ssshhh, dont tell anyone

but I have started something new!
I know I said I wouldn't do anything until Mar and to be honest I might leave it until April but I realised I needed some gifts so I have been busy on those
A little bit of goldwork

 the design

Applying the gold kid (leather)

adding some pearl purl

fuzzy photo but its there!

couching with jap
and adding the check chips (top heart)
I have remembered how much I love the fiddle fiddle that comes with goldwor.
note to self to do some more
I also love the fact that this  oh so particular of techniques looks a right mess until the end!

quick and easy birthday cards

 March and April are busy months for birthdays for me.
I am trying to be organised and wrote a list of the cards and gifts needed to get me through the next 2 months
It was long.
I need a quick way to make pretty cards.
Then I dropped  lots of paint charts on the floor.

I use them to teach with to help people make colour schemes. I like the Dulux ones that where ther are 5 or 6 tones of the same colour. 

Lightbulb momnet.

I dont claim it to be my idea. I am sure it is out there already and if you have seen it I will happily link to it.

Paint chart + small flower punch = pretty card.

and some interesting scraps!

Finish it or get rid of it

Some of the things that have been finished in my 2 month finsih-a-thon.

 A bag that just needed the handles added (!)

 A baby quilt for a baby born last June (!)

 A really hard to photograph space quilt started just under a year ago.
A gift for j so we can sleep under the stars together.

 Actually a year to finish something is quite quick for me.

Getting bored of finishing things now.

some more small details

Gill asked to see more of the small details.
honest she did, I checked in the comments.

 It is part of the Sue Spargo- Madeliene Millington inspired quilt I started.
It is based on my house
I now see that my house seems to be suffering from subsidence.
much check that it isn't in real life.
just holding the camera wonky

 I have been indulging in all sorts of odd little details around the house

 I have many more to add

This is it
its only taken me 6 months so far.

The anatomy of a project

or subtitled

 Finish it or get rid of it.

January and February have turned into busy working months for me.I am running 4 different courses and about to run a short course on mosaic.

Mosaic?

yes mosaic.

Guess what the kids and I are making over half term?

yup, that's right mosaic

Anyway, back to finish it or get rid of it.

When I tidied up/sorted out all my craft stuff I found many an unfinished project.

Started in passion and spirit, abandoned in boxes .

This is one of them

Many moons ago

fade to wavy pictures 

I started a crazy patchwork quilt.

inspired by this marvellous blog

I gathered fabrics, threads, beads and buttons.

The 7 year old was due to be hatched and I decided that if I put together a box of materials then I could pick it up and work on, in those tired but needing to do something moments.

 Not being a girl to follow instructions I didn't take much notice of the types of fabric, I decided on a yellow and blue colour scheme.
I know, but I love yellow and blue, its so zingy together and it was clearly something I had to get out of my system.

 I had a great time producing squares.

 Filling seams.

 Just enjoying myself in detail that didn't need designing.

 If you know my current work then you can see the gems of ideas starting.

 I indulged in detail

 I doodled with stitch

 I imagined wonderful ...
ok, enough of that.

 Maybe one more detail.

 Then....
cue sound effect of needle slipping off record player
I stopped
very suddenly.
couldn't even be motivated to finish this square.

 This is what happens to me.
I have great ambitions but then just get plain bored.
I loved the fabrics, especially this one

This came from a ball gown bought in Oxfam in Wellington, Somerset in1987. I was 15. It was strapless 1950's ball gown.
I looked gorgeous in that way that 15 year olds can.
I loved it.
My friend invited me to a ball at Cambridge on the basis that I had a decent dress to wear.
It holds a dear place in my heart. 
However life moves on and it seemed pointless to keep a ball gown and into the project it went.
It tied together my blues and yellows beautifully and reminds me of good times.
 more floaty memory pictures.
Anyway fast forward to January.
Newly discovered, 5 complete square , 1 half finished
A new resolution.... finish it or get rid of it.
I do not have the time for the crazy patchwork quilt I first imagined but what can you do with 5 and a half square of crazy patchwork when getting rid of it was not an option.

Turn it into a table runner.
I have fallen in love with this project again.

Now if only I had the lifestyle where I gave fancy dinner parties with table runners
as opposed to the plastic table cloth which is always on it
.......at least its finished.

did I mention my kids love lego?

Oh yes, maybe I already did.

I bought this pretty jar from the final, final final, reductions shelf in Waitrose.

You know the shelves where it is all odd pieces and picture frame with no glass etc

Those stand which really shouldn't say "final reductions" but more like "Desperate plea to take away these last few things"

I haunt these stands at this time of year waiting for childrens gloves to get down to £1 each then I stock up for next winter. 

Trying desperately to get through cycling to school in winter with the daily struggle to find 2 matching gloves is too hard. I buy up 3 or 4 pairs of identical gloves and just keeping going them one glove as they loose them

Yes, I do put names in them but in the chaos of the average year 3 cloakroom the gloves still wander off.

yes I do out the 5 years olds on a ribbon through her coat but the 7 year old wont tolerate this. Besides they just get taken out and used as horses reigns etc.

Anyway, I bought it for 99p. Put it in the middle of the table to decide what to do with it.

That's it, a terrarium.

The 7 year old loves to grow things. It's a project to do with him.

Very popular at the moment but a trend that has pretty much passed my by.

Until now.

 We have a spider plant that seem to feel the need to endlessly produce new plants.
Are we very good with spider plants and its happy, happy, happy or is it that we are slowly killing it and its trying to reproduce as much as possible?
We are running out of people we can give spider plants to.
We are running out of rooms to put small spider plants.

We dropped in some gravel, a bit of soil, a tiny plant of which i do not know the name and of course a spider plant.

 Pushed and dug with a the end of a spoon then dropped a little more gravel.

Lovely...well nearly just missing something, a little something.
We left it on the side to decide.

We came back later to discover ..
an explorer had made his way into out garden.

 There, hiding behind the spider plant.
A lego explorer.

I told you it gets everywhere.

five become a rock band.

Saturday was cold
Really cold.
It snowed.
That was the day I dragged them all out to a musical stone workshop.
Musical stones?
yup musical stones 
In a tiny, draughty, cold warehouse.
They are all quite used to me taking them off somewhere to do something a bit odd. I'll sign up for most things. 
They are getting quite good now at sitting in a room with a workshop leader and sounding interested. 
I consider it a skill for life.
j came as well, the night after a local beer festival.
a music workshop the night after a beer festival? 
yes, serves him right for going out and having fun.

 Musical stones are called lithophones.
Extra prize for anyone who can get that piece of vocabulary into your average day.
Lithophones... it says so here.

I am musically inept but it turns out the rest of my family enjoy playing music. They are played rather like a xylophone.
As long as I kept repeating 1,2,3,4 in my head then I was ok.

 They are all roofing tiles.
Who knew they could be so musical?