A seemingly rare, free weekend! After a lovely couple of extra hours in bed on saturday, feeling relatively rested, I decided to make a start on taming the wilderness which is our garden. The couple we bought the house from were elderly and had clearly not touched the garden for several years. Unfortunately I forgot to ‘before’ photograph the area I cleared but this shows a small portion of what’s left to do (the garden continues back and up into the trees).

My Dad did a great job of clearing a lot of our first terrace level when he and my Mum stayed with us after E was first born. He added in some colour for us close to the house.

The ground seems to have been divided up into various beds, there are stones marking these out, so I just took one of these and cleared out all the scrub and grass which had colonised it leaving a lovely cleared bed. This morning we headed over to Priory Farm Plant Centre to buy the plants. We’re going to have to go back to check out the cafe and farm shop on a day when we haven’t spent a fortune on plants – it looks like it will be a good place to take E when he’s a bit bigger!

I then had a pleasant afternoon of planting, which I’m pretty pleased with- though I may have to try to disguise the blue pot for the mint a bit better!! I potted the mint and sank it to try and stop it spreading.

Here you can see more clearly, (from left to right) a drill (get me with the lingo!) of parsley seeds, rosemary, tarragon, mint, purple sage – which is very pretty, thyme, basil and lavender. At the top there’s some salad leaves as well – I’m a bit worried it’ll be too crowded at the top there, but I can thin that out when the shoots start coming up – or at least I think I can!

Not too shoddy for a first planting! Our old flat had a yard which we filled with pots – some of which have survived and can be seen in the top photo.. but not much effort was put into it, I’m much excited by this as it feels more permanent. I’m not sure how much progress will follow this, the next few weeks are going to be busy, so I’ll just aim to maintain and grow this patch for now!

This is the 5th 6th time I’ve started this post and 10 weeks 13 weeks since E was born, for a while there poo and politics were all we talked about.. E was born just before the general election – which seems an age ago now! I watched hours of coverage of the election whilst feeding him! [I've since discovered V+ and now record all the telly I miss by going to bed so early!]

and the poo conversations have been about a lack of poo – we had a worrying 13 days of constipation, current thinking is that E has a cow’s milk allergy so I’ve gone dairy free while we wait for test results! I’m not a big fan of soya so any suggestions of yummy dairy free snacks greatly received! We’re doing OK on the savory stuff but soya chocolate buttons just don’t do it!! since starting this post I’ve discovered, with another 2 weeks of constipation for poor E, that soya is also a no go. The very lovely Molly writes the particular kitchen a blog chocked full of yummy recipes, we just need the time to check some of them out!

I’ve discovered that an iphone is essential for any new mother, small enough to read blogs/look up another new parent question whilst nursing a baby! I may be addicted to playing games on it though, it took me a long time to get over my spider solitaire addiction the first time round!! Knitting on the other hand nigh on impossible – I’m making slow progress on a pram blanket, started the week before I went into labour and only picked up again last week! I’m hoping that if the diagnosis is correct and E continues to improve, I’ll get a bit more time to craft on my maternity leave! The chicken quilt is also on hold, as we didn’t know the sex before he was born, I’m glad that I picked this quilt – anything too pastel wouldn’t last too long for a little boy!

One thing I did finish just before E was born was a cardigan, randomly in a bluey-green colour which I wear a lot and so would have happily put a girl in. Unfortunately it’s now pretty much too small and with the weather being so blummin hot we haven’t had much wear out of it, but I’m pretty pleased with the finished product and will be knitting up another in a bigger size for the autumn as you can tell from the picture below the hood came in very handy on a recent trip to a pretty windy Yorkshire to visit the Grandparents!

Update on pram blanket I made use of the extra pairs of hands last week whilst staying with my parents and made huge inroads into blanket. I’m just doing the borders to finish off and have learnt that pick up and knit means to pick up the stitch and knit it rather than just picking it up (- as I had done previously when knitting the cardigan).

I’ll make no promises to blog regularly and I know I have a stack of blogs to approve for the Big List but I’ll try and stay in touch! E’s having a rare nap on his play gym – rare in he’s napping in the day and that he’s not napping on me! (he does sleep well at night so no complaints here!).

I’m into my third week of maternity leave. Week 1 was cake week, I baked a cake, met friends for cake and have been back into work for leaving cakes at Patisserie Valerie..

Cake week was being followed by chocolate week – making the most of the excuse for a huge tummy over Easter!

I’m not sure of the theme for this week yet – so far have snacked on cereal and dried fruit, but it’s only monday, I’m sure I’ll come up with something unhealthy for this week

I have just 2 weeks left till my due date (24th April) and am finding the unpredictability of when exactly I’ll go into labour the most frustrating thing – that and having cold feet, I’ve all but given up on socks now and my slippers have gotten too tight!

I’m beginning to enjoy my leisurely days, watching all those films I’ve been taping for the last month or so, working my way through the chick lit at the library and trying to get as much done as possible on my Dixie Chicks quilt (photos are still to follow, I need a tutorial on up loading them!)

Glad to be back in the blogging business!

Couldn’t resist the title of this post.. I’m not the first to blog this amazing satellite photo of Britain in the snow, but it’s just fab!

Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

The amazing thing is the difference between the snow here and the complete lack of snow in town.. Didn’t stop me falling on my bum at Euston on Thursday! I’m pleased to report that I was helped up by a very kind man. It’s sad that that is the first question people have asked me, assuming that unfriendly Londoners would have left a pregnant woman abandoned on the floor.

