I figure if I start making decorations and presents in July then surely people will actually get something from me come December 25th. Maybe. We’ll see. After the last craft fair I found myself so crafted out I didn’t pick up a needle for over a month and I decided that I will try prevent that happening this time by starting a long term project before the fair that will carry me through. This will be our third Christmas together and the first we will have space for a tree. Seriously, we never even had space for a twig in a vase before now. But finally I get my very own Christmas tree. And rather than buy the nasty nasty cheap mass produced ornaments that are in my price range I want to make ornaments that have meaning for us. So I have drawn up a list (note to self: draw up a list so I can mean what I type) so that over the next 5 months I can make the ornaments that will form the basis of our family tree.

I’m still working on presents. But theres still time. 5 months is probably cutting it a bit tight (for me) but I’ll pull it off in the end I’m sure.

Yeah I know, worst blog entry ever but man, I really don’t think I am cut out for craft fairs. So much stress! Will I sell lots? Or anything at all? Will I have enough change? Will people like my stuff? Saturday can’t come soon enough.

New and very cool embroidery patterns are sprouting everywhere right now and it’s all I can do to keep up. I try to buy as little as possible these days (made easy by poverty haha!) but we all have a weakness. And oh my, embroidery patterns are my weakness.

New to the embroidery scene is Pimp Stitch. Four very talented women ‘keeping your stitching hand strong’ with some very cool patterns.

Sublime Stitching has new patterns!! Yay!! I want them!! My favourite three are going to be my present to myself after the craft fair. Or four. Probably not more than that. Probably not.

Wee Wonderfuls has just released the final seasonal fairy The Picnic Fairy. I will also be treating myself to this after the craft fair. I always wait for Hillarys new patterns like a kid trying to sleep on Christmas Eve. Remember that agony of a night that would never end?

Jenny from Allsorts has given a sneak peek of a pattern she’ll be selling by the end of the US summer. There’s going to be FIVE designs. Oh the cuteness!!

And of course there’s also Etsy. Heaps of artist made patterns and also plenty of vintage Aunt Martha’s patterns.

Everything has suddenly come due at once. I have to write two stories by Friday night. I have one plot and about 7 lines. I am also working mad hard on an embroidery as an example for the beginners embroidery workshop I am teaching at the craft fair on July 19th - assuming people are interested of course! I’ll be teaching 4 basic stitches and we’ll be practising them and then starting the Craft 2.0 panda which people will take away with them to finish. They get the hoop and needle and floss plus a handout with heaps of info, tips and websites and 90 minutes with moi. I’d pay for that. Look for a very very cool picture of my finished embroidery in my next entry. I’m about to start offering beginners classes and private lessons for kids and adults too. I put off beginning embroidery for so long so I’m hoping that if I offer classes then perhaps people will get up and just do it.

Anyway things are under way but…there’s two types of people. Those who do their important things then relax with time to spare. And those who don’t. I went to the thrift store yesterday. I cleaned the house this evening. Vacuumed even. And now I’m blogging. And thinking of a shop update for tomorrow. Guess which type I am.

Yesterdays thrifting produced a good haul though, which has been rare of late. A mint condition copy of The Poky Little Puppy. I read it as a child and I nearly squealed when I saw it. And these doilies. A couple are stained and need to be died but they are all craft inspiration galore:

We had the adoption ‘group information session’ last night. It was a bit of a poorly organised farce and I came away from it feeling oh so slightly depressed. They had the wrong powerpoint slides on the computer and on top of that they forced us to sit through a terribly acted role play. And then there was the sobering statistics. They aren’t good. And they’re getting worse fast. They don’t know why either. It’s a little lot heartbreaking to repeat the numbers. Three years ago the Wellington region had 30 couples on the waiting list. That year they had 16 adoptions. You had roughly a 50% chance of being picked in a year or less. Currently there is now 40 couples waiting and in the past 12 months there has been 5 adoptions. Which means a lot of people are going to be waiting a long time. I don’t ‘do’ waiting very well.

This hasn’t put me off applying, very little could, and we’ve decided to put our application in for the 2 day education ‘thingy’ in early September. It isn’t the next course but we need time to try find a smaller house to move to and choose our character referees and that sort of thing. I have my eye on a GORGEOUS townhouse, so fingers crossed. We actually had a cat sighting there a few days ago, how weird!!

In the meantime it’s only a few days short of the middle of the year so I decided it’s time to assess how things stand. Life, relationship, crafts, career, personal, you know what I mean. That’s going to take some thinking for sure. I got my ravelry invite today, just as my blue knitting fell apart. I managed two whole rows before I ended up with a mystery loop thing. I was doing so well until that loop appeared, the whole fell apart in a matter of seconds and I stomped off in disgust. Knitting, bah!

Here’s a random photo of something beautiful, just to keep me positive

I’m just really proud of making this little guy. He’s the hardest thing I have sewn without a home economics sewing teacher to help me. There’s hope for me yet.

Finding a free bar of chocolate in the mail on a Saturday was the sign that it was going to be a very good day.

We got given a free box of chocolates by my grandma later too. And both my grandma then my mother had a chocolate cake waiting for us to have a slice. My mother and I also the now familiar discussion where I said I want to learn to knit and my mother ’shows me how’. By that I mean she waves the needles and yarn around in front of my eyes faster than I can understand, says “you twst it like this to cast on then you do this and do this and do this and there you go, you’re all set” and a row of stitches appear out of nowhere. She then hands the needles to me and I….fumble a lot to produce 4 stitches. This is going to have to wait until after the craft fair in a month but I’ll knit a usable something by the end of the year damn it! I’m not fussy about what, just something usable. Set the standards low and I just might achieve it. It’s part of my 101 in 1001 too (theres a link up the top of the page).

