The weekend flew....

Another weekend gone and I have been stuck in the house trying to get my first hat order ready. I have three hats completed and just need linings added. I have two more that need to be assembled but are nearly there. The red and white hat (pictured below) I made using my Solufleece that finally arrived in the post this week. I find that this process is hard on sewing machine needles, so it's good to have a gross of them on hand. I have the lining in this one, so it is technically finished, but I am not happy with it and I will take the lining out and have a bit of a redo.
Since it has been mostly wet, I have the perfect excuse for ignoring the growing grass. If I wait another week I might get away with the last mowing of the autumn. I do love gardening, but I just don't seem to have the time or good weather to do as much as I would like. I have planted some hyacinths, narcissus, and crocus for spring, but I would like to get some more tulips and dig up some of the FREE monbretia that grow wild all over.

All these projects must come to an end as the Dingle Food Festival is on next weekend, if we aren't all suffering from indigestion from the Lisbon Treaty Referendum on Friday. This is the third year and it keeps getting better and better. The taste trail will be in full swing and all the food booths. I have heard rumor of the taste trail moving out west of Dingle with a bus tour to get us all to and from. This is a fab idea and I am hoping to sample much food and beverage. It goes without saying that the small boy will be happy enough to eat his way across Kerry....

I have a big order from http://www.fibrecrafts.com/ coming this week as part of my winter stockpiling efforts. I also discovered http://www.fabricland.co.uk/ and they have a mad kind of website but there is a tremendous amount of fabric and notions there. Their prices are outstanding. They have the best price on Solufleece and the satin lining fabric that I need for hat linings. Take a look!

The minimal amount of house cleaning and laundry was done this weekend so we should survive without being declared dangerous or smelly. I did make lovely calzones for dinner tonight. I seem to be failing to impress the small boy with dinners lately. I thought homemade calzone was a great dinner, but he pronounced it disgusting. This, after I made the sauce and dough and baked the feckin things. I did remind him sharply that not a lot of mom's bother to make things from scratch, but I'd say that landed on the floor before it could reach his ears. He seems to want to eat nothing but crap lately, but I just can't let him get away with that. Perhaps if I starved him for a day he would have a better attitude about eating what's put in front of him...? Sigh.

I am eagerly awaiting my Eason's order in the post. It contains Embroidered Books by Isobel Hall. Hall previously wrote Bags with Paper and Stitch and both books are luscious eye candy. I have been toying with the idea of making handmade books or at least really gorgeous felted and embroidered covers. I will wait for a rainy day and sit in my pajamas and read it with a cup of coffee. It goes without saying that it will be sans child.

Now, I really don't think my newly felted flowers are going to bead themselves.....

Well here I am again on a Sunday. I am always hoping to post more often, but once a week seems to be my regular posting. I actually got a lot of work done finishing projects up. I have a commission for a butterfly grouping for a child's bedroom and I felted the pieces ages ago and have just gotten around to doing the embroidery and bead work to finish them up. I should finish the third butterfly tonight and then just the ladybird (or ladybug for the Americans) to work on tomorrow.

It's amazing that I got ANYTHING done today at all with Kerry winning the All-Ireland and my son being grounded for the weekend. It's so hard to concentrate when they need to eat every hour and want to be entertained. It would be much easier to throw small boy outside and relax, but he cannot stay out past dark on a school night and Wednesday evening found me knocking on six doors before I could locate my wayward son and get him home. Not good. So I am cracking down and I doubt that he will chance sundown before heading home now.

I am hemming and hawing about craft shows. I did one craft show last year and I made no money at all on it. The stuff I sent was good but people were just not buying. Do I go again and hope for the best or do I forget it as the time and money for prep will just not be worth it??? When you make lovely, handmade things it's hard when people do not buy, even with good prices.... I was thinking Christmas stars for tree top and ornaments for the tree and making bracelets with the children on the day (they choose beads and we can do together). It would be nice to sell a few hats and do a few jumpers, but they are all in the box from last year. I hate to spend too much time on things that may or may not sell.....Must spend time this week thinking about that.

Other than that, I have been bogged down by a cold and the postal strike in England that has hijacked supplies that I am waiting on for AGES. Give me my Solufleece!!! Perhaps I will start on more butterflies and a series of pins that may or may not sell.....

September, the transition month....

Hi folks. I have been a big ol slacker about postings lately. It seems like it has been rather hard to get back to normal after the summer. And the summer weather that suddenly arrived this week has not helped matters any! Homework for rang a haon is quite a step up and we have had great stress getting used to the spelling tests. Good news is that on the second test small boy got all words correct!

I am in transition because I am de-cluttering the house and trying to get ready for painting bedrooms and getting floors put down. How do children acquire so much crap??? I blame Happy Meals. I have two months of gardening to get done in the next few days because God only knows when we will have fair weather again, so I have gotten no craft projects done this weekend.

I am in transition because I have craft supplies en route and I can't wait to get started on new projects. I received most of the wool I ordered from yarnroom.com and I have a separate order coming from Fibrecrafts in England. I ordered a whole load of Solufleece as I just LOVE it. I love designing my own fabric and I have great ideas to get on with if it would ever get here.

I am in transition because men are driving me a bit crazy with their inability to make up their minds. After a week of dickering around, it is clear that he is too busy for me but does not want me going out with anyone else and is not prepared to do anything to make me feel secure, wanted, needed, appreciated etc. Bloody men anyway. I need my craft supplies to keep my head sane.

