Hello blog. How are you? I've been thinking about visiting you lately and dusting off the keyboard in an attempt to write out a post. It's been 4 1/2 years since my last update and life has been rolling along at break-neck speed. Somedays I feel as though I've been hanging on to a life preserver and other days I've found myself drowning in all the change. 

I suppose it is good to recognize when you don't like change, my hand is raised at the moment. It's not a place I thrive in. I don't like reinvention. I'm not a great at it. I mostly just want to live a quiet simple life, with days blending into one another and a predictability that comes from all things stable and calm. 

 

Maybe that's why the idea of blogging never fully leaves me. It represents a time in my life when things felt really good. When I could count on my days being mostly the same and creativity thrived, however these past few years I have felt very challenged in the latter. Change will do that and when I feel challenged by my circumstances I can get pretty quiet. Like hold-all-my-cards so tightly against my chest that I forget that I have to still play the game. It's not a good scenario all around.

So, blogging may just be the thing needed. A requirement of sorts to show up. To write and create and at the very least it will give me a chance to clean up this space a bit. When I moved it from typepad to a free blog hosting, the formatting went wildly wacky. I'm not even sure if blogger is adequate, but for now it will have to do.

I think I'd like to keep things pretty simple here, posts will be projects I'm currently working on, maybe some cool things I'm cooking up in the kitchen, creative stuff like that. The days of posting about my kids & homeschooling are behind me as they are onto the next chapter in their own lives. You'll have to be satisfied with photos of my four-legged furry kids. They are the companions that stick to me like glue these days. Oh and I have no idea how often a post will happen as I'm terribly out of practice with blogging skills - photography & writing posts, etc. But I do want a place to catalogue my creative endeavours and maybe one day find a small community of creatives who are doing the same. In the meantime, I may be the only one reading my own posts, and that is fine too. But let's give this thing a roll shall we?!  

3 years later...

Question: when you've been absent from your own blog for over three years, does that make you a visitor of your own blog? Ha! Yes, I've have been very absent from this space. I have no particular reason. Life has continued on. I still sew, knit and make the crafts things. I'm still homeschooing, I still have 4 children at home, that I'm still raising/guiding with my husband of almost 25 years. We still live in the same house that we've been slowly renovating over the past 10 years. I'm not sure that ever ends?!

Some things have changed in the past 3 years. We've said goodbye to our beloved family in 2016 - Spencer. We welcomed new pets into our home - 2 lop-eared house buns that live free range in my daughters' bedroom; and one very obnoxiously, delightful puppy that joined our family in the spring of 2017.

Over the years I've contemplated deleting this space. But I get immobilized by the countless memories preserved in these virtual pages that I can't seem to let go of. So many of the early years consists of posts and images of my children when they were young. It's definitely a beautiful scrapbook of our lives since my kids aren't signing up to have their images taken anymore, let alone published on a blog. Things change right?

*photo of kids from a few years back*

If you managed to keep up with me at all, most of my social media activity for the past few years has taken place on instagram. But since the fall of 2017 I've noticed my productivity on that medium waining. Honestly, I'm starting to feel like instagram has run its course. While the snapshot photos provide a quick view into your life, they lack a certain personal interaction that you could get with the blog. Can I gripe for a minute and tell you how strongly I dislike how instagram has messed up people's feeds, I think the inability to see the feed chronologically keeps me feeling even more disconnected from friends I follow. And don't get me started on the endless, irrelevant ads... Egads! I suppose when things starting to swing that way, I found myself losing interest. I'm probably not alone. I don't know what today's answer is to instagram, which seemed to replace the good ol' blog for many.

