angharad

Knits and stitches 2011

2012-01-09T21:40:00.000Z

I still make things, just not half as much as I used to. Looking back on 2011, though, there was a bit more making than I realised, in between the house-hunting and house-selling, as well as all the stresses and strains of a relocation with 3 small children in tow.

In costume, there was 1 don't-look-too-closely felt Paddington hat, 1 Mildred Hubble school tie and sash, 1 Victorian smock, 1 WW2 evacuee's cap and gas mask, and a Bethlehem villager's get up. You'll have to trust me on this one, though the costumes were pretty shoddily thrown together at top speed, I may be biased but I think the cuteness of my children more than compensated for it!

For my little family, there was an attempt to be less of a slummy mummy by making an apple print pram liner, and a couple of outfits for my daughter's Corolle Les Cheries doll.

There were even two handmade baby quilts as gifts for my friend's new baby and my new nephew. I loved making the orange and pink zig-zag quilt, acquiring a new love of orange fabrics in the process.

The nephew quilt was finished and belatedly gifted to its recipient just before Christmas when at long last I managed to unpack my sewing machine and clear a space amidst the boxes in the study to sew! I used some of the same fabrics as I used in my own boy's quilt, adding some new ones into the mix, and backing it with some lovely soft brushed cotton fabric from Cath Kidston.

And my first project of 2012 is already underway as I'm getting another new nephew in the Spring when my sister's first baby is due. Today the fabrics were ordered and I can't wait to get started.

And in the hall of unfinished shame, we have one baby quilt top and the scrap vomit quilt I started back in May. I'm so nearly there with the scrap vomit now, well, with piecing the top anyway, just waiting for a spool of cotton thread sent to my old address and I'm away! But in the meantime, here's evidence that the B blocks are in progress, though I've departed from the pattern here and gone for what will hopefully be a pattern of diamonds interlinking across the quilt in dark grey solid cotton ... which may or may not turn out to be a terrible mistake.

There was also a sole knitted project, but as it was start to finish in moss stitch I'm counting it as three (let's overlook its miniature size!).

Pattern: Lucky by Kim Hargreaves
full details on Ravelry

I got over the pain of the moss stitch by knitting continental style, which I heartily recommend, as otherwise I think my hands would have ended up as gnarled claws in the process (knitting British-style does not favour moss stitch as it's about as inefficient a movement as you could get switching from knit to purl). I finished this one whilst watching Prof Brian Cox's A Night with the Stars before Christmas. Ok, so the maths bit was a bit of a stretch for me (and I have a gloaty mathematician of a husband to make this abundantly clear) but as far as I'm concerned, lining a handknit jacket with quilting cotton is as near as damnit to quantum physics. Stretchy knitting versus tightly woven cotton, the whole inside out/right side in thing. I'm so pleased with the end result, and my little nephew looks gorgeous in it!

And as for 2012? My stitching resolve is firm, and I intend to have a much more productive year.

Winter jaunts

2011-12-19T15:30:00.012Z

I genuinely can't believe that I had comments on my last post - I really thought I'd be posting into an echoey void! It's a lovely reminder of why the internet is such a great place; I have so many friends through blogging that I might never otherwise have met.

So it's the week before Christmas, and we've just had a 6th birthday for a small boy. A small boy who, with a week's notice, decided it was imperative he had a party rather than a family outing to Big Pit as he'd planned. I must admit, I was a little relieved about big pit. I'm fine with heights, but give me an enclosed space, or maybe a coal face 90 metres down a mine shaft, and I'm not at my happiest. And anyway, I've been before, on a lovely school trip and feel one 'real underground experience' in a lifetime is probably enough. Ask Joanne, I couldn't even go in the giant badger sett in Kew Gardens, I'm really a total wimp.

I prefer to do my sightseeing strictly above ground, and goodness knows there are some lovely places right on our doorstep in Monmouthshire. You can't walk a few feet without tripping over an ancient monument or recognising a backdrop from Merlin, hence Monmouthshire's boast of having more castles per square mile than anywhere else in Britain.

Tintern Abbey

Raglan Castle

And the children are partial to a bit of history and a rampage around a ruin too, hence their hilarious comments in the visitors' book at Raglan Castle on our latest visit:

The girl, 8, writes: 'Beautiful views and outstanding history'
The boy, 5, writes: '2000 times better than an ordinary human house'.

Now that's what I call value for money.

Bloggled

2011-10-24T20:34:00.014+01:00

My new sewing space; welcoming, huh?
I see this as symbolic of my mental state after the fun of moving house.

Goodness this blog has been neglected lately! And it feels a bit now or never coming back to it. To be honest, the more time has passed, the more I've felt like letting it die a quiet death. I'd been feeling a bit boggled and blah about the whole thing, and then a few days ago happened upon a lovely email in my inbox which really touched me and made me miss all the things I love about blogging.

It's been a long-haul few months. Around a week after my last post we sold our house to a buyer who wanted us out just over three weeks later, which didn't leave much time for blogging, taking stock, or even packing. I did briefly consider just taping myself up into a box marked 'fragile' and hiding when faced with the task of packing up an entire house with just a 13-month old to help. But somehow it happened, our stuff went into storage and after a short spell camping at my parents' house (whose patience must be limitless to have put up with us and our three children as well as a good deal of our clobber for several weeks), we moved in to our new home. Some headaches along the way, not least finding our children had been allocated two different schools, around 1 mile to the first, then 2.5 miles on to drop off the next in 10 minutes time with some crippling hills in between ... I mean, I like walking, but I can't fly. Thankfully we've finally sorted that one, and after a busy couple of months unpacking and decorating, along with parenting (which has slowed down the first two), I'm finally turning around, taking stock and thinking about blogging again.

We're loving our new life in Monmouthshire, although missing the friends we've left behind. The countryside around here is beautiful, our new home town has its very own castle, and we have a fabulous view of the Severn bridge as we walk to school. Oh yes, we've gone over to the other side (that's to say the Welsh side, and back to the homeland for me). The house is great, with so much more scope for swinging cats. And guess what, there's even a sewing room for me. My husband is intent on calling it a 'study' for some reason, but he'll soon learn that I don't really intend this to be shared space.

