the Little Princess' Boot Boutique

 The Little Princess has been wearing school shoes for the last few weeks. School shoes aren't great on feet which are already marked from the splints, when they are sized to fit over the splints, but you can't wear the splints due to the marking. Add a night away from her nice pressure relieving mattress, replacing it with hospital bed and hospitally stiff white sheets, and you'll get a pretty pattern of black and red bruises and pressure marks, which aren't going away any time soon.

What's a girl to do? To heal, the feet need to be nice and warm, cosily cushioned, free from pressure and not allowed to go too blue from cold.

We'd go shopping, but tLP's powerchair decided to collude with the weather gods and broke down on Friday, in the rainstorm which started at 3.10 precisely, the very moment when all the children were released from school on the one day of the school term when I go and collect tLP myself, on foot. Pushing a 125kg wheelchair with a not-quite-that-much-but-it-didn't-feel-far-off weight child on top home in the rain ranks as one of the less relaxed way to start the school holidays.

Still, Saturday morning loomed and we neither of us really fancied heading shopwards.

Enter, the Little Seamstress. First and most importantly, empty the fabric cupboards in search of the perfect cloth. Sheepskin's a must for the inside, and a nice pink flowery corduroy seemed to be a decent match for some seamless summery slippers.

First step, place your pins.
Next, select a suitable stitch - hearts and flowers were tLP's choice this time; she's clearly in a girly mood this weekend. 

 It's a serious business; our sewing machine works with a start/stop button, so you don't need to be able to work the foot pedal in order to make it go. tLP was not impressed with having to pose for the camera before pressing the button.

Stitch the fabrics together along all four edges. Next, take the rectangle, fold it into thirds, and sew through all six layers of fabric for the toes. Note to self: find a replacement needle before trying the next sewing project.

Slip the slippers on, and get very bored as Mummy marvels at the softness and cosy cushioned-ness of them. Debate the fastenings - buttons, poppers or ribbon? Have a ferret around in the bottom of the cupboard and come up with the perfect stop gap solution - soft and stretchy elastic with pre-stitched velcro fastenings, surely designed with the ankle in mind.*

 And it's a rubbish picture because the sun was actually shining. But there wasn't time to take a better one, because we had to go to Grannie's house and show Grannie and "Do you know, I will tell Grannie I maked them all by myself and my Grannie will say `I don't believe it' ."

And so we went to Grannie's house, and we showed Grannie, and Grannie said "Did you make them all by yourself? I don't believe it!" And there was much happiness in the house

And then we had to take this picture, to prove that the girly mood persisted - although only long enough to model the dress, which was then removed and replaced with more acceptable jeans and a jumper.

And the slippers aren't perfect, but I think as a first ever sewing project they're actually pretty fantastic!

Tia

*not quite - but then what else do you do with the new elastic straps which come with every ten leg bags?

Because it is, ultimately, all about me.

A new kitten is a great way to occupy a week or two. Throw in a poorly child; nothing majorly wrong but just "Not Right", and there's a beautiful distraction from the fairly major surgery planned for child number two.

But there does come a time when, no matter how cute the kitten, the headline news on the radio is that patients admitted to hospital on a Sunday are 16% more likely to die than if they are admitted on a Wednesday, including planned admissions, and the "la la la I'm busy, can't hear you" stops working, and you realise you are in fact heading that way in just two days' time (and yes, going in on the Sunday). It is, however, significantly better than the outlook this morning, when I misheard 16% for 60, and was considering calling the whole thing off.

I could drive myself mad wondering whether there really will be a statistically significant difference for the Little Princess between our Sunday admission and our originally planned Monday admission, but ultimately it's out of my hands, and I either trust the staff (and God) or I don't. We're going in.

But, in the meantime, if the sight of a very confused little kitten trying to suckle an equally confused neutered adult cat isn't distracting enough, then I have a lovely bag of yumminess to explore.

It occurred to me, in one of those pre-dawn-ugh-I'm-not-awake-back-off-world moments that there may well be a considerable amount of down time over the next week. We'll be aiming to keep the Little Princess nicely comfortable, and that should hopefully mean a fair bit of her being asleep. And then of course there's the op itself on Monday when I'm absolutely certain she'll be unconscious and there won't be a great deal for me to do, since for some reason they don't seem to like parents to be involved in the surgery.

And, with a new kitten in the house, crafty type stuff is having to be on the back seat - pretty photos aside, cats and knitting just aren't a natural combination. Hmm, a cat free week; what can I do with that? Legitimate knitting googling; hurrah!

