No words, only photos.

While sorting out my blog posts, I came across this post. It was written some time in July last year, but for some reason I never published it. No words, only photos.

 

Home days and birthdays

On Monday ds2 celebrated his twelfth birthday. Family members all clubbed together and he got exactly what he wanted - a tablet - lucky boy!

Today, we've been mostly pottering (interspersed with bouts of chemistry revision). We need to recharge and re-group and with half-term on this week there are fewer demands on time.

I finally got around to helping dd finish making  her beany dragon. This dragon has been ongoing for several months. Until now I've not really had the time or attention to give to projects. Sewing with a child requires as much patience as cooking,with a child. I have to be in a relaxed and generous frame of mind. It doesn't happen very often :)

Watching episodes of The Great British Sewing Bee has inspired me to get back to the crafts I once enjoyed (and often cursed over). But this sewing thing is a love-hate relationship.

Ds1 has been tinkering with his art homework this afternoon. This involves copying a piece of abstract art and writing about it. Not easy for a child who isn't actually interested in art and doesn't particularly enjoy writing.

Ds1 has spent much of the afternoon on his tablet, "researching" a writer for his Arts Award. Apparently Michel Paver has "unlimited ammo" ... ;)

The frugal seamstress strikes again

Three days ago I put my foot through one of our two double fitted sheets.

It had been looking sorry for itself for some time (three holes and a patch that was nearly a hole). But putting my foot through it confirmed its demise. The tearing probably had something to do with two years I've spent trying to squeeze a normal double fitted sheet over a super-thick orthopedic mattress (hey, what's a girl supposed to do?)

In our random mismatched pile of laundry - the one that's in the bike-helmet-sheets-n'-pillowcases-washing-powder-and-shoe-polish cupboard - we have two double flat sheets.

I don't like them.

Firstly, one is a remnant of the 1980s (or possibly 70s) and is the colour of pale coffee.

Or rather (once you've experienced the pleasure of children) the colour of post-coca-cola-party-child-vomit.

Although I don't like it, in the budget-limited state we are in at the moment, and having just wrecked one of our two 'good' sheets 'not liking the colour' isn't a decent enough excuse not to use it.

But I do have another reason. Our mattress is heavy. Flat sheets are tricky. Trying to get hospital corners, or tbh ANY corners using a flat sheet on our mattress requires hiring an Olympic shot putter with six arms (that's three to hold the mattress up, the other three to tuck the ends in). Average housewife-power just doesn't cut the mustard, particularly when it belongs to a weedy women with a bad back and a predisposition to loathing any form of housework.

Fortunately while browsing the internet for something completely different I came across this tutorial to make a flat sheet into a fitted sheet.

I already have a bag of random bits of elastic from our local scrapstore. My sewing machine is functioning and we are (for now at least) on reasonably good terms . (Admittedly it does sound like a bag of spanners being dragged by a tractor because I don't give it the tlc it requires, but we'll glide over that one). It even likes ONE of my reels of cotton (all the others, it eats) that just happened to be an ok colour, and the needle wasn't broken. We had lift off.

We came, we sewed, we conquered.

The tutorial worked. The maths was a bit iffy (surprisingly all those quadratic equations I did in my A level maths don't teach you how to turn flat sheets into fitted), and I didn't have a fancy cutting square measuring thingy (or whatever they say you need) and one sheet was much  bigger than the other, (so if you plan to have a go, DO measure your sheets and don't assume they are all the same size). But with a bit of botching it came right in the end.

I cut and pinned the four corners. Then I found it easiest (i.e. I learnt by my mistakes) to sew two neighbouring corners before doing a quick fitting just to check whether there is any need to adjust the other two corners to fit. Then I finished off with a sort of elasticky stitch on my machine that I didn't even know existed until my friend at Orange and Green gave me some instructions on how to sew stretchy material. I used longer pieces of elastic than the flat sheet tutorial showed, because to me 6 inches didn't seem long enough. [No. Don't go there.]

