Excuse me if I seem a little distracted but there is a wild, ginger kitten tearing up and down the room, trying to yank the power supply with his teeth from the laptop as I try to blog about my latest crafting.
Here it is. A scrappy heart that I made yesterday evening. It is very rustic. I'm no seamstress and maybe making this while also sipping a glass of Hubby's homebrew and watching Torchwood at the same time, gives it that extra thrown together feel!
I had to make this after seeing the lovely one made on Sarah Sellers 'Tranquil, Peaceful, Calm' website. The pattern came from the book above 'Fast Fabric Gifts'. So I bought the book (don't tell Hubby!) and made one from the fabric bundles I keep buying off the local market stall. I've placed it on the mantlepiece with along with the 'LOVE' ornament that I bought at the Wildwood giftshop and the teddy that I bought in the Cath Kidston sale today. Hubby keeps complaining about the teddy - that it is so well camouflaged (I thought, blended in) against the wallpaper that it is like a 'predatator' teddy. He likes my scrappy heart, though. Of course he does!
And... Auntie Julia came round today bearing gifts. Julia teaches a drama class and recently (can't remember if I blogged about this) we went to see one of her excellent shows. This car was a prop in one of the scenes and Henry was obsessed with it. My Uncle Ken made it and they said Henry could have it when the shows were over. So here it is - in The Lost Garden of of Hooligans. It's great. They love it. Thank YOU!!!

Thursday

Today, Honor and I were very brave and tried out a crochet workshop at the library. We were both on exactly the same level... complete beginners and it was a lovely experience to be learning something new alongside my daughter. We both found it very difficult. Fortunately, the volunteer teacher Celia was extremely patient and as the group was very small, we got plenty of help and by the end of the session we had made a little bracelet. About half way through, Honor got frustrated and wanted to give up, but we encouraged each other through it and were pleased with what we achieved.

I'm slightly distracted now as Hubby is watching the Wedding Crashers on TV. But I intend to do more crochet in the future!

LTG's rag heart

Finally. I have been successful in uploading the photo of my friends' rag heart. Very nice, isn't it?

For details on how to make one, scroll down to the relevant post.

Making a rag heart.

Hello! How's your new year going so far?

We love Christmas but I have to admit I get enormous satisfaction from the post Christmas/New Year clear up, when the tired looking tree gets hauled outside, the needles get hoovered up, the decorations get put back in the loft and I get stuck into a jolly good clean up and reorganisation around the home. Even before the Dr Who Christmas special comes on, I feel myself getting fidgety, looking around the house and start planning in my mind little changes I'll be making in the near future.

Although our Christmas holiday was fairly quiet, we did have guests drop in occasionally from Australia, Italy around town for some hot chocolate and cake. Though our guests were well behaved, the kids were a little bit less so and Hubby and I found things a bit claustrophobic. We have a separate room downstairs which for the past two years has been 'the study' - a place for the kids to do homework, me to do my tutoring and Hubby to work when he is at home. Hubby agreed with me that it might be a good idea to turn this room into a dining room and therefore make our living room larger. Bless him. We spent a whole day rearranging the furniture and other stuff to do this and didn't argue once! I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner. The extra space in the living room has made things more relaxed and we use 'the study' far more now. I have done one tutoring lesson in there since we made the change and the bigger table came in really useful. However we now want to make this room look more homely and less like a classroom. So I got busy this evening making a rag heart to go on the wall next to our wedding photo. It was very easy to make and cost nothing!
First of all I gathered together some scraps of material, including an old pink cot sheet and a blue top that Honor has grown out of and hardly ever wore. Then I cut them into short strips, some thick and some thin.

Hubby shaped an old, wire coat hanger into the shape of a heart and I tied the fabric strips on. (I often see craft projects which involve old, wire coat hangers but I'm not sure where you get them from these days. All of ours are wood or plastic, but my Mum had one going spare.)
After about two and a half hours, it was finished. I was very pleased with it and what was really nice was that as I was sat down one end of the room making it, the kids and Daddy were watching Die Another Day but looked up every now and then to say "wow, that looks really pretty". Well, the colours I have chosen are very much to my personal taste, but I bet it would look great made up in some modern, vibrant colours and fabrics like satin or velvet for a more modern twist. In fact, not only did Hubby and I start creating a dining room this holiday, but we also redecorated Honor's bedroom in a more modern, grown-up style. I may post some pics soon. Laura Ashley have a good sale on right now and I got some beautiful wallpaper for her room. I think we'll have to do one of these hearts for it next.
Earlier on today Honor went to a birthday party, so we too the other two children for a walk at Wildwood. Here is Hope trying out her new wellie boots. She did really well walking around the wildlife park.

Making soap.

Today I got to make the soap I had been waiting to do for some time now.

I bought all the ingredients from a website called 'soap basics' for my daughters' 'Little House on the Prairie' party back in May. The stuff didn't arrive in time. So I waited for her friends to come over so we could try it out together. What I have here, on the table, are:

soap base (translucent and opaque)

3 colours

4 fragrances (inc vanilla and lemongrass)

dried flowers (rosebuds, lavender, orange and lemon verbena)

After melting the base in the microwave and dividing it into the bowls for the children, they added the colours, perfume and petals of their choice and stirred the mixture.

You have to be fairly quick with this process because the mixture soon starts to set.

Then the mixture was poured into moulds.

The soaps did not take very long to set and our visitors were able to take theirs home.

We really enjoyed doing this and will definitely make more for presents.

I think this could easily be done more cheaply by saving old bits of soap and melting down to add whatever ingredients one can get. I wanted to get colours and perfume that are designed for skin contact but I think some essential oils could be used (please check instructions) and flowers like lavender could be found in the garden.

'Beach' project.

Recently the kids and I visited Westgate Beach and collected loads of large razor clam shells for the purpose of making the candle holders featured in the book 'Homemade' by Ros Badger and Elspeth Thompson. The shells had been sitting in a bag on the hall windowsill for a few weeks so when I saw 'Mom Unplugged' (see sidebar for link) has a beach project challenge, I thought it was time we got on with making them.

I washed the shells thoroughly and divided them up into piles for Honor and Henry. They had to arrange the shells around a candle in layers, which was quite fiddly to start with.

We tied the string around them and continued squeezing in as many more as we could until....

...they looked like this. Very nice, I think and the children enjoyed making them.

I can think of two special ladies who have birthdays in August. Perhaps the children could make some more during the school holidays as gifts for them.