Life in a peaceful world

I spent 2 hours in the spare room sewing last night and my neck is probably permanently cricked to the side… TOTALLY worth it though as what I made may possibly be so cute it is vomit-worthy. Unfortunately it’s a gift, and I can’t show off you until it’s been received, but I posted it today so hopefully can bask in the glory of my genius write a little post about it soon.

Otherwise I will be most likely fairly absent for a while as this is the stack of paperwork I have to make my painful way through before my inspection in 3 weeks:

The dreaded phonecall came at last and I’m going to be crapping myself studiously preparing until it’s over. It sucks because after a very shitty week, we were having a very good week. We made some sky-blue playdough and we smooshed and rolled and made cool shapes:

We made a valentines card and beaded clay heart for Husby at Moomin’s arts and crafts toddler group:

(I don’t normally subscribe to valentines day – Husby and I have 2 anniversaries already so it seems a bit greedy to have a 3rd, as well as the usual anti-commercialism blah blah – but that was the theme of the session and Moomin got right into it – a million tiny beads stuck to his glue-covered hands, insisting that the heart shapes were, in fact, butterflies, having a sneaky bite of clay… So who am I to deny the kid a bit of cupid-inspired cheesiness?)

And to top it all off, I got given this incredible propaganda leaflet by a kindly old lady which knocked my socks off:

(click on the pic above for more fantabulous detail)

A world where you can feed berries to bears and stroke lions? Sign me up. Where’s the boat?

(bad) judgement day

Things wot I dun that was stoopid:

#1 Sewed through my finger

#2 Grated a notch out of my thumb

#3 Put a polite notice on the front door asking people to “please knock, thanks” because our doorbell is broken. apparently this somehow indicates that people should batter the door down with both fists, perhaps even a kick or two, as if a horde of zombies is descending upon them. The post really is NOT that important.

#3 Let the Moomin go back to bed at 3pm yesterday, having already slept on me for 1hr earlier (ill, coughing, teething) though was rudely awakened by aforementioned thunderous-door-knocking – this time the meter reading man, who had come to read the meters I had read and submitted the day before. Moomin slept for about 2 hours then laughed in our faces at bedtime. More fool us.

#4 Went to supermarket and forgot a) Moomin’s water, which resulted in a trolley meltdown, and b) several items I’d gone specifically to buy.

#5 Impulse-bought a cheap book which turned out to be the 2nd in a series and of course I don’t have the 1st.

#5 Ignored my exercise aversion and attempted to run for 15 minutes. Aha. Ahahahaha. I am really stupid.

Things wot I dun that was ok:

Shamelessly plagiarising Inspired by The Kindergarten Bag at Trula, I made this bag from stash corduroy and some green fabric I seem to have had forever (I think it might be breeding inside my cupboard - it’s impossible to use it up it seems):

Basically an extra tall bag which flops down to become a satchel-type flap, secured with a toggle. Gotta love toggles.

1st real attempt at bias tape… with the only fabric in the world which refuses to be ironed.

Back view – with an added little pocket, closed with a snap and just big enough for a pen and a notebook.

Action shot. It also has an interior zip pocket, boxed bottom corners and is just the right size for a quick ‘wallet, phone, keys and at a stretch a nappy and a pack of wipes’ type outing.

If I made it again (which I might well do), I’d make the top taper slightly, as it comes out looking like it’s wider than the body of the bag. I’d make the bias tape/lining with a thinner fabric (that actually irons) and I’d play around with different fastenings – rucksack snap-buckles anyone?

So I’m not completely useless, contrary to recent proof.

Perfection fever

Something’s definitely wrong with me. First cleaning, now this. I’m making a muslin. Someone check my forehead for a fever.

I have bruises on my knees from kneeling on wooden floors, trying to decipher and trace out pattern pieces, and a blister on my palm from rotary cutting. And then once I’ve made the damn thing I have to make it all over again. Nothing’s worth this.

Ah, I’m just a lazy, moany old cow – of course it’s worth it for a perfect fit and finish (ahahahahaha the very thought of sewing something that well makes me a little uneasy). I’m making this blouse by the way:

…from the Feb edition of Burda. Though not in silk and sequins – ick. Not very me. In my perdy new green print, of which I have very little as I am skint, hence the muslin preparations to ensure I don’t waste it.

Also working on a totally plagiarised project, which I shall reveal (and accredit) in due time.