I found myself here (warning: link could be hazardous to anyone keen on rather splendid wool). Free patterns, marvellous! Free patterns for some extremely delicious fair trade hand dyed gorgeously textured ouchily pricey wool. Hey, it's Fair Trade - buying it is a Good Thing, yes?

Just one problem; hospital admission on Sunday, and today is Friday. Our local wool shop doesn't stock the right wool for the pattern I've chosen (although it does stock the silk and lace yarns, check them out!). I call an internet supplier. No problem; they can arrange a delivery for Saturday. Small problem; they don't have the colours I want in stock. I take a look at another site and decide I don't actually have time to arrange a second mortgage. I check a third; equally ouch. I call another supplier, Yarn Box. Handily, Nicola is about to sort out the day's post, and will pick and pack my wools as she does. Even more handily, Yarn Box turns out to be based very locally, and she will drop the yarn round herself - now that's definitely service! And here it is:

Pattern downloaded and printed, needles ready and waiting, and it is only the kitten lying on my lap playing with my hair which is preventing me from making a start already. Roll on Monday; I'm almost looking forwards to it now!

Tia

Party season

Tuesday, Ladies' night out.
Friday, Christmas Lunch.
Saturday, Christmas Party.
Sunday, Carol Service, pre-Christmas Lunch, mini school reunion.
Monday, today, the Guides Christmas Party.

Mog was poorly last week. Made it into school for nearly a whole day before being banished once more, but had an excellent extended weekend of parties. Yesterday, she was fine; last night she was very not fine, and today she seems absolutely fine except for one smallish issue - she keeps forgetting to breathe. I don't mind her obstructive apnoeas; at least I can usually hear her struggling. These ones though the only warning is the beep of the monitor as her sats drop into the 70s. A gentle nudge and she breathes again, laughing at my concerned face.

So, plenty on my mind, and a few days where we've only been at home in order to sleep. Which is my attempt at an excuse for having forgotten until this morning that I was supposed to make a piñata for the Guide Christmas party. Thankfully, two things we're not short of in this house are old paper and flour. Resurrecting a flattish balloon from Friday's party, I made a start. Having coated the kitchen in a fine layer of drips, I stood, holding one very soggy balloon, and wondered what to do with it next.

Hurrah for ceiling track hoists!
And hurrah again for baby baths to catch the drips.

Two hours under the fan heater, and we were ready for the second layer. Second layer taking significantly longer to dry, I had a prolonged and eloquent debate on facebook researched the possibility of using the microwave to speed things along.
Before realising that the gold paper probably wouldn't make the microwave very happy.

Beautiful!

But very soggy. No problem, shorten the ribbon, bring it closer to the fan heater.
Did you know, warm air makes balloons expand? And that an expanding balloon will push apart soggy Papier-mâché turning your beautiful giant bauble into something more closely resembling an elderly daffodil bulb post flowering?

No matter. Pop the balloon, and bake the beastie until it is rock hard and only slightly scorched around the edges.
Remove from oven, allow to cool. Cool some more. And some more. And some more. And then fill with chocolates, party poppers, glitter.

Decorate. Realise you have created something which looks less Faberge and more as though your five year old brought it back from school having made every step of it herself. Debate allowing her to take credit, before deciding she'd tell everyone the truth anyway.

Sit back, wrap pass the parcel, attempting to create inclusive forfeits.

Sit down again. Stand up, visit bathroom, realise you may have more work left than you first thought.
Take a closer look at the floor, the kitchen, the playroom, the sink, the oven and the radiator.

Sigh.

Go to Guides.
Tia

Deadlines

A little bit of this

and quite a lot of thatand not very much time at all

means there may not be very much of this over the next few days.
Sorry folks
Tia

The Making of a Migraine Quilt

My God Daughter had a birthday, and being the wonderful God Mother that I am, I totally failed to get her birthday present to her on time.

I could blame 'flu, I could blame tiredness, but truthfully, I just hadn't made it. So, I sat down and started sewing. And my eyes started jumping about in different directions.
Hoping it would get better once it was finished, I struggled on manfully*, until I decided the thing was big enough, at which point I started laying out the backing. This took some time.
But eventually I managed to bribe the beasties with a bowl of tuna, and got the quilt spread out over the fleece. And then the tuna bowl was empty, and two kittens had more energy than ever before.
And no, the eye-bleeding pain I got from looking at the strips did not settle at all. Note to self: strips of batik look very pretty when in a jelly roll but very evil when sewn side by side in a semi random fashion.

