21st celebrations, including lovely gifts and cards and experiences, plus my mum came down and brought my sewing machine, the first sewing project made in Bath, and my week working on Maternity ward

So, it's official! I'm 21! I had an amazing birthday the other week - my placement were very excited! The mum gave me a huge balloon:

Which is still floating in my room!! Very impressive, definitely earning its moneys-worth! It makes me smile every time I see it, bobbing around.




She also gave me this beautiful card which she made herself:






Isn't that just stunning!! It's such a beautiful card, I can't believe the effort she went to! And she wasn't the only one...









The 4 yr old drew me a card as well! There is nothing I love better than a card which a child makes for me; it shows such care on the part of the child. For them to focus on something like this for such a long time -!





My placement family also gave me this book:

It's full of projects to make, with beautiful photos all through. There are so many things in there which I want to make, and the images are so inspirational. Even the front cover - I love the style! It's a book brought out by a (for want of a better word) store in Bath, which runs courses and classes in sewing and making, called The Makery. It also hosts parties and sells habadashery items. Very cool!

So I was given all of that amazing stuff from my placement family, then we chilled at home in the morning before going off for cake and coffee early afternoon with a friend and their child. The 2 older children were pretty tired from school in the morning, so their emotions were running a little high; but it was a lovely afternoon, with chats and laughs.

My mum came down the weekend before, and stayed a night. It was lovely - we chilled out Saturday evening, and went to Newark Park on Sunday. It's a lovely hunting lodge, not too big for a ramble, but very interesting and really pleasant. She also brought down my sewing machine:















And the bag of sewing machine extras (I made the bag with my sewing machine!!):

 And the gift my sister got for me:






An ice cream maker!! Very exciting! I can't wait to make some ice cream! I've wanted one of these for so, so long, so I can't wait to try out some recipes.





My mum also spoilt me by getting me an extra gift of this adorable fabric:

 Isn't that just ridiculous?! I'm so grateful - she knows what I like!! It's one of those fabrics you just can't leave a shop without buying.




 I got this lovely card from my Friday babysitting family:

 The 3 yr old drew these pictures of himself (left) and his little brother (right) which was just lovely and sweet and oh-so-cute! And they gave me a gift card to buy a book, and some delicious chocolates!





 And my housemates also got me some yummy chocolates, which are mostly stashed at the back of my cupboard in order to savour them(!), and this notebook, which is utterly stunning:







 It has a quote from the bible on the front of it - to be exact, Exodus 33:14. Notebooks come in so useful for studying the bible, so I know I'm going to love writing in this one!

We also went to La Tasca as a house, and had a delicious meal together which was lovely - our first meal out as a house!






And the final thing I want to show you is this:

 yep, I wanted to use my machine, so I threw this quilt together. Oh yes, I did just say 'threw together'. Because I took blocks I already had, joined them together, and quilted and bound it in a day! It nbow sits on my bed, and is super warm and snuggly! the batting in the middle is 50% bamboo, 50% cotton, so it's really soft and warm and delicious! I also ordered some other materials to start another quilt, and I know there are some bits and pieces in my room at my parents' house for quilting too, so it's going to be a busy quilting year I think! I used fabrics I already had for the back:





See how simple I kept it?!








And then a super simple siggy block on the back, too:

Just my name and the year it was made, nice and simple! I love the wavy stitch here - it's really simple as well, but it's very pretty and covers a multitude of sins easily. It also can give the impression of there not being a seam or an edge there, which I love! I've used it before on my mum's machine, when I made the wife's quilt, and when I made my laptop bag. I used bias binding I already had for this quilt, just to keep it quick and simple. I like making my own binding, but pre-made is just as good, and much quicker to sew.