This week marks me finally unpacking the sewing machine, and some actual stitches sewn. I feel 100 times better about most things when I'm making stuff, and I've felt positively joyous this week stitching in the ditch and handsewing the binding onto a baby quilt for my new nephew. Now to try and keep up the momentum.

See you on the ice.

Multi-coloured block shop

2011-06-18T20:37:00.002+01:00

My workspace (because it sounds grander than 'the desk in my bedroom') is being overtaken by glorious colour. I now have 8 scrap vomit blocks completed and another 4 blocks' worth of string-pieced strips for the remaining 'A' blocks. Then there's the little baby boy quilt which started making itself last week on a whim.

As much as I'm trying to pare everything down and keep the house as tidy as possible for viewings, I'm not hiding these completed blocks out of sight because they make me happy when I see them. Partly because it's satisfying to see the 'completed' pile grow, but also because we're living in a completely abnormal way at the moment, with all our clutter hidden from view, so it's nice to have a bit of chaos creeping in!

I have, however, stopped short of leaving them laid out on the dining table for the delight of potential viewers -- yes, I'll buy the house immediately, but only if you throw in that beautiful patchwork! --
... no, probably not going to happen.

Oh, and thanks to all you enablers who commented on my last post, and a twitter exchange with Kate from M is for Make, I've taken my Japanese 'Dress and Camisole' book down from the shelf and traced out a pattern for a pretty - but, crucially, simple - top.

Delusions of being a dressmaker

2011-06-12T20:53:00.007+01:00

Will someone please remind me that I am a rubbish dressmaker? I lay before you the evidence (well, the remaining evidence that I haven't disposed of under cover of darkness):

Exhibit 1
The gauzey, wear-with-everything, it's-going-to-be-the-best-top-I've-ever-owned top.

Verdict: Never worn. Looks great on the hanger, but the fabric was itchy, the neck was too wide, and the cap sleeves were voluminous. Attempted remedial work, but banished to the scrap bin as a lost cause.

Exhibit 2
The shoplifting dress.

Verdict: Really, need I say more??? Wrong fabric, wrong size, unsalvageable.

Exhibit 3
A stash of fabrics and patterns bought specifically for dressmaking, languishing unused in an underbed storage box.

Verdict: Quit while you're ahead and still solvent.

So why is it that I am yearning to make a Beignet Skirt (Colette patterns)? I've been haunting the flickr pool for Colette patterns and have found some lovely examples there. I've even chosen my fabric - this organic crossweave cotton from Raystitch (there isn't a colour I don't like).

I just need to remind myself that the finished skirt, knowing me, will be unwearable. So if you see me hovering over that 'add to cart' button, please save me from myself.

The small stuff

2011-06-05T20:30:00.004+01:00

We've had a busy week of house-hunting this half term, with a trip across the border to the Wye valley to begin our search for a new home. Daunting is not the word - co-ordinating house sale and purchase, new schools for children and the husband's new job is going to be no joke. Then there's the packing. I'm trying not to think about all that for the moment, but gradually plugging away at all those little sorting jobs that will make the whole thing less painful.

I'm counting as one of those little jobs going through my fabric scraps at long last. There doesn't seem to be much sense in transporting huge carrier bags of tiny offcuts and fabric strips when we have a whole 5-people's-worth of stuff to think about. Of course, cutting and sewing means making a mess, but it's a pleasant diversion tactic. In a flurry of activity after returning home from Wales, I finally cut my 965th 2.5 inch square ready to start on scrap vomit. I'm thinking of changing the pattern slightly, and using a dark charcoal grey or even a navy for my B blocks, with the outer ring in grey, the next ring in scraps, then the inner ring in grey again, taking inspiration from this lovely quilt I found over on flickr.

The process of cutting up those little squares has put a considerable dent in my scraps collection, and now I've got the momentum going, I've been grabbing handfuls of fabric strips to finally get going on some projects I've been thinking about for ages. It's so satisfying string-piecing little blocks and odd shaped patchworky pieces. Once I've zipped through a few more, I'll post some pictures of what I'm making; I have lots of different scrappy plans!

Good things come in 2 ounce packages

2011-05-28T20:04:00.003+01:00

This last couple of weeks I've been driven by a new obsession - to reduce the two carrier bags full of fabric scraps I've been hoarding into 2.5" squares. Oh yes, bring on the scrap vomit. I loved the idea of this quilt ever since I saw Katy's post and mock up over at I'm a Ginger Monkey, and the finished quilt is beautiful. Then there's the name, of course, which seems to have inspired admiration and revulsion in equal measure, for me it's a complete winner; how could anyone not want to make a quilt called 'scrap vomit'?

There is something immensely satisfying about trimming down all those offcuts of fabric and being left with a towering, multi-coloured, pile of fabric squares. That's the beauty of scrap vomit, all those mismatched squares come together in a glorious riot of colour. If there's pleasure to be found in lining up those edges on the grid of my cutting mat and ruler edge and neatly cutting them to size, I'm even more delighted by the 100-square stacks I've been making. And, I discovered a stash of little ziplock bags, the perfect size to accommodate them, each package weighing in at around 2 ounces; the husband has been wildly amused by my bagging them and weighing them at the dining table!

At 623 squares (and a full 342 - or 7 ounces - short of the 965 I'll be needing to complete even the lap-sized quilt, there's a danger I'll be compelled to reduce all my yardage to 2.5 inch squares, which is really defeating the scrap-busting point of this quilt.

Any one else scrap vomiting? There's a scrap vomit appreciation society group over on flickr, and the finished quilts are all looking gorgeous. I can't wait to get sewing now, once I've carved up the remaining squares.

Today

2011-05-15T22:59:00.003+01:00

It seems I picked a bad week to blog daily, as blogger had a bit of a wobble and went into read-only as well as deleting various posts and comments. Though the venture was probably doomed to failure, it's nice to be able to blame the technology instead of myself for a change.

