One of those women...

I would forgive you for thinking that over the last ten years and the amount of moving and travel we've done, I ought to be a dab hand at packing.

Sadly, it's something that I'm desperately inept at and it all stems down to fashion. Yes, vanity is my nemesis, I want to look my best!

I'd love to be one of those women who can see an outfit, complete with accessories, before she puts it on, then she knows exactly what part of her wardrobe goes with what and always looks imaculate or very put together, rather than one of those women who sees a chunky necklace that just screams to be bought, then realises on getting it home that it doesn't go with anything and rather than making her look like the model in the magazine, makes her look like Lady Gaga after a makeover from The Wiggles!

I'd love to be one of those women who has her own individual "style" or can just see things and throw them together in a quirky but fantastic way, rather than one of those women who has her own individual style but rather than quirky, fits more into the "odd bag lady" category.

Yes, that is Whoopi - or should that be Whoops - i - did it again?

I'd love to be one of those women who can say exactly what they're going to wear for what occasion, rather than being one of those women who gets through about six or seven rounds before finally deciding that something will "do".

...and this is Sigourney, although I'm not sure that this will do at all, even in MY book, maybe she just forgot the chef hat to complete the outfit!

I tend to pack as I shop - impulsively and randomly. I pack what I like, like what I see but then get pissed off the other end when I feel I have "nothing" to wear together, I then, ultimately, end up wearing the same few items over and over just because I feel comfortable and safe in them!


Ultimately, it might be nice to be one of those women who just doesn't give a flying fig!

...finally, yes, that is me, circa 1984 and obviously the only one who didn't give a flying fig was my mother and those bloody awful antimaccassars because, judging by my expression, indoor scarf adornment and plastic matching earrings I was too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it huuuuuurt!

We're very restricted by weight this holiday - for me that is a major crisis - normally to get over the "nothing to wear" syndrome, I pack just about everything I own. That way, there is bound to be one outfit that will work and tide me over other than my usual jeans and t-shirt combo. But weight restriction -Qu'un désastre !

Still, I'm working hard at this and have managed to reduce the children's luggage down to the bare minimum because they'll only wear their swimsuits, a couple of pairs of shorts and the same piece of underwear over the fortnight, no matter how much nice stuff I put in or how much I try to coerce them otherwise.

It'd be such a shame to waste their allowance don'tcha think?

Back in daily life,  here are a few pictures of what we've been up to so far this holiday:


 Watching the world cup final!

!

New bag - but never again!!!!!!!!!!!

Strawberry fields

So they're back, all safe and accounted for!

Look what I did with myself!

Went to the farmer's market, made a ton of jam and some pickles, ate some homegrown strawberries, which inspired my picnic rug upcycled from a woolen rug that I then apliqued the strawberries and apples on and backed it with a polka dot oilcloth.... which then obviously inspired the friggin' rain.

Oh and a picture of the author by the author's daughter! She's not bad!

The photographer! Not the model!

Hotchpotch dress

This was a pattern from a crafting magazine that mum sent up to me. It's made up using several panels of material. It's been challenging just because the directions were far from clear and there is an excess of material - more than was really needed.
However, with some adaptation of straps and taking in a few darts, I honed it to something LMB will be able to wear with or without a t-shirt.

Life's a cabaret!

Another weekend and what a cabaret!




LMB had her dancing show on Friday night! This time last year she was in pre-school ballet. When it came to her time to get into the line, one of the other girls had "taken her spot", so, as a wee four year old, she proceeded to stand there, with the other girls continuing to "dance" around, and put her hand up:

"Miss Balletteacher, Miss Balletteacher, so and so has taken my space"

This was followed with her wandering off to the wings to report this atrocity!

Of course to the hilarity of the audience, lots of "aww's" and "cuuuuuute".

Fortunately this year, she proved to be "able to cope" with minor discrepancies from the usual routine, allowing the pre-schoolers to take this all on themselves, and was a lovely Dutch girl bringing a real tear to my eye.



Her final routine was Toni Basil's "Hey Mickey" which coincedentally was the first single (vinyl - yes sir - how old be I?) I ever bought!




Then this morning, the music school did their end of year concert, so LMB shook her eggs to Down in the Jungle.




And the Messers Beehive both played their geeeetars!



Finally I just wanted to put my current WIP up for you to see. I'm so chuffed with how this is progressing, but, in hindsight, I probably should have used a blue fabric for the underskirt. I'm not convinced the pink is the best choice. Anyway, see what you think.







