Month: October 2013

Scary Little Pumpkin

Scary Pumpkin!

I was going to whinge on about how poorly I’m feeling (working day seven of nine today, half term holidays, should have taken the opportunity not to work the weekend when my boss offered it to me but I’m a sucker for agreeing to stuff), how frustrating the house move continues to be (blocked drains, compost heap full of dog waste, where have the removal men hidden my laundry?!), or how I haven’t knitted anything or checked my email for nearly two weeks (argh!!), but instead I thought I’d show you this lovely picture of my little niece being a scary pumpkin.

As mentioned when I made it, this is Butterick 3772, and I have to say it’s been a brilliantly versatile little pattern!

Milly's First Birthday Party

I made one for her first birthday, which she wore as a dress, and then as a top, until the armholes got too tight.

Milly & Me

I made another one for her second birthday, this time with an enormous pocket on the front.

The pattern has loads of cute variations, although I’ve only ever made the simplest version, with a bit of lace or an improvised pocket. (Or a puffball hem and a pumpkin face. As you do.) Up to age 3 you only need a metre of 44″ wide fabric which, given the size of my stash, is pretty easy to come by. You can squeeze the smallest size out of half a metre, if you use a different fabric for the facings. In fact, I only used a metre for the pumpkin version, which is fully lined.

To be honest, it’s such an easy dress to make that I feel like a very bad aunty for not making more! Maybe once I’ve unearthed my sewing machine, I can have a rummage through the fabric mountain and make a few more.

First Fruit

First Fruit

We’re finally in to the new house, starting to get settled. Things have been a little more difficult than we expected. The previous owner was a smoker, and also had a great big dog. This has meant that we’ve had an awful lot more cleaning to do than we anticipated. We’ve already cleaned the place once, and had the carpets shampooed, but the entire house is still covered in a layer of nicotine and dog hair. Quite disgusting, and I’m beginning to despair of ever getting rid of the smell that’s still coming from the living room carpet.

But!

One of the reasons I wanted to buy this house in particular is because it has the most lovely garden. (Well, it will be. Once we’ve got rid of all the dog mess and cigarette butts. And pruned all the abandoned shrubs.) It’s much bigger than our old garden, about thirty metres (100 feet) long, and it already has a vegetable patch and some fruit trees. The pear tree is very young, and hasn’t grown any pears at all this year. The apple tree is also young, but has managed to produce about a dozen little Braeburns! Most of them are still hanging on very tightly, but we’ve picked these three which look lovely. Yes, a little nibbled in places, but we’re thrilled to have lots of wildlife in our new garden too.

We also managed to grab a couple of handfuls of sloes from the well-established blackthorn tree at the bottom of the garden. Although the tree didn’t seem to be excessively full of thorns, which makes me wonder whether they might in fact be damsons. More investigation necessary, I think!

It’s going to take a couple of years to get the vegetable patch sorted, I think, though there’s a greenhouse and a shed and a nice big rhubarb plant to get me started. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I’m really looking forward to it.

Leaving somebody behind

Chrysalis in the Shed

As I was taking down the curtains in the Shed, I discovered this little butterfly chrysalis – it’s about an inch long. (The grey and black fuzzy bits are dust and sewing fluff. How embarrassing. I do not keep a tidy Shed.)

The internet suggests that it’s probably a Large White, which seems likely, as we had plenty of them fluttering across the garden this year. Sadly, I won’t be around to see it emerge.

I hope Gemma, who will be taking over the Shed (and the house!) on Friday, will allow it to stay put.

Emergency Book Pile

Emergency Book Pile

Paul is optimistic that the removal men will be able to waltz in on Friday, finish off the packing, whisk everything into the back of a truck, and have all our belongings spirited away in no time at all.

I, as usual, am less optimistic.

I keep looking around the house (and especially in the Shed) and seeing the mountains of things still not in boxes. And the mountains of boxes without lids, or labels, and insecurely taped.

These books are deliberately not in boxes, as they’re the ones I think I’l most need while all the others are packed away.

(Yes, the coloured pencils will be going into the same bag!)

Hello Snail.

13/10/13

Today I had rather a long wait for the bus home from work (and there aren’t any buses to my new house on a Sunday, which is going to be awkward), so I decided to play around with the camera again while I was waiting. Hello snail!

13/10/13

Expecting my camera to be all “no, I’m not focussing anywhere you want, hahaha”, I was pleasantly surprised when it decided to prove me wrong.

(Yes, I realise my camera is inanimate. I don’t think that prevents it from having moods, or trying to thwart me at every possible opportunity.)

13/10/13

This little bit of lichen is about a centimetre across. About the same size as the snail’s shell, in fact. And today, my camera had no problem at all taking this picture.

13/10/13

Or this one. In low light, and in the rain, no less.

13/10/13

Goodbye snail.

Fuzzy red apple

Pompom apple

It’s Apple Day at the Museum of English Rural Life next Saturday – October 19th. I needed to come up with an apple-related activity for families, but because my usual teaching space is being turned into a café for the day we’ll be doing the activity in the museum itself. Because a large number of our objects are on open display, this means the activity has to be very clean – no glue, no glitter, no paint.

