Four weeks into my imposed writing routine, evening outing plus tiredness sets in on a Thursday night…no post.

Rather than berating myself, let’s just pretend it’s still 4 February, and go for it. OK?

—

The half-yearly visit to the dentist is upon us. Oh, the varied and wondrous set of shiny instruments in the dentist’s room that we are not meant to touch…

Oh, the lure of the pink mouthwash which two out of three of the visitors are not yet invited to use…

But the main purpose for visiting the dentist is to pick the coolest sticker possible after having your teeth checked.

I make a point of telling the dentist that he has the coolest stickers in town.
(The second coolest are given out at Gymnipper classes for pre-schoolers, on a weekly basis.)

These opinions are based purely on positive reaction levels from the kids. Sadly I don’t generally get offered stickers on these visits, so my own opinion of them doesn’t get to count.

By the way, it’s best not to get distracted by hungry kids, and leave the dentist’s premises without your handbag. Is it?

Luckily it was a very quick to prep tea once we got home.

—

This last week also brought the genuine delight of the double playdate. I should probably call it a triple playdate, since it works perfectly for mum, older child and younger child.

Mum gets two adults to chat to. Older child gets to do more stop motion film making with friend of same age.

Younger child gets to run around with the two kids of the same age, resulting in some very interesting spy/fairy cross-over dressing up.

You know it’s a good playdate when you’re onto your third round of hot drinks for the grownups, there’s been no real fights to break up, and the kids are generally still getting on with it.

And sometimes? When kids say ‘it’s a real mess upstairs’, they really mean ‘there’s some large items I can’t quite reach to put away, but other than that it’s not too bad’.

That kind of tidy up I can deal with. And Mini is still playing with the Duplo zoo set up that the visiting mum came up with.

—

Another visit to Granny and Grandpa. We do some detailed calculations based on snowy/blowy weather reports; lie low one day and venture out the next.

There are three choices of soup, to cater to different palates, and Mini discovers what Scrabble tiles look like.

But before that, there’s the day at home, a weekend staple. It’s a funny but happy mix: extended pyjama time, read alouds to the kids over lunchtime, usually a film at some point.

(We’ve just finished Paddington book 3, in case you need to know.)

For me, the day also seems to include the hauling of one load of school uniform and the beginning of another washing load, to try to get things ready for the next week.

But there might be other bits and pieces that don’t seem to get a look in until the weekend. Sorting out school clothes for Junior. Making the next set of birthday cards. Chipping away at Mini’s homework tasks.

As long as I can farm out at least some of the food production onto Dan, I don’t mind too much.

—

Mini gets a longer writing task for homework. Cue requirement to fit that in after school each day as well as usual homework for Junior.

Cue epic grumping on the first day, doodling and somewhat more compliance on the second day, and so on.

(These are Mini’s responses, not mine. But maybe I should try doodling and moderate compliance as a maternal gesture, sometime.)

Junior ends up with a day off school when the current cough going round gets to be a bit too much. Extra sleep? Check. Time for a film to aid recuperation? Check.

I even manage a coffee in town with Mum, and a spot of shopping together. New electronic scales (previous balance ones died). A step up for my Monday baking sessions.

—

There are bus diversions because of roadworks. So in turn, there are new routes home, hoping I’ve taken the right turns through neighbouring streets.

There is practicing for a forthcoming school assembly (more next time).

There are crocuses coming up in the park. And one day, even that first hint of spring-like light.

The birds don’t care. They’ve been singing away for weeks. Even with the recent run of wintry weather, they’re still at it.

So am I, in a way, typing away. Hoping that there will be a spring for the words I am still waiting for.

Maybe the tips are starting to show.

In the meantime, I’m joining the birds with some singing, with some help from Elizabeth Mitchell. This one’s been going through my head all week.

The post Weekly snapshot: 4 Feb (almost) appeared first on Frydmania.

I feel a bit the same, writing. Some days, it seems a gale goes on before I can sit down and write, and I’m only really writing once a week.

But once I start to write, I feel safe.

I like the blogs where I feel safe when I arrive. I know what to expect, to a certain extent. I like to be surprised at times, too.

I mostly feel safe through the choice of the writer’s words, their topics, their take on life. They’ve shown up and done their work; I get to sit and enjoy it.

This way round, doing my own writing, I’m reminded of that choice to put things down, for others as well as for oneself. To be real. To be me.

Here’s another week. It’s me, it’s real, and I feel safe thinking it over, hands above the keys.

===

Over the weekend, Dan and I both get ill at the same time.

Head colds, not the worst things in the world, but it means we’re vying for spare hankies, and hot drinks, and trying to give each other a break while really just wanting to be in bed asleep.

Still. It is a good excuse to stay put, let the weekend unfold. On the Saturday night, there is a concerted Put the Kids to Bed, as we just can’t hold it together much longer.

But the reward is in the takeaway curry, which no doubt helps our colds too. Certainly our spirits.

By the end of the weekend, we’re doing better. We do a bit of perspective-setting: could have been worse. Easier over the weekend than on school pickups. No one was actually being sick, etc.

It helps that there’s been a birthday, and there’s marzipan in the house. (Actually, marzipan just helps. Full stop.)

===

Time for a craft order – or rather, the happy aftermath when the box arrives and you can look over everything. With luck, this will keep us going for a good while ahead.

The kids love their craft stuff. There is general oohing and aahing over thin pens and thick pens. New decopens, probably our favourite item, that can colour on pretty much anything: wood, china, glass and so on.

I get a pack of different colours of wool as part of the order, and try to do something about the noble art of darning. Having found a good post about it recently, I decide to have a go.

It helps that I rediscover a pair of wool slippers this week, ones that were worn and worn and then developed holes. I was sad, didn’t know what to do about it exactly, hung onto them in hope.

So now I get to benefit from putting them back into active use – but no one is exactly checking out the quality of my workmanship on them. Unless I put my feet up conspicuously.

I am wearing my slippers as I type. Fairly soon, I’ll try washing them, and see if the wool felts as promised, to fill up the holes a bit more.

===

I’m finding that sewing is helping in the evenings. Some of it is family mending-type stuff. Some of it is more of an experiment (like the darning).

But there is something about having something to do with my hands as part of winding down at the end of the day.

Colouring is taking a bit of a back seat, for now. It’s still something to do with my hands, true, but not as active, or something like that.