Now with all the classes and clubs done and dusted for the next six weeks, it's time to kick off our shoes and enjoy the summer - and wait for it to start raining!
x

New Toy!

Did I tell you I've got a new toy?

Mmmmm, a Janome 8077! Early Birthday present from Mr Beehive.

So, as you can probably imagine, I've been busy.


Pair of summer pyjamas for the Little Miss (un hemmed at this point!). Amy Butler daisy chain fabric. I'm really pleased with the outcome, but the shorts could've used a few extra mm's around the butt!

This is a knitting bag for a friend of mine. I've lined it with a vintage rose fabric and it's fastened with a wooden button. It is long enough to take the longest needles and a current WIP or two.


This was an experiment in PUL. I'd wanted to do a lunch bag for myself (although someone already has her beady eye on it!) and had a spare remnant of Amy Butler fabric which I thought I'd use. So it's padded and lined with PUL so it's wipe clean with a padded handle. It'll happily take sandwiches some fruit and a drink.



A pair of checked baggies for my nephew with a couple of pockets for him to put his finds in. These were originally for Master Beehive the younger, but whilst I was sewing and he was at school, he grew! That'll teach me to make a pattern up from a pair of his existing baggies that he's obviously grown out of. He was showing a 1/4 inch of ankle out of the bottom sadly. Luckily there's a 4 year old who'll appreciate them (well, his mum will !!)




Next on the card I'm pimping a pair of my jeans and then I've had a delivery of a lot of pale baby blue and some chocolate brown needlecord. I'm thinking a cord pinafore dress for LMB with a cute applique dragonfly or something on the front. I've also got a friend having a baby, so I may have another attempt at a kimono top, I'll have a rummage in my stash box.

What do you get with a yard or two of cheap fleece?

The answer is .... skirts!

The little miss proudly sporting her skirt (the other two went to friends and their replicas - I made more!! - to cousins). I dont' know why she looks to have her body on back to front though!

Happy Thanksgiving

It is a hard year to find things to be grateful for in the current climate. Yesterday there was an attrocious terrorist attack in Mumbai, earlier in the year and ongoing are the job losses, people I know, young people and friends are battling cancer and other diseases and this doesn't mention the ongoing trials, tribulations and suffering that so much of the world does on a daily basis, out of the public eye and swept under the carpet.

It is a particularly prolific trying time at the moment, but perhaps there is still something deep that we can be thankful for at least for today. I know for me I am grateful that we are well and healthy (an old cliche, but so true) and I am grateful that we have a roof over our heads and food on the table in front of us. I am also quietly optomistic and hopeful that with some of the economic crisis that is going on, that perhaps the world will start to become a better place, that people might become more empathetic toward each other and that as a world we might begin to be more consciously aware of each other and help those in need much more. I hope that the New Year might start to take a turn for the better for so many families and that would be my thanksgiving wish if I could have one.

I am also grateful for my children, so, so much for the brilliance they've brought into our lives. Yesterday they chose to make up some boxes to send to some people overseas. We decided to send one to a soldier through a friend whose brother is deployed overseas and the other we've sent to some friends in Africa who, by far are not a charity and I hope they won't view it as that, but don't get the frivolity that we are lucky enough to have due to the unselfish choices they've made to help in that part of the world. It's nothing much, some magazines, a dvd, chocolates, some coffee and some little luxuries, but I hope it'll make them smile and think of home!

I also wanted to share a couple of craft projects I'm working on and one I've finished and then I have a recipe too.

This just needs darts to finish the sides.

This is Mr Beehive's sweater. It is knit in the round and I have yet to do the sleeves. It's a very easy raglan, but the yarn is so heavy that my wrists ache if I do too much.

..and this baby is a skirt I made yesterday for myself. It is admittedly a "little prairie girl yeeha", but I like it. The photo on the top shows the ruffle that I made, you can actually see it clearer in the bottom picture.

Finally, a recipe for you to try. I must warn you, it's calorie laden, but ya boo to that, it's lush, it's decadent, it's e.a.s.y!!!!

BTS Cheesecake!!

Two pots of Marscapone cheese (or Philly if you can't get marscapone!)

Three limes juiced and you need the grated rind too.

Enough icing sugar to sweeten the cheese but not overkill

2 packs of ginger snap biscuits

Butter

Small bar of 60% cacao chocolate

1 large glass of wine

Okay, so smash up the biscuits into small pieces, or grind them in a processor. Add about 6 oz of melted butter to the biscuit pieces and then press down firmly into a flan dish and let cool and set in the fridge. Whip up the cheese - do this by hand otherwise it just goes runny! Add sifted icing sugar to taste. Add the juice of three limes (more if you want really tangy, but watch it doesn't get too runny)and the zest from the rind. Stir and place ontop of the now cooled base.

