Understanding

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.

Sweat shop

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.

Questions

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.

Does this make me a bad mummy?

Is it wrong to let your son suck on, chew at, and generally play with a bottle of witch hazel (please note: a tightly sealed bottle) while you're changing his nappy?

Personally I consider it better than the alternative scenario of him mashing his fingers into his disgustingly poop-covered privates, then getting totally grossed out by the whole thing and trying to wipe his hands off on the nearest available object, which would either be the changing mat, me or, more likely, his clothes.

'Aint kids adorable.

With these hands

I've been a crafter for many years. Ever since I was a little girl and my grandmother showed me how to dry, paint, and then string together melon seeds to make necklaces and bracelets.

My mother showed my how to do some simple embroidery stitches and I made her a sunglasses case out of felt and floss. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she's still using it.

My first Saturday job was in a local needlecraft shop where I discovered the world of cross stitch and tapestry and spending my pay before I even got it.

I got back into making jewellery in my late 20's, this time with glass and wire, then silver and semi-precious stones. I took some summer classes at the School of Jewellery in Birmingham (UK) in silversmithing, stone setting, gemology and pearl stringing.

About two years ago I went to Canada on holiday and went to a class on fabric dyeing and from that started dyeing and selling my own range of fabrics and threads.

I know many people who craft in one form or another and one thing I've noticed along the way, is that the hands that create the most beautiful things are usually hard worn, coloured, scratched, cut, burned, or shriveled and pruny.

I was looking at my hands just now, which after a hard days dyeing definitely fall into the shriveled and pruny category, with a side order of stained, and thinking that they look awful. Then I looked at all the wonderful colours of fabric and threads that I've created with them, and somehow it doesn't matter any more.