The big day. It dawned misty and magical, so after packing Daddy off to work and Finn off to school, Niamh and Mummy walked down to the reserve to get some Birthday Girl photos.
But. Hmmm. There was a lot of this:
(She’s about to yell!)
And this:
“No Wotos Mummy”
So Mummy took a photo of Niamh’s beautiful Soulemama-birthday-crown on a magical and mystical log, instead.
(Note - I made this yesterday. So much fun - It took me about an hour (and only that long because I was messing around with elastic casings). Niamh does like to wear it about, honestly. At her convenience, not mine!)
Then Niamh had to try out the very wet playground (of course she did):
(At least we got to show off the new shorter ‘do’)
Then we found out Mummy forgot to pack a playground snack. (Ouch). Whereupon we went home, and Niamh had a nice long kip:
And Mummy got the kitchen ready for this afternoon’s cupcake fest:
Finally… proof that there was both smiling and crown-wearing yesterday:
Happy Birthday beautiful girl!
June 03 2008 | Family and Other Craft and Sewing and The Kids | 9 Comments »
Look at all that lovely de-lurking down there! Thank you for all the kind comments on my birthday post. (Only one ‘You’re Ace’ though. Hmmmm.) I’m delighted to announce that the ten pretty flossies will be making their way to Valerie any day now.
I was going to give you photographic evidence of the name-draw as carried out by my barrel boy, Finn - but Melbourne winter evening + poor kitchen lighting did not permit. Besides - see above. It looked kind of like that! You’re just going to have to take my word for it 
Valerie, if you would be so kind as to send me your details, I’ll have the floss off in the mail to you ASAP.
Oh, by the way, if anyone else is interested in what happened to my floss dyeing tutorial (I had an email a little while back about this), I do plan on getting it back up at some point - hopefully with accompanying photographs. In the meanwhile, I have the text of it available as a PDF, so just email me if you’re interested in doing some dyeing of your own!
June 01 2008 | Dyeworks and General Ramblings and Other Craft | 3 Comments »
… the blog turns three today!!!
By some odd chance of fate (the strangest coincidences keep happening to me lately - something in the air?), this lovely lady asked me yesterday how long I had been blogging. It occurred to me later that my ‘bloggiversary’ (cripes I hate that word!) must be sometime around now, and lo and behold, May 28 is it. Yep, I’ve been rabbiting on for lo these 36 months now. So Happy Birthday blog!
Now like all good crafty bloggers, I’m giving the birthday gifty to you Readers-slash-commenters bring the life to a blog, and I am so grateful to those of you who have hung around, especially over the last angst-ridden, sparsely-updated twelve months or so. Niamh and I have assembled this pretty little palette of Sugarlemon hand-dyed embroidery floss. All you need to do is delurk, tell me I’m Ace (or not!), and one random person scoops the lot.
Also, we made Birthday Scroggin. I can’t guarantee there’ll be any of that left when the time comes to send off the floss though 
(Actually, the Scroggin has nothing to do with the bloggiversary, but it is very festive, don’t you think? Inspired by an old Kiddley post. Yum).
(Oh yes, and smilies still not fixed. Gosh I’m lazy!)
May 28 2008 | Blog Blather and Dyeworks and Other Craft | 17 Comments »
The owner of this hand turns 2 in a week. Can you believe it?!
Oh how I wish I got the focus right in this shot - she was moving so fast I took what I could. It’s an almost great photograph
Anyway. The lovely biscornu in Niamh’s hand came to me two weeks ago. It’s from Christine, and it is a simply beautiful Pay-It-Forward gift. So sorry Christine that it’s taken me so long to let you know it arrived, and that I love it. So nicely finished - be proud of yourself!
PS. I upgraded my Wordpress installation and now my smilies are all blah. I just noticed this now, will work on it tomorrow!
May 26 2008 | Counted Stitchwork | 5 Comments »
There’s no escaping it - excluding January, 2-oh-oh-8 has been a pretty lean year for me, crafting- and stitching-wise. I’m a bit bummed about that, but as usual, when I’m feeling a lot of stress about other things, I find the urge to create falls in a heap. Instead, I’ve been doing a lot more reading than usual (the highlight of which has been the very beautiful Girl with a Pearl Earring - how, oh how have I not read this before?) More recently, I’ve developed an unhealthy addiction to Packrat on Facebook (and I’m going to go ahead and blame Annette for that, even though I know she will protest!)
All has not been completely lost though. Way way waaay back in February, I did actually do a wee bit o’ cross-stitchin’ Can’t for the life of me remember where this cute heart is from (DMC??), but it was a freebie chart, and I stitched it with a pretty pink hand dyed silk from Jo.
Then, in March, I became a joiner-in-er! I sidled into a Brown Owls meeting one night, had a bit of fun stitching up my name and Tweenie panels, decided that a room full of crafty strangers wasn’t quite as scary as I thought, and became a Seconder that very night. What is Brown Owls? Why it’s ‘Brownies’ for Crafters, of course (or ‘my weird cult’, if you believe my sweet husband!) Bunches of crafty chicks sitting around the clubhouse drinking tea, eating bikkies, chatting, and learning and sharing bits of crafty goodness. All thanks to the Good Lady Pip.
I’ve been to another two meetings since - in April we played with hooks and yarn. After the crochet class, inspired by Lara’s collection of flowers, I came home and puzzled my way through a few online tutorials to create this bunch:
At last night’s meet we had a bit of a Mix-up - everyone brought in whatever they liked to work on, plus some Show & Tell. I was so worried I was going to be the daggiest crafter there - because it has always seemed to me that even in this atmosphere of crafty revival, cross-stitch is still stuck firmly in the ‘Nanna crafts’ category. But surprise! and yay! I wasn’t the only one who brought cross-stitch. I know… I worry about the silliest things 
Oh yes, and on the weekend, one of my red flowers made its way onto a last-minute handmade gift for my Mum for Mothers’ Day (makes me feel like I’m back in kindergarten… in a good way!)
Pretty!
But the thing that is making me happiest of all today is a small but significant breakthrough in the Finn situation. We’ll get there yet
May 13 2008 | Counted Stitchwork and Finished and Other Craft and Sewing and Yarncraft | 6 Comments »
On the long weekend we went to Phillip Island.
We saw koalas and penguins.
It was very cold.
We all got sick.
The End.
April 29 2008 | Family | 4 Comments »
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