In the Olden Days...

This has become one of my four year old son's favourite expressions of late. Although he does have a real fascination for all old transportation equipment (I know way more about old street car systems and antique farm machines than I ever thought possible!), what he really means is anything that existed before him.

This gift for a new baby does not quite meet his definition, but it was completed early in 2011. I have just been too disorganized to actually cram him in a box and send him to his new baby owner. I have dreams of creating the perfect care package for my friend (who is now a mother of 3!). I'm all thoughts and no action these days. Good intentions at their worst.

I did however, get organized enough to make a donation to the Canadian Red Cross to assist in Japan!

This sweet elephant fellow is from Last Minute Patchwork Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. Making him really took only the 4 hours designated in the book and he was not tough to make...even for a 3D impaired lady, such as myself! Now my cute boy would like one for his very own. The highest praise indeed!

X-Stitched lemonade from a lemon

I made this cross stitch at Christmas for one of my very dear and crafty friends.

I had plans to wrap the finished cross stitch over an artists canvas, as I had done with some pieces for the craft show last year. I like how it makes the cross stitch look really simple, clean and a bit more modern (cross stitch can easily walk the line into the dreaded "quaint" territory!).

The problem??? Once again my lack of planning. I thought that I was being clever in using up an end piece of aida cloth (the fabric used for cross stitch). I thought that it was just "the right size". I thought wrong - AGAIN. Hmmm...Why do I always feel the need to "feature" my crafty mistakes???

This does not make for a pretty, modern, clean edge at all. Behold...the Frankenstein of cross stitch!

I set this monstrosity aside and did not deliver in time for Christmas. I just couldn't stomach what my lovely cross-stitch had become (visualize a dramatic crafter with her had placed dramatically on her forehead here).

When I was finally ready to revisit this project, I was able to adopt a more reasonable approach. I decided to do what is done with all major flaws - cover them up!

I made a strip of fabric and wrapped it around the canvas, sort of like a quilt binding. In the end, I rather like how it turned out!

That is what I love about the hand made...It forces me to get over my "imagined" perfect ending and make the best with what I've got. From Frankenstein to an extra excuse to add fabric to a project. Hmmm....there could be a lesson for me to apply to my life in this....

PS - Martha is doing a cross-stitch feature in her March issue. Find a preview here.

Illicit knitting

I'm not supposed to be knitting...Knitting is my compulsion, my soothing drug....mmmMMMmmmm.


When the world feels busy and a bit out of control some knitting will put it right. The problem? I am a worrier and the world is often a bit out of my control. So I knit. And knit. And knit and knit. I knit until I have injured my arms and wrists and my fingers go numb. I knit until I have permanently damaged nerves and tendons.

I have to stay away from knitting...but sometimes I just need a small FIX.

A new job for me and waiting for the new job for my husband to be finalized have resulted in sleepless nights. So I found myself surfing Ravelry (so dangerous!) and making an emergency trip to the yarn store.

These fingerless gloves should be complete very soon! And suddenly the world seems calm and right....OOOOhhhHHHHmmmMMMMMM. Ahhh. Knitting.

Just in case you need a fix too, the pattern can be found at JCasa *handmade.

Birthdays and breaks

Hope that everybody had a great long weekend! Not only was it the Easter long weekend, but at our house....it was also my birthday long weekend. Yippee! I love to drag out a birthday celebration for as long as humanly possible. Much longer than is appropriate really.

It was eerily calm at our house this weekend. This was not by accident. It was one of my birthday "gifts" from my husband. You see, I have a habit of scheduling every free moment, but he organized a "non-planned, do what you want on a whim" kind of a weekend . Let me be clear - I am scheduling my life with things that I love and with people that I love, but sometimes a calm, quiet, non-scheduled weekend is just what one requires. It was strangely liberating. We spent a lot of time outside doing nothing of any importance, but full of sunshine and enjoyment!