Also, also added a load of links to my blogroll – places I’ve been frequenting for a while but not got around to listing, and others that are recently discovered – check ‘em out. Been finding lots of inspiration and ideas from various places, like these:

Giving a boost to baby art at Paperseed

Rollie Pollies by Dana (from Made) at So You Think You’re Crafty

Counting Bean Bags at Chez Beeper Bebe

ABC Book at Obsessively Stitching

And that concludes my cop-out link post. Thank you.

 

Bring on the trumpets!

Baaaaaam. Baaaaaaam. Baaaaaaaaaaaaam. BAM BAM!

 

(Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom)

Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaaam. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaam. BAAM. BAAAM!!!!!!

 

(Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom)

Baaaaaaam. Baaaaaaam. Baaaaaaaaaaaaam. BAH BAH BAAAAAM! BAM BAM BAAAAAAAAM!!! DAH DAH DAM DAM DAM. DAM DAM DAAAAAAAAAM, DAAAAAAAAAAM, DAAAAAAAAAAAAAM.

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!

 

(For those of you who can’t ‘read music’ – that was Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss - otherwise known as “that opening music for 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the monkey-men find a monolith and chuck bones around and one of the bones gets thrown up into the air and it spins and does this beautiful segue into the space station…”)

I finished the skirt by the way…

I feel like I’ve translated the Dead Sea Scrolls with the sole assistance of wikipedia, or climbed Everest in my pyjamas. Something epic, anyway. And slightly moronic. I can’t tell you how long I sat and stared at the waistband pieces and the instructions and tried to make them work together by banging my head against the sewing machine. But I did it, and I didn’t kill anyone or myself, and I didn’t swear (much), and I didn’t throw it across the room (not once), and I DIDN’T BOTCH IT!

Seriously.

I adapted it slightly here and there, but in a purely professional way – I took it in a little after basting and before sewing up the side seams (check me – I basted for a change…), I had to extend the slit (not because I’m slutty, because I’m short and I hacked off about a foot at the hem to make it reach my knees, therefore cutting off most of the allotted slittage), and I only had a 7″ zip as opposed to the prescribed 10″ (and how many life-situations can you apply that complaint to…?). I even handsewed in all 6 buttonholes because my machine didn’t want to play. Man that wool is lovely to sew with – the stitches barely show, it slid through my machine like an oiled otter (I’m all out of analogies today so just go with it) and it’s so soft I don’t even feel guilty for not lining it.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

<sigh of satisfied relief>

But now I have to find stuff to wear with it. It kind of demands smartness: heels, a drapey blouse, make up, an actual haircut (which I got on Saturday, mwaha).

I own one pair of heels. Which I wear to weddings. They’ll have to do. (Good for elongating the legs, this skirt, apparently, which is good for hobbits.)

I own zero blouses. I have a blue lumberjack checkered shirt but something tells my fashion-dead mind that it will not gel with the aesthetic here.

The fabric is a dark grey ’smudged’ wide pinstripe. Kind of office-attire. Great for someone who works from home.

Yup, the whole smart-high-waisted-skirt thing was really a no-brainer addition to my wardrobe of jeans, boots and jersey tops in varying shades of grey, black and green… I am determined to wear it – and often – despite this. I will wear heels around the house and I will find a floaty blouse in a charity shop or make one (wardrobe refashion duty, remember), I will try to brush my hair occasionally.

I can change. I can.

Honest.

Denial – NOT a river in Africa

I cleaned today.

“WHAT?!”

I cleaned today. For 5 straight hours. Then I started shaking a bit and had to have a cup of tea and a boiled egg. Behold people, my annual house-clean! It’s a rare old treasure. The rest of the year I have housework-denial, in which I spend my time moving piles of crap from room to room, from worktop to worktop, I put dirty dishes in the clean dishwasher, sweep crumbs down the gaps in the floorboards, wipe the bathroom over with a babywipe while Moomin is in the bath… But no actual CLEANING.

Today, I went mental. I woke up with cleaning in mind. WTF? What kind of person does that? It’s unhealthy and unnatural and I’m glad I’m over it now. I tidied the whole of the downstairs – and not just making piles of similar things in corners and shoving stuff down gaps between furniture – everything got put in its rightful place (even if that is thrown in the cupboard-of-doom under the stairs). Then I hit the kitchen. For an hour. I unearthed things I never knew were there. I hoovered inside a drawer. I scraped black bits off the back of the tap. I realised I need 6 new jars from Ikea (any excuse, but this is good ‘un). It shone.