So let's draw a line under last week. Back to today. It's been a busy Sunday, as Sundays always seem to be. It started with a frantic tidy-up ready for a house viewing. A house viewing where I managed to speak Welsh with the viewer (there's a lot of us ex-pats up and down the Thames valley). I also distinguished myself by saying 'this is the front door' after coming back through the house from the garden. It was as if I thought he might have become disorientated having walked through the whole house. Let's be clear, we haven't got a West wing or anything, we live in a very compact house (I mean, err, very spacious, light and airy blah blah). I managed to giggle only slightly before regaining estate agent-like composure.

Today I also cut a small boy's hair (the resident small boy, not a random small boy from the street) and the husband's hair. I upset the small boy by using a wet comb on his head and unnerved the husband by laughing most of the way through his, but they both seem to have come through unscathed.

This afternoon, I defrosted some ice-cubed portions of food I had made up for the baby. I thought she was getting pasta bolognese with a side order of sweet potato, which was maybe ever-so-slightly not masterchef. It transpired she was getting pasta bolognese with a side order of cod and sweet potato: definitely not masterchef.

This evening I performed bread surgery, making incisions in 3cm thick slices to make Bill's ham and gruyère French toast. It was very very good. A bit radical serving a breakfast dish for dinner, but I'm nothing if not radical (witness the bolognese and sweet potato with cod).

Tonight I ignored the ironing pile for so long that the husband is now working his way through it as I type.

Hope you had a good weekend.

Start them young!

2011-05-11T23:38:00.000+01:00

I really love seeing my children getting excited about making things. Over Easter they suddenly both had a burning desire to sew. The girl wanted to make a pretty lavender bag for the tooth fairy (she chose a fairy-flimsy Japanese gauze) and the boy wanted to make a little purse (Japanese car print fabric and precisely 5 blue buttons). They were very definite about their ideas and choices, and they were totally focused on their work.

It seems the whole stitching thing and a general appreciation of things handmade has been seeping in to them through some kind of osmosis for some time. Witness my 7 year old's homework over Easter: sentence 3 "I knitted a tea cosy". Atta girl!

Then I found some abandoned sheets of paper featuring her designs for purses:

You will need
gold (thin) t[h]re[a]d
Any lov[e]ly fab[r]ic
Flower lining
Any nice but[t]on

Got to love "Any nice fabric (not shown)"!

There was also my 5 year old's homework a little while back. He chose to draw his oldest teddy in her handknitted dress.

Let's be honest here, the reason he chose Nee Nee was that she's white, so he thought he'd have less colouring in to do (ever the pragmatist!), but I did grin when I read his text:

This is my teddy bear
Her name is Nee Nee
I got her from my Grandad
My Great Nana knitted the dress
Sadly she isn't alive any more

We're building up quite an archive of the cute stuff! Gold stars all round!

AOB: A make a month in 2010

2011-05-10T20:18:00.003+01:00

Phew. Day 2 of tying up those loose ends and I'm still here. I nearly forgot, but not quite! Thanks so much for the quilt appreciation, I really enjoyed working with a different colour scheme and definitely need some more orange in my life now.

So, remember back in January 2010, I had this bright idea, A Make a Month in 2010. I set up a flickr group and had a blog button and everything. Anticipating a bit of a setback in my creative output after the birth of my daughter in May, I thought this might keep me on the crafting straight and narrow; the guilt of keeping up with everyone else would surely keep me going! I even managed to keep it up until around June ... I am quite possibly the worst sewalong starter in the world. Thanks to Ruth for taking the reins when I was off snoozing, rocking and feeding! I have to say though, even though I fell behind in the blogging and flickr uploading, I was still with you all in spirit and managed, by the skin of my teeth to complete my 12 projects. It's been fun seeing everyone else's makes too.

Here's my finished mosaic of makes. If you click on the pic, you'll go to my flickr where you can see all the individual makes. Anyone else fancy sharing a mosaic of their 12 (total or favourite!) makes in 2010? You can link in the comments and upload to the group. I'm going to close the pool by the end of the month, so a bit more time for late finishers like me!

Finishing what I started

2011-05-09T20:44:00.007+01:00

I've been so neglectful of my blog just lately. There are 101 things I'd meant to blog, but somehow time passed and I hadn't got around to it. I don't like leaving things unfinished though; witness my recurring nightmare of being in the final year of my degree, a week before my final exams and realising I have neither chosen my special authors, nor read any of their novels. I can feel that deep dread in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it. I think the dream is born of an anxiety about not finishing things (as well as not starting things I said I'd do!). So in the spirit of starting and finishing, I'm planning to post each day this week just to tie up those loose ends, like the AOB section of an agenda.

First up is the 2010 zig-zag quilt piece-along I signed up to 16 months ago. I'd been inspired by Lina's gorgeous zig-zag quilt in sunny yellows. Evidently, I failed to sew a zig-zag quilt in 2010, but I had the perfect excuse to start one this Spring for a best friend's new baby girl. All I knew was that there must be lots of orange, as it's always been her favourite colour, and I thought I'd throw in some bright pinks for extra zing, though steering well-clear of the classic baby pastel pinks.

I've seen a great tutorial by crazymomquilts on how to make a zig-zag quilt without piecing any triangles, but in the end went for a different method, piecing pairs of two triangles from two 5" squares, then assembling the zig zags in horizontal rows.

And here's the finished quilt

It was made with 5 fat quarters of fabric (all used, almost to the selvedge), a metre of fabric for the backing, and a few inches of solid quilting cotton for the doubled binding which I had leftover from a previous project. The whole quilt is playmat-sized, using a craft-sized pack of warm & natural wadding. All materials were ordered from the lovely Jo and Fran at Saints & Pinners (all the dolce fabrics are now in the sale).

I'm very happy with this one, and as ever, enjoyed handstitching the binding on to frame the finished quilt and seeing it become a thing rather than a pile of fabric squares. My friend's baby (who is totally gorgeous!) has already tried it out for size and had a lie down on it on a picnic-in-the-park meetup, and I hope it'll hold up to lots of use (the beauty of such a brightly patterned quilt is that you can throw pretty much anything at it!).

new things on the horizon

2011-05-01T21:30:00.008+01:00

Once again, I find myself apologising for a long blog absence. There's been a whirlwind of activity around here, since, a few weeks ago, my husband got a new job. He's a teacher, so at least the timescale is a bit kinder than it might be, but even so, having to be moved out and moved in by the beginning of September means that we've been under pressure to get our house onto the market as soon as possible.

