Yarn Along in pajamas

It has been a looong time since I did the knit along. Mostly because I haven't been able to sit (curse you back troubles) so my knitting has been on GOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOWWWW.  Now I'm way more mobile its going faster.

This project is the tail end of something experimental.  I am making sleeve, leg and tummy extensions for E's favorite pajamas.  I am not normally ambitious enough to bother with this sort of thing because E.'s clothes go right to J. as hand me downs and everyone is happy. 

 However....  

These particular pajamas are for E. the best-est pajamas ever created on the face of the planet. They are boy's pajamas (eg nice and comfortably baggy) we bought in the UK before we moved and they have guitars and other rock/music equipment on the shirt.  I am lengthening them only because when I told E. they were getting too short and she had to hand them on her eyes teared up and J. started jumping around crowing because E.'s precious "Coolest PJs on the Planet" would soon be hers!  

So here I find myself... doing the thing that seems totally futile for the sake of a pajama obsession that is probably quite unhealthy... 

I will post pics next week with a how-I-did-it-and-if-you-are-a-masochist-or-cheapskate-so-can-you!!

I'm reading Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore.  It is a fantasy novel which has two others in a sort of paralell series. I've found it  interesting and I love the world the author created but the book is slow and pushes hard against some moral issues that I feel quite strongly about so I have found it occasionally uncomfortable enough to skip some reading. I would read it again if it weren't for a lot of (gentle) references to said moral/sexual issues which this is not the forum for discussion.  It has a villain I find very very repulsive and A LOT of victims. So I dunno. Thumbs sideways I guess.

You can see E is re-reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Excitement for the The Desolation of Smaug is reaching fever pitch in our house as the girls all know it opens the day after M.'s birthday and I've already bought us tickets at our local cinema (surprisingly good for a small town) as a surprise for him (he LOVES The Hobbit).

Happy kitting!

xx Jo

Art night.

Tuesday night is my art night. I pack up my easel and canvas, grab my paints and brushes and head out to a nearby secondary school where I sit and chat and laugh and paint and get tips on how to use acrylics. In this case (like last year) this particular course was a gift from M. for my birthday. I like experiencing learning and is some ways it is a bit of an addiction. I pick up new hobbies quite frequently, get passably proficient then move on... its probably not a great thing to admit but I can do a lot of things only a little well. Occasionally some craft or art will meet all my needs for creativity and functionality and then I feel the need to do it all the time (knitting... my fingers itch for needles when idle). 

 

I paint in watercolour intermittently- usually to make gift pictures for family and friends ( a painting for M. of London South Bank can be seen on the wall here) and I love colour pencil painting (here) but I have been actively terrified of acrylics and oils. The solidity of the paint as you put on the canvas gives me a quaking of anxiety, feeling that whatever I'm seeing is going to look like a toddler sploshed it on. M. ever the pragmatist thought I really aught to learn to use acrylics so I can paint his mum a birthday present that is not in watercolour (they already have a watercolour of mine on the wall from a birthday gift in 2011for his dad).

The point of this post is not however the painting, or the picture, but the BOX. Ohhhhh yes the scrumptious little wooden beauty that houses my paints and brushes.
Also a gift from M. procured at our local car-boot sale for an astonishingly tiny price. Though I didn't know it was for me I was there and listened in awe when the vendor quoted such a ridiculously low price M. didn't have the heart to haggle with the poor man. It is old- no telling how old however- and it has a gorgeous patina of age which fortunately didn't wipe away entirely while M. was cleaning it up.
 My favorite bit?

The name and address of a previous owner written in an old fashioned scrawling hand on a stained, battered, peeling piece of paper stuck to the inside lid.

 

x Jo

 

September means birthdays.

Bath, Sommerset 

 

At last I am in the digital world again properly. After I sent our computer off for a repair in May (ages ago!!!!) It came back months later- broken. Seriously. I had a little tantrum and threw my toys out of the pram. There was much argy-bargy and pointing blame between the store which handled the repair and the company who manufactured and repaired the computer; eventually (another month later) one of them took responsibility and gave us a credit note for a new computer. So here I sit typing at our new shiny laptop.    I t   h a s    v e r y    w i d e    s p a c e d    k e y s     s o     I     m a k e    m a n y     t y p i n g     e r r o r s ! ! !

 

The long and short of it is I have a computer so I also now have photos!! Taken on my lovely new Canon EOS 600D (thank you to my sweetheart for that BIG treat after I... ahem... never mind what happened to my old camera).

 

It has been such a crazy busy summer. We've been all over and done so much I would have liked to share our adventures with you but I don't have the energy to make it interesting. So instead I will bore you with just whats been going on here in the last week... or so.
 

 J. and I both have our birthdays in September. One of us has turned 9, the other of us has kindly asked that her age not be published to the world. I will leave the guessing up to you.  Birthday cakes in the last year (due to popular demand) have almost exclusively come in adorable cup cake holders which look like tea-cups. Our cakes are always served on my great grandmother's glass cake stand which was a gift from my mother when I got married.