I must confess, however, it turns out that I don't just sit still well...so I spent much of the weekend with some hexagons in my hands. This was a completely directionless and relaxing task. I'm not really sure what I will do with these hexagons. I had imagined making a wall hanging and taking it into my office at work to fight off the BEIGE. Not sure if that's what I'm going to do now. Work has been busy and sort of yucky lately (temporarily, I'm sure!). Not too sure if I want to subject my lovely hexagons to work and the beige. Is it crazy to be protective of scraps of fabric made into hexagons? Probably! Perhaps they will become a lovely cushion for home???

As you can see, my son is very keen on all of the colours. Here he is helping to model my hexagons:

Here I go...back into real life. Luckily, the weekend is not far away...

Red, white and GOLD!

Have you been watching the Olympics? We have!

We hadn't intended to spend the entire weekend watching the Olympics, but we did. Certain small boys have brought home (yet another!) cold. This one is miserable, and as a result, so is the boy. We curled up on the couch together and my son dozed on and off, while I stitched and his father tried not to cheer too loudly and wake him. Between rests we ate throat soothing freezies (for cold infested boys and grown up cheerers).


You know a three year old is feeling retched when he asks if he can be taken to bed now please. Poor soul!


I couldn't quite figure what had inspired me to start stitching these matryoshka dolls in red and white...but the answer is plain as day:

• Red and white for Canada
• Russian dolls for the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics

The Olympics must be entering my subconsciousness!

I am so proud of Vancouver. What a fantastic job they have done in hosting the games!

I hope that you had an opportunity to enjoy some red, white and gold moments over the last few weeks.

Do NOT mock the flu

Remember when I said "I am a germ fighting power house"? I was wrong. I take it back. I'm sorry that I "smack" talked the flu. My bad. Call off your germ friends. I give....I give...

I have been laid out with the flu for 3 days now...3 DAYS!! Sadly too sick to even feel up to a little crafting (I know!! Too sick to craft??!).

I have missed brunch and book club (which I love so!). I did however, manage to finish the book club book, which I may not have managed without the extra sick time. It's a good book:

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Check it out...even if you are not flu-infested.

Why, oh why??

Am I just hyper-sensitive about privacy?? I know that in real life I tend to be a fairly guarded person until I really get to know someone. I'm friendly, but I'm guarded. I would love to be one of those people who is just more open, but not tooooo open - y'know the type of person I mean (the one who shares everything with the stranger sitting next to them on the bus).

This morning my work colleague is breaking up with her boyfriend. I am not close with this work colleague, I didn't even know that she had a boyfriend....but I am listening to her very calmly explain all of the problems in their relationship and why it no longer works for her. Really none of my business, but what can I do??? The irony - I work in an environment with closed door offices. Close your door people...close your door.

Some of my work colleagues didn't even know that I was a crafter until I "outed" myself by inviting a few the craft show that I participated in. They were kind enough to come...and it even helped spurred on a "stitch" group Tuesdays at lunch. I look forward to the restful break and shared stitching on Tuesdays. Good things (even GREAT things!) can come from being open...

here is a craft show project for your viewing enjoyment, because I hate to have an image free post!

Just need to find the balance between toooooo open (à la phone break up in the office) and tooooo closed (à la very private Holly, fish in the water).

Ahhh...the ever elusive balance. Where art thou?

PS - the break-up is no longer a calm conversation. YUCK. Am sorting out work to be done away from my desk for the next few minutes.

PPS - YES, I realize the irony of my musing about privacy in an open blog forum! Please note that I only have a few readers and please further note that I do not list my break-ups and details of my underwear on the blog either.

Boxing Day surprise

We woke this morning to an incredible ice storm!

This was the view from the window (NO, the windows are not frosted...that is a lovely layer of ice):

We were meant to have an outdoor block party with street hockey and warm chili today. When we looked out the front door we were confronted with an empty street and ice laden trees and wires. Probably not the best day for venturing outdoors!

