jumpers back on; two little boys with colds. My knuckles are slowly freezing-over as I write this.

Global bloomin' warming or just freak weather... I don't care what caused it, I want my spring back!