I was going to take a photo, but then thought what kind of nutter takes a photo of their bedsheets?
It was one of those sane days, so I didn't.

If interested, just google and you'll find plenty more tutorials online, (such as this one)

Easy Peasy Christmas bunting

We were in need of some new Christmas decorations and were shown how to make these by another home edder at a home ed group. Really really easy bunting!

First cut squares out of scraps of material. We used pinking shears to reduce fraying, but ordinary scissors are fine too (and the fraying just makes them look authentically rustic!).
The squares don't have to be a particular size (2-3 inches square works fine with thinner fabrics, you can go larger with stiffer fabric (light fabric tends to flop a bit if squares are large, as we discovered!). Vary the sizes and don't worry about making the squares precise unless you are totally retentive.


We used mostly free fabric swatches (checked and silk furnishing fabric samples) so the material was stiffer and worked well.



Use an ordinary running thread to sew diagonally across the square. We used our hand-cranked sewing machine which is evil, but easier for the kids to control than my equally evil electric one. Don't fasten off, just keep going.

Sew a couple of stitches after you come off the diagonal point and then tuck the next square in and carry on going. Having a couple of stitches between squares helps them to twist and spin a little.



We found some shiny fabric and popped that in as well to make it look a bit more Christmassy.


When you get to the end of all your squares just do a few stitches back the other way and fasten off.

You can choose to have short bunting strands and hang them vertically, or do like we've done and make a super-long string of them to go across the room in a zig zag.

The photos don't do them justice, but you get the idea.

Like I said - easy peasy! (And a good way to use up those not-so-nice fabric scraps that you can't bear to throw away)


(Spot the lovely hanging paper Christmas tree we got from Wilkos this year only £1!)

This year's bunting hung above last year's strings of pot pourri and little hand-sewn padded hearts:

This is perfectly normal for OUR family.

We had a sad discovery this afternoon. Three fledging blue tits drowned in our unused pond which had tipped up and collected rainwater. I assume that they fledged out of a nest in the apple tree then went plop into the water.

Of course in a usual (normal?) household this would simply be a sad event. In our family...

ds1 began to dig a hole in our lawn.

He said 'If you put this on your blog I want people to know I'm not burying the birds because I care. It's because I want them to decompose and then in a few months time I can dig them back up and examine their bones. I haven't got a bird skeleton yet.'

I can hardly accuse my children of being odd seeing as it was me taking photos of dead birds on our back lawn...

Another thing that is perfectly normal in our house. Taking an old outgrown t-shirt like this (with too-short, chewed sleeves) :

and converting it (with ample cursing over a sewing machine) into a new, extended sleeve, t-shirt using scraps of blue t-shirt.

Ditto this one which was an adult t-shirt got for free from the local Swap Shop,

now converted to a long-sleeve child's t-shirt:

And as if that isn't enough to classify us as slightly odd compared with the rest of the population, some of us have daughters who spend the whole day like this:

The rebellious seamstress

You know the saying Life is too short to make peg bags..? Yes?

Well actually that isn't really a saying, I just made it up. But if it were a saying it would be a jolly good one.

Anyway, life really IS too short to make pegbags. But I like to take up those few useless seconds that I would otherwise squander on drinking wine, daydreaming and writing a bestseller. Besides, when your peg bag gets to looking like this, drastic measures are needed.

So I get some of this (impossibly thick, fades easily, and which coincidentally is exactly the same covering as our futon cover):

And some of this (bright orange and smooth with lumpy velour leopard patterns on it):

To make one of these:

And yeah, I know that the flower isn't even, and the sewing is wonky and, well just don't look too close. But it does function as a peg bag. It holds pegs slightly better than a carrier bag would and may have a slightly longer life-span. What more can you ask for?

Of course if Carlsberg made peg bags they would make peg bags like this. Actually they'd probably make beg bags that looked like cans of Carlsberg (never one to miss out on a promotional opportunity). But you get my drift.

I was never born to be a seamstress. At least not a conventional one. Let me give you a few reasons why...

