Kitty's Scritchings

Still Alive

2009-05-17T22:27:00.003Z

But barely =(

We've been an en-lurgied household for nearly three weeks with no end in sight as yet. I started it all off over two weeks ago with some sort of flu like virus that had my sinuses screaming and left me feeling like a wrung out dishrag for over a week.

Then as I was still recovering the Ewok came down with a 'proper man cold'. He's had the sniffles before but this time it's serious. He's been coughing and sneezing for three days straight and his poor little nosey is red raw, so now every time he wipes his nose it hurts so much he cries, but he won't let me put anything on it to help as it stings too much to start with. I've just has to sneak into his room and take his temperature as it was 38.8C (101.8F) when I put him to bed. Fortunately the baby paracetamol seems to have done the trick as it's back to normal now. Fingers crossed that's the worst of it for him and he'll be feeling better tomorrow.

Naturally, because my system was still buggered from whatever virus it was that I had, now I've come down with the blasted cold as well. It arrived yesterday and then invited it's mates along for the party today, so now my nose is red and sore too.

And finally, I've just heard Wookiee downstairs sneezing his head off. He's been sorting through old boxes of stuff from when we moved here nearly 5 years ago, so it could just be dust, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him snuffling with this cold tomorrow.

Bleargh.

More Stitching

2009-05-03T10:01:00.005Z

Another finish from a couple of days ago. This piece is destined to be part of a larger wallhanging being created as a group project with many other stitchers. It should all be finished by the beginning of June, so hopefully I will be able to share pictures of the finished piece then.

This is based on mini-kit called Lone Fisherman from Permin, however I've messed with it quite a lot. Removed the fisherman, extended the design to fit a larger square, reversed it and, most obviously, coloured it. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out in the end.

I actually have the kit and two others (Country Lane and Off the Rocks) which I plan on stitching from the kits and then making up into something with a bit of patchwork. At the moment I'm leaning towards making each one the centre of a small log cabin block and then either stitching them all together bellpull style, or making them into individual mini pillows.

Miss Manners is IN

2009-04-17T09:22:00.003Z

I've just read a post by the excellent Mamacita about the dangers of letting the children rule the parents and home, rather than the parents doing their job properly.

One of the commenters asked, as someone who doesn't spend much time with small children, is it reasonable to expect a 4.5yo to eat/chew with their mouth shut.

So, my opinion on the subject is, that they are never too young to start learning good manners and polite behaviour. Just because they may not understand why that behaviour is necessary or the centuries of social conditioning behind them, doesn't mean that they can't be taught to behave a certain way, understanding can come later.

So my 2.5 yo has learned to say please, thank you and you're welcome. He says pardon me when he experiences a gas escape from either end, for the most part he doesn't talk while he's eating and he keeps his mouth shut when he's chewing. At the moment he's learning that we don't snatch, by me making him give something back and try taking it again nicely if he does snatch the first time, and he has to keep doing it until he gets it right.

No, he doesn't always get it right, he has to be reminded of all these things occasionally, and frankly I don't think that is a problem, the fact is that more often than not, he does get it right, and that makes me proud.

Oh, and for the record, seeing someone smacking away at their food with their mouth hanging open physically disgusts me. Seeing a young child doing it I can cope, as long as their parent is working to correct them, however seeing a grown man doing it (one of OH's friends springs to mind) is utterly disgusting and I have very great difficulty eating around people who do that.

Got the munchies?

2009-04-07T18:00:00.003Z

Then make your own munchy seeds:

2 tbsp Sunflower Seeds
2 tbsp Pumpkin Seeds
2 tbsp Pine Nuts/Kernels
1 tbsp Sesame Seeds
1/2 tsp Olive Oil
1/2 tsp Dark Soy Sauce

Mix them all together in a bowl and then spread out on a baking tray. Roast in the oven for about 5 mins at 150C / Gas Mark 2. Keep a close eye on them to ensure they don't burn. I took them out of the oven every couple of minutes to give them a stir.

Leave them to cool and then munch.

Next time I think I'll leave the sesame seeds out, they're too itty bitty next to all the other seeds. I was also told you could put golden linseeds in, but I didn't because I didn't know whether I liked them or not, and they were quite pricey compared to all the other seeds. Basically I think you could use any combination of any seeds you like. The idea is to very lightly coat them with the oil and soy before roasting them.

I made some yesterday and it's only because of my self-control that I haven't already eaten the lot. Ewok thinks they're yummy too.

As promised

2009-04-05T08:02:00.004Z

A post not about Ewok's toilet training.

I have actually managed to do a little stitching over the past few weeks and here's the results. It's from the 2002 JCS Ornament Issue and I had a kit for making it from a friend who was clearing out her stash, so it seemed rude not to stitch it. The design is Abigail's Christmas Ornament by Earth Threads

Just the stitching (sorry for slight blurriness, it's a scan and the beads were already on)

Finished as a tuck pillow, the little pillow was part of the kit.

With hindsight I probably should have subbed out the pink thread for something else, but I was just looking for a quick, easy stitch that didn't involve digging through my thread and project boxes for threads, and trying to select a fabric from my extensive collection.

Progress

2009-04-03T17:22:00.004Z

He's been allowed to wear trousers around the house for the first time today. So far we haven't had any accidents (that's me setting things up for a soggy evening folks), although he has managed to pee over the rim of the toilet seat and all over the floor, his pants and his trousers a couple of times. I keep trying to tell him that if he sits there trying to watch himself pee then he's going to get wet feet, but he's still fascinated with the whole thing. Good job I keep a mop and bucket in the shower in that bathroom.

He's also earned two more cars since last I mentioned it. He's just earned his third and is merrily playing with them all at the moment.

Tomorrow I promise I'll write about something other than toilet training *lol*

P.S. One fun thing I've learned since we started toilet training. Ewok has veeeery ticklish bum cheeks *hee*

Understanding

2009-04-02T00:01:00.000Z

Before having Ewok, I would always wonder how any mother could leave her child. I'm not talking about ones who gave them up for adoption as soon as they were born, but the ones who had started to raise their children and then suddenly abandoned them with their fathers (or other relatives).

In some cases it is because they really don't care about their kids any more, their own happiness is more important to them, and I'll never understand that.

However, I'm starting to understand that some of them genuinely believe that their children and their fathers will be better off without them, that they are screwing motherhood up so badly that it would be better for all concerned if they just left.

I'm not saying that what they believe is right, in most cases I suspect it's far from it. Just that some days I can see how they end up feeling that way.

Success and Failure

2009-04-01T09:51:00.002Z

Ewok's toilet training has progressed to the point that we are now only rewarding him if he goes to the toilet, does something and keeps his pants dry and clean. We started following this system on Monday morning, and his reward is a sticker on a chart. We also said that once he had 15 stickers on his chart he would get a toy surprise as a reward.

Well he's just earned his first toy surprise *yay* It's a matchbox car from a box of them that Wookiee bought at the weekend for just this purpose. It's a perfect reward for him as he loves cars and he's sitting happily playing with his new toy right now.

The failure is on my part. I really tried to deal with the nighttimes but last night I snapped. I went in to him at about 12:45am to take him to the toilet, only to find that he'd already soaked his bed, although he'd not woken up to it. So I took him into the bathroom to get him changed while Wookiee sorted his bed out. Then I put a pull-up on him.

I'd decided that I wasn't doing him or me any favours by persuing the nighttime training at the moment. We were both losing sleep and consequently being tired and cranky with each other during the day, which I'm sure was affecting his daytime training. So, he'll stay in pull-ups at night until they're pretty much dry in the mornings, then I'll look at nighttime training again.

We're calling the pull-ups 'night pants' and having one on didn't stop him from getting up and going to the toilet this morning when he woke up, so no regression there so far.

Right, now I've got to create a new sticker chart that he can take to nursery with him this afternoon.

Aww

2009-03-31T15:07:00.000Z

This is the effect the nighttime training is having. I took this less than 5 mins ago:

He's lying on his old cot matress, which I brought into the living room for him to sit on while he's training, to try and save the sofas from accidents. He's actually been lying there watching tv for about 1.5 hrs, I'm just surprised it took him that long to fall asleep.

A New Outfit

2009-03-30T22:08:00.000Z

What do you think *twirl*, does it suit me, or does my bum look big?

The saga continues...

2009-03-29T19:24:00.004Z

Well he knows what he's doing now, but it's still a bit hit and miss as to whether he makes it to the loo in time or not. Yesterday he only had a couple of accidents, today there were more accidents than successess.

Tomorrow is going to be his first big test as we have Tumble Tots in the morning and Sure Start Stay & Play in the afternoon. His old changing bag is already packed with several changes of pants and trousers, there's more trousers in his travel box in the car and a piece of disposable changing mat in his car seat. Neither event is more than a 10 min drive away, so fingers crossed he will be fine travelling. My main worry is that I haven't managed to get a folding loo seat yet, so he'll have to balance on the big seats, which isn't a problem as long as he only needs to pee...

Nighttimes are what's killing me. He hasn't had a dry night yet, and when he wakes up wet in the middle of the night, it's not being woken up and having to go and clean up that's the problem, it's that he then won't let me leave him again for at least 30 mins, usually not until he's deeply enough asleep that I can creep out of his room without disturbing him. On top of that I'm having to wake up 1.5-2 hrs earlier than I used to, to try and be up before he wakes up, so I can get to hom and get him to the toilet before he wets the bed while he's waking up. Although to be fair, this morning he woke up before my alarm woke me, and he'd managed to get out of bed before losing it, but not onto the loo.

So I haven't had an unbroken nights sleep for the last 6 nights, not more than 5 hours total on any night, and I have to be alert and vigilant all day long. I'm about dead on my feet now.

Quick Update

2009-03-27T01:34:00.003Z

By george it works!

As of lunchtime today he 'got it'. We had a couple of accidents in the early evening but I think they were down to him being tired. But he also managed to take himself off to the toilet three times during the afternoon and pretty much manage on his own, with me just hovering and reminding him to flush and wash his hands afterwards.

He hasn't had a dry night yet, but then we've only had two nights of it, and I'm just going to go and check on him now before heading to bed myself. He also hasn't needed to poop since lunchtime, so there may still be a little work to do there, I'll find that out in the morning.

Still, practically potty trained in 2.5 days *phew*

Potty Training

2009-03-25T20:28:00.002Z

We're following a 3-day potty training system.

It's killing me, but it does appear to be working. In two days we've gone from nappies and no attempts at even trying to PT, to a sucessful pee and poop in the toilet with still-dry pants and him initiating the visit to the toilet.

This was followed by an accident 20 mins later, but still, progress is definitely being made. We'll see where we're at by tomorrow evening.

Awwwwwww

2009-03-23T17:43:00.005Z

I always check on Ewok before I go to bed at night, just to make sure he's ok, tuck him in properly if he's kicked the duvet off, and check his nappy. At the moment I usually have to change his nappy lest it be all full and leaky come the morning.

When I have to do this, he will rouse a little, I'll get vaguely coherent comments from him and co-operation with any nappy-changing instructions, such as asking him to lift his bum up so I can slide the new nappy into place.

I was doing this the other night and he was his usual 80% asleep, 20% co-operation and mumbled sleepy comments. I changed his nappy and put his pyjama bottoms back on him, which is his cue that he can curl up again because Mummy's finished messing him about. I snuggled dog up to his front, and his arm went round him and I got a sleepy 'thank you' which made me smile. Then I pulled the duvet back over him, tucked him in and turned to pick up the wet nappy for disposal, and that was when it happened....

From behind me I heard a very very sleepy 'All cosy'

Click for bigger image
Picture taken a while ago when Ewok was still in his cot

FB Meme again

2009-03-18T01:09:00.000Z

Another one of those memes that's doing the rounds of Facebook, only I don't use my real name on there so I definitely wasn't doing this there...

1. YOUR REAL NAME:

Kate B-

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (first 3 letters of real name plus -izzle)

Katizzle

3. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color and favorite animal):

Purple Cat

4. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (your middle name and street you live on/or neighborhood if it's a number)

How does this work if you don't have a middle name?

5. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 Letter of your first name):

Burka (Hmm)

6. YOUR SUPERHERO/CRIMINAL NAME: (Your 2nd favorite color, and favorite drink):

Blue Black Russian (so I'm clearly a crim)

7. YOUR IRAQI NAME: (2nd letter of your first name, 3rd letter of your Last name, 1st letter of your last name, 2nd letter of your mom’s maiden Name, 3rd letter of your dad’s name, 1st letter of a sibling’s first name, And last letter of your mom’s first name):

Arbrikr (had to substitute a cousin for sibling since I don't have one of those either)

8. YOUR WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (parents' middle names):

I'm very well protected, they don't have middle names either.

9. YOUR GOTH NAME: (black, and the name of one of your pets):

I'm torn between Black Smurf and Black Azrael, the latter is definitely more Goth, but the former is much funnier.

10. Your ghetto girl name:(first 3 letters of your first name and add -iqua):

Katiqua

Just call me Nigella

2009-03-06T14:25:00.004Z

Yes,this is all home made, even the pastry!

We've had some news recently that means we need to tighten our financial belts a bit, and as a result I've started being a little more careful about what we spend on food. Asides from looking for the cheaper alternatives in the supermarket, this means I've been looking at whether it's cheaper to make things myself than buy them ready made.

This brought me to pies. I love pies, as those of you who have met me in person will probably have intuited from my 'comfortable' physique. So I decided to have a go at making my own pies, and this was the result. Not the first, but definitely the first worthy of a photograph and blog post.

That up there is a turkey, bacon and mushroom pie, made with reduced for date diced turkey thigh (v cheap anyway), reduced for date bacon lardons and mushrooms, along with some diced onion, a couple of chicken stock cubes and lots of black pepper and garlic. The pastry is shortcrust and is ridiculously easy to make, especially in a food processor, and given that it's just lard, butter, flour and water, is far cheaper than buying ready made stuff, and it's easier to work with as well.

I didn't keep exact costings, but the filling for the pie (and enough for two more the same) cost about £4 - £4.50, and the pastry probably cost about 25p per pie, tops (value range butter, lard and flour). So I could have made three pies like that one up there for the grand total of about £5.25 (so £1.75 a pie). That pie did Wookiee, Ewok and I a dinner with about 1/4 left over, and we all have hearty appetites. A family sized pie at the supermarket will usually cost about £4 and I can tell you for sure that it won't taste anything like as good as that one did.

