Some more swops

I posted off some swops today, first up was the products of a needle book swop and a colour hunt swop, which by good fortune were both going to the same person. 

The idea behind the colour hunt swop was that my partner specified a colour or colours and I had to find certain items in that colour; a fat quarter, buttons, thread, ribbon and something else (my choice), as you may have guessed my partner’s choice of colours was red and aqua (that is aqua thread up there in the photo isn’t it? aqua is a hard colour to define). So I raided my stash for the items and for the something else I made an Aranzi Aranzo felt mascot (the Bird pattern)

The note paper you can see in the photo by the way, is a download I found recently from this excellent website Bees Knees Activities, it’s the Ghostly stationary, the sort of thing I could imagine using if I ever had to say, write to Neil Gaiman.

The needle book was sort of inspired by a needle book I saw on the Martha Stewart website but I didn’t have quite the right materials, so I improvised a bit, so actually my needle book looks completely different from the Martha Stewart needle book. It also, it turns out looks exactly like Iggle Piggle’s blanket, this only occurred to me as I started to blanket stitch, I had gone for red and blue as they were the same colours as the colour hunt. I can imagine it now “Oh look Iggle Piggle, there’s your needle book. Now watch you don’t prick yourself Iggle Piggle . . . Oh dear Iggle Piggle has pricked h handis” (I watch way too much kids TV). Not sure how clear it is on the photo, but I embroidered ‘On Pins and Needles’ on the front, a phrase I’d seen used on a printer fabric tutorial I’d seen in a patchwork book.

And then I posted some fabric ATCs.

It was meant to be making ATCs according to what your partner liked, so my themes were clouds, phantom of the opera and cats. I wanted to try felt applique again, after having fun with the Tardis ATC. I particularly liked doing the cat ATC as I like silhouette work, the clouds are okish and the phantom mask was ummmm hard but actually in the few days since I made these grown on me, whereas my opinion of the clouds ATC has gone down hill a bit.

Boy Lacer has a nursery place!

Excellent news in Girl Lacer’s book bag this afternoon (staff always sneak letters and notices into the kids’ book bags, bit more reliable than giving them to them by hand!), Boy Lacer has a nursery place at the school! It’s an afternoon slot, same slot Girl Lacer had, which has one major inconvenience in that it starts at 12.50, which means you have to have lunch early (I think I remember when Girl Lacer was in afternoon nursery I had to start making lunch at 11am so that we could eat at 11.3o) and I hated that when Girl Lacer was there, however this time round there are some benefits to having an afternoon slot. When Girl Lacer was in afternoon nursery, me and the kids had no real reason to get up early (sigh I miss those days), so we often wouldn’t be fully dressed until 10am, we were effectively wasting our mornings, this time round, me and Boy Lacer will of course be up early to take Girl Lacer to school, which means we’ll have nearly four hours together, which will be nice and we’ll be able to do stuff, whereas I think if he’d had the morning slot he would have been so tired in the afternoon we’d have just been home killing time till we picked up Girl Lacer again in the afternoon. Also Boy Lacer’s many appointments are normally in the morning, so no clashing there either.

So really exciting, the thought of the excellent staff there getting their hands on Boy Lacer! We were 95% certain that he’d get a place there, he has after all a sister already at the school and we live close by, that’s two criteria to get him in on but I’ve heard stories of years where there’s been too many siblings to get a place at nursery, even so I didn’t actually apply to any of the other nurseries, it would have been a nightmare doing drop offs at two different schools, he would have just have had an extra year at playgroup.

So this will be the year I’ve always promised myself, five afternoons a week free, wow! So I’ll be able to make a lot more progress with my writing and work on opening an Etsy shop, this will be the year I’ll be able to see if I can make a ‘reasonable’ income from working for myself, it’s that are going back to ‘proper’ work when Boy Lacer is at school and after school care is a worry.

So just potty training to think about now,  oh and filling out what will be lengthy answers in the tiny medical problems boxes on the admission form. I know they’ll accept him without being potty trained but it’d be nice if it wasn’t an issue. Got four months, mmmm. I’ll stick with the current plan of action though, in that he’ll potty train when he ‘decides to’, he will now go and sit on his potty fully clothed when he needs the toilet (or sometimes just afterwards) and over the summer I may decide to forego some clothing, see if that helps.

Random ramblings

I got half way through writing a post yesterday evening and then decided to watch the last episode of Kirstie’s Handmade Home and then decided to fall asleep on the sofa, so there you go. I’ve loved Kirstie’s Handmade Home and I’m really glad there’s going to be another series. I loved how she summed up the whole series last night, you don’t often see a TV presenter so obviously rather emotional about their programme’s subject matter and she really looked like she’d enjoyed everything she’d done on the programme and how she spoke about how she appreciated all the British crafts people out there, it just seemed really heartfelt.

Yesterday was a tiring day, Girl Lacer had her school trip, to the same farm she went to last year, she left telling me the highlight (or what I would have called the highlight anyway) till this morning, she saw “Mister Tumble dressed as a farmer” and I think it was the Mister Tumble as she said they were filming him, I guess a new series of Something Special is coming up. Oh if I’d been there I’d have gone all fan-girly.