In the meantime, we are on to a new box set of a favoured TV series – one that doesn’t need me to keep my eyes on the screen all the time. Sewing is fitting in with it just fine.

===

Mini and I read The Paper Dolls this week. I am informed that we have had it out of the library before, but I’m pretty sure we haven’t.

In brief: mum makes girl a set of paper dolls. They get names, they have adventures, indoors and out.

There is a moment of high drama, which I won’t spoil, but by the end, the girl has become a mum herself, and is making a set of paper dolls for her daughter. Cue new adventures.

There’s that natural pause at the end, and you think: well, we’d better make some paper dolls, then.

With a bit of thinking, and a couple of goes, we created a couple of sets of paper dolls. One (round head shapes plus trousers) was criticised early on; the next set incorporated skirts and longer sections for hair.

The trousers set were given girl names, but soon became boys when it came to playing. The skirt set also got girl names (think Betsy, Getsy, Gretsy…etc), and soon the two sets were playing together.

Well, for at least a few minutes.

Mini was taken enough by the idea to want to make some more, later in the week. I demonstrated the arms bit so that they would stay linked up; Mini came up with much of the rest.

(And learned, fairly quickly, that drawing lines for high heels means that you can’t cut them out. Cut alternate footwear solutions.)

Whether or not Mini will go ahead and make sets of paper dolls, far into the future, I don’t know. But I do like planting a seed, and seeing what happens.

===

I am trying to do Paid Writing too – aka copywriting. I get some done this week, but it seems to take longer to get my brain in gear.

Once I’m underway, it’s all right, but it seems to take a surprising amount of procrastinatory cleaning to begin.

The house is benefitting from it, though.

Fiction writing still seems a long way off, for now. But I am in that January phase where I want to do new things. Even if it’s tiny things, like fixing a sock or a woollen slipper.

Maybe the words are more like migrating birds. Usually, they flock in around September, jostling, ready for some time indoors as the weather turns colder.

I’m not really sure where they are this year. But I keep turning up, once a week, to see if some of their friends are available. Maybe they’ll come and join them soon.

I hope so.

===

Rain upon rain. Cold winds too. It’s January, and I do understand why people find it so hard.

(It helps to have a January birthday, so there’s something to look forward to after Christmas. Even if your expectations for your birthday can include snow, torrential rain, or just greyness.)

We do what we can. One foot in front of the other. Keep the warm gloves ready for school pick up.

Mini continues in drawing mode. Junior has been set a Minecraft challenge by Dan, and both are delighted with the results.

I stick with some more baking for another week, generally enjoying the results. A little bit of a rhythm is building up.

And there’s generally about enough time left, at the end of it all, to restore the kitchen to relative normality. (Aka normal levels of food debris. You know the deal.)

It’s not all creativity. There is also the overdoing it that brings on colds; the ongoing issue of the sheer impossibility of eating breakfast and getting dressed, Mummy!

But alongside it, there seem to be fewer friendship issues for the kids at school. More of a sense of continuity.

The long autumn term is over and done; the pattern has been set, and actually a bit of routine is doing us all good.

====

I too am settling into coming here, once a week, putting down some words.

They are no great shakes, really. They are bits and bobs; the ongoing run of life with kids.

But writing about them allows me to pause. To feel the safety of it, for me, in the routine. Hopefully for the kids too.

Tonight, I can still hear my thoughts against the noise of the wind. And that will do for now.

The post Weekly snapshot: 28 January appeared first on Frydmania.

The kind of winter day that lifts you up; the kind that also has you doing the morning footwear calculation for the kids. Shoes or boots?

Boots (wellies) won out, which was just as well: there were some puddles with ice on. Would have been a shame not to examine them close up i.e. wade through the puddles.

There’s snow on the hills today. Closer to the coast, you don’t really see the chill of the day, though you can feel it on your neck; in your hands.

(Replacing leather gloves in the sales? Turns out that was a very good plan.)

===

A while back, I learned about the notion of kaizen: little tiny changes, day by day, that add up to significant change.

Evidently kaizen means ‘good change’, and is a big thing in management circles in Japan.

I may have done New Year’s Resolutions in the past, but these days, it’s too easy for them to become an addition to the ‘to do’ list.

And with two kids in school, bringing home new bits of paper, sporting new holes in school uniform etc, there’s no lack of things to put on the ‘to do’ list.

So back to kaizen. I don’t feel the need to go into a full continuous improvement mindset any more; I’m not doing corporate stuff any more.

But a tiny bit of change, here and there, bit by bit – yes, it does add up. And you can then pat yourself on the back a bit, and see how it’s gradually coming together.

That’s the idea, anyway.

===

Maybe it’s kaizen. Maybe it’s rediscovering my mojo in a couple of areas. Earlier in the week, I ended up doing some baking.

Not world-changing, true. Thing is, I used to do quite a lot of baking. I liked it. It was something I felt reasonably good at.

Then we moved Junior onto a gluten- and dairy-free diet, and the baking mojo packed up and left.

It shouldn’t have to, I know. But baking was something about ease; about the feel of putting ingredients together without too much thinking.

Wheat-flour cooking was (not surprisingly) where I learned to bake, as a child, watching my mum make yet another batch of rockbuns.

(Yet another only really refers to the speed at which said rockbuns were consumed. We were all for as many batches of rockbuns as we could get. Still are, really.)

As an adult, continuing to bake, you draw on some of that ease, that breeziness of feeling ‘I know how this works’.

Baking free-from shouldn’t have to be that different – it’s just it’s not based on the same ease there used to be.

Anyway. Big breakthrough. I tried an apple cake, one I used to make a fair amount, having had some baking apples passed on to us.

I decided to make it as the recipe stated, just with gluten-free flour and baking powder, and dairy-free marg.

TOTAL success. It is maybe a little softer than the original, but in all other aspects, it feels like the original. So much so that I had to put some of it in the freezer to stop us eating it all on the spot.

Anyway. A small change. One that felt like: I can do this again. Even dusted off some cookbooks. Let’s see if I can add a further reworked cake to the list.

===

A new year, a few new TV series. The Young Montalbano series returns. We shout ‘Dottore!’ and make the appropriate supplicating hand gestures.