While watching the snow I’m being spectacularly unproductive on the craft front, I’ve been sat here watching Gilmore girls (yes, still hooked) and playing free Tetris online all morning instead of the many things I’d like to get finished in the next few months.

I was however, very impressed with Rob’s girlfriend’s pre-Christmas handiwork.. She made him a Stuffed Reddit Alien Toy. Check out his post about it for how it was put together..

Cameron and her Reddit alien

Inspired by Cam’s handwork I’m off to get the ironing board out to do a bit more work on my baby quilt, photos to follow when I have something to share!

This summer we moved to the country and according to the song there should be ‘Millions of peaches, peaches for me..’ Maybe you have to be outside the M25 for peaches?

We moved to a real peach of a house in Caterham Valley and so that’s where I’ve been, exploring the area, decorating and generally settling in.

We’ve got a new addition:

This is Scooby a lovely 2 year old cat we got from the Cats Protection, they have a couple of kittens listed on their website with broken legs – I can’t get over how cruel people can be! But Scooby seems to be settling in well and hopefully will be very happy with us!

We have another new arrival on the way, due in April which is another reason for the lack of blog posts – I’ve been pretty exhausted for the first few months of my pregnancy, but I’ve at least started knitting again – nearly finished a hoody cardigan for my friend’s baby, Isabel (I’ll post a photo if it turns out OK!).

I’m going to try my hand at quilting over the next few months (/years) and am going to make the quilt below.. it’s a bit of a challenge, but it should keep me and Scooby busy!

We celebrated our wedding anniversary the other weekend. Can’t believe it’s been a year already!

I’ve absolutely adored our first year of marriage and we really spoilt ourselves.

The Lions match in a sports bar on Saturday afternoon, followed by a stunning performance of Madam Butterfly at the ENO – which was beautifully done, very simple but striking set and costumes. We recognised some of the traditional Japanese Kabuki moves from a production of the Mikado we were both in a couple of years ago.. So something for each of us I guess!

I’m determined we’re going to stick to the traditional themes for anniversary gifts so year one was paper, so Duncan bought me a subscription to Sew magazine. A fantastic new magazine published in the UK .. which I appear to be the exact target market for! You might recognise a little someone in issue two.. which dropped onto my doormat today! There’s a feature on sewing bloggers with mini interviews with 5 of us – it’s quite exciting! I was really hoping to include some photos, but as neither of our cameras has battery, I’ll link to Lisa’s review of issue one for now instead! – I couldn’t resist posting straight away, Duncan’s out and I had to tell somebody!

Image from Joggles.com

I made a last minute decision to sign up for Sharon Boggon’s Studio Journals: A Designer’s Workhorse course through Joggles. It’s a course I’ve been meaning to take for a couple of years. It’s about using a journal to ‘catch your design ideas’ with a view to designing fiber projects – so embroidery and quilting. I have the list of the materials needed so will head out to the art shop on Saturday morning – first item on the list a journal

I’ve done a couple of other courses with Sharon before and have really enjoyed them. I have found it difficult to keep up though – I think the first one I had to stop the sewing part way through after hurting my wrist and I followed it up with a second course not long after recovering..

I’m going to have to make time this time to get the most out of it! Which will be a challenge for me! Especially with my new addiction to Springwatch and hopefully a house move this summer.. (still sitting with fingers crossed waiting for our buyer to have her mortgage approved).

I was at our local pub last night, The Earl Ferrers, it’s a fab local with a real community spirit. Last night we had a lavender bag workshop for us instead of our usual stitch and bitch session.

One of my neighbours is a costume designer and had a host of different materials and trimmings for us to play with. Please excuse the sewing on this – the lighting in the pub, the beer and the lateness of the hour did me no favours!! (the embroidery in the centre is cut from a lovely piece of embroidered silk – not my own work!)

I’ve had to hold off on this post until my Father-in-law’s birthday present was delivered!

Richard is both a big Schubert fan and difficult to buy for so this year we decided that an embroidery of Schubert was a good option.

I took this image:

Traced the outline and simplified the detail a little. I used split stitch for most of the design and fly stitch to shape the curly stitches on the hair. I’ve run the picture by a few of my musical friends and they assure me that it is a recognisable likeness! What do you think??

When Duncan visited Seattle recently, he stayed with a Search Marketing associate of his, CEO of SEOmoz – Rand Fishkin and his wife Geraldine.

While he was there they visited Archie McPhee a store who’s tag line is ’slightly less disappointing than other companies!’ The store sells Yodelling Pickles – I can’t wait to go visit myself at some point! Geraldine bought a jar of fake eyeballs.. which I wish Duncan had photographed! Not least because we decided that it would make the perfect thank you card!

The photo’s not great, but the iris is done using buttonhole stitch, the pupil a french knot and the red blood-shotness is fly stitch.

Since making my own eyeballs I found some kits over at Creative Kismet who would have thought there’d be so much call for embroidered eyeballs!

One of my favourite stories as a child was the Princess and the Pea, so I’ve been really excited by some of the projects I’ve seen around recently.

This embroidery is just so lovely, it looks so simple, which I find are often the hardest projects to do!

Over at Soulemama this amazing project really captured my imagination and I’ll be saving this one up for the future

Just realised how ambiguous this is and that I didn’t properly reference the embroidery – just to clarify it’s not my work! It’s by the very talented Georgia McDonald! Also after a bit of digging I’ve found the pattern for it over at etsy – very reasonable at $5!