A Craft (un) Fair

What happens when a good chum invites you to share a table of crafty goodness at a new fair in the local area?

Handstamped baby bibs in vintage cottons 

What happens when you stitch like a b***h in anticipation of said table, so as not to let the side down?

Our table full of crafty goodness! 

What happens when the fair is extraordinarily poorly attended?

Antique Linen lavender bags and Reel Necklaces 

You sell one item, that’s what.

Crochet hearts garland

The good thing about going with a friend, though, is that you have time for chatter, stitching, sitting and laughing.

Handpainted yarn soon to be sold online here. 

For the record, the fact that Reuss is moving away to another county is spectacularly unimpressive in my books. So it’s good that we got to craft together one last time. For now, anyway.

Beautiful fuzzy iPhone pics courtesy of Reuss – forgot to take the posh camera in amongst all the tablecloths/baskets/floats etc.

Need it, want it, can’t live without it…

DROOL

DRIBBLE

PANT

moan quietly in the corner…

 

I can’t think of a single pressing project that would involve these spools, but holy hell.

If I had all the money and time in China, I would hem all my frocks (and Tilly’s of course) with these so that you would see a little flash of FABULOUS whenever you sauntered through meadows. Of course, that would be a wonderfully frivolous use of them but still…

NEED THEM. WANT THEM. CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT THEM.

Liberty Print bias tape - £5 for mixed bobbins set - Clothkits

Ask Tilly: Your Parenting questions answered…

Question:

It’s only 11am and your use of a dummy has already been ‘commented’ upon by a shop assistant in the form of: ‘Oh, what a beautiful girl you are… But what is that horrid plastic thing that Mummy has put in your mouth?? You don’t need that, do you sweetheart…?’

Frazzled and knackered, you stagger to the library and head straight for the ‘How to get your child to sleep through the night’ section and as the buggy grinds to a halt, the bawling starts.

Loudly.

What do you do??

Answer:

Rusk. Rusk. and Rusk.

It’s a toy, a snack, a teething soother and a rattle all in one.

If it gets ALL OVER the baby, the buggy, the buggy book, the floor, your shoes and the library… then so be it.

  

I say it again.

Rusk.  

A Scottish Wedding Design

Friends of ours are engaged to be married and we couldn’t be happier for them! They have two glorious children (5 year old girl and 2 year old boy) and Dad hails from Glasgow. They hope to marry in August before a relation is posted abroad with the Army, and so are leaping from nought to sixty on the wedding planning front …

It got me thinking about tartan weddings and how you could incorporate an important heritage into your day without it feeling like Edinburgh at Festival time.

The tartan in question is (thankfully) one of the gloriously lovely ones – Campbell, which is the mid-blue-green check below. Not too dark, not too bright… not too garish…

The bride wants to incorporate the tartan into her attire without drowning in the gothic and theme weddings. I personally love the frocks of By Storm – look through the website of this Glasgow-based boutique for some elegant styles that incorporate glimpses without feeling that you’re an extra in Braveheart.

The little flower girls have suggested wood fairy/sprite outfits and I love this pattern in dark chiffons to channel this kind of look below (left).

And to prevent the death by taffeta risk – this citrus frock would be great for a bridesmaid or best friend to nod to the scheme…

Flowers can go down the thistle route without being nauseating with these Buttonholes from John Henry…

Can’t wait to see what route she goes down, but the brief happily set my mind racing around the web. What else do you think could work here?

British

From great madness…

Comes great beauty

Barbeques in the rain…

Warm Potato salad and chargrilled chicken…

Wonderful…

Domesticity with a capital DUH

The rugs have finally been beaten…And here it is: it’s a much more effective remover of dust and generic crafty threads, yarns and BITS than any other method. Dyson, eat your heart out. One broom handle and a good bit of ‘welly’ and we were golden.

Though sneezing rather heavily…

The coffee has been supped from the recently-received-back-from-paint-it-yourself-pottery-shop-mug and I’m mightily pleased with the final result.

We have planted mint (received in the post from fabulously innovative mother-in-law!!) and clematis (acquired in a more pedestrian fashion at the local garden centre)…

And I’ve been cooking scrumptious dinners on account of my brother staying with us and inspiring me to try some new recipes…

Nothing like another mouth to feed to gang up on the Boy that won’t eat **** and make him try fish, seaweed, tomatoes and bulgar wheat for the first time since childhood… This in particular was scrumptious and easy peasy (I’m delighted to say, as it’s demonstrated by a 2 year old…)

However, we have had one utter FAIL…

Having spent all my days proclaiming this to be the easiest and tastiest Rhubarb jam recipe in the WORLD, I took my eye off the boil so to speak and this is the result…

I’m claiming it as ‘Caramelised Rhubarb’ but noone is buying it…

Any ideas for uses to salvage the char are welcome…

Keeping busy

I went to a stress management course a few years ago and determined that on one hand, it is important for each of us to accept and acknowledge all the many and varied strings to our bows that we attempt to pluck/strum/fiddle with simultaneously and therefore accept how very busy and clever we are to remain standing at the same time… On the other hand, though, I was shown how important it is to my sanity and sense of self to create a veritable cacophony with all the many and various strings I keep taut at any one time… Perhaps as long as you’re able to acknowledge all that you’re playing you will be more likely to hear whether you’re creating a tune or a ear-bleeder…

Right, that’s enough of that metaphor. Suffice to say, at the moment I’m torn between attempting to do nothing but be at one with my child and getting fun things done in order to make me feel that each day has been well spent.

