Hello World (Again!)

have you missed me?!

My life is very unpredictable at the moment, along with the usual ups and downs of having a 10 month old baby, I'm also trying to earn money by supply teaching... it has good days and bad days, and far too many days where I get up and get ready only not to be given any work that day :-(

Anyhow, it does no one any good to focus on the negatives.

Squiggle is doing fantastically well, he's 26.5lb! (that's BIIIG) he's got his two bottom teeth, he's crawling and standing up on furniture!

He likes to dance:

Anyhow. I'm making an effort to get back online, and do more stuff for myself. Sort out my life a little bit... you know :-)

So... see you soon with some content!

Embroidering on Stretch Jersey with Solvy

So 6 months in I'm finally doing what's expected of me and embroidering baby vests.... it's much harder than it looks.

I've got something called Solvy (water soluble stabiliser)  which is like a thin plastic that you can draw your design on, hoop up with your fabric and sew through. Then once you're done you dunk the thing in water and the Solvy dissolves! cool eh?

yea it's still not easy.... but this is what I'm going for.

once again, pinterest is my inspiration

Serious Monday: The Mammy Lists - Why I breastfed

Lets be clear here, I'm a craft blogger. My blog is not concerned with politics, religion, the intricacies of my personal life, or anything deep or philosophical. It is my refuge from such things. Saying that, there are times when something that is so intertwined with my day-to-day life (blogging) and other major life events (having a baby) have to acknowledge each other's existence.

This is part of a series of blog posts I'm calling “The Mammy Lists”

Why I breastfed.*

Serious Monday: Mammy list 2 - Postnatal/living with baby

Lets be clear here, I'm a craft blogger. My blog is not concerned with politics, religion, the intricacies of my personal life, or anything deep or philosophical. It is my refuge from such things. Saying that, there are times when something that is so intertwined with my day-to-day life (blogging) and other major life events (having a baby) have to acknowledge each other's existence.

This is part of a series of blog posts I'm calling “The Mammy Lists”

 (co-sleeping on a sofa is NOT recommended... but sometimes it happens... and the Husb0t was not going to risk waking either of us up..... )

Postnatal/Living With a Small Baby

Yum!

How to: Baby Carrier!

So many unfinished stories, here's one I've been meaning to get to for AGES!

I told you a while ago that I was making my own SPOC (simple piece of cloth) baby carrier. They're also often referred to as baby wraps or slings, and they're often HELLA-expensive!

Witness the awesomeness that is babywearing - I've just noticed my hand seems to be supporting Squiggle's bum here - that's completely unnecessary, he's nice and snug in there... in fact after I took this picture I went shopping (about half a mile walk there and half a mile back) Squiggle had a nap in the sling (not uncommon - it's so relaxing for him!) it rained cats and dogs, but I just popped up my umbrella while other mothers were ducking for cover trying to figure out how to attach their rain cover to their buggy . . . Meanwhile Squiggle carried on with his nap. . .

I'm kind of embarrassed to even call this a sewing project it really is as simple as buying a piece of fabric and hemming it... no really!

What a difference a bit of sleep makes...

I'm not going to apologise for not blogging much recently, its amazing how hard it is to keep on top of everything once one of these comes into your life.

He's 10 weeks old in 2 days time, and for the past 3 nights he's slept through from around 9pm to around 6am... I'm in shock and disbelief and can't really allow myself to hope it's a new pattern....

There's all kinds of crazy real life stuff going on at the moment that is truly too boring to blog about...

somebody needs their nappy changing... and the cycle continues...

Work in Progress Wednesday - SPOC Baby Carrier

SPOC baby carrier - translation - Simple Piece of Cloth (good amirite?) also called a baby wrap. You know the one....

pic from http://www.wrapyourbaby.com/larae.htm - where you can buy this beautiful EllaRoo wrap for a mere $119 ... yup that's $119 for a big ole' piece of fabric... yes yes I've heard the arguments, it's the way it's woven yatta yatta... but I'm certainly not going to pay anywhere near that to try out the concept... so

This is how you dry 5m of fabric with no tumble dryer...

and this is how the project stands at the moment, 5mx61cm of cotton, pinned and pressed ready for sewing along the hems tomorrow :-)

Sunday Squiggle: Nomnomnom Nose

Nighttime Nursing Bra Top TUTORIAL!