So yeah, the last 2 weeks in pictures! I've spent this past week working on the maternity ward, which has been an incredible, indescribable experience. Lots of baby cuddles have happened, and baby baths and topping and tailing and first nappies and lots and lots of changing beds. It has been a full ward all week and I've loved it! I've had some hilarious conversations with mums about the real nitty gritty details of giving birth - those things you don't usually learn about until you actually have your own baby! One mum said that she didn't know you had to deliver the placenta after the baby; lots of mums said there was no preparation for the amount of pain having a baby came with; many of them described the tenderness and discomfort of the aftermath (the waddling that doesn't stop once you've had a baby!); and many of them talked about how weird it was that that was inside them only a few hours before. Truly a worthwhile experience, and I feel so lucky to have been able to do that. Having said that, I got a sicky bug from one of the mums and ended up missing out on the last day because I was ill. I feel much better already, but I didn't want to risk passing it on to any other mums or their babies, so I stayed off yesterday.

And that's all for now!

Love love xx

Blogger's sulking at me, so no pretty pictures of Gardening or Knitting, Plans this Evening

So I spent ages the other week trying to publish a post about the gardening I got up to with mamma, but for some reason blogger kept refusing to publish the post with its pictures, it kept coming up as an error. so now I've given up, and will simply tell you that the pots mamma and I planted up were very pretty. I think she possibly has a couple of photos on her blog if you want to see - find her at Mammafairy Sews.Whilst I was at the parents', I also made a block for QATWII; I made Anita's neighbourhood block. I was running out of time, though, so I made the basic block with the ideas sketched out that I wanted, put together all that I could and signed it - and mamma finished it off with a few extra details. I asked her to, as I did what I could in the time, but I could tell that it didn't feel finished. Again, I would show you a picture of it, but blogger doesn't seem to want to allow me to upload any photos, so you will have to wait until some unforeseen time when it stops sulking at me!

I have also very almost finished my first baby cardigan! All that's left to do is knit on the button band and attach buttons! I'm pretty chuffed with how it has turned out, and can't wait to start another one!

I'm out this evening, to spend the night with my discipleship group from church. We're having a sleepover at one of our houses, with a film and lots of unhealthy food! Then we'll all go to church together tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to it; it should be a lot of fun. The girl whose house it is is leaving in a couple of months to move to South America for a while: how long, we don't know. But that's where she feels she's meant to be, so that's where she's going. We'll all miss her, but we're celebrating for her!

That's all for now - with a bit of luck, blogger will stop sulking at me and I'll post again soon with some photos for you to see!

Love love xx

Pictures, Bread, Quilt Block, Socks, Nut Butter, Knitting

I didn't realise later would mean the next day. Sorry. Here are pictures, as promised!

Beautiful bread:

 Sorry - I realise now it doesn't look as beautiful as it did before I grated chocolate all over it then tore great hunks of it off to gobble down in satisfaction. But I didn't take any photos before I did that stuff, so you'll have to use your imagination. It looked a little reminiscent of this

 I made a loaf of it the other week with the wife, but we followed the instructions exactly and it turned out like lead. This time I just added an entire sachet of yeast, and I chucked all the ingredients into the breadmaker and got it to do the dough bit. Then I rolled it out and up and so on.







Then my block for the Quilt Around The World II:


It isn't finished yet. I still need to edge all of the appliqué and do some fabric painting fun on it. But they're supposed to be scarlet pimpernel. and yes, I know they aren't scarlet. Neither are the actual flowers, apparently! But they are native to Britain, which is what I wanted.

 This is the first sketch I made, when I was getting a feel for the scarlet pimpernel. I'm not very good at drawing, so sorry about that. But I used this to then trace onto greaseproof and position everything; then onto bondaweb.

and there's a flower up close. I'm going to put a sort of fabric paint wash fade thingy into the centres of the flowers in pink to mimic the actual flower. Then, once I've done that and appliquéd it all, I can send it onto the next person who is, incidentally, my mum. This is why I feel less bad about not getting on with it. I should be doing it right now, but I know my mum knows what I want, so I've been lazy. But I need to finish it and get it up on flickr for the other members to find out what I want - which is a neutral background (any greys, black, white or cream) with a flower that is native to their own country. I don't' care about flower type or colour, or how they put it on the background - appliqué, paper piecing, whatever. Just a native flower on a neutral background, with the flower name and a signature block to go along with it. Now all I need to do is finish it, and work out how to use flickr! Should be easy, right?!

and some beautiful socks:

When I visited my sister ages and ages ago, she set me up with some needles and self-striping yarn and instructions for making socks. I finally finished them! They're blue and stripy and cosy and comfy and warm and I love them oh so very much!

