Two Owls Design

Stocking Up

Things are pretty busy at the moment preparing for the upcoming Christmas fayres but that's only a contributing factor to the lack of recent blog posts. I haven't been willfully neglecting the blog, it's just that the weather has been so bad lately it's been too dark and gloomy to photograph anything and who wants all text and no photos?  Words without pictures, it'll never catch on.

In preparation for the fayres, over the last month I've been working to a project/product per week. Week 1 was tea cosies.
 
Week 2 was Christmas bunting.

    
Week 3 was tree decorations. 
Next week is cushions and any re-stocking after the Mencap Christmas Fayre this Saturday. My Mum is doing the stand with me and will be selling her handmade cards and cakes. We did it last year and it got us into a lovely festive mood ready for the start of December.

Hat

After my Mum knitted the tank top on my 'to knit' list I decided to have a go at the other item, mainly because it looked like a good gift for my little sis. The pattern was also featured in Prima, it's a really good source of free knitting patterns, all available online to download. Having only done a little bit of cabling before when it came down to it, it was nightmarish and much unravelling and counting of stitches took place but it did get finished last week (a better knitter shouldn't have too many problems with it though). Once finished and tried on, possibly influenced by how much concentration and effort it took, I loved it and decided not to part with it. There are plenty in the shops after all that I could get for my sister.

It's not easy taking a picture of yourself...
...and unfortunately on this the best shot I appear to have problematic nasal hair.

That's the last of the knitting for a while though - and anything else other than sewing, as I had confirmation a couple of days ago for stall at the Stockton Heath Winter Market and so excitedly trying to make enough stock now in preparation.

It was all going so well...

You know those days that occur once in a blue moon, when everything just happens to go your way and whatever you touch seems to turn to gold? Well I thought that last Saturday was one of those for me. The last two weekends have seen trips to Longsight market in Manchester after a hot tip that it was a great place to buy fabric - all at bargain prices. The first week was ok, I picked up a couple of striped fabrics but last Saturday my bargain-loving-heart skipped a beat to see some roll-end Cath Kidston prints being laid out on a stall.
That's what dreams are made of for me, not bags and shoes...well not quite as much anyway.

Then in the evening Mike and I were off to see Morrissey in Liverpool (you may already know where this is heading). It was the first concert that we've been to together since before Aidan was born - the last incidently, being Morrissey too. It was all going swimmingly, our seats were dreadful (at risk of altitude sickness) but on showing the attendant our tickets she asked would we like to swap them for some better seats as she had some returns on her. Too right, this was one of the best days ever. Sadly from there it was all downhill though, as widely reported mid-way through the second song somebody launched a bottle hitting Morrissey square on the head and he left the stage. For ten minutes or so, as security were trying to wheedle the culprit out of the crowd with little success, people were left speculating about what would happen, but the announcement that it was all over was met more with disappointment than disbelief. Morrissey has come in for a bit of stick for walking off, accused of being too touchy and that a few missiles from the crowd goes with the territory etc., but why should he put up with it? He'd collapsed on stage only a couple of weeks previously and it's not as though he's a punk act gobbing on the crowd, the man was in dry-clean only. So we are left with the prospect of a rescheduled gig/refund and lingering sense of annoyance at an anonymous bottle tosser.

Knitted by Nanas

My Mum was away on holiday last week and happened to mention beforehand that she wanted a knitting project to tackle whilst away but hadn't seen anything that she wanted to make. It just so happened that I'd seen a pattern a couple of months back in Prima magazine for a tank top for Aidan that I'd been planning to make myself but hadn't got round to. This is truly how it happened and no strong-arm tactics were employed to get my Mum to knit-to-order for me whilst on holiday, honest. It just happened to be a mutually beneficial situation for all concerned. So I went to the local wool shop with the lovely lady that doesn't mind a rowdy 2-year-old running round pulling yarn from shelves shouting 'I got a yellow one' etc. and dropped it off with my Mum. One week later...

The wool that the pattern specifies was a touch too pricey for me and would have cost just short of £25 to follow the pattern exactly, so some more credit crunch friendly yarn was selected instead - Sirdar Click double knitting with wool. Ta Mum, it's fab.

Last week

This past week has been sewing light and potty training heavy. Timing-wise, with no tots groups on due to half-term and my mum and dad away, it seemed like the right time to give ditching the nappies a go. So sticker reward charts were made (tremendously effective when combined with a 5 stickers in a day = treat size bag of choc buttons, incentive scheme), underpants and extra pairs of trousers purchased. I don't know who it was that told me that the first two days would be an endurance test then suddenly, for no discernable reason, the penny would drop on day 3 and it would become plain sailing (ish), but they were right (thank goodness). Without going into too much detail (omitting the truly yucky bits) the highlights/lowlights have involved christening a local supermarket car park as we were parked too far from the store loos and frequent reminders that 'next time you need to try and remember to take your underpants down before using the potty'. Aidan may not thank me for these disclosures in years to come but he's done really well and it's a relief now to have it over and not be shelling out for nappies any more. So it's Thomas underpants in and nappies out now (apart from at night). The last remnant of babyhood is almost gone.

Friday was our 10th wedding anniversary, the tin anniversary. Baked beans in return for a decade hardly seems right. A couple of Christmas tree decoration ideas for the fast approaching Christmas Fayre at the end of this month.