Then I hoovered and mopped downstairs. I have the only kid who’s not afraid of the hoover because it’s such a goddamn novelty item. He loved it – “woooooo!” it is now named. He tried to help out with the mopping (again, novelty) by squeezing the dirty water over himself and trying to eat the wet fluff.

Next, hoover stairs, transfer mountain of laundry on the landing to respective drawers, bedrooms and shelves, hoover landing, fill an entire bin bag full of tiny fabric scraps, broken needles, thread, cardboard and plastic and hoover spare/sewing room. I made some last minute adjustments to my kasia skirt tonight and was astonished that I didn’t have to sift through an ocean of offcuts to find the machine pedal. This cleaning thing could catch on, you know?

Hoovered Moomin’s room so he could go for a nap in a nice dust-free environment and attempted to de-calpolify his rug – splattered with pink by flailing teething baby and groggy parents. Have decided to demand Husby flips it to the clean side tomorrow. Nice.

Bathroom. OMG. Nasty. I hate to admit straying from the natural cleaners here but I bought a bottle of bleach for this motherload. Enough said. It’s clean. I felt weird having a shower in it later – as if I was in someone else’s house, or a hotel. That’s a baaaaad sign of how gross your house has become.

And then I collapsed. And ate a whole bowl of pretzels. Completely off-setting any exercise that was unwittingly carried out during the cleaning blitz.

Go me.

Oh, one last thing – totally unrelated – but I love my son. Yeah, it’s a given, I know, but you know when you get those moments where it takes your breath and you just mumble, “I fucking love you…” ? Had lots of them today. Have lots of them every day, but here are 2 that stood out:

#1 When he woke early from his nap disoriented and in pain (canines damn them to hell) so I brought him downstairs and sat with him in my arms on the sofa and stroked his little palm, making the most of the usual 5 post-sleep minutes I get snuggling before he’s off causing mayhem… 10 minutes later I look down and realise those little fluttering eyelashes have gone still and that little grumpy red-cheeked face is all squidged up and he’s fast asleep. He hasn’t fallen asleep on me for months and months – it’s no longer a done thing for a 1 year old, apparently – too much else to do. So this was quite a priviledge.

#2 The HOUR he spent engrossed in building a duplo tower/temple. A NON-STOP-HOUR. With only minor tantrums when it wouldn’t stick together or he knocked it down accidentally. Then he’d sigh, pick up the pieces and start again. Incredible. An architect in the making, surely. “Moomin, you want some dinner?” I asked, half way through. Normally this stops any activity dead. “Umm, no,” he said. Okaaaaaay. I asked again a little while later. “No,” again. I slid a plate of toast over to him at 5.30, hoping he wasn’t having a Richard Dreyfuss moment in Close Encounters and we would be off to find some duplo mountain where the aliens would land…

“Oooh! Toast!”

Phew.

Misanthropy and fabric

 

Ummmmm. 

Ooops? 

But, but, but – 3 are jersey, which guarantees they’ll get used up in things that will be well-worn. 3 were remnants so I had to get them. And the green print (below) was bought specifically to make a blouse so that is allowed, ok? It’s allowed if you buy it with something in mind. Don’t judge me. 

  

 

This one is so cool – it has a kind of graded pattern going from little polka dots to larger flower print. I’m thinking long tunic top – with sleeves if there’s enough. There was a nasty saleswoman in the shop who told me twelve times to prewash the jersey as if I was a complete remedial and hadn’t been nodding politely each time she said it, then as she rang this one up told me ALL about some woman who had made the most AMAZING top out of this fabric – clearly implying I would not be able to even conceive matching her prowess. It’s the best fabric shop in my town, but they’re veeeeery snobby and if they don’t know you by name then they treat you like an idiot, ho hum, it was worth it. 

Kind of reminded me why I avoid going into town any more (on a Saturday no less). I get pavement-rage. People walk too slowly, they meander all over the place and stop suddenly and inexplicably right in your path, they promenade along without a care in the world when everyone behind them has somewhere to be, or doesn’t really care for waltzing along the street lazily while it’s trying to snow. While we’re about it, why do people look at me funny? You know when you’re walking along and you make eye-contact with someone walking the other way – usually you both drop it and that’s that. Not me, people STARE at me. And I’m no painting, so don’t think of flattering me. I either get a piteous smile or the kind of look you might give a bearded lady in a cage. I’m not sure which is worse. Oh, and an old man WITH A STICK shoulder-bumped me out of his way. After I’d already got out of his way, politely, like the good respect-your-elders-especially-if-they-have-a-stick youth that I am. So he deliberately went out of his way to shunt me, quite hard. He blatantly didn’t need no stick. I should have taken his legs out. 