Yum!

For people who like recipes, I'll do my best but I don't measure out when I'm creating so all measurements are approximate.

1 rectangular pie dish, mine is 26cm x 18cm x 5cm deep.

For cooking I have a large deep frying pan with a lid, but a large pan should do, you just need something with a lid.

Turkey, Bacon & Mushroom Pie Filling

Turkey thigh, 200g-300g, diced into 1cm-1.5cm cubes (yes really)
Bacon lardons, 50g (or streaky bacon chopped up)
Mushrooms, 50g closed cup, roughly chopped
Large onion, finely chopped.
1 chicken stock cube
ground black pepper and garlic to taste

Gently fry the onion in some oil or butter until soft and translucent, add the garlic while frying. Lob in the turkey and fry some more until all sealed. Remove from the pan. Add a knob of butter (no I don't know, just some) and heat gently until it all melts, don't let it burn. Then add some plain flour to the butter and mix until you get a thick paste, cook this for about a minute, don't let it burn. Make up the stock cube with 1/3 pint of boiling water and add the stock to the paste in the pan and stir until it's all dissolved into the stock. Put the onions and turkey back into the pan and add the mushrooms and pepper. Bring to the boil, turn down to a simmer and leave to cook for at least 45 mins, up to 1.5 hrs.

If the gravy isn't thick enough by this point then use some chicken gravy granules or cornflour to thicken it up as much as you like. Or you can boil the living daylights out of it to reduce the gravy that way.

Shortcrust Pastry

225g plain flour
50g butter
50g lard
3-4 tbsp v cold water

Sift the flour into a bowl, add a pinch of salt if you want (I don't), chop the butter and lard into small pieces and add to the flour. Mix this into fine breadcrumbs, either by hand or in a processor. Add the water a bit at a time to avoid making the pastry too sticky. Mix until you have a nice smooth lump of pastry. If it does get a bit wet then put extra flour down when you're working it and rolling it out and it will solve the problem.

This makes enough for two lids for my pie dish, so you could halve the recipe.

Fill the dish with the mixture and top it with a nice thick pastry crust. Cut a couple of air holes in the top and decorate as you like. For a nice shiny finish brush the pastry all over with beaten egg. Cook for 30-40 mins at Gas Mark 6 (or whatever that is in C or F)

Serves 4-6

Apparently...

2009-02-28T12:50:00.000Z

Byebye Blogrolling

2009-02-27T16:24:00.002Z

Finally I've finished moving my blogroll over to Blogger's own tool.

If you think you should be on my blogroll and you can't see yourself there then please leave me a message in the comments.

Apologies for the lack of posting recently. Various things have prevented this. Mainly a complete lack of arsedness (as in - I can't be arsed) and the evil Packrat on Facebook.

Let's weird Mummy out...

2009-02-10T10:03:00.000Z

Two things have happened recently that make me think Ewok is trying to weird me out.

The first was one night, when I went in to his room to check on him before I went to bed, some three hours after he'd gone to bed. I do this every night, and sometimes it will disturb him a little and he'll sit up and mumble something at me, but quietly telling him to lie down, with guidance in the direction of 'dog' always gets him snuggled down again. However, on this occasion, before I'd even got the door fully open, I was startled to see him kneeling up facing the window, completely still and quiet. He didn't move a muscle, even as I made my way into the room and over to the bed. I did my usual quitely telling him to lie down, and still without a word he just sort of folded up on himself, so his head was on the pillow and he was curled up in a ball on his front. What freaked me out the most about this was his total lack of awareness and the silence.

The second incident was the following day. He was amusing himself as he frequently does, and had opened the living room door (there's a gate so he doesn't wander about the house), and I hadn't really registered that he'd done it. Then I clearly heard him say 'Thank you Daddy' and then he shut the door and went back to his toys! Now it was while we were snowed in, so I just assumed that Wookiee had decided to work from home again, although I had thought he'd gone in to work on that day. So I went to the door myself to check, then I searched the house, and discovered that Daddy definitely wasn't home! I did discover one of Ewok's little wooden train engines, carefully balanced on top of the gate, and it was one he'd been asking Wookiee where it was the day before.

*Cue twilight zone music*

I have a teenager!

2009-02-09T11:31:00.002Z

I didn't think I was supposed to see this sort of pose and expression for at least another 10 years!

(Click for bigger image and the full moody impact)

Snow!

2009-02-05T17:28:00.004Z

Well as many other British bloggers have posted by now, we've been having some uncharacteristically seasonal weather in the form of heavy (for us) snowfalls that actually settle.

We had some earlier in the week, but when Ewok and I went out to make a snowman we found that the top inch of snow had turned to ice overnight, making it far from suitable for building. Then last night it snowed again, and through into this morning, and it was proper snow, for building biiiig snowmen.

After lunch we got all dressed up for the weather and headed out into the garden to build this:

The 'hat' is courtesy of Ewok's beach bucket, and it does have arms, they're just very spindly twigs that kind of blend into the background of, well, spindly twigs. For scale, Ewok is about 97cms tall.

Hopefully the above is a little video I shot with the camera. Ewok didn't realise I was filming, he thought I was about to take a photo, hence him posing next to the snowman and saying 'cheese' *lol*

Some beading

2009-02-04T11:15:00.003Z

It's been an age since I've been able to get the beads out and have a play, but recently I had two reasons to do so. The first was for my secret santa recipient and the second for a 'care package' parcel for an online friend. They've both been received now, so I can blog them.

Although one of these was for secret santa, I'm posting them now because I only made them a couple of weeks ago, the SS gifting was somewhat belated (I sent most of the stuff in time). You see I wanted to make her a beaded scissor fob, and I knew I had lobster clasps somewhere, but could I bloody well find them! I was griping about this to Wookiee a few weeks ago and (unusually for a man, I think you'll agree) he says to me 'what about that box on the landing?

And there they were, in the box on the landing, and of course, after all this searching for them, they were way smaller than I remembered and nowhere near big enough for scissor fobs. So I ended up having to buy some more anyway *gah*

Anyway, the first one was for my SS and her favourite colours are blue and purple (like me) so I had plenty of beads to choose from for her fob:

The other one was for Suzy, and after much investigating (And then outright asking her) I found out her favourite colour is red:

They both have a murano glass bead at the end, and then various glass and crystal beads interspersed with silver beads. The large round blue bead at the top of the blue one is coral (ethically sourced I should add)

I really enjoyed making them and I suspect there may be a few more in my future, but I'll need to find some more, larger clasps, as the ones I managed to find in a hurry weren't quite big enough. They fit over the handle of my stork scissors but they were very snug.

25 things

2009-01-27T02:12:00.003Z

I got tagged for this on Facebook, but I didn't really want this sort of rambling about myself on FB, so I decided to post my response here instead.

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

I'm not going to tag anyone with this either, but feel free to do it, and do let me know if you do.

So, here goes:

1. When I was very little I wanted to be a ballerina (like most little girls), sadly nature intended me to be not delicate at all.

2. Through my teens my dream job was to work for ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) as a programmer.

3. I own in the region of 2000 paperbacks, and about 75% of them are Fantasy or Science Fiction.

4. I like reading bodice-rippers, including Mills and Boon.

5. I have one leg slightly longer than the other, enough to cause back problems now, but not enough to have been spotted when I was younger.

6. My favourite colour is purple, with blue a close second, and not bright colours.

7. The book I have probably read the most number of times is The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

8. I have a vampirish smile thanks to missing my two middle teeth on the top. I don't have a huge gap there because I never had them as adult teeth, the baby teeth fell out and nothing grew in their place, so the others 'shuffled up' to fill the gap. This means you can clearly see my K9s when I smile, which is one of the reasons I don't do an open mouth smile for photographs.

9. I am a natural redhead. No, I'm not going to prove it ;-)

10. The only physical activity I ever really enjoyed doing (apart from the obvious) was trampolining. Having a chronic back condition sadly put paid to that many years ago, although I frequently think about trying to do it again, to see how I get on.

11. I have an addictive personality, especially for games. I will very quickly become obsessed with something and spend/waste waaay too much time on it. Fortunately I also have the staying power of an asthmatic snail, so I will eventually lose interest and drift away from most obsessions after a period of time.

12. Some things I will stick with, like stitching.

13. My house is full of stuff I bought for projects, that I never then got around to starting. This is aside from my stitching stash.

14. I love gardens, gardening not so much.

15. My dream home would be one where I could buy a farm, build my dream house right in the middle of the land (complete with octagonal library tower), re-forest the remainder with native trees and try to reintroduce some of our endangered native animals. Unfortunately this would require winning the lottery and then some.

16. I am a southerner by birth but a northerner by blood.

17. I attended educationally, what was at the time, the top secondary school in the country. Shows doesn't it *smirk*

18. I hate doing my taxes and despite all good intentions, will always end up putting it off until the last minute. NOTE: For those not in the UK this one is topical, our taxes have to be filed by the 31st Jan each year, let ye incur a fine, so I've just done mine.

19. I wanted to call my son Patrick. Wookiee wouldn't hear of it because of Coupling, specifically the episode from series 2 called My Dinner in Hell (youtube link).

20. When I was much younger (still in junior school) I was so desperate to not seem 'boring' that I made up a middle name for myself (I don't actually have one).

21. I have, in the past, seriously considered moving to Canada. It was the thought of missing all my close friends (not my family) that stopped me.

22. Using the criteria; the name of your first pet + the name of the street you first lived in, my porn star name is Muscles Bisley.

23. I have a 'thing' about stationery (especially pens), towels, china and glasses (the drinks kind). This made living just down the road from Denby for 8 years a potentially expensive prospect.

24. I'm afraid of wooden roller coasters. Steel ones, no problem, love them, wooden ones just scare the whassanames out of me. This is based on experience. First The Grand National at Blackpool, and second the Mighty Canadian Minebuster at Canada's Wonderland.

25. I don't particularly like doing these sort of things but I didn't want to disappoint my tagger(s).

Yesterday in photos

2009-01-23T13:51:00.003Z

S.E.X. in the morning...

Toddler + sharpie marker in the evening *sigh*

Nogard's Armoury

2009-01-22T13:28:00.000Z

So, as promised, here's the other dice bag I stitched. This one was for the newest member of our group, A, and someone who's new to D&D as well. She only got her first set of dice for Christmas, so of course she needed a fancy new dice bag in which to store them.

After discussions with the rest of the group I decided to base the design of her bag around her character, which would be strange if it wasn't her very first character. So long after she's gone to the great dice bag in the sky A will still have the bag to remember her by.

The character's name is Nogard and she's a paladin. So playing on the fact that the dice are most often used for combat rolls in D&D, the dice bag became Nogard's Armoury, with a sword, a shield and a set of dice decorating the four sides.

Here's what it looked like before being en-bagged...

Sides:

Base:

The fabric for this one was Sparklies Summer Skies Belfast Linen, and the colour in the 'flat' pictures is much closer to reality than my rubbish photographs.

Covered in Bees!

2009-01-21T10:12:00.005Z

Finally I can share my two latest stitching finishes. They were both gifts for people who may have stumbled across my blog and so I couldn't share until they'd been gifted, which happened this last weekend.

They are both dice bags for members of my D&D roleplaying group (yes I'm 30-mmmph and I still play D&D).

The first one was for a friend who loves Eddie Izzard and quotes lines on a regular basis, however the one we hear the most in our gaming sessions is 'Covered in Bees!' from his Beekeeper sketch. So of course when I needed a design for his dice bag, well it had to be covered in bees.

I pinched a little bee motif from an Anchor Winnie the Pooh design and repeated it 34 times over the area to be stitched (I was sick of stitching that bloody bee by the end of it!) and here's the result:

Here's what the stitching looked like before it was made up into the bag...

Sides:

Bottom:

It's stitched on Sparklies Sunlit Forest Belfast Linen.

I can report that the recipient was well chuffed with his new dice bag, and repeated 'Covered in bees!' even more than usual during our Sunday gaming session *lol*

Tomorrow I'll post Nogard's Armoury...

Baby's first...

2009-01-13T23:04:00.004Z

...night in a big bed.

Yes, it's really taken us this long to sort out a proper bed for him, and to make his room safe for him to roam about. No messing about with kiddy size beds here, we've put him straight into a standard single. I got the bed frame ages ago off Freecycle, and we bought a new mattress for it last week in the sales. We got him a standard single 4.5 tog duvet and a small childs pillow, and today I bought him his linen. The duvet cover and pillowcase set has a royal blue background with brightly coloured trucks all over, and he thinks it's great. I could only get white sheets, but they're not going to stay that way for long

Unfortunately it took a lot longer than we thought this evening, to get the room finally sorted, so he's gone to bed 1.5 hrs later than normal. I hoped this would mean that he settled quickly, but there's been a lot more sobbing than usual. On the other hand there's been a lot less sobbing, screaming, getting out of bed, and yelling than I'd feared, and I think he's about asleep now.

The real battle is going to be when the time comes for his nap tomorrow afternoon...

*Post continues after about a 40 min break*

Well as it turns out he wasn't so settled as I thought. I'd gone downstairs to help Wookiee rearrange the furniture in his 'swamp' (it had all had to be shifted to get the single bed out and moved to Ewok's room) when I heard the clarion cry of 'MUMMY!' from upstairs, and waaay too loud for him to be anywhere other than standing at the gate of his room *sigh*

I soon discovered the problem was that I shouldn't have left his big toybox in the room with him. He'd opened it up and pulled almost all the toys out and onto the bed, and I think what he was trying to say was 'Mummy I want to go to sleep now and I can't because my bed is full of toys.'

So I had to put all the toys back in the box and move it out of the room completely. I'll worry about what to do with it tomorrow. After that he settled down without so much as a whimper.

I think he's asleep now...

Growth Spurt

2009-01-05T12:54:00.002Z

We had to go shopping for new trousers for Ewok on Saturday. As you may have gathered from previous posts he's a tall boy, he's at or above the 98th percentile for everything, but until recently all his height has been in his upper body. This meant that although he was needing 3-4 yo tops, he was still wearing 18-24 mo trousers.

A couple of weeks ago it looked to me as if he'd grown, and if I noticed (who spends all day every day with him) then chances were that he'd grown a lot. So it was backs against the wall and out came the trusty yardstick.