Today there’s sun, yes, but it’s been a pretty wet grey start to the year. Opportunities to look at sun and sea in Sicily, even if just on the telly? Si, por favore.

===

Junior and Mini have decided to collaborate and build a hotel together in Minecraft. I am not quite sure of the genesis of this project, but they both seem very keen on it.

In the spirit of encouraging talking to each other, rather than shouting at each other (not all the time, but…), we’ve upped their gametime slot, so they can talk and build.

So far, there is cake in every room, a certain number of ladders to climb, and a few more surprises.

Overheard today:

J: What shall we use this time? Shall we try quartz? Look, this is polished quartz.

M: OK. Is that sheep fluff?

It is fair to say that Mini’s interest in Minecraft is so far mostly around the animals (and occasionally blowing them up), so appreciation of building materials is newer.

Rest assured I shall appraise you of the inner workings of the hotel, once complete.

===

On a different kaizen-type note, I’m doing some sewing. It’s kind of addictive, in a positive, peaceful-repetition sort of way.

This is a very housekeeping sort of sewing. I’ve been able to take up hems on school trousers before, sew on nametapes, and other bits and pieces.

Now I’ve worked out how to add some material onto the bottom of kids’ pyjama bottoms to make them longer (and hopefully, reduce the need to buy new ones).

Flushed with success, I’ve also sussed a couple of things about waistbands. For one, I unpicked the waistband on another pair of pyjama bottoms, made the elastic shorter, and sewed it back up again.

I’m guessing this should work on regular kids’ leggings too.

A couple of other pairs of leggings, passed on, had lost all their elastic and wouldn’t stay up. These ones had a proper trousers-style waistband that I didn’t think I could safely take apart.

So I made a new bit of waistband out of a strip of material, sewed it over the existing waistband, then added new elastic. That seemed to work, so I did the same on the other pair.

So far so good. Mini is enjoying picking the contrasting material from my stash;
I am enjoying figuring out how to make something work. Everyone’s happy.

===

We are in a brave new world of using timers.

Junior has suddenly discovered the ability to get dressed much faster (and without me shouting through the door). With the option of trying to ‘beat the clock’, suddenly getting dressed is much more interesting.

This is transforming my mornings on school days, and Junior is also finding that, with a bit of time left over, there’s a chance to do something fun before heading out the door.

Meanwhile, the world of stop-motion films continues. Dan sets up a plain background, and he, Junior and Mini try making some little films for themselves.

So far, my role appears to be to make approving noises. And to provide snacks once it’s all done.

I can do that.

===

We have had a happy few days of seeing friends this month.

Some of these friendships go back well over a decade. It’s wonderful to find that we still have things to say to each other. Conversations form; we remember bits of each others’ shorthand.

Encouraged, I get the diary out today, and set up one or two more meetups.

Kaizen for introverts: leave the house and meet people. Good people.

Even one at a time will do just fine.

The post Weekly snapshot: 14 Jan appeared first on Frydmania.

So starts another year. So maybe the writing can start again.

A couple of days back, Dan brought some photo albums down from the attic. He’d promised to show the kids some pictures from a particular trip; a few more albums made it downstairs with him.

Some of this was filling-in work: that’s Grandpa .. [who you didn’t get to meet], or Auntie..
That kind of thing.

Today I looked again at an album with a mix of pictures that Dan took and others that are mine. A varied selection: lots of places, lots of people, across a wide range of years.

We took a lot of photos as students, Dan and I. No iPhones, no Facebook, no Instagram, and still, lots of images, now corralled into an album. (Lots of albums, actually.)

If we wanted to share them, we posted off the film to Tripleprint and handed round lots of tiny photos – to parents wanting to find out what we were up to, to flatmates wanting to keep a shared memory.

Today, I look and try to remember the details: of group shots; of where a particular photo was taken. I peer in on the extra social details that emerge as I look back at a distance of more than a decade.

===

There’s a post on Facebook at the moment, a jokey one that sums up some of the quandry of the whole memory capturing thing.

The idea is that someone walks around, acting out all the tropes of Facebook: taking photos of everything, doing big thumbs up if they like something; running around telling everyone what they had for breakfast.

By the end of the story, people are looking to lock them up. You get the idea.

All these things we now expect to share, all this scrutiny of minutae. We surely don’t need all of it.

I don’t want to get into telling you what I eat for lunch, day by day, nor even taking photos of it. I figure you don’t need to know, and you are fully capable of making your own lunch decisions.

But still. A bit of capturing of the moment can be good. Because we don’t know when we’ll be looking back on it, and wondering what life was like then; trying to reconnect with the feeling of it.

I look at these old photos, and it feels good. Some we can share with the kids; parts of our lives-before-parenthood that they sometimes hear about.

Others, I may want to look at with Dan, and think back. Who was that person in the back row? Why did we go there? (How long did I get away with wearing that jumper? and so on.)

So in the interests of a future self, I’ve decided to go back to a few little snapshots. By blog. And if you want a riffle through, that’s fine too.

Who knows, 2016 may even be the year I finally get some photos on the blog.
(I realise I’ve been saying this for a long time. So don’t hold your breath.)

Enter the weekly snapshot.

===

The T-shirts turned into cushions make a comeback. I started on some of these a while back. Now it’s Mini’s turn to get a few.

The idea is that particularly favoured T-shirts don’t just get passed on; they find a permanent place at the end of the bed to prop up the soft toy collection, or maybe offer a few moments of snuggling.

In short: sew up the bottom of the T-shirt; unpick the arms and resew along the armhole; maybe cut off a bit of the neckline to make a flatter top.

I discover that you can pretty much get through a whole T-shirt, start to finish, in the time it takes to watch a feature film, plus a bit more. And it’s quite fun to let Mini come through for breakfast and find a new cushion on the sofa, waiting for attention.

===

We have passed the stage of Eating up Deli Items. (This happens between Christmas and New Year; use by dates on cheese and all that.)

We are now into the stage of Eating up Cake. And very pleasant it is too.

Having gone through a whole stollen before Christmas (ahem), thankfully we were given another stollen as a present. We’ve managed to eke this one out a bit more. (It’s all about marzipan, but the cake helps out.)

I’m sure there could be the potential for fresh ingredients, fresh ideas, that kind of thing.
But it remains to be said: there are Things to Eat Up First.

(And I know there’s plenty of soup in the freezer still, to balance things out a bit.)

