September?

Well, I hadn't anticipated taking quite such a prolonged blog-break but after my last post our summer got much busier than expected.

We've had visitors, lots of visitors. The children were whisked away to London by dear friends of ours and I was lucky enough to have a whole day all to myself.

Naturally, I ignored the housework in favour of sewing, crochet and doing more sketchbook work. 

 Minx caught the arty bug and spent many happy hours sketching - talking non-stop the entire time, of course.

In fact, that girl of mine talked non-stop for the whole five and a half weeks!

She even managed to squeeze in plenty of bickering, arguing and niggling with her beloved brother.

She went back to school yesterday, and headed straight off on a whole week residential trip.

It's very quiet here this week!

Despite the noise, she did redeem herself with the odd bit of baking.

It seems I'm all but redundant when it comes to fairy cakes these days, being required only for oven lighting and the fetching and carrying of ingredients :o)

She can do a mean chocolate brownie too, and her ginger biscuits were a resounding success. I've come to realise this girl of mine is at her happiest (but not quietest) when she's busy doing - preferably busy doing with me by her side, lending an ear to the continuous stream of chat that she emits.

We both got rather heavily into making bracelets a couple of weeks ago. This cute daisy bracelet is from a very old beading book that's been gathering dust for rather too long.

It took about an hour, with Minx chit-chatting next to me....

....are you noticing a bit of a theme to my summer?

During my one and only day of silence this summer, I managed to finish off a bag that I'd been crocheting. I was hoping it would be mine but the mother in me ended up giving it to Minx, to make up for her having a poorly day the week before - she  must have been ill that day as she was quiet for about three hours!


She loves her new bag.


Hasn't used it once.


If it had been mine I'd have almost worn it out by now!

The penultimate week of our summer break saw us spending a very relaxing, and surprisingly dry, day on the beach with my lovely friend Trashy, while various children and dogs kept themselves entertained :o)



Old black dog, exhausted by the silly puppies.



So, before you know it, September is here. Another lovely summer has been and gone. There's the chill of Autumn in the air and it's back to work for me and back to school for them, although for my boy it's no longer junior school but the big and scary world of secondary education. Yup, my baby started secondary school today. I watched him go into school with his shiny new uniform, looking far too grown up and wandered back home with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.

Now, if you would kindly excuse me, I must go and throw the computer through the window - blurry Blogger has gone all 'new and improved' while I've been away and I can't get my words or photos where I want them....grrrr!!!

Happy blogging!

xxx

I feel it's only fair to warn you that this post is rather photo-heavy!

It's been a funny old week. We're having our driveway block-paved and in our efforts to disturb the workers as little as possible, the children, Merlin and I have tended to avoid going out too much and have spent rather more time than we'd like confined to quarters.

This hasn't been entirely without benefits, as I've had more time to be creative than I have for a very very long time.

First off, I got stuck in to my next sketchbook page. For this challenge, Gina had asked us to choose a portion of one of our potato print images and enlarge it to fill a whole page. I loved doing this and really want to do more - unfortunately I got somewhat obsessed with something else (so unlike me!).



Too much time indoors led to me getting the urge to give some (more) of my cushions a makeover. The crocheted covers I made a while ago were starting to look more than a little tatty, especially as I didn't actually make removeable covers so they were decidedly grubby too.

Initially I only planned to make one cushion cover - a circular Granny cover in Cath Kidston inspired colours, using the fab Granny Mandala tutorial from Crochet with Raymond.


Could have done with making the semi-circles on the back with a little more overlap but no-one will see this bit unless they're being nosey!


Being me, I didn't stop there. I've seen so many lovely crocheted Granny things on Ravelry with a neutral background colour and this idea had been stewing in my brain for quite some time. So, here's cushion number two, again with a little nod to Cath Kidston's colours.

...and the back -again, the overlap could have been a little longer.

By now I was on a roll and as soon as cushion two was assembled and on the sofa, I got stuck into cushion three. This one popped into my head as I crocheted the back of cushion #2 and I obsessed about it the entire time I was finishing off the second cushion!

