An age old tag, fulfilled...

Two posts in one day. I know, it's madness. Well, I was reading my lovely friend Skip's blog earlier, and I clicked on the label "happiness", as you do, and found this post. Seems I was tagged, and quite some time ago, and I never even knew it.

Here’s what to do:

1. Open the first (oldest) photo folder on your computer

2. Scroll to the 10th photo

3. Post the photo and the story behind it

4. Tag 5 or more people to continue the thread

I wasn't going to do anything about it, thinking it's a bit like realising you never paid your library fines, and that it's a bit late now, so the best thing to do is simply never to go back to the library again, but then I opened iPhoto, and I found the 10th photo in the first folder, and I thought again:

It's not one of the ten oldest photos on my computer, so I don't know how it snuck into that spot, somehow hoodwinking my computer and its grasp of chronology, but I'm kind of glad that it did. This is my Dad, and the picture was taken a couple of years ago, when Ruby was about five months old, on holiday in Cyprus.

I keep writing and rewriting this, going into the backstory and and the now-story, but all I really want to say is that I love my Dad more than I can say. He is the most generous, loving, brave and inspiring man I have ever met, even if he does hide it pretty well sometimes behind the fact that he's from Yorkshire.

This picture sums him up for me. It is how I think of him. He's the best dad I could ever have hoped for, and I wouldn't trade him for the world. I wouldn't even swap him for Bill Nighy.

Coincidentally, that was also the week my little baby girl first stood up, sat up, crawled, and grew her first two teeth. Busy holiday for her, that was.

Don't feel in any way obligated to take up my out of date tagging, but here are my five taggees:

1. Pixie at I'll be Francoise

2. Robyn at Rose Lullaby Dolls

3. JK at West of the Pennines

4. David at Things I Don't Understand

5. Kat at Slugs on the Refrigerator

So, take it or leave it my lovelies, but I found something rather special doing this, so it might just be worth a shot. A big belated thank you to lovely Skip for that little nugget of love.

The Great Unveiling of the Grand Transformation

I have been threatening to do this for such a long time, and procrastinating so effectively, that I had honestly almost given up on it myself. I made flags for bunting, oh, three hundred years ago, and never sewed them together. I made a roman blind in the similarly distant past, and never hung it. But finally, with (almost) all the bits and pieces in situ, the Great Unveiling of the Grand Transformation can, at long last, take place.

Here, good people, is your before shot:

Not so awful, but just too girly for me, and it all just felt old and cluttered. It felt very much like a baby's bedroom, and my baby is very much a Big Girl now.

So, goodbye to over-saturation of pink and hello to clean lines and bright colours.

Goodbye to chaos and clutter, and hello to a well-stocked bookshelf and a sense of space.

Goodbye to poorly fitting blackout blinds and feeling like a long, narrow railway carriage, and hello to daylight in the day time, darkness in the night time, and a whole lot of feng shui.

The only thing missing is a shade for the ceiling light, which I am going to make out of the same fabric as the bedclothes when I next venture near an Ikea.

We're both pretty pleased with it. Here's to many happy nights' sleep.

Oh, and I'm going to tidy up the old bunting (which is not really 'old', just needs repressing and possibly topstitching because I was too lazy to do it the first time round!) and give it away on the blog, so watch this space.

Time travel, courtesy of some strawberries

I went back in time today. Approximately twenty years back as it happens, transported there by row upon row of warm, dusty red berries, nesting in straw. Who would have thought that a pick-your-own garden centre could have such a visceral effect, but there I was again, not much bigger than Ruby, with strawberry juice dripping down my chin and the sun on my back. I couldn't stop picking them.

And the peas, my other favourite things. Just to push me a little further down memory lane, Ruby and I spent a happy half hour shelling them into a sieve, eating half of them raw along the way. From field to plate in under an hour. Beat that, Captain Birdseye. It doesn't get much better.

In other news, the makeup bags have been at it again, breeding like rabbits. Honestly, they wouldn't be out of place on the Jeremy Kyle show.

Le Quilt (aka. The Father's Day Project of Epic Proportions)

So, said the cat in the hat. So, so, so...

