Round Up

It is just me or is it really hard to believe that it's more than half way through the year?  I can't believe it's already August. In my mind August is going back to school, family birthdays and basically the beginning of Autumn!  Although to be fair the turn in the weather this week is similar to autumn too, the beginning of July was glorious - please come back sun!!

July has been a busy old month in this household.  Firstly we went on holiday to a lovely place called Southerness.  Good old caravan holiday, I love it :)  We had a pleasant surprise when we turned up at our allocated caravan as we had a verandah (ooohhh!!!!)  

It was lovely inside too.  I love going to a caravan, especially with little kids, we can please ourselves what we do and when and still have some home comforts.  I'm definitely a homebody, I like going away but I do love getting back to my own space too :)

Not much on the making side of things has been done lately but we have gotten outside into the garden.  At long last we painted our shed and garden fence.

Of course the Dude wanted to, briefly, help daddy!

And this is the finished effort (excuse the washing), I'm really, really pleased with the way it looks.  Makes the garden seem a little smaller, but darker paint does that to any space, but it feels so much more welcoming.

We also received a lovely gift from my old friend Lynz of Domestic Light & Magic fame (I say old in no reference to age, purely on the basis that we have actually been friends for over 20 years, it fact it could be over 25 years if my maths is right).  The gorgeous Wee Hoolits quilt for Little Miss.  So this is her modelling it, wearing the fab outfit also gifted from Lynz (she has very good taste).

I still can't get over just how smiley my little girl is, this face beams up at you when you go into her room first thing in the morning and every time she sees you.  Our little photoshoot continued as did her smile, for a while.  This is my favourite shot.

And this one makes me giggle, not even 6 months old and already she has a 'are you done yet mummy?' face. I think I'm going to see this face a lot in the future!!!!

Starting over

This week I rejoined Weight Watchers (again!).  Not really with the goal of losing baby weight, if I'm honest I've pretty much lost the majority of that, aside from about 4lbs.  No, I haven't really been at a healthy weight for some time (read that as most of my adult life - I can pretty much pinpoint the exact time frame where weight became an issue but that's a tale for another day).  So this time I've joined with a different goal in mind that previous attempts - wedding, to not feel as frumpy, blah, blah.  No this time I'm looking at the long term health aspect of being as overweight as I currently am.  I am very much like my mum's side of the family and very conscious that this side has had significant health issues and don't live particularly long (my mum passed at 48, her mum at 66 & her dad at 56).  It's probably a bit of a morbid view on things, but although all the health issues have been unrelated, I do believe that we follow a bit of certain path in life, healthwise, and that path is affected by your mother's family history.  Whereas my dad's side of the family go on for ever (he's about to turn 70 and still works in a supermarket bakery 24 hours a week, his mum was 82 when she passed and his dad was 6 weeks off 94 when he died last year).  So I am determined, not only to lose weight successfully in the long term, but also increase my overall fitness.  Getting out with Little Miss in the pram and walking the Dude to and from nursery is helping to build up my basic level of fitness, especially as there is a hill between us and the school, but I need to do more. 

So with that in mind I am giving serious consideration to doing the Edinburgh MoonWalk next year.  I've done it once before, the full 26.2 miles, and it was hard but I probably only did 6 months worth of training.  If I start now, and encourage a few friends to do it will me, that's all the motivation I need.  The icing on the cake is raising money for Walk the Walk charity, who are funding the building of new Maggie's Cancer Care centre at our new local hospital, which is due to open next year.  Oh yeah and I'm 40 at the end of next year and want to tick a few things of my mental 'do before 4-0' list :)

With all this in mind, this quote rings very true for me today

It's Been Too Long ....

since I blogged anything about what I've been doing or why I've been absent for such a long time.

Lots of things have been going on, work stuff, family stuff but mainly I've been working on a special New creation. A very special one.

Little miss Megan was born on 19 February at 6:53pm weighing in at 8lbs 4oz. She has slotted in fairly well into family life but it does feel like starting all over again in some respects. The dude is almost 4 so you kind of forget just how small newborn babies are and just what the techniques are for dealing with sleep deprivation - not quite mastered that one yet.

But she is just perfect, my family is complete and I'm one very happy (although a little tired) mummy!