I may have mentioned on more than one occasion what a poor housewife I am, so it's going to be quite a struggle keeping the house in order for viewings! For the time being, I'm trying not to stress about chains, new schools for the children and saying our goodbyes here, but taking one step at a time.

The move is something we'd always planned in the longterm; we're heading West, back to the homeland for me, and nearer to family in South Wales and the West country, which has been the main reason behind it all. Of course, there's all the guilt about uprooting the children, but so far so good, they're excited about having castles, mountain centres, seaside and grandparents on their doorstep and seem to think they're going to be permanently on holiday. So far, I'm the only one who's disgraced herself by shedding tears at their classroom doors when telling their teachers we'll be leaving!

This has been a bit of a word-heavy post, so I'll leave you with a few pictures taken by the children on a recent idyllic day out at Kew Gardens with Joanne and family. We had a wonderful time roaming the vast gardens, exploring the giant badgers' set (actually Joanne and I sat that one out; the advantage of taking husbands along is that they can do all the gung-ho, crawling around in small dark spaces things!), and admiring the giant compost heap (it takes a considerable amount of time for a small boy to appreciate its splendour).

From the viewfinder of my daughter, budding nature photographer ...

And Joanne mentioned 'extreme closeups', so I just had to post this picture my boy took here.

Somehow, I forgot my son was only 5 and didn't anticipate quite how close to the peacock he would go to take his shot; there must have been a number of people that day who took photos of a beautiful peacock and the back of a small boy holding a canon powershot about a foot from its beak!

Weekday evening carnage

2011-03-30T18:07:00.005+01:00

If my head ever explodes, it will be between 4 and 6pm on a weekday evening.

Then there was the cat with a bird in the back garden, me running out in socks spraying her madly with a water spray, resorting to the hose when that didn't work, baby screaming in her high chair due to me being outside, oh, and the pervasive smell of haddock from last night's dinner. I keep a well-ordered house, me.

A patchwork week

2011-03-28T20:29:00.007+01:00

It seems that I may be becoming a quilter. As anyone with a young family knows, day-to-day life is lived in pieces. It's all very well my being able to go a day without a proper meal just fuelling myself with the odd cup of tea and slice of cake or chocolate bar, but it is very much frowned upon if you don't feed your children. There's also the small matter of clothing them, getting them to school, settling babies down for naps (in an ideal world), and all that housework (ok, I'm lying about this one). Thus the day is broken down into little pre- and post- chunks - where windows of time and opportunity arise in between the necessary tasks for the day. I thought I didn't have any time to sew during the week, but as it turns out, if I'm in the right frame of mind and organise myself I can make a tiny quilt top in a week's worth of naptime sewing sessions!

I started out with the beautiful bundle of squares which I won from Florence in her blog giveaway last year, 16 4.5 inch squares from the Grandmother's Flower Garden range by Rosalie Quinlan. They'd been sitting in my to-sew pile for some time, and I periodically got them out to play with but had been hampered by indecision about how to use them. Then suddenly (maybe because it's Spring) I found myself in a yellow kind of mood and seized with the impulse to piece the squares together with this printed gingham from Tanya Whelan's Darla collection. I allowed myself just one day of procrastination as I rearranged the squares into their most pleasing configuration and then cracked on, and lo and behold, the baby sister slept for long enough that week for me to cut and piece a small quilt top.

Quilting is the ideal pursuit for anyone who has a fragmented day. Cutting, piecing, sashing, sandwiching, quilting and binding are all very satisfyingly methodical, and more importantly, they are tasks that can be picked up and put down when time allows. This week I shall be starting the process again with a little baby quilt for my friend's new baby girl. I've become oddly decisive in the wake of completing my thrown-together quilt top last week and plumped for these 5 fabrics from Saints and Pinners after only a small amount of deliberation. And you know what, I'm even going to cut into them tomorrow! Hopefully the end of the week will bring another completed quilt top, zig-zags this time (ticking off another outstanding to-sew from last year's list!).

And next week and the week after? ... I intend to apply the principles of patchwork to my unwritten patterns and get them done bit by bit. Then again, I should probably apply those principles to a bit of Spring cleaning around the house.

Small-scale sewing endeavours

2011-03-15T11:15:00.004Z

I'm slowly limbering up to sewing more regularly. As ever, my problem is that when I do get some free time, instead of sitting straight down to sew I ponder all the projects I've been planning, then decide what I'd planned probably would have ended up being a disappointment, and pack everything away again for another day. I have a sketchbook brimming over with (poorly drawn) ideas for bags and tea cosies, aprons and quilts and yet none of them ever get made. There's also the small matter of two almost-finished patterns, one for this bag and the other for these wallets that just need that final push to get them finished and ready for sale.

In the interests of getting back into the swing of things, albeit on a very tiny scale, I've been trying to expand my little girl's wardrobe of dolls' clothes. The doll is one that I bought for her having seen a similar one in an issue of Marie Claire Idees - they're sold through the Marie Claire Idees shop as Marie and Claire dolls, and are made by Corolle in their range of Les Cheries dolls. Ours is a Chloe, purchased here, she's a 30 cm / 13 inch doll with oodles of glossy hair and what's more she's vanilla-scented! I'm all for playing with dolls, and can totally see the draw of the Blythe dolls I've been seeing all over flickr - the possibilities for hairstyles and miniature clothes are endless! With the aim of providing Tulip, my daughter's doll with a range of outfits to rival all the other well-dressed dollies out there, we bought the book of knitting and sewing patterns designed by Marie Claire Idees,Tenues de poupée. It's with some hilarity that I noticed the difference in the style stakes between chic Parisian Marie (in her beret on the right) and the dowdier Marie a Londres (on the left)! On the whole though, there are some very sweet designs.

Here's what we've come up with so far, first up, a dress for a garden party, which my daughter says reminds her of Alice in Wonderland. I've been looking for an excuse to use this gorgeous mushroom/toadstool fabric (Willow Shroom from Alexander Henry) for ages - and the best thing about dolls' clothes sewing is there's still plenty left for another day!