1) I never use a pattern. Well I've bought loads and I have used one once. But once in 40 years doesn't count.

2) I never buy material. Unless you include the pennies I give the scrapstore for their eclectic bundle of offcuts. Well actually I did buy some material once, and that was to go with the pattern that I used, once.

3)The material that I do acquire is always completely useless for making anything that anyone sensible might want to or need to make. You know, I go for the weird, quirky, wacky stuff. The stuff that is too thick (needle-breaking) or too thin (needle-skidding) or just too damn shiny/bright/small/furry/glittery/boring/patchworky/skinny/fraying/odd-looking to be made into anything.

I choose material by looking at a pile in the scrapstore and going 'Ooh that looks like a tarts underwear, I'll have some of that' and 'that looks like a shredded piece of chainmail, I'll have some of that' and 'that would glow really well under UV light, I'll have some of that'.

You see my problem?

4)I never use the right thread. I mean I never use the right colour thread. Because if I've managed to find 10 minutes and a small space on the table in which to haul my machine out, then the last thing I want to be doing is running out to the shop to buy the right colour thread. If it goes through my machine without my machine jerking to a halt or spewing bundles of thread-spaghetti from under the needle, then I'll use it. So what if I'm using black thread on white material I LIKE CONTRAST!

5) And I can't be faffed with winding bobbins. So if the only bobbin with anything on it happens to be bright orange, then bright orange it is. Of course it goes without saying that this bobbin thread never matches the top thread, but there is an advantage in this: it lets me know (in bright orange) when the tension is wrong and the bobbin thread is coming up in big loops on the 'best' side of my sewing. It's not always orange. Sometimes it's purple. And on rare occasions it has been red.

7) I don't change my needle unless it breaks. But because I often use the inpenetrable furnishing material, my needle breaks at least once a year and so I probably change it as often as more conscientious sewers (that's people who sew, not those victorian pipes for chanelling your doo doo from your chamber pot to the English Channel).

Oh and I only ever use those needles labelled as being for 'jeans material'. Well, my logic goes that if the thick needles will go through thick stuff, they will also go through the thin stuff, so why buy a different set of needles for the thin stuff? (seamstresses all over the world will be turning in their little seamstressed coffins now)

6) I don't look after my machine. Once or twice a year it comes out onto the table. At regular intervals during sewing I blow the fluff from out of the bobbin compartment because otherwise the bobbin jams up. Often I bemoan the fact that it needs oiling and it's rattling so much that the table is vibrating. I remember that I still haven't replaced the bulb, so I can't actually see what I'm sewing. Then I put the cover on my machine (which is torn and needs replacing) and put it away for another 6 months.

8) No matter how often I ask for advice about sewing, I'm either too impatient, too arrogant or too damn lazy to take it. Am I bovvered? Probably not. But next time I ask you for advice, maybe you should just come over and do my sewing for me.

The frugal sap is rising...

I was replying to someone else's blog here about sewing, when I felt a blog post of my own coming on...

Look what I've been up to this morning:

No, they're not my legs!

Dd's previously almost-too-short-and-rather-tatty jeans, transformed into girl-power fringe monsters with the help of my clanky-clonky machine and a really horrible denim Barbie skirt.

It wont win any awards for tidy sewing, and certainly no prizes for style or design, but it was worth it for the pleasure of cutting up that skirt.

And also this morning, the habitual 'easter egg hunt'.

God I so hate doing it, but the kids love it. Best part was making the little easter egg cards for the treasure hunt (especially feeding them into the laminating machine). But that was 6 years ago and the pleasure has long worn off.

So each year I salvage the egg cards from the back of the home-made-jams-and-other-forgotten- things cupboard and tie them around the house and garden.

I deserve at least 3 easter eggs for being an obliging mother and an oscar for being able to fake such convincing Easter enthusiasm.

Catch-up

Well, I've come back from a weekend away at the Cheltenham Literature Festival and already I feel like I'm way behind with my blogging.