It doesn’t help that the Boy is currently on nights and so I’ll be with the Tilster 24 hours a day until Friday lunchtime. To add insult to injury, on Saturday I will be co-hosting a table at a local craft fair and so perhaps, this week, I will attempt to focus on two tasks alone.

Being at ONE with a short-tempered and short-attention-spanned baby and MAKING STUFF in order to be able to hold my head high and my table FULL come the weekend.

Busy but focussed but chilled but happy but not over-stretched and not over-tired and not over-wraught…

AND NOT BLUE.

In theory… 

Images of recent busy-ness – Nigella’s Black and White tart and a Tea Mitten Cosy for a gorgeous friend’s birthday pressie.

Blue and bells

Spring is a funny thing. You wait all winter for the longer evenings, for the glimmer of sunlight that lengthens the days, for the signs and symbols that there is light and life beyond 3pm, for the chance to venture out without layers upon layers of woollen rigmarole…

I recall being sent to bed on a school night while the daylight remained strong, listening to the shrieks and delighted chattering of others who still enjoyed the sunshine. I recall vowing that when I was a ‘grownup’ I would savour those evenings and make sure that I would not waste the long days.

Now, though, the days seem to go on too long. The early nights that I yearn for are blighted by the bright light in our south-facing bedroom. The teething Tilly who moans and shrieks by day sleeps fitfully at night and her parents are left as broken shells who cannot speak, let alone frolick and play in the sunshine,. The 6pm watershed that marks the moment that the bottle of wine can be opened is, all too often, long in coming and bitter when it does arrive.

I am feeling blue.

And today, the memory of a beautiful weekend walk in the wooods is succeeding in keeping me a slightly brighter lavender blue rather than a bluey-grey.

Mobility Issues

Hmmm…. I am reminded of the Friends episode (The One with the Stain) where Joey tries to convince Rachel that there is enough room in his apartment for the baby after it’s born:

No room? It’s a baby. It’s like this big. (Holds his hands about a foot apart.) Y’know, I mean you-you could you could put it over here. (A desk.) Or-or-or we could put it right here. (The chair.) Aw, it’s cute, right? Or-or we could put it over here. (By the bathroom door.) You wouldn’t even notice it. Where’s the baby? (Mumbles that it’s over in the corner.)

For the first five months of her life, Tilly was that (holds hands about a foot apart). If I left the room, she would be where I had left her, which, on more than one occasion, was the kitchen table, the bed, the rug and propped in the corner of the sofa cushions…

We travelled to Washington DC last week to visit the Sis who departed there before Christmas and thus had not met the Tilster.

Tils was a model baby, despite jetlag and so much sightseeing activity, and the Sis is besotted.

So far, so soppy.

However, the one glitch in the plan was her sudden success at movement. My child is now a spinning top and cannot be left anywhere. Name a surface and I can guarantee you it will not be safe. The bed? No – she has [nearly] fallen from there to the floor… The floor? No – there are a myriad of dangers and perils awaiting the speedy steamroller including walls, tables, chairs, sofas and even soft toys, which interrupt her intended trajectory and send her speeding into said dangers even if she –and I- had thought she was going to avoid them.

Thankfully, the bedding plan worked for the duration of the week (strategically piled towels, a rolled yoga mat for bumper, all covered in a cot sheet) but had we travelled even a few days later I fear she would have been up and outta there quicker than a prison break!

There is nothing for it but to strap her to or in various objects in the hope that she does no longer term damage to herself.

  

When left to her own devices on the floor, she rapidly descends into a shrieking harpy who cannot decide whether she prefers to be on her front or back.

‘Tilly, if you don’t like it, you can roll over…’

This is taking some time to sink in.

One skill at a time… one skill at a time.

Pretty pictures of DC to follow – oh the knitting, oh the paper goods, oh the ‘old towns’…

I know I’m biased but…

When she’s not screaming, she is pretty damn cute.

 

PS. It’s important to know that I photoshopped the above picture to remove the dangling bogey from her schnozzle. Parental delights know no bounds.

Admiration and Organisation

Have you ever had those moments where you realise that childhood experiences you COMPLETELY took for granted were in fact GARGANTUAN feats of planning and preparation on the parts of your parents and not, as you presumed, your god-given right as a small human being??

In trying to prepare for the much-anticipated trip-to-meet-her-Auntie, Tilly, the selfish wench, has entirely expected us, her thankless parents, to orchestrate her travel to and survival in Washington DC for the next 8 days. She hasn’t raised a single finger to offer assistance in the week long frenzy of washing, sorting, list-making and buying that has occupied our existence since Easter.