I’m not entirely sure where all this anger at my fellow man comes from. Maybe I’m not a very nice person. Maybe I was irreversibly damaged by the malicious little fuckheads I went to school with. Maybe I should get out more, mingle with the masses until I feel more like one of them. Or maybe I’m right, and everyone (excluding your good self, dear reader) is just mean or weird or annoying.

Soup for the soul

Mmmm soup.

I made this yesterday and the simplicity of boil, blend, bread made me a bit sad that my cooking has been (oh forgive the pun but it had to be done) put on the back burner recently. I’ve been avoiding the kitchen. It’s cold (did i mention the cold?) and skank (no hot water = lazy Skip who can’t be bothered to boil twelve-gazillion kettles just to wash up) and cold and the fact that it was put in just after our wedding and is still unfinished leads me to believe that we have been procrastinating over its completion for nearly 4 years. Oh. My. Shizzle.

The lovely Beth from the aptly named My Name is Beth has been participating in the 100 days project and has given herself 100 tasks to do to make her life more manageable (when you’re done Beth, can you come and help me please?) such as revamping their house, rescuing languishing plants, selling baby clothes, finding some time to spend sans baby and generally doing all those things that we all walk past and note: “I should really sort that out… hmm I’ll do it soon, yes I will, right after I’ve sat around on my arse and eaten a whole packet of hobnobs and watched House and some other really important things…”. Ahem. Anyway, I’m rather painfully jealous of her accomplishments to be quite honest. And inspired.

Our kitchen was funded by money given to us in place of wedding presents. It replaced the Grey Hole of Death that used to be in that corner of the house. It’s a tiny little 2 metre galley made the best we could make it. We trekked to Ikea and filled not 1, not 2, but 3 trolleys with cupboards, white goods, handles, feet, a colander, a BASTARD tap (more on that later), the kitchen sink (inclusive) and miscellaneous attachments that we are still finding in the back porch and wondering if they are somehow failing to serve some integral purpose that we never found on the instructions.

We were happy to give the fitting job to the dad of one of the kids we look after – a kitchen fitter as it happens – and… a bit too comfortable in our company, therefore decided to get stoned every day while he worked. “I’m a perfectionist,” he claimed. “In what universe would this apply?” I didn’t ask him. But, it got fitted (though without doors on the fridge and freezer as he decided to admit at the end of the job that he’d never fitted an Ikea kitchen before and didn’t know how to do it) and our beautiful, cheaply and locally sourced wooden worktop was in place and lookin’ spanky. His plumber friend ‘installed’ the tap and connected the gas and we were good to go.

Flash forward two months. The counter is covered in water. The cupboard under the sink is full of water and bowing at the sides to the point that it has expanded sideways into the dishwasher and popped the door off. The worktop is cracked, bowed, distorted, blackened and basically fucked. Insurance man says that it must have been slowly and silently dripping out the back without us realising for months (hmm, ever since it was installed perhaps?) before finally blowing completely, and therefore it is not an emergency water claim and therefore they will happily give us the price of the tap as compensation. Gee, thanks guys. The plumber (if he can be called that) said he’d done it properly, that it was the tap that was faulty. His boss then tried to stiff us out twice the amount he’d originally quoted. I spent months on the phone hold to Ikea trying to threaten them with a long and painful death involving a rabid psychopath squirrel file a complaint to no avail.

 We bought a new cupboard and got our *free* tap (woohoo) and sanded the worktop back as best we could. It now looks shite. My tiling is apalling. Our ‘friend’ plasterer left gaping holes above the boiler, around the light fitting and next to the radiator. We put up half the coving and skirting and ran out of money and that is how it has sat ever since. I’m sure I could spend 100 days just trying to fix it. I’m not going to, though.

But we are going to sort it out, slowly, by degrees, as and when we can afford to do the next little part. We WILL. Or I will set the rabid squirrel on us.

Moral of the story?

Don’t ever let your friends work on your house.

Check your tap regularly for leaks.

Make soup – it’s nice.