===

On the same attic-roaming trip, I rediscover a few things, including a magnetic calendar.
Both kids are very taken with it.

(It needs talking Mini out of a grump, when I confirm that the calendar needs to live in the sitting room, and cannot just be annexed to one person’s bedroom.)

Now, of course, there is a new area of breakfast-time bickering to be had. Who will change the day of the week? Who will change the date? How many times a day can we update the weather picture?

We’ll see how long it lasts. Whether it needs an Official Parenting Decree: child A shall be tasked with moving the month ONLY. Child B must wait until xyz until moving their element on the calendar. And so on.

I am reminded, again: not too much change at once. At least, not in items that make up the daily landscape.

===

It’s back to school week, and we have to tackle the expectation that everyday is a film-watching day.

Junior and Mini have had lots of days at home over the holidays, which makes it very easy to fit in a film. If you cut out going to school, doing homework, wearing uniform (getting dressed, even), then you are pretty much down to:

• eating (several times, of course)
• playing (lots)
• watching a film.

You see their point. (There is obviously also space for a spot of sibling annoyance; a moment of disgust when asked to do something like putting away clothes. Everyone needs a little variety.)

Sadly, when you put the school-time things back in, you can’t quite fit in the film slot.

Unless you are a parent, trying to comfort yourself over the gradual reappearance of the alarm clock in your life. Then you put the kids to bed, engage in some sparring over what to watch, and settle in with a film.

It’s also a great excuse to avoid doing anything with the Christmas cards.

===

The main thing to tell you, of course, is that I have a new set of felt-tip pens for colouring.

And I’m not afraid to use them.

The post Weekly snapshot: 7 Jan appeared first on Frydmania.

Instead, I head back to doing some colouring, when the evening comes round and my time is (relatively) my own.

Because, at least for now, colouring is good. Colouring is peaceful. Colouring gives you something nice to look at the end.

And colouring is really the last thing I would have expected to find myself doing, even a year ago.

====

Somewhere near the start of this year, one night, I found myself out of sorts. I needed something to do with my hands.

Not cooking. Not typing. Not sewing. Just something that felt like…not work.

I found a few of my kids’ colour-in birthday cards that hadn’t been done. I half-inched a pot of felt tips out of a sleeping child’s room, and made a start.

It was…peaceful. I even sent a few of them, to other grownups who know me well enough that I can send them coloured-in birthday cards done by me.

===

I had a set of fine tipped felt pens, bought for a journalling thing that didn’t quite take off.
I had a couple of books of geometric colouring designs, bought for the kids’ craft stash.

At some point, I decided to combine the two. And the whole thing took off.

Much later, I started to see colouring books everywhere. In bookstores, bargain stores, in magazines sent by people who want you to buy their books.

There was all this mindfulness stuff mentioned in the blurb for the colouring books. And I’m pretty sure it’s there. If you want it to be.

But maybe for me, the six- or seven-year-old me that used to colour grids of squares and triangles and hexagons had made a reappearance.

===

I’m not great at drawing. I understand, yes, that I can be better, that practice is true for drawing as well as for writing, cooking, roller-skating, and many other key things in life.

But in the meantime, I can do colouring. In fact, I can imagine I’m in somewhere in North Africa, or maybe southern Spain, gradually putting together a mosaic floor.

That’s the kind of colouring I find myself doing the most. Sometimes there are flowers and leaves, and tendrils, and, you know, I put up with them too.

But what I like most is the geometric stuff. And what I like even more than just the colouring is the outlining, especially where you do a lot of it.

Then it starts to feel like you are not just involved in the shapes, but that you are somehow creating them. Straight line after straight line combine, and all of a sudden you have a twelve pointed star, that you would not have been able to manage otherwise.

===

What I also really like are those moments when you look up from what you are doing, or turn the paper a bit to do a fiddly bit.

And suddenly, you see a new element in the design that you hadn’t been able to see before. The squares that interlock between the triangles; the succession of new shapes marching off across the page.

There’s something that is both very small (line after line after line after LINE), and something that is very big: the way that space works; the way that shapes fit together.

That’s not the kind of thing I’ve been used to looking at so much. But I could get used to it.

I find that I do.

The post How I stopped writing and learned to love felt tips appeared first on Frydmania.

Now we’re OK on this in a few different ways:

– Junior Reader doesn’t grow terribly fast (so far), so the T-shirt still has some life in it yet

– we’re pretty good about passing on clothes when they don’t fit any more, given that many of them are ‘new to us’ via helpful friends and family, or second-hand shops.

However. There comes a point when certain clothes reach treasured status.

And really, this one is a good one – nice red background (always a good start as far as Junior Reader is concerned), big applique design on the front that’s holding pretty well despite lots of use. (It’s a T Rex, in case you wanted to know.)

So Junior Reader came to me with a suggestion. Why not turn the T-shirt into a cushion cover? (Because, you know, we definitely need more cushions with dinosaurs on.)

===

Lots of people have clothes they don’t want to part with. Sometimes this is OK – fashion comes round again, etc. You may find out it looks great a few years from now. (If you have wardrobe space to wait this long.)

Sometimes, you only wear the clothes a few times a year, but it’s worth hanging on to them. (Quality wool coats; much of my ‘hot weather clothing’ collection.)

Sometimes, it’s time to think differently about the item. It’s part of the reason quilts and rag rugs work well. You get to hang on to some material that has sentimental attraction, but in a new form where it has a bit more use.

And why not add a T-shirt cushion to that category?

===

Junior Reader has clearly seen me fiddling with fabric enough to put the suggestion – and I like it. It is a nice T-shirt, plus it gives me a new project idea.

Junior Reader is now adding further complexity to the notion. ‘It needs a zip.’ Well, love, I can’t fit zips (as yet), but Granny R can. So maybe we’ll ask her, or…maybe I’ll bottle it, and we’ll use press studs instead, ‘cos I know I can sew those on OK.

A T-shirt is not so far off a cushion shape in the first place. And if I run out of pillow filler, I could go as far as buying a cushion pad for this one – which would then mean I might need to do a bit more conventional measuring to make sure the cover fits.

But beyond the cushion itself, there’ll be more leftover material. Fuel for the rag rug, I suspect.

Still, while the T-shirt still fits, this is more of a project to muse on for the future. We’ll keep you posted.