How my mother managed this on a regular basis (with a pilot dad and us living in the US with British family to visit, trans-Atlantic flight was a pretty regular occurrence in my childhood) with three/four children and often on unbooked, last minute seats scattered around the plane… I will never know.

We have sufficient muslins, babygros, milk powder and sunhats in small sizes to open a local nursery school, while the Boy and I are likely to wear the same three items of clothing on rotation for 8 days. We can only assume that the varying degrees of vomit, sweet potato and poop will single us out as ‘new parents' as well as ‘tourists’…

Oh hell.

The Boy has never been to the East Coast and is OBSESSED with the West Wing so I will be sending him on reccies to find President Bartlett while I wait in a variety of locations to see if Bradley Whitford may want to discuss important campaign issues with a young Mum with a beguiling accent.

Of purees and dribble…

Have plastic accoutrements…

Have pureed sweet potato…

Have a VERY messy baby…

Successes so far include broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potato and BANANA in a big way.

Dried fruit with apple not so successful…

Carrot a complete write-off.

Ah well, live and learn…

More stitching and only a little bitching…

Busy fingers in attempts to drown out noise of screaming baby with the clack clack clack of needles…

Limited success on the drowning out front, but great success on the creativity front.

This mobile was so much fun to make. It feels a little bit ‘Blue Peter’ in that it uses up old buttons, a wire coat hanger and scraps of fabric. All that’s missing is the washing up liquid bottle…

 

 

 

Also finished off this scrummy little vest for my new nephew, Harry. That kind of name requires vintagey-looking buttons and a homespun look about him, don’t you think?…

My little madam has been a little monster for most of the day – oh, please, let’s put our lovely daughter in a carseat for four hours to go meet Harry. That will be just splendid.

Frankly, I could leave her in a lay-by and no one would know. Apart from the fact that I’ve just told the internet.

If anyone finds a moody, but incredibly well-dressed, baby somewhere off the M1 tonight, she’ll more than likely answer to ‘Tilly’. By screaming.

Stitching and not too much bitching

Oh it is so very satisfying being creative.

Does that sound nauseating?? I mean it in its most sincere way.

 

A little knitted picnic for my 6 year old goddaughter’s birthday. The basket was a post-Easter sale find at Waitrose – the sum total of charity shop yarn and basket was about £12. Hoorah.

Patterns found on many and various websites including:

Sandwiches adapted from Jean Greenhowe here.

Knitted doughnut here.

Knitted strawberries here.

Pie slices and battenburg from this lovely little tome of patterns.

And cupcake pattern purchased from the GORGEOUS Little Cotton Rabbits.

The exception of the creativity came in the form of the SCRUMPTIOUS lemon meringue pie made for us by the gorgeous Emily and Emilie (one cousin, one friend) . The happy travellers made a very generous but entirely uneventful stop on their world tour of travelling extravaganza to sunny St Albans and enjoyed the delights of a home kitchen, mixing up mac’n’cheese, pancakes, cookies and suchlike. The highlight of their trip was the daily pooping escapade of my delightful daughter and endless episodes of Friends.

The fun never stops around here.

New Vogue Patterns

Love the glorious neckline of the jacket on this fabulous Badgley Mischka.

Can’t work out if this is gorgeous and chic or ‘old lady in Savannah’…

Whereas this is FABULOUS in a Desperate Housewives kind of way and.... POCKETS!!

These are interesting with midriff options…

And then the glorious Vintage Vogue… OH MY GOODNESS CHECK OUT THE METERAGE.... far too much fabric to justify for any but the most SPLENDID event…but that skirt is FABULOUS

And then the collar... oh my goodness the collar...

And finally, there’s just the fabulously high-fashion and fabulously bonkers jumpsuit!

 

Get thee sewing my ladies, get thee stitching!

In the wee small hours of the morning

I had a realisation.

I guess you could call it *the* realisation.

I looked at my sleeping daughter and had ‘the moment’. She will be four months old this weekend, and it has taken me this long to feel ‘it’.

The much talked about.

The BOND.

That amazing, overwhelming, innate radiance that you *should* feel the minute they put the baby in your exhausted post-labour arms.

I’ve spent the last four months in a ‘methinks the lady doth protest too much’ state of affairs, proudly telling anyone who would listen that I was FINE with the lack of feeling and simply patiently waiting for the moment to come. In truth, I had horrendous fears of simply never feeling ‘it’… Maybe some people just ‘have’ kids. Maybe some people don’t want to smother their child in love and adoration and are happy just having a small, diaper-wearing buddy around the house. Maybe the absence was all I was going to have.

And I can’t tell you what changed.

To others in the same situation, I don’t have a magic formula to what makes it better. I can just say that after a feed at O Dark Thirty O’Clock last week, I looked at the sleeping baby in the cot and my stomach went ablaze. I don’t know about butterflies…. there were fire-breathing dragons in my abdomen and I suddenly realised that I LOVED MY CHILD. I would throw myself in front of any thing, any one, any anything to make sure she comes to no harm.

And so I smiled, kissed her forehead and went back to bed.

And I’ve not looked back since.

The relief is extraordinary.

But the feeling is even better.