 Especially, can I just say, I love the triangle detail that comes with the joining of the heel flap to the rest of the sock! Not too bad for a first pair of socks, eh?










And one last thing:

 

 Some mixed nut butter. This is roast almond, pecan and walnut butter. I didn't just make that piffling little amount - I made about a jarful. But I promptly used most of it in some no-bake energy bites rather like these. I really like them, as shown by this being the second time I've made them! They taste really good, and I can pretend they're healthy!

I'm going to vanish now and either sew a little on my block or knit some on a baby blanket I'm making for my pregnant friend. Pictures of that will come at some point, but not right now!

Love love xx

Brief update, Manchester, Lent, Church, holiday, half term and work, letter from America, walk

My cat is ill. My grandpa is much better. And my friend is heading down to see her sort-of boyfriend to try and get pregnant again. Umm.

I went to Manchester yesterday with my friend, KT. He's hilarious and we joke a lot. I bought some more writing paper, which is pretty fun and useful since I was running out rapidly; and I bought a couple of bits from lush as well. We had a drink in Starbucks and just generally chatted and walked and window shopped in clothing stores. We stopped in at Primark - a store I have never bought anything from due to cheap material clothes and cheap labour they use - and it was strange to see how uninviting the men's clothing was in general. It was all so dull and muted and miserable looking on the whole. What happened to colour? Why are we suddenly dressing men in grey and brown and mustard - a colour which suits almost nobody, I might add.

But it was really fun in general, and pretty cheap for me as days out go since the only money I had to spend was £4.50 on a return train fare with my railcard. Bargain! Plus, as I walked to and from the station, I felt like I'd done some healthy exercise too. Definitely enough to make up for the toblerone we bought for the train journey home...

I'm giving up tea for Lent. I am an avid drinker of tea. I'm not absolutely sure how many cups I get through in a day, but there is rarely a moment when I am without one in my hand. That adds up to a fair bit of money I think. Not a massive amount, but a reasonable bit. So I thought I could give it up for Lent, and give the money that would usually be spent on cups of tea for 40 days to a charity. I don't know what charity yet; but I feel it makes giving it up actually meaningful, rather than just being something I've given up pointlessly for 40 days. I remember once when we were young we gave up our pocket money for Lent and saved it all up in a tin to give to a charity. I never knew if we actually did give it to a charity, or which charity it went to... This time, I have it planned out.

My mum's kindly offered to go and look at church services with me. I decided I want to go to church on Sundays, but I'm not sure where. So we're going to do the rounds of the local churches and see which one feels right. I'm quite drawn to one at Leigh Sports Village simply because the service is at half 4 in the afternoon, which means there's no danger of sleeping in. I know, I know, religion isn't meant to be about making things easy in this way - but I do think that with the distance it is to get there, it also makes transport easier. We'll see.

The parents are going on holiday this Sunday, leaving me at home alone for a week (yay)! I enjoy pretending to own my own house and live independently, even if it is just for a week.