First off I had to find a new place to measure him, as he's now taller then the cupboard I was making marks on before. Then it was make the mark and measure it with the stick. Now, he had a developmental check-up at 2 years old, and his height then was 93cms (or 3ft 0.5in in old money). His new height, just three months later mind you, was 96.5cms (or 3ft 2in). Even allowing for measuring errors that's still a hell of a growth spurt!

All this growth meant that his old trousers were starting to look obviously too short on him, and he only had one pair of 2-3yo jeans that I'd bought a while ago when they were in a sale.

So Saturday afternoon saw us heading to Asda for the weekly shop, and up to their clothing department for some new trousers for Ewok. However, when it came to measuring up the 2-3yo trousers against Ewok, they didn't look as though they'd last him very long before he'd be growing out of them too. A quick look at the label showed that Asda 2-3 yos are 92-98cms tall. This occasioned Ewok's very first visit to the changing rooms. He insisted on having Daddy take him in (Daddy wasn't too impressed with this *heh*) and off they went with two pairs of trousers, one 2-3yo and one 3-4yo. After a few mins of scuffling Ewok came back out for the Mummy inspection wearing the 3-4yo trousers, and they only looked a little bit too long on him, probably one small turn-up too long. We didn't bother with the 2-3yo trousers after that.

So my baby Ewok has pretty much passed over the 2-3yo trousers and gone straight to 3-4yo stuff. Oh, and if you don't know already, he was 2 last September, and no, I haven't been standing him in compost!

On the stitching front, I've had another finish, and will be having another one very soon, but I can't share them yet as they're gifts for friends who might just read this. As soon as I can, I'll post them for you all to see.

Another stitching finish

2008-12-26T09:25:00.002Z

I actually finished the stitching on this some time ago, and had it made up and in use, but I didn't consider it properly finished because it still lacked the button in the middle.

A few days ago I braved the nearest town for some last minute Christmas shopping, and because I needed to visit the excellent haberdashery shop in town. It's a great shop, a true haberdashers in the old style. I went in because I needed cotton thread, cord and cord locks for a drawstring bag I was making and they had everything I needed. While I was there I looked through their massive array of buttons and finally settled on one to finish this project off. Actually I bought two buttons but I had a feeling that one of them would be too big, and it was.

So, finally finished finished, my Tribal Sun Biscornu:

Top view:

Side view to show the beaded edge:

The fabric is Sparklies Fire 32 count Lugana (Murano) and the design is Tribal Sun, a Sparklies freebie.

I have also stitched this design to be the cover of a needlecase, and over one for a scissor fob, but neither of them are properly finished yet, so pictures of them will have to wait.

Ornament Exchange Part II

2008-12-24T22:56:00.000Z

Yesterday morning my ornament arrived by special delivery all the way from the wilds of Scotland:

It was made by Paula, and she knows me well. The design is from Dragon Dreams and is called Santa's Christmas Surprise, and although you can't see it in the picture, the backing fabric is a gorgeous dusky purple silk.

I will definitely be participating in more ornament exchanges in the future.

Don't play with your food

2008-12-23T14:02:00.001Z

That's Mummy's job *lol*

I think it's called 'Bored SAHM Syndrome'

At last, some stitching to share

2008-12-18T13:10:00.004Z

I have been stitching quite a bit, but I kept changing from one project to another for various reasons, meaning I didn't have any finishes to share, but now I do.

This year, for the first time ever, I joined in an ornament exchange being held on one of the forums I frequent.

I've never made an ornament before and I wanted to make a good impression, so I chose something I thought would be quite simple to make, a cube, and decided to stitch snowflakes on each side except one which would have initials and the year on it.

Of course this 'simple' idea turned into a much more involved task than I thought.

First off I needed some snowflake patterns and unlike some of my Google adventures, this one yielded results on my very first click, with The Floss Box. In fact I was spoilt for choice, but I managed to narrow it down to five designs that were all about the same size, and sufficiently different. Of course then I had another problem, after all I didn't want the finished cube to be huge and all those designs are about 40-60 stitches across. That's when things got a little crazy as I decided they would be stitched over one. Now I'm no stranger to stitching over one, but always before it's been solidly stitched designs and I've used tent stitch, but that wasn't going to work for these designs, so this would be my first experience actually cross stitching over one, and to a deadline to boot!

The fabric choice was easy, my partner was Linsday and I know her tastes very well, so I chose a dark purple fabric (Sparklies Basically Bonkers) on which I knew the white snowflakes would stand out well. I found that once I got into the swing of stitching over one properly, that it actually stitched up quite quickly and I soon had all the sides ready for construction. Fortunately it wasn't my first time out making up, having made a few biscornu in the past. I wanted to bead the edges as I was stitching them together, but didn't want to overpower the stitching, so I used petite seed beads, one on every stitch, which gave a lovely delicate line of beading. I used a oily finish clear bead (MH40161) and a purply/blue bead (MH40252) alternating between the two.

Finally I added some crystal bead drops to each of the points except the top one, where I put the hanging loop. For the drops and loop I used MH00161 and various shapes of Swarovski AB beads, bicones, rounds and droplets. I had all of these in my stash as I used to make jewellery before Ewok came along.

Now if you managed to make it this far through the rambling explanation you deserve some pictures, so here you are.

First off I scanned the stitching before I made the ornament:

And a couple of pictures of the finished ornament front and back.

Those last two pictures are a little washed out because I had to use the flash. Linsday has some more photos on her blog which show the colours a bit better.

I have to say I was very pleased with the finished ornament, although I was a little worried that I may have gone a bit over the top, but hey, it's Christmas.

GTNR - Round III

2008-11-29T16:05:00.001Z

I won't insult your collective intelligence with 'Baa baa sheep' but have a go at this one...

Round, back, pull, cha cha cha.

Verminii Eradicus

2008-11-27T03:31:00.003Z

Or at least I bloody well hope so.

You may recall I've posted before about a small mouse problem we were having in our house. A wee blighter that was managing to elude capture and removal. We did think that Wookiee had managed to get rid of it at one point (I'll post separately about Big Bad Wookiee Chasee Mousie) but when we started seeing and hearing the signs again soon after, we just assumed the blasted thing had got back in somehow.

A few days ago, after some more research into humane(ish) ways of catching pestiferous small fuzzies, I ordered some glue traps from Amazon (of all places) and put one down in a spot where I was almost certain it would catch it eventually. This was on the kitchen worktop, where it butts up against the fridge freezer (the bugger was climbing up behind the f/f).

Aaanyway, about an hour ago, I was sat in bed reading when I heard a minor clatter from downstairs. Assuming cat related shennanigins I ignored it once I determined that it hadn't disturbed Ewok. About 20 mins later there was a far worse clattering and sound of empty bottles and cans hitting tile. This was my first clue that the trap may have caught something as there were several empties on the same surface as the trap.

So I trotted off downstairs to find all three cats lurking just outside the kitchen door. I switched on the light and saw that I had indeed caught the nefarious little git that'd been causing so much trouble.

Now you'll have to excuse me my language while I get this out of my system. You see I hadn't caught a mouse...

IT WAS A FUCKING RAT!!!!!

IN MY HOUSE!!!!

*ahem*

Sorry, I'm still a little freaked out by it all actually.

Of course having caught said rat, I now had to dispose of said rat, preferably a few miles from home. At 3 o-clock in the frikkin morning. In. My. Nightie.

Having awoken Wookiee for emotional support as much as anything else, I managed to transfer rat and glue mat into a convenient Really Useful box* for the trip. Then I pulled on a pair of trousers, grabbed a bottle of oil (to release the rat from the glue, it's how it works), a torch and my cardi (it's cold and v windy outside), loaded everything into the car and set off into the night.

I drove to the next village, about 3 miles away, and parked up in the end of a track leading off across some farmland, unloaded the box and dumped the rat out. I then proceeded to try and pour oil onto the glue round the rat's feet and tail, without getting too close. This was made more interesting by the strong wind blowing the oil sideways, but I got there in the end and Meester Rat scurried off into the night minus some fur and a bit of blood (not sure why, but there was blood on the trap). I then chucked everything back in the car and went home.

As you can imagine I'm blogging this now because frankly, I'm wide awake, and I still need to get over the fact that it was a FREAKING RAT in my house, and not just a mouse. I know mice are disgusting, dirty and disease ridden as well, but they just don't creep me out the way rats do. I should also point out that it wasn't a full-grown rat, otherwise I don't think the trap would have caught it, it only being designed for mice. However I can say that the glue traps do work, very well indeed, and they're a damn sight cheaper than some of the other options.

* They really are really useful *grin*

I want to be....

2008-11-20T21:32:00.002Z

...a Yorkshireman?!?!?

I have tried to explain to him that it really should go down his trousers, not up his jumper, but he's young and full of newfangled ideas *lol*

So young, so cynical

2008-11-19T19:58:00.005Z

Yesterday was such a lovely day that I decided a walk in the forest was in order. We're lucky enough to live only a 15 min drive from Sherwood Forest and there's a nice 1 mile trail that's suitable for all, so off we went.

I actually remembered to take the camera with me to try and get some autumnal photos and of course more Ewok photos, I got a few good ones and you'll find some at the end of the post.

Towards the end of the walk I spotted a lovely spot, carpeted with fallen leaves and with a fallen branch between two trees, all lit by the late afternoon sun, so I sat Ewok down on the branch and tried (without much sucess) to get him to sit still long enough for some photos. After I'd given up he was rooting around in the leaves and came up with an acorn cup, still with a bit of twig attached. I told him it was a cup, which he accepted and then waved it at me saying 'cup' a few times. Then I told him it was an elf cup, from which the elves drink. His response to this was to put his head on one side for a few seconds and then screw his face up into his best 'you're having me on' expression and say 'naaaaahh!'

So, first a couple of 'me trying to be all arty' photos..

And now some Ewok photos...

(that's the Major Oak behind him, big isn't it!)

GTNR - Round 2

2008-11-17T12:40:00.002Z

This is the only other one where he's saying more than the name so far, but here goes...

Rou, rou, garda, bear, 1 dep, 2 dep, chickatickatickatickaticka!

Bonkers I tell you!

Guess the Nursery Rhyme - Round 1

2008-11-14T17:38:00.003Z

Ewok is just starting to string words together to form vaguely coherent (to us anyway) sentences. Most often these take the form of requests for something (mostly food), but he's also started trying to do nursery rhymes for himself. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what he's jabbering on about so I thought I'd share the experience and see how you lot do...

This is what I had to endure in the car for 30 mins this afternoon, can you guess what it's supposed to be:

One, aana pan, aana pop, aaana BANG! *loud clap*

Poo Yuck!

2008-11-11T14:49:00.002Z

Not the words you want to hear when your little one is in the bath and you're in the shower covered in soap.

I suppose it was inevitable really, and I should be glad we've got to 26 months before it happened.

On the plus side he ended up in the shower with me, which he's always hated in the past, but if the giggling and laughter were anything to go by, he seemed to enjoy it this time.

I don't think we'll be scrapping the baths completely though, he loves his toys and the bubbles too much to be happy being deprived of them completely.

Fabric Sale

2008-11-01T17:26:00.002Z

I've decided to sell off some of my personal stash of hand-dyed fabrics from Sugar Maple Fabrics. I've realised that I'll probably never use most of them now I dye my own, and I can't just hang on to them forever.

I've put piccies and details of all the pieces I'm selling on this webpage.

Postage is free to the UK and at cost everywhere else. Payment by Paypal please. If you want to buy, or find out how much postage would be, please email me on smfsale@sparklies.co.uk.

I am keeping a few pieces, I couldn't bear to part with some of them, and there were a few pieces already earmarked for specific projects. It also helps to think of all the new stash I'll be able to buy with the proceeds *grin*

NO! BAD!

2008-10-16T17:02:00.004Z

Ah, he makes me so proud at times.

Got you wondering now, haven't I.

Normally having your toddler shout no and bad at the top of his voice would be cause for concern, but not when he's doing it at the sight of those appalling creations the Teletubbies.

Wookiee and I both loathe the Teletubbies, with the result that, in the past if they ever came on the tv while Ewok was watching we'd go 'No, no, no, no...' while running for the remote to change channels or turn it off. Over time he seems to have picked this up from us, and now it's more often him shouting NO! at the tv that alerts me to the fact that they're on.

You see, you can teach them something *smirk*

Baby's first...

2008-10-09T21:51:00.003Z

SUGAR RUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was a surreal experience, happening as it did while I was trying to watch a program on narcolepsy. Having a toddler running in circles around the living room with barely a pause for 30 minutes (no I'm not exaggerating, 30 minutes) while watching people who fall asleep up to 90 times a day makes for an interesting contrast don't you think?

The 'Ewok whizzing his tits off' episode was courtesy of him snaffling the last of my glass of squash while I was out of the room. I drink fully leaded hi-juice squash (in other words not the sugar free stuff *blech*) and I mix it about 3 times the strength it recommends on the bottle. I guess I'm lucky it was only 30 minutes really.

This evenings entertainment was brought to you by the numbers E110, E104 and the letter wheeeeeeeeeee!

My baby is 2!

2008-09-14T11:38:00.003Z

I can't believe he's 2 already!

It was his birthday yesterday, and we spent all day at White Post Farm which is a place he loves to visit. Last time we went he was mesmerised by the ducklings, this time it was the giant bunnies we couldn't get him away from.

He got to feed a baby goat (well I held the bottle for him, but he got to cuddle it while it was noshing), groom another goat, and pet loads of other animals, including sheep and llamas. We had a picnic lunch in the play area, although he was more interested in playing than eating. He had a go on the toddler trampoline and really didn't want to get off it again. Oh and he had a bird sit on his head in the walk-in aviary. Inside they have a seed dispenser, and for 20p you can get a handful of bird seed, at which point you get mobbed by the birds. On the whole they were well behaved although I did have a couple of fights break out on my arm, and one of them tried to eat me!

I look a few photos, but I'd completely forgotten to take our camera, so I had to buy a disposable one at the gift shop, which means I can't post any pictures until they've been developed. I just hope they come out ok, I'm so used to being able to take loads of shots and see when I've got a good one that it was a bit unnerving going back to the old school.

