Gratitude (part one)

Yep, it's Wednesday again and having to have a steroid injection this morning wasn't exactly a good way to make me feel better about my least favourite day of the week. So I'm doing my best to concentrate on gratitude for the good stuff! This is part one, more later I hope. I don't always find being a stay-at-home mum (I love my wee man, but I also love teaching and really miss it at the moment) the easiest but when you get to take time having a leisurely breakfast with your little boy, including having leaf tea from a proper teapot, and the sun streams through the window it has to be admitted that there are perks.
PS I've posted a pic of my quilt on the V&A's 'Quilt of Quilts'. Much gratitude coming to you if you go and rate it here!

Quilt Pictures

Ta-da! It's been worth all the careful cutting, pinning, machine and hand sewing. We haven't started trying it to sleep under just yet, as I think that'll have to wait until we've got a better bedroom set up for him (roll on that house move). He's already making it his own though.

Wot no pictures?

I just have to say this...I finished P's quilt! All that hand-stitching is done, all the ends tidied away and trimmed, tacking removed. Made with lots of love and rather less skill and experience, it's by no means perfect, but there's an argument for hand-made not being perfect, isn't there? Plus, it's my first attempt at quilting, so it will only get better. At the moment I haven't got pictures to post. The camera on my phone, which I use for pretty much all the pictures I put on here, is pretty good considering. However, having spent so long on this project and with it being a bit big and therefore tricky to photgraph I'm going to use the proper SLR for this one. It's just a question of finding time when P is asleep or otherwise occupied and there is enough daylight to do it justice. Probably tomorrow. He's asleep now and sun is streaming in, but not wanting to waste a beautiful afternoon, we're getting ready for a walk...

Egg

More poetic types than I could, and no doubt have, waxed lyrical about the simple beauty of eggs. This particular egg is beautiful to us though, as it came from our own lovely Penelope and was rather unexpected.
Poor Penelope has not had the easiest time in the last year or so. Her life partner and leader of the pack Beyonce passed away last Spring and due to the uncertainty of our housing situation, we've yet to replace her (soon though, we hope). Then she had to cope with not one, but two changes of location, ending up some 300 miles or so from where she began her egg-laying career. At three and a half, she's not exactly elderly in chicken terms, but after a fairly sparse and unreliable egg-laying season last summer we had quite accepted that she would be pet rather than provider in future.
We were delighted then, when with total seasonal appropriateness on Easter weekend, she began to lay again! So far we've had four perfect pale brown and freckly eggs in four days and I can't tell you how nice it was to make P's lunch using just about the freshest egg possible. The yolk was a dazzling yellow. Maybe Penelope likes the new food we've got her, or maybe she's appreciating the end of the long, cold winter as much as we are. Whatever the reason, it's amazing how homely it feels to have eggs from the garden, not to mention giving a great excuse for cakes, meringues, custard, mayonnaise, lemond curd etc. etc!

Bump and baby pillow

Here as promised is the reason for all those lovely, juicy coloured fabrics. Despite the temptations of all the scans I'm having for this baby, we still don't want to know whether it's a boy or a girl. This obviously means that I can't start sewing or knitting in girly colours as there's a 50:50 chance it's a 'he'. However, since borrowing a certain Kitty B's feeding pillow back when I was feeding P, I've been meaning to acquire one, and was only really put off by the price, which always seemed a bit excessive for what it was. This pregnancy I had two thoughts- firstly, why the heck didn't I make one as it would be cheaper and secondly, as I'm a girly, why can't my feeding pillow be girly-coloured, even if the baby turns out to be the non-girly variety?
So here's what I did:
Selected some of my favourite zingy coloured scraps and random fat quarters, then lined them up in an 'artfully hotch-potch' way, pinned, tacked, then sewed them together.



Then, using a paper template kindly provided by the self-same Kitty, and with some- ahem- 'help' from the big-brother-to-be, I cut what appeared to be two boomerang shapes from my hotch-potch pieces.




Slightly smaller boomerangs were cut out from some brushed cotton and sewn together to make the inner layer, leaving a hole for filling later.


I'm very proud to report that by taxing my little grey cells I managed to set in a vintage zipper on the inner curve of the outer layer, before sewing the rest of the seams.


There followed a short wait for these to arrive in the post. I had originally hoped to stuff the pillow entirely in the spelt husks, but found that 500g made for a rather floppy pillow. By the way, as if jam funnels weren't useful enough in their intended role, they also prove to be invaluable for feeding spelt husks into pillows! Anyway, to solve the floppy problem, I used a layer of natural wool from a fleece I acquired and washed last year to make a peg-loom rug. It's created a nice effect in the end, with a bean-baggy, fit-to-your curves effect on one side of the pillow and smoother, sproingy softness on the other. At this point I would think that, when feeding, the bean bag side will be on my lap so that the baby is on the more stable and less rustling side. Until then, it's going to be getting some use as a bed-time bump support.

Girly? Yes. Full of bright, summery loveliness? Definitely. Boy or girl, I don't think the baby will mind. Although it does need an iron, when this tired pregnant lady can be bothered to!

Cake!

I'm posting this at the risk of spoiling the surprise, but in the hope that a dodgy internet connection means the intended recipient won't be reading this. It's either a birthday cake or, if there are too many of those about, an Easter cake. Whatever the official designation, it's a big lot of chocolate yumminess!
I used Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Fudge Cake recipe from Nigella Bites. I halved the ingredients as, despite her claims that if dumped you could eat this yourself in one sitting, in my experience, the full monty feeds a lot of people. I also substituted the dark chocolate in the frosting for white chocolate, partly to ring the changes, but mainly to achieve the correct colouring for the sheep. A little extra melted white chocolate for the legs and to stick the sugar flowers on and some dark chocolate for the face completed the effect.

A good Wednesday

Wednesday has a bad reputation round these parts, for reasons I think I've grumbled about before. Today was a happy exception. I knew even before I opened my eyes, as in the midst of a week of a windy, wet and cold return to winteriness, there was sunshine coming through the window (it didn't last!). Not only that, but I was opening my eyes at a time I chose, since P was contentedly playing with his bag of 'good morning' toys, chattering away to himself as he had been for maybe an hour (!) without any apparent need for me. Okay, so I discovered when I went in to see him at a comfortably later hour than normal that he had also been munching the spine of a book. Why, when left alone with them, does he eat books? What is lacking from what appears to be a healthy, balanced and generally home-cooked diet?! Oh well, doesn't seem to be doing him much harm and I really enjoyed my lie-in.
Once we finally got ourselves up and breakfasted it was time for me to do some work on the results of a slightly stressful painting session yesterday afternoon (suffice to say, grumpy toddlers who haven't napped are not best combined with paints). I made an egg template and used it to cut shapes from the best bits of his daubings, then let him loose with some crayons to add further embellishments. Actually, he mainly broke the crayons in half and tried to eat them, which makes me more motivated to invest in some nicer, and possibly more nutritious ones (!). We bought these for a friend's second birthday and I've been meaning to get some for P since then.
Anyway, with embellishments added, I cut a slit at the top and added some dotty ribbon I had stashed to make a hanging loop et voila Easter cards for various family and friends.
As for this...


...I couldn't resist sharing my delight in the project I've more or less finished during naptime today and this evening. It's something I've been meaning to get sorted for ages and now that I've got on with it, it hasn't taken too long to complete (just waiting for a delivery from Greenfibres now). Aren't the zingy colours just the thing to drive back the last blast of winter? More soon.