So where does that leave me today? I'm busier now and that generally that keeps me from posting on this space or instagram.  I mentioned that I'm still homeschooling (some of) my kids - 17 years now actually. My oldest son is in university. My second son has just completed his final year of high school and has some tentative plans for post secondary education in the fall of 2018. I'm down to my last two homeschoolers, my twin girls, we are finishing up grade 8 this year. Homeschooling has been a big part of my life and making sure my kids have lots of opportunity for extracurricular activities takes up a huge chunk of my time. When I'm not homeschooling I work half-time outside of the home, and I'm pretty disciplined about fitness, so really that leaves me a few hours in the week to create/make things and sometimes I don't even manage even that. Have I mentioned sleep and age yet?  I noticed this strange correlation between my age and late night productivity. The older I get, the less productive I am after 9 pm. When I was younger, those were my best creative hours. Now after 9 pm, the yawning starts and I find myself heading towards all things bed. Sleep has become so very important to me now that I am getting ready to head into my 5th decade. Wow! I can't believe that is around the corner. Someone pinch me!!

felted dog bed

I have two dogs that have made their appearance in my blog (& instagram) from time to time. Well last year we had to break them of the sleep on furniture habit as we purchased new couches for both our living & family rooms. I couldn't let my pampered pooches make them become glorified dog beds this time around. Yeah sure, once in a while in the family room is okay, but not on a daily basis and never if we aren't around. It was a hard learned lesson for my pups but I think we have succeeded in getting the message across.

Enter the new dog bed. My dogs are pretty simple creatures. Most days they want an old pillow or a crumpled up blanket to sleep on. That's when I remembered seeing this post on apartment therapy.

Back in my hard core thrifting days I managed to amass a nice selection of sweaters for felting, no doubt for some great craft idea that has come and gone. It was back in the days when I made a couple of felted bunnies for my wee girlies. I hung onto the sweaters in hopes that I would be re-inspired to use them and I can say that this is probably one of the first times that has actually worked. I set to work cutting up the felted sweaters into various sized squares. Sewed them back up in a patchwork style. The final product needed to be large enough to cover an old pillow front to back. Next I sewed the one long edge (the other long edge is folded) and short end. I left an opening on the opposite short end for the pillow to be inserted, and I sewed a strip of velcro on the short end for ease of opening and closing in case I need to add a new pillow or things need to be washed. (Best part about the washing thing is you can easily use hot water with no fear of shrinkage as it is already felted). Check out the apartment therapy post as it has step-by-step instructions.

Really super easy project start to finish. And I think it might be a wee bit more attractive than seeing an old white, naked pillow laying on the floor. It is Lily approved too! Now to get busy on the second one.

somewhere far, far, away...

Have I ever told you how much I love Heather Ross' fabric? I mean love. I have quite a few of her fabric lines sitting in my fabric stash. They are just waiting for the perfect project - crazy right? I know it. I totally realize how ocd that is and I'm trying to curb that tendency to hoard save fabric. I mean for gosh darn sake, it's only fabric right? (I really want to think that way. I mean what is the point of buying fabric if you aren't going to use it?)

I have long realized that collecting fabric, for me, is just as much fun as sewing the fabric. But after a while collecting without using can also become a burden... and burdens tend to be life sucking. So in the interest of fun, I finally cut into my precious Heather Ross Far Far Away II fabric. 

A bit about the fabric: it was originally printed by Kokka fabrics and I'm hoping it will be re-printed - like the princess and the pea was - in quilters cotton. I'm sure I'll be all over that line if it comes again, but I digress. The fabric is a hefty 80% linen/20% cotton blend which tells me off the hop that is is going to be sturdy. Nice for some crafty functional projects.

First thing I needed was that perfect project *cough, cough. Since my girls have been in need of pouches for their pencils, erasers and such, I thought this would be a good jump off point. This usually starts with a quick drawing in my sketch book and then onto prototype stage made from my endless vintage sheet supply.

Once I tweaked the project I was all set. Armed with my rotary cutter and a new "use it up" attitude, I took a deep breath and cut into my stash. And you know it wasn't too painful. The fabric, both the fabulous art and weight were a great choice for my girls' pouches.

