On the bright side

Today has been one of those days that you can deal with in two ways: ranting-and-raving-isn’t- life-unfair-why-me, or becoming like Pollyanna. I read Pollyanna when I was about eight and like to think that some of her “I’m so glad, glad, glad” attitude has stayed with me. I know it drives some of the people around me mad but really, there are times when there is nothing you can do to improve a situation; getting cross just makes it worse, so why not just try to look on the bright side?

1. I suppose it all started with the Little Helper’s chicken pox. It was inevitable that he’d get it some time now he’s at nursery, although I expected it would be during term time and not right now, given that he hasn’t seen any other children for weeks. Still, at least he incubated it until Christmas and all celebrations were well and truly over. It made the school run a little tricky on Tuesday, though. In the end, I dumped the older two at the lollipop lady’s crossing and didn’t even need to get him out of the car, then at pick-up time I bundled him up and headed for a deserted patch of playground, in between all the groups of chatting mothers (ahem, actually this is what I normally do anyway, call me anti-social…). Perversely, or so I thought, he’s decided that this would be the week that he would finally get to grips with potty training. Nutter, I thought, you don’t feel well, you’ve got chicken pox, this will never work. But, in fact, it’s perfect, we’re not going anywhere anyway, so no embarrassing accidents, and besides now we’re onto number…..

2. The snow. So we’re not going anywhere because of the chicken pox and the potty training, and even if we wanted to we can’t actually get out of the drive because of the snow, so it’s all good. Except that we were expecting the lovely Ocado man to deliver our shopping today and he rang to say he’s stuck in Newhaven and can’t bring us our food. Bother. Except…

3. Not to worry, nowhere to put it anyway, the fridge has decided that today is the perfect day to break down. We’ve got plenty to tide us over and it gives me the impetus to clean out the fridge and use up all those little end bits of everything around the place. Might as well do the cupboards too. Bulgar wheat with a sell by date of 2006 anyone? No-one? Just as well, because I’m cooking it all up for….

4. The pigs. When I fed them this afternoon I used up all the pig-nuts in the bin where we keep their food. Looked around the shed for the next bag. None there. Stomped back up the garden to look in the garage. Nothing. Rang H at work. “Please tell me there’s another bag of pig-nuts somewhere”. “There is, it’s in the boot of my car”. Oh, yes, that would be the car abandoned at the station 5 miles away, up snowy hill and down icy valley to which I don’t have a key? Err, yes. Not to worry, we’ve got bulgar wheat, we’ve got wholegrain-risotto-rice- that-takes- 1 ½-hours-to-cook-that-was-on-special-offer-3-years-ago, we’ve got half a packet of pearl barley we only use once a year in turkey soup, we’ve got the cereal no-one actually likes…..

….those pigs are going to have a feast tomorrow. Not actually sure what we’re going to eat, but no doubt tomorrow will throw all sorts of other little surprises our way. Will I be able to deal with another day with such equanimity and Pollyanna-like poise? Hmmm.

Just for pleasure

A comment I read earlier today made me realise how little time I have spent in the past year sewing for pleasure. It's not that I dislike sewing for my business - of course not, otherwise I wouldn't do it, it's just that sewing for pleasure has become something of a luxury. Bizarrely I managed to find time just before Christmas to do just that - I sewed for pleasure and made a few things that made me happy this Christmas (incidentally the only Christmas for a long, long time that I made absolutely no handmade presents for anyone - I just bought them from other people instead).

For our first Christmas together, H and I bought what I thought of as a "Starburst" for the top of our Christmas tree from the Conran shop (ah, those were the days, lie-ins, weekend shopping, espressos along the way). It was a lovely pointy shiny star made of different coloured foils. I've since discovered that it's called a Polish Porcupine and there are instructions for making one here. We've used it every year since but sadly bits have been breaking off it and we decided that this year we needed something different. Thanks to a button and felt stash that needs some serious re-organising, I spent the weekend before Christmas putting this together:

it also featured on our Christmas Eve party invitation, although that was before I mounted it on the red and white background which it needed for it to be noticed way up there at the top of the tree:

Then, on Boxing Day, with the party and the Day under our belts, I got itchy fingers and knocked out a couple of these for the younger two boys. I know they're not going to want to wear Christmas t-shirts for much longer, so I'm making the most of it while I can (they drew the line at the mistletoe t-shirt I made last year. Kissing? Uggggh!):

This little helper now has chicken pox, cleverly mirroring the spotty pudding, don't you think?

So, a New Year's Resolution? Well, apart from the one I've made for the past 30-odd years (yeah, yeah, yeah, be tidier, more organised, hmmmm) maybe I need to do a little bit more sewing, just because I want to.

Opinions please

I have to confess to loving my Traffic Jam bunting. It was one of those designs that worked just as I'd imagined and I enjoy making it. I don't, however, particularly enjoy batch cutting and sewing, and the vehicles are pretty fiddly given the number of windows. So, I've been trying to rejig the pattern to reduce the amount of cutting and sewing involved but I wonder if the quality or design is suffering because of this. Could you give me your opinions please?

This is the bus as I currently make it:

and these is my proposed new design. Please bear in mind that I did this in about two minutes flat, so the zigzagging would be more even:

Thanks for your help!

Edit:

OK, following all your really helpful comments, here's my compromise which I think might do the job. I've taken on Martina's suggestion of the strip of felt under the zigzag and next time I cut some bus shapes, I will take on board the comments from my big sister about making the bus "chubbier":

The genius that is Kitschycoo

They say sibling rivalry or envy is a bad thing, but I'd like to disagree on this occasion.