The post Making: new uses for treasured T-shirts appeared first on Frydmania.

Dan and his mum have liked Matisse for a long time. I’m newer on the scene, but had managed to see a few things in galleries, like The Snail at Tate Modern.

Junior Reader didn’t know about Matisse, but does know a thing or two about paper cutouts, having gone through an extensive phase of making paper snowflakes. So we thought it might just suit everyone.

When I was at the exhibition, I learned that Matisse had spent time in Hawaii, and that some of the local art had influenced the shapes that he later cut out of paper.

That rang a bell with the quilting book, and more recently, I looked it up. There is a Hawaiian style of quilting that is probably more accurately described as applique i.e. sewing smaller bits of cloth onto bigger bits of cloth in a decorative way.

The Hawaiian style is to have a high contrast between the cutout shape and the background. So you can imagine a white background, say, and a deep blue or deep red design on the front.

But when I looked at how it gets made, all I could think of was: snowflakes.

—

When you make the template for the cutout shape, you fold the paper into four. You then just take a quarter of the cutout, and pin that onto material which is folded into four.

Then you cut through all four levels of the material. The result is that when you open out the coloured material, you have your complete shape, all nice and symmetrical.

I fancy the idea of collaborating with Junior Reader on this one. One maker making the design, the other sewing it. I think that’s probably a win-win.

The trickier bit is the sewing that goes with it. From what I’ve read so far, you sew a line around the inside of the cutout shape – that holds it in place. You do it in a contrasting colour so it’s easy to spot (and remove later).

Then you do ‘slipstitch’, which I think is to use sewing to tuck the edges under so it looks neat. After that, you remove the traced line of stitching, and your applique is complete. Or something like that.

I don’t quite know what we’d do with the result – a cushion? A wallhanging? I might canvass Junior Reader for ideas. Given the relative enthusiasm for snowflakes, I can imagine that I would be offered several, at the very least.

I’m filing this one as ‘idea for some time later’, rather than an immediate one. But if I can find a deep enough blue (particularly a kind of Yves Klein blue, if I can), and a lovely enough snowflake shape, I rather fancy giving it a try.

I imagine you could also do the same in reverse – ie white snowflake on coloured background. It might not be so Hawaiian, but it might be more snowflakey.

And as Granny R has kindly made some nice red cushions (with leftovers from the red curtains she produced), we might just have the perfect base on which to balance a few snowflakes.

I’ll keep you posted on the weather forecast for this one.

The post Making: a new use for snowflakes appeared first on Frydmania.

There were a mixture of stalls. I liked some items; was less keen on others. But on one stall, there was a lady with strips of cloth, and a wooden implement which I can only really describe as a Bodger.

The woman had a loose-weave cloth, and she was using the bodger to poke strips of cloth through that backing. What she was doing was making a rag rug, something I had read about, but never actually seen done.

The woman had kits for sale, with the hessian backing, instructions, and a few pieces of coordinating material to start you off. The clincher, of course, was that the kit gave you your own bodger.

I was in.

—-

The thing with making rag rugs is that it immediately gives you a use for lots of tiny bits of fabric that might otherwise get chucked out.

These days, as the woman showed me, those bits of fabric can include fleece material, jeans, tartan, cotton, and pretty much anything else you care to cut into tiny pieces of fabric.

Once I got home, and looked at the instructions more, it seemed that the cutting of strips was to be greatly improved by the owning of a rotary cutter.

I did not then own one. So the kit stayed in its bag for pretty much a year. (I made an attempt at getting a rotary cutter at one point, only to find I had bought something else, and had to take it back.)

Fast forward to this summer. I have now acquired my rotary cutter. So all of a sudden, my new toy is not just for quilts/patchwork, but I can also get the rag rug kit underway.

—

While the rag rug kit was gathering dust, I did start to amass a pile of fabric to go with it. Then I had a big bout of spring cleaning and got rid of it. (I kind of regret that now, but only a bit.)

On the plus side, it might be the ideal use for lots of little strips of eco bag that I no longer want to use, but that could find a new purpose as a rag rug.

On the other side: what does one do with one’s rag rug? I have a feeling that it might turn into a teeny tiny rug for a teddy, in a similar way to the teeny tiny quilt.

The good thing about the rag rug work is that the pieces aren’t fixed in the same way as sewing. So if I try out some bits and don’t like the effect, I can always pull them out and start again.

I’m rather hoping that rag rugging – aka bodging – might be just the thing for doing while watching TV. Normally I don’t manage to make and watch TV at the same time, but I think this might just be the exception.

And then, if I like it, I can always buy more hessian, and bodge away a bit more.

===

Early results:

– fleece material is nice to use, fairly easy to put in and out

–  tartan material looks good but keeps fraying. Turns out I should have cut it on the bias. (I know the phrase – now I need to go off and work out what it means in practice. I think it means cutting cloth in a way that stops it fraying.)

– cotton eco bag material works very nicely. And those bits that had writing on – you only see a tiny bit of the writing for each ‘stitch’ of the rug, so it’s not distracting.

It’s more like those pictures of walls where an old advert was painted up there and is now flaking off in a reasonably charming way.

– folding the strips in half along the width makes for a neater ‘stitch’ but means that you get lots of flatter lines

– bodging can be done fairly easily while playing Settlers of Catan on holiday

– with practice, I can now bodge strips from the front of the cloth, which speeds things up.

===

So: will it use up scraps of material? Yes, just great. But I am now realising I will need a lot of scraps of material. (No wonder rag rugging was done by a whole family – you’d need to, just to create enough strips and get them into the backing.)

In consequence, it will Take Some Time to complete. But that’s OK. I suspect it could be a perfect project to pick up and put down when I need to.

The post Making: a rag rug appeared first on Frydmania.

Meanwhile, the bed has been joined by a desk – a very nice fit really. The desk is really a low table – for tea parties, for drawing, or whatever else seems the best use at the time.

There is now a gap between the top of the table and the top of the wood that forms the end of the bed. It’s only really about fifteen centimetres deep, but I don’t want it to get attention for the wrong reasons.

I am hoping that the table will get plenty of use – but I also want to avoid leaving wood in front of the draw-er that might a) get drawn on too b) stickered to death c) other possible notions I have not yet dreamt up.

The solution: making an end of bed tidy.