Miss A's pouch: front

back


Miss J's pouch: front


back

mini quilt swap = mini swoon

Last year I participated in round 2 of the schnitzel & boo mini quilt swap. It was a good distraction before the dreaded house remodeling started and it got me dusting off my sewing machine. Anything to get me sewing is always good in my books.

I was given a bit information about who I would be sewing for, their fabric likes/dislikes, designers they admire, pattern likes, etc. Armed with that information I choose Camille Ross Kelley's mini swoon quilt pattern. I've been crushing on her big swoon pattern for quite a while now and thought my foray into the swoon world via a mini would be a good place to start.  
My partner favoured cool, neutral colours. The fabric was an easy selection for me as I too am partial to the cool neutrals. I used Denyse Schmidt Hope Valley fabrics paired with Robert Kaufman's Essesx in flax. It was my first time sewing with the Essex. It was definitely easier than sewing with straight linen but pairing it up with Hope Valley - quilting cotton - in a mini quilt made getting points perfect a bit challenging. I think the weight of Essex might lend itself to larger projects but I'll have to confirm that when I attempt that next.

quilt stats:

fabric: Hope Valley by Denyse Schmidt, Essex (flax) Robert Kaufman
backing: (not visible) Hope Valley
pattern: Mini Swoon by Thimble Blossoms
quilting: straight crisscross lines by me.
dimensions: approx. 22" x 22"
gifted to: Sarah of duck egg threads

In a nutshell

Hello blog world.

It has been almost 8 months since I wrote my last blog post. A terribly long time to be away from one's blog don't you think? At the very least it is a sure fire way to lose all your blog readers. While I didn't intend to do that, I'm sure my switch from blogging platform Typepad to Blogger last March (2014) didn't help in that arena as well. Good thing I'm not in it for the readership.

In spite of my effort, I will press on in blog land, in one form or another. It's a nice space to come to. I know the blogging thing has morphed over the past few years. People don't read them as much, and a lot of the new ones that pop up now are super techie with tons of advertising. It's all fine with me, people have to do what they feel led to do, after all no one size fits all.

June 2014

July 2104

Sept 2014

Oct 2014

Jan 2015

Jan 2015


For me however, I think I will keep this space simple. When I first started this blog - back in 2007, it was for me an online journal of sorts. A place where I could look back and see some of my accomplishments and also capture snippets of my life with 4 kids - those young magical years filled with sweet times together. I love looking back on those years in my blog; mostly because I have been lousy at putting photo albums together and  those images of my little kidlets are readily available.

So if this is the case - keeping the blog alive - where have I been for the past year? Well, as with all things best intentions get laid aside for practicality, and I am a practical girl. The short version is the hubby and I continued our 6 year long renovation on the duckyhouse. We started in July optimistically thinking we could rip it off in 3 weeks. Excuse me while I pause and laugh my face off. Hahahaha. Good one. Well it lasted until Christmas, mostly. Then I feverishly threw the house together for Christmas, including wrapping gifts until 4:00am on Christmas Day. Lame I know. Such was my year in 2014. I was very happy to see the end of it and start a new year.

So far this year has been good. I'm a month into 2015 and I finally got my word -  "fearless". Yup, I'm planning on being fearless this year. I might need help with it once in a while but fearless it is. I've got a few big decisions looming and perhaps, just perhaps being fearless will help me get to where I need to go.

Photos are from my instagram account June 2014 - Jan 2015

grandma's sweater

Catching you back up to where we left off on my last blogging post (pre-blog-move). I was working on a sweater for my mum. It knit up super quickly and just sat there waiting to be assembled, washed, blocked and modelled. For the record, that is miss a. modelling the sweater. Yes it is too big for her, but fits my mum pretty awesome. This pattern was very straight forward to knit. The cable yoke was a delightful detour from the stocking stitch. The buttons are from my vintage button stash. I will be uploading this project to my ravelry page. In the meantime, the pattern can be found here: sirdar cable-yoke cardigan.

welcome here!