Luckily all but two of these colours were already in my stash and a quick nip out to the wool shop for a ball of lilac and a ball of blue cotton this afternoon helped me keep the manic crochet going. Mind you, this time I just couldn't face crocheting another cushion back and tried something new(to me) by backing it with fabric.

Here they all are, making my manky old charity shop sofa look really rather gorgeous - if I do say so myself!


It wasn't all plain sailing, however. My first attempt at the circular Granny didn't quite work - a combination of the colours not being quite right and me not reading the pattern - I increased too many stitches on one round and ended up with a very frilly circle.

Not wanting to waste it I set to and blocked and pressed it to within an inch of it's life, turning it into a nice flat circle.

Just perfect for my new jug and bowl :o)


In amongst all this hooking I was forced to take a break for a spot of birthday sewing for one of Minx's 'friends'. Apparently a fiver in a card would not suffice as the little madam in question (and she is a little madam, believe me) had already told my girl that a bag was expected. To make Minx's life easier I agreed to just make the bag....although it wasn't done with much positive energy on my part!



I'm not the only one who's been busy making this week. As soon as Minx saw Jodie's latest patterns she just had to make her very own Smith, with a little help from her Mum. This is Spot Smith - made with some gorgeous fabric given to me by the lovely Kitty quite some time ago.

Thank you so much for the pattern, Jodie - this made my girlie very happy indeed.


All of this creativity has made me so happy this week but the thing that has made me happiest of all happened just an hour or two ago.

A metre of crocheted chain. Minx's very first attempt at crochet. I'm now wearing a turquoise crocheted chain around my wrist - a friendship bracelet made for me by my baby as I was writing this post :o)

Phew! Well done if you made it through all that lot! Here's a little something to end with - one very big, and pointy eared, seven month old puppers.


Wondering where Trashy, D'boy and the little black dog have disappeared to after a very successful visit to Moogshouse on Thursday. Both pups were thoroughly exhausted after a very full-on play session :o)


...and yes, that is one of my beautiful new cushions the little git is standing on!

Happy hooking xxxx

Home again, home again, jiggety jig...

We're back!

The past week has been by turns both lovely and a bloody nightmare (Locket and Trashy have the texts to prove it!). Luckily, the good bits won out and we ended on a happy note.

We've been thoroughly spoiled by the in-laws, who treated us all to a week at the Manor House Hotel near Okehampton (as advertised on TV, people!!). This was a totally different holiday for us and all eleven of us found plenty to do.

There was indoor and outdoor tennis, badminton, bowls, crazy golf, ten-pin bowling, swimming, golf and even aqua-aerobics, salsa and zumba and falconry. Then there was hot-press printing, t-shirt painting, jewellery making, pottery underglazing, bisque painting, woodwork and pottery transfers.

I managed to make all of two things but both make me very happy. First there is the little jug that I painted with underglaze. I went back to collect it the next day, all shiny and ready for use.



I could have done patchwork, embroidery and drawing and painting but I chose to do crafts that I wouldn't normally get chance to do. The craft studios were so well equipped and staffed by a great team of very helpful folk and we all made plenty of lovely mementos.

I was really thrilled with my jug but the bowl I made in the pottery transfers class is my absolute favourite.


(I've just remembered that I did also make a couple of pendants in the enamelling class but they're still packed.)

I even managed to treat myself to some minx nail transfers, an eyebrow waxing and an Indian head, back and arm massage - according to the therapist my back was 'very tight'. After an hour of kneading, pummelling and stroking it was more relaxed than it's been in years.

I was a total beauty therapy virgin before this holiday but I may have seen the light and will become much more high-maintenance in future!

For now, I'll just make do with a decent night's sleep in my own bed, ready for my next Colour Sketchbook session.

xxx

Colour sketchbook

Yesterday, after spending five hours grumbling my way through the two biggest baskets of ironing in the world ever - thankfully aided by some good DVDs - I felt I deserved at least a little time to do 'me' things.

As luck would have it Gina had posted the next installment of the Colour Sketchbook project. I totally lost myself for over an hour. Who would have thought potato printing would be the perfect antedote to domestic drudgery?



I did seven pages of potato prints in my sketchbook! All still need to be worked into further but once I'd started I just couldn't stop.

