May (and March and April) Days

Hello strangers, remember me ???!!!! Lost my blogging mojo for a while there, nothing worrisome going on, just life etc.



We had two weeks over in NIreland for Easter. You may remember that my Dad died at Easter last year, 2016. Very sadly, my uncle, my Dad's twin brother, died a year and 3 days after my Dad, just before Easter 2017, and of the same thing - cancer that had spread to lungs and stomach. We all just couldn't believe that the family had had to go through the same thing all over again. My Dad was the baby brother, well actually when they were born there were triplets, but the 3rd baby didn't survive, so technically my Uncle was the eldest and my Dad was the middle one. We took the children out of school to travel over a couple of days early for my Uncle's funeral, and once we had the funeral done we were able to settle down and enjoy our time over there. All the extended family are going to my cousin's wedding in a few weeks, and we were all saying how it will be lovely to get together as a family for a happy occasion for once. Whilst over there we had some lovely days out which I think deserve their own post so I'll share those another time, but for now here's a pic and maybe you can guess where we went.



As you may or may not know I am training for the New York Marathon (New York Baby!!!!) in November, and have been doing lots of events as part of my training. I did an obstacle colour run (where they throw paint at you while you leap around on big bouncy castles - such good fun) with my daughter ....


I also did a triathlon with a friend ....





As you can see the weather was fantastic for both of those :) Sadly (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), there are no photos of me during the swim section of the triathlon!
I've also been doing parkrun every Saturday morning. For those of you who haven't heard of parkrun, it is a free timed 5k event that runs every Saturday morning at hundreds of parks all across the UK and indeed there are some international parkruns too. Its not a race, just a run, you can sprint, run, jog, plod or walk, and bring your kids, buggies, or dogs. I very firmly fall in the plod category and I don't bring the dog as it would freak her out. Parkrun is very inclusive, runners of all abilities are welcomed, and it's free, as the whole thing is run by volunteers.




In other news our activities as a family have been somewhat curtailed by the fact that Little Tomboy broke her wrist! She fell off the playground play equipment at school, and although it wasn't REALLY bad, it was bad enough that she had to have an operation under general anaesthetic to straighten it. On my birthday. Hurrah. First time I'vve ever left the house on my birthday at 06:30 - as we had to be there by 7am.
Here she is in hospital recovering from the op - still smiling bless her - no overnight stay required thank goodness.



.... and at her checkup lat week ....



That's us in the hospital cafe having breakfast before her 08:30 appointment! 08:30! Have you ever tried to get a 9 year old to a hospital appointment in the centre of town before breakfast in rush hour traffic at the same time as getting the other 2 ready and off to school and then realising the patient has got dressed in normal clothes not school uniform even though she is going to school later so you've had an argument with her to get re-dressed. It wasn't terribly fun. Luckily the hospital cafe does a pretty good latte and The Best Pain Au Chcolat In The World, so that eased the pain. I am pleased to report she is doing very well, her arm barely hurts and she'll have the cast for just another couple of weeks. Currently we have covered the millions of signatures (very cool but she was bored of them!) with some rather fetching camo tape bought off amazon. And she's STILL smiling :)



Tomorrow we have Mr 13's birthday, he will be Mr 14. He's having 9 friends to go paintballing and very disappointingly I'm not allowed to join in. Too embarrassing obviously. He's very into his artwork at the moment, does a lot of computer art, loves media studies, animation and computing, but he also loves drawing and sketching with what I call Proper Pens. And Proper Pencils. At least I hope they're proper because they cost enough! Here's a little sketch that he did the other day in a cafe while we were waiting for lunch. With just the one blue pencil. I just love this and its pinned above my desk.



I popped into Hobbycraft today (can you tell whats coming) to buy him some more Proper Pens for his birthday but I seemed to come out with a load of yarn and fabric. No idea how that happened.



The fabric was reduced so of course I HAD to buy it, and I just loved the colours of the yarn, I'm going to use the Lionbrand Lamdscapes Yarn for a shawl/wrap and the caron cakes for lap sized blankets. And now I really really must stop buying craft materials of any sort. In fact I feel a no-spend challenge with associated blog posts coming along sometime soon ...

In crafting news its all been about the unicorns.  I'm selling them for charity to fundraise for my marathon for the National Autistic Society (Mr 13-soon-to-be-14 has autism). One lady wanted a large unicorn so here's what I made for her. The credit for the pattern goes to a lady called Marina Chuchkalova whose pattern I purchased on etsy.