Speedy Make

I had an idea in my head last week for a quick lap quilt for my Granda's birthday.  He is the fantastic age of 93 today.  I bought a lovely layer cake at FoQ last month which was just asking to be used to who was I to deny the cutting of fabric to be carried out.

I have no idea what the fabric is called or who designed it unfortunately but I do know that it from Robert Kaufman and it's lovely.  I changed by mind about the design mid way through last week so by Friday I needed to go and buy some sashing material and backing fabric.

Saturday naptime I managed to get the fabric cut out, Saturday evening I started to piece the blocks until my machine fell out with me and stopped working.  So I threw in the towel in trying to fix it and went to bed!  Got up Sunday morning with renewed energy determined to figure out what was wrong with my machine so I did this

and gave it a good old clean.  Hoovers out quite nicely actually, but no still no joy in getting it to do more than one stitch before it jammed up and refused to work.  *insert a very stressed person, lots of shouty, growly, thumping about and threatening to throw it out of the window*  But then for some reason I looked at the bobbin .............

I had been using the one on the left!  It should look like the one on the right.  No wonder it kept pushing he bobbin case out of the machine.  So once that was sorted it was like working with a different machine and it was full steam head.  So as daddy kept the dude occupied (ok they watched a dvd but it kept them out of my hair) I got all quilt top pieced.  Another short nap time and I got the layers basted.  We then went to visit my Granda at his nursing home.  He was in fine fettle if a little confused (apparently he was going to visit his auntie!).  We then got home and when daddy did bedtime I got on with the quilting, making and attaching the binding.  I finished about midnight last night!  But I'm really happy with it and what's more so is my Granda!

I did worry that it might be a bit too modern for a 93 yr old but he talked about it all afternoon apparently (after asking my dad if he needed to go to school today, bless him!).  We got it home because I forgot to attach a label with his name on it but I'll get that done tomorrow. 

Procastination

be thy middle name!!  Oh dear, I don't know if it's post holiday blues or just laziness (I'm leaning more towards the latter) but I've struggled to get back to my normal level of organisation since I came back from Embo.  I get little bursts of energy/enthusiasm but they don't last very long ...........

......... or I get interrupted. (I did start this post at 1.30pm today but a little person decided he'd had enough sleep so it's now 6pm and he's busy watching the Bedtime Hour on Cbeebies - I know dreadful parenting eh!)

Anyway, this week has been busy with getting back to work, catching up on everything that went on when I was off and getting back into our normal routine.  So all fun stuff has kind of taken a bit of back seat but I have been getting on with my hexagons.  This is 71 of them sewn together, I not sure what I'm going to do with it to be honest.  I did have a bit of an idea of making them into a cushion cover but I'm not sure about that now.  It's a funny shape of I need to cut out more and then see where I get too.

The husband is off working tonight so I'm planning to get some more hexies cut out and try to get some more of my mystery quilt done.

I've also been spending some time this week doing a little bit of family history research which has been really interesting.  It's something me and my dad have talked about doing for years but never really got round to doing anything about it.  But with my grandad's 93rd birthday coming up my dad wanted to find out if he will be the longest living of all his siblings, he was one of 7 and is the only one still living.  So that has meant a bit of digging about to find out birth dates and then that led to finding out marriage dates and similar information.  So in a short number of hours the other night I discovered that when my grandad's parents married  in 1906, his mum was 25, 3 years older than his dad and both her parents were deceased which my dad didn't know.  In fact there seems to be quite  few marriages in my family history where the bride was older than the groom which I think is quite unusual.

Wow! Wow! Wow!

If anyone is joining along with Lynne of Lily's Quilts Hexalong then this stunner will make your eyes water and make you go weak at the knees. 

This is a close up so you can get an idea of the size of the hexagons - possibly 1 inch width at widest

And this is the full size quilt .........

Unfortunately I don't have the name of person who made it, the details were not in the Festival of Quilts catalogue, but whoever they are they are a HUGE Green Day fan, this is their lead singer and it is an incredible likeness.

