Green things

 I had the luck to get some pretty fabrics from my very local quilting studio. The talented owner Josie runs classes and sells also fabrics. She is online as well here and is situated so close to my front door that I don't even need a jacket to go and visit. Luckily the studio is not open daily, it is tempting enough as it is. Josie had two day January sales and I went to see if there was anything I could see immediate use for. Actually I was after a dress fabric, but alas, did not find one. The fabric above came home and I am now thinking what I am going to make out of it.

Similar colours in this fabric, which I decided to use as a table cloth. I had a trial run, the cloth unhemmed, just to see how I liked it. I did like it and as it was a tad short, I made a border out of some hand dyed batik from Africa.  I even did the border in double , so no raw seams are visible and the cloth stays put a bit better with more weight around the edges.

Another green craft; a bookmark. Very simple, a leather thong with some big wooden beads. I have used it a lot and might just make another, as I always have more than one book on the go.

 Apart from sewing in green, I have been busy supporting the local Green Party. I might not agree on every policy the Greens have, but their ethics and most of the policies coincide with my personal ethics and wishes. I cannot see how the mankind will survive if we don't make quite many drastic changes on how we live on this planet. (And that is just looking at some pretty recent reports on fauna/flora/climate changes we have caused). The changes need to be both individual, local, national and international. I also like the fact that they don't campaign by rubbishing others, but by telling how they would like to do things.

You could see what policies/parties align with your thinking here. "Vote for policies, not for personalities" online questionnaire is a great tool to narrow down the party/parties you might want to have a closer look at preparing yourself for the voting in parliamentary elections in May. 

On the creative front my mind is awash with all sorts of projects and I might even make a note of them as I don't think that I manage to get them all done before the mad gardening season begins. At the moment it is very cold though and the wind has blown a hoolie both yesterday and today. In my sleepy state yesterday morning I thought that a jet was flying past us, until I realised that the noise continued be there and that I was listening to the waves crashing on the seafront, not far from our house!

Diary, allotment and blocked noses

One of Elf Son's Christmas wishes was to have a diary. I had some lined notebooks with white/ugly covers, so I went to work and covered his with some oil cloth.

The oil cloth adds to it a bit of old fashioned charm and a masculine touch. I bought these notebooks cheaply as a lot of 5 and have since covered them for different uses. I have one for my allotment diary as well, but it is missing a cover. I was fancying a garden themed cotton, but might end with waterproof cover...I'll show you when I have got my act together. I must ask Elf Son, what type of diary he keeps. I know he writes regularly, but knowing him, it could be as easily about his real life as a fantasy diary.

The allotment is in its winter hibernation and only things to harvest are the kales, purple broccoli, lettuces of different types, parsley and coriander. The leafier things live in our polytunnel. Today is a cold day and we even have a smattering of snow on the ground, unusual for our coastal location.

The picture is from autumn, since there are still some flowers there. This bed is now  sowed with garlic.

As an experiment I sowed two beds with winter clover

During the autumn I have been busy building raised beds with paths in between covered with weed suppressing membrane and wood chips. I hope to finish building the rest of them in February.

In other news Elf Son has generously shared his winter bug with Elf Husband, who is now on sofa duty looking miserable. I have felt the virus rummaging, but keep my fingers crossed for my immune system defeating this one. I just cannot be bothered with two colds in one winter.

Mushrooming and the satisfaction of hanging pictures

I changed the picture in the heading, just for the fun of it. There is much less chance to go mushrooming here than in Finland, I decided to make some of my own. The mushrooms were modelled in Dass modelling clay and I stuck them in a scouring pad (happened to be out of florist's oasis) inside a little wooden box. I covered the pads with lichen, which I had gathered in Finland. 

I have been thinking about how to hang our pictures downstairs. The process took over a year. Admittedly some of the walls were not painted before the autumn gone and it made it more difficult to visualise. We have been debating what to hang above the sofa; I have wanted the Tingatinga paintings up again, but Elf husband had other ideas, which did not really come to fruitition. I had an idea of maybe hanging a group of smaller pictures there and was going to buy picture ledges from IKEA, when I suddenly had the INSPIRATION I had been waiting for so long. I needed to hang that group of pictures, but not in the living room. We have the perfect spot just in the foot of the stairs. There is a big white space, which I now call my gallery.

The livingroom got two of the Tingatingas and a pot plant called Triffy Trafalgar (she is greeted every morning and we stroke her gently from time to time).

We also had an extra little reading light installed for the little sofa.

I also wanted to show our new stone sculpture; we found it on the beach with the ancient forest. and it is decorated with fossilised marine creatures. It sits like a huge dragon egg on the window sill. 

 Have you found any decorative pieces from the nature lately?

