If I can work out how to do buttonholes by the weekend then I may be able to put some pictures up of not only this cute “thing” but the cute pair of PJ’s I made…

In the meantime, should you want to see Spider looking rather spiffy then I urge you to pop over to Is it Finished Yet ? where he is modelling his “Victorian Era” look – today at school they were encouraged to dress up as Victorians and my wonderful Mum at 24 hours notice managed to whip up a fabulous waistcoat out of old curtains.  Let’s hear it for Grandma’s !

I made them for Spider’s teacher as I noticed her wearing a variety of pairs over the last 3 months.

I’m not really into fingerless mits/gloves or arm/wrist warmers myself I do have a bit of a thing about gloves though…so perhaps I should try making a few different pairs this year instead of socks.

Trying to decide now whether I want to have a handmade christmas this year or not…if I start now it might actually be achievable for once and to not find myself on christmas morning desperately trying to finish things off and get dressed at the same time.

Not that there has been a lot of “making” recently…almost everything I touch recently has been going wrong so here is something that didn’t go wrong and which I was so pleased with I made it twice more !

Once upon a time a girl wanted a house…but she was studying…and had a very low income…so instead she hung around Habitat and occasionally bought things for the house she would one day have and dreamed of dinner parties at which she would have a blue tablecloth and crystal wine glasses…

16 years later it was time to retire the blue tablecloth as the girl no longer had the sort of life that involved dinner parties and the tablecloth (being linen) creased and was hard to iron…oh and attracted stains more than a white shirt attracts bolognaise sauce…

So I recycled it  once

Twice

Three times

The pattern is from The Book Bible by Lisa Lam(U-Handbag) and in order are the Easy as pie Bag, the Flat bottom bag and the Pleated tote the bags provided wrapping paper for a Secret Santa present, a present for Spider’s teacher and the last one went as a cover for a bottle of wine for KTCupcakes (I also delivered her last years christmas present at the same time which was another Easy as pie bag in red and black)

Last year my aims were:

- Re-learn to sew

- Learn to crochet

- Lose weight and make myself over

- knit more things for me

Most of these aims will have a post of themselves at some point in the next month…I think I’ve probably been 50% successful.

On the sewing aim I think I’ve moved from being a relearning beginner to intermediate and (thanks to a lovely girl) I work with I have managed to grasp the basics of crochet.

Losing weight just didn’t happen at all and as for knitting for myself well all those retirements and 40th birthday present meant that didn’t happen either (I spent the last hours of 2011 knitting like a demon to try and finish the last 40th present off )

So in 2012 I am going to be a little bit selfish, more things made for me and that does mean jumpers and other clothes (yes even some sewing). Losing weight is again a top priority (because mentally and physically I just feel like a slug)  and as part of that I finally took my measurements (now you know why some of the golden glow has gone !).

The unofficial aim of 2011 of knitting a sock  a month sort of worked (until September when it all fell to bits) if you argue it was really an aim to use up 100g of 4ply a month ! So I’m going to continue with that but this time it will be socks (because I don’t inflict them on other people).

I also want to try and complete the Vintage Style for Kids sewing but those e patterns are working out hard to print out to the correct measurements so I may take some liberties…

The garden also needs to be taken by the scruff of its neck and shaken into order…

I want to read more too…

But mainly, and this is why the targets are quite vague, I want to have fun…what with one thing and another last year it was quite difficult to have fun…but this year fun with the family and spending time together doing things (rock climbing again perhaps…it’s been almost 7 years…) takes priority.

Which means one thing…I need to be better organised !

No this blog is for me and it’s so I can interact with other people with similar interests…sort of an individual internet forum and I get to visit other people’s personal space…and about sharing…

Which is a long way of saying that the lovely and talented Mrs Lacer made me a christmas card and it is fantastic…and it has skulls on it…and I don’t think I have any other friends who would put a skull on a christmas tree just for me…and possibly Mrs L’s other friends wouldn’t appreciate it as much as I do… so I love the internet, and I love having a blog…and I love the connections you make.

Thank you also to Emma Pad Pad Paddy for the card it was fantastic  and it makes me feel awful that this year i am using purchased cards but I am being a swan this year (frantic paddling above the water to keep going and meet deadlines)…

Oh and cards from me despite being purchased are running late as half my addresses are still on old emails…which I can no longer access due to the ribena incident…and I’m so glad I’m not cooking or making presents this year as I think I would be about to meltdown due to a too large “to do list”…

ETA I haven’t met either Emma or Mrs Lacer (although I almost tried to hand deliver Mrs L’s card last week when work took me to her home town…except I had by that time lost her address (thanks Spider))...it is all as a result of blogging

No silence has been down to a much more fundamental but slightly more serious reason….

Here is a test for you. Carefully identify what I said and what I should have said out of the 2 scenarios

1.  Boy: “Mummy can I play with your computer ?”

Mummy: “Yes but make sure you leave your drink on the other side of the room on the book case”

2  Boy: “Mummy can I play with your computer?”

Mummy: “yes but make sure you don’t spill your drink”

A you can probably imagine from the above, yes Ms Ribena did meet Mr Laptop and no it was not happily ever after. Instead it involved my husband, a screwdriver, a spare replacement hard drive, a reload of data and a loss of all old emails, knitting patterns and photos stored on the laptop.