Still, eventually the kittens wore themselves out, and I was able to join the two together. No picture of the finished article, the girls and I were too busy stroking the fleecy inside and admiring its softness.

It did, eventually, get posted yesterday.

And this morning this arrived on my phone.
I think she likes it! And look, the backing fleece matches her wheelchair perfectly. It's definitely nicer inside out.

I think she might be sleeping to get away from the stripes here...
Happy Belated Birthday, sweetie!
Love,
Tia


*man struggle: I did it but paused regularly to text a friend about how awful it all was and to collect much praise for doing it.

My weekend

Two girls very happily occupied. One house un-enterable due to building works, so not even a hint of feeling as though I ought to go home and do some of the many tasks waiting for me there. And yet a desire not to spend the entire weekend curled up reading books and exploring the charity shops down Cowley Road.

So...
From this:
To this:
I didn't quite finish it before coming home, but stitched up the last bits this morning. And now my wrists ache, my fingers are cramped, but I have the world's largest and snuggliest new jacket ever.

Of course, being me, my knitting skills aren't quite right - it's substantially wider than it's supposed to be, and I have somehow managed to use five balls of wool less than the pattern called for. So the next question becomes, which child needs a matching jacket the most?

Tia

Increasing the feline population

The girls were invited to a birthday party today. The invitations arrived weeks ago, we replied in good time, I noted it in my diary and then promptly lost the invitations. So, yesterday I thought I'd better find out what time it was and check which church hall we needed to find.

And received the always welcome news that it was fancy dress. Ooops.

Take one rather nice remnant of furry fabric. Cut into three strips, one 2 inches wide, one 8 inches wide, and one wide enough to become a tabard. Cut the smallest strip in half, and fold both corners down like this.
Fold the second strip in half and stitch it like this. You can't see it terribly well but there's a nice little curve on the bottom corner.
Take the tabard sized strip, double it over, then fold in half lengthwise. Fold the hood in half and use it to hack out a hole in the middle cut a shallow diamond for the neck.
Sew the hood to the tabard. Find a small square of cream fabric, cut it in half and glue it to the two black triangles. Lose the camera. Fold the triangles so the cream is inside and they stand up. Mutter imprecations for having lost the camera. Pin the ears to the hood in a thin tuck about 2 inches from the front of the hood. Bend pins. Hand sew ears to hood, developing blisters on forefingers from the pressure of pushing the needle through 7 layers of fabric. Tear playroom apart looking for camera.

Stitch both sides of the tabard down, leaving holes for the arms. Find camera. Resist urge to kick the cat.

Find a pair of old tights, and stuff with a pair of leggings which have been sitting in the mending pile for three years. Lay next to tabard to prove outfit is definitely cat and not bat. Dress small child in white tights and white long-sleeved jumper. Pull tabard over head of said small child, and post tail through hand-hold at the back of the wheelchair.
Very cute! Celebrate for two minutes until you realise you don't have a costume for your other child either. Bang head against wall until you see red. The red reminds you that you have a red cord pinafore dress and a red crocheted poncho. Dress child in a pair of white tights and a white long sleeved jumper (spot the theme here?). Rethread neck cord on poncho to give artificial hood. Find toy moses basket belonging to child currently dressed as a cat, and thread it through second child's stiff fingers. Arrange birthday child's present in basket with a scarf in manner intended to suggest cakes and goodies for a sick grandmother.

Pose child carefully. Realise camera has disappeared again. Swear. Find alternative camera, snap perfect photograph, then realise you now have no way of plugging said alternative camera into computer, having lost cable months ago.

Take out mobile phone, attempt to line both children up together, give up in despair. Leave, late, for the party. Receive admiration for costumes and hold disconcerting conversation with woman who turns out to have been your music teacher in the GCSE years. Realise she looks several years younger than you now.

Survive Enjoy party. Watch cat-child dance with 5 spidermen and 3 princesses, as Little Red Riding Hood child coughs quietly in a corner watching the rest of the action. Realise that you are no longer embarrassed by your smallest child's ability to be first to sit down at the table, and last to leave, a good 10 minutes after the other children. Smile sweetly as same child flattens several small children in her rush to grab a party bag as they are brought out. Debate whether bad manners is excused by the fact child is finally anticipating what happens at Birthday parties. Shelve complex thoughts for later.

Get home. Find camera. Discover suspicious odour emanating from smallest child, and disappear to fix it. Bring camera to take photo of larger child, and discover that evening carer has let herself into the house and, in a fit of super-keenness, has lifted said child onto bench and stripped costume off in order to give her a shower.