He had a snooze in the car on the way home, and then a bath as soon as we got home, to clean off all the dirt and muck he'd accumulated from running around and falling over in the mud at the farm. Then we sat down to open his cards and presents, as we'd saved them for after the day out, so's not to be giving him lots of new toys and then dragging him away from them.

This year he could open his own cards, with a little help starting off. Granny and Grandpa had got him a musical card that made him jump the first time he opened it, then he couldn't get enough of it *lol* Fortunately the others were all just regular cards.

He didn't have many presents to open as Wookiee and I are getting him a new big boy bed and bedding for his birthday, and my parents are coming to visit in a couple of weeks so he'll get theirs then. He did get a wooden activity cube from Wookiee's parents, some books from my aunt and a wooden jigsaw from one of my cousins. He also got a coloured disco ball light from his uncle (Wookiee's brother) which had him mesmerised, especially after it got dark and we turned the lights out for full effect.

All in all it was a great day, and it obviously wore him out as he overslept by quite a bit this morning.

My boy is growing up *sniff*

A WIP

2008-09-11T00:43:00.005Z

A couple of weeks ago I started stitching Starburst by Loopylou Designs:

Click for a bigger version

This is the top section of the design, and I still have to put in some mosaic stitches and then cut and weave all the hardanger.

I'm stitching it all in white on a piece of my Sparkling Purpleberry Spludge 28 count Cashel, and I have to say I'm very pleased with how it's looking so far.

Ennervated

2008-09-09T10:55:00.002Z

Sorry for the lack of posts folks. I have stories to tell, but every time I thought about actually posting one of them I got a big fat 'meh' on.

Things to tell include:

Mouse 1, Wookiee 0
The catflap incident
The tale of the disappointed thief
Baby banana bread

But today i'll tell about last night, when I went in to do Ewok's nighttime nappy change.

You see I have to change his nappy in the night because he piddles that much during the night, that if I don't change it, then he's wet or worse come the morning. The change usually takes place 4-5 hours after he's gone to bed, just before I settle down for the night.

Last night I went in about 4 hours after his bedtime and did my usual check of nappy fullness, only to discover that his pajamas were sodden, as were the bedsheet and the top sheet. On top of all that, dog was slightly damp too, although I think most of that was transference as he was being well cuddled.

I'm certain the source of the water was his sippy cup, which he has in bed with him every night, I'm also almost certain the soaking was self-inflicted. He has this 'thing' he does, where he gets a mouthful of water and then just dribbles it down his front, and keeps going until he empties the cup. He doesn't do it too often these days, but he was doing it yesterday, so I suspect he did it last night before going to sleep. I'm actually quite surprised that he then settled down to sleep so quietly, all damp as he was.

So there I am, needing to change him and the bed completely, and of course he's chosen the night that all his other bedsheets have gone in the wash (were in fact in mid-wash-cycle at the time) and the only clean ones were the ones he'd got all wet. At least there was a single pair of jammies still clean.

I ended up putting one of our sheets on the matress and wrapping it around several times (we only have king size!) and fishing out one of his crib blankets for warmth, it wasn't really big enough to cover him but I suspect he doesn't really use the top sheet much anyway. He woke up while I was changing him, as I had to transfer him to the changing table. Normally I quick-change him in the cot and he rouses enough to co-operate but nothing more. This time he was chatting away to me and quite awake. Fortunately he settled back down again quite happily once I put him back in the, now dry, cot. I had to leave dog with him, I doubt he'd have been so happy to go back to sleep without his beloved dog.

I can't wait for nighttime potty training *sigh*

Silly signs

2008-08-21T01:05:00.002Z

We spotted this sign a few weeks ago when we were down in Kent visiting friends for the weekend. Fortunately we were very close to our destination as I was crying with laughter thanks to the mental images it conjured:

Pickled onions and nappy rash

2008-08-18T09:53:00.002Z

I've searched the internet to see if anyone else has seen a connection between these two things, but so far I've found nothing useful. Maybe no one else has been bonkers enough to feed their toddler pickled onions. Of course this sort of thing is what happens when I leave Wookiee in charge of Ewok for the weekend.

The weekend of the Stitching Show (which went very well btw, see my other blog Dyeing to Sparkle, for ongoing detailed posts about the planning, prep and actual show) I had to abandon Ewok to the tender mercies of his father for most of the weekend. This is not to say that Wookiee is no good at looking after Ewok, just that the last time I went away for the weekend I had to leave him detailed instructions, written up and printed out, on the usual daily schedule, what to do in various circumstances, meal plans and a 'your son is crying, why?' diagnostic chart. I confess I did take the piss rather with that last item, but I had a laugh writing it.

They both seemed to have survived the weekend, but I noticed on the Sunday evening that Ewok had an appaling case of nappy rash. It transpired that it had appeared since the last nappy change, but since Wookiee tends to postpone changes until he absolutely has to (he has nausea issues) I assumed it had been brought on by him 'stewing in his own juices' for a little too long.

After Ewok had been put to bed, Wookiee was giving me the highlights of their weekend, and he comes out with 'Guess what two things he stole off my plate at lunchtime, and actually came back for more of?' Exhausted though I was I managed to figure out lettuce, but not the other item. That, it transpired, was a pickled onion. These are both things that Ewok has been given in the past, on his own plate, and both have been summarily rejected, now it seems he has developed a taste for them. I didn't think much of it beyond the thought that this would expand the options for mealtimes.

The next morning Ewok's bum was looking better thanks to the liberal application of rash cream before bedtime and I thought nothing more of it. Lunchtime came around and Wookiee prepared his lunch of sandwiches and salad, and included some pickled onions which were the first thing to vanish off the plate. That evening I was changing his nappy (after he'd pooped) and his little bottom was red raw with rash again! That was when it occured to me that the acid in the pickling vinegar may have been coming through in his poop and attacking his delicate little botty.

It's not an unreasonable connection to make, he very rarely suffers from nappy rash. Usually it's when we haven't spotted he needs changing straight away. This was also the worst case of rash I'd ever seen on him. So I told Wookiee no more pickled onions until I'd checked into it, and then went to do some research, which as I mentioned before, turned up nothing.

Ewok hasn't had any pickled onions since, and although the last signs of the rash still haven't quite faded (yes, it was that bad) it hasn't come back either. Unfortunately, to really be sure of the connection I should feed him pickled onions again, but if you'd seen the miserable, sobbing and howling toddler who squirmed to get away from me while I was wiping his botty as gently as I could, you'd understand why I'm not that bothered about proving the hypothesis.

Late night/early morning

2008-08-06T10:26:00.002Z

One of the few perks of working late into the night, and then early into the next morning is getting to see these sort of sights outside when I take a quick break for some fresh air.

3:00am

4:30am (same view as above)

4:30am (looking east)

Baby's first...

2008-07-31T09:58:00.003Z

...day at the beach.

Righty ho, we were away visiting friends this last weekend. It was our friends T&J's annual birthday BBQ bash about which I have blogged before.

We travelled down on the Saturday afternoon. In true disorganised fashion we had hoped to arrive around 4pm, instead we didn't leave until near on 3pm and arrived at our B&B just after 7pm. We threw all our stuff into the rooms and headed back out to T&J's house and after a quick hello and a cuppa we all set off for an eatery.

Normally I wouldn't bore you with details of the meal and restaurant however this one was worthy of note for all the wrong reasons. Upon being given the menus it turned out that this was one of those 'few options, big prices' kind of places, where there's nothing that you're really bothered about on the menu and you're going to have to pay a lot for whatever you choose. As an example I had a 14oz t-bone steak with 'chips' and a tomato, which cost £18.95, the steak was wonderful, the chips were actually half a dozen not-very-well-cooked wedges and half a tomato. The other meals were similarly frugal, and disappointing. Hell we paid more for Ewok's meal than we would normally pay for our own. We thought it was just a pricey place and we were down south so even more pricey than we would expect, however our friends had been there before and were similarly shocked/disgusted at the prices and portion sizes. All in for an appetiser (one between us) and meals for the three of us we paid just over £50! As a follow up we got a text from T on Tuesday morning saying that the restaurant had closed down *lol*

Sunday was the day of the BBQ and the weather was perfect. As a side note, it always is good weather that weekend. I've been going to this do for 7 years, Wookiee for longer and without fail the Sunday afternoon has good weather, so if you ever need good weather for something around that time of year then choose the last Sunday in July.

There was slightly less pyromania this year than previous years. I think the guys are slowing down in their old age, although there was a slight pause in the proceedings when sirens were heard in the distance and they decided to wait and see if they were coming to us, before carrying on with burning any and all cardboard they could find. The main goal this year was to see how high they could get the flames to spurt out of the top of the chimnea. I think 3 foot was about the record.

On Monday we were heading home, but before we did we took Ewok to the beach for his very first look at the sea. Our friends live in Faversham which is only a few miles from the coast (as opposed to where we live which is pretty close to being the middle of the UK) and they recommended Broadstairs as having the best beach for kiddies, as in it is sandy not pebbly. We got there at 12:30 and headed for the beach. On the way we loaded up with various things for the beach, an umbrella, beach mat, bucket and spade (of course) and some beach shoes for Ewok. It turned out that the beach shoes were a good investment as the sand was so hot it was burning my feet let alone Ewok's delicate tootsies. We found a space to set up in, put down the mat, put up the brolly and then put Ewok into his beachwear (swim nappy, shorts, t-shirt and a 2 inch thick layer of factor 50). Once he and I were ready to head out into the sun we set a course for the water's edge.

I thought he might be a bit wary of that much water at first, but not a bit of it he toddled straight in without a care in the world and started splashing and giggling. I hadn't got my swimsuit, I just had my skirt tucked into my knickers, so we were restricted on how far in we could go, but Broadstairs is a very shallow beach so we still managed to get in a resonable way. He loved it. He wanted to go deeper but I didn't fancy having to plunge into the water fully dressed to retrieve him if he fell over in the deeper water, so I encouraged him back to the shallows for some splashy fun in the waves.

We had about 10-15 minutes in the sea then made our way back to where Wookiee was sitting grumpily under the umbrella (he doesn't like sun, heat or sand) and Ewok then sat in the sand for another 20 mins or so playing with his bucket and spade. We got him to bury my legs (well they were burning) and dig a big hole, and we even found a little damp sand further down so he could use the bucket to make a castle. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself, so we may have to do it again sometime this summer, although I think Wookiee would prefer a beach with a pub he can sit in, while Ewok and I play.

Anyway, here's a couple of piccies:

The look of concentration.

How do these things work?

Ah, got it!

Eaten alive

2008-07-28T22:46:00.002Z

WARNING. If reading about infestations gives you the heebie jeebies then stop here.

Ok, you were warned.

We've been away for the weekend to visit friends, and I'll do a post about that soon. For those of you not in the UK the weather has been roasting (for here) all weekend and today.

We got home this evening around 9:45pm and I immediately took Ewok off upstairs for a bath. I'd taken his clothes off in the living room, and while the bath was running we both wandered into the main bedroom so I could open windows as the room was baking (it's in the roof). When we got back into the bathroom I was about to take his nappy off and pop him in the bath when, to my horror, I saw that his legs were covered in fleas!

Looking down I saw that I was similarly infested (I'd taken my trousers off to bath him because he splashes, a lot) and I immediately started plucking them off him and crushing them. In the end there were so many of them, and while I was delousing him the b$%&@ds were munching on me, I just lobbed him in the bath and washed them off him, then left him splashing while I killed the ones left on me. Then I had to shout for Wookiee to watch him while I got my big can-o-flea-killer and sprayed the bedroom, the landing, the stairs, the hallway and even the living room.

I think the bedroom was worst because the cats are not allowed in there unless accompanied, so the fleas had hatched out (thanks to the heat) and had nothing to feed on until Ewok and I walked in.

It's my own fault for not treating the cats for fleas sooner. I noticed they were scratching several weeks ago, but I've been so busy I didn't go to the vets to get some more flea treatment. You can be sure I'll be going there tomorrow, to get that and a new big can-o-flea-killer as that stuff prevents (re)infestations of eggs and larvae for 12 months, and fleas for 2 months. So the whole house is getting dosed, there's still a floor to do and the can I have is almost empty. Fortunately there doesn't seem to have been any hatching on the lower ground floor as that floor stays relatively cool, except for two rooms into which the cats never go.

Ewok and I are now covered in bites, him mostly from the waist down, me around my feet and ankles, with several more up my legs, arms, and on my back, and I'm itching all over from the thought of them as much as the actual bites. On top of that I'm mildly allergic to cat fleas, I get hayfever-like symptoms when I get bitten, the more bites the worse the reaction, so I'll be buying some antihisthamine pills tomorrow as well. I dabbed witch hazel all over his bites and mine. It's not helping me much but it seems to have helped him. We'll see what he's like in the morning.

If you've managed to make it this far then I suspect you're now joining me in some sympathetic scratching.

Urgh *shudder* fleas!

Meme thing

2008-07-22T10:42:00.003Z

Pinched from Joyous

The Concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

The Answers:
1. What is your first name? Kate
2. What is your favorite food? Steak
3. What high school did you go to? Oxford
4. What is your favorite color? Purple
5. Who is your celebrity crush? David Tennant
6. Favorite drink? Black Russian
7. Dream vacation? Canadian Rockies
8. Favorite dessert? Tiramisu
9. What you want to be when you grow up? ILM* Programmer (had to use Movie Programmer for this one, there were no results for the other)
10. What do you love most in life? Ewok
11. One word to describe you. Mad
12. Your flickr name. Dracoiratus

*ILM = Industrial Light and Magic, the people who do CGI for movies.

Gulp

2008-07-17T18:34:00.001Z

I have 87 metres of Brittney, Murano, Belfast and Cashel sitting on my dining table.

I may be gone some time...

Egghead

2008-07-15T00:46:00.004Z

And not in a good way *sigh*

I had my first trip to A&E this evening after a certain Ewok, running full tilt across the living room, tripped and smashed his forehead into the edge of the wooden leg of one of our dining chairs. At first I didn't realise just how hard he'd hit it, until close inspection while comforting my sobbing and howling son showed me a HUGE egg-shaped lump on his head. I've heard people describe lumps in this way before, but this is the first time I've seen it happen. It was swelling up as I watched, within a couple of minutes it was about 1.5 inches long, by 1 inch wide and over an inch up from his head, and no, I didn't get a ruler out and measure it, this is just an estimate.