I also made this Summer holiday outfit, a smock top and some turned up blue jeans for city sightseeing. The blouse fabric is an offcut of Tana lawn I bought in Liberty some years ago, which was made into a gypsy top for my girl (outgrown but ready to be passed down the line to the baby sister!) and also put in an appearance in my Chinese coin quilt. It's a real favourite of mine so it's been nice to put the final scraps to use here.

Lots more plans are afoot to make tiny fairisle jumpers and hats, a great way of ploughing through my collection of leftover yarn. It's nice to see something through from start to finish in an hour, and even I can't procrastinate too much about fabric choices for a dollswear!

Now would someone please shout at me to do some proper sewing instead of playing with dolls? And maybe I'll get those sewing patterns finished in time for Christmas too.

Book reviews - Learn to Quilt and Crafts with Kids

2011-03-06T20:00:00.012Z

New Holland Publishers kindly sent me a couple of books to review recently, Learn to Quilt by Sharon Chambers and Crafts with Kids by Susie Johns.

Learn to Quilt is a book I chose for myself having made a couple of quilts more or less freestyle, or with very simple patterns, but wanting to learn more about different styles of quilt blocks. This is a fairly slim volume but it does cover a lot of ground, starting with basic quilting and rotary cutting techniques and moving on to more complicated blocks as the book progresses. There's even a chapter on foundation piecing, which I'm really keen to try having seen all the string-pieced blocks popping up all over the place in blogland and on flickr lately. The book also covers techniques such as 'quilting as you go', hand quilting (with templates) and hand-tying. There are 13 chapters in all with each starting by explaining a technique and then going on to use that skill in a quilt design. The book is a good project-based volume for beginners, with more than enough to keep me busy for some time to come.

Needless to say, Crafts with Kids was immediately pounced on by my 7 and 5 year old and they have been poring over it ever since, choosing things to make.

There are 5 sections inside covering paper craft, recycling, painting and printing, naturecraft and needlecraft. All the projects are very easily attainable for children of this age range with a little adult supervision - no overly complicated or finicky techniques and, more importantly, they end up with a finished object that looks enough like the photo in the book to avoid major disappointment! The big sister had a friend over to play the other weekend and they had great fun making pretty paper heart decorations from the book for their bedrooms using tissue paper, coloured cardboard and some sparkly stickers and sequins. They followed the instructions themselves and were able to assemble the various layers without adult help.

Whilst we have lots of other children's craft books on the shelves, this book is one I could let my children have pretty much free rein to choose projects from - we have most of the materials around the house and they're not too time consuming or difficult, all in all a winner!

New Holland publishers have kindly offered readers of this blog 20% off Crafts with Kids or Learn to Quilt with free P&P (UK only) if you follow these links and enter the code 'angharad' at checkout (Offer valid until 30th June 2011).

Staying on the right side of sane: a reading list

2011-03-05T23:10:00.000Z

When Karen of Blueberry Park wrote a post 'Next to my bed' about her pile of bedside reading books I took a look at my own bedside table and decided to play along. My books told a very particular story about the latter stages of my pregnancy. You see, for all that I am (ahem) a terribly sane and well-balanced person most of the time, the last few weeks of my pregnancy with the baby sister really got to me. I got to the point where I really didn't want to be on the school run chatting and being all bright and breezy, I just wanted to hole up in my bedroom with a huge pile of comfort reading.

So what books did I turn to in my hour of need, to switch off, immerse myself in someone else's world, and try to forget about the whens/whats/ifs of my due date, but a great big stack of all my favourite children's literature. I never got around to posting (same old story!) but now that it's world book night, I thought I'd join in the fun and post some of my chosen reading for those moments when you're feeling ever so slightly unhinged and need to lose yourself in a book.

First up, Alan Garner: The Owl Service, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and Elidor (Elidor is absent from the image as I was making someone else read that at the time, I'm like that with favourite books, a total evangelist). I truly love these books and must have read them a hundred times over as a child. I'm Welsh (in case I hadn't mentioned it ;)) as well as being a medievalist by training and these books appealed to both those parts of me even as a child. The sparsness of Alan Garner's prose in the Owl Service (a re-reading of the Blodeuwedd story) really drew me in, and the idea of fantasy otherworlds lying side by side with our own had me hook line and sinker in Elidor. Re-reading The Weirdstone and The Moon of Gomrath as an adult, I was instantly transported back to my childhood, torn between reading on greedily and not wanting to finish the book too quickly! These are books I will make my children read.

I can't move on either without mentioning The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea, also on forced loan (to my mother and she will enjoy it). An epic journey undertaken by 10 year old Pidge and his fiery 5 year old sister Brigit peopled with the characters and landscapes of Irish mythology, it's the quirkiness and humour of this one that grabbed me. Swapping sweets, wolves dressed in people's clothing, the whole concept of a watch frog, it's a total masterpiece. I still can't come across the lines depicting the first attempt to ensnare Pidge without a smile and a feeling of utter contentment:
'This Road is the Winner of the Safest road in Ireland Competition. This road is so safe that a boy can cycle down it with his eyes shut'.
I adore this book; all children should read it.

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials triology are books that I discovered as an adult, working in Waterstone's bookshop (what a great job - I bought so many books during those few years!). I used to work mainly in the children's section, and read these having seen so many older children buy them. The Oxford aspect is a real pull as I had the most wonderful three years there as a student, and it makes them feel instantly familiar. I've read these books at least 10 times each and still find myself avidly turning the pages. Lyra's character is so utterly compelling and her Oxford is so vivid, I was a total convert from the first chapter where we saw the Master poison the Tokay!

I'm ending this post with Harry Potter, not because they're my favourite books of all those in this post but because they're where I ended up. And I say 'ended up', but should rather say 'read in rotation'. You see, I started my 'staying on the right side of sane' reading list a couple of weeks before the big due date just thinking 'one more book and I'll probably have the baby'. The days, then weeks dragged on (the little miss was 10 days late, but after a false alarm a fortnight before my due date, this seemed like forever) and I grew steadily more antsy and fidgety and fed up and tearful. So while the other books got me through the early days (I read each several times over), by the time I'd got to the overdue stage all I could cope with was Harry Potter. What mashed potato is to food , Harry potter is to books - total comfort reading (and lest anyone think I'm damning with faint praise, I'll remind you I've already shared my love of potatoes on this blog, starchy perfection!).

