Swap goodies

I owe a huge thank-you and apology to Rebecca at An Irish Craftworker's Good Life. She sent me some lovely fabric as part of Flib's January swap, and I am very, very late in posting about it.

Along with the fabric, she sent me a sweet print from a linocut she blogged about, and a delicate felt star. Thanks Rebecca!

Current obsessions

Thanks for your kind comments on my bad-mood post. I'm still in my own little blargh-world, but at least outside the sun is shining, right?

This week's excuses for avoiding blogging are:

:: Some much needed home decorating.



We finally painted the baby's room and moved her in early last week. We are all sleeping much better, now that I'm not waking her up with my hacking cough, and she's not keeping us awake with her sleepy mutterings. It's thoroughly predictable, but I had to make her some bunting. It was one of the many projects earmarked for the two weeks after her due date, when I was to be impatient for her to arrive, as all first babies are late, and would need to keep busy. Like so many things involving parenthood and babies, the plan didn't go according to plan. Anyway, I'm very pleased with the bunting, which was super-easy to make, and I look at it obsessively during nursing sessions.

The hen mobile - christened the "dream hen" by her father, she lays eggs that help Moot have sweet dreams - is from Danish Design. We also bought her the swallows mobile, which hangs over her changing table. She has a lot of mobiles.

The bumper around the cot, which I made last year, is still bare. I am procrastinating on that project - I want to applique egg shapes on it, and maybe a hen or two. I need to get some of that double-sided fusible interfacing stuff.

Her room is quite bare at the moment, and while we have some pictures to put up, and a lovely embroidered panel I bought in Mexico a few years ago, I am enjoying the sparseness.

:: More sickness, only this time worse. Moot had a bad cold and a fever. It's the first time she's really been ill, and it was quite sad to see. We were in hospital earlier this week (see next item on the list) and apparently it's a bug that's been doing the rounds.

:: More useless fretting about the baby's weight. She is probably what is considered underweight, and we have regular check-ups in hospital for the purpose of monitoring her, and driving me mad. It's incredibly frustrating - she just doesn't have a big appetite. No matter how much milk or food she is offered, she only takes what she wants, and that seems to be not very much. And she is a perfectly healthy baby. Just small. I hate these appointments, because they turn her weight and food into an "issue", which I really want to avoid. And I worry about her being so small, like any mother would. Anyway, it usually takes about a week, and then I get over it.

:: Stash re-arranging, from a messy corner of the living room to an ottoman and chest of drawers in the bedroom. Now I can read pattern books and finger fabrics from the comfort of my bed. Is that worse than reading cookbooks in bed?

Another obsession of the post title.



I made this dress for her a while ago, her father drew the outline of the duck so I guess it was a collaboration, really. I try not to make her wear it every day, but really, I want her to.

I'm still working on the baby blanket and more cushion covers, but I want to make something for myself next. I am quite obsessed by this pattern from Built By Wendy, and I have the perfect, cheap, fabric in mind, a white cotton with a thin blue check.

Because I am obsessed by tunics. I rarely go into central London these days, so my Top Shop browsing is online - have you noticed that they have a tunic category on their website? Fantastic. That said, I do worry that it isn't reasonable to want to dress like a pregnant woman when you aren't pregnant.

Not meaning to, but being ungrateful nonetheless

I had a bit of a difficult morning the other week, one of a few things that have contributed to a bout of insularity. The baby has been waking up in the night for the past month or so, which has been shocking because she's slept through for the past six months. So I'd had a rough night, I was past my prime on the cleanliness front - no shower for three days, pyjamas getting on a bit.

As I blankly stared into the garden while fumbling with last night's dishes, I noticed a woman in the garden next door. I've never seen her before, so I decided she must be someone's girlfriend. For some reason, that struck me as quite glamorous. Illicit. Was she going to work in yesterday's clothes? How naughty. She was wearing a vidid green mac, tightly belted, and her hair was swept up, and she was smoking a cigarette. She was elegant, I haven't shaved my legs in months. Then when I turned on the computer, I found a change of address email from a friend who's just moved to New York for a glamourous job, bloated salary, and year-round access to Purl Soho and Grand Sichuan.