As soon as I saw this immense lump I yelled for Wookiee in my best 'Emergency, emergency, there's an emergency going on'* fashion and he came running. I showed him the lump and we agreed it was time for a trip to the local hospital.

By this time Ewok had stopped crying and when I grabbed the car keys he perked up and started saying Car! Car! (I swear I'm raising a petrolhead). So Ewok was strapped in to his car seat, with Woookiee sat in the back to keep an eye on him, and I did my best Nigel Mansel impression down the highways and byways to A&E.

We checked in and sat down to wait. Ewok snuggled for about 5 mins while he got used to being in a new strange place and then started wriggling like mad to be let down so he could run around like a loony some more. Because clearly, when you're an almost-2-year-old boy you can never run around madly bumping into things enough. Thanks to this totally unconcerned behaviour on his part I was feeling a teeny bit silly when we were finally seen by the triage nurse about 40 mins later. She asked a few questions about whether he had knocked himself out, had he been sick, checked his eyes, watched him wriggling and trying to play with her computer keyboard and said that we could go and take a seat in the main waiting area, but that there would be about a 2.5 hour wait to see a doctor, who would most likely just give us a leaflet on head inrjuries and send us home, so it was up to us if we wanted to wait.

Needless to say we didn't wait, we simply brought him home, gave him his supper and put him to bed, where, after playing with his teddies for a little while, he fell fast asleep as normal.

We did move his cot into the main bedroom for the night, because I'm still going to follow the procedure of checking on him every three hours through the night and that's just so much easier if he's in the same room. However I suspect that he's once again going to prove that toddlers are indeed made of rubber.

Anyway, once all the fuss was over and he was eating his supper, I did get some piccies of the war wound for posterity:

It's not come out very well, but you can just see the large purplish welt above his right eye. What you can't see is that it's about half an inch off his forehead. I suspect it may get more spectacular over the next few days.

*Extra credit if you know where this is from.

You know you're a mum...

2008-07-11T10:17:00.002Z

When you find yourself chasing your son around the living room singing the phrase 'Give me the spoon' over and over in a vaguely operatic fashion, because any attempt to simply take the spoon will result in a meltdown of apocalyptic proportions.

The advantages of a big house

2008-07-11T00:01:00.000Z

In the comments of my last post, Karen asked how I was able to work with Ewok running about the place. The answer is simple: I don't have to watch him all the time.

It's taken a lot of time, and trial-and-error, to get the house laid out in such a way that I can leave him unsupervised in two areas of the house while I work. The first area is the living/dining room. This is two sizeable rooms joined by a large archway. The living room part is 23'x13' and the dining room part is 11'x10'. This has allowed us to set it up so that my 'office' is at one end of the living room, behind the sofa, and then we have a large dining table in the dining room, which is where I cut and serge the fabrics. Nothing in either of these rooms is within Ewok's grasp (well that's the theory anyway, it doesn't always work out that way) so I can work at the computer, or chopping and stitching fabrics while he plays in the main part of the living room.

Of course he pesters me from time to time and is usually far more interested in my antics than those of Pocoyo, or the Tweenies, and occasionally he'll be very naughty and warrant a telling-off, but for the most part this arrangement works.

Finding a way of doing the actual dyeing with him about was a little more tricky, but we sussed it in the end. The utility room, where I do my dyeing, is in the basement (which is more of a lower ground floor than an actual basement, the house is built into a hill), and the room itself is tiny. Of course I couldn't have Ewok in the room with the dyes anyway, it's too dangerous for him in oh so many ways. However the basement has a large hallway (about 13' square max), off which all the rooms lead, and with the application of three baby gates we were able to fence off the central part of the hallway as a playroom for him. So while I'm dyeing, he can play safely in the hallway, and I'm just a door away. Dyeing goes in bursts of activity with frequent 5 or 10 min breaks, and I spend these breaks playing with Ewok, so he never has to amuse himself for more than about 30 mins at a time, usually a lot less, and if he needs me I'm right there.

Finally, I usually have 2 hours each afternoon while he naps, and 3 to 4 hours after he's gone to bed, before I crawl into my pit, and of course I get loads done then because there's less distractions.

It does mean that my 'me' time will have to be mostly sacrificed until the show, but I'm hoping it will be worth it, and I'm not giving it up completely. I'll still have an hour in the afternoons to stitch and watch tv, although even then I'm working, as the piece I'm stitching at the moment is on one of my fabrics and I'd love to have it finished in time for the show as a model.

Sweat shop

2008-07-10T10:31:00.003Z

Well I'm starting to get an inkling of what people in a textile sweat shop have to do. Just the merest inkling though.

After doing a load of calculations and setting up an immense spreadsheet, I've worked out that I need to dye in the region of 850 pieces of fabric in the next 4 weeks!

However, before the fabric can be dyed, it has to be cut to size and the edges serged using my trusty overlocker. Yesterday I cut and serged 168 pieces of varying sizes and it took several hours.

Yet what I'm doing isn't tricky. I'm stitching in a straight line, on fairly thick and firm fabric and it doesn't matter if the line wobbles a bit. The people who work at piecing clothing together are working with all different weights of fabric, from flimsy gauzes up, and they have to put pieces together accurately with neat stitching.

They also have to work in appalling conditions. I recently watched an episode of a program that is following a group of fashion students as they travel around countries like India, doing the jobs of the workers who contribute to one stage or another of clothing production for the UK high street. The episode I watched showed them working in a manufactory where they (6 of them) were expected to piece 36 blouses together over a 2 day period. Each completed piece was checked by the supervisor and if rejected if had to be taken apart and redone. The room they were working in was spartan to say the least, lit by generator-driven flourescent lights, a generator that they had to operate themselves. The place was dirty and bug infested, and not only did they work there, but they lived there too, sleeping on the floor with a few blankets for warmth. Oh and they get paid a few pence per succesfully completed garment, almost all of which is sent back to their families in the villages to pay for their children to get the education they didn't, so that they can get good, well paid jobs and have nice homes.

I don't mind admitting that I had tears in my eyes at the quiet dignity of one of the men they talked to, as he explained that yes, he could get himself a better education and a better job by spending his earnings on night classes, but at the expense of his children's current education which just wasn't an option.

I may be having to work hard, hunched over my machine for hours at a time, but I know it's only for a few weeks, and that I will see all the profits of my hard work for myself. I have a comfortable padded chair to sit on, a clean, well lit room in which to work, and an ipod loaded with Harry Potter audio books to occupy my mind.

Musn't grumble.

Calling all UK stitchers...

2008-07-08T13:05:00.003Z

...and any non-UK ones who may be here on holiday in a few weeks. Come along and support me (and all the other exhibitors of course) at the first Stitches Needlecraft Show, being held in Bakewell by Wye Needlecraft on the 9th and 10th August.

I only found out about the show this morning from a fellow stitcher who's planning to go to the show and was hoping to arrange a bit of a get together, however as I only live about 20 miles from Bakewell this looked like a great opportunity to do a show, without it costing me a fortune in travel and hotel costs on top of show costs. So I gave them a call to get the details, then called Wookiee and asked if he'd be okay with me spending a whole weekend at the show, and then called them back and asked where I had to sign. I had to do it quickly before I talked myself out of doing it.

This does however mean that thinks are going to be just a little frantic chez Kitty for the next few weeks, as I do not routinely keep a large stock of ready-dyed fabrics as it's easier to simply dye to order. So all my spare time until the show will be spent squirreled away in my tiny utility room which doubles as a dyeing room.

Aaaaaaargh!

2008-07-07T10:23:00.005Z

Bloody Teletubbies! (I hate that show)

Most mornings, while Ewok is having his breakfast, I put CBeebies on for him to watch. Over the last few weeks we've become used to the fact that at 11am we can watch Something Special, which is one of Ewok's two favourite shows (the other being Higgledy House). He loves it so much that he'll come running when he hears the music (if he's not already watching) and will happily sit next to me on the sofa to watch it. It's the only program I will deliberately sit and watch, because I need to learn the signs too, and it doesn't make me cringe like a lot of modern kids telly does.

I think it's one of the best childrens programs on telly at the moment. It is primarily aimed at special needs kids, teaching them Makaton. However it's great for all kids to watch, as it shows that there are children with different needs from the usual ones, and it enables all young children to learn the Makaton signs, whether they will actually need them as they grow older or not.

For Ewok this has a immediate benefit, in that he can sign things to me for which he doesn't yet have the words. An obvious example is that I have him signing thank you. Some may say that if he can 'get away' with signing it, then he won't bother learning to say it, but before I taught him the sign all he would do was give a nod and a grunt (or a giggle) when I told him to say thank you, now I get the sign and a cheesy grin, and he will grow to understand the concept of thanks whether he's saying it or signing it.

Another one he's learned is the sign for balloon. Ball/balloon was one of the first things he learned to say, but the word for both was the same and sounded like ball. Let's face it, balloon is a bit tricky when you're just learning to talk. Then he learned the sign for balloon, so now if he means ball, he says ball, but if he means balloon, he says ball and does the sign for balloon as well.

The show also benefits from having Justin Fletcher as the presenter (he also does Higgledy House) and he is a fabulous presenter, and I'm almost certain that it's him (rather than the show) that Ewok loves to watch. In fact while googling for the links for this post I discovered that Justin has been honoured this year for services to Childrens Broadcasting and the Voluntary Sector.

So, what does all this have to do with Teletubbies I hear you ask. Well, this morning I switched on the telly as usual, 11am rolled around and what was on the telly, not Something Special, oh no, bloody Teletubbies! In fact most of the schedule appears to have changed (thank you BBC) and there's no more Something Special for the foreseeable, although they have put Higgledy House on in the afternoons, so I'll have to remember to record that (it's during his naptime), then I can put that on tomorrow morning instead.

Of course this would happen after a weekend when Ewok has repeatedly asked to watch Something Special, which he does by making the sign for Mr Tumble* (a character on the show) and grinning at me like a loon, and I've been telling him that he can see it again on Monday (today) because they don't tend to put it on over the weekend. We've just been to wash his hands and clean his teeth and he's asked me for Mr Tumble three times in five minutes, I guess I'll just have to request and borrow the DVD's from the library.

* See, he can't say 'Mummy please can I watch Something Special' but he can sign 'Mr Tumble' and I know that's what he means.

Proud Mummy

2008-07-04T10:22:00.002Z

Yesterday we went into town, primarily to go to the library to pick up some audiobooks I'd requested. At the same time we returned Ewok's books and while he played in the toddler play area they have, I picked out a few new books for him.

As it was already past his normal lunchtime, I decided to give the library coffee shop a try as they do food as well. It's not a huge place, and the tables and chairs are low ones, and they didn't have any highchairs, which wasn't a huge surprise.

I ordered us an egg sandwich each (made fresh to order), and a cup of tea for me and then settled us at one of the tables. Ewok started to get a little antsy about being left strapped in his pushchair, so I decided to risk it and let him sit in a 'big' seat to eat his lunch.

He was good as gold. He sat there, with the plate on his lap and quietly ate his sandwich, and drank his water, then handed the plate back to me when he was done. The ladies running the place were totally charmed by him, especially after he turned the cute grin up to 11 and held his arms out to one of them to be picked up for a cuddle. He's such a tart!

I have to say that he is usually quite good when we go out, and we can go for a pub lunch without having to worry about him disturbing the other diners, but he's also usually confined to a highchair, or running about in the pub garden if they have one. This is the first time he's been allowed to sit in a chair where he wasn't restrained, and I was so proud of him.

It was also nice to have the ladies there commenting on how well he behaved, too often these days it's only the badly behaved children that get noticed.

Like father, like son.

2008-07-02T21:31:00.005Z

People frequently comment on how much Ewok looks like me, and I think on the whole they are basing this on the fact that he has reddish curly hair, as do I.

However, as these two photographs will show, he also bears a striking resemblance to his dad:

Ewok, taken today:

and Wookiee, taken when he was about the age that Ewok is now:

Fortunately he hasn't inherited his father's ~~satellite dishes~~ ears!

Not long after this picture was taken, Wookiee's mum took him for his very first haircut, after which his hair grew back straight and dark brown. This is one of the reasons I haven't taken Ewok for a proper haircut yet.

UPDATE

Ok in the interests of fairness, I've managed to dig out a photograph of me at the same age, no laughing at the back please:

I'll post a more recent one of myself at another time. I have one from a couple of years ago that I'm not ashamed to show people.

We've had an accident...

2008-06-30T09:48:00.003Z

Not the words you want to hear coming from your OH in the middle of the supermarket as he returns to you with child in pushchair after a little foray into the 'household' section of the store.

There I was, browsing the craft magazines, when the pair of them hove up behind me and these fateful words were uttered. My heart sank and I spun around expecting to see blood, cuts, or at the very least, signs of bruising.

What I actually saw was a very large plush dog in the pushchair.

Closer inspection showed that Ewok was still in there too, clinging on to the dog as if his life depended on it.

Apparently the 'accident' consisted of Wookiee leaving the pushchair within grabbing distance of the soft toys whilst perusing the shelves for a car steering wheel type of toy. Ewok has a definite penchant for plush toys (can't think who he gets that from *cough*) and he decided that the large floppy dog was his new best friend.

Given that it was already half an hour past Ewok's usual nap time and we'd barely started the grocery shopping, I had a fair idea of what would happen if we tried to perform a soft-toy-ectomy. Sure enough, when dog was dropped at one point and I then tried to walk off without it, a howl went up that would have put an air raid siren to shame.

This was on Saturday, and he's taken it everywhere since, including using it as a pillow last night. In fact his cot is getting quite crowded now, as he also has a large teddy and three small ones, a lion, a cow, and a lamb, that also share the cot at night.

I wonder if it's possible to take out insurance against 'accidental' purchases?

I have no willpower

2008-06-29T18:32:00.003Z

I mentioned in a previous post that once I'd finished a current stitching WIP that I'd be starting a new piece from Victoria Sampler, specifically Sweet Pea Gazebo. Well I haven't finished the WIP, but I've started SPG anyway.

I did put a few more stitches into my WIP first, but then deicided I didn't have the drive to stitch on it at the moment. I also stitched a load of speciality stitch samples for a new product that I currently have in development, which I'm hoping to get into the shop in the next couple of weeks.