My intention is always to write a little each day. Something short, philosophical, whimsical, meaningful, or just plain funny. Why don't I? Well, you know how it is...places to go...people to see...and all that stuff. So I leave it for a few days...and then I have just TOO much to put into a blog post and I can't decide what to write which makes it even more difficult to write anything. You know, I always swore I WOULD NOT be one of those people who just posted up annotated photos of my kids doing things, on their blog. Hmmm...


So, here's another one of my jumbled blog posts dutifully titled 'catch-up'.

Recently my kids have been doing what some people term 'crafting'.

Last week dd and ds2 were doing 'simplified' patchwork at a local home ed group.When I say 'simplified' it was just that the patches were first ironed on to backing material using that bonding web stuff . This held them in place while dd could hand sew them in wonky blanket stitch. (Still, not bad for a nearly 6 year old who's never really sewed before).

ds2, on the other hand, took to the machine...

And the boys have been doing warhammer. Well not really warhammer, but making the scenery for warhammer. The other day they were sawing polystyrene chunks in the conservatory. Have you seen how far little flakes of polystyrene can travel around a house? Bit of a vacuum cleaner job that was...

Here's ds1 being creative:

You know those educational maths 'games' that you see in educational catalogues, and end up buying because, well it seems like a good idea at the time [especially when you are just starting out in home education and haven't quite got your head around the idea that home education has nothing to do with 'school at home']. And then the game ends up sitting on a shelf for years because it's designed to be used in a classroom and just doesn't really fit into anything you would do at home. Well here are my kids using one of those games this week:

It's a number bonds (to 10 or 20) version of dominoes (triangular pieces). In some ways it's a nice set - quite tactile and attractive. But as a game it's rubbish. Nobody wins. Ever. Ever ever ever.There is never a time when you can't use your tiles to complete your turn. So basically whoever goes first, completes the game first. [yawn]. And the only form of entertainment, as my kids have discovered, is to find out what weird animal shapes you can make with the tiles, or to bully your sibling into putting their tile in a particular place. That's not to say they didn't enjoy using them (they did, briefly, this once), but I just wonder what the people who design these sorts of things think about when they make them. I guess they're just thinking...'hmm what can we make that looks like a game, but is actually just another educational classroom tool and some teacher will think is a good idea.' Well I fell for it. Once.

We've been doing quite a bit of maths recently. Conventional workbook-type maths. It makes me feel glum that we approach maths from this angle. I wish I was more maths enthusiastic, seeing the joys of maths in everyday activities [if I had a penny for every time I've heard a home edder say 'don't worry about maths, it's everywhere in every day life' I'd be a rich woman by now]. Science, yes. I see science in pretty much everything. We never have to 'do' science because we are always doing science anyway. Maths? Nope. If I do see it, then I don't appreciate or find pleasure in it. Yet I know others who do. I guess it's just about what floats your boat. Maths is like a very heavy load in my ship.

I guess when you home educate there are always going to be gaps in your child's knowledge, their experience. Unless you are going to farm them out to other families for a few months at a time to absorb the world from a different view, I don't think it's something you can totally avoid. But then, I don't suppose school kids have gapless knowledge either. Should I worry..? Probably not.

dd, contemplating the life of a sandwich

Animation on the big screen and blackberry picking

Last night we went to see a showing of ds1's animation at a local cinema. The screening is a showcase of the minifilms and other productions created during a week of workshops for local children and teenagers. During two days of workshops Ds1 had worked on an animation called 'Hot hot hot' with a group of children, in which the sun melts the earth and is then put back together by 'Magnet Man'. The kids had had great fun using some software to 'melt' pictures of world landmarks. The remaining animation had been made with plasticine figures, hand-drawn backdrops and stop-frame animation.

Not quite Blackberry and Apple Crumble...yet

Yesterday I picked a whole bundle of blackberries from the garden, in the jungle that used to be a neat line of raspberry canes and a tidy bramble bush. It seems very early to be picking blackberries. Seems earlier each year, or perhaps I've just been sucked into all the global warming gloom. The blackberry bush was lethal and I came out all prickled and itchy. I really must dig it up next year and move it to the allotment where it will have space to do what bramble bushes do best - sprawl all over the place! Apart from a few tiny windfalls (enough to fill a kid's bucket), the apples haven't caught up, so not really enough for blackberry and apple crumble yet. I'll put the blackberries in the freezer for a month or so and by then I'll have so many blooming apples I'll spend all waking hours peeling, chopping and cooking the things!