Enter this ridiculously cute apple pompom! I used a mug as a template for the outer circle, and a bottle of tipp-ex for the centre. This results in a pompom about the size of a tennis ball, and uses about 20 metres of chunky wool. After you’ve tied off the centre of the pompom, you just wrap a pipe cleaner through before you remove the cardboard, and then twist the ends into a stalk and a leaf. Ta-da!

I know it’s just a simple little thing, but I’m disproportionately pleased with how this has come out. The yarn is so soft, and the pompom is a lovely size, and I might just have to rummage through my yarn stash and make some for myself! I’m usually opposed to the making of novelty yarn items that have no functional value, but I can feel myself being strongly swayed by this one.

If you want to make one for yourself, all you need to do is take yourself and 50p (plus the £1 entrance fee for adults) down to MERL next weekend!

Milly’s Pumpkin Dress

Milly's Pumpkin Dress

It’s two years since I last made a hallowe’en costume for Milly, so I thought I’d better fulfil my role of Aunty Who Sews, and make another one!

My Mum spotted a knitted pumpkin hat in a magazine, which is what gave me the idea to make a matching pumpkin dress.

This is Butterick 3772, in orange polycotton, with black felt for the face. I think it’s the third one of these that I’ve made now. This one’s fully lined, partly because the fabric’s quite thin, and partly because I wanted to bag out the hem to create a puffball effect. The lining was cut about an inch shorter at the hem, and about an inch narrower on each side. The top layer was then gathered to match, and the difference in length between the inside and the outside pulls the seam underneath. It’s not quite as puffy as I’d have liked, but I think it will look very cute!

And now, at long last, we have a moving date! After months of waiting, we’re making the move next Friday! Eek! So, this is the last thing I’ll sew (by machine, at any rate) before we move. My task for this afternoon is to pack up the machines, and start shoving the rest of the contents of the Shed into boxes. Wish me luck!

Time to rest

19/06/2012

Today I am mostly feeling sorry for myself. Anyone who reads my personal Facebook page would be forgiven for thinking this is nothing unusual – my status is quite often me whingeing about some aspect or other of my health that’s gone a bit wrong. Today’s is quite a spectacular one though – I’ve managed to put my back out. OUCH. I did it yesterday – a particularly annoying finale to what had been a really good weekend!

On Saturday we popped into town with some friends for Reading Town Meal. An annual event, with lots of stalls about wildlife, sustainability and local food – and a free meal, cooked by catering students from the local college, from food donated by local allotment holders and home growers. We sat on a hill in the Forbury Gardens to eat our vegetable curry, beetroot and bean salad, and fruit crumble. Yum!

(Paul didn’t go for the vegetable curry – he bought a massive pork pie from one of the stalls. I have to say it looked good!)

In the afternoon I went to a BIG SING organised by the Witt Studio Chorus. We spent three hours rehearsing a medley of songs from The Sound of Music, and then gave a small performance for friends and family. I used to be a regular member of the chorus, but had to give it up earlier in the year, mainly because I could no longer stay out late on a Wednesday and then be awake and functional in time to go to work on a Thursday. I enjoyed it very much, but I was reminded just how strenuous singing can be – I was exhausted when I got home, and in bed by 9pm!

Twelve hours’ sleep later, on Sunday we made an impromptu trip to Hughendon Manor, where they were having a 1940s WW2 weekend. Again, we had a really good time, enjoying the re-enactment displays, and particularly the talks given by Stephen Wisdom. We’d seen him at one of the big multi-period re-enactment events a few years ago, and Paul couldn’t resist the opportunity to see his “Mr Punch vs Mr Hitler” puppet show again! The weather was so glorious that we sat on the lawn in full sunshine, wondering why on earth we’d come out with scarves and gloves.

When we got home, I wanted to pop round to the corner shop. Unfortunately, as I bent over to pick up my bag, something right across my lower back went PING and caused me to do rather a lot of squealing and hopping and yelling. Oops.

I went to the corner shop on crutches, and spent this morning on crutches too, hissing and ow-ing every time I tried to move. Thankfully a heat pad, a short walk, and some stretching later, and the pain has downgraded to quite severe sciatica, which I can cope with a lot more easily. (As someone with long-term hip problems, I get sciatica a lot.) Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be well enough to go to work – and I have been very glad that today was my day off!

So, to everyone who thought I was bonkers for doing so much on my previous day off, you’ll be pleased to know that I have actually spent this one resting. I’ve only done a few rows of knitting, I haven’t made anything, I haven’t packed anything for the house move – I’ve just rested. Shame it took a serious complaint from my spine to force me into it, but there you go.

Playing with Kuler

 

This is a screenshot from the Adobe Kuler app on my phone.

I’d read about it on the Spoonflower blog, back in August. They sometimes run design challenges requiring a limited colour palette, and this particular one was run in conjunction with Adobe.