And the final transition appears to be out of my job. I am told that the Community Employment scheme that I am on is finishing at the end of October and I do not qualify for the additional two years because I don't have enough stamps. I am to go on the dole for a year and then I will qualify for the additional two years work. It makes no sense at all, but I am beginning to see how this might work out a bit. I will be dirt broke, but if I stock up on wool and beads and other supplies I might need, then maybe I can use the time to work on developing products. God knows I will have to do something productive to keep from going loopy at home. I completely dread being out of work through this recession, but there appears to be very fecking little I can do about it....

Well, I have been a bit of slacker lately. I haven't had a post in over a week, but I seem to be fighting to get on my own computer in the waning days of summer holidays. School starts Thursday!!! Hooray! I love my son, but back to a regular schedule and some peace of mind for mommy is in order.

I did finish this hat over the weekend. I used a new method that I found in Crazy Felt. You use Solufleece (available at Hickeys in Dublin or online at http://www.rainbowsilks.co.uk/) to sandwich your fibres between water soluble fabric. The fabric is like interfacing and is really easy to sew on. Once you have your fibres selected, lay them out on top of the first piece of Solufleece in an even manner. Then spray it with adhesive so nothing shifts and cover it with the second piece of Solufleece and pin the whole lot in place. You then stitch the whole lot in a random, free embroidery kind of way on the machine. The thread must capture the whole lot to hold together. When you are done, rinse it in warm water and you are left with a fabric you have created yourself! Very exciting.

Next time I do it I can photograph the whole process, but the final result turned out pretty good. I followed the pattern in the book for the first experiment and it turns out that the side piece needs to be a bit wider, so I added a bit of denim as trim to give it that bit more coverage. Don't know why I chose pink, but I am going to do a black and silver one next. The fibres are merino in various pinks, Wensleydale, fuscia satin, and micro fibre trim. It's easy, but I must stock up on thread as you do go through quite a lot to make sure you have the fibres caught up.

It's very tempting to stay up tonight and do another!!

Well, we are home and well recuperated from the English holiday. For the record, I would not recommend the earliest flight in from Stanstead as it means getting up in the middle of the night. Money is saved, but exhaustion is total.

Legoland was brilliant, but expensive. The small boy loved it! We went on lots of rides and he came home with a new Indiana Jones Lego piece to add to the collection. The London Zoo was excellent and the weather was picture perfect over the last weekend for it. There was a live animal show, a Bug House, gorillas, a butterfly habitat, a children's play/animal explore area, and all the usual suspects. We had a great time in London's parks; Holland Park had an excellent playground for bigger kids. We also caught Regent's Park, Greenwich Park, and Kensington Park. Kensington Park is the home of the Diana Memorial Park, which is the best kids park I have ever been in: a Peter Pan theme with a big pirate's ship sunk into sand, water features, tunnels, climbing, sand, swings, musical garden. It was a child's dream come true. Small Boy just stared in wonder and didn't know what to do first. Then he threw his shoes at me and ran for the ship. And it was FREE, enclosed, and people without kids can't get in and kids can't get out without parents. As an added bonus there were healthy kids meals served at the concession. To be honest, it was a lovely memorial to Diana and a bit of peace for parents in the summer. The kids just go play and come back when hungry. Why does Ireland not have lovely parks for kids???

The only disappointment was London Dungeons. We waited in line for an hour only to scare the pants off the small boy. It was just more appropriate for teenagers and a shame that they didn't state this on entry. Small boy kept saying "We are never going there again, Mommy!" Over and over til I felt truly guilty. To be honest, I could have skipped it, but I thought it was a fun way to do London history. Live and learn....In the picture of the two of us together in que at London Dungeons, the scar on my arm is all makeup. They were doing gory makeup for free and I got one; small boy was mortified as you can see from the pic.

Other than that, it was nice to spend time in the city. Small boy is a bit too independent and I had to keep pulling him back from his wandering ways. He asked me the first day "Why is everyone brown in London?" We were on Brick Lane in the Bangla/Pakistani/Indian area at the time and the comment was made in innocence, really. Kerry is still quite white and so I do want him to see that other parts of the world are much more diverse. I noticed that when he played on the playground, he never picked mates that were white, so maybe they do learn to be colourblind. Thank God.

Well, we are nearly ready to head away on holidays. I find that right before I head away, I am nearly at the breaking point with people, ready to yell or lose the plot at absolutely nothing. Of course, the small boy is excited about holidays and asking for the world before we leave town; he is six years old and full of WHOO-HOO about the whole thing. All I want is to finish packing, tidy the house for our return, and have a glass of wine so it actually feels like I am in holiday mode. I just need to purge the fridge of science experiments so that they won't be walking and talking when we get back home.

Camera ready and has new batteries-check! Phone charger and UK adapter-check! Clothes packed, London A-Z and travel paperwork all stowed. Just to throw in toiletries in the morning and away we go to Kerry International (ha!) Airport. All that is left is to CALM DOWN and actually enjoy myself. I must have the Big City Lecture with my son, as well. Living in a small town he has no idea about the dark element to life and London is a great deal bigger than Seattle. We need an If-I-Get-Lost plan just in case he goes day dreaming and wanders away. Normally I would say that I would never let this happen, but I will be shopping for fabric and, well, you know how it can get....a friend tells me on Brick Lane you can get silk for like €1.50 a metre. That alone makes my blood pressure go up.

The only possible glitch is that the neighbor boy has chicken pox. I don't care if small boy gets them, but the timing would be truly dreadful as Legoland has been the carrot that I have dangled in front of him for the last two months. No little dots yet, so I just have to watch and see. Too soon to worry about that yet!

It's time for me to start singing my holiday song....

The view of Connor Pass outside my front door. It looks fairly hazy, but the camera just isn't picking up the rain that is whizzing sideways. Fairly dirty stuff. On the other hand, there was bright sunshine in Dublin for Kerry to totally defeat the Dubs on their own home turf. Let them have the sun if we get to win!