Stretching back into my space

My house is not big (or that small I suppose) but it has been a tight fit for the past month with 3 adults and 2 children (one bathroom and loo!).  Yesterday John and Steph got their house far enough to be able to move into and slept their first night there.Well John Steph and Max did because Ben was staying with his cousin for a sleepover. Max is in hospital today to have his adenoids removed and grommets re-fitted. They had to be at hospital for 7am this morning.  It is impossible to explain to an autistic 3 year old that he is not able to eat before the operation so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they take him down early this morning.  I'm waiting patiently for updates and am going to sew to keep my mind from conjuring up horrid pictures of the operation.

I've marked out some fabric and layered on to some bosal to make a bag with good structure. I've been working on a design which was inspired by something I saw (I can't remember where) a while ago and did a quick sketch, adapting it to my taste.  It is a raw edge machined flower, which is unusual for me.

Claire is covering my shift at work today as I've done a lot of extra duties for Steph over the past couple of weeks. Bit tired to say the least but I'm enjoying and really appreciating the space and quiet in the house!

John and I (well more John) rushed round like mad things yesterday. After a morning in the main clinic at Newcastle we rushed down to the satellite clinic near Peterlee (we hire a room in a business centre) to put up a new bed and shelves in the larger room we now occupy.

John (literally out of breath as he turned the last screw in the white unit seconds before the first patient arrived)

Originally we were in a little room but we have expanded to this more pleasant area.  We have enough room to put in a scan station and admin area too.  A few more little decorative additions will make this a lovely space to treat the expanding number of patients we are getting.

John has booked a quick trip to Spain over Easter - he richly deserves the break. I'm so proud of the way he conducts himself, running his own business, caring for his little family. He works so hard at work and at home.  I am in awe of his dedication.

Later...... 

Max has had his operation which was a bit more complicated than they thought. I'm hoping they will still be able to get him home today.  I feel a bit overwhelmed by it all - goodness knows how John and Steph are. 

I've managed to stitch the fabric to the bosal but I don't like the way it looks so I'm going to use wadding and interfacing instead.  Hey ho back to the drawing board. Where is my stitch ripper?

Never mind I'll finish the lawn baby quilt top - so pretty but quite flimsy - about 42" x 36"- maybe it should have had an extra couple of rows?? Too late!

I'll get it layered at the weekend and maybe take it to Karin's when I visit a week today - we're going to Unravel at the Farnham Maltings.  And we may have a glass or two of wine as well.

Later still.........

Max is out of hospital - they swung by on the way home to pick up some essentials which they'd left in my lockup, i.e. the TV stand. Max was very pale and subdued but he has come through it safe and sound. Apparently his adenoids were really infected and were 'pulling' his ear drums in. Poor little chap.  I was so pleased to see him I'm afraid there were a few tears.  I hadn't realised how tense I was today and I didn't sleep much last night either.

So I'm off to bake some cookies for class tonight and I'll be back later to sleep in my own bed again, stretched out like a pussy cat.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone xxxx😘😘😘

Organise my time - get more done!

It's the same old cry isn't it? There's just not enough time to do everything I want.  My head is reeling with ideas for things but I'll get nothing done in a timely way unless I get myself properly organised. It's a real life skill which comes back to bite me unless I'm really disciplined.

So..... I finished my little cowl, made with the First Ever Skein I dyed:

It is yet to be blocked and I'm hoping it will soften and drape better because it is a little scratchy. I absolutely loved doing this pattern (please don't look too closely for mistakes). Although I have decided I really don't like knitting nupps (pronounced noops). I will knit this pattern again because it was a pleasure and after about half way I didn't have to frog back so much. I'll put little beads where the nupps are though because they are quite messy - I haven't quite mastered the technique.  I wanted this finished before 2nd February because we were booked on another workshop.  This time at Lucy Locket in Seaburn. It was great! We used natural dyes, which looked completely different when they were dry.  The next two pictures are the same skein of yarn, wet and uncooked, then dry.

No wonder I had trouble getting reds for my crochet hexagons!

I had intended to make my first pair of socks because I expected we would be using sock yarn but we didn't.  This base was 100% Blue-Faced Leicester, so probably not hard wearing enough for socks. I should have used the first skein for socks and the ones I dyed yesterday for the cowl. Hey ho. Live a day and learn a thing.