As promised, here are some pictures (as modeled by the small girl, who can never resist a camera lens anywhere in the vicinity) of the quilt I made for my beloved Baba for father's day, the secret project that has taken up so much of my time lately. You see, I wasn't making it up, I really was busy.

I made it using the Folk Dance Quilt pattern by Anna Maria Horner, and I love the geometric-ness of it. As a virgin quilter, it was a daunting project, but manageable. Very much a case of one step at a time.

It was machine stitched, hand quilted, and is made from 100% natural fibres. The middle of the quilt sandwich (anyone who knows the proper term for this, do please let me know - I have no knowledge in this area whatsoever) is a lightweight bamboo batting, machine washable, tumble-dryable, and perfect for snuggling up on mild summer evenings.

And so, 234 pieces, 13 yards of fabric, 60 hours of sewing, and thousands upon thousands of loving stitches later - the result is one very heartfelt gift, for one very special man.

And this is the man himself. Happy father's day, Baba. I love you xx

In the immortal words of Take That... (Or: Anyone can learn to sew)

... "We've come so far."

Every time Ruby stays over at my parents' she comes back with something or other that she has begged, borrowed or stolen. Last week she came back with a little pink dress she had found hanging on a forgotten hook somewhere, the first thing I ever sewed for her.

It wasn't that long ago, maybe two years, but I'd kind of forgotten about it. I'd forgotten that when I started out I really didn't know how to sew. I just knew that I wanted to. Obviously the girl has grown in the interim so you'll have to forgive the fact that she looks like an extra from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but whatever allowances you make for that you will surely wince, nonetheless, to see the flaws in the shaping, the way the upper bodice gapes while the lower bodice barely makes it across her belly...

... the, um, generous armscye and the poorly finished seams.

The wonky stitching...

... the seams that didn't quite stand the test of time ...

... and the raw edges ...

... raw edges everywhere you look.

It made me really happy to see how for I've come in what seems now to be quite a short time. I've learned everything I know from sewing blogs, tutorials and books, from my marvelous mum, and from good old-fashioned trial and error. When I started I couldn't sew a buttonhole; I didn't know how to set in a sleeve. I had never sewn elastic, never used bias binding, never sewn a rolled hem or a french seam. Back then I didn't know what a placket was, let alone how to sew one. If something got ripped, or stained, or outgrown, it went to the charity shop, or in the bin. Now when Ruby outgrows a dress, I make it into a skirt. When my jeans don't fit properly, I alter them. I couldn't find a dress I liked enough to wear to my friends' wedding next weekend, so I am going to make one instead.

Two years ago I was no better at sewing than when I walked out of my last needlework class aged eleven. Now I feel as though I've always sewn. There is so much that I still want to learn, I'm standing right at the foot of the mountain, but it's not intimidating any more. I don't look at something I want to make and decide against it because I don't know how to sew in the zip, or what to do with the interfacing, or because I don't like the sleeves quite like that. Not any more. Now I look at something and work out how achieve what I want to achieve. I know that few things are as hard as they look.

So, that was the first dress I made for Ruby, which was only ever worn once or twice, which never really survived the wash, but which, like everything else I make her, was stitched so lovingly, with so much care. It was my prototype.

My other prototype turned three yesterday, but this one can't be improved upon. She's perfect just the way she is.

Insomnia-induced creativity

If jet lag is the mother of industry, then insomnia must, at the very least, be a distant cousin of productivity. I have forgotten how to sleep. My body seems to have forgotten it needs sleep. Actually, that's not strictly true. When I do sleep, I sleep really deeply and really well, but I am down to about five or six hours a night – four and a half last night – and I am a big fan of sleeping. I love to sleep. Until I had the small one, I was a nine or ten hours a night girl.

So, while I am not necessarily thrilled about this state of affairs, it is true that fewer sleeping hours mean I have inadvertently got my wish for more hours in a day – more waking hours at least – and I have been making and doing and fixing and... did I mention making?

I have very nearly gotten my act together and finished Ruby's room. I have finally screwed the dimmer switch, which I wired in over a year ago, to its back box. I have put up the roman blind I made for Ruby's room, with my very own drill. Yes, all right, it's pink, but it's still a power tool, okay? I am woman, hear me drill things! Rah.