J wanted to have her birthday at Alice's Adventure Wonderland which is not so local now we have moved but lots of fun. K is too grown up for it all (though she spent many hours trying and retrying to work her way to the middle of the maze) and E is pushing the boundaries of finding it fun. The benefit of AAW (Alice's Adventure Wonderland) is that its never full and there are no queues so the girls run from one ride to another with a look of maniacal pleasure in making the most of every second. The most important thing was that we all enjoyed it and we enjoyed being together.
 

 

Other than that there has been a lot of quilting and sewing and untill this morning and very little homeschool. We are back to it today and it feels great to have a morning at home just focoused on home and learning.

 

Matt has had an interview for a job in CA and has just this afternoon had an invitation for another interview soooooo.... things are moving and in the right direction. His visa is approved, the qualification reciprosity is done and is better than we expected. All we are really waiting on is a job and to run down our tennancy agreement on this house before we move. We have to remind ourselves daily of the principles of  Matthew 6:24 and not to try to map out the uncertainties.

 

x Jo 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunshine, Friendship and Cake

There are some weeks when all the most wonderful things come together. They are unusual in their beauty and pleasure. Time passes slowly as every minute is filled with fellowship and the bliss of being with great friends. This last week has been so brilliantly memorable I expect it will take us a while to wear out the warm glow left behind.

So monday through friday went like this:

cooking, sunshine, cooking, cooking, sunshine, sleep

sunshine, reading, friends, sunshine, walk, play, icecream, sunshine, games, sleep.

sunshine, beach, picnic, sunshine, beach, rollerblades, sushine, park, ribs, games, sleep.

 

 sunshine, pancakes, gifts, Longleat, picnic, sunshine, play, fun, animals, Alice's tea, games, sleep.

sunshine, park, sunshine, goodbye, misssing, sleep.

X Jo

Follow the White Rabbit

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser around here.

  

Kitty turns 13 years old very shortly and we are expecting her cousin and best friend (Ruth) down for a few days with her mother (the loveliest most gentle person I know) and we are so excited. Kitty didn't want a party as such she just wanted to spend some time with Ruth and when her mum suggested they both come down for a few days visit it was the perfect opportunity to get together.

I've been secretly planning an Alice in Wonderland party for some time since we took out the stunning book Paper Cuts by Taylor Haggerty from the library. So while the girls were recently with their grandparents for a little break I cracked out the pva glue and string and started to create a little bit of wonderland for our home.

The White Rabbit:

This scrumptious little man is a Lindt chocolate rabbit. A middle size one (500g) which this time of year are fairly easy to come by in a large supermarket. I wrapped him well in cling film so that there was no chance for the PVA glue and acrylic paint to taint the chocolate. I then paper mache'd him up with a layer of white tissue using Decopatch glossy glue; a little slightly thinned PVA glue would have been cheaper and just as good but I had the decopatch to hand and I didn't have the PVA. Because white tissue is so transparent when used like this I then covered him with a layer of white acrylic paint followed with a final layer of white tissue and glue once the paint had dried.

His snappy little suit I painted on using acrylics in two shades of green, blue, brown and a tiny bit of yellow for his buttons. I based it on John Tenniel's original illustrations of the white rabbit.

The straws and gift bags:

Sourced from the lovely products at Project Pretty She will personalize flags and stickers for the bags and straws but I chose to make my own eat me/ drink me tags from Cath Kidston stickers I had hanging around.

  

This adorable fellow is a friend of the Mad Hatter and likes to sleep in tea pots. He came from the wonderfully creative Etsy shop Quernus Crafts and has been resident with us for only a few weeks.

X Jo

Do as the Romans do

We've had a birthday in these parts which has been unusually pressured. Birthdays for adults (Matt in this case) are usually lovely, relaxing and peaceful affairs in our home. This year our children's plans for M.'s 36th (!!!) got bigger and bigger. And its all the Roman's fault.

It goes like this:

History studies for homeschool are done with all the girls together. We started with ancient Britain and have now reached the Romans in Britain. The chronological process has put a great deal of things into place for the children and produced an enormous surge of enthusiasm in their history lessons. It is all spectacularly thrilling.

However the girls unanimously attacked me with the idea of planning a Roman feast.Due to a surfeit of obligations and plans we put the feast further and further back till the only option was to combine it with M.'s birthday or leave it to January.

Kitty researched and planned the menu, Esther researched and planned our costumes and Jessica wrote a PowerPoint reviewing the history of the period. As planning moved forward it became more and more obvious that their vision outstripped my enthusiasm.

This is how it all turned out... Matt came in from working in the shed to be dressed by the household servant (me) in his tunic and toga. The dinner was being served in the triclinium where diners could recline on cushions around the "roasted swan" centerpiece of our meal (cake).

We had goat stew, pieceman bread, olives, bread, almonds, fruit, vegetables and (everyones favorite delicacy) stuffed door mice. It was delicious and admittedly easier than a roast dinner however... the cake. Oh the flipping monstrous cake. Not to mention the tunics!

It was spectacular Matt loved it, the girls were over the moon, and I am so glad to move on from the Romans. Long live the Saxons!