I feel like I spent the whole of Friday catching flies!!!  The standard of work was absolutely amazing.  At one point I overhead a conversation between two women about how they were starting to glaze over they had seen some many stunning quilts.  I had to agree, it did kind of become an assault on the senses, but in a very positive way.  So much to see/admire/drool over and most definitely not enough time.  One day is just not enough, we had hardly any time to view the stands but I did manage to squeeze in a little shopping :-)

More on that later and some more pictures of stunning quilts.  I've never driven 350 miles in 1 day before, never mind doing it again 2 days later, I'm feeling fairly exhausted today and I still have to organise the packing for going up north tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to a restful holiday, with a little hexagon sewing coming along to join the fun.

Not long now!

Look what my postman delivered to me the other day.  I've been reading them (almost) obsessively since they arrived - I know, they're only the guides, it's a shame really how excited I'm getting about going.  The competition guide is really interesting as it gives you a little blurb bit about all the quilts which are being exhibited - really interesting.

I had myself a very productive night last night and I've more or less caught up with the Mystery Quilt-along - hurrah!!!  How fantastic are these plaits?  I loved doing them and I'm really pleased by how effective they are.  Trying to think of ways to make an entire quilt out of plaits.  My first thought was that they could be used in a similar way to a chinese coin style, like this one I made, but now I'm thinking of different blocks and things.  My mind is running away with it's self on the possibilities!

 All I need to do now it sew together these 4 blocks and I'll be up to date!  I should even be able to get that done before the end of (dare I say it!) nap time if I get my skates on.

I've got a busy week ahead of me, what with a mountain of work to be done at work before I finish up on Wednesday, getting organised for heading to Birmingham on Thursday (not really looking forward to the drive but hey, it'll be worth it), back home on Saturday, then packing to be done for heading away again next Monday.  But I still want to work on getting some hexagons cut out to take with me so I have some sewing to keep my hands occupied and stop them shovelling food into my mouth.  It's a subconscious action, I swear I don't even realise I'm doing it half the time.  Well that's my excuse anyway!

Merry Christmas!?!

No that isn't wrong!  My dad finally got his christmas present last night.  A hot air balloon flight.  It's all very weather dependent so it was all a bit last minute - phone calls in the middle of yesterday afternoon saying it was all go.  He wanted all of us to go along with the grandkids to see him off and what a glorious night it turned out to be.

So while we waited for all the setting up hoo-haa to be done these two had a blast running about in the field, chasing each other, 'accidentally' falling over and through grass about.

It did take a while but eventually this began to happen (that's my dad in the grey jumper - taking more photos!)

Nearly upright ......

 Almost .....

 Nearly .....

 Up, up and away ......

 Far away, floating over the Ochil Hills

Keeping up!

Well trying to anyway!!  I've been busy trying to finish off things and start new things.  The dude's quilt top is finished.  I think - I like the way it looks but part of thinks it needs a border.  Yes/No?  Maybe I'll make a border just to see how it looks.  I'm planning to back it with a brushed cotton to make it lovely and snuggy.

My hearts quilt is now finished and sitting on our couch being leaned against every day.  I'm really, really happy with it and in this lovely warm June that we're having (!) it's been used already.

I'm getting behind on mystery quilt but a big part of that (other than, you know, life getting in the way of other fun stuff) is that I've been seriously procrastinating on the block which is to be paper pieced.  But thanks to Sheila who sent me some really helpful and very clear instructions on how to do a block I'm over the mental block I had.  So following the instructions I made this funky little tree (I added the border to finish it off)

I've made a little bit more progress with my mystery quilt since this but not much!

I've also being doing a little bit more of my brit quilt swap mini-quilt.  It's coming together nicely.  I haven't decided how to finish it off but I'll have a little bit of play and see what I can come up with.

I haven't been my usual organised self the last few weeks so I haven't had as much time as I've wanted to do much else but after the end of this week I should have more time as I step down from being as involved in our Toddler's Group (1 year of being the treasurer is enough for me).  But for now, seeing as it's Father's Day, I need to spend some time with this little man and his daddy.  Steak for dinner me thinks!

My Boy

.......is 2!  We've had a busy week.  I've been on holiday and spent the first half of the week preparing for the Toddlers AGM last Wednesday.  Being the group treasurer does involve a fair bit of work making sure that everything is up to date and logged properly so I wanted to make sure that I had everything correct.  Which meant that I checked, double checked and triple checked the accounts before the meeting.