So instead, we stayed in and indulged in some of our favourite Christmas treats:

We spent a lot of time on the phone catching up with family. We enjoyed a glass of wine. We enjoyed racing games on the new Wii.

Most enjoyably, we spent a quiet day together in our pyjamas. Ahhh.

We will also enjoy leftover roast beef for dinner (perhaps with another glass of wine?).

Round 2 of MarioKart championships after the little one goes to bed. Bring it!

The roast...

At first I worried that there wouldn't be enough roast for everybody. We were planning for 8 people at our Christmas table. One dropped off because of family responsibilities a week ago and the rest fell off the list on Christmas Day because of illness.

We tried to make the best of it and nestled in with just the three of us for a cozy dinner.

It was a great meal (if I do say so myself!)....but I must confess that I found it a bit strange with such a quiet table.

I confess to finding it a bit lonely, since we had originally thought that family would be here for Christmas (and travel plans fell through) and then we thought that we would have a large crowd of friends (and that fell through).

I realize that in the greater scheme of things this is not a big deal...it really isn't. Perhaps just not what I was expecting?

All in all there are so many greater unhappinesses and disappointments, and I know that Christmas is a difficult time of year for many people. I am lucky that my Christmases have been quite happy, and I know that my disappointment this year is a small one (I really DO know that)...

Once again, I am using my blog to work out that my life is really pretty good...and as a reminder of all that I have to be grateful for! Thank you for indulging me...

Now. Off to enjoy some of the leftover roast for dinner (and there are LOTS!).

Hope that all had an enjoyable Christmas Day. AAAAaaand, for those of you who didn't - I hope that you will remember that it is only one day, and that you will enjoy the rest of the holiday season.

Much Christmas-y love,

Holly

Living life in FAST FORWARD

Life has been crazy busy as of late. Work, family, personal…all crazy.

The craft show was last weekend (very fun – more on that later). The week before was travelling for work and somewhere in the middle both husband and boy landed with the flu (not ME! I am a germ fighting MACHINE!).

Perhaps many of you could cope with all of these curve balls gracefully. Perhaps you would have made good on your give-away promise, sent your mothers birthday gift and still managed to stock the house with groceries??? NOT ME! I meant to…I wanted to - truly I did. I endeavoured to complete, but somehow my entire life is at WIP stage. EVERYTHING = WIP. That’s OK…it’s really alright. The people who know and love me are used to my life being a WIP. They are used to watching me flit here and there and stop thoroughly engrossed in the task at hand, forgetting all other tasks for a time. They have watched me drop whatever I was working on completely as I realize that I am behind in another task. Sometimes I come back to the original task, sometimes it seems less important, most days I invest a LOT of time feeling guilty about all of the things that I haven’t managed to accomplish (have I mentioned the give-away, my mothers b-day gift and the stacks of thank you notes that I compose daily in my head but never put to paper????).

Have you ever noticed that some people are time benders? They seem to be able to accomplish things in the 2.5 minutes that you have thrown away as insufficient to complete any useful task. Do you know some of these people? I want to dislike them…but mostly I admire them (and am quite frankly a touch jealous of their magical time bending talent!). I am starting to see time as an elastic…long and straight, but somehow the time benders have figured out a way to SSSTTTTTeeeEEEETTCH the elastic so that there are magic little pockets of time. I know that this is PROBABLY not true. People probably aren’t secretly hiding a time bending technique from me…but I must confess that I am starting to believe hard-core in time bending magic. I truly am!

I want to be a time bender!

Tukeyliciousness and balance

Happy Thanksgiving Canadian friends!

I am the designated turkey-maker this year. I must confess that while I really like cooking, I don't really adore turkey dinners. This is why my long-suffering husband gets turkey only once a year for Thanksgiving.

I'm certain that the leftovers will be glorious, though...

This has been a very welcome long weekend. The work week has been one of my longest ever. I made it home in time to see my son only one night this week. Entirely unacceptable. It is making me re-examine my work-life balance and question whether it is acceptable. I think that maybe it is not.