WARNING: frank discussion of breastfeeding and lady-booby-bits... it doesn't bother me so I don't know why it should bother you but, meh, the internet *shrug*

ok, so I spent pretty much... err... yup half my life being generally disappointed with my boobs... well... I've now found my boobs' secret talent. Apparently they're hella good at feeding babies (well... my baby... haven't tried them on other people's babies yet, although I am feeling I may have had quite a profitable career as a wetnurse if such careers still existed...)

So... my boobs are efficient feeding devices, infact:

(Source: http://himynameisben95.tumblr.com/post/6195190507)

oh yea!

Getting on it, slowly but surely...

FACT: babies make it hard to craft.... I did not previously appreciate this.

FACT: There is no shame after childbirth, I no longer care about being photographed without make up.

This is how I roll... very... very... slowly!! But slow progress is still progress (but, the baby's asleep, why don't you put him down - ah, but if you put him down, he'll wake up, and then he'll cry.... )

wanna see what I'm working on?

hmm? nope, no more clues, it's for a swap, I can't risk spoiling the surprise!

And don't worry :-) A Tutorial for the Shirt and Tie Bibs and more pictures are coming soon.

Finished! Shirt and Tie Bibs!

Another triumph of pinterest inspiration:

pattern pieces coming soon!

Sunday Squiggle: Headbanging baby

set your phasers to adorable



Sqiug dancing to Planet Rock with Daddy on his tenth-day-birthday
x GS

Baby hiccups

in lieu of actual crafts, have a video of Squiggle on his 10th day being thoroughly unimpressed with the hiccups.

enjoy...

Update: Squiggle is here!

hi guys.

My little geek arrived last weekend, on Saturday the 6th August.

He was 2 weeks late and weighed 8lbs 9oz, he's 8 days old today :-) and we're both doing well. My labour only lasted about 4 1/2 hours and I managed on gas and air. I've got a lot to be grateful for... he's very healthy and sleeping well (when he's full!)

I won't be using his name on the blog, just because, you now, the internet lasts forever. I'll still be calling him Squiggle :-)

Normal programming will resume shortly, I haven't hung up my crafting hat yet :-) I've got at least 3 projects in the pipeline which I'll get to as soon as I can get this sleepy baby off my tummy.


love to you all!!

Embroidered Stargate Baby Vest

oh baby :-)

PLEASE tell me you recognise that guy!

I've agonised for AGES over whether or not that looks enough like Jack O'Neill... in the end I put the little point of origin symbol in the bottom left hand corner just to give people a little clue :-)

Of course not every one's seen as much Stargate as me and my family (ie. ALL of it :-) ) but hopefully the text makes this project 'accessible' to all on some level or other.

Yet another example of my incredulity and recognition of the absurdity that within a couple of weeks I'm going to be taking the final blindfolded step into the precipice of parenthood... I can't believe I'm already 38 1/2 weeks pregnant.

Here, have the picture I used as a kind of pattern:

 

Hopefully you can see what I did there... I put this image together on Gimp by fiddling with the colour levels and adding the text.Then I more or less used my monitor as a lightbox and (tried my best to...) trace all of those black shaded areas directly onto my fabric... and then just stitched!

I tried to use my intuition/gut feeling about how to compose the image, starting with the larger shaded areas, filling them in with satin stitch, and then outlining that, and doing the finer lines with backstitch. The text is done in a mixture of chain stitch and backstitch to make some words seem more bold than others.

Here's my work on the hoop for you purists!

 one and a half weeks to go... hopefully....

And now it's a frilly unicorn cushion :-)

see?