Just for fun...

Halloweenish birthday card I made for a niece around the Halloween time. I just like this sultry young madam.

March Journal days 28-30 and Happy Easter Tree

Helloo!!! Went awol for a while. I have been busy with life, so did not get the pages uploaded.

Day 28:  Stain your page

..or connect the item with the correct stain. Too much of wine and too late, what ever. I had problems as I did not really do or eat anything which would have given good stains, so here we go with rather vague staining.

Day 29: A funny and an irritating idiom.

This clearly invited participation from the family and as I happened to ask, I felt I better take their advice, since they were in total agreement  about this. The first one is the irritating and the second one is the funny:

You might notice that we are on a "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" kick here. Elf Son got the original radio series as DVDs for Christmas present and they have been played and replayed. He can fluently quote several aliens and certainly Marvin the paranoid android, so deliciously played by Alan Rickman. For those who are not familiar with the story the second quote is the equivalent of the first one amongst the  Shaltanacs. As it was such a mouthful to say, nobody ever bothered and they were the most contented inhabitants of the universe.

Day 30:  Scavenger hunt. Collect on your page:
  a yarn scrap
  a fruit sticker
  a piece of an envelope
  a (sticky)note 
 something round
 something green
 a bandaid

Aargh...I could not find anything really interesting. My note is from the bin...I was planning our train journey to York. The green is wrapping from one of the Elf Son's presents this morning. It's his birthday. This is the first time since his birth that the Easter Saturday is the 30th March. He was an Easter Bunny among many others. They had to open up an extra room or two that Easter on the maternity ward. What was special about Elf Son was that he was a boy. Most of the babies in that particular hospital that Easter were girls.

I could probably have sold that plaster in an antique shop, so old it was. We have some rather old stuff in our medicine box, which the husband rolls eyes about, but I keep, because hey, it will stick, won't it? The round thing is holes. The board is a bit of gaming counter board from "Dungeons and Dragons" game. Yes, he got that one. Thank you Vaari and Mummo! We have been playing the first adventure this morning and I AM the dungeon master, the evil one moving the monsters and knowing where all the traps are etc.

Here is HAPPY EASTER to you all. Elf son and I made an Easter/Spring tree yesterday and he decorated it with our Easter decorations. It was really easy to do. I used a bit of cello tape in the end to keep the strips of fabric in place. I did not need to tape in the beginning. This is a really good project for all the small scraps. ! saw the idea somewhere in the blogland and now humbly apologise that I did not take a note of where. So credit to whom it belongs.

 

Not great light, but I believe you can get the idea. A couple of detail shots to show you how easy this is.It looks best when not looked at this closely....

It's worth to let all the knobbly bits be under the wraps as this then gives you places where different things can hang from. I removed them from our first branch and that was not a good move.

Blog Anniversary Giveaway and a New Year's Gift

It was my blog's 1st anniversary yesterday! Happy birthday blog!

I am fully aware of the custom of having a little giveaway to celebrate. I don't know if there are any others than my family and a few friends reading this, although the stats show that there are at least occasional visits from places where I don't know anybody. (Obviously the family and friends are welcome to participate). As this is mainly craft and sewing blog the give away is "crafty". I thought that it would be nice to give from my stash and something I have made, so here we go.


The giveaway winner is going to get a rainbow of zips:

















small selection of buttons















 Two Suffolk puff pins















and a pencil case I made

















To participate leave a comment, it does not matter if you have never done so before, you are still welcome! I will draw the winner on Friday the 7th after 3pm GMT, as I am going to use Elf son as my random number selector after he is back from school. Please check if you have won and if so, contact me as the blogger doesn't always give me your email address even if you leave one. GOOD LUCK! 
Now that we have got the giveaway sorted, I can show you a notebook I made as a New Year's gift to my friend and mentor, who is an avid journal writer. We don't exchange Christmas gifts, but I am going to see her next weekend and thought that this would be a nice surprise and a way to say thank-you for mentoring me and being a friend. The colours are not very "me", but are "her". It's always nice to make things for people, because it forces me to colours and designs I would not otherwise use.

I blogged earlier about a notebook I made and there was talk about writing some sort of tutorial for it. Well, I didn't, but maybe I should have, just to use it myself! I could not remember what I did last time, so I needed to figure it out again. Not sure if I did it the same way, but that doesn't matter. I still have not produced a tutorial though...I have to refine my false book binding technique. I really don't have a faintest clue about real bookbinding, so it's all ad libbing it. The printed text is an Einstein quote: "Imagination is more important than knowledge"

I wanted to make the insides inspiring as well, so I added some pictures and decorations here and there

There are fantastic sources for vintage children's craft activities etc on flickr. I can easily lose myself for hours there. It never stops amazing me how generous people are sharing all these goodies with the Internet community. There are several rainy day cutting and pasting activities there which are super cute. Go and check out here and here. The latter has a lot of sets with different vintage themes and is a treasure trove. The pictures are actually lovely enough to frame, if you are missing pictures for your child's room, or indeed for yourself. I used some of them for illustrations printing them to be on the left hand side, where it is more difficult to write.
The whole process of making this notebook was much more painful this time than last time around. I wonder whether it was because I knew I was making this as a gift, whereas the other one started as something for myself.
 