I've also made loads of little ones but don't seem to have a photo. I'll take one of the next one I make. Other than the unicorns not a lot has been happening on the crochet front. But I'm hoping to rectify that this weekend, I'm going for a spa weekend for my cousin's hen-do, as these things go it's going to be a fairly non-rowdy event so my crochet is coming with me and I intend to sit about, drink prosecco, and do my crochet, all weekend :) Bliss!

Til next time,
Jillxxxxxx

Five on Friday

Hello dear friends and readers,

It's that time of the week again so today I am joining in with Five on Friday (hosted by my lovely friend Amy of Love Made My Home). This week has been a fairly quiet one although I seem to have spent ridiculous amounts of time ferrying children about and driving to and from various schools. My 3 Little People all go to different schools. Mr Teenager goes to a secondary school that's 4 miles away, with his autism he wouldn't cope with the bus so I drive him there and back each day. Little Miss is at our local catchment secondary school and walks there with her friends. She loves that independence, and even if it's tipping it down with rain she'd rather walk than have a lift from me. I'm so, like, embarrassing. And Little Tomboy is still at primary school so I walk her there and back. It's a bit of a juggling act and in the afternoon I don't always have time to drop Mr Teenager and my car at home before walking up to get Little Tomboy, so sometimes I pick her up on the way home in the car, but I prefer to walk if I can. Then you add in all the clubs (football, gymnastics, drama, guides, kickboxing, Photoshop-club, badminton) and its a wonder I am ever at home. 

Anyway enough waffle ... here are 5 snippets of my week .....

1. Little Tomboy's school had some duck eggs that they nurtured, and last week they hatched - great excitement. It wasn't in her year but we popped in to the relevant classroom after school one day to see them ..... Soooo fluffy and cute .....

2. On Monday the pre-school attached to our primary school had a fundraising bingo night. Just in the school hall, bring your own snack and drinks - bottle of rosé wine, don't mind if I do - do you like my heart paper-cups - so classy. It was a fun night, I won £5 (so it's not big money!) and a nice little raffle prize of some hand-cream. The raffle prizes are donated by people and are often unwanted gifts or bottles of wine, so it can be hit and miss. I have in the past won a bottle of wine which was so revolting I poured it down the sink. I know. Yes it was that bad. So nice hand-cream was a pleasant surprise :)

3. There has been a bit more in the way of sunshine and blue skies this week, and the daffodils are coming through. This is our local park which we pass on the way to school each day, and at which Little Miss hangs out with her friends. Even though she's at secondary school now you are never to old to play on a swing 😊 There's also a great little local cafe and of course all important sweet shop.

4. Little Miss goes to Guides and they've been working on their Confectionery badge. I think basically this teaches them how and where to get inordinate amounts of sugar into their diet. They need to learn how to make truffles and peppermint cremes, and at their meeting on Tuesday they made little icing cake-toppers. She made this one of a teddy sort of hanging over a moon, so sweet. Literally.

She also made cupcakes, but we aren't allowed to mention those because she stupidly left her bowl (containing her last cupcake) on the sofa in reach of Pixie. So, yes, it got eaten by the dog, cupcake case and all. Lots of tears. Mr EC (big softy) gave her a little bowl of Minstrels by way of consolation. She ate one then dropped the bowl on the floor so the dog got those too. More tears. We then sort of accidentally reminded her that she had wanted to give up chocolate for Lent, and a minstrel is ... well ... chocolate. Even more tears. Not a fun evening. Luckily the cake-topper did not meet with any calamity and is still intact.

5. We had a really lovely afternoon last Sunday out at our local National Trust Property, Basildon Park. If you follow Amy's blog Love Made My Home you will have heard about Basildon Park, as Amy works there, and I have also blogged about it before here. Mr Teenager is now of an age where he doesn't want to come along, and needs his own space and some peace from his sisters, so we leave him at home playing xbox online with his friends. This is a recent development for us: having to drag a reluctant autistic 12-13 year old everywhere is not fun let me tell you. He tries very hard but, due to the autism, anywhere new causes so much anxiety and upset, it's always a nightmare trying to get him to get ready and causes everyone to get super-stressed and grumpy before we've even left the house. So for us now to be able to leave him at home (and for him to be okay with that) is really a bit of a game-changer.