I have rage… and it feels good

From time to time I am forced to turn to the babysitting services of cBeebies to distract my darling womb-fruit while I go and do something terribly important – like an urgent wee, or attend to a burning meal, or collapse with general exhaustion, or check the BLW forum for a reply to a particularly funny thread…

Now, I’m not a vigilante anti-TV protestor, though OBVIOUSLY programmes were so much better when we were kids – I have fond memories of such gems as Stop It and Tidy Up, Thundercats and Pigeon Street…

(sing it with me: “long distance Claaaaaraaaaaaaa!”)

…but I refuse to have it on all day long, especially when some of the current line up makes me want to pull out my own fingernails and gouge my eyes out with a spoon.

Even the sacred In the Night Garden gets my goat occasionally, with its acid-laced cast of misfits:

Upsy Daisy, the little tart with her inflatable dress and roaming bed-on-wheels (yeahuh, we all know what you’re gonna grow up to be honey), precocious and steeped in stage-school theatricals (please note my hatred for her does NOT stem from the Moomin’s adoration of her and in no way is born from jealousy);

the OCD and sadly submissive caretaker, Makka Pakka;

the flashing trio of Tombliboos (whose mother really needs to sew in some better elastic into their trousers):

 And then there’s the wooden-peg equivalent of the Octomum – the Pontipines - a Jon & Kate Plus 8esque stop-motion, speed-fuelled family of flatulent morris-dancers who are involved in a sinister neighbourly-feud with the strangely similar family that shares their semi.

They all live in a land infested with an insane public transport system (a zeppelin powered by farts and a breakneck bendy bus which threatens to kill its passengers with every trip), some slowly advancing blow-up capital Hs who always seem rather despondent, and a bizarre sentient and mischievous ball which reminds me of the alien from Dark Star.

And like a cop-out Dallas ending, this is all the dreamland of Iggle Piggle - a fleecy blue creature with a bell in his leg and an attachment to a comfort blanket (seen above falling for the beguiling siren-charms of that bitch Upsy Daisy).

He falls asleep in his little boat, out on the deep, dark ocean, and escapes to his trippy imagination, unaware that beneath those ominous waves lurks something with rows of razor teeth and sharp eyes and a hunger for lonely little blue things… or that might just be my invention.

Either way, who is he? Why is he alone? What/who is he running from? Where is he bound? These things would have bothered me as a kid - still do bother me (though I’m not quite sure why I spend so much time worrying about it). But besides all that, for some reason it’s like crack for toddlers; entrancement, a sense of unease and most of all, moreishness.

And that’s the best on offer (unless you want to stray from the gospel and get into the genius of Spongebob and Foster’s… which we quite often do, before the plaintive cry of “Beebies! Beebies! -Mama, I can’t comprehend the satirical humour and off-the-wall hilarity of these awesome shows yet, just change it back for chrissakes!”). I would take ITNG any day over a myriad of others – the stragglers that remain come to a pathetic total of losers.

There’s wannabe popstar vocal coaches turned shop owners Carrie and David and their Popshop, in which they create catchy and inane songs for their customers and writhe like your drunken aunt and uncle on a wedding dance-floor to an audience of shell-shocked kids. (To appreciate fully the horror of this you should probably watch this video behind your fingers and whilst wearing sunglasses.)

 There’s the horrific Me Too with its cast of inept and moronic parents going about their daily work while their ADHD childminder feeds them random lines of oracle advice.

“Come away in my little pudding and Granny Murray will just pop you in the oven til you’re tender….”

 My favourite love to hate is currently I Can Cook, hosted by the insufferable hands-on-hips Katy, who, in her inevitable lonely hearts ad claims she loves to “tickle cheese, snap courgettes and squish blueberries” and whose audition went a bit like this:

Producer: So… Katy. We need you to sing a little round-up song summarising each episode’s recipe – do you think you can do that?

Katy: Why of course, Mr Producer!

Producer: Can you sing?

Katy: Like a frickin’ songbird. I’m GREAT with kids too (read: I look like a chipmunk and giggle inanely a lot).

Producer: The job is YOURS.

And the result:

“Let’s snip the chives, snip, snip, snip, then whisk the egg, whisk, whisk, whisk, then beat my head against the burning hob, smash, smash, smash, until the blood starts flowing, bleed, bleed, bleed…”

(And yes Katy, you know exactly where you can shove that pineapple…)

Red daaaaaaahling?

Darling Petunia has tagged me (nay, challenged me, I feel) to find 7 red things in my house. Thanks lovely. It was harder than I expected!

The Moomin’s mini red guitar given to him by his beloved (if a little debauched) ‘auntie’ Sara.