So back to SPG. I had a dig around in my kitted up folders and found that not only did I have the chart and silks pack but I had the Trebizond pack for it as well, which I'd forgotten about. I bought it all off a fellow stitcher several years ago, filed it away and then forgot about it. Anyway, this meant that all I needed to get going was some fabric, and to dig out a ball of #12 white Perle.

When I bought the fabric for HAS I got half a metre, just in case I messed up the hardanger section and needed to start over. I didn't and so I had a large piece of 28 count cream Quaker Cloth sitting around waiting to be used. I decided to cut off a length of it and dye it up to use for SPG. I dyed it a spotty mix of pale green, purple and pink, trying to give the impression of sweet peas, and I think it came out rather well. I need to try it out again on some Lugana, but if it works out I'll be adding the colour to the shop range, probably called Sweet Pea.

I'm the Mummy!

2008-06-22T18:09:00.004Z

At last Ewok has finally caught on to the fact that I'm Mummy.

He's been less inclined than a lot of kids to even bother with the proper talking thing, but he's had a word for Wookiee for quite a while now, and a few weeks ago this became a full blown 'Daddy', at which point we could not get him to grasp the fact that everyone else was NOT Daddy.

Wookiee was Daddy, but so was I, and the cats, and the teddies, and the poor bemused chap in the supermarket who just happened to make eye contact with Ewok at the wrong moment.

In some ways it's been a little upsetting for me (when I've been in a low mood anyway) that Wookiee got a special name but I wasn't anything at all. When I was feeling less low, logic kicked in and I realisedthat this was probably down to the fact that I'm here all day every day, so he has no need for a name for me as he has no need to call for me, or greet me in any way.

With the advent of a full recognisable Daddy, however, we've had a big push on getting him to say Mummy, and yesterday, for the first time, he did!

I may have mentioned before that he's a very bright boy (yes I know I'm biased, but he is) and so having grasped the concept of a different designation for Daddy and Mummy he's very quickly grasped who is who. So much so that in just one day he's now getting the right one for each of us most of the time, and he's started saying baby (more of a babbie really) for himself.

I'm sure in a couple of years time I'll rue the day he ever learned to say Mummy (Mummy, mummy, mummymummymummymummymummymummy, muuuuuuuummy!) but for now I'm very happy and a little misty-eyed about it.

It's time for lunch...

2008-06-20T11:14:00.004Z

...and we're just having breakfast.

I let Ewok watch CBeebies while he eats breakfast, and when I switched it on this morning (barely) they were just launching into the 'time for lunch' song that they play everyday at midday.

This is thanks to one of those nights.

Ewok went to bed at 10:30pm last night, a little later than his usual 10:00pm but still not too late. I finally got to bed at about 2:30am after spending too long stitching (as usual) and then suddenly remembering something I wanted to look up on t'internet before I went to bed.

I was struggling to settle to sleep, partly because I kept hearing suspicious noises outside, car doors going and the like, which given where we live and the fact that it was a school night (as they say) struck me as strange. Especially as one of the neighbours has recently warned me about a spate of car burglaries in our street.

So there I was, trying to relax and go to sleep, when all at once the Screaming Toddler Bad Thing Raid Siren (TM) went off at full blast. From 0 - "mummy there's a monster about to eat me" in 2 pico-seconds!

I waited the requisite 2 minutes to see if this was one of his usual "wake in the night, squawk a bit, go back to sleep" routines, but this time the screaming didn't settle down, the sobs got louder and the cot rattling started up. This was at 3:30am

I then spent the next hour and 45 mins in an endless round of cuddles, putting him back in the cot, more screaming and tantrums, teddies being thrown at me and then demanded back, only to be refused and then demanded again when taken away. At one point I lay down on the floor next to the cot with a cushion for a pillow and one of his spare sheets for a blanket and he flung himself over the side of the cot (I'd left the side dropped at this point) and tried to curl up with me. I briefly thought about taking him up to bed with me but I really don't want to go down that route. I did change his nappy, try to put him in his sleeping bag as he felt a bit cold (cue more screaming), gave him a slice of bread and some water (which went down a treat), and sing to him (something that he usually likes, but this time: more screaming). At one point it seemed like his big teddy had 'given him the fear', but when I put it out of the room he only howled louder until I brought it back in again.

I still have no idea what set him off (I'm assuming a nightmare) or what finally settled him down, but at around 5am he finally lay down and looked happy about doing so, so I left him to it. He did still howl for a couple of minutes after I left the room, but this time it was the usual half-hearted "don't wanna be in bed" protest, and then he finally dropped off again.

I left a strategically placed "Be vewwy vewwy qwiet (hunting wabbits)" note for Wookiee, promising dire things should he wake Ewok up while prepping to leave for work himself (at about 7am) and finally managed to get back to bed myself. It was still around 6am before I fell asleep.

Then, of course, in the way of these things I heard a knock at the door at 8:30am and it was a delivery guy with a parcel for Wookiee. Fortunately this didn't wake Ewok up (his room is right next to the front door) and I went back to bed and sleep.

So I was finally awoke by the usual morning chirping from the monitor at 11:15am, got up and left the bedroom to hear small animal screaming noises from the basement. Went downstairs to find a young blackbird, still alive but definitely the worse for wera, cornered by one of the cats. That went back out the catflap to take it's chances and then I went back up to get Ewok up.

This is when the other shoe dropped.

You see I'm frequently faced with a leaky nappy first thing in the morning. He's been piddling in it all night and then in typical male fashion he takes a poop when he wakes up, which just overloads the nappy. I'd had a faint hope that because I'd changed a quite soggy nappy in the night, I would be spared the leaky one this morning.

No. Such. Luck.

As a special treat, this morning I had to deal with an exploding nappy instead. In fact somehow his pyjama bottoms had escaped the carnage, but he had it all over his hands, and he'd been wiping them on his front, so his top was covered in it. Then when I got the nappy off him I discovered that it had gone up his back, which I suspect is where the stuff on his hands had come from. This was when I stripped him down completely, picked him up by the now wiped down hands, and dangle-carried him to the shower in his bathroom. He doesn't really like the shower but I wasn't messing about trying to get him in the bath. Both the baths in this house are on different floors from his bedroom, whereas he has an en-suite shower room, and the prospect of poopy carnage through the house was enough to steel me to his howls of protest about being showered.

So, in all, a shitty night and a shitty morning. I can't wait for the rest of the day.

(apologies for any spelling mistakes or typos, but I really can't be arsed to proofread)

A stitching happy dance

2008-06-17T08:43:00.003Z

For the last few weeks I've been madly stitching on Heirloom Anniversary Sampler from Victoria Sampler. The reason for this was Wookiee's Grandparents 60th Wedding Anniversary, which was last Saturday (14th June).

On the advice of Wookiee's Dad I made a few changes to the original design. Primarily these were to change all the hearts ('they're not hearts and flowers people') to diamonds, what with 60th being diamond and all that, including the big heart at the top, and I added the jessicas either side of the new big diamond to fill in the large space left. I also replaced all the silks with DMC colours, except for a couple that I had to dye myself, one because there was nothing close in DMC, and the other because it was an overdye anyway. Next all the heart beads and pearls were replaced with various swarovski crystals, and I used a large one in place of the flower in the middle of the hardanger. Finally I changed the verse to something more appropriate to the couple, and more suitable for a 60th.

Anyway, here's my finished piece:

If you click on the image it'll take you to my webshots album, where there are close up pictures of the top, middle and bottom of the sampler.

I finished it into a bellpull, but unfortunately the pictures of the finished piece didn't come out all that well. Next time we visit I'll try and get some pictures of it in situ.

Stitching on this has given me the yen to stitch more of these style of design, and I have Sweet Pea Gazebo in my stash with the thread pack to complete it, so I shall probably he hoicking that out to stitch once I've finished one other WIP, that I'll be getting back to now HAS is done.

Questions

2008-06-04T09:56:00.002Z

Being a mum for the first time means having loads of questions about what to do when. When should I start potty training, when should I move him from the cot to a big boy bed, when can I let him start learning to juggle with knives...

A few weeks ago Ewok finally got his own room. The delay in this happening was due to the main bedroom in the house being on a separate floor from all the others, and the house having so much concrete in it's construction that most weak wireless devices (like baby monitors) just don't work. So, I finally decided that there's very little chance of him needing me in the night now, so being a whole floor away is not so much of a problem, and then we found a baby monitor that works through the house electrical ring, so yay!

Of course I still have to look in on him every night before I go to bed, just to make sure, and I was wondering, and here's my question:

As a mum, when will I stop checking on him before I go to bed.

My answer: Probably not until I'm going to bed before he does.

He thinks he's a cat

2008-05-23T07:48:00.002Z

Well sometimes he thinks he's a cat, then occasionally he seems to think he's a labrador.

The labrador behaviour is probably quite common in toddlers. There's 'begging'; sitting practically on my knee while I'm trying to eat my dinner (having had his half an hour before) with a face alternating between pathetically cute and cheesy grin, and trying to sneak carrots off the edge when he thinks I'm not looking. Playing 'fetch', where I throw the ball for him (is it wrong that the ball in question is actually a canine squeaky toy?) and he brings it back to me, and then the other day he was bringing me 'presents'. He would find one of his toys, pick it up with his hands, stick it in his mouth, carry it over to me and spit it out into my waiting hands.

All of that I've heard other parents describe, what I haven't come across before is the cat behaviour. He likes to go around the room marking his territory, although fortunately not in the traditional cat way of pissing all over everything. What he does is to lick his fingers and then wipe them over whatever he wants to claim as his own. Imagaine if you will, Cat from Red Dwarf as he goes around the ship with his little spray can going 'Hey, this is mine. That's mine. All of this is mine. Except that bit. I don't want that bit. But all the rest of this is mine." (Here's that bit on YouTube)

His favourite things to claim are the telly and the french windows, which means unless I clean them both everyday (ha!) they end up sporting very obvious smeary fingerprints. On the telly this is an all over thing, but on the windows it only goes up as far as he can reach (about halfway) and then they're clean, which only emphasises the fingerprinty-smearyness of the bottom half. Did I mention I hate cleaning windows.

So is this normal or do I have a particularly freaky child?

New Blog

2008-05-17T00:20:00.002Z

I've decided to create a breakaway blog for all future posts relating to my business, with the aim of getting this blog back to being about my life in general. I know that not all my readers are stitchy types and I've been a bit worried about flooding this blog with too much stitchy and dyeing stuff. I'll still post about personal stitching here, but everything else will go on the new blog.

It also seemed to be an easy way of creating an 'About Me' that I could add to my shop, somewhere where I could write about how I got into stitching and dyeing and how the business came to be.

So I'd like to invite you to visit the new blog which has the very imaginative *cough* name of Dyeing to Sparkle.

I'm still here...

2008-05-03T12:53:00.001Z

...but my blogging mojo has gone walkabout.

My first ATCs

2008-03-16T11:53:00.002Z

I've been busy making ATCs over the last few evening for a Butterfly ATC swap that I joined. I've never made one before and it's been great fun, if a little frustrating at times. Most notably when I dicovered that all the double sided tape I had in the house was temporary not permanent and things kept peeling apart.

Anyway, here's a slideshow of the results:

ATC

Sale on Now

2008-03-12T00:46:00.004Z

It's the anniversary of me opening my own shop online, so for today (12th March) everything is 10% off.

Shop, shop shop!

<== Clicky on the Sparklies linky in my sidebar over there to visit my shop.

New Fabric Colours

2008-03-09T12:34:00.002Z

I've been busy this last week, creating new colours of fabric for the shop. So now I'd like to introduce to you...

Thalia

Parchment

and Ocean Depths.

In case you were wondering, Thalia is similar to Basically Bonkers but the colours are more muted because it's based on cream, rather than white fabric.

Costume Party

2008-03-05T15:45:00.000Z

We've been invited to a costume party in May. The theme of the party is children's programme characters. Given that we are both in our mid-thirties, and most of the other guests are either very late twenties or early to mid thirties means that we're looking at programmes from the late seventies/early eighties.

It's not definite that Ewok is invited, and if he's not then I won't be going either, but so far we've been batting a few ideas around as if he is. So far we've come up with a few ideas, mostly where we all go as characters from the same show or series, which may be really cute, or could just be really sad, not sure which yet.

My first idea for Ewok was Dungeonmaster from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoons, of course then Wookiee would have to be Venger and I would want to be Tiamat, however while Ewok and Wookiees' costumes might not be too tricky (more robes), trying to create one dragons head, let alone five of them, is more than I can manage. Wookiee suggested I go as Sheila (the thief), a much easier costume, but Tiamat is much more 'me' than Sheila.

Wookiee had thought of going as a Mr Man. I suggested either Mr Tall (duh) or Mr Tickle (he has very long arms too), and then thought that Ewok could be Mr Small, but that doesn't leave anything for me, as I refuse to be a Little Miss, little madam maybe (according to my mother) but not a Little Miss.

That was as far as we got before the conversation drifted onto other things, so if anyone has any suggestions please do make them. However if you're not UK based it might be worth checking that we got the programme over here.

Baby's first...

2008-03-04T10:55:00.000Z

...haircut, as administered by me!

Before:

and after:

I didn't do a lot. Mainly I wanted to tidy up his fringe, and round the back where his hair was all very different lengths due to the back-to-sleep bald patch from when he was little. That and the fact that wielding a pair of very sharp and pointy scissors (I was using my stitching stork scissors) round the face of an extremely wriggly toddler who is fascinated by shiny things, is not my idea of fun and meant that I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

I refuse to pay a hairdresser at this point, I don't see that it's worth it for him, not to mention the hassle of first finding somewhere experienced in dealing with wriggly toddlers, then getting him there and keeping him as unwriggly as possible during the whole fascinating process.

I kept three curls and have them squirreled away, each one tied up with a length of silk thread (no particular reason for it being silk, it was what was to hand at the time) tied in a double knot and then made into a bow. When I get around to scrapbooking for him I'll do a haircut page and put at least one of them in a little envelope on the page.

BTW, please excuse the redness around his mouth and nose and on his cheek, he's teething again and recovering from a very snotty cold. Oh, and under his right eye you can just see the last of the scuffing from his attempts at being a superhero.

Concentrate

2008-03-03T18:11:00.003Z

I really should concentrate on what I'm doing when mixing up dyes, instead of mentally blogging something that Ewok has just done. That way I wouldn't absent mindedly mix the same colour twice.