—

The notion of the tidy is that it sits on the table side of the end of the bed, covering up the space, yet making the table space more inviting (fingers crossed).

So what I’m aiming for is a long thin strip of fabric – an extended letterbox shape, if you will. Part of it will form the back of the tidy, and a lower bit will be sewn on the front, with stitches across it vertically to form pockets in the strip of fabric.

I haven’t quite worked out how the fabric attaches to the end of the bed – but I have found the perfect remnant of fabric for it.

—

When I was off hunting for the exciting rotary cutter, I had a little browse among the offcuts of fabric in the shop. Lots were curtain material, and not what I was after, but I did find a long strip of fabric with a series of small animal prints on it.

(Yes, we are talking cute fabric here. It’s a new departure for me.)

I eyeballed it for size, and thought it would work. At just over two pounds’ cost, it was worth a try.

Once I got it home, it turned out that it was an ideal shape for the end of the bed, hopefully making the sewing side very easy.

I also got an offcut of plain creamy fabric at the same time. I think it might be curtain lining, not sure, but it’s plain, and cheap, and it will work out just fine to go with the print.

So far, I’ve roughly cut off enough of the plain fabric to fit the print offcut. Fortunately enough, there’s a good chunk of the plain fabric left over too (so probably add on about 50p to the cost of fabric bought, which is still a bargain).

—

I have worked out that I want the fabric to match: one strip will form the back of the tidy, the other will form the bit that will then get divided into pockets.

The cream fabric will be sewed to back it. I hope it will add a bit of weight, and I think it might need some of that pillow inner to make the whole thing a bit sturdier, and able to hold a fistful of crayons per pocket, say.

I’m sure more confident makers might add contrast pockets, or embroidery, or all kinds of other things.

I don’t know if I’m feeling brave enough for that yet. I’m hoping that cute fabric will swing it for now, and maybe I can add some of the rest later, if I get better (or if it is requested).

Although this is being written about after other items, it will probably get finished first, because I have all the pieces for it. Plus I can take it on holiday to complete without Junior Reader suspecting (unlike the teeny tiny quilt).

I appreciate that, given the insistence that the fabric is cute, I may be required to provide photographic evidence.

I’ll see if I can run to that too.

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Dan and Junior Reader are Lego afficianados. To be honest, it’s building anything – it could be K’nex, or Duplo, or anything else that you stick together.

I admire the things they create – they have a much more instinctive understanding of making than I do. Plus they can both think in 3D, which is a challenge to me.

But the downside of these building sessions is that there are lots of tiny bits, spread out. And when it comes to tidying up, it takes a long time, there’s quite a lot of harumphing over the tidying up, and there’s invariably a few bits that are found later.

So how would it be if you used a blanket for the spreading things out stage – then pulled the corners to form a bag? Then (carefully) tip the Lego into its drawers, and you’re done.

The plus side to this plan, as I see it, is the chance to have a nice comfy surface under you as you sit and build.

The question mark is: do you make it as a quilt? And the even bigger question: should the quilt look like Lego itself?

—

So here’s where I’m at so far on the thinking about this.

I like the idea, and I think it would be very useful. And I have those sturdy handles all ready to use. (More than I need for one blanket. Maybe I’ll make a second scooping-up blanket for something else.)

Downside of a Lego-style quilt: potentially difficult to see the actual pieces on if it looks like Lego too (ie Lego-type colours, similar shaped blocks).

BUT if I did a Lego style quilt, and put a plain backing on it, then you could use the plain side to build on, so you could see the pieces.

And then you’d have the visual joke of the Lego side for other occasions where you might like to have something to snuggle (thinks: Sunday film afternoons?).

Big plus of this: we know the Lego colours already. We know they work together. There’s no pattern matching to do. And the pieces can be Lego shaped, which could be fun to plan.

I think if I do this, I’ll probably aim for using Duplo blocks for sizing, rather than actual Lego sizing, which would be too fiddly to work with.

(After discussion with Dan, that size is probably too small too. Think bigger.)

It might also be an excuse to cut out little bits of coloured paper, and move them around to find a pattern I like. Plus I do have that rotary cutter now, so I should be able to cut suitable sized blocks of fabric.

—

It’s at this point that I see the addiction of making. It’s not just about solving problems; it’s about thinking about the best way of doing so.

I know that if I do this, it’ll be a lot of work. And I do my sewing by hand, so that could mean it takes a while.

But at the same time, I am really enjoying the sewing. If the teeny tiny quilt gets finished OK, then I’ll have some more skills for doing the next stage.

Plus I’ve got a LOT of quilt-stuffing material from those old pillows. I might as well make use of it.

If I can, I’m going to use the fabric left over from the eco bags, where I think it fits sufficiently with Lego colours. I’ve got time to plan it; maybe to hunt for scraps of material that would work.

But in the meantime, I’ve found the perfect scrap of material for another project – and one I’m going to complete first, I think.

It’s an end of bed tidy thing, sewn, with pockets. More on that next time.

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And you can bet that, come mid August, all those bright wee things will have sprouted extra inches of leg and new hairstyles and far more in-depth knowledge of whatever it is they’re keen on.

So maybe it’s time instead to take stock of where things are at now – because assuredly it will all be different when the new term comes round.

===

Like many other places, Edinburgh schools have been overtaken by loom bands. In some places, they are the reserve of girls; in others, boys are working away with the best of them to create whatever the latest plastic bangle look is coolest right now.

Mums chat in huddles, identifying the best deals and the new equipment to make the things on…and others just get fed up with lots of little coloured rubber bands everywhere.

Small D returns home with an aquarium. Think paper plate, blue-ish scene behind, clear film on the front to look like the glass. I rather like the two (actual) shells – and the carefully inscribed lines to show that they are falling down through the water.

Sports days are on and off and happen in the rain and sometimes even happen on good (bright, sunny) days.

There are end of term discos where everyone emerges dripping with sweat and clutching an ice lolly.

I think there may be the great ceremonial pile out off to the park on the last day of term, to play, eat a picnic lunch, play some more. Some of that gradual leave taking before parents batten down the hatches and engage the hard-won Long Holiday tactics.

There are coffees snatched, and parent conversations indulged in before the holidays begin, and an actually still heated beverage becomes but a happy dream.

There are calculations about rate of hair growth and the possibility of hot summer, and decisions to be made about summer haircuts.