Picked the first two tomatoes yesterday too. I'm hoping this year's crop will be better than last year's when the tomatoes suffered so badly from blight in the wet weather that we hardly salvaged anything. Must remember to make up some tomato feed: at the allotment I've got some rotting seaweed in a sack that I haven't dared open up (I can smell it from 10 feet away!) which would make a good feed if I diluted it. It's been there almost a year and should have stewed nicely by now. A bit too nicely. Of course the coward's way out would be to go and buy some commercial tomato feed, but that wouldn't be very 'organic' or frugal. Maybe I'll just wait until I have a bad cold and can't smell anything!

Finally managed to get to my sewing machine and finish a cushion cover. Looks great on the sofa, though the dogs seem to have a fondness for it and it didn't take them long to cover it in dog hairs. Just another 7 cushion covers to go...

Doggy visitors, scrapstore visit, and that darn machine again!

Over the past few days we've had a large, but very friendly, lodger staying with us. His name is Arlo.

Arlo is a lurcher crossbreed and one of Jack's friends. He's the one dog we've found that truly puts Jack in his place (usually on his back in 'submissive' pose) and who tolerates his 'puppiness'. No matter what Jack does to annoy, Arlo can bite his ears (quite a large surface area to get hold of there) and literally squash him into submission. It all makes for a fairly good relationship.

Arlo does have the distinct advantage that he can easily outrun Jack. A few gentle strides for Arlo is equivalent to a 100-metre sprint for Jack. Poor chap, no wonder he's been so exhausted since his friend arrived!

Jack 'discovers' Arlo's bone. Nope, not giving that up.

Jack 'discovers' Arlo's food. "Mmm...tripe...yum.

Much better than that dried dog food I get fed."

"Ok, ok, I'll share it. Darn it! Got my ears in it now!"

We took a visit to the local scrapstore on Thursday and I bought 3 carrier bags of material with the intention of making some new cushion covers (cushion covers currently in use are pretty scuzzy, even by my not-very-high standards). Of course, I'm totally ignoring the boxes and boxes of material we already have in the loft and which I also bought under the guise of making cushion covers/curtains/clothes for the kids/bags to sell. As dh says, reassuringly, 'It all makes for very good loft insulation'.

S0, while the kids were quiet and otherwise occupied I thought I'd sneak into the conservatory and start making a cushion cover. Bad idea. Or perhaps a good idea. John Holt says in one of his books (I forget which one) that the best way to encourage kids to learn is by doing the things you love. Not doing these things with the intention of 'teaching' your children, but purely because you enjoy doing them. Holt predicts that if you do this children will see what you are doing and try to emulate it. Or...in my case they will spot that I'm no longer focusing on them, but that I've sneaked off to focus on something that I want to do. They will immediately want to interfere/destroy/ sabotage the activity or - if I'm fortunate - want to do it too!

So, I got as far as measuring and cutting some material and that was it. Then they were begging me to get the hand sewing machine out and I was cursing it, trying to thread the darn thing, untangle the bobbin and master it's stubborn, antiquated personality. The neat pile of material on top of the newly-tidied art cupboard, was pulled down, cupboards opened, and my finally-clear-after-3-weeks table was once more full of stuff. Home education and a tidy house just don't go together.

Ds2 decided he was going to make a sleeping bag for dd1's toy dog. As you can see, it all went fairly smoothly (thank you scrapstore for felt! I don't think I can cope with stubborn sewing machine AND trying to show a short-tempered child how to hem fraying material in one lifetime).

Just had to take a film of it doing what sewing machines are meant to do, cos usually it's angrily chewing up thread and rucking up material.

Dd1 helps