Then Thursday was the Dude's birthday, this is him in one part of his birthday present.  We didn't get a chance to build it up until the morning of his birthday which was interesting to say the least.  It's looks fairly simple doesn't it?  We didn't think it would take very long - it's only a few pieces of plastic after all!  Over 2 hours later we had a different view of it!  But he loves it so that's all that mattered.  The other part of his present, which is bigger, went together so much easier and quicker - sod's law eh! (that's my nephew checking out the doorbell)

I attempted to go one better than last year's cake and I'm pleased with the result.  I'm going to spend some time this year improving my icing technique before the next birthday but it tasted really good and my butter icing was just amazing :)  (that'll be why my jeans are tight!)

And to finish off my week off work we spent the weekend at Grannie's Heilan' Hame holiday park.  It's at Embo, which I'd never heard of before, but it's about 3 miles from Dornoch (the place where Madonna and Guy Ritchie got married) and it's lovely.  Check out this beach ....... (and blue sky)

I'll be back tomorrow with more about the weekend.  Just now I'm off to have a decent cuppa (I'm contemplating taking my own mug on holiday the next time to try and get a proper cup of tea) and watch a programme about space archaeology!??!

Thinking & Playing

I've been doing some more thinking about my design for my mini quilt for my BQS partner.  I'm leaning more towards doing the flying geese design but I think I'll probably make up the shoofly/pinwheel combo too.  More just to see if I can do it LOL.

 Anyway, I've been redrawing the flying geese (how hard is it to find graph paper btw, I had to download it!), and playing about with how it will look and trying to decide on fabrics.  I'm more or less settled on these.  They are Kaffe Fassett, bundle of about 25 fabrics which I bought at the Festival of Quilts 4 years ago I think and never really figured out how best to use them.

But I also acquired some fabric for the shoofly block (i.e. paid my sister a visit and somehow left her house with these in my possession!!)

 I've got a week off (I mentioned that yesterday) and although we've got a few things planned, including a small person's birthday (where have the last 2 years gone?), I intend to get some serious sewing time built into my week.  We're also going away for the weekend next Friday so I'm going to take something with me.  Possibly try my hand at hexagons.

Brit Quilt Swap

I've been playing about with some designs for my swap partner, I've got all their details with their likes and dislikes so I've got some ideas running round my head.  I've played about with the designs I posted the other day, which were my first drafts, and added some colour.

 This is a off centre shoofly block with pinwheel blocks round 2 sides. 

 This one is a half log cabin block repeated 4 times in a square.  I will not be using these colours, I was just playing about with felt tip pens.

The last one is flying geese with the middle row facing the opposite direction. 

I can't decide which one I like the best.  I'm tempted to make up all three and then see what I like the most.  

 I've been trying to make my garden look a bit more welcoming late, I do NOT have green fingers.  I have a tendency to kill plants, no matter what I do they end up dead!  So when I looked at these baskets this afternoon and I had pleasant surprise.  If you look closely at the fuschia there are little flower buds.  Look!

 Tiny little flowers nearly ready to bloom!  I planted up 4 different fuschias and this is the first one to show any signs of flowers so I'm really, really pleased :)  And this little orange pot takes me back to my childhood, it's got sunflowers growing in it - from seed!!  I planted them up, explaining to my little man what would happen so it's exciting to see them growing and seeing Euan taking an interest.  (ok, he just wants to water it ALL the time but he's still taking an interest).

I'm now off on holiday for a week and I'm looking forward to having time to relax, spend some decent time with my little man, my husband and get some sewing done stress free. 

Still sitting

in the same pile as it was on Thursday - my fabric that is!

Thursday night was such a wonderfully warm, light night that I took the opportunity to plant up 3 hanging baskets, a trough and 3 plant pots.  Soon I will (hopefully) have pretty flowers decorating my back garden, including this just outside my back door.

It's a flowering lavender, which admittedly isn't much to look at just now, but hopefully it will give off a lovely scent when we step out of the door!

Gardening is not my strong point - I've lost count of the number of plants I've managed to kill off, so I'll be pleasantly surprised if any of the other plants actually developing lots of lovely flowers!?!?