I'm on half term from work this week, so I've been doing as much as possible already and I'm hoping to continue my week in this vein. Then next week I will be back to work. I still plan to do as much as possible. I saw that there was a mums and tots group on in Leigh on Tuesdays in the morning, so I was considering trying BB at that. It does cost 50p to attend, whereas Story-tots on Wednesdays and Playgroup on Thursdays are both free. But 50p isn't too bad, and I think BB might enjoy it. I'm always looking for something specific to do on each day simply to give something significant to it, and to break the day down into manageable bits. That's especially important now that BB doesn't have a nap anymore, as the afternoon can seem interminably long sometimes. But if we do something through the morning, then by the time we get home it's lunchtime, and then the games at home occupy us easily for a few hours. If we don't go out at all then the games at home have to occupy us for twice as many hours. And I feel trapped in the house - especially in this weather. I think all the groups we go to are good for BB, as when I first started working with her she was sued to having me all to herself and having undivided attention. At the groups she doesn't get that, which she is slowly getting used to. And she gets used to being in the company of other little people the same age as her, which can only be good to my mind.

I got a letter from America yesterday, which was brilliant! It's part of LetterMo, and so I'm going to write back to the lovely person who wrote to me. It was a very interesting letter, touching on sticky discussion topics, like religion and homosexuality, and healthy living. I'm going to enjoy writing back!

I'm going to stop now, as I need to get dressed for the day. I'm going for a walk with KT today. It's been so long since we saw each other - up until yesterday - so we're going to try and do a bit more from now on.

Oh - and my teeth should be finished and in my mouth by 23rd March, fingers crossed!

Love love xx

ill, childminding, childminding, childminding, plans for next week, letters and yoghurts, wifey

I'm sick. Still. Not drastically so, but enough to make me all unhappy about it and say all the time, 'this being ill thing really sucks It's just so frustrating!' Mamma reckons it's glandular fever. I reckon I don't care, I don't want it regardless of its name. Even if it was called Naya Rivera I would not want it. Because it is hurting my feelings, and you shouldn't associate with things that hurt your feelings. having said which, if Naya Rivera turned up on my doorstep, I would not refuse to associate with her. But then I don't think she would hurt me like this stupid illness is.

So yeah. Not done much of anything, still. I've been childminding, obviously. It's been pretty fun. BB is now pretty completely potty trained - yay! She's learnt this funny trick now, where she does a poo, then bends over and touches her toes so that I can wipe her bum clean! It does make me chuckle. On the other hand, since we started the whole potty training ball rolling with a reward jelly tot for every successful trip, she's developed this whiny tone of voice that demands a 'jelly top' after every single potty trip. I'm afraid I'm big and nasty and refuse to give her the reward until she asks politely in a more normal tone of voice. She's 2, she's not going to tell me what to do in that way!

We've just wiped out her nap completely, too. She decided she no longer wanted it over Christmas, and refused to go for her parents. But she was going for half an hour with me. But since it's making her faff about both when going to bed and when getting up in the morning, we just agreed we'd scratch it and see how she did. She seems okay - she crashes a little come the afternoon, but doesn't get her family up at 5.30 in the mornings now, so all in all a pretty good job! B is much the same as usual - school, homework (way too much for a 5 year old as far as I'm concerned!!) and we've been enjoying reading some books together.

We all jumped in muddy puddles the other day. It had been raining during the day, but the sun had come out and it was pretty warm. We all had wellies on and waterproofs, and there were some deep puddles just outside the house. Sure, the waterproofs needed a sponge off afterwards, sure the 5 year old slipped and got coated in mud and needed the fastest bath known to man, sure her clothes all went straight in the wash. But the two of them got to run around in winter, jumping around, laughing and playing together, and we all enjoyed it. So worth it!

Aside from all this I haven't done anything else much. Next Wednesday I'm meant to be going out for a ballroom dancing class with a friend, which should be hilarious fun! And on Thursday I'm going to see the ballet of Beauty and the Beast with mamma at the Lowry. I'm very much looking forward to it - it's been a while since I saw a ballet, and I do enjoy them!

I've also written a few letters to people, so I'm going to go now and post those. It's a good way to get me out of the house! I might take a walk to the texaco at the same time and pick up some yoghurts, too. I've been craving them for ages and we haven't bought any!

Love love xx

Ps. Still missing the wife terribly. It sucks that she chose to go to a uni so far away.

