Face masks

As the pandemic lockdown begins to lift in the UK I thought that I had better get organised. Imagining that there will probably be some situations where face masks are required to be worn and with medical standard masks in short supply and, rightly, reserved for medical professionals, care workers and vulnerable individuals, I decided to make some.

A few weeks ago someone shared a link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website - an organisation in the US.  Not only do they have a very helpful section on how to properly put on, wear, and take off a face mask safely, but a few ways that you can make one.

There are a number of no-sew options but I decided to give the version that required sewing a go - not least because it gave me a good excuse to dig out all of my fabric!

In the end I made 12 masks but only had appropriate elastic for three.  I have posted four masks to my parents as my Mum said she had some elastic so I'm now on the hunt for suitably narrow elastic. I guess I could always repurpose some elastic bands but don't relish the thought of getting the rubber caught up in my hair (ouch!)

With an outing scheduled for Saturday where wearing masks is compulsory, it seems that my project was completed in the nick of time!

Becoming resourceful

Have I really not written a post since January? Where has the time gone?

I originally started the year with the ambition to find more time to get creative, not least because I had 5 months to create the wedding day of all wedding days. Well, something like that anyway. I also wanted to spend more time at home. Yes, you can laugh at me now but it seemed like quite a challenge back in January!

I was making fairly good progress on wedding preparations but slightly hesitant at sharing things here that I really wanted to hold back for the big day. But then the coronavirus took hold and the landscape has changed.

Firstly, the wedding has been put back by about 6 months in the hope that social gatherings will be both permissible and safe by then. Secondly, I'm fortunate enough to have a job that can, it turns out, as easily be done at home as in the office, so the daily grind for 5 days a week has continued but without the daily commute, saving me around 8-10 hours a week. So, although I am busy for the best part of 5 days a week, I have not only got my wish of spending more time at home but also have an extra 6 months to complete everything that I had planned.

With the pressure off and the sun out, I have very much been tempted out into the garden. And with a new potting shed and a packets of flower seeds purchased last autumn, my evening and weekend obsession has been created.

Things started out deceptively modestly...

... but I'm clearly more green-fingered than I thought as after about 4 weeks the seed trays were looking a little crowded and so I decided to do a spot of potting-on.

But became a little overwhelmed by the result...

... particularly when I began wondering where the next stage of potting-on would go since we don't actually have any flower beds and, because it's a rented house, we can't really dig any in.

But this is were things got fun, and we became resourceful!

I have raided the garage for anything that could possibly be turned into a flower tub (more of which in a later post). We also found three pallets around the side of the house. You know the sort used for large deliveries...

Inspired by a friend, a little dismantling and putting back together occurred ...

... and what is being called a living wall planter was created.

Well, two in fact but we only had enough paint for one of them. Hopefully more paint can be sourced before too many plants get big enough to need permanent outdoor homes. But for now I'm really enjoying the satisfaction of something being made from seemingly nothing or at least things we found lying around. 

Many of us hope that life won't go back to exactly the way it was before the pandemic as we've begin to appreciate the slower pace of life. I know I'm definitely not going to be automatically reaching out for the new before I've exhausted all possibilities of what I can find lying around!

I hope you are staying safe and well and finding as much enjoyment in the small things as I am.

2019 round-up

2019 was a year of change for me. I think the only constant thing has been the contents of my wardrobe. Even the wardrobe changed. Twice! The year has been wonderful and exhausting in equal measure.

I have certainly had less time to get creative and when I have been creative I have rarely also found the time to write a blog about it, hence the rather low number of blog posts. However, as I browse through my photos from the year I thought it would be a good opportunity to do a round-up of the things that didn't quite make it first time around.

I'll start with the jewellery board I made for my soon-to-be-step-daughter for her birthday in July. She had been admiring mine so it seemed only fair to make her one of her own, including some very special buttons from one of her Dad's old uniforms.

Next up was to treat the spare room bedside lamp to a new lampshade. I say 'new' but I have to say I don't think I ever saw it with an old one! The fabric was a gift from some friends of friends and I'd been desperate to turn it into something for years.

In September we decided to do a big furniture switch between houses. The goal was to give me a space to work and create in. This meant swapping a double bed for a futon and a desk. The bed had been swathed in fabric and I soon found out why. A certain small girl had covered it in pony, football and knight stickers many years ago!