I'm making myself at home in this new space and looking forward to making new friends! Hope to see you around :)

crafty goings-on

I'm knitting. One of my projects is the Sothia shawl. I love the feel of finger weight yarn, so light and airy.

The other project which has taken over most of my knitting time is something I'm making for my mum. She's had this chunky yard sitting in her closet for 17 years! Yes, you read that right, 17 years!! She was hoping she would pick up knitting but alas, I don't think it is her thing, ya think? I talked her into letting me knit up a cardigan and she obliged once I reminded her of when she purchased it (I'm playing the bad daughter/good daughter card). The pattern I'm using is from Sirdar, the yarn is Beehive Shetland Chunky, long since discontinued.

And since the majority of our time has been laying low the past month, I took some time to teach the girlies how to do some basic knitting. They picked up on it really fast and have been enjoying making little scarves for their plush babies.

Speaking of babies, isn't this little guy just the cutest? He came and stayed for us for a week while his family went on a vacation to California. We couldn't resist putting a few doll clothes on the little guy - hope that doesn't mess with his masculinity. Haha.

knitting, notes, etc

Are you in the midst of endless winter like we are? Argh! I really don't mind winter and having grown up in the Canadian Prairies I'm a big season fan, but this winter is trying my patience. *so. much. cold. so. much. snow.* Proof you say? Well here is my son who is 5'9" shovelling snow at the back door. It's getting hard to know what to do with the white stuff.

It hasn't helped that our crew is sick yet again. Hence my absence from the computer. We are taking it all in stride and doing our best to keep our spirits up. Even if that means mid day basking in the sun from the indoors. For a brief moment it gives me the illusion that everything is green and growing outside. Yes I'm a dreamer.

minted

They arrived! A sweet package from minted.



I ordered Thank You/New Year cards last month for those who attended a big famiy birthday party that we had in late 2013. Besides the "thank you" portion, I owe family & friends updated photos of my growing crew.



I've been waiting to get them all addressed and sent out before I committed to this post. No sense in spoiling the snail mail surprise for the recipients who are reading my blog.



My thoughts: The photo is 5 x 7 in size with a nice matte finish. It will be easy for people to frame later on, if so desired. I ordered 25 cards plus envelopes and I didn't bother with their proof reading service so that saved me a bit extra cash. Shipping to Canada was via FedEx and cost $9.95, great for over the border.

Overall, the process was simple and delivery was quick. I really enjoyed my minted experience and I will definitely be ordering from them again.

detours

I started sewing a project last week, that I cut in December. It's been sitting on my desk in a pile waiting to be constructed.  It was supposed to be a hexagon quilt following this tutorial, but I ran into a snag and now it is an accidental adaptation of jaybird's hexagon quilt.



I say accidental because after cutting out a 1/4 of my triangles, I realized that I was cutting them wrong. Duh! I'd like to blame it on the very high fever I had before Christmas while we were all down with the flu. yuck! Sadly though, my only defense is that my brain was on some other wave length. Unexplainable but good for me.



You see normally my perfectionist side would have righted that wrong by starting again. However these days my time is precious and sometimes to complete a project you have to forge through and embrace the detour.

I won't end up with the result that I was hoping for when I started the hexagon quilt, instead I am now on my way to completing a jewel quilt. No matter which way, they are both sweet.

I need a distraction

It's cold here. really cold. the kind of cold that makes me want to stay under the covers all day, drink hot chocolate and eat sugary sweets so I can lay down belly fat to get through the rest of winter. Since none of those options are happening, I have to find other ways to keep myself distracted happy: yarn!