Books, Peak District, knobs, necklace, patchwork, wife, Trafford, childminding, NaNoWriMo, plans

Goodness, how time passes by. Before you know it, you've missed posting for ages again! Life has been quite busy, though. So! Last time I posted it was just after my birthday, wasn't it? And I'd just got back from visiting the wife.

Well, all the books I received for my birthday I have now read and enjoyed very much. I found it curious that I hated Animal farm when I read it, yet 1984 I felt was far more interesting. Both by George Orwell, but both very different qualities of story to me. I felt like nothing ever really happened in Animal Farm, whereas 1984 was busy and constantly fascinating to me. Fire was a good, easy read, as was Graceling which I read a long time ago by the same author. I also read Stephen Fry's chronicles, which I enjoyed immensely. His reading is difficult to read without concentrating, but really amusing and quirky. I've also reread The Shack recently, which is always a fresh read. I always come away with it feeling strong and positive and understanding myself better for having read it.

So - the weekend after I was away with the wife I went up to the Peak District with my mum and a couple of her friends from school. One of these friends has a daughter who's just a few years younger than me, and she is an awesome person! She's really clever and funny and good, and I love her company! So we stayed in the Peak district and visited Chatsworth House, where I found some amusing little novelty gifts for H, such as a campervan recipe book (!) and a book based on the telly programme Meerkat manor. I also found a coaster which made me laugh so much I just had to give it to her; and she knew why as soon as she saw it. It was a picture of some hills and there were a few sheep across the front - three pairs of sheep, in fact. And it said underneath 'double ewe double ewe double ewe'. I get that on its own that's just a bit of a corny joke and not that clever. But, having watched Gavin and Stacey about six months ago which the wife lent to me, all i could think when I heard that was of Uncle Bryn saying, 'And the best thing to do is to think of something to help remind you, like with me now, I think of "whiskey with water" which was my brother, God rest his soul, my brother's favourite drink.' And of course, since the wife has seen this too - and with it being a regular quote between the group - she got it straight away!

So I got her those little bits and I got for myself  a slightly ridiculous something:

Door knobs. Or knobs for something like that, anyway. Yes, go on, laugh like a little child, I still do in my head everything I hear the word 'knob'. Aren't they adorable, though, with their tiny buttons all over? They are really buttons, too, they're not painted on. I know I don't have a use for them just now, but I got a pair of each and I'm sure that at some point in the future I will find myself wanting super awesome handles, either for a door or a drawer or a something. And then I will be glad to have them. For now I'm keeping them in a drawer, waiting for their useful time to come But I knew I'd regret it if I didn't buy them. So I bought them!

I also bought a swirly necklace which is very pretty:

And we bought a bakewell pudding, which was very underwhelming.

It was a lovely weekend - the cottage we stayed in was delightful, but freezing and a little small. There was nowhere I could go and get some privacy really, and I value my time to myself a lot. But I did enjoy it despite that, and we arranged to have the other girl, I, come up to us and spend a week, which she did last week.

So yeah, I was up last week, and she made lots of patchwork squares for a quilt for her bed. They were really pretty! She did applique squares rather than piecing, and she did some with just a big flower in the middle in white on a pattern background, and she did some which were four hearts coming out from the middle in patterned fabric on a white background. We also baked Viennese fingers, which were nice, and pecan cookies which are to die for and do not last at all. I've made them twice since she left and eaten them all in a few days! We were going to go to Manchester for a day when we needed to get her brother's cricket stuff to him at the station anyway, but then he was so late that there was no time for us to go to Manchester. But otherwise it was lovely.