Liberal use of 'Sticky Stuff Remover', a quick sand, the application of some black satin gloss paint found in the loft and it was a bed transformed!

I also finally decided to take the guess-work out of trying to find hats, gloves and all things required for a dog walk, with the natty use of some hand-crafted felt labels.

And before we knew it, Christmas was upon us. This year's Christmas tree decorations were sewn and dispatched...

... and I even found time to make a cake and decorate it before the family arrived for the festive season.

And I couldn't possibly not make a wreath for the door.

Whilst a new pom-pom was made for someone's Christmas jumper, just in time for the village outdoor carol concert.

Finally, but most definitely not least, I'd like to share with you my two favourite hand-made Christmas presents. Firstly, the fabulous Secret Santa gift I received of these make-your-own soup pots. Not only do they look gorgeous but they are a doddle to cook and taste great. One was made for the family over Christmas and the second has just been cooked up ready for some healthy packed lunches.

Secondly, my wonderful new potting shed. I have a pile of seed and bulb packets just waiting to get planted so I had better get my wellies on!

May 2020 be a healthy, happy and creative one for you!

Anti-spider 'buttons'

Having spent my life up until January living in a city I have been extremely surprised by the number of spiders that exist in the countryside - or is it just a particularly 'good' year for spiders. Fortunately, they don't scare me but their cobwebs are driving me mad. The bedroom windowsill had got to the stage where it looked like part of a Halloween display where someone had gone a bit overboard with a can of fake web spray.

After spending last Sunday morning vacuuming up webs and dead spiders we decided to blow the actual cobwebs away by going on a walk with the dog. It wasn't long before our foraging obsession kicked in and we were filling every pocket we had with the goodies we encountered. The result was fairly impressive, if a little random!

The berries are sloes which have been washed and put in the freezer before being made into Sloe Gin, the sweetcorn was enjoyed for dinner and the golf ball is for my Dad. As for the conkers, I've heard from several sources that they are good at repelling spiders (and read several more that there is no scientific proof for this). After my morning of cleaning I was keen to attempt a 'prevention is better than cure' approach and I was willing to try anything.

What I hadn't heard previously is that you are supposed to drill a hole in the conkers. I suppose this helps release something odorous to spiders - or not, depending on who you believe. Although S had offered to drill the holes, the conkers were still quite soft, so I decided it couldn't be too difficult to poke a hole in each one. I cast around the kitchen looking for something suitable but nervous that a slip of a conker could result in the hole being drilled in my hand.

In the end I remembered the little devices we have for holding and eating sweetcorn. These have two extremely sharp prongs, making them just perfect as I felt that the twin prong would also make it less likely to slip and cause collateral damage.

In no time at all I had pierced all the conkers with perfect little twin holes, making them look a bit like buttons and - in my opinion - quite charming.

Now I just have to spread them around the house and see if they have any effect. Apparently, Great Auntie Jean used to swear by them so who am I to argue?

We're jammin'

I have an ear-worm. You know, a song that you just can't get out of your head. It's Bob Marley's Jammin' and it's all thanks to last week's foraging session. I guess not many people would associate picking fruit in English hedgerows with a classic Reggae track but, to be fair, the music didn't permeate my brain until quite a few days later.

After the apple and damson 'tip offs' we set out with great enthusiasm armed with far too many tubs and pots in search of our hedgerow goodies.

At least, I thought I was probably being over-optimistic about the amount of fruit we'd find but the last thing I wanted was to be out and about and run out of containers. But as luck would have it, we hit gold! Or should that be purple, red and green?

If truth be told, I had to call a halt to the picking, particularly when it came to the apples. Outside in the big open countryside the containers looked fairly small, but in the confines of the kitchen, the prospect of having to do something with all that fruit suddenly hit me. It was quite a daunting prospect.

However, I was undeterred, and last Sunday morning rolled up my sleeves, gathered every single empty jam jar I could lay my hands on, plus a few that were swiftly emptied thanks to a rather random breakfast, and set to work.

Eight hours later I had 24 jars of apple chutney in three different variations: classic apple chutney, tamarind and apple chutney, and spiced apple chutney. The jars are all now squirrelled away busy maturing, ready for Christmas.

We also had 1.8kgs of blackberries macerating in 1.5kgs of jam sugar and 2.2kgs of stoned damsons. (Top tip: use a cherry stoner to get the stones out of damsons - it still took the best part of 3 hours but it was better than cutting them out with a knife, sieving them out of the finished jam, or - horror of horrors - making jam with stones in which you have to pick out of every mouthful!)