The Elf

For many years our tree has been decorated in silver and white. It has been pretty and I have enjoyed it. Last year I started hankering after a more "homemade" tree, bit more Shaker style or even Scandinavian style. (That is what Scandinavian style means in my head, no official way of decorating in Scandinavia). After last Christmas I bought some straw decorations from IKEA for very little money and I already had some cute wooden decorations and couple of other bits and pieces.

A bit of gingham ribbon was added with elves from IKEA's this year's collection and my homemade hearts and voila, I had the tree of my dreams.

As my boys were so accommodating for my new scheme and did not kick up too much fuss about all the glitter lacking from our tree, I decided to go for an opinion poll for the tree topper. (I should add here that the discussion about lametta is conducted on a yearly basis in this house). Opinions asked: one, the Elf son's. I told him that I didn't much care for our rather overly sweet fairy bought from B&Q and would like to make a home made one and what did he think about that.  He had an instant reply: I don't want to have a fairy, I'd rather have an ELF! So this is what I made:

I had absolutely no idea how to make one. It was rather "let's see where this takes us" affair. I am delighted by its stability on the top of the tree. All the toppers I ever have had to handle were wobbly one way or the other. And it is a truly homemade decoration. It is mainly made of felt and the stripy arms and legs are made of the last bits of Elf'son's much loved stripy t-shirt from when he was 4.  My plan is to make some more homemade stuff every year, how I am going to fit it all on the tree, I don't know. I guess some of it gets too worn out or I will replace some of the bought stuff. Have you had any last minute making for your tree?
Editor's note: The long exposure tree picture and the proper, sharp picture of the elf are taken by the Elf Husband with his SLR, as my camera didn't quite make it in these low light conditions.

Christmas Preparations

There are luckily a few preparations for the Christmas, which are OK to show now. We baked some gingerbread biscuits with Elf son on one Sunday morning. As usual he was eager to help, see the grin:

This is the reason.

Honestly, it's a time honoured tradition that at least 1/5 of the dough ends up eaten before its baked. It is unusually delicious and both young and old keep snatching bits from it.

I did not take any pictures of the result as my mojo left me after decorating only three biscuits. And guess what? We have already eaten all the ones we baked. There just might be more baking in the cards.

This December I have had red, polka dots and hearts on my brain, so I made these for our tree. I love how they feel in my hand. The felt was really nice to work with in this type of project as it doesn't unravel and  is easy to make to relatively small and tight forms.I found some vintage cloth covered buttons for these, which pleases me to no end.

Elf Husband gives little gifts to the ladies who work under him every Christmas. It tends to be my job to put the gift together after he has decided what type of present he would like to give. As there are 10+ people, they cannot be expensive. This year I put this together: (Angel not included)

You probably don't need any explanations really, but here are the few technical bits, which are worth sharing: The candle is raised a bit and blocked to the position with florist's oasis, which also holds the greenery. Should you use satin ribbon like me, it has tendency to slip off the pot. I solved this by rolling a bit of masking tape under the ribbon in the back and on both sides of the bow, as I didn't have any double sided tape. I tried earlier with a hemp string and that sat without help. The pine cones are held in place with a bit of steel wire stuck into them. The hearts are cotton glued on felt, edges cut with pinking scissors and the ribbon sits in between them.
I like this type of things where I can use few simple ingredients to make something nice, but not too elaborate. At Christmas time I especially love the greenery with some colour. Have you made any nice Christmas things?

Snow and cards

We have been snowed in! Well, actually we can creep out in our Land Rover, but the roads in this part of the world are not awfully safe at the moment. I am happy with the snow, because I don't need to go anywhere, we have plenty of food and there are shops at walking distance. I find it really cosy with candles lit and doing crafts and my elfy business.