The pink was dyed with cochineal and madder with little touches of cochineal/baking soda solution which turned it mauves-pink in the tray but disappeared when 'cooked'. The little mini-skeins above became blue (indigo) with splashes of madder which all but disappeared; the yellow one was dyed with fustic, (from tree bark I think).

The yellow was closest to the wet colour. Carol (my sister-in-law) did a mixed colour and then a fustic skein

She was using indigo blue in this shot.

She also used cochineal and the end result was a lovely pink and blue skein.

Alex wanted some gold/yellow/toffee colours for her yarn

This was how she started - the whole skein was coloured deep yellows and toffee colours before it was heated.

After heating the colours turned much lighter with some pretty salmony colours.   I love the idea of dying with natural colours but I think I need a lot more practice to get the deep colours I want. I know it is possible because I have bought them.

We had a lovely day despite the worry of not being able to make it because of a heavy snowfall over night. The only problem was the last little hill up to Alex's house so she walked down and met us at the main road.  The roads were still slushy but we made it to the workshop.

We had lunch delivered from the cafe next door - just the ticket for a cold winter's day. It's a long time since I had such good mince and dumplings.

Lucy's shop was a lovely mixture of yarns, hand-dyed yarns and other crafts.  I got some felt to make Luna Lapin (the book was a Christmas present from Will), and some cotton to make a very fine crochet cloth.   Lucy is organising a wool festival in Newcastle in August - Woolness - which celebrates the positive mental effect that crafts have.

I haven't decided what to make with my new yarn but I think it will go into my blanket stash which is mainly made up of fingering weight blue-faced leicester wool.  That project is my long term love and I don't mind if I never finish it!

Itching to do something yarny last night, but baby-sitting meant I couldn't do anything too complicated, I went to another Christmas present.  These are 15g balls of Scheepjes Stone Washed Aran. I can get two 4" squares from each little ball.  There were 50 in the box and I bought some more neutral to make alternate squares.

I'll be popping some little balls of yarn into a project bag with scissors and hook so that I can take them out when I have an odd ten minutes to spare.

Mmmm John has just brought me a peanut butter and banana smoothie as I type.

Yum.  Steph has taken the boys across to see her mother so John and I are enjoying a few minutes of quiet.

I'll be cutting out a bag this afternoon which I'm designing for the class. It will have compartments for various things and pockets too. A proper Quilter's Bag. There will be other things to go with it, including a travelling sewing kit, ruler cover and cutting/pressing mat. Everything you need to take a project to class.

First I'm going to do a little work on a pattern which was requested by one of the ladies which I'll need to test out first.

I made this design for Steph's friend's baby but didn't write it out. So that is my job before the demolition squad gets back and hopefully I'll be able to do some sewing tomorrow morning before work.

The hens are fed and the eggs collected - I've had to chip a hole in the ice of their drinking trough these past few days - but they fluff up their little feathers and get on with searching for grubs and other things that hens love. I'm going to get some fat balls for them which I only really give them in cold weather.  There's a nice little pile of fresh eggs so a cake may be in the offing later. John likes poached eggs for his breakfast too.  They'll be moving into their new house in about a week and peace will reign once more.  In the meantime I'm enjoying the company.

So - off to the cutting table (ha! my dining table) Have a good week everyone xxxxx

Making lotion bars and trying to keep warm

Gosh that wind is bracing - it strikes right through to your bones.  What is the forecast this week I ask myself? Well a bit of everything by the look of it but cold, so cold......

Well I'm grateful for lovely central heating! Will and Alex have a wood burning stove which was blasting out golden heat yesterday.  Quick pick of Will cutting kindling outside in the arctic blast.

Little Zula was stretched out in front of the fire purring gently completely oblivious to the cold outside.

The lotion bars! I've been looking forward to making them for a while now and looking forward to making them with Sal, Alex's friend  -  who was as lovely as she sounded. I've been trying to add her  blog  (rerootyourself.com) to my list but am having a few technical issues. Her lifestyle is a shining example of caring for ourselves and our world.

We gathered all the ingredients together (as it turns out not that many),

• Equal parts of Beeswax and Shea Butter or Coconut Oil
• a few drops of essential oils - my favourites were orange and lavender

We also tried some with a little olive oil added.  

The oils and wax were simply melted (in saucepans from the pound shop, dedicated to the purpose) and poured into little moulds, again set aside solely for lotion bars and maybe soap. But that's for another day!

They began to set almost immediately

 So we quickly added some essential oils

and left them to harden.  Then we got a bit adventurous and added some cocoa powder and orange or peppermint oil to another batch.