One thing I will NOT be able to knit anytime soon is anything complicated like a bunny. My mother knitted one at my request and she gave me the parts today to sew together. I am really not going to like sewing it together. For one thing one ear is 8 rows too short. Good one mum.

Here’s what he’s supposed to look like:

His current state:

And I’m also elbows deep in sewing Peanut the elephant from one of my favourite books. Not complicated but lots of little parts. A lot to do but truthfully…chocolate and lots of it, craft projects and lots of them equal a very good day.

The baby basket is a basket in the cupboard where I put all the stuff I have collected for my future baby. It sits next to my thrifted dolls cradle. There’s a few little onesies I bought to try applique on (and still need to try), two exquisite birds from Eva, a absolutely gorgeous wooden rattle that is going to become a family heirloom, various childhood toys I want to pass on and now it’s being filled with the toys I make. Not the good toys, oh no, those are going to the craft fair. Perhaps it will get a few of them if they don’t sell. These are the first tries where the closing seam went funny shaped, the toy that would look better with ears, the too good to throw out but too odd to sell sort of stuff. That really makes me sound bad, doesn’t it? I will make him or her plenty of good toys too, I am just getting in early and putting aside things that rattle that he/she/it can play with when it’s young enough not to know or care that mama has a shitty slipstitch.

These went in the basket today. The ball closure down one side looks like someone took a bit out of it and the little rattle (everything I make has bells in it lately, I have baby rattles on the mind)…well I think it looks better with ears but it still may wind up on my stall next month. I’m going for a wide variety of stock and that includes tiny little things that cost exactly the same amount of change you have in your purse Very convenient.

In the absence of anything intelligent, life changing or funny to say and no new crafts to show right now here’s some stuff that has seriously been inspiring me on flickr lately. The cat picture is not so much inspiring as just plain hilarious.

1. How to Make a Chocolate Chip Cookie, 2. Pattern sample all stitched up, 3. “Some sayings about birds” embroidery, 4. leftover thread, 5. pink doe, 6. Stitched by Hand ATC, 7. whisks, 8. DSC_0027, 9. DSC_0027, 10. Tweet, 11. Embroidery - Japanese Design, 12. Colorway Quilt Done, 13. worker animals, 14. The Purple Monogram, 15. Mothers Day Gifts, 16. Weekend

I have bells on the brain. Well baby rattles probably but really anything that tinkles. When we got the cat back we promptly put a garish flouro yellow collar on him with a bell on it. Wearing a collar was never his thing plus we further tortured him by writing his name and phone number on it in large letters. So we have spent the last couple of months with the tinkle of a bell in our ears. The nightly tinkle as he comes to join us in bed, the 4am tinkle as he decides its breakfast, the 6am tinkle when he decides that surely it’s breakfast time now. The random tinkles from outside as he skitters around. And so I guess between that and baby fever I was really bound to come up with these baby rattle balls. They have two big bells in each one, which give them a perfect rattly sound. Hand stitched too. The stitches are visible which gives it that really handcrafted look. You can see that all 30 seams were stitched with love….love stitches indeed. This is why I craft.

I have to apologise for the lack of a giveaway which I promised. I have taken on way too many commitments lately and need to cross some off before I take on more. One of my 101 in 1001 tasks involves writing down all my financial data so I know where I’m at. There’s a reason I have avoided that task for so long. The truth is not pretty. But there is now only 19 days until we attend the adoption information evening and get the application pack (and you KNOW I’m filling out the forms asap) and that really means it’s time to take stock of…everything. My finances, Dave’s finances, our spending habits and where we tend to haemorrhage money etc. I realised yesterday that despite having not so much to live on we really could be spending it all a lot more efficiently. Especially with the impending first winter month’s heating bill. And in fact simply BECAUSE we have not so much income is the best reason of all to use it more efficiently. It ain’t going to be easy but it’s going to be well worth it!

The plan includes:

• changing banks - between us we’ll save up to $15 a month in fees between us. $180 saved in a year simply by having lower bank fees! That’s a lot of money we’re just giving away each year.
• My writing is set to make me more money than ever this year.
• We’ve replaced a lot of our lightbulbs with eco bulbs. We don’t know if the savings are that noticable to our power and the fact that they have mercury in them (how is that ECO??) makes me mad but the theory is that we won’t have to buy any lightbulbs during the time we’re living in this place.
• Planning meals for the next week or more at a time
• More home cooking (I actually don’t miss takeaways hardly at all, only one place
• Not turning the heater on until as late in the day as possible
• Not running a load of laundry or dishes until the load is as full as possible. It costs the same for a half empty or full load.
• The spare change jar - it’s actually surprisingly effective once you get into the habit.
• Selling all the stuff we don’t need or use. I’ll donate the rest. Having clear spaces makes it easier to be creative and lifts your mood.
• Not buying new stuff. Do I really need it? Chances are the answer is no.
• Dave is taking on lots of cash work. Computers always need some sort of help.

We’re lucky, Dave has a work car with free petrol. In an ideal world we’d walk places, eco-changes as well as fiscal ones. But for now we’re doing what we can where we can in a way that won’t overwhelm us. Do you have any ideas that I haven’t thought of? I’d love to hear them.

And just so this isn’t a photoless post here’s my finished cat and mouse skittles. They only took me 9 months to finish!