Boy Lacer had playgroup in the morning, so that meant I could get on with some writing and I am really proud of myself in that playgroup mornings, to me now automatically mean writing, there is quite a lot of other things I could be doing with my only two quiet mornings a week (at the rate I’m going with my sewing for example, I’ll be making my summer clothes in November) but I’m well and truly entrenched in my current project and like I said writing on Tuesday and Thursday mornings is now automatic. Although I wasn’t actually writing this time, I was doing some more research, as my heroine is still posed to steal the sacred temple statue and I wasn’t totally happy with how she was doing it, so a couple of hours of reading later and I’ve got a new idea how to get her into the temple. It does mean that I will have to rewrite the last thousand or so words again but I’m quite excited by the new plan as I think it’s more exciting and actually more historically accurate and it involves crypts, I love crypts! 

So it was a good research session bar one thing, I don’t know about any other writers out there who happen to be reading this, although I suspect it’s the same for any writer, when I’m writing or researching, I am in deep, it is no exaggeration and as poncy as it sounds, when I’m writing or researching about Ancient Egypt, I am in Ancient Egypt, same goes with any story I’m writing, be it a space ship or 17th century England, so if I get disturbed, ooh I don’t like it! And I got disturbed about halfway through by a couple of annoying texts from my sister, who thinks the way to diagnose a complex condition is via Google, so it took me a while to get back to Ancient Egypt after that. Thing is I can’t turn off / ignore phones, it could well have been school or playgroup.

After that I went to pick up Boy Lacer from playgroup and we went straight into town for some shopping. We had a M&S lunch on a bench on the main pedestrianised bit of the shopping centre and I watched semi-amused, writer’s brain going overdrive, two clowns trying to offer people passing by modelling balloons. In reality they were probably there courtesy of the council, who are into town centre entertainment in a big way, but one of the clowns, seriously, he looked like he’d escaped from the latest Batman movie, as one of the Joker’s henchmen, so this poor bloke was going up to all these mums and small children offering them a balloon and all the mums would get this look on their face and go “Argh, no thanks!” and scurry off. I don’t think I was the only one getting the Joker connection or maybe more mundanely they thought this was a new novel way of getting pick pocketed, whereas I was imagining there was some toxic mutant gas in the balloon which would leach into the little ones skin turning them into miniature Jokers!

We were just in town to get some bits and bobs, I did pop into Muji, somewhere were I rarely go ‘cos going in there makes me want to buy stuff but I wanted to get a plain exercise book for a possible idea for a birthday present (which I managed to get). There’s some beautiful stuff in there at the moment, including this lovely New York map scarf, which I had to exert great control not to buy

They also have Paris and London scarves to.

I’m having to shop for birthday present ideas now because I’ve run out of the books that I sell, suitable for 5 year olds that is, that I’ve been giving as birthday presents for months and months now. I’m not currently restocking, as the business does not currently feel that viable thanks to the recession and loosing money is too much of a risk. It’s coming up to summer fair booking season though and it’s still a bit gutting having to let go all these booking queries coming to me and seeing them go to other sellers. So, as I’ve been using my stock of books ever since Girl Lacer got to an age where she started getting invites to loads of birthday parties, it’s quite a novel experience having to shop for birthday presents (and painful on the wallet). The first birthday present happened to be for Girl Lacer’s best friend and I immediately got the line “Whatever we get for S, I have to have because me and S have to get exactly the same stuff”. I did actually cave into that, we brought S a pink pig eco torch (because “he likes pink” – he does actually, Girl Lacer even got the present gift wrapped with pink ribbon) and I brought Girl Lacer one to, principally because Girl Lacer managed to get me at a particularly weak point in my parenting will power but also because she really likes Mr. Lacer’s big torch which is so big it has the potential to break toes and it eats expensive batteries and the pink pigs were particularly cool eco torches, you pumped the torch up to charge the battery or whatever is in them and the power lasts for ages. But I’m not succumbing to the “Whatever we get for X, I have to have because me and X have to get exactly the same stuff” line again and I’ve seen some nice ‘homemade’ art set tutorials around on the web, so I’m going to have a go at making some of those, far cheaper and I think a little nicer to.

So, after shopping I had about 20 minutes to try and find Girl Lacer’s tap shorts (which I couldn’t find for the second week running, this time I had to send Girl Lacer in a pair of black leggings instead, which whilst they almost look like the tap shorts, I’m sure Girl Lacer’s rather scary dance teacher noticed and probably assumed once again, “that poor Girl Lacer, she’s got a mother who couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery”) and then it was out to pick up Girl Lacer from school and then it was quickly back home to get her changed and then back out again to the dance class. Now since Girl Lacer’s tap and modern class has been extended by ten minutes (to forty minutes), I’ve been doing my darn best to make sure me and Boy Lacer have an excuse to go to the nearby supermarket instead of having to wait in the cold, dark church next door, but as we’d already been shopping, I had no excuse. So I came prepared (drawing paper and pencils) but even so, Boy Lacer was a complete and utter nightmare for the entire 40 minutes, he wasn’t the only one though, there were lots of little brothers and sisters also waiting and pretty much every single one of them were acting up. It’s really tough going, they’re all under 5, most of them have had busy days at playgroup or nursery and the last thing they want to do is sit in a cold, dark church for 40 minutes when they should be at home having their tea. I am counting the years until either a) Girl Lacer is old enough to go to dance class on her own or b) Boy Lacer has a Nintendo DS or whatever and I can let him play that for 40 minutes instead!

One final note, it’s currently 11.30am, so not quite lunch time and Boy Lacer’s going “What you like?” which is his way of saying he’s hungry (another favourite version is “What you making?”, when I’m either obviously not making anything or in the kitchen loading the washing machine) and I’m going “It’s not lunch time yet Boy Lacer” and he’s going “Yes it is!” mimicking exactly the same faux cheerful pitch I use on him when I want something.