There is the counting down of final packed lunches, and snacks, and school uniform washing loads. And there is the complicated deliberation about teacher presents/cards at the end of the school year.

===

Life becomes a little bit more complex at this stage of school – but not too much so yet. Not too knowing yet. Thankfully.

Boys and girls both engage with creating their own little worlds online (mainly through Minecraft).

There are Brownies activities, and judo competitions, and a hundred and one other ways to signal the end of scheduled time for a few weeks.

Playdates involve more requests for (computer) screen time – but messing about outdoors is still high on the list of entertainments.

Swings, and hide and seek, and monkey bars at the park. Even a hammock to try out at a friend’s house, if you’re lucky.

===

We have this stretch of several days of good weather. (For those used to one day sun, one day sea mist in Edinburgh, that’s unusual.) Prolonged grass cutting ensues. The new picnic bench is ready for action in the garden.

There is a scurry for sun dresses and skirts and lighter tops and sunscreen. Wearing shorts to the office (if there’s no visitors that day).

I hunt around the attic for those items that can actually come back out for use: inflatables. Games to play outdoors on the grass.

I work around the other items tucked away, those ones for rainy days and cold days and miserable days.

Not just now. Who knows how long the sun may last, but for now, we’ll live in hope of a little more summer to enjoy.

The post End of term report: June 2014 appeared first on Frydmania.

Supermarkets sold them to you; conferences pressed them on you (to hold all the paper that you then didn’t need anyway. Hmm.)

I started into eco bags a while back. They were quite often souvenirs of trips to Germany. I still have a couple which I love (and which have the frayed handles to prove it).

One is for a children’s book publisher, and has a very nice illustration of a cheery frog on a motorbike. The other has the Ampelmaenner (traffic light men) of East Berlin – you’ll see the ‘Go’ version as the little icon at the top of this webpage.

Eco bags are a nice idea, but they don’t really hold a lot of shopping. They’re fine if you’re off to the paper shop to collect your weekend newspaper, they’ll do a few bits and pieces, but not a great deal.

Cue my next use of them: for putting dirty washing in when on trips away from home. And when you’re home and doing the washing, stick the bag in as well, and it’s ready for next time.

But still. There were bags I liked, and ones I really didn’t care for any more. So I decided it was time to get the material back, use the blank bits (maybe more quilt activity?), keep the bag designs I did like, and ditch the rest.

And then I was able to justify getting a new sewing toy. The terribly sharp, terribly exciting rotary cutter.

—

You can use strong scissors to cut fabric, of course. You can even have pinking shears to make sure the edges don’t fray. (Though the main use of pinking shears, as I recall, was to reuse old Christmas cards and turn them into tags for next year.)

Once I’d read the quilting book a bit more, as well as a bit of looking at sewing sites, I realised that a rotary cutter could help things along nicely.

It basically looks much like a pizza cutter – but deadlier. (A pizza cutter doesn’t have a guard for the blade. This does.)

Lest it seem too dangerous for words, I have been practising cutting, carefully, on little scraps of fabric, to get the feel for the thing. Turns out it’s very nice to use – very smooth.

You do need to have one of those cutting mats to use them on – I think they call them self-healing mats.

The kind you can use for cutting out card designs with a Stanley knife. (We did some Christmas cards a few years ago, with lots of cutting, so we have the mat already.)

So the stitch ripper and the rotary cutter have been working together on taking apart these bags. A few are even coloured, and may make it into a different pile for a larger-scale quilt idea (if the first one works out).

I don’t quite know what I’ll do with the picture bits I’m saving yet. I don’t think they are quilting squares; most of them have words on as well, and I don’t want a quilt that’s too busy to look at.

They might be interesting cut into quarters and moved around a piece of fabric, as it were, so the effect is less immediate on the eye.

I do now have a lot of nice strong handles from the bags, though, which brings me to another idea: a scooping things up blanket.

(A blanket with handles, basically. I’ve seen things like this for sale online. Play on it, then pick it up by the handles at the end, and scoop up whatever’s inside, to make tidy up easier and quicker.)

I think the blanket might work for all kinds of small playthings – but I’m principally thinking the Lego collection. More on those plans another time.

Updated: the bits of fabric with words on turn out to be just fine in a rag rug. And more on that on a separate occasion.

Am I using up almost all the fabric? You betcha.

The post Making: reusing fabric appeared first on Frydmania.

Even further ago, I found myself teaching in Poland (second time around), again at a point where my hands needed something to do in the evenings.

(English teaching in the day meant that it was very hard to do anything words-related at night. So I ended up doing some sewing-type things instead.)

Fortunately, my teaching position came hot on the heels of an American family who had been there for three years before me. The mum seemed to have been into quilting, and left a box full of lots of odds and ends of fabric.

I made a few little bits of patchwork. The colour combinations were good. One became a kind of table runner for the low table in the room where I was staying that year.

Another made steps towards being the size of a cushion cover. It never got to those lofty heights, but it does now get more viewing time, as it were, by going over the top of a rocking chair.

I never wanted to fill the house with patchwork thises and thats. Part of me admires it, the colours, the shapes. Part of me also wants to avoid too much busyness on the eye.

But with some offcuts from my clothes-adjusting activities, I thought I might try to find a use for them. Cue: the teeny tiny quilt.

—

The point of this is that it’s a place to learn. It will probably end up the right size for a teddy or other soft toy, which is plenty big enough to work on, but not so crucial that I feel bad if it doesn’t work out.

I’ve kept the notion of the teddy quilt a secret from Junior Reader, but I hope that it will go down well, once I feel like it’s at a point where I can hand it over.

Part of the current attraction of the quilt is that it also gives me a chance to use up the inners of the pillows we recently parted with.

(I discovered that you can’t recycle them – they just go into landfill – but some online searching suggested things like using them for making soft toys or quilts.)

So far, we have simple squares. A bit of leftover red curtaining material (Granny R has been hard at work on new curtains for Junior Reader. Respect.). And the offcuts of those jeans I mentioned.

24 squares, and a colour way of red and grey. So far so good.

—

So I’ve learned to look at the useful book before beginning the project. (Turns out you shouldn’t create strips of 6 squares, but just do them in pairs. Back to the stitch ripper for a bit.)