At Elf son's school they have a tradition to have  a postbox at the school and all the children send cards to each other. Now this school is minute and everybody has something to do with everybody. this means that he needs/wants to send cards to ALL the children and ALL the staff. As he is not the greatest writer, even short messages tax him a lot and writing 30 cards is a total no-go area. To offset the printed message inside, I encourage him to make the cards himself. It cannot be too time consuming as he is a boy who won't make 30 same/similar cards or different for that matter. I don't think that I would have at his age. So this is what we made today, for children:

 for adults a different card colour

I think it was a rather good effort. I cut the cards for him with the guillotine and he attached little wooden Christmas figures on the front. We had a choice of three figures and three punches as you might figure out from the pictures. Elf son had a go with the decorative punch, but had to give up as it was too hard going. Even I had to resort to tricks to be able to do it. We produced all 30, so now we just need to plan what to write and get the message printed. I think I scanned his handwritten message last year, might do the same this year.

Have you made any cards? My own cards are not done yet...

Happy Halloween

This is our pumpkin. I carved it according to Elf Son's wishes and scraped enough of the flesh to make a delicious pumpkin pie. In search of recipes on the net I noticed that all the recipes were calling for canned pumpkin, even the American ones! I could not believe it- we tend to make a pilgrimage to the supermarkets after the Halloween to buy some cheap pumpkins, because they disappear from the shelves as soon as the afore mentioned day is over. People don't obviously use pumpkin any more.

We made these bats as well. I cut a whole lot for our kitchen wall and Elf Son cut the ones for his room.  I got the idea from Dana and like her I am not much of a fan of coffins and plastic Halloween decorations. The bats on the other hand look rather nice and were good fun to make with Elf Son. I was pleased that he wanted to cut bats for his bedroom as scissor work and the required fine motor skills are challenging for him.

Yesterday evening I went out of my kitchen door and was about to get a heart attack. There was a ghostly Nessie in my carport. I had parked my plants from my polytunnel under the carport and wrapped them in horticultural fleece. There was a stiff wind flapping the fleece in a wormy manner and the car park lights were casting an eerie orange light on this monster. It was one of those split second moments when I almost screamed, but realised very quickly what I was seeing. Here is a hazy picture of my monster.

Believe me, it was far more scary in person as it was the movement which actually tricked me. Have a Happy Halloween!

Sewing Saturday

Saturday afternoon was one of those magically super powered afternoons when sewing mojo was with me, Husband did all the kitchen duties and the Son was otherwise entertained.

A while ago I gave in and bought two metres of Anna Maria Homer's voile in kiwi and a smaller piece in "Little Honey Meadow" pattern. I had my plan of making a tunic from an old sewing magazine, which I begged from a realative, when I was visiting Finland last winter. The magazine is from 2003, but most of the clothes in that number are timeless pieces and many of them to my taste. This tunic was "the easy beginner" project, so that was all really promising. Actually the pattern and the instructions were really easy, but in the interest of public health and safety, I needed some sleeves. The tunic is sleeveless and I don't feel that I can at my age publicly flash my overarms any more.

I needed to draft the pattern for the sleeves and then the arm hole was not quite right either and needed small darts. All in all I think I faffed as long time with the sleeves as with the rest of the tunic. The colour is nice, but not quite what I expected, you know screens and colours and all that. It just isn't quite sitting right with me. I think it is a tad too yellow and far too light shade at that. So now I am comtemplating to make a shorter overlay of the patterned piece. It would also solve the problem of the sheerness of the voile. Otherwise I need always to have something under the tunic and that would be pity as it feels just wonderful on my skin. I would agree with several other bloggers that it has a "buttery" feeling to it. This unexciting picture shows the colour better:

Elf Husband had asked me to make a new holder for his new phone, which is bigger than the old one. None of my phone covers in my stash fitted, so I made an entirely new one. As he wants to have it attached to his belt at work, a belt strap was added as well. To avoid the strap being pushed together on the belt and to stiffen the whole works some plastic was added both inside the back and the belt strap.

Husband carries also a whole lot of keys at work. When they are in his pockets the trousers look awful after only a few weeks. I made a key pouch for him last year, but that has been worn down. I had bought the material for a new one, but had not made it yet and as I was on the roll, decided to tackle that as well. The pouch got the same new elements as the phone holder. It has got a loop added for the key chain, so the keys cannot get lost. The pouch is made of denim so thick that if you sew trousers out of it, they would stand by themselves, no problem. I even made it double in the main parts of the pouch. I would have never ever attempted on this with my old sewing machine, but my new one is just a dream. I think at one of the corners I had six layers of the said denim to go through and the machine did it without a hiccup! I love that machine and think that everyone should have one like it. It is so much easier to sew neatly with a good machine.

I was still contemplating the not quite pleasing colour of my tunic, when my creative juices started flowing to improve the look with long necklaces. Of course I had to make two of them to check out my theory. In the end I liked them even better with my white peasant blouse. I looked very hippy wearing them both together! I think the overlay for the tunic is definitely in the cards...

Have you had a super charged day of creating lately???Let me know!