It's all down to my niece, who celebrated her first birthday this weekend with three (yes THREE!) parties. So this time a year ago I had a lovely time cruising round Folksy looking for presents for the first girl to be born in our family for 13 years. And after eight years of only buying clothes for boys, it was such a treat to look through Kitschycoo's shop, selecting just the right tunic and booties for a girl.

Obviously they were a hit with my sister as she has now bought a coat pattern from Amanda at Kitschycoo so that her mother-in-law can make a funky orange bird-patterned coat for my lovely niece.

Which is all lovely for my niece and my sister, but frankly I was feeling a bit left out. After all, Amanda is my friend (albeit only in an on-line-y, twittery kind of way) and it was unfair that my family didn't have any of that amazing Kitschycoo style in our house.


The best thing about Amanda is her great talent for rooting out the most amazing fabrics. I'd seen this one (left) on a t-shirt in her shop, but I wanted MORE.


My Littlest Helper has huge blue eyes, and I knew that this was the fabric for him. So for only the second time in my life I commissioned a piece of clothing (the only other item was my wedding dress) and it is truly gorgeous. Really I don't have words for it, so just look at the pictures. All I need to say is that it arrived on Friday lunchtime, and although it hasn't been worn in the bath or in bed, it has been worn at all other times and with great pride:

So please, if you have boys or girls, go to Kitschycoo's website. This lady has a huge designing future ahead of her, I'm sure (I hear that ladies' coats are in the pipeline) and I can't wait to see (and maybe buy!) more of her designs.

Grandmothers

I have just returned from delivering Charlie to my mother-in-law. She lives 160 miles away in Bath, so we arranged to meet half-way in Hampshire. Charlie's excitement grew as we got closer to the rendez-vous point, as did his worries about how he might change cars in the middle of the motorway. It was lovely having him to myself for a couple of hours and we chatted about how I had been to stay alone with my grandmother at about the same age. My children are at the age now that events such as this will remain with them, as similar experiences have stayed with me.

I imagine that my parents dropped me off at Grandma's house in Hertford, although I know that when my older sister went to stay there she travelled by Grandma's favourite mode of transport: the Green Line Bus. We didn't see Grandma very often; this was in the days before the M25, so circumnavigating London to get from Sussex to Hertfordshire was quite a trek, although I imagine the trips might have been more frequent if my grandmother and mother had got on better. Whichever grandparents we were visiting, we were always wearing our best clothes and would always stop in a layby just before we got there to have our hair combed and our faces cleaned with lick and Kleenex.

I do remember feeling rather nervous about staying there on my own. After all, this was not someone I knew particularly well; I did know that Grandma was quite bossy and I certainly wasn't sure about keeping up my good behaviour for several days. But the memories of that visit are happy. I remember that we walked into the town centre to buy my birthday present from Woolworths. I chose a red, blue and yellow plastic saxophone. How Grandma must have loved me serenading her for the rest of my time at her house!

I stayed in what had been my father's bedroom and remember lying there looking at the wallpaper covered in trains (or were they planes, perhaps?) trying to imagine Daddy as a boy. It seemed such an impossible and funny idea.

I clearly remember Grandma asking me if I liked custard and I must have pulled a face, thinking of the thick-skinned yellow slime of school. But the tinned Bird's custard she extracted from the larder was a revelation: smooth, creamy, sweet and delicious. Grandma's larder was a wartime hoarder's dream. In those days which predated "best before" dates, it was anyone's guess how long those tins had been there.

When I think of Grandma, she is a tiny, old, rather querulous lady. And yet she had the patience to have small girls to stay with her. She let me choose my own present, even though she must have hated it. She always made us tangerine jelly with segments in because we loved it. And most of all, she sent me letters like this:

In this one she hasn't signed off with her usual XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX (dozens of kisses and hugs) but I love the way she has stuck all those shapes on, licking and sticking each one individually, in those days before sticky stickers.

I hope that my children will have dozens of memories of all their grandparents. The way they interract with them is so different to the formal, best-dress, best-behaviour relationship I had with my grandparents. I am sure that it helps them to feel an integral part of a huge family of all ages and better equipped, therefore, to communicate with all generations.

Phew!

I am gradually coming back down to earth after the last week of June. It's the same every year. My middle son turned 6 on 23rd:

and my oldest turned 9 on 29th:

(do you think they were excited about their presents?!)

and of course they're still at the age when presents and cake are paramount, so a huge amount of energy has to go into thinking about presents for us and wider family to give them and then buying them and wrapping them and then baking cakes for school and cakes for home, and organising parties........

so you can see why I've needed a bit of a break. And oh, did I mention we had the school fete in the middle there somewhere? And I had a stall? Which went pleasingly well, incidentally, particularly as I was selling bags and bunting rather than my normal cushions and hot water bottles.

Just in case you haven't seen enough of my children's tonsils, here's the youngest, not wanting to be left out:

And finally, a useless piece of personal information following on from these revealing photos: my favourite word in Spanish is Otorrinolaringólogo. Sounds great, actually it means Ear, nose & throat doctor. So now you know who to ask for when your child inserts a peanut up their nose on holiday (no, that's not how I know!).

Elderflower

There is a divine smell in my kitchen - we are making elderflower cordial. My helper today is Charlie, and so far we've picked about 150 heads of flowers, enough to make litres and litres of cordial. Slightly worrying is the 10kg of sugar we've used, but it all gets diluted and the smell and taste of the elderflowers is so pungent that we never need use much of the concentrated cordial in each glass to release the heady memories of late spring.

We'll leave the elderflowers and citrus fruits to steep overnight and then strain and decant the syrup into the many plastic bottles I've been hoarding over the past weeks. It's lovely to know that we'll be enjoying this delicious essence of spring for months to come.