Put back in fridge.

Drink wine!

When it has cooled, use a cheese grater to grate or roll if you are fancy bugger, some curls of chocolate onto the top of the cheesecake.The rest of the chocolate may be consumed at your leisure.

Enjoy!

It. Is. Done!!!

Ta da!!!!

Wee missy has a new sweater. I am actually very chuffed with my perserverence with this one! It's taken me just over a fortnight and some cursing into the small hours, but it is complete.

So on to the next project, sweater for Mr Beehive the younger now. I found some eco-wool made out of recycled plastic bottles in "The Store that cannot be named" the other day, $2.85 a pop!!!!!!!!! It's really soft too, so I am going to give it a go, see how it knits up.

I will try not to get so embedded in this one that I don't update my blog!!

She's also wearing a recycled skirt that I made from an old sweater I had. Very recycled thrifty girlie today and uber blue too, no idea where that all came about!

Who cares - I am candle calm!!!

So I have bought a new candle. I know, me, a candle!! I am not a fan of candles that smell, they tend to be really nauseous and sweet or chemical and overpowering, but this candle........THIS candle is my calm!!

Well, that's the idea.

It's a whopper of a candle, so let's hope there is a whop-load of calm in there. It smells really fresh and floral but not too much. Yup, of course, you'll get that - a written description of a scent for you to imagine and enjoy - riiiiiiight??!!

Anyway, Mr Beehive has been away again this week, so let's see....no! I do believe the week was actually pretty uneventful, well apart from the fact that the lappy went down mid week so I presumed it was the re-router to the wireless connection - gosh that sounds like I know what I am talking about - shame of it is, I haven't the first clue so didn't even know what the re-router looked like to re-boot it. As it turned out, t'wasn't that at all, it was me being a dork and I pressed off the wireless button on the front of the computer - well duh, like I knew that was there?!

I had a mad crafting day yesterday, the kids were off school as the teachers were at a conference, so while they played, I sewed. Now I would show you the results, but......right now i can't find the cable to connect the camera to the computer and I think that is how the actual wireless button came to be turned off anyway while I was busy poking my memory card into any available slot........well, that normally works!
I made a sweet Christmas skirt and top for LMB, the underskirt for her 50's polka dot swing dress that I intend to make her and began hat number 5 for the Save the Children knit-one-save-one campaign. I'll try to remember to upload photos when I find the cable. I have a suspicion that it has been posted into one of the washing baskets of clean clothes that I have piling up in our bedroom.

How does one family produce so much laundry? I think my laundry basket is modelled on "The Magic Porridge Pot" and I have yet to find the words to get the darned thing to stop re-filling just as I get to the bottom.

Last week I watched a great video from NAMTA (North American Montessori Teachers Association) called - thieves!- "At Home with Montessori". It was three short clips of three different families with kids at 4months, 7 months and 15 months and the different home environments that they had set up for them. All the rooms were beautifully and carefully organised, as this was the prepared environment. I had to take a moment however to cough rather loudly behind my hand "bullshit"! because here they were showing these great environments with one child in them (two in the last one, but only about 10 months apart) with low level shelving with toys arranged on them (almost like ornaments!) and not a spot of clutter, paperwork, no knitting projects all over the place, no homework piles, no dog, no anything out of place anywhere and most importantly.......NO LAUNDRY?! I wonder if they will loan me their fairy? They could make a killing selling that secret, but then, I don't care - I have a candle!!!

They F**K you up your parents.......

I fear this entry is going to be getting things off my chest that have been bugging me over the last few days.

First of all I feel compelled to mention how sad I feel that had I not miscarried back in March, our baby would have been due now. I can't mention it out loud in real life because........well, it isn't something you talk about! If you talk about a baby that never was...well, you come across as a bit "affected" by it all, probably depressed, you know what I mean (not how I feel btw, more how society views it), people don't know what to say to you. It seems sad that although our baby never made it to full term, s/he will never be determined by anything other than my memories - even Mr Beehive hasn't mentioned it. I suppose women are more attached to things than men can be? *shrug*. It isn't helped that we are now struggling to get pregnant again! I had read that most women who miscarry are generally pregnant again by the time their original due date comes around, I guess I am just not one of "most" this time, but it had given me hope.