At least I had a spare piece of fabric handy that was the right size to use up all the extra batch of dye, and it's one of my regular colours so I can just add it to the stock levels when it's done.

The really annoying thing is that I now can't remember what it was I was blogging, darnit.

Baby's first...

2008-02-28T19:50:00.004Z

... Dungeons and Dragons session:

This is the role playing group I'm part of. From left to right you can see M, Wookiee, Ewok, and L hiding behind D. I do have another picture where you can actually see L's face, but she hates having her picture taken so I thought I'd stick with publishing this one.

Oh, and the beer is Wookiee's not Ewok's, just in case anyone from Social Security is reading this.

He also has his own D20, here's a picture of it:

The little d20 on top is actually a standard size die. His isn't exactly a 'proper' d20, it's actually a life counter die, so the numbers cycle around the die, but it is 'proper' in that opposite sides still add up to 21. The biggest actual d20 we could find wasn't safe for him to have, and the guy advised us that the stuffed ones were not safe for small children.

I've considered trying to make him a stuffed one, and frankly, given the way he's wanging the blasted thing around the living room at the moment, I may have to do more than just think about it.

Superman he's not

2008-02-26T14:58:00.004Z

Yesterday was a bath day for Ewok and I. There's not enough hot water in the tank to 1/4 fill the bath for him (37 deg precisely) and then refill it to parboil temperatures for me, so we bathe together while he gets a-scrubbin' and then Wookiee takes him away to dry and dress while I fill the bath up with OMFG-that's HOT! water, lie back with my book, and cook myself for half an hour.

Once I'm also scrubbed and polished I swathe myself in towels big enough to make tents for an entire Bedouin tribe and wander upstairs to the living room (it's a strange house) to get dry and dressed myself.

It was at this point I should have been warned about things to come. Ewok decided that it would a splendid idea to try and wear my knickers (aka panties). Now by no stretch of the imagination am I small, you could probably make Ewok an entire outfit out of the fabric from one pair of my panties. Much amusement was had by Wookiee and I at the sight of Ewok wandering around the living room with my knickers pulled up over his trousers (of course he had both legs through one leg hole, but hey) and we joked that only superheroes wear their underwear on the outside.

A little later in the evening while I was cooking dinner, Ewok started kicking up a fuss because he was HUNGRY NOW DAMMIT and didn't want to wait the few more pico seconds it was going to take for me to cut his sausages up into bite size chunks. So Wookiee let him out of the living room and let him roam under supervision, his supervision.

The first thing Ewok did was make a beeline up the stairs in pursuit of gawd-alone-knows-what, so Wookiee was stood at the bottom of the stairs coaxing him back down and watching for slips. Now Ewok can do stairs, he's careful, holds onto the rails, scoots down on his bottom, that sort of thing. Yet in the seconds that Wookiee looked away to talk to me in the kitchen (why he had to look in my direction to talk to me, I don't know), Ewok decided that if he could wear underwear on the outside he could also fly, and launched himself down the remaining steps.

Bumpetty, bumpetty, bump, splat, waaahhhhhh!

At least now he knows he can't fly, and he's going to have a corking black eye tomorrow, just in time to show off to his friends at Little Poppets.

Mice eat Bombay Mix

2008-02-20T17:56:00.003Z

Who knew?

Apparently they also eat tuc crackers (cheese flavour crackers for the non-UKers), which I suppose isn't so surprising.

Of course you're wondering how I know all this, well we have a mouse, or maybe meeces, it's hard to tell if there's just one or more. As far as we can tell they're getting in through some holes that have been drilled into the outside of the kitchen wall. We had no idea they were there, and we don't know why they're there, but there they are, and according to the pest control guy who came to take a look, they're big enough for meeces to get through.

The first indication we had that there were rodents of some kind in the house was hearing scrabbling, skittering and gnawing in the ceiling voids at night. Kind of creepy when you hear it at 2am and don't know what it is. Some of you will probably say it's creepy when you do know what it is, but I don't really have a problem with mice per se. I have three cats, I'm used to them bringing rodents of all kinds into the house, dead and alive. I have to say the dead rat did creep me out a little, but not half as much as the live one, especially as it was big enough to escape back through the catflap on it's own.

The next thing I found was when I went into my baking cupboard. Bear in mind I haven't actually done any baking since we moved here, so the contents of this cupboard haven't really been disturbed for a while. I pulled the first bag of flour out and discovered that the whole of the bag of the bag had been destroyed and there was flour everywhere. Further investigation showed that the mice have a taste for plain and self raising flour, caster sugar, and icing sugar.

I cleared all the mess out and noticed that the back of the cupboard isn't solid all the way up (it's a floor cupboard by the way), there's a gap at the top, obviously where it/they had been getting in. I bought new baking products and relocated their storage, leaving the area where they had been, empty. The rest of the cupboard contains bottles of alcohol, and quite frankly if the little buggers can gnaw their way through the bottles then they're welcome to get, well, I suppose rat-arsed would be the appropriate term.

The next attack came on the fruit bowl. I guess they were getting desparate now. Several old apples had teeth marks and there were little bitty bits of apple all over the worktop behind the bowl. More cleaning and moving and now the little buggers really had to get clever.

This morning I found Ewok's bottle of medicine had fallen on the worktop from the corner shelf where it lives. Then I noticed that all the empty egg boxes that I store on top of the fridge/freezer had been disturbed. So I got the steps and climbed up for a better look. We keep the crisps, biscuits, cakes etc on top of the fridge. There had been a half pack of tuc crackers up there, now there were only crumbs and shredded bits of plastic packaging. More cleaning up and securing of foodstuffs in boxes. I also decided to tidy up the corner shelves where the medicines are kept and that was when I found the bombay mix debris. It had been put up on one of the shelves and forgotten about, again it had been about half full, and the little buggers had scoffed the lot!

Part of me is intrigued to see what they're going to find to eat now. They've got until the weekend, because that's when we're going shopping for traps*, and something to fill in the holes.

* Yes, humane ones, alright.

S.E.X. with the postman

2008-02-18T11:22:00.003Z

Yes folks, this morning I was that hussy.

I've mentioned Swap-Bot before and this morning I recieved a parcel for a swap I took part in recently entitled 'Chocolate Bar and Yarn'. Fairly self-explanitory, the minimum of the swap was to send a bar of your favourite chocolate and a ball of your favourite yarn, with an approximate value of $10-$15, to your assigned partner. I say the minimum because you can always send more than that if you choose.

Because of the value and the fact that I had recently managed to pick up several balls of some of my favourite yarns very cheap in the sales, to my partner I sent 2 balls of Jaeger Roma and 3 balls of Wilko's Soft-n-Fluffy (yes Wilko's, 3 balls for a pound!), and for the chocolate, 3 of the small bars from Thorntons. My sendee was an ex-pat living in Europe so I thought she'd appreciate the taste of home, apparently so did her hubby *lol*

Anyway, to the point, my parcel arrived this morning from my sender (not the same person) and this is what was inside:

(Click for bigger)

The yarn is 100% cotton from Blue Sky Alpacas and is sooo soft and strokeable, I may have to add it to the Gloriana siks for a snuggle-n-stroke session. I also had a job on resisting the temptation to breakfast on chocolate. I suspect the sachet of hot chocolate may not make it until tomorrow as I usually have a mug of hot chocolate at bedtime.

This is bar far the best swap parcel I have recieved so far, not to say that the others weren't lovely, just not quite as accurate on my preferences, or as generous.

Right, there's a certain small someone pestering in a 'feed me' kind of way, and some chocolate to be refrigerated so I'd best finish up here.

S.E.X. Explained

2008-02-15T10:47:00.003Z

Apologies to Meg and any of my other non-stitchy readers for not explaining.

S.E.X. stands for Stash Enhancement eXperience.

In other words, shopping for stitchy stuff, or craft stuff, or any other kind of stuff that you call stash, usually hobby related.

The term does afford much amusement in the stitchy community, allowing you to say such things as "I had S.E.X. with the postman this morning" without your OH starting divorce proceedings, well not on the grounds of adultery anyway. Possibly on the grounds of you having just spent all the housekeeping money on bits of cloth and string, and the sure and certain knowledge that he's (or she's) going to be eating baked beans on toast for dinner until the next paycheque comes through.

S.E.X. Party

2008-02-13T10:37:00.004Z

As you may know, I dye fabrics and threads and try and sell them to poor unsuspecting cross stitchers. I also spend far too much time on various forums full of those same poor unsuspecting stitchers. On one of these forums is another lady (K) who operates a ONS, except that now she's having to give it up because life has given her one too many lemons recently.

A little while ago another forum member suggested holding a S.E.X. party at her house, where myself and this other lady would take along our stock and other stitchers would come and buy it. Think tupperware party for stitchers. That happened last Saturday and a great time was had by all.

I used some very underhanded tactics (I turned up with my stuff) and forced several people (at flosspoint) to buy my products. I also had a frolic through K's stock and succumbed to the lure of silk threads and a chart.

The threads in question are Gloriana silk floss, and they are oh-so-strokeable. She had all of them strung onto one of those metal rings, and at one point I was sat with it in my lap, just stroking it, I half expected it to start purring.

I was very restrained on the day and only bought 11 skeins of the silks, but I've since emailed her asking for another 20 skeins (if she has them). The ones I bought on the day are Twilight Blue, Midnight, Bell Flower, Periwinkle, Red Clay, Sage, Ollalieberry(2), Merry's Mauve, Pigeon and Winterwoods.

The chart I bought is Blackstone Fantasy Garden by Ink Circles. I've been contemplating this design for a while now, and was going to add it to my wishlist, but then it was there, right under my nose, and I just couldn't resist. My plan is to stitch the design using the Gloirana silks instead of the Carries Creations threads used in the original, hence the request for more skeins of the silks, I need more colours to choose from.

I've made more progress on the tits too. I finished the fifth one last night, so just one more to go and it's done.

Photo finish

2008-02-05T10:38:00.000Z

I have actually been stitching recently, and here it is:

It's a photo frame based on Dimensions Fanciful Butterfly. The original has a colourful butterfly in the middle, which is where the hole for the photo is now. It's also originally white and cream on white fabric, but I chose the blue hand dyed fabric and then adjusted the thread colours to match. The fabric is a piece of 32 count linen Silkweaver Blue Dynasty that I had in my stash.

I made this for a Swap Bot exchange, and I was a little sad to parcel it up to post as I'm really pleased with how well it came out. So I'm just going to have to do another one for myself, in purple this time of course. Probably not straight away though, it's a fiddly design to stitch and I really want to work on something a little less taxing for a while. Back to the tits for me *grin*

You know you're a mum when...

2008-02-02T09:45:00.000Z

...you realise you've been humming 'I'm a little teapot...' while unloading the dishwasher.

You know you're a mum when...

2008-01-24T11:57:00.000Z

... you find youself browsing the internet and absent-mindedly cuddling a stuffed toy that your offspring lobbed at you about 15 minutes ago.

It's a Sylvester nightlight in case you were wondering.

Chain Recipe

2008-01-20T10:39:00.000Z

I had a chain letter in my inbox this morning from a friend. Now normally I don't bother with these things, but in this case I a) Know the person it's come from and b) it's just recipes by email.

The idea is that you send a recipe to the first name on the list (there's only two names), then adjust the email accordingly and forward it on to 15 friends.

I prefer not to just randomly send these things out, so if you'd like to participate, say so in the comments here and I'll add you to the list. If you're not sure about your email address being bandied about on t'internet, well if you're anything like me you'll have a hotmail or gmail or someothersuch account that you use for these sort of things, basically a spamcatcher account, so use that email addy. Heck, if you're on Blogger then I think you have to have a gmail account now, I've got one that I never use.

Aaaaanyway, if you want to join in, leave me a comment. Thanks =)

Wool For Sale

2008-01-16T20:00:00.000Z

Yes, really.

I have 48 balls of Jaeger Roma for sale at £2.95 a ball, all the balls of the same colour are the same dyelot. Postage to the UK is included, if you're outside the UK and interested then email me telling me how many balls you want and I'll let you know the p&p costs.

What I have is:

10 balls of 001 Pearl
8 balls of 003 Denim
10 balls of 004 Lulworth
10 balls of 014 Lavender
10 balls of 020 Sage
(See the colours at the bottom)

If you want to buy then email me using the link up there telling me what you want and what your Paypal email address is (sorry Paypal only) and I'll send you an invoice and then the wool. First come, first served.

001 Pearl

003 Denim

004 Lulworth

014 Lavender

020 Sage

Phases

2008-01-15T10:43:00.000Z

Ewok is going through a mega-dribble can't-keep-water-in-his-mouth phase at the moment. The trrouble is that I can't work out if it's deliberate (i.e. he's just being perverse in a baby kind of way) or whether it's being caused by something beyond his control.

What happens is that he takes a swig from his sippy cup and then promptly spits most of it back out of the sides of his mouth and all down his front. I have found him utterly saturated after he's managed to empty an almost full cup (250ml) in this way. One day I had three changes of his clothes strewn around various radiators drying.

He could be doing it deliberately, for whatever reason seems good to a 16 month old. However there are several other things that have changed recently that could also be causing it. The primary one is that he's got two new teeth, and they're the back ones at the top (at least I think they're the back ones, they're molars anyway) so he's jumped from getting the four at the front to having ones at the back and missing out the ones in between. They could be more sensitive and the cold water hitting them is hurting and causing the spit/dribble phenomenon. It could be that we've started cleaning his teeth in the mornings (about a week ago now), or it could be that I've bought new spouts for his sippy cup.

Frankly I'm not really bothered what's causing it if it's not deliberate, there's not a lot I could do about any one of those causes, I'd just like to know if it is, or isn't deliberate, because if it is then I won't feel so bad about getting upset with him for doing it.

Slippery when greasy

2008-01-14T10:05:00.000Z

I made some homemade sugar scrub yesterday. I'd been feeling in need of a good cleansing for a while now. Not that I don't bathe regularly, it's just sometimes I feel the need for a really good scrubbing (Ooooh Matron!).

Usually I'll use a shop bought scrub, like the Totally Juicy grapefruit one (I blogged about this ages ago) but with no personal income to speak of I decided to have a go at my own.