A little light reading to force me to pull my typing finger out.

I’d just finished sewing on old skool corduroy patches to these favourite trousers of Moomin’s lil’ buddy Fitz, who is crawling his way through all the knees of his trews!

Unstaged – I swear! But an obvious place to store one’s trains doncha think?

The tasty ‘pretend-it’s-caffeine-and-smile-through-the-tiredness’ beverage of choice in this house.

A glowing beacon of hope in the chilly depths of our living room. Though the chubby little fingers probably explain why we keep having to check it’s actually on…

 Once taught Husby to walk, now provides Moomin with some evidently essential transport from one end of the living room to the other – it has various options: use it as a scooter, pile it with plastic food and operate the fastest shopping trolley in town, sit in it and let parents shove you as hard as possible to the other while laughing like a maniac.

Oh, that’s 7 isn’t it? Well have just one more:

The outrageously flaming cheeks of 4 simultaneous canines coming through… And one quizzical Moomin.

Right, 7 tagged bloggers to continue the trail of red:

A Friend to Knit With 

Beauuuuutiful knits, gorgeous pictures, lovely lady.

Elsie Marley 

Excellent creative ideas and amazing-quality execution.

Cluck Cluck Sew 

A quilting queen with awesome designs and use of colour and fabric.

Obsessively Stitching

Ever imagined there were 5 awesome crafts to do with some simple potholders (check out the quiet book!)?? Well there certainly are, as well as I-spy ideas galore and other great stuff besides.

Chez Beeper Bebe

Soooo many great ideas here. The stuffed alphabet and numbered bean bags are waaaaay up on my list.

With the Crickets

Well there’s one gorgeous red thing right there – check out the sweet little red dress she made for Craft Hope for Haiti…

Noodlehead

Awesome blog name and brilliant crafting going on too. Planning on making one of her messenger bag from cargo pants and a zippy wallet soon.

And that’s it. Go reds!

More Warm Things

I’ve been a bit productive on the old wardrobe refashion front… Having been on a non-sew trip for a while, I think, fine, I’ll just channel my creativity in some other way and make a resolution to write every day (30,000 words into a novel which IS going to be finished this year), then promptly do nothing but sew.

Nothing particularly spectacular but satisfying and useful. 1st, from scratch, this cowl neck dress using the free pattern from Burdastyle (thanks Ichigo Girl) which I can’t wait to do again with some print jersey (there were some stripes in the fabric shop that I kept walking past and stroking but couldn’t justify buying without a plan). It’s pretty versatile – it can be a top, a tunic-length top, a dress, you could change the cowl neck to a V-neck or just a round neck, add sleeves… Really happy with it, though it needs a bit of hemming, but let’s face it, that’s never going to happen while there are more interesting projects on the go.

Like this:

A saggy hand-me-down knit dress/top that is soooo soft and warm and lovely but I just can’t stand bat/bingo winged sleeves. Simple inside-out pinning/marking then sewing up your new side seam. My machine complained bitterly about the whole process and I ended up handsewing over most of the seam but hey, it worked, and I will stay away from trying to sew knit until I actually know what I’m doing. So, the after photo:

Ugh, hate having my photo taken – hence the ‘demure’ poses (as Husby calls them), which are really me just trying to turn my face as far away from the camera as possible without becoming an owl.

And for the Moomin……………

I finished the tank top! Finally, and not without its own special type of botch. I’d picked up stitches (for the first time, get me!) and ribbed the neckline and it turned out soooo small he’d never have fitted his brain-filled head through it. Luckily I hadn’t sewn up both shoulders so decided to turn the right one into a fold-over button up fastening. Seems to work, and thank f*** it fits, with room to grow a little even (though not his neck, that must remain as it is or he will throttle himself). He was quite impressed (if you count running off shouting “Bird! Bird!” and flapping as a sure sign he appreciates my art), though tried to take it off and give it back to me saying “Mama, ningning (knitting),” until I explained that it was now HIS.

Well, now we both have something new and warm (yeah, I know, Husby is ignored in all of this but he’s being a right grump so he can just freeze) and it cost me about 50p for the amount of yarn I used, and a coupla quid for the jersey which was in my stash anyway.

Also made it to step 4 of my skirt, and skillfully managed to sew myself 2 right-handed pockets which is the only cock-up so far, so if I get away with that being the worst I’ll be ok… The zip doesn’t frighten me half as much as the 6 buttonholes I know I have to do at some point. Eek.