My motto is generally that "life doesn't kill you it only makes you stronger" but sometimes, it just kills a little part of you. I am sure that our life right now, with all the uncertainty, isn't helping. I am just hoping that once we have some security about where we are moving to next and when that will be, everything will fall into place. That is tha attitude i am trying to keep right now at least.

My second rant of the morning (I am doing well, it's only 9.30am on a Sunday) is to the BBC headlines in the paper that declare than an "independent study" shows that boys are proven to be behind girls at school - even when they start at five http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7674472.stm

This, I have to say, isn't new news, people have known this for years. But read down. Note the paragraph that says:

"Children with two working parents tended to do better than others. They were four months ahead on vocabulary and two months ahead on visual tests."

Now, I am all for encouraging parents to return to the work place if they want or need to, but is there not a smattering of this sentence that irritates you? So for all of us SAHM's out there, who are educated and interested in our children's upbringing and development, apparently, according to THIS piece of tripe, we are doing our children a disservice by remaining at home with them. We should be putting them in day care from the start whereupon they are going to be four months ahead of their counterparts, because naturally, we never communicate with our children, we don't bake, garden, draw etc etc and a nursery with two or three carers (maybe all between the ages of 18 and 20!!) to 8 or 9 kids is a much more educational environment?!

Of course, I am pretty sure that isn't what they mean, not least what they discovered. We are talking the outer realms of this, the parents that don't give jack shit about their kids' welfare who are at home on benefits probably versus the parents who have a norland nanny whilst they go out and work - not really your average picture!

I can't abide these "surveys" that, quite frankly, survey a small percentage of the population extremes and then print their "findings" in the national press (probably to suit the government so that more women jump back into the workplace a few hours after giving birth regardless, to ensure they don't fuck up their off spring!). I don't suppose for once there might be the opportunity to not have women feeling guilty for the choices they want or have to make.

"There are lies, damned lies and statistics!"

Finally, here are some of the projects I'm currently working on. The school is taking part in Save the Children's Knit-One-Save-One campaign this fall, so the everyone is frantically knitting newborn hats. No longer can you hear the sound of children's voices in the hall, all you hear these days is the clicking of needles lol! So, here is one of the four I have already made and the other photo is a new project I have started, my first bit of cable. It will be a scarf for Mr Beehive when I am finished. I love to knit in the evenings while I am doing something else, but unfortunately cable isn't very easy for me as yet, as I tend to lose my place, so this may or may not be completed before next winter!

Babies and 'Broidery

I love my job! I love it when I hear about my clients having their babies and I love it each time an anxious mum rings me up and says - "I think my water just broke!" I feel so excited for them and so honoured to be called and asked for advice or help, or even to come along and attend the birth.

I think I have now clocked over 25 births since I first came to the US back in 2005 and have taught over 50 couples! That's around 75 babies - er...no make that 76 as there was one set of twins. I am now beginning to get repeat clients which is also fantastic, seeing them evolve from their first birthing experience to their second.

I am currently on call for a second time mama who had a four hour birth last time around! I hope I make it!!


Christmas Challenge!

Okay, so this is it. My Christmas challenge to myself is to use as much as my fabric stash as possible without buying further AND to make at least one gift for each family member this Christmas. I had hoped to do this last year, on my green and frugal campaign, however, this year we have more pressing need to be frugal, partly due to our potential return to Blighty next summer and having to cart all this stuff back and partly due to a housing situation that we are working through. So, I am trying to cut back on my fetish of fabric and yarn and finally pull out my finger and make those projects I planned on last year! So here are today and yesterday's efforts.

This is a cute barrett holder that I made this afternoon, it has wading and card inner to ensure it is firm and then the trimming is fixed at points. The barrettes then just slide and clip on. I popped over to a friend's house this morning for coffee, she has an embroidery machine! Eager to show me how it worked, we ran up some embroidered names!! I intend to make this gift up again for my god daughter.

This is a little lavender and millet filled beanie doll. Mr Beehive has a god daughter who will like this I think. I think I might actually make a little tooth bag for her and she can then be a tooth dolly.

Mr Beehive laughed at this one! Don't blame him really, but what do you buy for the couple that really have everything. I know they'll enjoy this over their Scottish Sunday Post and warm barm cakes!

Oh and this is a stealthy brag here! See the blue ribbon! This skirt won first prize yesterday in the local Agricultural fayre!! Watch out Hugh Fearnly Knittingstools - I'll be up there with my crotcheted onions one day giving you a run for your money!