French Knots

Excitment!

Firstly 'Hello and welcome' if you are visiting from The Crafty Crow and thank you to Cassi for mentioning the game I made for my nephew's birthday, I'm really excitied to be mentioned on a blog my children and I enjoy.

More excitment arrived in the post as I was the oh so lucky winner of this wonderful wool from Asti at Lilys House. 

  

The colours are wonderful, much nicer than I've been able to photograph and I'm going to save it till my brain is functioning on a little more sleep then I'm going to knit some socks just for me! Go and check out her Etsy shop for more temptation!  Juno Fibre Arts.

 

I also signed up for a Graze box as mentioned by Domesticali 

  

I love the idea of some healthy treats popping through the letter box and the element of surprise 'what will I get'!? You can log your preferences on their website so you don't get anything you really dislike and I've loved everything they've sent me so far. I'm saving the boxes, no not because I'm a hoarder and can't throw anything away, but because they are a good size for storing scraps of paper and card and they stack nicely.........and I hate to throw anything away! If you fancy trying one you can enter the code NLFQTWZM and you should get one for free and one half price too.

Right got to go, the big two want to bake cakes and naturally I enjoy unhealthy treats too.......!

A busy afternoon

 

sitting in the sun watching the washing dry on the line!

Moving forward

 

Winter flowering jasmine last time, now it's sweetly scented hyacinths and cheerful primulas. Despite the grey skies and lack of sun I'm trying to create a bit of spring to cheer myself up. I'm sure the fact that I have only 8 weeks to go until the baby arrives is pushing me along the path seeking spring too. I feel like I have been hibernating this winter, staying at home feeling ropey and waiting for spring.

Mr FK has been busy creating a new bedroom out of my old sewing room, a large room with two windows, which has now been divided into two with a little hall area

   

this is the view into the bedroom which will soon hold a cot and other baby acoutrements. I'm lucky to still have a little sewing room and am trying to whittle down my fabric mountain to fit it all in. I'm a dreadful hoarder and a firm believer in things'coming in useful' at some point in the future so the destashing isn't going too well yet!

 

My Christmas present is finally in use, just had to wait for the wall to be built, and now hangs in my sewing room so I can play with the colours and rearrange them. A few flowers and a bit of colour, I'm easily pleased!

Is it nearly here?

Spring, is it on the way? I hope so, I'm tired of dull grey days and long for a bit of warmth and sunshine. I've been watching out for signs

 

 

Yellow blossom to herald the return of the sun, soon please!

Some days....

it has to be chocolate

 

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....................now I've got heartburn......................off to find the Rennies!

A little light reading

 

What a lovely stack of inspiration, these are keeping me company at the moment. The great thing about books for Christmas is the weeks and months of pleasure they give. I've earmarked projects in Sew Fabulous Fabric and Childhood Treasures but will have to wait a while to get started as my sewing room is undergoing a transformation. Mr FK is building a couple of walls to split it into a nursery and little sewing room, such a treat to still have my own little space even if it might be a bit neglected after May! The Cath Kidston Make book is my least favourite, nothing in it really grabbed me.

So while the building work is going on upstairs I have been knitting instead, some little squares to make a pram blanket trying out different stitches. Some are a bit wonky but I'm working on the basis that once it's been sicked on and through the washer a few times I'm not going to notice.

 

These lovely dpns were also a Christmas present, thanks to my lovely ( but blogless) friend Amanda. I find wooden needles much easier to knit with and now have them in every size I might need - more hats and socks to come I think. No surprises there!

Some advice too please. I have a great, woollen, stripey rug in lovely zingy colours that I got from a fellow freecycler in perfect nick apart from the fact that the end is fraying. I think I need to bind it with something to stop it getting any worse but amguessing I'd need to stitch it by hand as it's pretty chunky. Unless any one knows of an iron on wide thingy that would do the trick?!

Hope you are having an inspired and cheerful start to the week.

2009

 

I love the New Year, an empty year stretching ahead waiting to be filled like the pages of a new journal. One of the reasons I love blogging is the record it makes of family life, the small everyday things that are so easily forgotten but are so precious.

 

Once the flu had passed we had a lovely family Christmas, visitors and visiting, lots of food, new bike riding, new guitar strumming, film watching and just hanging out together. 

Today feels like a fresh start as the decorations come down ( I'm a bit superstitious so even though the tree came down at the weekend (thank goodness for wooden floorboards that are easy to sweep) and I've taken the rest of the decorations down today, 12th night. So the house is relatively clean and tidy, as long as the doors to the children's bedroom doors are shut! All ready for a fresh start to the year.

2009 promises to be an exciting year as our family grows and we welcome the new baby in the spring. Knowing it will be a challenging year I'm not going to set myself up for failure with a raft of resolutions but I have some goals that I'm going to keep in mind this year

Allotment - I'm not expecting too much this season as bending will be a bit of a problem in the spring (!) but anything we grow will be a bonus. The children really enjoy it, they think it's a bit like Time Team digging for treasure and are really excited at all the bits of china and clay pipe that they dig up. My Little Helper wants to grow potatoes so he can make chips! Hmm not quite the healthy approach I had in mind.

Crochet - 2008 was the year I learnt to knit properly and 7 pairs of socks later my enthusiasm has not waned. So this year I want to learn to crochet, I see a ripple blanket or granny square blanket in my future.....possibly quite a few years in the future!