I’ve just started combining the pairs into sets of 4. That took a bit of trial and error to work out how to match them so it looks (as best I can) like the seams actually line up.

Hopefully I’ll complete the 24 squares fairly soon. Then I need to think about what to put on the back, and how to tease out the pillow material so it forms the filling (or batting) of the quilt.

There is also adding some kind of binding around the outer edges to hold all the elements together. And after that, you get to do stitching through the different layers (the actual quilting), which I understand can be decorative if you want it to be.

—

So that’s all going fine. But then I discovered a set of fabric that was doing nothing, and decided to add to my material stash by cutting up: eco bags.

The post Making: a teeny tiny quilt appeared first on Frydmania.

My normal sewing levels are around attaching name tapes to clothes. Occasionally badges to judo outfits. Not much more.

I did learn to do backstitch (making a nice strong seam) in the teenage days of having a favourite schoolbag, which would intermittently fall apart under the weight of all the books.

Having finally found the perfect bag (large, green, canvas material, good straps), I was not going to let it go and have to begin the hunt again. So I think I must have kept it going a good three years in the end.

Which is good for schoolbags, all in all.

Over time, and with a bit of observation of my mother-in-law’s trouser hemming techniques, I have moved up to being able to take up trousers to a shorter height, should one’s junior reader require it.

(I have also on occasion managed to sew one trouser leg to another (temporarily, I didn’t leave it like that), but I’m better at spotting that in advance and saving all the unpicking.)

Although it has allowed me to buy a seam ripper, like the one I remember my mum having, which is a lot of fun to use.)

Having shown the level of my sewing credentials to date, down to the business of making.

—

No. 1: a pair of trousers belonging to Junior Reader. Having been taken up several times to begin with, once they were taken down, they had big bands of fold around the ankles.

They looked a bit like lines you’d find at successive high tides. So I asked if I could turn them into mid-length trousers, and was given the nod. (Phew.)

The trousers were cargo pants, and fortunately, had some detailing on them already which gave me a hint of where to cut. Then I hemmed them and: hey presto, new light-weight trousers.

Not yet tried out at the beach, but great for this ‘is it spring/isn’t it’ kind of weather.

These I have been able to see are a success, because they are getting worn a lot.

(We have also had the ‘how to take off your trousers carefully’ talk, after a certain amount of recent fixing and refixing of school trousers, and so far, cargo pants are doing just fine.)

—

No 2: a stage further up. Dan had a pair of jeans with rips on both knees. So I applied the same logic (and measured VERY carefully), and managed to create some cut-offs.

I think the point of proper cut-offs is that the hems are mean to be a bit raggy. But that doesn’t really build in your sewing skills, so I’ve gone for neat for now.

I think they may actually need taking up a bit more – they are a tiny bit Empire-builder for now. But hopefully we’ll get to see them in action (if that hot summer we’re promised comes round), and then we can fix on the hems for definite.

Updated: they’ve been worn all week on holiday. The length is good at the points when you sit with your knees bent. And really, they are just off, seeing holidaying action, so I think that’s a win.

—

No 3: same approach, different garment. Dan had a much loved long-sleeved shirt, with a hole at one elbow. No longer suitable for business meetings.

A spot more cutting, and cue: short sleeve shirt. This one I’m happy with for length of sleeve.

Somehow or other, there was also a hole near the lower seam. So I cut the lower seams and had a go at a rolled stitch, to make the hem very small.

The hems were a success, but it does make the shirt a bit boxy now. So I think we’ve settled that it’s one of those summer shirts that you don’t actually try to do up, but wear open over a T shirt or a vest.

—

Big plus point from 2 and 3: spare material. Just a bit, but nice enough to use for something else.

Which leads us to the next making update: a small attempt in the direction of quilting. (Fingers crossed.)

The post Making: new clothes for old appeared first on Frydmania.

It doesn’t seem to matter what the interest is – science experiments you can do at home, knitting patterns for tiny babies – there’s plenty to borrow from.

So I’m tentatively creating a new category here: making. Not because I think that what I’m trying to do is Pinterest-worthy (hardly, given that I’m still avoiding adding photos), but simply because That’s Where It’s At right now.

Making is probably not big news any more online – but there’s plenty more encouragement for what is effectively free-range creative endeavours. It might be putting together paper and cardboard, it might be making finger puppets, or all kinds of different things.

I’ve reached a point where my head is too full of chatter in the evenings. Sometimes, I drown it out with TV – that works fine, but it seems that my hands would like something to do as well.

So, little by little, I’ve been starting some making of my own. It’s not going to be a new and exciting invention, it’s not going to inspire other kids in the playground, but it’s going to be something that I made. By myself.

—

I do do making, of sorts. Cooking has been my big area of making, for a long time, but in a funny way, it doesn’t feel like making particularly.

In cooking, you have recipes to follow (or at least to use as a guide). There are techniques to learn; variants on how to use different ingredients.

I dare say the same could be applied to something like woodwork, but I have lacked the confidence to feel that I could then approach a new area of making, and extend my skills there.

So what I’m trying is a bit different for me – it’s in the following your nose kind of category of activity. I’m trying things out: no patterns, no how tos, no instruction booklets.

No one is telling me what to make but me. No one is devising the plans but me. That is partly faintly alarming and partly very releasing, because I can be on my own side. It’s about having fun in the activity, and hopefully it turning out OK.

—

The thing with making is that it encourages all kinds of useful skills. Learning through trial and error, thinking on your feet, improving techniques as you go along.

It’s a very arts/crafts way of thinking – much more what you can do with your hands than I’m used to. But that’s OK. I don’t want to write a thesis in the evenings; I want to relax, and maybe explore a little too.

I am worried about whether I’ll manage to be precise enough. I fear cutting into things and making mistakes, but maybe I’ll find a different idea as a result. (I hope so.)

—

So every now and then, I’ll share some making thing that I’m doing. I might even mention what Junior Reader is up to – there’s someone who loves making, and is not afraid to try new things. Maybe I can learn a thing or two.

I’m hoping that what I come up with will be a little bit eco, too, finding new purposes for things, spinning out the life of a garment. Stopping some fabric sitting doing nothing, and turning it into something useful.

If you’re really lucky, I might even take photos. Not for the how-to factor, but to prove to myself: I made something. I can do it.

And I can enjoy the process as well as the finished product.

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