I have bought and bravely ridden a bike, with my precious spawn on the back, on actual roads. This clearly was not done at night, so doesn't strictly qualify to be included here, but it is kind of a big deal for me, seeing as how I haven't ridden a bike in well over a decade. It was the shame and lasting trauma of failing my cycling proficiency that did it, you see.... So I am somewhat proud of my newfound roadworthiness, and thought I'd just squeeze it in there.

Sewing-wise, I have done loads (and thrown away a fair proportion of it on account of it being embarrassingly badly sewn tat, which perhaps goes to show that insomnia is not all good – but let's not dwell on that). Success stories include a shirt-to-dress refashion using this tutorial (I'll stick a piccie up when the girl is not asleep in such close proximity to said dress), a few nighties, since the girl, for no obvious reason, has renounced pyjamas, and a nice little bunch of summer dresses and tops, all from half yards I have been collecting.

This is my pick of the bunch:

A sweet little smock top made using Anna Maria Horner flannel;

A stripy pinafore dress....

.... with a cute appliqué on the back (which, because I quite like how the heart-on-the-bum-look turned out, we are going to pretend was not accidental);

And Ruby's election night dress, a lovely soft peasanty tunic, based on this tutorial, completed at about three o'clock in the morning when the reds and the blues were neck and neck, and I gave in and went to bed.

There's also a really awesome skirt, which happens to be in the wash, but you get the point. I think I have made more in the last week than I have in the last month put together. I have also learnt that lining and reinforcing things, while taking a little more time, makes oh-so-much of a difference to the end result. So, in conclusion, as much as I am wary as to what the long term consequences of sleep deprivation may be, as long as I can keep up this kind of productivity I am not going to complain. For now at least.

Children's Museum of the Arts NYC

The CMA is one of our absolute favourite places in the city.

It's a non-profit organisation whose mission is "to extend the benefits of the arts to all children and their communities and to secure the future of the arts by inspiring and championing the next generation of artists and art lovers."

Ruby simply knows it as "The Art Place."

She begs to go there nearly every day, which pretty much sums up how brilliant it is.

Check out the website, and if you ever get the chance, don't pass up the opportunity to visit.

Happy little Wild Thing.

Happy Mother's Day

It's funny being abroad for Mother's Day. I spoke to my mum on skype last night, and she emailed this morning to say that the present I sent her had arrived. I got flowers from Ruby via my parents in the UK and the marvels of the internet, which is pretty cool. On the whole though, it has to be said that without a father around to implement it (and with the rest of your family in different time zones), Mother's Day may as well be any other Sunday until your offspring are at least approaching double figures.

Between the rain and the stinking cold that we are both incubating (I smugly thought I had escaped the evils of this particular one that Ruby has been carrying snottily around all week, but, alas, how the mighty have fallen) we never even made it outdoors. There were tears and tantrums, not just hers. We did get our acts together in the end though, and did some rainy day crafty things, turning a cereal box into a television with the aid of sugar paper, sequins, feathers and lolly sticks. So that's something.

Oh, and the $5 flowers I got from Trader Joe's last week have rather surpassed themselves. Not just the hyacinth-and-narcissus combo I had initially suspected. Between those and the lovely pink roses from my parents, I'm not doing too badly for flora.

Playing the Glad Game

This week (well, the last seven days, since this week is only two days old) has been trying. Ruby's selective deafness has increased, her apparent need/desire for sleep has decreased. The sleep deprivation has had a negative effect on my tolerance levels for the selective deafness, and that combined with a notable lack of interaction with adult humans has left me feeling a more than a little irritable.

In light of these circumstances I have decided to be Pollyanna this evening and play the Glad Game, so, rather than dwelling on the things that are not so great, these are the things that I am glad about....

I am glad that spring is here.

I am glad that it's warm enough for Ruby to

play outside with bare legs.

I am glad for paper and paint and blu tack and a great

big wall of the small girl's art.

I am glad for good food (and a little proud of the fact that I have survived for five months with no bigger pans than this one).

I am glad for the small girl who can always make me smile

even when I am decidedly annoyed with her.

I am glad for the strange wall of brightly coloured religious art of

which I have finally become quite fond.

I am glad that the aforementioned small girl is finally, angelically asleep.

I am glad for wine and chocolate.

And I do feel better after that. Maybe Pollyanna was onto something.