Sisters

Crafty Sunday

It might be wet n windy outside but there's a warm hive of industry indoors! Quite unprompted the girls have gathered paper, scissors, glue, glitter and coloured film and have made beautiful pictures.

Tula is getting fat, as you can see! We went to see the dermatologist during the week and she doesn't have ichthyosis after all. All that's left to examine now is her bone formation to see if she has any identifiable congenital condition at all.

As you can see time spent holding the baby is still productive! I can just about manage to continue patchworking at the same time. I've made good progress on the Jacob's Ladder, despite getting a bit carried away with preparing for the next quilt.

Garden-wise, the allotment is starting to pull me out of the house again, even though I'd kind of written this year off, I can't resist it when there's so much to do! As well as getting some veg on the go, I also want to sow the wildflower section which has been covered up since last spring in preparation. Have to wait for another gap in the rain for that.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend too whatever the weather's doing! :-)

Busy hands

So here are the first few pieces of the new quilt. 

 I'm trying out English paper piecing for the first time, just to see what difference it makes to the patches. I'm following some brilliant directions by Karen Turner on her blog which make perfect sense, but I just don't 'get' it yet.  I had originally wanted to make stars but couldn't in the end face all the angles, having struggled with a prototype I put together a while ago. So I found this book which as well as providing plenty of detail about quilting in general also has patterns to copy, which is far easier than trying to make them from scratch, and I've decided on Jacob's Ladder, which should be fairly straightforward as it's just squares and a few triangles.

The girls have been busy too, Milly is obsessesed with 'sticking' at the moment - she actually prefers to do the cutting whilst I do the sticking - and has asked to do this nearly every day. She takes little squares of coloured paper I've cut up for her and very very carefully cuts and tears them into tiny pieces which I then glue down. Luckily we both find it quite restful to do!

We've also had some fun painting sessions:

Love this triumphant gesture!

Such good fun getting covered in paint!

Anyhow, back to the sewing :)

marvellous motherhood

It's funny how pregnancy for me seems to be one unfunny fat joke after another: as soon as the nausea subsides, the pelvic girdle pain kicks in closely followed by horrendous insomnia. Add to the blend of raging hormones a good dose of bleeding gums, heartburn and good ole varicose veins and you wonder what the hell women put ourselves through this for. Oh yeah: to spend the rest of our days, feeding, cleaning, clothing, nagging and worrying over the little bundles of joy that result.

My I'm full of the joys of motherhood tonight.

Yet we all had a lovely day in the sun today with very few cross words (read screaming tantrums) between the girls for a change.

Don't get me wrong, I love my girls; they have saved me in so many ways and honestly I feel so absolutely blessed by the miracle of their existence, their beauty and intelligence: they fill me with joy with their funny comments and random kindnesses.

It's bloody hard work though.