Knitting does the trick in a pinch. Pick up a project, pull it out for a 1/2 hour here and there, take it with you when you do have to go out. It's the ultimate busy mum's companion. In my last post about knitting I was getting very close to finishing a vest that I have spent tons of time picking up and putting down. That vest is all finished (here's a sneak peek), except for the yarn that needs to be weaved in. Would I be a bad crafter if I said that I wore the vest the other day and just tucked those threads in? don't judge me :/



Shopping for yarn is almost as fun as knitting. I really could be a yarn stash hog. I'm already a fabric one. don't judge me.  I tried out a new to me knitting store: loveknitting.com and I have to say they had me at "free shipping" over $50. For us Canadians that only happens if someone lives in the same town as you. On top of it I ordered during their January sale so the yarn was super-priced! The yarn arrived in the cutest organza bags all snug like bugs in a rug. Great packaging! FYI, the January sale is ending soon so if you need some yarn, you still have a couple of days to stock up.



I ordered the Sirdar montana yarn. It's an economical acrylic/wool blend, as sometimes I don't want to spend eyons of dollars on a sweater that I know is not going to fit in one years time. Which means I was planning on using this yarn for my girlies. I still haven't completely decided on what I will be making yet. I'm currently loving on these: olearia, bulle and paprika. I have to make the final decision soon as my fingers are itching to get knitting. Are you a knitter? If so, what are you working on?

chalkboard calendar

Just over a week ago I was eyeing the very sad calendar page pinned to my fridge. The calendar is both sad and small, easy to ignore and unremarkable. Then my son missed his orthodontist appointment because sad, small calendar is not only unremarkable but also hard to read with it's small print.

Something needed to be done. It had to be dramatic and noticeable, it had to be easy. And so came the chalkboard calendar idea. I googled the concept and found lots of inspiration. This particular one caught my eye, it's less permanent which can be a good thing if you don't want to mark up your walls. However I'm a mix-it & paint girl so I went the route of paint.



Chalkpaint to be exact. I used Rustoleums black chalkpaint - available at Home Depot. Next I marked my spaces with 1/4 inch tape to delineate the squares of a chalkboard and wider tape to set a boundary. From here it was pretty fast and easy. I painted a coat of the black chalkboard paint, waited for it to dry and then re-coated (4 hours later).



The next day when I checked my wall it looked a bit rough and uneven. I sanded the chalkpaint down to make the walls a bit smoother, wiped the whole surface down lightly and painted a 3rd and final coat. If it wasn't for the sanding I would say that the whole process was completely painless.



Make sure to let the chalkboard cure for 3 days with no writing, etc. Once it is cured you have to condition the chalkboard by using a piece of chalk on it's side to cover the black. It helps to have minions do this part for you. Finally use a chalkboard brush to dry clean the board and you are good to go. After 7 days you can wipe the board down with a cloth. But as you can tell that won't be happening until the last day of January when I get ready to fill in the next month.



Give it a whirl, and if your aren't brave enough to paint your wall then remember you could always buy the wall decals linked earlier.

disclaimer: This post was not sponsored by Rustoleum or Home Depot Canada. I paid for the chalkboard paint all by myself :)

fox and shop

Thanks for the mudroom love, I'm still delighted with that space and happy to have another project crossed off my list.

This winter we have had a backyard visitor. He comes a couple of times a week around mid-morning. He has comes very close to my backdoors and thankfully our dogs have not seen him yet. I'm not sure what the attraction is, as we do not feed him. But we do back on a lake so our yard is highly accessible.

I know it is mating season for foxes. I sure hope he finds what he is looking for. I'm so tempted to sit him down and explain that the city is probably not the best place to find a mrs. foxy fox but since he is here, my logic is irrelevant.

Isn't he lovely?



Onto other things... It's shop upate time and I have some gorgeous new vintage sheets that I've listed. I've actually listed over 20 new prints, so go check them out. Vintage sheets are like sunshine wrapped up in a blanket and I'm sure most of us could use a little reminder this time of year  :)











I do want this blog to be filled with eclectic bits of my life (foxes, fabric, etc) and part of that will include etsy shop updates. Hope you don't mind (In the rhetorical sense).
Well, I am off and running out the door. Have a fabulous Friday, xo.