Anyway, back to Basildon Park.  So we went out with just the girls. This time we went slightly off-piste and instead of walking round the garden we followed one of the trails - the orange one - through the woodland. Ok, so not strictly off piste then, but a bit of an adventure nonetheless. We covered about 4 miles, we had one tired little doggy at the end. It was extremely muddy - we had a few slippages and near misses but nobody actually fell over.

You can just see the front of the house through this gap in the trees ....

I wish we could have taken credit for this awesome little shelter but it was not us who made it. Isn't it fab ?

The end of the walk brings you out at the side of the house ...

....and being back at the house means you are at the tea-room. They even have a special extra tea room where dogs are welcome 😊

In the above photo you can see a press/cupboard at the far end - here is a closer look. I just adore it, I'd love something like that in my kitchen however Mr EC is very much the minimalist and would definitely resist that decision. So perhaps best not to go there!

Hope everyone has had a great week.

Til next time,

Jillxxx

Five on Friday

Hello dear friends and readers,

It's nearly the end of February, can you believe it. We had half-term here just over a week ago, and I went to NIreland for the week. I'll share more on that another time, but for today I am joining in with Five on Friday (hosted by my lovely friend Amy of Love Made My Home). I am sharing five things on my hook.....

1. A toy puppy for Little Tomboy .... his face is a bit wonky but that's just giving him more character I think ....

2. A unicorn head. It is going to be a unicorn, I promise, I know it looks like a weirdo frog ghost at the moment....

3. My autumn blanket. Still got around 15 squares to go so it might just get done for next autumn lol

4. This sort of inverse pineapple scarf ...... a from magazine pattern that caught my eye .....

5. And the start of my Scheepjes Hygge Cal .... (yes, another Cal)

Just a really quick one from me today folks, hope you all have a great weekend :)

Til next time,

Jill xxxxx

Hearts and flowers

Hello dear friends and readers :)

Just a quick post from me today, I took a small diversion from my various works-in-progress to make a little gift for a friend. It's her birthday and I know she has just redecorated her dining-room with a purple theme, so I wanted to give her something purpley for her birthday, and I wanted part of it to be handmade.

She is a huuuuge candle fan. Every time I go round to her house it smells divine, and she always says it's because she burns candles. Personally I do not trust myself with candles, having twice had near misses where I one time badly burned a wall when a candle fell against it, and another time the mat that a little candle-in-a-tin went on fire as the tin got too hot. Yikes. No nice smell is worth a house fire. Thankfully my friend is clearly much more candle-safe than me. I'd have loved to actually make her a candle, but just haven't had enough time - I got a load of candle-making bits for my birthday last year but haven't used them yet, I need to practice before I start making gifts for people. Maybe next year ....

I decided to stick to something a bit safer, and crocheted her a hanging heart. I'd seen this post of Lucy from Attic24's, which in turn references this post by BeaG on Flickr. You make two hearts then double-crochet them together and then stuff. Pretty straightforward. I also added a really simple little flower with a wooden button.

Such a simple little pattern that produces a really sweet little hanging heart. Hopefully my friend will love it, and maybe even in part because its hand-made.

I also decided to make her a card, I'm not very good at thinking of card designs, so I occasionally buy card-making magazines for inspiration. I found an old magazine with a kit comprising patterned card and some fun little sentiment greeting thingies, and sort of used one of their designs with a few small changes.

I used a white card blank from my card stash, bits and pieces from the magazine kit, and some sparkly gems for a bit of bling.

I'm giving her her present tomorrow morning so I hope she loves it :) I'll report back soon to let you know.

Til next time - be safe with those candles people!

Jillxxxxxx

Five on Friday

Hello dear friends and readers, gosh is it really the end of another week ? It must be time for another Five on Friday, hosted again by Amy over at Love Made My Home. This week I have a bit of a random selection, just stuff from my week (and a bit from the week before), nothing earth-shattering, but I hope you enjoy my photos and blurb anyway ....

1. Can you believe it's February already ? I normally hate January, definitely have that post-Christmas Blues type thing, but this year hasn't been as bad. I've no idea why, but I'm glad it's February, and I'm glad to be waking up feeling good. Having daffodils around always helps too, they just seem so fresh and new and bright, and full of hope and promise.

2. The weekend before last I entered an OCR - Obstacle Course Race - called Muscle Acre. And yes it definitely lived up to its name. Basically an OCR is a run but with lots of obstacles and lots and lots of mud and water. Here's an un-muddy photo of me before the race ...