Spider is feeling a bit subdued…at least he was until he went down with a christmas flu…

Blogging will be a bit sporadic for the next few weeks as the rebuilt laptop is not yet up and running…tomorrow Spider and I have a Star Wars festival planned which involves a sofa, the duvet and all 6 films back to back

Wish me luck

 I have issues with the real me. The real me hates shopping for clothes because nothing fits. Nothing fits because clothes manufacturers make clothes for the average figure and there is nothing average about me. Clothes manufactures make blouses to fit a C cup…I’m an F/FF. My body fits into 3 different clothing sizes 14, 12 and 16, so as you can imagine I never ever buy dresses because they only fit where they touch! Trousers are a nightmare…if they fit in the hips then they are way to baggy in the waist and I look like a sack tied up with a bit of string if I cinch them in with a belt…which is still, (despite my now larger waist) cinched in to the very smallest hole in the belt… that’s of course if the trousers reach my waist, because it’s difficult to get any trousers these days that poke much above the groin area as most trousers are low rise… I hate the whole buying clothes experience so much that I just don’t do it. Which means that eventually after years and years of wearing the same thing over and over again, you  reach crisis point…really I can’t go on like this, there is nothing left but my underwear…

But then you can buy clothes I guess and alter them to fit…but if you are going to go through that sort of hassle then you may as well make them from scratch? (Let’s put aside for now my fear of taking a pair of scissors to something I have just spent a large sum of money on).

So why not make things from scratch? Ah yes you’re scared of cutting aren’t you and you have lost confidence in your ability to sew…err, actually no, I’ve been slowly beavering away here with my sewing machine getting practice in plus the corset course made me feel much better about what I produced, it made me realise I’m not a complete dunce, I can do it if I slow down and take my time.

So? OK so I admit it. I am scared of the tape measure. I spent a large amount of time waiting for Little Red in the City to come out, pre-ordered it, couldn’t wait to get my hands on it and yet, 6 months on I have made nothing. I have made nothing because every single pattern involves you taking accurate measurements of yourself. I also have at least 4 Colette patterns plus my new book but I have made nothing, because I have to measure myself.

It is quite one thing to say you accept your body, that you accept the fact you have a backside the size of Norfolk and a chest that could put someone’s eye out if you turn to quickly…plus that roll of fat around you waist. You can accept it. You can then ignore it on a daily basis and pretend it isn’t so and live happily in your imagination with the body image you… But now…now I have to steel myself to cold reality. Get the tape measure out and accept the cold certainness of the figures I will mark down in my book…because otherwise I will be naked by Christmas.

You know what it’s like you have left over food, you put it in the fridge to be used later, you have good intentions but you don’t use it up at the start of the week and by the end of the week you are reluctant to open the fridge as you know the leftovers are still there staring out at you accusingly…

My WIPs have been like that of late. The guilt of not finishing things has been crippling me…I don’t want to work on the WIPs as they have been there so long that all love for them has gone, but because I know I should be finishing them I don’t start anything new…instead I do nothing…

This week I have been feeling rather low and blue. November and February are the worst for this as the colours are drained out of the world and the sky is just grey…so there I was feeling sorry for myself then the postman came to my rescue.

I ordered the Colette Sewing Handbook back in August and for some reason, at the same moment it was announced as being out in America, Amazon emailed to say they could no longer get hold of it and cancelled my order ! So in a fit of pique I ordered from Amazon.com who although couldn’t get it to me until the end of November  could still get it to me before UK Amazon who emailed me 2 days after my US order to say they could now get it again…but not until December…

I felt low…I needed cheering up, a month is a longtime to wait , so I ordered Sewing for Boys. On Thursday it arrived (hurrah !) and I curled up on the sofa on Saturday morning to plan…but what was this ? A knock on the door from the postman with another parcel…and this one from America (double hurrah !)

BUT of course I’ve been unable to settle down and enjoy them because of all those unwelcome ghosts of  projects past (and not complete)… so I’ve been having a weekend of tidying up, finishing things and parceling things up… a bit of clearing the decks.

Hopefully it will boost my mood and a bit of forced finishing might make me feel “unbocked” and a bit more “creative”…also since some of these unfinished things are 40th birthday presents it might also put smiles on other faces before their next birthdays come round !

(Some of the unfinished objects involve Vintage Style for Kids projects…which I’m begining to think I need to intersperse with other things as making the paper patterns up is challenging in itself…)

At the end of October my friend KTCupcake had her hair cut, accompanied by my god daughter Cookie…Cookie had with her a knitted handbag made by her ever loving godmother…

The hairdresser liked the bag so much that she sort me out through Facebook and has requested something similar…

This is the infamous fluffy fairy monster bag…not sure I can recreate it as it is  bag of spontaneity and circumstance…and it’s construction is a saga that I have not as yet felt up to blogging…but I suspect it’s debut on the web is now imminent…

Unfortunately I wasn’t thinking when I knit it and messed up the decreases to the centre…fortunately you can only see that if you are looking down from above…

Details on ravelry (feeling lazy tonight !)