I'd seen various recipes online which were all based around the core of sugar and olive oil, both of which I have in the house. The one I tried was one part oil to two parts sugar, I used 1/4 cup of oil and 1/2 cup of sugar, then I put in 10 drops of lavender essential oil so that I wouldn't end up smelling like a greek salad. Then I hopped in the bath to give it a try.

It worked wonderfully, better than I'd hoped, but there are a couple of things to watch out for. Firstly, after using the scrub, when you rinse the stuff off, your skin will be greasier than a bacon sarnie, and secondly, so will the bath.

To deal with the excessive greasiness on me I emptied the bath out, washed all over with my usual soap and then rinsed off under the shower. I use the Johnsons Baby Bedtime Bath so it's nice and mild and won't counteract any benefit you get from the scrub. As for the greasy bath, you just have to be very carfeul getting out and then clean it thoroughly afterwards.

The first thing I noticed after I dried off was that my skin felt incredibly soft and smooth and smelled faintly of lavender, another benefit was that my hands didn't feel all dry and rough any more, which is probably the first time they haven't since Ewok was born.

I only used a small amount of the mixture so I've got plenty for next time. I probably won't use it every time I bath, but I may try and use it on my hands more often. One thing I did notice is that the sugar has a tendancy to settle to the bottom, so I've got it in a container that's bigger than necessary, so I can just give it a good shake to mix it up again when I need it.

Swap-Bot

2008-01-13T10:48:00.000Z

I was recently introduced to this site when it was used to organise our stitching secret santa this year. The lady organising the SS used it because it automatically assigns partners for you, so even she didn't know who was sending to whom.

After our 'swap' had completed I decided to have a nosey around the site and see what other sorts of swaps were taking place. Well there's loads of them and I've been sucked into the whole experience.

Swap-Bot simply facilitates the process of setting up a swap that people (who meet the swap criteria) can join in. You can set up private swaps as well, the SS one was private.

In order to join in you need to register and set up an account and profile. The profile is where you put information about yourself, primarily interests, likes and dislikes. This is where your swap partners will look to get a feel for what to send you (within the confines of the swap). As an example I'm currently working on my item for a 'Handmade for you' swap. The parameters of the swap were to send one handmade item to one partner. As my thing is cross stitch that's how I'm making my item, having looked in my partners profile I discovered she likes small picture frames and her favourite colour is blue. So I'm making her a cross stitched photo frame in shades of blue.

I've also decided to have a stab at hosting a swap. This one is for sheets of papercrafting 'stickies', stickers, peel-offs, die cuts and rub-ons. Having bought a few bundles and TSV's from QVC I have loads of sheets of these that I'll never use because they're not to my taste. So the swap is to exchange two of these with each of two partners (so send out four sheets in total). It's an international swap and if your interested you can join in here: Stickies Swap.

Although the swap is restricted to people with a 4.5 rating, if you're new, signing up and you know me somehow (and I know you) then email me and let me know it's you before the sign up date and I won't block you. Or you could try and get in a couple of quick swaps before the closing date, you've got until the 31st Jan.

You Rock!!!!

2008-01-12T01:29:00.000Z

This post won't mean anything to anyone who hasn't played Guitar Hero III...

I just beat career mode on medium *YAY*

Getting to play all the way through Dragonforce on medium was nice too, as when you're playing over the closing credits there's no audience metre, so you can mess up as much as you want and keep playing.

Now I just have to work on moving my fingers to the right buttons so I can play it on Hard.

P.S. Yes I am up in the wee small hours playing with the Wii, why do you ask?

Made in China

2008-01-10T11:18:00.000Z

You couldn't make this up...

Before Christmas I commented to Wookiee (In a HINT kind of way) how it would be nice to have some sort of personal directed reading light to allow me to read in bed again without disturbing Ewok by having a table lamp on.

As a result I was given three different reading light, the smallest of which was one that fits over the ear and looks like one of those handsfree phone earpieces.

Unfortunately it hasn't worked right from the off. Looking inside there's a wire that's broken off from a contact and would need soldering back on, however the real fun of this item is the packaging. I had to scan it to share with you the real joy of something that's been translated by someone who's grasp of the english language is seriously lacking...

Click for a bigger image

False economy

2008-01-07T10:00:00.000Z

I've recently reviewed our finances and they're not looking too good at the moment, so I've been looking for ways to save a little here and there. I like to ensure that we get the best deals when we go shopping and I'll only pay for branded goods if they are worth paying the extra over the unbranded/own brands.

Pretty much since Ewok was born we've been using Pampers, primarily because we had loads of money off vouchers that made them almost as cheap as the supermarket brands, and I could feel/see the difference between them. However when we were shopping last week I had a look at the difference in price between the Pampers that we usually buy and the store's own. It worked out that the Pampers were 17.9p each and the own brand ones were 10p each, that's quite a difference when you think that we generally get thorough 6/7 nappies a day. So we bought a pack of the store brand ones to try.

Today I took the pack back with two used from it and asked for a refund. They gave him terrible nappy rash from the outside of the nappy! The inside of his right thigh has a HUGE sore patch where it's chafed. It also gave him a rash on his bottom and I'm pretty sure he's not teething at the moment. This is the boy who's inherited my dragonhide, who only ever gets a rash when he's teething, and even then it's not that bad and a splash of bum cream cleans it right up again.

The store band nappies were Tesco's. I'm not going to rant about them because they did give me my money back without any argument, it's more just to warn any other mums who might consider trying them.

More babyproofing

2008-01-07T01:02:00.000Z

Every day it seems Ewok can reach that little bit further, climb that little bit higher.

About a week ago I walked into the living room to see this

Click for bigger images

He'd not been able to climb up there before, it was just that little bit too high for him. Then he managed to reach to the far side with his hands and get a grip on the far edge, just enough to pull himself up. The first time (when I got the picture) I left him up there, until he realised he couldn't get down and got upset, in the hope that it would stop him from doing it again for a while. No such luck, he was back up there within 10 minutes and very quickly figured out how to get down again.

While I love that he's so intelligent and can work things out so very quickly, just occasionally I wish he couldn't. Two days after this picture was taken I left him alone for five minutes and came back to find all my knitting stuff (from my trays on my desk on the other side of the drawers) strewn about the living room and Ewok sucking on a Halls Soother. That evening it happened again (he did have a cold at the time, so maybe not so daft after all), we never found the wrappers for the cough sweets, I think we know...

The following morning, while he was having his breakfast and safely confined to the highchair, I moved the drawers. My desk is safe again, at least until he manages to work out a way of bridging the gap from the table (you can see it in front of him in the first photo) to my desk, after all, it's only 17".

Another thing he likes to do is try and get at my keyboard and mouse. If he can't reach them by hand (I've learned to push them back when I'm not using them) he'll get one of his toys that's long and use that to hammer at them and try to pull them within reach. He's already managed to damage my keyboard a little anyway, but I decided to fight back, and am now the owner of a shiny new wireless keyboard and mouse. This means that when I get up from the computer I can put them anywhere I want, and certianly out of reach of anything he has in his toybox.

Who's the ~~daddy~~ mummy *smirk*

I'll leave you with an image of what happens if I leave my chair too close to the desk...

Click for a bigger image

"I will send those emails, I WILL!"

Oh, and in case you were wondering, those are his pj's.

Catching up

2008-01-06T09:57:00.000Z

Hope you all had a good holiday and a merry New Year.

We had a relatively quiet time. We spent Christmas day at home just us, it's my day to relax and have a wee drinky, so no driving to rellies, no entertaining and the big dinner is ready when it's ready, although this year I did make an effort (and succeeded) to have it ready in time for Ewok's normal teatime so we could all eat together.

Boxing Day is usually spent visiting with Wookiee's family, his grandparents in the morning, a couple of drinks with his Dad in the pub before lunch and then the rest of the day at his parents house. This year we had to change the venue because his parent's house just isn't big or uncluttered enough to contain a nosey, scrambling, 'la-la-la I can't hear you saying no', pestering smaall person, plus they have a small, very exciteable dog. So this year they came to us for tea. Fortunately 'tea' in this case is just a cold meal of ham, cheese and salad. They couldn't stay for long because they had to get back to the dog, she doesn't travel well and they don't like to leave her for more than about 3 hours at a time.

Ewok got some great presents but his favourites so far are a VTech Tiny Touch Phone, a Little Tykes DiscoverSounds Guitar, and a large stuffed teddy. The teddy has been the biggest surprise, he has a few stuffed toys but hasn't seemed crazy about any one of them, but teddy got taken to bed on Christmas Day night and every night since. Sometimes he gets shoved to the bottom of the bed and then once I checked on Ewok before going to bed myself, and he was cuddling teddy in his sleep *aww*

I was given loads of books from my Amazon wishlist and a book light to allow me to read in bed without disturbing Ewok in his cot. I also took part in a stitching Secret Santa exchange and my SS sent me a wonderful parcel with the chart for Mushroom Tabernacle Choir, a large piece of SMF Cabernet, three skeins of WDW thread, a beaded scissor fob and a lovely little dragon figurine.

In other news, I've had a new product promotion in Gift of Stitching, it was a lovely article with a great picture and they said very nice things about my fabric and threads. I've already had two orders as a direct result, fingers crossed there's more to come.

I'm also supposed to have a very small piece in the issue of The World of Cross Stitching that comes out on 14th Jan (on the Best Buys pages), and look out for me in a giveaway promotion in Cross Stitcher (the UK one) in the issue that comes out on 1st Feb, No 197. That's one where you can write in to try and win something.

Basically Bonkers

2007-12-24T02:10:00.000Z

Here it is:

Approx DMC shades 208, 209 & 3807

Ok, so I promised you the tale behind the name a few weeks ago, as I was gently reminded by Karen in a comment recently.

Back in June a large group of stitchers, myself included, all got together for a stitchy weekend at some holiday cottages in Derbyshire (we'd booked the whole place). In the run up to the weekend people were offering to teach people various things and I offered to run a dyeing class for anyone who wanted to have a go.

Several people were interested, so along with all my stock (well I couldn't turn down a captive audience, could I!) I packed up all my dyeing paraphernalia.

We had a glorious weekend and early Sunday afternoon I set up a dyeing area in the small garden between the cottages, and those who wanted to play gathered around for the demo.

I started with dyeing threads, because these take the least amount of room, and once they're in the pots of dye they can be moved anywhere there's a flat surface. Next I moved on to fabric immersion dyeing, where the fabric is immersed either partially or totally in a pot of dye, usually scrunched up. These can also be moved away once they're soaking. Finally we laid out some fabrics for sponge dyeing, which one of the ladies described as 'like being back at nursery school again' as she wielded a dye laiden sponge in a rather alarming manner.

The result of all this inspired dyeing were some wonderful colour schemes, and I decided that several of them would do nicely as future colours for my collection. In honour of the ladies that had created them, I asked them to come up with the names for the colours.

One of these ladies is Joy, who is a frank speaking lady with a big personality (she's a love, and I'm pretty sure she'll read this and be in bits at me calling her a lady), and earlier in the weekend, during a rather mad conversation, I'd said to her; "You know, you're just basically bonkers!". Much hilarity ensued, and the nickname stuck.

The colour you see above was created by Joy in one of those happy accident moments. The fabric was originally dyed with a new colour, one that I'd not had chance to try out before that weekend, called Vivid Violet. It actually came out a very bright pinky purple, and Joy is not a fan of pink. So in an attempt to alter the colour to something more purple, we dyed it again, this time with a dark blue/purple dye and this was the result.

When I asked Joy to name this colour she had a bit of a dilemma. You see she already has a colour named after her, Buttercup Joy, created in response to her request for just such a colour. She'd also already named one of the other colours she created that weekend (she was quite prolific in her dyeing) after her daughter, so she was now a bit stuck for names.

Then in a flash of inspiration she said, "You can name it for me after all, just call it Basically Bonkers!"

A finish

2007-12-23T01:00:00.000Z

I've finished my second (and more than likely my last) piece of stitching for the year. The design is a freebie called Coeur, one of many lovely designs I found on a blog I was sent to by a friend. The blogger is Ludivine, she's french and her posts are in french, but even if you can't read the posts (like me) I recommend you go and have a look at her designs, they're wonderful. To see only her posts with designs in, click on this link Grilles gratuites.

Anyway, here's my finished piece:

Click for a bigger image.

This is not my usual choice of design, but I was looking for something to be a showpiece for a new batch of thread colours that I'm releasing in the New Year. As they're all shades of pink and purple it seemed appropriate to do a Valentines related design and this one really appealed to me.

It's stitched using one of the new colours, called Hunnybunny (approx DMC 3608 and 3609), on my Fairy Tale fabric. Stitched over one, using two strands and tent/continental stitch rather than cross stitch. I find this works better for me when stitching over one.

As you may also guessed, this means I have the scanner back, so as soon as I can get the batch of fabric in the washer, ironed and dried, I'll tell all about Basically Bonkers.

You know you've been watching too much CBeebies when...

2007-12-21T15:24:00.000Z

You find yourself singing "I'm a tot, je suis une tot, Tilly, Tom and Tiny..." while you're doing the washing up. (Tots TV)

You wonder when they're going to do an episode of In the Night Garden entitled Upsy Daisy and Igglepiggle get a room.

You come up with some alternative lyrics for Postman Pat, which start "Gangster Pat, Gangster Pat, Gangster Pat in his black and white spats."

You start wondering just how gay Big Cook Ben actually is.

You look forward to switching over to CITV to watch Pocoyo. Actually, IMO this is one of the nicest things on for kids these days, especially as the UK version is narrated by Stephen Fry.

You decide it's about time Ewok saw some proper kids cartoons and go and dig out your complete box set of Dungeons and Dragons, follow that up with series one of Dogtanian and finish up with as many old Looney Tunes cartoons as you can find.

69 Dude!

2007-12-20T23:56:00.000Z

Oh I just couldn't resist that one.

That's how far I've got through Dragonforce ~ Through the Fire and Flames, on Medium, on Guitar Hero III, 69% that is.

It may not sound like much, but it's quite the achievement for me.

I thank you *grin*

Notes to self

2007-12-18T11:10:00.000Z

It doesn't matter in how much of a hurry you are. It doesn't matter that you, the fabric and the washing machine are all in the basement and the serger is upstairs and you've already been up and down those damn stairs umpteen times today.

Before you wash loose-weave evenweave fabric in the washing machine, serge the cut edges.

Don't, and the results WILL be messy *sigh*