Place camera on top of computer in order to avoid losing it again. Post small child into bed and prepare armchair for larger child who is currently unable to lie down.

Upload pictures and realise how few decent ones there are. Decide to post them anyway.

Tia

Lazy Autumn Bibs

Little Fish goes to pre-school all day on Thursdays now. She missed last week, being somewhat busy and under anaesthetic and all, so today was her first long day. I sent her off, excited, with a couple of pots of slime for lunch, and left her arguing with her keyworker over when exactly she could eat lunch.

And then came home to the joy of an empty house for five whole hours. Bliss. So, what did I do with my wonderful patch of time? All those relaxing things I've not had time for over the summer? Long soak in a bubble bath, back to bed with a good book, catch up on some sleep, or some nice solo shopping? No, for some reason I got hung up on the bib I made yesterday and decided to do some better ones.

Take one piece of flannelAnd cut out a rough bib shape.
Add in a layer of soaker fabric (ZORB)
And a waterproof layer (diapermaker's PUL in this case)
Pin, and then stitch.
I do love my sewing machine. I use my overlocker for speed most of the time here, but it was not happy yesterday with the waterproof layer. So I was forced to dig out the proper machine. I had forgotten how nicely it stitches, what a joy it is to use. Unfortunately, it didn't like stitching the waterproof layer inside out either, so I had to cheat use a top stitch and trim rather than sew them backwards and then turn them around to get a nice neat finish.
Having stitched all the way around the bib, take a phone call from school*, and take a short break to go and collect Mog who is worn out after a busy morning. So much for five whole hours off.
I just had to turn it over to admire the neat train tracks stitch. And stroke the flannel, and squidge the lot; it's all so soft and yummy.
And then trim away all the fabric excess to be left with half a dozen fairly basic but beautifully soft and absorbent bibs. In nice fetching autumn colours.
Mog seems to like them anyway. Or perhaps she was just pleased at not being in school.

The more observant of you might have noticed I haven't photographed the fastener. That's because there isn't one yet. My velcro is iron on, and won't iron through all the layers. My poppers are all fiddly little tiny ones for summer dresses, not extra thick bibs. I'm thinking it'll either be a couple of inches of elastic (practical but ugly), a button (pretty but uncomfortable perhaps?) or a couple of ribbon ties (simple but strangulation risk?). Meanwhile it'll be a safety pin (easy but slatternly!).

Now we are late, so I must run.
Tia

*this part optional for anyone who is not me.

It's Caturday!

more animals

Little Fish wants a cat. Little Fish wants two cats. Little Fish is scared of cats. Little Fish cries when cats come near her. But, Little Fish wants cats.

We've always had cats. Our last cat, Henry, moved out a couple of years ago. He decided our neighbours were more fun. Or we were less fun. Or something. Either way, he vanished on us, reappearing fortnightly howling with outrage that his foodbowl was empty. I think I put the finishing touch to his disappearance when I grabbed him one day, shovelled him into a cat box and took him to the vet who then pulled out all but one of his teeth. It needed doing, they were rotting in his jaw and must have been causing huge amounts of pain, but that followed by a fortnight's incarceration as he healed pretty much ensured he never came near us again.

So, for the past two years, we've been catless. It's been necessary to an extent. Little Fish, as I said, is scared of cats. We have had the whole house refloored, something a cat would not have enjoyed. We've been away for a month this summer, Mog's had major surgery, we've been busy.

Still, Little Fish has been angling* for cats for a while now. At first she wanted a dog and a cat. The cat would be called Woof, and the dog, Cat. There's a certain simplicity about it. But I don't like dogs (don't hate me), so that wasn't ever going to happen. And then she hit on the perfect (purrfect?) names. Names so good that we just had to have cats to make use of them.

So, today, we went to the animal sanctuary. Little Fish held tightly to Grannie's neck as we walked past the dogs, and clung on firmly as we entered the cat yard. This is an amazing place. At first glance, you think "that's a lot of cats", as you notice half a dozen feeding from the same dish. Then you notice another half dozen feeding from another dish. And another two or three under the shed. And twelve in the shed. And twenty sitting on the roof. And then another four sitting on the unopened cans of food. Then you go into the stable bit, and see some baskets with blankets in. And then the blankets move, and purr, and you realise there are another dozen in the room with you. And the little chicken wire box buzzes, and you realise there are twenty kittens all curled up together on a shelf in another little room. Everywhere you look, eyes look back at you, the walls wobble as cats make themselves known. Sorry; I forgot to take photos.