I read them all, one after the other, then again, and again, in order, out of order, starting the next as I put the last one down, starting the same one I'd just finished again. Honestly, I don't even want to think about how many times I read each of them in that final week. It was a lot, and you probably wouldn't believe me. This makes me sound even more crazy than I was, but it was all I could think of doing. I was reading The Order of the Phoenix the night I gave birth to my daughter. I remember at 8.30, with these huge contractions, reading through the pain. When, at 11.30pm, I had to put the book down as I couldn't actually face reading it any longer, that was when I knew I had to go to the hospital!

Thank you, Harry Potter, you really kept me going.

Books really are the best kind of escapism. I sort of wish I wasn't such a devourer of them as I'm always so sad when I've finished, but the books I love most I am incapable of rationing.

Read these books, read them all.

They make me laugh

2011-03-05T20:44:00.002Z

I'm posting this just so that I don't forget how these two had me crying with laughter last weekend.

We'd just finished lunch when my daughter left the table and I noticed what she'd chosen to wear that day. Yes, my daughter had inadvertently dressed herself as a French mime artist. To say I couldn't stop laughing is an understatement - I must have laughed for about 20 minutes until I was in tears and took my husband down with me. The boy and girl had no idea what was going on, no more did the baby, but they all joined in laughing anyway.

I made her pose like this - they still haven't asked me why and I forgot to explain. No-one thought to ask why I laughed for so long.

The boy wanted in on the photo shoot, so grabbed his lego board and added a few bricks and asked to be photographed. Even more laughter - he's turned himself into the default flickr avatar (he was making a robot face). The thing which had me incapacitated again was him, posed like this, saying in all earnest 'tell me when to say cheese, mummy'.

I think maybe you had to be there.

I sometimes sew: tale of a handmade pram liner

2011-02-25T21:28:00.006Z

Can you tell what it is yet?

I bought the fabrics for this make way back last April, in a final nesting impulse before the baby was born. My babystyle oyster pram was already chosen (not without a lot of deliberation - I like to research things thoroughly!). I could have had the pink, knowing already that I was having a girl (not that a baby boy would be likely to object to the colour of his pram), but then, I didn't like the idea that people might judge me for buying a pink-for-a-girl pram (shallow, aren't I?!) so green it was. Problem is, even though I like green, I never quite liked this actual shade of green, hence my idea of making a pretty pram liner to neutralise it. I already had the Sandi Henderson Farmer's Market apple dot in the red and pink, and thought the green version would be perfect. Of course, buying from the USA (from etsy seller Material Gal), I was obliged to add a whole lot of other fabrics to my basket to justify the postage - the first time I have ever been stung for customs, but it was worth it!

It took a whole eight months for me actually to make the pram liner; I couldn't just jump into it without thinking very carefully about bindings/backings/battings, could I? That kind of thing always takes about eight months.

Basic pram/pushchair seat liner how-to:

1) I roughly cut out an offcut of Warm & Natural batting to fit around an inch inside the seat of the pushchair (I did this in situ by laying the batting on top of the seat). A word to the wise - always better to err on the side of caution and to have to trim away a bit extra than to cut too small - the liner will sort of sink into the seat with baby on top, so it will pull in quite a lot.

2) Removing the batting from the seat and laying it in on the floor, I folded in half lengthways to make sure each side was even and rounded the corners, then placed the folded batting on top of the folded apples and pears and used it as a pattern to cut around for the front, then the same for the back.

3) I quilted the lazy way, straight lines using the edges of the rows of apples as a guide and sewing by eye (as I didn't bother to match the pattern when cutting out the back, the quilted lines cut through the motif, but I don't think it matters either way). I did pin lots though, with bent quilters' safety pins.

4) The binding was handmade by cutting strips of this lime-y green solid cotton on the bias and joining them until long enough to run around the perimeter of the liner. I machine-stitched the binding to the reverse of the liner then handstitched to the front (there's a great bias binding tutorial here which shows how to finish the join neatly).

5) The holes for the 5 point harness were made with the 3 step buttonhole stitches on my machine, positioned by just sitting the finished liner on top of the pushchair and marking the placement with a water-erasable marker.

Lesson learned for the next time:
As much as I love the feel of the warm & natural batting, it doesn't have quite as much weight to it as I would like for this project. It does tend to get squished up behind the baby when my husband manhandles her into her pushchair (he is less precious about the need to stretch and arrange the pram liner prettily than me!). A double layer of batting might have been better, or maybe interfacing the front and back panels.

I'm now planning another in a cute beige and lime green frog print fabric (bought from another etsy seller, fabricsgalore, who I now see has another gorgeous print which might just work with my green pram, maybe for Summer?). I think the cotton canvas should be a nice weight for the liner, and I might try a fleece backing this time, partly for weight and partly so that it sticks to the pushchair a bit better and doesn't slide around.

I have more sewing to share, believe it or not, so back with another post in the week. Strictly small-scale projects only though.

Not taking photos of my lunch

2011-02-19T11:22:00.003Z

I seem to have slipped into a fallow phase, blog-wise. There are so many things that I meant to blog and just haven't. I know it's got a lot to do with the small baby and her (and therefore my) sleep patterns, but I've got to the point where it feels like it's forever hanging over my head yet I haven't got the get-up-and-go to do anything about it. You know, suddenly I almost feel like people may not actually want to read about what I had for lunch yesterday.

Thing is though, it's either blog about my lunch and such or not blog at all, as it's only really the small day-to-day stuff that's actually happening around here. And I think, on balance, my lunch is probably slightly more interesting than the fact I cleaned the floor, or scrubbed the kitchen tiles, so let me tell you about a really good lunch I had the other week. I have long been a huge fan of wagamama's chicken katsu curry - I'm so obsessed with it that it's really the only thing I'm prepared to order if I go there, as I don't want to waste the opportunity of a meal out on something I might like less. So a long while ago, when meeting up with Florence, Joanne and Lisa in London, Joanne helped me to buy the wherewithal for my own homemade version in the Japan Centre on Piccadilly.

