I'll be back

Not that anyone reads my blog, but then again, I never post anything, so why would you. I have excuses, mainly focussed on my lack of dining room and ergo lack of computer. But now it's back, so so should I be. One of these days. Soon. I promise.

A bag for me

We're having our dining room floor re done. The dining room is where the computer lives, so at the moment, we have no dining room, all the dining room furniture in the wrong places (2 tables in the kitchen anyone?), all the contents of the dining room furniture (good crockery, a zillion glasses, all my material and wool) stacked in the spare room and no computer. So I'm writing this at work. Don't tell! But my work computer won't let me edit photos. So one of them is sideways. Sorry.



It's another of the Buttercup bags, like I made for Anja from some jeans a while back, but in red cord, like Child B's red cord trousers I made in the winter (now, sadly, lost), and lined with some lovely Indian printed cotton that lovely Rosie bought me.



I blogged about Child B's trousers when I made them. For months he had demanded red trousers. Whenever I got him dressed, he wanted red trousers and cried when I couldn't provide them. Shops only make red trousers for girls, and though that usually wouldn't bother me, I just couldn't find a pair that would do. So I made them for him. When he next demanded red trousers, I produced them with a flourish, but he just cried all the harder. Not those red trousers. But it's his birthday today (3, my goodness), so I'm feeling indulgent. Happy birthday piglet.

I love you and my new red handbag.

Anja's birthday present...

... is a gardening apron.

It's made out of the back of her husband's ruined jeans, and some lovely fabric from Brixton market. If she's very good, I'll stick some secateurs in the pocket too.

World Wide Knitting In Public Day

We went to Dunster. It's on Exmoor. It has a castle.

And pubs with picturesque beer gardens

And a historic medieval yarn market.

And even though it lacks any actual yarn shops, you can still knit the first round of your new socks there, in the yarn market, to celebrate WWKIP day.

Tshirts to dresses

I do like a wardrobe refashion and I particularly like it combined with a clothes swap.

This little dress was a tshirt. You know what a tshirt looks like, so I didn't take a picture first. It had capped sleeves and was fine, but nothing special.

I had been holding forth about how easy it was to make little girls dresses out of tshirts, and then someone rather called my bluff, by saying go on then.

So I did. And I must say, I'm rather proud of it.

It's got a ruffle.

It's got a pouch type pocket.It fits the child it was intended for.

I proved a point.

Job done!

The second tshirt is for another friend's little girl. Still a work in progress, but nearly there.

Friday cupcakes and a picnic

I feel like I spend all day everyday at work (although it's the only place I have any peace and quiet to arrange childcare and think about food shopping), but on Fridays I quite often stay at home with Child B. And even on days when I don't, I come home early to pick up Child A from school.

Like many parents (well, mums) I've found the transition to school traumatic. Nursery used to run from 8am to pretty much 6pm, with snacks and naps all round. Even though it bled us dry, financially, it was a source of emotional succour as the pastoral care was provided as much for the parents as for the kids. School, in terms of weekly budgetting, is a godsend, but in terms of hours per day it's a nightmare. I mean who on earth can fit a working day between 9 and 3? Especially once the guilt laden 15 minutes extra in the class room are accounted for. Even when I work from home, 9.20 to 2.55 hardly constitutes a working day. But in a way, the worst thing is what to do with all that extra time with your child! Much as I love them, I can't be the first mum to think that the less time she spends with her children, the harder the time left becomes. Firstly I don't know what they like to do. Secondly I forget how to play, or how to let them play. Thirdly, there's a lot of pressure to make all the time together precious, when inevitably some of it will be fractious, or involve wiping noses, administering vegetables and shouting.

When it's sunny, we often go straight to the park after school. When it's not we bake a cake. Sometimes from first principles. Often from a packet. The boys mostly eat porridge for breakfast, but porridge augmented (secretly with fruit) with hundreds and thousands, chocolate sprinkles, food colouring, whatever. I think it's still more nutritious than Krusty Flakes, or (insert generic sugar laden cereal here). I means though, that we're at the top of our game when it comes to icing cakes.

Lucy from Attic 24 always takes such beautiful pictures of her little people's works in progress, and manages to even make her housework look lovely and colourful. I'm not quite as adept, but in the spirit of at least trying, here are our little bowls of icing. Oh no, darned computer won't move them. They're at the bottom.

Here we all are at Chepstow Castle. In the sun. Glorious!

A little birdy told me

These pretty little birds are from spool. I've been making a batch to give to people who I'd like to give something to when they've had a baby, but for whom a knitted blanket wouldn't really be appropriate.

They're sitting in the fence that separates us from our lovely neighbour. Her garden is much better than ours, so it's nice to be looking that way.

The look we aspire to with our garden is something along the lines of repossession chic. Our gardens go back to back with our neighbours, so it would be quite a feat to get a car on bricks through. However, if we did manage, it would feel right at home.

We used to have a pond. Considering our garden is not large, the largeness of the pond was a particular insult. That it housed newts was a redeeming feature, but it did threaten to drown most children / cats that passed its way. A couple of years ago, Mr Kinkatink decided to fill it in. But first he had to dig another pond. For the next two years, we had 2 ponds, taking up about 50% of the garden.

At the bank holiday I freaked out at the allotment after bastard slugs ate EVERYTHING (well, not the bind weed) so I decided to abandon the allotment (it's going spare, if you'd like one - time wasters need not apply). By the end of the weekend, we had somewhere to sit and drink pimms, and more importantly, to photograph little birds. They are now winging their way around new babies in the greater Bristol area.