We talked to the cat lady about our needs, and she talked about the 150 cats currently housed by the sanctuary. We settled on two cats. Again, no photos. We will pick the cats up next weekend, and there will be photos then. In the meantime, a description.

The first cat is an elderly cat. He is grey, and looks like a puff of smoke from a damp campfire. Long hair with a floaty tail. A small cat with a lot of fluff and a giant purr. He's an old man with a heart condition, and will need to take pills every day - but apparently likes to take them with corned beef. Excellent; we like eccentricity here. He was very calm, very friendly without being at all pushy. And Little Fish looked at him from her perch on Grannie's hip and said "that my cat". She didn't want to touch him, but she didn't want to run gibbering from the room either.

The second cat is younger, and not so beautiful at the moment. He is suffering from stress (if I was sharing a room with 149 others I might be too), and so has bald patches. But he too was beautifully calm and very content to curl up on a cushion all day and watch the world go by. He is a beautiful ginger cat.

We looked at other cats, many other cats. But these two were the ones who stood out as right for our family; I hope we are the right family for them too.

Oh their names?
Come Back and Go 'Way. I particularly like the idea of the Come Back Cat.

Tia



*angling? catling? not pussyfooting around, anyway.

What do you do?

When two little girls both wake up ridiculously early?
Saturday morning television of course! Little Fish seemed to think it was a little scary, but Mog was rather more impressed.

Television delayed the inevitable for an hour or so, but eventually that point in the morning arrived when it was either leave the house or do nothing but get annoyed all day. So, since Mog had told Uncle Colin she was going to be spending her birthday money on new trousers, we went into Oxford.

First stop Debenhams, where a rack of brightly coloured pinafore dresses caught Mog's eye. Thankfully only in a figurative sense, although Little Fish's enthusiastic pushing of Mog's chair nearly rendered it physically true too. I pulled out the dresses to show her properly and she gave a very enthusiastic yes. I pointed out that they weren't actually trousers, and showed her some nice trousers. She closed her eyes. Picked up the dress and she gave a wide eyed yes again.

Little Fish and I persuaded her to have a look elsewhere first. We called in at Gap where Mog quite liked one tshirt - sold out in her size. She refused to look at any of the others. Tried Monsoon but the children's clothes had been moved downstairs with no lift. M and S next, where Mog refused to look at anything at all. Back to Debenhams, where after a feeble attempt to convince her to think about music or story books instead, we bought the dress.The cardigan matched it and other clothes too well to be passed by.

And these boots were too perfect not to be bought for winter and chilly camping nights No zip, no pushing, just a velcro tab halfway down and an opening right to the bottom. Perfect.

Lunchtime next, pasta and icecream.

Waddling Walking back to the bus we passed the Ashmolean, and decided to take a detour. When we got inside, we realised they were having one of their monthly children's activity sessions. This time the challenge was to make a landscape painting. With children to the left and right drawing boats on oceans and trees on horizons and ducks in ponds, my girls combined to create this

Mog was in charge of colour and texture, and Little Fish on layout and glueing. Is it a seascape? Cyclone at twighlight? The inside of my wardrobe?
Tia

Pretty Mummy

2.30PM5PM
Little Fish's verdict? "Pretty Mummy".

I'd be smug, except that my house is now covered in bias binding, where Little Fish has unravelled reels of the stuff. Mog meanwhile is sitting giggling at Basil Brush on television. I had better feed the ravenous beasties.

Please excuse the blurry pics, Little Fish has been at the camera again.
Tia

Crochet away!

I may have mentioned my fabric explosion. Sewing is great for keeping hands and body busy. But the machines are noisy, meaning I can't use them at night, and they are big and heavy, so I can't take them with me when we go to hospital or away.

I have a wonderful knitting box. It was my grandmother's, and still has many of her old patterns and women's magazines from the '60s and '70s. I can't imagine ever wanting to knit up a pair of woolly britches, and I cannot figure out how to do cable stitch either. But I love the smell which greets me when I open the box; slightly musky, wood and wool and paper and just the faintest hint of Grandma. And I love the fact that my needles were her needles. Her fingers flew across the wool; whether she was knitting or crocheting even the biggest project visibly grew through the course of the afternoon. I'm a lot slower; I have to be content with measuring my progress in inches rather than feet. But I still enjoy it.