And the same time that I left, the wife came down for a brief visit. At some point over the week I had managed to get it into my head that I'd bummed her off somehow and she was in a mood with me. I don't know why I thought that, but I was absolutely convinced. And so when she invited everyone round on the Sunday, I didn't know whether to go or not because I didn't want to annoy her any more than I thought I already had. But it was all alright in the end, because at some point I managed to realise that she wasn't in a mood with me and that i was just a little bit crazy is all. And so I rang her and told her all about it and she just said that she wasn't in a mood with me and that her only problem was that she didn't know how to make things better so that I wouldn't convince myself of things like that randomly and without warning. But we went to the Trafford centre on the Monday, so it was okay really.

yeah, so we went to the Trafford centre on that Monday as part of a plot to cross a couple of things off the list - if you look at the list you will see that things have been crossed off! So we went to the Arcade in the Trafford Centre (who knew they had one of those!!) and we played on the Dance Mat and she beat me. In my defence, it was my first time, and there was a tiny baby that I could see a little way from my screen that was totally distracting! And then we went and played air hockey, and she won, but only just. it was on a drawer and she got the deciding point, is all. don't let her tell you differently. Another round and I would have beaten her! And then we did bowling, which I already knew I was atrocious at because, well, I am. And I kept insisting to her that I was really bad and that it wasn't the best idea, and then on my first round I got a strike! I think she was convinced after the next two rounds when I missed all of them! She was actually alright, she got quite a few spares and a couple of strikes too. In the end, my score was 69, at which she said I had clearly been aiming for that score because it was the rudest number I knew and typical of me! And then we did lots of window shopping and had a cuppa and came home. We did get a lot of funny looks because we were holding hands as we walked round, and she said that she'd seen a couple of people who looked like they were trying to work if we were lesbians. Meh. It didn't really bother me. As far as I'm concerned it's just like holding my mum's hand. But H is my wife I guess, so...!

So yeah! This week I started my childminding job, which is serious fun! I can't believe I'm being paid to do it! It's a lovely job to have, it really is. I've had a few issues getting there in the morning, but that seems to be working itself out now, so no worries! And aside from that, I have no more news - I'm done!

Oh wait, no I'm not. I'm also doing NaNoWriMo this year, and so far it's going awesomely. It's very easy to write, I think because I'm using a lot of what I know already and my own experience to write it, and I usually find that easier.

So today I'm going to write a letter in response to my sister, post that and the letter to my brother, and get my word count for today. i try to do 2000 words a day, to help ensure that I'll hit my target and to tide me over if I don't manage to do any on the days when I child mind. They are long days, after all, and I'm usually in bed very early on them! I've just received a package from Joe Browns, so I'm going to go for now and open that parcel!

Love love xx

Quilt, childminding, rant

So I promised I would go into a few more details on making that awesome mammoth quilt for H, and I will, right now!


So it was born from my determination to create something for the wife to take to uni that involved lots of photos of some of the loveliest times we'd spent together. This felt particularly important to me, because she often creates beautiful memory books or collages of photos for people which have huge sentimental value, and I felt it was about time she had one. Also, I wanted to give her a present that really meant something. I already had the few little bits for her - clear nail polish; a book containing the word 'akimbo'; a tin full of carrot cupcakes (the recipe for which will be posted on here at some point); and some new socks. But all these bits, whilst having meaning, weren't really a big deal. And I wanted something lasting that she could keep with photos of us from some of the happiest moments. I'm such a sentimental flannel, aren't I? I wanted it to be different to the things she always did for people, though, because it wasn't about just copying her thoughtfulness, it was about showing her how much I cared. And, since I had such a big pile of sewing to do yet, it made sense to plonk a huge project at the top of the pile and give myself just four weeks in which to do it!

At first I thought I would have to order fabric printed with the pictures on it, since I had tried printing onto fabric and found that whilst it worked fine, it washed straight out. But when I looked at the cost of ordering the fabric to be done for me, it was ridiculous. To get different photos it looked like it was going to cost me 40p per cm, and I wanted pictures of different sizes, some as big as 6 inches square.