Simple living - drive less, walk more, get back into meal planning, tackle the clutter hotspots (like the tottering pile of papers on top of the fridge)  no spend days and to address the cash trickle, you know when you get £30 out of the cash machine and somehow it trickles out of your purse without you really knowing what you've spent it on.

Happy New Year to all of you. May 2009 bring you peace and happiness.x   

Cutting my cloth

I have been thinking about spending or rather not spending. Living on less. With prices rising - fuel, petrol, food - I want to make my money stretch further but do not want to compromise on nutrition or quality. No battery chickens who have led a life of misery and torture thank you. But equally no month left at the end of the money either!

Menu planning is the corner stone of my plan, what have I got in the freezer and the pantry, which nights will we be sitting down to eat at the table together and when we need a casserole that can be dipped into at different times as swimming lessons and Brownies intervene. I add items to my shopping list as we run out of them and them include anything extra I need to make the planned meals. I bake our bread, well really the bread machine does but you know what I mean, so I keep the pantry well stocked with flour especially when it is on offer.

I also try to shop flexibly, we need some biscuits? If the ones on offer are ones we like, those come home with me. The local co -op often has great reductions on meat that is coming up to it's sell by date so those go in the freezer too. The Poundshop/Wilkinsons and their ilk are handy for washing powder, loo roll and basics at great prices and I am happy with own brand goods too. The supermarkets wheat biscuits taste the same as Weetabix and are a fraction of the price. 

This is my latest addition in the kitchen, a friend did not need it any more and it's perfect for drying using the heat in the kitchen from cooking. Currently the hand embroidered goodies I picked up for a couple of quid at the jumble sale this weekend. Now clean and dry waiting to be made into draught excluders. Both designed to reduce my heating bill. I've also lined the door curtain with an old woollen blanket, as the stained glass front door is pretty but draughty.

I suppose recycling jeans and linens into draught excluders is cost saving too as it stops me buying scrummy new ( but expensive!) fabric.

So it's a homemade Christmas on the cards I think, using up some of my huge fabric stash and getting inspiration from some of the amazing tutorials around blogland.

One brilliant idea I picked up recently from  Frugal Trenches is a no spend day. Simple but harder to achieve than I anticipated! It's a change in mindset I think, I often confuse 'want' and 'need'. Sometimes is it need - tights for the Big Sister for school as the weather gets colder, but also want comes into it - a pretty spotty jug for the kitchen. So I came home with the tights but not the jug. Just cutting my cloth.........

Whoosh!

That was the sound of last week rushing by me.....a whirlwind of a week. Mr FK was away on his course again so it was just me and the children. Suddenly there seemed to be so much happening - a new after school football club for the Big Sister, swimming lessons, secondary schools to visit ( along with about 2000 other people) to help us start the process of applications and 11+ exams for the next year, choir practice, friends over for tea, costumes to be chosen and then made for the book themed day at school ( 2 days sewing a mediaeval style dress like Lucy from Prince Caspian and a Jolly Postman outfit!) apples to be picked from the tree, apple sauce and stewed apples frozen for the winter, new tyres bought for the car, the DJ booked for the PTA Christmas children's disco, spellings learnt, flapjack made for the Macmillan coffee morning .....no doubt pretty much like your week too!

When I stopped to draw breath I noticed a honey bee on the, still flowering, verbena bonariensis but by the time I grabbed the camera it had flown off. A busy bee too.

 

An exciting parcel arrived to cheer me up from the generousSuzie Sews with a wealth of goodies   

pegs,sparkly thread and a wonderful selection of brooches which have been much complimented in the playground. Thank you so much Suzie!

I must thank Rachel of Contented too as she solved the upside down screen problem, and I could be rather smug with my husband, for about 2 minutes, as he had fiddled around with it for about an hour and not been able to work out how to fix it and I'm certainly not known for my technical wizardry!

Speaking of which just look what Emma from Bagladee has put together for our swap   

feel free to use (a smaller version!) on your blog. Has everyone heard from their partners? We have one extra player who can steo in if their is a problem otherwise I will swap with her too.

Right off to tour another secondary school - I wish my school had had the amazing textile, art and technology departments they all seem to have these days, am I too old to apply for myself do you think?? - then a peacful afternoon enjoying the autumn sunshine. Have a lovely weekend!

Friday

 

So pleased to see My Little Helper taking after me! It's a picture of 'Daddy and me in bed, Daddy's snoring'......no change there then!

Where has this week gone! Considering I have 6 hours a day to myself I seem to have little to show for this week's 30 hours, bit of shopping, errand running and tidying but other than that I'm not sure where the days have gone. I need to get used to being alone again after 6 weeks of the children being at home but even with a list ( and how I love a list!) the days are frittered away, pottering. Ah well ,there's always next week!

 

I found a rare moment of near sunshine while walking earlier this week and snapped this rose. I'm trying to walk more for short errands to save petrol and money but also to increase my activity levels which will slump from low to non-existent as winter approaches.  How do you change from season to season? I feel the need to hibernate and cook hearty casseroles as winter takes hold, longing for summer sun, which we missed out on this year. Are you a sun lover or does your heart leap at the first signs of spring? 

Hoping for a weekend with a little autumn sun to encourage me to mow the lawn and tackle the weeds in my flower bed, enjoy your weekend whichever season you are in!