And finally... Inspired by L and M, we made Krispie cakes yesterday and I just really like this picture. It was an intense process for Aidan, spoon in; bowl, cake case, mouth, bowl, mouth, bowl, cake case, bowl, mouth, repeat until no mixture remains. Cake recipients were warned beforehand of the levels of hygiene reached during production.

Cakes and Cosies

Two more tea cosy designs are now done and ready to become Christmas gifts or to go on the Christmas Fayre stall. The owl was a bit of an ordeal to make and so the design will have to be tweaked/simplified for next time.
 
 
Friday became a 'make and do' session for Aidan as he donned his new 'honey' (for some reason he just can't remember the word pinny) and we managed to get the chocolate pistachio brownies made.
 Fortunately we had more chocolate than the recipe required as strangely some went missing. A small tantrum broke out when they had to go into the oven, patience is a tricky business apparently for a 2-year-old, so he took his mind off them with some painting. Like there wasn't enough clearing up to do after the baking. 
Much fun was had though and the brownies were delicious, so much so that when Aidan was denied a third piece until after his tea he threatened "Aidan might get cross". Ooo.

Tea Leaf

The first completed tea cosy.  
Since making this one I've made a couple more but have not been able to get decent photos of them yet as it's been so gloomy over the last few of days.

A couple of my canvasses sold in the shop last week so Saturday morning was spent stocking up on a few plain dye linens on a shopping trip with my Mum to Chester. Whilst my Mum drove and got the car parking ticket, I offered to get the coffees once we'd spent up and so we stopped off in a tea room before heading back. It was only once we were back in the car and had fought our way through the mounting lunchtime traffic, that I realised that Mum must have paid the bill whilst I was in the bathroom, as I hadn't paid. Only she hadn't. Oh dear. We'd accidentally done a 'runner', instead of shouting her a coffee as promised, I'd made her an unwitting accessory to a crime, oops. Back at home, I phoned to apologise and to send a cheque.

As it's national baking week this week, tomorrow Aidan will be donning his apron and making some pistachio chocolate brownies - providing the supermarket shop goes smoothly, unlike the week he sank his teeth into pretty much everything in the trolley.

Tea Cosies

Tea cosies are the new project of choice around here at the moment. Firstly, they are fairly small and I'm far more adept with the fiddly than the unwieldy (curtains, no matter how easy my Mum says they are to make intimidate me) and secondly (relatives look away now) they'll make good Christmas gifts. Also, hopefully they'll be a good item to help fill out the Two Owls stall at the Warrington Mencap Christmas Fayre - organised by a couple of fabulous friends (good pitch guaranteed, it's not what you know...)

Having bought a few new fabrics in Ikea the other night, mainly in red prints, the design developed as a way to try them out straight away. By the time it was ready to be photographed tonight though it had become a touch too gloomy to get a good picture but here's the main motif.

Yammer...

Blogging is, by it's very nature, narcissistic and the more I write the more I become aware of this less than comfortable fact. To counterbalance all of the 'me-me-me' though I can't really write about anybody else too much as that would infringe their privacy. Course I write about Aidan but is that so much about him or about me as a mum (will he hold any of this against me as he gets older)? In many ways I view the Aidan-y bits as a diary to read through in the future as a reminder of his developmental stages and the activities we did together. Already the memories of caring for him as newborn baby have blurred to obscure many of the finer details. For example should I come to have another baby the midwives will most certainly have to demonstrate again how to bath it correctly, that's all smudged out now a couple of years on.

I'm feeling the need to justify why I'm doing this - is that coming across? It does makes a cheap and easy alternative to a proper-copper business website and has also become an extra link to a few members of my geographically distant family (the down-side of family reading this blog however is the potential to defuse any surprise when giving out handmade gifts come Christmas). So it's not just to yammer on about myself, honestly.

Anyway, here's a made-to-a-design-brief cupcake.My husband Mike was really quite ill at the beginning of the year and he lost (without trying) a frankly alarming amount of weight and was suffering with anaemia. The upshot was that towards the end of the summer he was diagnosed with coeliac disease, an auto-immune disease which means he can no longer eat gluten found in wheat. Freakishly, I went through the same 10 years ago and so it's not been a huge adjustment and just means that we are both now on the same diet. We went to a fantastic triple 40th birthday party at the weekend for 3 good friends and Mike very kindly in the run-up to it, volunteered me to supply some gluten-free cupcakes to go alongside the normal ones (hence the design-brief). Gluten-free sponge can be a tricky business as the unusual and not thoroughly pleasant taste of the gluten-free flour can be too obvious in a light sponge, so it was a bit of a problem. Fortunately, Nigella has a good recipe in How To Be A Domestic Goddess which is light on flour and big on chocolate and treacle-y demerera sugar, it was a good job we had a couple of duffers in the batch that spilled out of the paper case and became taste-testers as in the end we didn't have one at the party.

In more other worky-related stuff, sadly my canvasses haven't sold in the shop so in a last effort I've done an example canvas for personalised ones in the hope that it may attract some orders. 

Commission

The first Two Owls commission has been completed, a do not disturb style sign personalised with a name instead of the word 'baby' as in the original version.