I should point out that I am usually able to manage daycare pick-up and regular home times...except for in the Fall. Fall is the busy time at work when I seem to disappear from my life for 3-4 months. This has always been OK with me until last year. Now I find the travel/overtime too big of a sacrifice. What to do?? I am left in the all too familiar quandary of figuring out a balance between a career that has been cultivated through hard work and my family (who will not be young forever). I don't remotely imagine that I am alone in this quest to find balance. I think that I just imagined that I had set my life up with a lot of room for balance before my son was born. Perhaps not as balanced as I thought. Hmmm...some more thinking and balancing will be required!

All this being said, work has also interfered with my crafting somewhat. Unlike a 2-year-old, crafting can stay up late with me. I have been coming home from work, eating some dinner, and then crafting late into the night! Sleep, shmeep. I am working furiously toward a shared November 14th deadline. Hello Ottawa crafters! More about that soon...

Just don't know where to start...

Life has been crazy busy lately...mostly in good ways. I have been travelling for work (boo!), but my boys (husband and son) came to meet me in Toronto by train (yay!). Evan was very excited to travel by train and behaved BEAUTIFULLY for his dad. We visited with family and went to the Toronto Zoo. Fun for everyone...and we were sure that Evan would adore the zoo. Ask him what his favourite animal is...? The truck (but of course!). At least it was a zoo-y safari truck.



The camel ride was also pretty exciting:




Doesn't Alice look lovely and gentle? (OK...I don't actually know the camel's name, but why would you name a camel anything other than Alice?).


That lovely young lady in the pictures (no...not Alice the camel - the human one), is my cousin's daughter and Evan took a total shine to her. Notice how he wouldn't let go of her hand - not even in the safari truck! That is devotion. He was pretty smitten (and cute!). I was worried that it might be too much for a 10-year old girl, but she was lovely with him. Thanks Alexandra!

We stayed at my aunt and uncle's house (where we were married!). They have a lovely house that backs onto a small forest and stream. So very relaxing. On Friday night my aunt and I sat outside by a fire (with a lovely glass of wine) while my uncle and husband admired the largest TV that I have ever seen.

I don't know how to put this (it will possibly sound very hokey)...We don't have any family in our adopted home town. Much of the time this is just fine. We have built a close community with dear friends who serve as family. We are happy. But - there is something so easy and peaceful about passing time with your family. People who know your history...maybe this means that they "get" you in a way that others can't access? Maybe the pressure is off because they HAVE to love you?? I don't really know, but there is something very easy and centering about spending time with family. (Told you it would sound hokey.)

Back into the real world routine (at top speed). I'll post about my fun flea market finds in my next post.

Quel désastre!!

OK, so a summer of fabric ordering and in & out of my craft room has resulted in a MESS! I was not feeling inspired or happy facing the chaos that has taken over (somehow the chaos in the rest of the house is OK...fixing it would take too much time away from crafty pursuits!).

I saw a great tutorial on folding fabric...YEEESSSS, you read right. I really like folding fabric. I like ironing it, folding it, then I stack and re-stack it into happy little piles. I find that it clears the mind of any worries and fills it with happy pattern and bold colour instead. Mmmmm....soothing and peaceful. OOoohmmmMMMMmmmmm.

I have the world's smallest craft space. I think that it is around 7X8 (that might be generous!) and is shared with the recycling bins. It is small...but I am SO grateful for it! It's the first time that I've ever had a dedicated craft space that was mine. It is such a luxury to be able to leave the sewing machine out. It frees me up to steal a few minutes for sewing here and there (without using up all of that time hauling all of the gear out). It means that I can leave all of my crafty things out on display. It means that I have my very own little "haven". Do some of you feel similarly about the crafty space you have managed to carve out in your life???