We were excited and impatient to see how they turned out

They actually looked like little chocolate truffles.  The tea tree oil was quite strong but I loved the orange, especially with the cocoa. The rosemary was lovely too but quite strong. I think the volatile oils will disperse quickly so it'll be a matter of experimenting to get the right balance.  You wouldn't mistake them for sweets, luckily.

The shea butter bars set a bit harder than the coconut oil bars but they are designed to melt on contact with warm hands thereby dispensing the correct amount of lotion. We'll have to find little containers to hold them in the summer otherwise we'll have little puddles rather than pretty shapes.  In this weather though, warm hands and sunny windowsills are few and far between. It's hovering around freezing point at the moment, but that wind makes it feel much colder.

We had a lovely roast lunch, chicken for Will and nut cutlets for the girls. Alex makes amazing roast potatoes and has a steamer which makes perfect vegetables. I'm spoilt.

My hens only got a quick refill of food and some mealworms and a quick hello before I retreated into the warmth of the house. It's amazing how much cold you can tolerate when there is no wind but how uncomfortable it is when the wind is howling straight off the North Sea! The hens were fluffed up in the warm corner but came down for mealworms and sunflower seeds before retreating back to the warmth. Sensible girls.

I was spoilt again at tea/supper time with steak and chips cooked by John, served with pea salad and broccoli.

I'm not a big meat eater so I was pleased I'd had nut cutlets at lunch time! After washing up (John uses every utensil available) I settled down to a lovely evening of knitting.  It was a really lovely weekend with the family.

Now I'm sitting in the quiet of a Monday morning after the mad rush to get children ready for school and peeps ready for work. (I was keeping out of it whilst Steph and John went through their frenetic morning ritual).  The sun is shining brightly from the east on a gunmetal grey sky to the west but I can see bright blue emerging too, highlighting the skeleton trees a beautiful bronze.

It has been much easier than I expected having an extra four people in the house.  Steph spent a few hours on Saturday with her mother, cleaning and washing at the new house whilst John and I were at work. We went there after work and John pulled up carpets and I took Max home for some quiet time. He gets upset when it's noisy. It is going to be another couple of weeks before it is decorated and new flooring is put down.

I finally got the Sew Demented Bag sewn together and, after spending most of the construction time cursing it, I love it and, dare I say, am going to make a couple for presents?

I'm really pleased with the colours of this - choosing them from my collection of Sandy Gervais Autumn designs which I'm gathering together for a quilt.

It's about the size of a pencil case with a zipper that extends over the sides to form handles.

Inside there are three zippered compartments which then create four other spaces

You can make the outside plain although I chose to add a strip of squares.

Once you've made one and can see how it is constructed (the pattern is not good for this but there are a few tutorials on YouTube), the next attempt should  together quickly, but you need a strong machine to do the side panels. Joanne at the class broke two needles on her Brother machine. I didn't attempt it on my Singer but went straight to the Bernina which sailed through the thick parts with ease. I did put a larger needle in to be sure though.  I think I'll make one for Karin in Japanese fabrics and a linen and lawn version to go with the other sewing things I've made over the past few months

Well I've got three hours before I need to set off for work. So I'm going to give the washing machine some wellie and take a shower with maybe knitting a couple of rows of my cowl added in for good measure. I want it finished this week as Alex, Carol and I are going on a Natural Dye Workshop on Saturday. Socks are on the agenda for this yarn. It's something I've never knitted before but Carol assures me are really good to knit and wear.  Somewhere I need to fit in some time to write a pattern for the class this week. OMG - where will that come from!

Craft Polygamy - it's everything you could wish for

My real love is quilting and has been a constant for more than a quarter of a century,  since I discovered the first issue of Popular Patchwork at the supermarket in 1993. The cover had a sampler quilt in brown. I was in love.  (well maybe not with the brown).  I went for blue and yellow which was the colour of my bedroom at the time (good old Laura Ashley). Each little triangle on this tree of life was sewn individually - I think there was nearly one hundred pieces in this 12" block.

 The Strawberry was my introduction to curved piecing.

 And this rose design ignited an interest in Amish Quilting and then, naturally Durham Quilting.

All hand stitched from the piecing and quilting to the binding. Not a machine in sight. I was mindful that the quilting should look the same on the back as it did on the front. It was mostly cut with scissors and homemade templates.

I was having trouble getting points to match and my mother suggested going to a quilting shop she'd seen whilst in Newcastle. This was new to me as fabric had to be bought from Laura Ashley or other haberdashery shops, it was the first specialist quilting shop in the area.