One of the 6 inch squares

Then I found this product that lot of blogs seemed to refer to when printing pictures onto fabric at home, Bubble Jet Set. So I order some and gave it a go, following the instructions on the bottle and advice from various blogs and websites that had experimented with it. It basically involved soaking your fabric in the Bubble Jet Set, allowing it to dry and then ironing it onto freezer paper and feeding it through a inkjet printer. Once you'd done that it needed hand washing to set the inks completely, and you had your pictures. I was actually really impressed with how it came out; it was just like fabric to the touch, soft, pliable, and the pictures looked really good, especially for something done at home.

I experimented with colours in the pictures to make sure they looked their best once they went onto fabric. This involved doing sheets with tiny versions of the pictures on to ensure they would look their best when I printed them in full size. I'd already done all of my setting squares and made the rest of the squares as far as I could without the pictures, which was just as well, because the process of getting the pictures onto fabric took quite a while. I did a few at a time to get it done faster, but it was the most time consuming part of it. I was very aware that I had a deadline, although i finished it about 10 days in advance of the deadline, which was brilliant.

I tried to vary the sizes of the photos and the way they looked to keep it interesting!

 I made the back from 3 colours: the brown of the setting squares, the cream for the background, and one of the teal shades. I then used teal thread and created a label for the back at my mum's suggestion. It simply said whom it was for and the date that it was made.I think it worked out pretty well, even if it was a little wonky in places!

  I then quilted it all together, and created a binding for the edge from some of the fabrics I'd used in the main part of the quilt, randomly mixed up. I did a decorative wave to sew the binding into place, because it's a safer option than trying to do invisible stitching with a machine. I chose the wave because I'd already used it in quilting on the border of the quilt, as well as some little hearts down the sides. And with that, it was done!

It meant a lot to me to do it myself for her, and put the work in. my mum kindly offered to help out, because it was a lot to do in four weeks, and we were both aware that I hadn't made any quilts before at all (!) but I told her that I wanted to do as much of it myself as possible. It was my work that had to go into, my love. And I achieved what I wanted to: I made a quilt that I felt was incredibly meaningful, at least to me, and every stitch that went into it was done by me, every part of it was done by me, right down to sandwiching the layers together and the ironing of every seam, even all the hand washing of the photo fabric! It truly was a labour of love.

The colour of the water after every hand wash

So that is the epic saga secret of my first quilt!

Other news I have is of the childminding I did. I enjoyed it immensely, and I managed fine the second week on my own, although i missed H a bit during nap time, when in the first week we had joked around and read aloud from books and just generally frolicked in our usual way. But the lovely couple I was childminding for really surprised me. I was aware that I was childminding for them because they had recently got a new childminder but she was on holiday almost straight away, which was when I was filling in. but the lovely couple said that the children had been so happy with me looking after them, and that the couple had been so pleased with the arrangement that they would like me to continue childminding for them for the rest of the academic year!! How about that! I naturally said 'YES!!!' and so they have just given the new childminder four week's notice, which means that in four weeks I start a new wonderful job looking after two beautiful children!! I can't wait, although it probably means that I'll have to leave my current job at Currys. But I don't mind, because the childminding will be more enjoyable, more fulfilling, and more valuable to me come next September! So yeah! Though I never expected it, I'm absolutely overjoyed at how that's panning out so far!

My last point today is a bit of a rant. I was out shopping with my dad this evening, just for groceries, you know, and he loaded the shopping into the car and I took the trolley back. The trolley bank was a bit messy, with trolleys not slotted into each other and taking up a lot of space, so I naturally sorted them and tidied them and slotted our trolley in and left it looking neat. About ten seconds after I'd done so, we were pulling out of our spot and a lady nearby took her trolley to the bank, seemed to be pushing it neatly into place, then left it unpushed in. What on earth!! She made it messy again all for the sake of saving two steps forward!! I do not understand! I had literally just tidied it up, it would have been no extra effort to put her trolley in neatly, but no, she was too lazy to take the two steps it would have taken to put her trolley in neatly! How rude! If there's one thing I cannot stand it's people who do not put their trolleys back where they belong neatly. It is unbelievably rude to just abandon your trolley, be that right where you parked int he middle of the car park, or at an angle in the trolley bank. It just shows laziness and ignorance and a lack of courtesy for anyone else. It's actually selfish in my mind. I had just made the effort, right in front of her, to sort the trolleys out and line them up again, and she had just made my work completely pointless. An adult woman, mark you, because adults are generally the ones doing the shopping that requires a trolley. How can they expect children to have good behaviour when they don't themselves? And how dare they complain about young people's behaviour when their own is so bad! It actually makes me really angry, because it is plain and simple rude. And because it's a rudeness and a laziness over something tiny! It takes almost no extra effort to do the right thing in this, and yet people still don't. It just really irks me is all!