I wasn't thrilled with the first prints as the paint was a bit thick and made the echinacea look a bit heavy - this may change once I work into them a bit more with watercolour washes.

However, after stamping all over some scrap paper to clean the paint off my potato stamps I realised I loved the softer, almost ghostlike images that were made once the stamp was less painty.


So, I found a big sketchbook and did a page with softer looking images.

I've even had to keep the scrap of kitchen paper that I cleaned my stamp on!

Just to finish off, and to get the very most out of my potato stamps, I hauled out some Scrapstore cotton for a bit of fabric printing. Not sure what I'll do with this yet but it's ready and waiting for inspiration to strike.

No post would be complete without a little Merlin Moog snapshot.

photo taken by Mr Moog when he discovered Merlin looking mournfully out of the front door wondering where his Mummy had gone - my boy loves me :o)

Now, I'm off to furtle about in the loft for holdalls - the Moogs are off for a little break and will be back very soon.

Happy stamping xxx

Sketchbook

A few days ago Gina posted about her summer sketchbook project that she will be teaching and invited her blog readers to join in. I looked back over her posts from last summer and decided it might be just what I need to get my creativity going.

The first challenge was to choose a colour, which is to be used throughout the sketchbook. I chose blue so that I could indulge my love of turquoise. Gina then asked us to paint our first page with a wash of watercolour and cover it with clingfilm and leave it to dry.

I couldn't find my watercolours, so I dug out my acrylics instead and made up a juicy wash of paint. Once dry I had some great textured background to work with.



The theme of the sketchbook is 'close to home' and Gina suggested using something from the garden. My garden underwhelmed me completely and I struggled to find anything that I could develop into a good graphic image. Also, my drawing skills were most decidedly rusty so I cheated and photocopied a piece of bracken and blew it up by over 300%.



I then cut out the image to form a reverse stencil and once I discovered that no matter how hard I scribbled my white oil pastel just wasn't going to work, I switched to a darker blue which seemed to be much more promising. However, I wasn't very excited by the image so it was back to the drawing board.



After a good think I decided I'd love to do an echinacea flower....but I don't have one in my garden and cheated even more by using my very close to home computer and downloading some images off Google!

Echinacea #1 - outlined in orange oil pastel (still can't get the white to show up) on a background of Minx's cheapo watercolours.

Echinacea #2 - again on a background of Minx's cheapo watercolours, outlined in blue and worked into with black biro. Starting to look a little more promising.

I then decided to have a little play with some Markal paintstiks and my cut out images.

I coloured each image in with the paintstik and then using the image as a mask on white paper I scrubbed the 'paint' onto the white page with a toothbrush, as I'd seen Gina do on her 2010 posts.

After dinner I delegated the clearing up and got out Minx's crayons and watercolours for a quick play with some wax resist.

Earlier today I was doing some sewing - teachers' presents - and kind of mastered drawing (or rather writing) with the sewing machine and of course this got the cogs whirring so I sent Minx outside to bring in the washing while I tinkered with a bit of free-machine embroidery.

I'm already having so much fun with this and I'm really looking forward to seeing where it goes - thank you Gina for inspiring me :o)

As I mentioned earlier, there was present sewing today too. This year I opted for an apple for the teacher in the form of a pencil-case, for each of the children's teachers. Everyone loves to start the new school year with a brand new pencil-case, right?

Now for the knitting news.....I've recently been suffering a distinct lack of knitting mojo - most uncharacteristic for me. Even having four different socks on the needles wasn't inspiring me. Last night I decided enough was enough and got cracking with my beautiful bonkers Hexagon socks - this is my second pair of these...here's a Ravelry link to the first pair,

I thought you might like to see my current bed-time reading - to round off this suddenly rather miscellaneous post!

I've wanted to do screen printing for a very long time but haven't yet managed to give it a go. I've been looking for local courses but having drawn a blank I did some Googling and came up with this lovely book.

Well worth a read if you feel the urge to print. Not just screen printing but block printing, stencilling, stamping and lots more. I love this book :o)

I'm hoping to squeeze in some more creative moments this summer, once we've broken up from school. We don't break up until Wednesday - far too late as far as we're concerned!

xxx