bee handmade

birth

Well she arrived after a marathon labour. Here she is.

Instead of boring you with the gory details and waxing lyrical about how much of a shock to the system it is I'll move on to some nice pictures of her bedroom. My parents unearthed some things of mine from when I was a child and I've installed them in Lena's room. Hopefully she'll appreciate them when she's older. The rabbit and pram was a gift for the baby from one of my friends, as was the gorgeous dress below (I wish they sold it in adult sizes!). It's so pretty I had to hang it on the wall.

This is an ercol chair which we are going to have recovered. It's currently sporting a quilt from TK Max and an Ikea cushion.

I added some extrea fabric to this wreath so it would echo the colours in the room.

The crochet ripple blanket in situ in the cot.

The finished crochet cushion.

And the other side done in bobble stitch. I finished the buttonhole end with a picot stitch. I'm really pleased with it.

The cats are being very stoical about the new addition to the family. Here is Bee consoling herself by curling up on some fabric I'm trying out on the second ercol chair.

Finally if anyone has some magic tips for a windy baby please let me know!

shades of white

Random pictures taken over the last week or so. The only theme being shades of white (slightly tenuous!)

The beginnings of a crochet lace blanket.

I came across this pattern on poppalina and was immediately drawn to how cobweb soft it looked.  I couldn't find any laceweight silk so am using soft crochet cotton. Once you get into the rhythm it's a nice pattern to work. I feel like I'm crocheting porridge, and I love porridge.  As poppalina says it's a handy size to carry around in a bag. After the multi colours of my hexagon blanket it's good to work with a soothing oatmeal shade.

Scented stocks. These flowers had a beautiful smell but unfortunately didn't last that long.

 

Fairy cakes made by my mum on a long awaited visit home.

Our first home-grown vegetable! It gracefully enhanced a potato salad.

The first home bbq of the year and some tasty organic chicken and sausages.

Zabaglione and langue de chat - using up eggs is such a trial ;-)

It was so nice to eat outside on a warm Sunday evening.

One from the archives - 1

I've managed to curb my addiction now but I did go through a phase of buying LOTS of Japanese craft books. The habit was somewhat inspired by craftlog's Japanese craft book resource. One of my first purchases was this crochet book. As with so many of them, the styling is lovely. One thing you learn when you buy quite a few is that certain ideas are repeated quite frequently. My advice would be to do a lot of cross referencing on flickr, craftlog and yesasia to get as good an idea as possible of the patterns/designs the books contain. This is the crochet hook holder I made from the one mentioned above. Very useful and easy to make. The fabric is a recycled old skirt. I've used the butterflies on many things.

 

I stumbled across this catalogue card generator a while ago then forgot about it.  I was reminded of is existence on peapods via  freckle farm.

happy new year

Welcome 2009 - how did that happen? I'm not a huge fan of resolutions because I always feel bad when I break them. The only one I can recollect keeping was acquiring a taste for whiskey! However I do admit to a 'no pressure' attempt to worry less and make more time for crafting (oh and perhaps to purchase a new mac - this post seems to have taken an eternity to compose as my machine is so bloody slow). 

We took down the decorations today (not quite twelfth night but nevermind). I love Christmas paraphernalia but also relish how spacious and tidy everything looks when it's all packed away. It heralds fresh starts and new horizons.

A few random things to share.

My Christmas present from P. Lovely earrings by Abigail Percy.

A wintery walk and an inaugural outing for my new wellie socks.

A flickr mosaic inspired by the one on Ellybeth's photostream. Click on either link to see how to play.

It was a lot harder to do than I anticipated - maybe indecisive should have been the word I chose to describe myself. It made me realise that I like a LOT of things!

distraction and diversion

I get very easily distracted.  I was supposed to be making some oven mitts today but that didn't quite happen. First of all I got distracted by this.

Cat's are very entertaining and this one is particularly demanding. She wore herself out eventually so I then got distracted by this.

My mum gave me a bag of threads she found (left overs from her and my grandmother) so I spent a while squishing my extra stash into my existing box. As you can see it's a pretty tight fit. I love all the colours although I'm not sure how I've ended up with so many purples and pinks.  I'm way more of a blue and green girl.

I then got diverted by a bit of online window shopping here, here and here.

listing

Don't you love making lists? Things to do, places to go, favourite books, films, biscuits, best meals eaten (I spend a lot of time thinking about food) ...

The best kind of list is a happy list, quite literally a list of things that I like and make me happy. Always produces a smile and also steers you towards the glass being half full rather than half empty. Here is one for today:

Bamburgh, baking, beaches, books, puffins, kittens (especially Bee and May), peas, camping, ranunculus, tidying, bellinis, Venice, magazines, the Lake District, my lomo camera, crochet, sewing ...

That's all for now. Unfortunately I have weekend chores to do (something that wouldn't be on the happy list!.