I don't mean to be ungrateful for what I have, and I don't think I sound terribly coherent, but these two unconnected incidents touched a nerve, and underlined some weariness I have felt lately over how all-consuming parenthood is. I feel as though I have blinkers on, and can't shake them off. I feel disconnected from the rest of the world, and fearful about going back this summer to a job I sometimes love, but often find frustrating. It annoys me that I feel this way, though, because it's such a cliche. And it's not as if I was glamourous before the baby, or that we had such a scintillating social life, or that my "career" was on a rocket.

In another development, I've been tagged by Rebecca. My first tag. In blogland, does that mean I've arrived? I feel all bashful.

1. I speak French, and went to a French school in London. One day, while on the tube home with some kids from my school, one of them, a particularly homornal teenage boy, made a lewd comment about a couple travelling opposite us. It turned out they were French, and it all got a bit embarrassing. Ever since, whenever I hear French people while out and about, I have to prepare in my head what I will say to them if they say something rude about me.

2. I choose where to go on holiday on the basis of what kind of food I will be able to eat there. I like visiting museums and doing "cultural things", but mostly I want to wander around local supermarkets and then go have lunch. I also have to take pictures of what I eat, to my own considerable embarrassment. We stayed at a fancy ryokan in Japan on honeymoon, where we served an elaborate meal in our room. After each course arrived, I had to wait until the waitress left the room to take pictures. (If you want to fantasise about some spectacular ryokans, take a look here.)

3. I am mysteriously attracted to glasses put on the floor, and will always manage to knock them over, wherever they are. As a result, all of our glasses are made out of toughened glass.

4. I often go through phases of wanting to wear make-up, and will buy a lipstick, or an eyeshadow, but I only use them once before I decide that I can't wear make-up because it makes me look... weird.

5. I still like Kraft Dinner, an appalling combination of macaroni and radio-active orange cheese. I think it's because I left home - Canada - before I could grow out of it. It's a bit of a family joke, I always bring some back when I visit, and my cousin sometimes indulges me by sending me a packet for Christmas. I get very angry when Moot's dad has some, because he adulterates it with pepper and Thai chili sauce. He just does not get it.

6. I have never knowingly discarded a letter. Only the advent of email has saved me from living in a six foot square space tunnelled out of towers of paper.

Excuses for not blogging

Erm, so, like, it's been a while. I have lots of things I want to blog about, but I also have many excuses as to why I haven't. A nasty bout of flu, visits from in-laws, sorting out childcare for return to work this summer, feeling blah and frumpy and the need for a bit of a break.

Not that I haven't been sewing, or reading your blogs, or dreaming up more things to make.

I've made another cushion cover, with some Amy Butler fabric from my stash. And I slipped some browny-aubergine fabric behind the cotton lace on the small cushion cover, thrifted from Value Village, to bring out the detail.



With some dotty flannel and jumbo rickrack, I'm making a baby blanket for a friend whose baby is due at the end of the month. I think I first saw the ricrac used that way on etsy, but my bookmark to the shop's page isn't working. I got the rickrack from Ribbon Mad.



Unfortunately, the trimming isn't straight, so it's waiting on my WIP pile, to be ripped and resewn.

To make up for the loss of stash fabric, I've had two new arrivals. One is the first of my swaps from Flibbertygibbet's swap, from Carole, who doesn't have a blog.



The strips are very sweet, and will find their way into a project for another baby, due in April. My second swap parcel has been delayed and is due soon! You can see what other people got - and what I sent - here.

I'm quite broke, but stretched to five pounds for some Liberty fabric strips from ebay, for a quilt project I'm mulling over.