and there was sun sun sun

The bank holiday weekend has been spent in a way which all long weekends should - lovely long sunny days doing pleasurable things. Nothing ground breaking here (unless you can count gardening !) - the simple pleasures of time spent with family and friends, stress free pottering, barbecuing, a spot of gardening, a little bit of creativity, a cheeky shandy or two, and a general feeling of well being. nice.

I've done a spot of recycling too - this necklace got broken at the weekend - not bad thing because it was cheap and I wasn't that keen of the yellow metal used to link the beads, so I took the opportunity to make something new out of something oldAll that was required was some waxed string from the local craft shop (£1), a few buttons from my stash and a little bit of time, et voilà!
I have lots and lots of beads left over so I'm off to the garden to make a few more in different coloursI'm also loving this tune at the moment, and I like the birds in the video too

paper bunting

I've been through my paper stash and picked out lots of papers I have never used, or been able to find a good use for - you know the ones included in the paper packs you bought because you liked 1 or 2 of the papers in them, and then you end up with another 12 which you are not that keen on. I've used them in this paper bunting - and amazingly they seem to have transformed into something a whole lot prettier:This was a very lazy bunting mind you, I just used a ball of string I found in the drawer and a roll of double sided sticky tape - very blue peter-esque. The bunting is for an indoor tea party and I think it does the job quite nicely.

In other news, the slugs have been having a party of their own in my greenhouse, and have demolished my cucumber plant. I am not defeated though - I have banished all slugs, bought copper tape for my grow bags and pots, and have planted some more cucumber seeds - fingers crossed that this will do the trick.

I'm hooked!

On Friday, I went to an 'introduction to crochet' class, along with my sister at John Lewis in Kingston, which was run by a rowan consultant called Lesley. I was quite prepared to come away from this and still not know how to crochet, however I am pleased to say that after a 4 hour intense session, I can now crochet! (and so can my sis). Our hands ached at the end of the session, probably because we were not very relaxed - finding the correct positions for our hands took a while.
I'm probably getting a bit ahead of myself now by saying I can crochet, as you can see from the pic above, I can double and triple in a straight line (don't look too closely), and I can just about interpret a pattern. We were given a 10% off rowan voucher for the day, and remarkably I didn't buy any wool or cotton, however I have my eye on this book on amazon:I did however have some happy time browsing the haberdashery dept, and bought some fabrics and notions to feed my stash - mostly from the bargain bin - great :o)
I can't imagine why crocheting has eluded me for such a long time, but I'm happy to have this new skill. Ripple blanket here I come!

how does your garden grow?

The first thing I do when I get in from work is go to my little greenhouse to check on progress.
Some of the things I've planted were from seed, others were from small plants - a combination of being too late to grow from seed and too impatient. I'm pleased to see that some of the things have started to grow - with gusto! All the tomatoes are growing well, the strawberries are flowering, the peas are reaching for the sky, the radishes and rocket seeds are really sprouting up, and my flamingo tree is starting to look very pretty in pale cream, pink, and green - it's all very satisfying to seeMy 2nd birthday giveaway was drawn in a lazy fashion using a random number generator:no.5 was paper-and-string! Sarah, I'll pop the cards in to the post to you tomorrow.
This is what you'll be getting:
Thanks to everyone who left a comment - especially the delurkers.
I did manage to get a few designs into my folksy shop too, and I do mail internationally if any of you folks outside of the UK are feeling flush :o)

I am 2

it's true, doesn't time just fly - 2 whole years of my virtual life, here in blogland.
This is the first time in my life that I have actually kept any sort of diary for such a long period of time. There is much about the goings on in my life which I don't write in my blog - I think it's important to keep a little bit of yourself just for yourself. That said, there is much more I wish I had documented here - it's great to look back and see forgotten pictures, or favourite recipes, or lost memories, or to read how I may have been feeling at a particular point in my life.
Note to self: write more, and take the camera out with you more often.

May I take this opportunity to pause for a small moment and thank everyone who takes the time to pop by and leave me a comment. I've met some lovely, friendly, kind, generous, funny and inspirational people since starting my blog and long may I hope that continues.
It's been some time since I gave something back, so it seems a good time to do so. If you'd like to own a couple of my new cards (similar to those in the mosaic below) then please just leave me a comment below. I will draw the lucky recipient at random on Wednesday 13th May (probably some time in the evening)

getting my hands dirty

After a weekend spent getting my hands dirty (it took ages to get the dirt out of my nails), Monday was spent in the happy, compost free surroundings of my work room making mess of an altogether papery kind. The fruits of these labours - some more cards. I'll make a few more this week and then get them into my shops. Some are missing a theme though - should they be birthday, thanks, general greetings? What say you?

