Coming up for air

Today's not that different to any other day lately. The sun is shining in the most fantastically blue cloudless sky, cicadas are going crazy, the washing's baking to a crisp on the line. What *is* different, is that I'm finally in the right frame of mind to sit down and write something here.

So, what's been happening?
We now have more family living close by - really close, I mean 2 doors down the street, and it's fabulous. Ian's cousin and his family have made a big move from Australia to NZ, and wound up in the same street as us. Our children get along mostly great. And Ian's sister has moved cities and now lives 2 blocks over. I love the pop-in visits, coffee mid-morning, or a wine in the evening.

Craftwerk last week was fun. I wasn't sure I'd managed to make enough stuff for the trip to be worthwhile, but turns out I had, and it was. I met a lovely woman who put me on to a local source of kimono fabric pieces, so I have some nice big pieces to get busy with. As an added bonus, I got to spend some time with my brother and his girlfriend.

Playcentre is keeping me and Helen busy 3 mornings a week.
Jen's happy at school, and rapt that the school pool is now open. We've got a key so we can use it after hours. She's so much more confident in the water now, she's picking things up off the bottom of the pool, and talking to her friends under water :-)


I'm working on these felt flowers at the moment. Some will have pin backs attached, others may yet end up packaged as scrap-booking or card-making embellishments. Better get cracking!

Meet Bill

We have a new family member. Bill is settling in beautifully, although his default look still says "peeved and annoyed". In fact, he's making himself right at home, as you can see here.
A couple of days ago we melted down our broken crayons in cupcake cases (no, Bill hasn't been helping himself to the baking) and set to work drawing all over a hunk of background paper snaffled from the recycling at Ian's work. Bill and the girls loved it, he was even happy to pose with a crayon Jen balanced on his leg (although, check those ears!) How cute is he??!!

I realise it's been a little while since I posted anything with pictures, so here's a couple of bits and pieces I've made lately.

Another pony-tail holder for Jen made from buttons (I've made lots more like these for sale at Craftwerk).


And a finger puppet for one of Jen's friends, made one wet day while we were at camp. Zac described it and chose the colours for it himself.


This isn't exactly crafty - yet! My lovely neighbour has a gorgeous bougainvillea growing against her house and she gave me an enormous bunch of flowers from it about a week ago. Now fhe flowers are dried and ready to go to Playcentre next week to join our natural collage resources. Aren't the colours amazing?

Being creative and expressive

At Playcentre, we plan for our children using the national early childhood curriculum (Te Whariki). One of the aims of the curriculum is that centres provide an environment where children can discover different ways to be creative and expressive.
So, here's Helen at Playcentre on Friday. We had an excursion to see Ian at work and he took photos of the children for our photo board at the centre. He gave us a huge piece of background paper, a bit tatty in places, but perfectly fine for us. When we got it back to the centre, we set out paints and brushes and the children got to work. Helen painted herself entirely blue (she had help with the pink!) and danced and dived and rolled around on the paper, being a humpback whale in the ocean.
How marvellous it must be to feel that kind of artistic freedom, to literally be able to put your whole self into your creations.

I finally finished some kimono flower pins last night. I gave up on the tsumami folding with these ones. I think the busy floral pattern suits this style of petal better. As I was attaching pin backs to them, I did think they'd actually have made cute Christmas decorations, if I'd made a wee ribbon loop to hang them instead. Oh well, maybe next time.

It's raining, it's pouring

What a dismal day. Thursday is my "lazy, busy day". No Playcentre today for Helen and me, so instead we've been doing some errands round town. In the pouring rain. My list for the day:

• Spotlight for pinbacks - didn't make it
  
• Bead Bazaar for Swarovski rhinestones - didn't make it
  
• T'n'T for summer pants for Jen - check
  
• $2 Shop for storage bags (so I can remove some clutter from the girls' room and give/store it away instead) - didn't make it.
  
• De-cluttering the girls' room - you guessed it.
  
• Vacuuming - nope.
  
• Laundry - har!
  
• Grocery shopping - check
  
• Update and run a full check with SpyBot - check
  
• backup this computer - not yet.

So what kind of "success" rate is that? 33%? My report card for today reads "Miriam could do better".