So with my shopping list of S&B golden curry, some K&K panko breadcrumbs, and a pack of free-range chicken breasts, I got cooking. Dipped the chopped chicken breasts in flour, in beaten egg, then in the breadcrumbs. Shallow fried them briefly in batches in sunflower oil, then baked them in the oven on a greased tray. Meanwhile, I cooked my rice, fried onions and chopped 4 curry cubes (half a pack) and added them to 750ml of water on the hob which my veg had been boiling in and stirred a bit till it thickened.

When I'd dished it up and was just about to carry it to the table, my husband asked in frank amazement 'Aren't you going to take a photo of that?'
'Why?', I asked.
'For your blog,' said he.
'But it looks like a pig's dinner,' said I.
'Go on, you know you really want to,' he replied.
And so I did.

It may not look much, and I did add in lots of random fridge-vegetables (courgettes and green beans), and it's missing the lovely pickles, but it wasn't half bad!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I seem to have mislaid my baby ...

Knitting season - book reviews

2011-01-24T14:05:00.000Z

It is officially the knitting season in this household, not that anyone else is taking part*, just that the knitting bag is now a permanent feature in the living room as my thoughts turn to hats and scarves and gloves (but let's not mention the glove gone bad incident again).

It's been a chance for me to rediscover all my well-thumbed and newer knitting books, including this pair that were sent to me by Quadrille to review a long while ago: Simple Knittingby Erika Knight and Blankets, Bears and Bootees by Debbie Bliss. The reviews never got published at the time due to the arrival of the small person, so I'm revisiting the books now.

Blankets, Bears and Bootees is everything I want in a knitting book at the moment - lots of projects for tiny people - so mostly achievable in the the curtailed knitting time I have . I've cast on for the teddy blanket in exactly the colour palette of the book (I know it's lazy, but the pretty silver grey and the tan and beige colours are part of what drew me to the pattern in the first place). As ever, however, I only discovered the errata after blithely knitting on for a few full rows of 100-plus stitches! The patterns use Debbie Bliss's own baby cashmerino yarn (bought at a bargain price from hejhog)- I have yet to knit with a more lovely baby yarn, it's so super soft to the touch and stands up so well to washing and wearing (these legwarmers were worn to death by my daughter and are still looking pretty good!).

The baby booties with a bear on the sole to match the blanket are also on my to-knit list, and also the trio of little baby shoes, earmarked as a baby gift for my friend who's expecting her first baby early this year. Other projects include a very baby-boutique jumper with a zig-zag edged detail, a covered baby book, some cute fair isle covered hangers for the nursery and pretty bears and rabbits to cuddle (these too would make lovely gifts). On a somewhat larger scale, we have the giant penguin beanbag, though I must confess I'm pretty sure I have neither the patience nor the staying power to see through such a large project (so much stocking stitch in one colour would probably send me to an early grave, though if you're a tv knitter then this would rattle along on the needles without too much concentration required).

Simple Knitting would make a fantastic present for someone learning to knit, or a past knitter wanting to pick up their sticks again. It's styled like a Japanese craft book, with pretty graph paper contents page (I'm a sucker for graph paper; might be why I married a mathematician) and beautiful shots of needles and yarns. It not only covers the basics, like casting on and off, decreases and increases, but also has lots of information on following patterns, correcting mistakes and aftercare of your knitted items. There's also a stitch library, including some lovely textured swatches which I definitely plan to knit up.

Each pattern in the book has a little 'masterclass' section, going in to more depth on the individual techniques needed to make the piece. The projects, using some beautiful yarns in a neutral palette, range from those which could be gifted, like a cabled hot water bottle cover and an intarsia tea cosy to practical designs like the long fingerless gloves and moss stitch bag. I particularly liked the round buttoned cushion and the striped knitted throw, though I'm not sure I could carry off the pared down aesthetic in my chaotic home!

*As I finish typing this post (they're generally a 3-day plus affair these days) I have won over the girl who has completed her first two rows of wobbly solo knitting. I'll crack 'em all given time :)

My own knitting efforts have been somewhat hampered by the fact I've had my wrist in a splint for 10 days after a fall when out ice-skating with some of the other mums from school. It wouldn't have been quite so embarrassing if I hadn't been a bit of a ringleader for the entire expedition. And I wasn't even doing a triple salchow or anything! According to my dad, going ice skating when you have a small baby is 'tantamount to rock climbing', and though I have to stress that I didn't actually have the baby with me, I will admit that the timing wasn't ideal, and I do feel like a bit of a lemon!

Happy New Year and giveaway winner

2011-01-06T10:49:00.006Z

I thought it was twelfth night this evening so started taking down the decorations this morning. Then it dawned on me that twelfth night is actually the eve of the 6th of January so I'm actually a day late. So there's another housewifery fail I can notch up! I'm a little late wishing everyone a happy new year, but it seems I'm a little late with everything these days.

Christmas was lovely, our first as a family of five. We had real snow, the most we've ever had living in the Thames valley. It began snowing on the boy's birthday and formed a lovely sledgable covering (time for a little gloating over my husband who had told me it probably wouldn't snow this year when I snapped up the last sledge in Daniels in November). We've had riotous fun, mostly doubled up with laughter as we careered out of control down the slope; I must have laughed for about 45 minutes when the boy and I nearly took out his older sister in one headlong run (bad mummy!). The baby sister flapped her arms and legs around so much watching her siblings sledging that she fell asleep in our arms on the way home each time.

The run up to Christmas was full of festive goings on, including a most exciting trip to see the Nutcracker in the London Coliseum. My sister treated my mother, my girl and me to the tickets as a Christmas gift, and so a few days before Christmas we took the train to London to meet her. We had a fabulous time, the girl was absolutely spellbound. The boy and baby, not being so compatible with the enjoyment of a ballet performance, were taken to the London transport museum by my husband, which to be fair, in the boy's eyes was equally as magical as the girls' outing!