Dig in

Before going off to the garden centre today, i thought I'd at least do a bit of research on sowing and growing, and found this excellent BBC website called 'dig in'. Well, it is quite basic, but it suits me just fine - and I think the animations are fab.
I also think Sara Cox is very funny, and she makes me feel like less of a fogie for having my little greenhouse (which was erected yesterday by Mr Monda) and growing some veggies, fruits and herbs.

green fingers?

I am a very amateur gardener - fumbling my way through my garden experiences with no real idea if I do the right things. I prune stuff with gusto, pull off dead leaves, and dead head flowers, but I'm not really green fingered. I'm hoping this will magically change though when I erect my latest purchase this coming weekend:I'm not ready for a grown up's greenhouse yet, so I thought this was a good starting point. I'm scarily excited about growing some veg and herbs in here. I got it from here if you are interested.
I'm mostly wanting to grow tomatoes - a few different varieties, as they are just my favourite thing to eat. Is this normal behaviour for a 33 year old person I wonder?

a little bird told me

I was looking through my paper stash, and couldn't find what I was looking for. The only answer was to dig into my fabric stash and head to the photocopier. Photocopied fabric is in many respects better for my project work as it is thinner than scrapbook papers (and therefore easier to draw on), cheaper, and allows a much wider variety of choice - from my rather plentiful fabric stash!

These cards were fun, and quite quick to make too. I'm off to experiment and make some more for my shops.

weekend shenannigans

Friday Night: Whirlwind supermarket sweep for weekly food shop, followed by Mojito's on the sofa and My Girl on TV.Saturday: super speedy housework effort, slap on, into London to see Grease at the Theatre. accidentally purchased new bag and a pair of shoes.
Sunday: reading emails, catching up, eating ice cream in the sunny back garden, making cards, salmon and soup noodles with edamame, apple and rhubarb crumble, cutting up some wool jumpersPhew. A good weekend.

The bird is the word

Do you watch family guy? If you don't then you are missing a real treat. Once you get over the odd concept of a talking dog who everyone in the family can understand, a talking baby who only the dog can understand, and a father who is massively inappropriate at every given opportunity then it is actually very funny. This week there was an episode which made me and Mr Monda laugh so much that we just haven't been able to get the song or the dance out of our heads - and here, just for you (and also me, because I love it) a small snap shot of the episode courtesy of YouTube:


I think you'll agree, that the bird is indeed the word. Also on a bird related theme - this rather nice fabric was purchased on a recent trip to Ikea. This (cotton) was just £1.99 per metre - a bargain!

2002 miles away (apparently)

By way of a small explanation of my absence these last few weeks, I have been approximately 2002 miles away, in Cyprus to be little more exact. Cyprus was not my first choice as a holiday destination, but our primary reason for going was a wedding out there, so we combined it with a holiday. I took surprisingly few pictures whilst I was away, which is not very like me. I did lots of things which were not like me actually - lots of sleeping, walking, sitting and reading, chilling out and drinking cocktails (ok, this last one is very like me).
I'm quite a home bird really, and as nice as it was to do all these things, I am also very happy to be home - I missed my baby cats, my own bed, and the familiar surroundings of my little home. Although it was nice to have a complete break from everything, I missed technology (my computer and my blog, my sewing machine, my camera) and I'll be glad to get back to it all. I'm going to dive back into google reader in a moment and read the remaining 537 posts on my list.
A small flavour of my holiday:
This was called 'between the sheets'a little run down villa - I really like the wooden shutters metal patterned grille on a glass doorpart of a print from the wall of an ancient Greek bath house

Cath Kidston Discount

I just received this by email as I subscribe to the Cath Kidston newsletter. This is a one day (Wednesday 8th April) 15% discount. Now go forth and shop! (click on pic for full size image and discount code)

so busy

I'm so busy at the moment - this blog post is effectively a displacement activity from other things I need to do.
I've been working on a design brief this weekend and have actually got quite a lot done, but need to carry on for a few hours yet today as I have a deadline this week. I also need to eat at some point (although can't think where I might get time for this).
A couple of things have come from the Monda camp this week - a card for a friends daughter, which I decided to make with a stitched paper patchwork - I really enjoy stitching with paper. It's something that you can't overwork though - it has a tendency to fall apart if you doAlso, I've been working up those green and pink fabrics from my last postI'm using this in my latest design work, which I must get back to now...

finding inspiration in pink and green

Off the top of my head, I wouldn't have picked green and pink together - its only when you start looking around for inspiration that you realise they work very well together indeed. I must walk around with my eyes closed sometimes.
When seeking inspiration for my projects, I usually find an object, picture, photo, snippit of fabric, piece of clothing etc, and go from there. Then I raid my fabric stash and grab all the colours I am looking for, selecting and rejecting as I go along. This usually means I have lots of little piles of fabric on my desk ready for the project to begin. This is my latest fabric stash, inspired by the heart in the top pic