That's all for tonight!

Love love xx

Busy, cardigan, ice cream, fancy dress, games, tribe, cloth pads, camping, mum

Busy busy busy since the last time we spoke, I think...! Let me see if I can't piece together the past few days in a way that makes sense...

Okay, so I have some photos for sharing from the recent projects I blogged about last. These include:

A lovely picture of my cardigan:

See how nicely it's gone together! I know there are still loose ends to be sorted and I haven't quite finished as I need to find the perfect buttons for it; but I've tried it on, and I feel amazing in it! The colour is wonderful, i think photos really don't do it justice. And with finishing I've found that I have quite a lot of yarn left over to play with and find something else to make. This does excite me.


I also have pictures of the two ice creams:

The strawberry buttermilk...

...And the vegan strawberry.

I think that they would be better if I had made them in an ice cream maker, which I don't have. Having said which, they've turned out fine, but a little hard. They taste brilliant. the vegan ice cream somehow tastes more like a sorbet, which is refreshing and lovely; and the strawberry buttermilk is really creamy ice cream. On the whole I would consider them to be a success, but in future I would go round to my grandparents and bribe a use of their ice cream maker from them.

So those are the crafty bits I've done. Since then I went to a fancy dress party, which was great fun! I might actually have a photo of that too... let me look...

Yep! My mum took one when we finished the costume:



The last touch to this was the painting of two rouged circles on the apples of my cheeks for a real fairytale look. It was a brilliant night, great company and some very funny games. We played flour mountain, a classic laugh; pass-the-parcel, which was oh so grownup; and a new game to me, of which I don't actually know the name. I'm gonna call it apples and satsumas. Basically, you took a pair of nylon tights and you shoved a satsuma into each toe. Then you tied the tights round your waist so the satsumas hung down in front of you, prompting many jokes about how low people's satsumas swung. Everyone lines up and puts an apple on the floor, then it's a race to see who can get their apple to the finish line first simply by whacking it with the satsumas. It's hilarious but soo difficult!

So that was a lovely night, and I slept at H's house afterwards to save confusion with the taxi and... well, just 'cause I wanted to, and that way we would be able to watch the next two episodes of Tribe, which I happened to know were major in terms of plottage!! The looks on her face were priceless, the shock and excitement crossing it were well worth the money spent on the box set.

Afterwards, I went home and finished the cloth pads completely. So now I have a pile of them just waiting to be given to new homes! Very exciting! I experimented a little with these ones; my mum's new sewing machine has lots of pretty embroidery stitches, so I added a line of one of those to each side of the flaps. It will require fine tuning in the future, but I'm very happy with the dainty little bit of pretty.

Having finished the cloth pads, I packed my bags for the following day. this pretty much leads into the camping... experience. But it's a long, long story, and deserves its own blog entry, which it will get most likely tomorrow. For now, let it suffice to say that it was not the biggest success with me. It has left me exhausted and in a bit of a low place right now. But I was just looking through the camera, and I found a beautiful picture I'd taken of my mum, so I'm going to put it up here as a lovely finish:

Isn't she gorgeous?!

So I'm gonna leave you now. this has been mainly about catching up on photos and B's eighteenth. Tomorrow you will see the account of camping. Be warned!

Love love xx