When Goldy died, I reached for the needles and made a very boring plain brown blanket. I don't know what we'll do with it; it's long and narrow, too wide for a scarf, too thin for a lap blanket, too ugly for a baby. Little Fish will probably annex it for her dolls. Or possibly to carpet a pretend play house.

Over the weekend, Trina sent me here. And here. And here! And we sent each other to lots of different places courtesy of You Tube (search on crochet, far too many to list). Which inspired me to put my knitting needles away and dig out the crochet hook. This lady's you tube video clips were really helpful in helping me figure out what I'd forgotten (turns out I was trying to knit with a crochet hook. It doesn't work.

Inspired, I went off to our local wool shop to pick up something yummy. I don't have a wool stash (yet!), so am forced out to the shop. Oh the hardship. Forced to go shopping. In a craft shop. Awful! Imagine my feelings when I discovered the shop had a sale on all their wools. All their discontinued ranges were marked down. A lot. I now have the most yummy Rowan plaid yard, seven 4oz balls for the price of 2, five balls of pale blue alpaca silk for the price of 2, and two packs of ten balls of baby double knit, one cream, one white. We have a lot of babies due in our family over the next six months or so, and these wools will be perfect. Not right for crocheting, but hey, can't have everything, right?

So, do I go back to the wool shop and fill another bag with bargain wool, running the risk of finding even more knitting projects, or do I give up the idea of crocheting for now, and run with the knitting instead? I definitely want to have the crochet down pat before Little Fish's hospital trip - a ball of wool and a hook take up less space and are less pointy than a pair of long needles. But if I go back I just know I'll end up with more packs of bargain knitting wool. I wonder if I should just risk playing around with the silk - it's so soft.

Watch this space!
Tia

You can't have your cloth and cut it.

But I really wish you could.

I have a love affair with fabric. Until a couple of years ago I believed that the right way to purchase fabric was to identify a need, find a pattern, and then buy the right cloth for the job. I had the odd stash builder when remnants were too good to miss, and when projects changed halfway through leaving me with tatty remains opportunities for patchwork.

And then one day it all changed. I discovered the joys of fabric shopping on Ebay and found Wazoodle. And then our local fabric shop had a sale. Not just any sale, a mammoth sale with everything in the shop reduced by at least 50%. Everything. Patterns (really wish I'd stocked up on more of them at the time), fabric, notions. I think it's safe to say I went a little overboard.[a small selection]

Thankfully this fabric explosion awareness of the joy of stash building happened at the right time, and Bob was able to build around it.
These cupboards take up the back wall of the new sunroom. Deeper than the average cupboard, the side cupboards now store all that fabric, patterns, notions, books, everything else I didn't have space to dump anywhere else vaguely sewing related. The middle doors fold right back and hold my machines
Those shelves underneath are extra narrow and will eventually take all my threads and serger cones. One day. When Bob has finished using the sunroom as his own private workroom and finished tiling the kitchen.

It's a lovely room. Or will be. Just now, it's housing a collection of large and heavy tools, as well as doubling up as a drying room. But there's a spot all set aside for my rocking chair, there's a long deep bookcase for all my crafty books and knitting patterns, there are sockets galore for ironing board and inspirational music and general grown-up playtime activities. The long term plan is that this room will be both my sewing room and my sitting room; it opens off the playroom so the girls and their friends can create mayhem enjoy themselves in a way only children can, whilst my own friends and I sit in relative peace next door, in touch with the children but able to enjoy coffee safely. I can't wait.

Meanwhile just for now it is mostly draped in dustsheets, and I creep in in the evenings to think about all the things I'll be able to do in there when Bob has moved on. And look at all the fabric, and try to decide what to do with it all. Lots of it is easy - I have a large bolt of denim which gets used whenever we need emergency trousers (happens more often than you might think), pre-quilted batik which ends up as sleep sacks, yards of brushed cotton for bibs, and oodles of fabric I liked well enough to buy but am equally happy to see disappear made up into clothes or gifts for friends. Some of it is harder - what do you do with ten yards of bright red sweatshirt fleece if you don't want to make sweatshirts or jogging bottoms? But some of it I can't bear to chop up - what do I do with this? Just stored it takes up space and will gradually deteriorate. I have 8 yards of this
It is beautiful. Suedey - I think it's moleskin. Those leaves are each about an inch across and loose. Originally I thought I'd make myself a Christmas pinafore out of it, but I think I'd end up looking like an overstuffed sofa. It's not suitable for children's clothing (pattern too large), not strong enough for upholstery. I like to pull it out and stroke it, then put it away again. But that's not really what it's for. Any ideas?

Tia