You point Kuler at a photo, and it picks out a selection of compatible colours for you. (You can also start from scratch, with a colour wheel, but that’s not really the part I’m interested in.) You can choose from five pre-set moods, or you can choose your own set of colours directly from the image.

I was thinking about the photographs I stuck in a scrapbook the other week, and wondered whether pasting the colour charts into the empty space left by a square image on a 6×4″ print would be a worthwhile thing to do.

Looking at this image, I’m not sure. Sticking all five colour charts together like this makes it harder to see the subtle differences between them, and I think I much prefer the phone screenshot, where you can just see the one.

I do wish there was a better way of saving the colour chart alongside the original photo. The ones from my phone are screenshots taken before I pressed the tick to save the colours. Once you’ve done that, the photo goes away, and you’re left with just the chart.

From the website you can download the colour charts as .ase files which you can import into Photoshop’s swatch panel, which is very useful, and it will also show you the rgb and hex codes for the individual colours. But again, once you’ve chosen your colours and clicked save, the original image is lost. Screenshots it is then, I suppose!

Mind you, as evidenced by the shield bug above, the original photo doesn’t have to be well-composed or even slightly in focus in order for the app to work! You can also use the phone’s camera to pick colours from life, without having to use a saved image.

All of this is making me yearn for a better camera/phone hybrid though. My iPhone is a 3gs, which is quite old now, so the camera’s not all that great. The one I keep seeing advertised is the Samsung Galaxy S4, which runs on Android. If all the apps I currently use on my phone (not that many, it has to be said) could be run on this, then I might be inclined to make the switch. Not that I can afford it right now… but for a truly compact camera, that can take quick snaps and upload them on the fly, this might be the way forward for me.

(Although even just typing that sentence is making me miss my SLR. I am nothing if not fickle.)

Still struggling with the camera

Maiden Erleigh Nature Reserve

Today started as a tired, sore, germy day (again!), which could easily have lapsed into watching rubbish on tv and malingering on the sofa. So I decided to take the camera for a very short walk, so I would have at least got out of the house and done something.

As you can see, I’m still really struggling to get the dratted machine to focus where I want it to. I love the picture above – two rosemary leaf beatles in the lavender in my front garden. But is is actually in focus? Anywhere? No, it is not. And this is the only picture I managed to get where the camera didn’t categorically insist on focussing on the background instead of the dratted thing right in front of the dratted lens. Read on, for more of the same.

Maiden Erleigh Nature Reserve

This was supposed to be a lovely juxtaposition between the shiny arch of the padlock, and the rusted texture of the chain. What I wanted to focus on was the place where the three links overlap. Would the camera do that? No.

Maiden Erleigh Nature Reserve

This one, on the other hand, came straight out of the camera first time! Lovely depth of field, focussed exactly where I wanted it. Brilliant! Would the camera do it again, so I could have a choice of shots? No.

Maiden Erleigh Nature Reserve

Okay, this one I do like. I’m less bothered that the petal tip closest to the lens is out of focus, because that means you can see the texture on the inside of the petals. Who knew flowers were hairy? Now you do.

Maiden Erleigh Nature Reserve

And this one – lovely. Straight out of the camera. Automatic macro mode. Focus on the water droplets. Exactly what I wanted. The camera almost had me lulled into a false sense of security…

Maiden Erleigh Nature Reserve

…until it needed more than twenty shots before it would focus on this leaf, and not on the dratted trees in the background. (I may have resorted to pointing at the leaf, and hissing through clenched teeth “IT’S RIGHT THERE, YOU STUPID CAMERA”.)

Maiden Erleigh Nature Reserve

And then it was fine again. Aren’t the colours in this lichen amazing?

Maiden Erleigh Nature Reserve

Dear Camera, No.
Really, what were you thinking? You do seem to have tried to focus on the raindrops on this blade of grass, but sadly you have failed. Even at 2736 pixels across, I can’t work out where the point of focus is in this photo.

Maiden Erleigh Nature Reserve

Thankfully this one, being almost entirely flat, was no trouble at all. Phew.

I suppose, in the great scheme of things, if all I want these photos for is to print them out at 10cm square and stick them into a scrapbook, it really doesn’t matter whether or not they’re great works of art in their own right. They’re just a means of capturing a little bit of something that I can use for inspiration later on. But in that case, why on earth did I bother to trade in two SLRs (one film, one digital) for a not-very-compact camera with a lot of manual functions, if none of them will actually do what I want? I’m beginning to wonder whether I might have been better off buying a small, cheap, very compact little camera – or maybe one of the new ones that can wirelessly synch straight to Flickr and Facebook.

As it turned out, the best part of my little walk today was something that I could never have captured on camera, and I’m very glad I didn’t try. The lake was so quiet that when I walked down onto one of the fishing bays, a Great Crested Grebe turned out to be about a foot away from me, the closest I’ve ever seen one! And as it quickly swam away, its path was crossed by the turquoise flash of a kingfisher flying right in front of it. Perfect.