So, where does Bob Marley fit in? Well, that would have been after work on Monday when we made blackberry jam and some plum and apple jam, on Tuesday when we made some damson jam, and on Wednesday evening when we had to reboil the blackberry jam because it hadn't set. After a 2 hour commute and 8 hours in the office each day, things tended to get a bit silly as we heated, boiled and 'wrinkle tested' until I could barely keep my eyes open. At some point, Bob Marley popped into my head, shortly afterwards to be blared out of the iPod, to add to the general silliness!

So, we now have 30 pots of jam to go with the 24 jars of chutney. And it probably wouldn't surprise you to know that, at some point on Monday, a plum tree was found across the road and there is still a large bowl of beautiful plums awaiting further attention! Well, we seem to have mastered the setting point of jam so it would be a bit rude not to continue our jammin'.

Country pursuits

Having exchanged my very urban lifestyle to one much more rural, I have spent the last couple of weekends engaged in very country pursuits. And by that I mean foraging.

I have to say I've never seen so many beautifully fat and ripe blackberries in my life as there are within a stones throw of the house (and I'm not skilled at throwing stones a very great distance!) So far we have picked around 3 kilos and there are still many more for the picking.

To say that there are a few jars of blackberry gin on the go would be an understatement. We are even experimenting with blackberry and vanilla vodka.

And when we ran out of gin jars and room in the freezer, I progressed onto jam.

A huge crop of sloes has been spied but they are not quite ready yet, however the elderberries were at their best last weekend. I had no idea what to make with them but just couldn't leave them on the tree. In the end, the simplest thing to turn them into seemed to be cordial - great diluted with sparkling or still water or even, dare I say, sparkling wine!

We're now just off to pick apples as we've had a call from a friend who has more than he knows what to do with. Another friend has also alerted us to the location of a crop of damsons. To say I'm excited at the prospect of wondering down a green lane on a sunny, late summer afternoon, armed with some empty plastic containers would be a complete understatement. Sometimes it's the simplest of things that can make us happy!

Bringing joy, simply

Back in April I was busy making new bedroom curtains complete with black-out linings so that I could sleep even when the sun was rising. Admittedly, this does make finding your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night rather tricky but the sleep is golden!

What I failed to mention was the choice of the fabric. I had originally fallen in love with a beautiful biscuit-coloured linen, embroidered with birds. However, at £70 per metre and a whopping 6 metres needed, this was way beyond the budget, not least because we are only likely to be living in the house for another 2 years.

Not that I'd given up entirely on the bird fabric as the curtain fabric we chose picked out exactly the shades of blue and green that was featured in the embroidered birds. My mission was then to find a metre of the fabric being sold off at a discounted price. After a few weeks of searching, the internet came up trumps and a metre's worth of embroidered birds was being delivered through the letterbox.

The idea was to make some lampshades. One for the ceiling light and the other for the bedside light. The ceiling light was an awkward size. Or should I say that the size and spacing of the embroidered birds proved challenging. However, I just about managed to get the birds lined up. I'm not entirely happy with the final result, but I am particularly picky!

The bedside lampshade was much easier, even if it did mean sacrificing a lot of the remaining fabric to get the birds lined up so beautifully. (Can you tell I'm happier with this one? And who doesn't love a Kingfisher?)

With fabric left over I just couldn't resist having a few more birds perched around the bedroom. A trip to the local craft store resulted in three tapestry hoops of just the right diameter to be able to frame up one of each of the birds to hang on the wall.

This is such a simple thing to do and, I think, looks particularly effective when the bird designs are so obviously embroidered.

I placed the hoop over each bird and centred them up. I then cut out the fabric leaving enough of a border to be able to fold the fabric around the underside of the inner hoop.

I then took a roll of narrow double-sided sticky tape - as luck would have it, the one that came with the lampshade kit was exactly the same width as the inner tapestry hoop - and applied it to the inner edge of the ring.

I then carefully folded over the fabric and stuck it down.

In just a few minutes I had a fabric picture, ready to hang on the wall.

They have been on the wall at the foot of the bed for at least a month now and I don't think I'll ever tire of looking at them. Or is it just that I'm sometimes just too lazy to get out of bed and admiring my handiwork is just a feeble excuse?!

Well, either way, they bring me much joy, so what's not to love?