And the dishcloth exchange deadline I thought I had loads and loads of time for is now just a week away.
I wanted to try and finish these flowers today too, but I just remembered I have a meeting at Playcentre tonight, sigh.

Phew, what a week!

This has been a l-o-n-g week. Last weekend, my twin brother and I celebrated one of those big birthdays. You know, the one that starts with a 4, ends with a 0? Many many cocktails and much hilarity ensued. We stayed up much later than was wise, given my last 6 or so years of child-induced sleep deprivation. But it was so much fun.
Helen and I finally made it back to Playcentre on Wednesday, she's pretty much recovered from the chickenpox.
And then last night, my fantastic friends threw a surprise birthday party for me. It was a perfect evening, absolutely still, a starry sky, and we sat outside and enjoyed lots of lovely wine and talking and laughing. It was just wonderful. I am so, so lucky.

On the crafting front, after these two blogs mentioned my kanzashi tutorials I've put some more thought into it and come up with another video and photo set (Threading 1-9). There's also a few more tips on flower assembly over on Craftster.

There's also a how *not* to do it video, which was the first attempt, where things didn't look so good. YouTube clipped off the last 2 seconds, which was me saying "or not!" Har!

Nothing like doing something over (5 times) to get it just right, huh? :-)

Double petal flower pin

I love that pink and white fabric combination from yesterday's flower.
Today I decided to try something new. Bi-colour petals, using the same pink and white fabric.

It isn't too difficult to do.
Cut your fabric squares for the outside colour ever so slightly bigger than the inside squares.

Fold your first triangle using the outer fabric, and hold it down with the side of your hand (this is how I did it, anyway!)

Now fold your inner fabric into a triangle and lay it on top so it sits inside the outer one by about 2mm or so. Those inner petals will stand out highest, otherwise.

Then just carry on as normal. Lovely!

My first Whiplash entry

I've been an avid reader of Whipup.net for the last 6 months or so. I signed up way back when the first Whiplash competition took place, thinking I'd enter something myself. I've admired so many gorgeous things produced for the Whiplash competitions, and I've been inspired by so much of what I've read and seen on Whipup. Well, accessories are my thing at the moment, so I've decided to join in this round.
If you read back to one of my posts last month, you'll see I already posted a tutorial (video and pics) about folding fabric petals tsumami kanzashi-style. So I won't be doing another tutorial, they're fun but also time consuming, and difficult to do with only 1 pair of hands. So instead, I'm going for the skill category, with this little flower. Normally, I like the simplicity of just 5 petals on my flowers, but sometimes, as with a two-colour flower, you have to go with an even number. So here she is, a 6-petal soft pink and white flower pin. I've made other flowers in this colour combination before, but using a pink button centre, polyester chiffon and a different style of folding for the petals. I love the softness of pink and white together. This flower is a bit more special, as it's made from vintage kimono fabric, a silver-coloured metal filigree and glass pearl centre.

Last day of the holidays

Sad to say, the holidays are nearly over. Helen will be back at Playcentre tomorrow morning, and Jen and I will get to spend some unexpected quality time together because Jen has the chicken pox. She's been pretty miserable with them since last Monday, covered in spots and itching like crazy. So no school for her for the next couple of days at least. It's meant our last week of the holidays didn't exactly go as planned. Instead of having friends over to play, going for picnics at the park with the Playcentre families, going to the library, art gallery, shops etc we've been cooped up inside (thanks to the weather, also, which turned foul right after we turned off our night-store heaters. Needless to say, they're back on again.)

The only crafting I've got done this last week was putting together a few more button brooches. Goodness knows what I'll do with them. But never mind, because I love them anyway!


Otherwise, I've washed every item of dress-up clothing from Playcentre, and have a pile of them to mend and some to alter so they are a better fit for little people.

Feeling a lack of craftiness niggle today, I signed up for a dishcloth swap on Swap-bot. The deadline is way off in the middle of next month, and it's only for 1 dishcloth. Just the right sort of little project to keep me busy once the girls are asleep. And a great excuse to look through my Barbara Walker knitting treasury book again.

Folding kanzashi petals

We made a little video of me folding kanzashi petals. It's not the greatest resolution, and I forgot to talk (doh!) but it's up in my Photobucket album if you're interested.
There's also some pics that would work as a slideshow through Media Player or something if you grab them all. Images in my Flickr album if you want 'em.