So. This baby cushion is (surprisingly) made out of upcycled materials... the floral base fabric is a duvet cover and the bias binding edging to the frill is made from an old pillowcase (I love it and I've got loads more, making your own binding strip is such a good way of using up small amounts of fabric)

And I've made it into a cushion cover so it can be removed and washed (and so I can make other covers :-))

The size of the cushion pad itself is 12"x12" (I made it out of a spare pillow we had in the house)

:-) very happy... and if Squiggle is a boy...  then this is my cushion :-)

37 Weeks (& going a little crazy at 4:30am)

Gosh 3 weeks left to go... hopefully. Don't worry there will be some actual embroidery in this post, it's not all about Squiggle. But (s)he is dominating my life a little right now so suck it...

Last night I hauled my pregnant ass out to karaoke :-) I like karaoke, but it's hard to sing with your lungs, intestines and stomach all pushed up in your ribcage. I haven't been to Karaoke since before I was pregnant so there was lots of "woah what happened?!" from well meaning people who recognised me from before, as well as the usual stares from strangers who don't understand that they do allow pregnant women into pubs nowadays.

Anyhow I sang True Colours, started a bit crap, got better towards the end of the song, it was quite triumphant, drunk people loved it. Then my friends from Cherry Scream (find them on FB!) got up and sang Highway to Hell and You Give love A Bad Name, I sang along at the top of my lungs (not very far away from the bottom of my lungs) it was very cathartic...

I got into bed around 1am and (thankfully) fell asleep quite quickly... which was good because I woke up at 4am, on my back, feeling really uncomfortable. I tried to roll over onto my right hand side (this is how I usually sleep - it's the only way I can sleep - with a pillow jammed between my knees) but Squiggle wasn't having any of it. So I gave up at 4:30 am and came downstairs.

I was awake.

I made the Husb0t a sandwich to take to work today... I decided I needed to leave him a note in case I fell asleep on the couch before he woke up:

(read more after the jump... )

Baby Clothes, Cleaned (ironed?!) and Catalogued

This post is essentially for the information of anyone who may buy me anything for Squiggle.

We have been very fortunate, in that up to now the Husb0t and I have not bought any baby clothes (apart from the odd Princess Leia costume and Hello Kitty dress that we've found at carboot sales) But our lovely family and friends have been more than generous in their gift giving, and in particular my uncle dropped off a MASSIVE amount of his boys' clothes that they'd outgrown. Even right now, as I'm writing I'm remembering more bits of baby clothes that we've got stashed away somewhere (9 months is a long time!)and I'm having to go and amend my list... oh there's a list... I HAD to make a list!...

Here's the list:

So I guess... we've probably got MORE than enough 0-3 month stuff :-) we could do with some more jumpers/cardigans for winter (3-6 month) more blankets/muslin squares/crib (moses basket/pram size) sheets as we have none! haha But I'm thinking of using pillow cases anyhow as they're much cheaper.

We'll need stuff for the cot bed after about 3 months (sheets/more blankets) but I need to get that measured.

We'd also greatfully accept gifts of boring consumable items like nappies and wipes. I'd really like some reusable nappies, you can get packs of 3 or so to try out in some supermarkets now. Money's going to be tight when Squig gets here so even if you bought us some nappy bags I'd be greatful! Vouchers are cool too.

We've kept to the basics when getting 'equipment' we've got a car seat/buggy (with pram top), changing table/mat, bath, crib, cot bed and a few toys. We do not want a baby monitor. I believe we're getting a playpen/room divider. We've also got a really cute little rocking horse.... I would quite like a baby sling of some description but I think I'd rather buy it for myself as there are so many on the market (and some of them are DAMN ugly!) so if you want to buy us something along those lines juat let me know so I can make sure we don't get duplicates :-)

and (of course) if you've got a shop or website that sells baby goods and want me to review anything on this blog, please, don't hesitate to get in touch!!

35 Weeks - 5 to GOOO!!

 
This is not a father's day post, sorry :-)

I read a great pregnancy blog from pregnant chicken the other day, What to do in your last Trimester. This blog is great fun and wholeheartedly recommended for anyone, even more so if you or or your partner is pregnant :-).

I'm not going to reproduce the whole list here, but here are a few things that I did already, either consciously or unconsciously, in preparation for the arrival of baby Squiggle. Reading them on the list made me do a mental 'fist in the air' BOOYAH!