It was the first OCR I'd done, and wowsers it was SUCH good fun! Completely exhausting, but tremendous fun. On the day of the race it was 0 degC, and the first obstacle was to climb in and out of a skip filled with cold water. So pretty much within the first 5 minutes we were soaking wet. The good thing about that is it makes you keep going as you'd get far too cold far too quick if you didn't. A bit further on we had to wade through muddy water that was waist deep with massive slabs of ice floating about on it. Can you see my lips turning blue - hypothermia is a risk - but I was sure just to keep moving.

(Don't worry about it saying Clare Sheppard below that photo, thats my friend who facebook'ed it!)

One comedy moment was when we had to crawl under a skip, I crawled in one end fine, but when I tried to crawl out the other end I couldn't make it through due to my boobs being too big LOL I had to reverse and go out the way I came in. There were lots of crawling type obstacles, a lot where you had to commando crawl, hence the boobs got very muddy ....

There were also a lot of climbing obstacles but with lots of mud around it was really hard to grip with my hands so I did a lot of hauling myself up and letting myself down by throwing my whole arm over the top. I didn't realise until after I'd had a shower just how many bruises I had ....

And then of course there's the medal and beanie that all finishers get. I've got a few running medals but have to say I really felt I'd earned this one!

3. Back to more sedentary pastimes - after reading this post of Amy's I decided to give sock-knitting a bash. Like Amy I'm following the sock-a-long by Christine who is also known as WinwickMum, but so far I've only got as far as doing a tension square. It's the first time I've ever knitted with 4-ply and I am loving it, I love how soft and light the resulting fabric is, and I can't wait to get going on an actual sock. 

And of course I had to jump the gun and buy some more sock yarn - which came with a free pattern sheet too. Can you see the sparkly bits in the pink one - glittery socks! How fabulous!

4. Another thing I want to share with you is some of Little Man's drawings. He's actually 13 now so not so little, so I think I need to start calling him Mr13 (nicking Meredith of Mereknits idea). Anyway despite not choosing Art as an option for GCSE, Mr13 is pretty artistic. We think he gets this from my Dad who was a pretty great artist (he was an architect), I'll share some of his pictures some time too. Anyway here are Mr13's drawings, they are in the Manga style which is a form of Japanese animation. Aren't they gorgeous ? I just adore the eyes.

5. I got a Fitbit for Christmas and am trying to hit 10,000 steps each day. And what better way than to go out on a dog-walk in the rain with Pixie and Little Tomboy. That's them this afternoon, a lovely end to the week.

They are best friends these two, always playing, running, and snuggling on the sofa. Sooo sweet.

That's it from me for today, hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Jillxo

Tea cosy hat

Hello dear readers and friends :)

I promised you a post of a finish before the end of January - so here it is :) Are you impressed ?

It was bitterly cold here for the last couple of weeks - it's warmed up a bit now, but last week .... ooo it was so so cold .... brrrrrr ..... I needed a hat and of course that is reason enough to crochet one.

The pattern I used is the Firebrand Slouch hat from my favourite crochet book "Crochet One-skein Wonders" by Judith Durant. I made mine a bit shorter so it wasn't slouchy ....

.... and I wear it with the brim turned up as I think it suits me better.

I seem to have one of those faces that doesn't really suit hats - too roundy? too chubby? hair too short ? glasses ? I don't know. I just know I'm not massively comfortable in a hat, but I think this one is OK. Don't be fooled by the half decent photos, I was very careful not to show off the double-chins.

If I make another - which I may very well do, in a different colour - I'll make the brim deeper so that there's more to turn up. I suspect it looks rather like a tea cosy, hence the post title.

The yarn is King Cole Big Value Chunky, I originally bought it to make a mermaid blanket, but really didn't like how it was working up. For a hat, however, it's perfect - really cosy and warm, and worked up easily in one evening.

Speaking of yarn, I had some "help" with that. Hmmmmm. Naughty doggy ....

.... but how could I be cross ..... soooo cute ....

Anyway, back to the tea-cosy, er I mean hat. Here's the top view (and yes those are maltesers - my favourite) .....

.... And a sort of side view in all its tea-cosy gloriousness :)

I used most of a 100g ball of wool, and have another ball left, so I think I'll make some wristies to match :) Almost a pity that the weather's warmed up !

Til next time,

Jillxxxxxx