Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.

I love the seaside. I miss it, and especially as it's (supposed to be) getting in to summer, I really really miss the sea. Not that I ever really properly lived by the sea. I lived in Portsmouth for 3 years whilst at uni, and managed to go to the beach almost every day, even though it wasn't a proper beach, or amazingly nice, I just love the sea air, and the feel of sand or pebbles beneath my feet.

So as soon as my niece was old enough to stand and walk, I took her to the local parks to play in the sand, as I feel it is very important. I spent most of my childhood holidays outside or on the beach somewhere licking pebbles and eating sand, which is why I believe that I'm so healthy as an adult, I got all the germs in there when I was younger so my body got on and dealt with them, and now I'm thankfully very lucky to have a good strong immune system.

I love my niece, and I know she's only little, but she can be a little bit prissy about things and doesn't like getting her hands dirty (one of her favourite games used to be 'wash hands' - weird child). So i feel it is my duty to teach her to do more outdoory things instead of her more favourite watching tv. Luckily, there's always a Nana (or 2 in this picture) around when I'm home to come and entertain the little one with me, and so when I was home for Easter, we took her to the park to teach her how to make sandcastles.  

Although Nana is possibly getting a little more into it than my niece is, she did love it. So we taught her the important art of building sand castles, and then I taught her the even more important art of jumping on them!! I've heard so many stories of mums nowadays not encouraging their kids to share with others that I feel this was important lesson to learn - have fun with it while it's there, but then there will be plenty more things to play with after, so there's no need to get attached to just one thing. 

On saying this though, I did have to keep swapping spades with the little one when making the sand castles, as she kept insisting that mine was the better spade and she wanted it....I will learn one day!!

Spring Sewing

So one of my friends mentioned at work last week that she'd been reading some of my blog posts and laughing to herself at her desk and it made me realise that I hadn't written anything for a very very long time. And suddenly it'as mid-May!! Where has the year gone?

As a pretty standard response would be when asked 'What are you up to this weekend' the answer has been sewing, and lots of it. And of course some drinking cider. My current project, apart from preparing little bits for the Roxeth School Fete, on the 23rd June, is making cushions. And a lot of cushions.

One of the Art directors who I work with had a massive box of African style batik fabrics, and a lot of cushions and mattresses and so thought that covering them all would look fantastic, but just didn't have the time. So I was entrusted with the box of beautiful fabrics, and asked to make a lot of cushion covers. 36 in total, to be exact. 27 cushion covers and 9 mattress covers.

Now I'm quite a pro at making cushion covers, not that there's really much to it, and so it doesn't actually take me too long to make one, if I concentrate. Maybe half an hour for a standard size cushion cover, and an hour for the mattress covers.

But the problem is concentration. I am so easily distracted. If there's no one at home, I can probably concentrate and sew properly for a good few hours, and be very productive, An example of this was yesterday morning when my house mates were all asleep and so I made 8 cushion covers in a row without stopping, even to go on the internet.

However, when they're in, I struggle a lot more as I constantly want to wander in to the living room to see what they're up to. Or I even get sidetracked with other sewing projects. In the midst of cushion making I have half made a very pretty dress, and felted a fair few new strawberries for various projects.

I'm just waiting on some Velcro to arrive to sew down the lengths of the mattress covers, to get them on and off, but apart from that, after this weekend, I should have pretty much finished them. That is if I get off my computer to stop blogging and get back to sewing.