It's been an exciting year for us with the arrival of the baby sister. The weeks seem to have been jam-packed with family outings and lots going on in general, but I have precious little making to show and tell. The list of things I made in 2010 is scarily short compared to my usual sewing/knitting output, so here's a list of things I said I'd make but didn't instead:

1) handmade advent calendar for the children
2) zig zag quilt (I've wanted to do one since seeing Linaloo's lovely yellow zig-zags)
3) scrap vomit quilt (and not just because of the name!)
4) seat liner for the baby's pushchair (bought the greens and pinks in this bundle especially)
5) mini quiltlet for the baby (using the Rosie Quinlan squares I won in Florence's giveaway)
6) aprons for both the children (cut out in April, never finished)
7) tea cosies (lots of them, sketchbook full of ideas, none made)

I achieved a grand total of zero sewalongs, in spite of being signed up to the zig zag quilt group, tentatively saying I'd join in with imagingermonkey's scrap vomit, and having been in the handmade advent calendars group since January 2009! I should have known better than to start my own little make-along last January. The Make a Month group over on flickr has loads of beautiful things that everyone else has been making, but not much of my handiwork. I've actually not done too badly at the making considering the scarcity of free time, it's the photographing, flickring and blogging I've struggled with as that evening slump comes over me. It's going to be start again in 2011 for me, I'll just rollover last year's project list and hope to accomplish more this year.

Meanwhile there's a tax return awaiting my attention - all the more galling as I have totally neglected my shop this year, just quietly ticking over with the odd sale here and there. Again, hopefully I'll dust off the cobwebs and Spring clean the shelves in 2011.

So on to the winner of the calendar giveaway, the random number generator has come up with no. 7, which makes Tess of Driftwood the calendar winner. I hope you get lots of inspiration from the calendar this coming year! Just drop me a line with your address and I'll get it in the post to you.

Back soon, now I've charged the camera's batteries I'll show you some pics of my Christmas presents, and perhaps try and share some of the things I actually did manage to sew and knit this year (though I'm wary of over-reaching myself, so won't promise anything).

Happy New Year!

Blog giveaway - the sewing calendar 2011

2010-12-13T20:57:00.006Z

Roll up, roll up! I'm having a Christmas blog giveaway to thank anyone who's still here reading after my part-time blogging stint, and also for any lurkers or newcomers, the more the merrier!

Back in the mists of time (well, last December), I was contacted by Megan Smith to see whether I'd like to contribute two of my tutorials to the Sewing Calendar 2011. Naturally, I jumped at the chance, so you'll find my jewellery roll and napkin set tutorials alongside some beautiful and useful projects by other sewing bloggers. Projects include pintuck cushions by Ellen Luckett Baker from thelongthread, a chick finger puppet by Amy Adams of lucykatecrafts, felt bauble decorations by Laura Howard of lupinhandmade and bugsandfishes, a bag by Autumn Hall of creativelittledaisy, toe separators by Julia Bremble of marmaladekiss and a coffee cup sleeve by Kyoko Nakayoshi of cottonandcloud. All in all there are over 100 sewing projects including home decor items, bags and pouches, aprons and decorative items.

If you'd like to enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post by midnight GMT on Tuesday 21st December telling me what you'll be sewing in 2011. I'll pick a winner from all the entries and post here, so please check back to see if you've won (blogger doesn't always give me people's email addresses to get in touch directly). Once the winner has emailed their address to me I'll get the calendar in the post for lots of sewing inspiration in 2011.

You can have too much of a good thing

2010-11-23T11:24:00.012Z

Buoyed by the purchase of the loveliest red hat in accessorize on a day out with my friend a couple of weeks ago, I had the fantastic idea that I would knit a pair of red gloves to match. After all, you can never have enough red, right? Well, as it turns out that would be wrong ...

Hmmm it seems I've knitted an enormous, industrial-looking knitted red rubber glove! Suffice to say I won't be wearing my comedy glove (I will definitely not be knitting the pair) so what shall I do with it? Cast your votes now:

for hands that do dishes?

unblocking the toilet?

murderin'?

hawking? jousting? clearing hazardous waste?
(sorry I lacked the resources to illustrate these)

Watching Wallace and Gromit's The Wrong Trousers with the children this week, it also dawned on me that if I put the glove on my head I'd bear more than a passing resemblance to Feathers McGraw (yes, I know, it's the beak ...).

The glove is soon to be no more as I shall have to repurpose the wool. Now it's back to worrying about my beret making me look like Che Guevara (yes, I know, it's the facial hair ...).

Back on the blogging wagon

2010-09-07T21:40:00.013+01:00

No, not dead, just busy baby-gazing (read constant breastfeeding!) and child-raising. It's been so long I don't quite know where to start. Probably with a long-overdue thank you for all the good wishes and comments on my last post - I'm not sure where the weeks have gone since the baby sister was born.

We had an idyllic Summer of visits to relatives, day trips, picnics, teeth falling out left right and centre (the big sister), conquering a fear of slides (the boy), and first smiles and laughter (the baby sister). Also, let's be honest, a little bit of squabbling (the big sister and the brother) and much vomiting and screaming (the baby sister), but we'll gloss over that.

We did castles (Castell Coch and Conwy), gardens (Bodnant) beaches (Lyme Regis), archery (Old Sarum), crabbing (the quay in Conwy), ancient monuments (Stonehenge) and much more besides, and the children had a whale of a time.

photo by my dad, hence higher standard of photography than usual!

Whilst I often bemoan the fact that we live so far from all our relatives, it does give us lots of lovely places to visit come holiday time from Wiltshire to Dorset, South Wales and North Wales.

There was also a 10 year wedding anniversary - obviously I was a child bride, I'm not just an aged old crone. We celebrated with a ready meal from M&S, talk about a glamorous lifestyle! Last weekend we also christened the brother (long overdue) and the baby sister. Cue a bit of stash-busting of my yarn hoard - this baby bonnet and cardigan.

another pic courtesy of my dad

Now if only I'd had the foresight to start knitting more than 3 days before the christening I'd probably be able to uncurl my fingers by now.

Life is somewhat hectic around here these days, and I'm not yet sure where I'm going to carve out some serious sewing time, but I'm enjoying all the mother stuff in the meantime. I've contemplated getting one of those mummy calenders of the many columns but I fear that's only one step from being the kind of person who does all her ironing the minute it's brought in from the line, remembers to polish the school shoes and gets all the lunches made the night before, so I've resisted so far - I wouldn't want to wreck my well-earned slummy mummy image!