Yesterday we headed off for a drive as the weather was so nice and ended up in Milngavie - the quilt shop I was hoping to visit was closed (again) so we visited Dobbies instead and had a lovely lunch.  But I did end up getting a quilting book in Dobbies for a complete steal of £4.95.  We got Euan a Toy Story book as he loves Woody at the moment and he's never been so quiet in the back of the car, it was really cute to see him holding this huge book and really studying it!

Today we did think about going to a local farm for special Easter open day but the miserable weather made up our minds for us.  So Pete ended up convincing me to drive to Corstorphine to visit Guitar, Guitar (otherwise known as the Sweetie shop in this house) and he came away with a new guitar pedal - I've no idea what it does but as he's gigging tonight and has it with him, I'll find out tomorrow how good a buy it was!  So after a complete soaking for me and Euan when we went for a little walk when Pete was 'having a wee shot' of the pedal, I decided I needed a 'sweetie' too.  So a drive back to Stirling and I now own a 1/4" foot for my sewing machine.  It was supposed to be my mother's day present, it's only taken me a month to get it.

So now I have no excuse for wonky seams! 

Scrappy Sparks

About a week ago I got an email from Sarah's Cards with an offer that was just too good to miss - a £75 grab box for £25!  Not one to pass up a bargain I grabbed at the chance to get one and I was lucky enough to get one before they all disappeared.  The concept is that all the boxes are different and you don't know what you get until it arrives.  So after stalking the postie for a few days, it arrived at the end of the week.  It's been an age since I have the joy of a pizza box being delivered and look at the goodies that were inside

 There is even a page all about boys!!  I couldn't have picked it even if I'd tried!?!?!

The purpose of buying this box is to spark my interest and creativity for paper based crafting as I have yet to make any scrapbook pages of my son - he's over 22 months and I've not made any scrapbook of him yet.  The rate I'm going I'll have forgotten all the little things before long.  It's definitely not for the lack of photos, I probably have thousands of his first year, not so much from his second year (that's what being back at work does for you). 

I've got lots of ideas running through my head - for scrapbook pages, for a couple of quilts for Euan, for FINALLY decorating our bedroom, for many, many things.  Just need to try to squeeze and few extra hours into every day to get it all done - easy eh!

Cleverly Crafty

It's been such a busy week that I keep forgetting what I've been up to!  Last Friday me and my sister went through to Glasgow to the Hobbycraft & Creative Stitches exhibition.  There are 2 exhibitions held every year, one in spring and one in autumn, it's generally a mix of many crafty things.  Normally papercraft, needlecraft, to woodcrafting and almost everything else in between.

I did go with a few specific things in mind, namely some scrapbooking supplies suitable for little baby boys.  For some reason, for the thousands of pictures I must have taken of our little dude in the last 21 months I haven't scrapped any of them!  Can't explain it, there is no logical reason for not having done anything with his photos and trying to record the small details of his life so far.  My mojo has been on holiday for a while!  Anyway I thought I'd go looking for something to spark my interest but I was sadly dissappointed, nothing much that spoke to me - lots for cardmakers/stampers, lots of bling/glittery paper but nothing that said little baby boy.

What there was on display though, was a fantastic display to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, you could walk through it!  The entire display was knitted - everything from the rocks and grass outside to all the fish, divers and deep sea essentials.  To say it was brilliant is a total understatement, the talents of those who made it is amazing!

Knitting is one thing I just cannot get to grips with, over the years I've tried many times to do it but it's never been successful, in fact I find it quite stressful so I don't do it.  I put it down to being left handed by that can't be it, there are bound to be many, many left handers who can knit perfectly well so I just have to face that I'm no good at it.  Although it does slightly annoy me that I've never quite figured it out yet.  I grew up with 2 grandmothers who were particularly good with their hands.  One was a seamstress for a living and carried on doing alterations for the majority of the population of the small fishing village she lived in, well into her retirement, she had her sewing table set up in her livingroom and her machine was used daily.  The other was a knitter, latterly making up sample garments for new knitting patterns for companies like Patons & Baldwin.  Every image I have of her she was either in the middle of knitting something or had a bag of knitting at her side.

When I think about it, it's only right that I do some kind of practical/creative hobby.  I've got some good heritage to live up too.