An ode to a kitty

When I started this blog I had decided that I would only blog about things that make me happy. Kind of make it my own safe little "happy place". No blogging about work woes, the leaking roof (and it sometimes does!), disagreements with family, and all of life's normal hiccups. It is meant to be a place to remind me of some of the things that I find fulfilling in life. You may have noticed...I haven't posted much in the past few weeks.

Our cat fell suddenly ill and had to be put to sleep. It's been a tough couple of weeks watching him struggle and make difficult decisions on his behalf.

While this seems like very sad news (and IT IS - at least it has been for our family!), I have decided that it was my blog - so I can break my own rule (!) and that I would put up a few pictures and memories of Melvin-the-cat that make me happy (thereby fitting it within the "happy blog" mandate). So without further ado, here are a few shots of Melvin T. Howe. Great cat and major trouble-maker.

Melvin (like many cats, I would imagine) was quite particular about who he liked...and if he didn't like you, he let you know! He used to nip my mother in the bum while she sat for meals at our dining room table. He once tried to back an overnight guest (a grown man) out of our house. He had his group of "people" and if you weren't one of them he wasn't always very kind. HOWEVER...if you were lucky enough to be in Melvin's inner circle you were privileged. Melvin would cuddle up with you, "chat" with you and hold vigil over you if you were tired, sick or unhappy. He was also a near constant companion when I was up at nights caring for my newborn son. He often sat in the chair across from me while I was crafting - just observing the process, unless he was "helping" by sitting on whatever project I was focusing on. Here are some shots of Melvin the "craft helper":

Alright. Now that I have that out of my system, I promise to be back with a few more crafty-type posts very soon.

And so it begins...

Look what arrived for me in the mail today! Hooray!

I immediately set about readying this stack for quilt production (washing, drying, ironing, folding, stacking and re-stacking). I had already passed many minutes daydreaming about the sort of quilt that this fabric might become and had decided that it is destined to be a zig zag quilt for some lucky baby. Once I had the fabric in hand I couldn't resist sketching out some plans:

How does everybody else go about planning a quilt? I love this phase. It's all day dreaming and planning! I usually sketch something out. It helps me to understand how the pieces will fit together. I am often WRONG in my measurements...but I must admit that it doesn't really bother me much. I'll just add rows as needed to get to the measurement that I want in the end.

It was a really quiet night spent on my own. My son was sleeping upstairs and my husband retired to bed early to try to fight off a nasty cold that is brewing. I put my iPod on shuffle and opened the windows so I could listen to the mix of music and the fantastic thunderstorm that was brewing outside. While I listened, I cut & cut and stitched. I have always thought of myself as a very social person, but sewing has really made me value the time I get to spend on my own - a LOT!

Once I start..

I found out that Pink Chalk Fabrics is having a sale. It's a good one. I had to talk myself off the ledge. While I didn't purchase everything my heart desires, I managed to pick up some fantastic deals. Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for the good mail to arrive!

I did treat myself to my very first Japanese print:

Cute, non?

I also started full force on free motion quilting my Tula Pink baby charm quilt (I will really have to come up with a better name!). I am pleased to report that I decided to "just get it done" and go with the "free motion" flow. Very challenging for me - but I discovered that after an hour (or two!) of fighting with the quilting, I really did enjoy just letting the random quilting pattern happen. It is not perfect, but I think that I am learning to be OK with that. As my good friend keeps saying "It's handmade!". I am feverishly working on the binding and will post pictures once the project is complete...stay tuned!

How to overcome...

Turns out that I am type A...seriously type A.

I have finished the quilt top for my friend's baby. It has even been sandwiched. I have been attempting to free motion quilt the sucker, but have pulled it out several times for the following reasons:

1. the quilting is too close together


2. the quilting is too far apart


3. the stitches are too long


4. the stitches are too short


5. the stitches overlap


6. there is a pucker in the fabric


7. I am seriously too type A

Perhaps you will see more crafty type posts when I overcome my personality flaws?