I took the trip and it was the best thing that ever happened in my creative career.  The lady, called Pearl, had a massive supply of 100% cotton - about sixty bolts! Unheard of luxury. Now of course shops stock hundreds and even thousands of bolts. She showed me how to mark the fabric and match up the points; how to sew the little quilting stitches and what to put in the 'sandwich'.  I'd made clothes for me and for my dollies, lots of cross stitch and knitting but nothing like this. I was totally beguiled.  Over the months that followed I got a ruler, rotary cutter and mat. I loved the rhythmic nature of the stitching which somehow must have been in my blood. My paternal grandmother and her twin sister had been seamstresses at Harrod's, making bespoke silk underwear.  They used to knit and crochet beautiful fine jumpers and shawls too.

I've loved craft painting too, and had a wonderful teacher in Sandra from the Crafts House (now very sadly retired from her teaching). I saw some of her work at a quilt shop nearby and called in to see about learning her craft. It was magical. She is a talented and creative artist and a patient teacher. (Not to mention a very lovely person). Her husband would cut any shape you wanted from wood. Now I have to get them laser cut which produces exact shapes, but they don't have that organic nature which only hand-cutting can produce. I particularly loved the way you could create painted fabrics. This has led me to dabbling in fabric design which is something I will definitely pursue when time allows - it is a much longer and more complicated process than I ever imagined. That and I have had to learn how to use design software at the same time, although it often starts as a watercolour.

I know many people are monogamous to their passion but I'm a bit of a tart when it comes to creativity. I've loved knitting since I was a young teenager but when cross-stitch came along my knitting needles fell silent for a while.

Knitting was briefly re-ignited when the boys were willing to wear hand knits (and machine knits when my father decided to buy me a knitting machine and then a spinning wheel).  I didn't keep up with the machine knitting - it didn't have the same fascination as the slower, mesmeric counting that goes with hand knitting and crochet.  I still have the spinning wheel and intend to dust it off when I retire.  When I first got it, sourcing fleece was more difficult. I lived on a farm at the time and had some sheep of my own,  but with two young children and a little farm shop to run, preparing fleece was low down on the agenda. Now you can buy a huge variety of fleece in different stages of preparedness and more particularly, lots of different blends.

Latterly crochet has taken a big chunk of my crafting time and I have loved discovering the gorgeous yarns - the choice is incredible. Thanks to Barbara at Ring-a-Rosie in Whitley Bay I have access to an incredible range of yarns.  Visiting Yarndale in Skipton and UnRavel in Farnham means I have a super collection of Indie-Dyed Yarns. It also spurned a love of smaller items like wrist warmers and cowls which are much quicker to knit up and don't depend on getting the right tension. This is good considering the vast array of different yarn weights which don't translate like they used to do when I was first knitting. 4 ply, double knitting, aran and shetland lace yarn were the only weights then - you could use any manufacturer for any pattern.

The fascination with the hand-dyed yarns made me want to try that, which I finally did with Alex a couple of weeks ago.  We're booked on another workshop at the beginning of February to learn how to use natural ingredients to dye the yarn.  Coming home with a skein of hand-dyed yarn re-ignited my knitting mojo - back after a couple of decades or so.  I've sat up late at night and knitted early in the mornings.

The thing that I'm pleased about the most is that I haven't really given up on any of these crafts. There's nothing really stored "under the bed" (apart from my embarrassingly large stash of fabric). There are quite a few things that I don't use so much now like my Sizzix Cutter but I do use them occasionally.

I think all these handcrafts I enjoy have been kept alive by the blogs and podcasts of other people as much as my real-life crafting friends. It's a whole new community that you can give you answers to any problem, including how to make a Sew Demented Zippered Bag which would have gone in the bin long ago if it hadn't been for YouTube. They give inspiration and share their passion which is very infectious.

One of the bloggers  - Posie Gets Cozy - has recently been making Hand Lotion Bars. As a quilter and knitter I use a lot of hand lotion and was pleased to see the solid bars which of course don't need plastic bottles.  Alex's friend, Sally, is up from Lancashire next weekend and we are squirrelling supplies to make our own hand lotion bars.

People often ask me what my favourite colours are. The truth is I don't have a favourite colour, I love them all. Colour is the the magic that binds all these crafts together. When it comes to colour I'm just as much of a tart with that too and, at my time of life, it's the only tartage I can get.