The Swallows and Amazons Page

I know I've said it before: isn't it great when one project you've been working on leads into another? I would never have got to this page if my scrapbooking friend Helen hadn't put out an appeal for warm woolly hats. I could knit some hats, I thought, and I did. Then I found a book of patterns, I knitted a skull and crossbones hat and it turned into this:

Then I knitted another and it turned into this:

A wardrobe of hats and scarves for a little boy I know. And then I thought, if I can put a fringe on a scarf, what would a fringe on a page look like? So I tried it out:

I punched a couple of holes and cut some lengths of embroidery thread and knotted them through and I kind of like it. A tone on tone version would add a nice border to a wedding page or (and if I have the patience some day soon, I'm going to try this) a big circle with a yellow fringe right round would be a great base for a page about lions. Or would black on black be menacing enough for a page about killer penguins? Mmm

Just Pick A Photo

Find a photo, Shimelle said, and do something with it. I've been getting ready for the holidays here, thinking about summer photos, so a quick look back at the first half of the year and the stories I might have missed certainly seemed like a good idea.

Here we are back in January. The Small One and I, on a visit to the opticians. It's dark in the back of the shop, no windows, just a huge mirror; and if you are quick and quiet, you can jump up and down, make faces, have fun, without being spotted by the girl on the counter round the corner. Take our picture with your new phone The Small One said. So I did. Couldn't work out how to take one of those great chairs home in my handbag, though.

Happy Sunday.

Sunshine And Speech Day Part Two

Speech Day was a good one. We listened to the orchestra, we sat through the speeches, we clapped the prizewinners and then, suddenly, we were drawn back to the College of seventy years ago, to the sandbags and water tanks of war time. To the school Granny knew.

And we were charmed as our guest speaker, who was once a little girl of eight, told us how she had been too young to go to the Pictures with the other boarders one Saturday afternoon, and had ended up at a Sale Of Work with one of the teachers. There had been donkey rides as a special treat; and the donkey man had let her ride home in state to the stables, close to the school. It was a good lesson to learn, she said. That if someone tells you "no", take heart because there will always be something better just round the corner.

So we went home, marvelling at the thought of stables right next to school. Possibly right where Starbucks is now. And I finished up the second half of my double page layout:

I used a sketch from the Studio Calico Sunday sketch collection..and I'll be using it again. Plenty of room for journaling and space for lots of little pictures; and because the emphasis isn't on any one photo it's easy to include images which are only loosely related. It's a perfect design for any kind of round-up page.

I did finally manage to squeeze my doily embellishment in, but I have changed it just a bit. Can you spot the differences?

Today I'm Loving...the look of the kniting and crochet books by Lucinda Guy. Maybe The Small One and I will learn to crochet over the summer.

Sunshine And Speech Day

This is the page I thought about posting on Fathers Day:

It's my Mum on holiday with her friends, in France at the end of the 1950's. I thought it would be a bit of fun, kind of a gift to my Dad; but it didn't feel right in the end. So I've saved it for today.

It started out as yellow and grey (isn't this such a fresh feeling combination at the minute? I saw a lovely layout using it here yesterday): but I added some powder blue for a 1950's look. If you peer you might spot my experiment with the title.

I like pale shades, I like knocked back tones, but sometimes they need a bit more life if they are to help a page pop. So I've been forcing myself to try more outlining to add emphasis. Some of the letters here are outlined in brown, some aren't and I think it's pretty obvious that the brown needs to be there. I'll be doing a bit more of this, then.Try it, see what you think. I'm doing a second page with the bits I've trimmed from these photos (50's France? I wasn't about to bin that); but that's for again.

We're off to Junior Prize Day this afternoon (English! History! That's my girl!). It's always a mixture of pasts, presents and futures; and as the sweet sound of the School Song rises high to meet the dust dancing in the air, I'm sure I'll think of that other young girl who walked across that very same stage many years ago. Before she went to France. Before she met my Dad...

But you can find my very favourite story about Granny and The Small One swapping notes about school here.

Today I'm Loving...the news that Martha Stewart will be releasing a doily punch (see it here) so the embellishment layering can continue. Brilliant.

For Fantastic Fathers

I lost my dad when I was twelve - my brother and sister were younger still - and my dear Father-In-Law, too, went way, way before his time; barely six months after proudly baptising his grandson with his own name, in the family way. So today that grandson and his little sister and I will be spending the day making sure that the Dad we've got knows how much he is loved. Happy Fathers Day.

This is my dad, right here:

Cath's Company

Sometimes I start to make one page and it turns into a different one. Sometimes I want to use one side of the paper and end up turning it over and using the other..

We were in London during the '94 World Cup, helping our friend Tony marry his lovely Californian bride at Chelsea Register Office. We posed on the steps for photos and the TV cameras started to attract a crowd. Really, though, it was just us and one of Tony's BBC mates doing a quick home wedding video on stuff he'd borrowed from work.

And that was supposed to be the story. But I laid out my paper (from October Afternoon Thrift Shop)

and a different story came.

After the wedding they settled in Hammersmith and we got into the habit of visiting every summer. The children were little, the days could be long, and I looked forward so much to seeing the shops and the shows, all the things I'd been reading about through the year. One sunny, sunny afternoon Lauri and I left the kids (for they had twins of their own by now) with the men and slipped away for an hour of peace at Cath Kidston. A couple of tube stops, a quick walk and sanctuary was ours.

And so that is what this page came to be about. I flipped the paper over and made this:

What was a layout about a bit of glamour turned into a layout about two mums wanting a bit of a break. And I think I like it better that way.

Finishing Up The Doilies

That's it. I have no more doilies. I only had one packet to start with and I had used four already so I had eight to decorate and here are the last two:

I think I'll mount them on squares of patterned paper as Christine suggests and put them in a frame, three groups of three with one square for some journaling.

I'd still like to keep on layering things up though. You don't really need the doilies as a base; a simple scallop punched circle would do, or a very simple circle and a pair of cheap scalloped scissors which is all I've got just at the minute:

It's a great way of using up older supplies and little scraps and its a good way of experimenting with combining colours. I'm going to use this one on a yellow and grey page I've got planned.

Today I'm Loving...how many of you I managed to hoodwink on Sunday with my creative statements! In the interests of open and tranparent blogging I now have to admit that the two true ones were.....

......the Downing Street one and the Fireman one. I did have that conversation outside Downing Street on a school trip when I was nine; and I did try to push someone out a window on another school trip when I was a teenager. Jacky was right. He was very annoying. I met him at a reunion not long ago and he said Isn't it great that I'm still alive and you're not still in jail. I had to agree.

Have you Heard The One About..

With all the knitting and dollmaking and scrapbooking this week it's been a bit short on Tall Tales round here, don't you think? The knitting is going well, though. I finished a skull-and-crossbones hat for our piratical little cousin; but it turned out, um, quite big, so The Small One snaffled it for days when she feels like working a Swallows And Amazons look.

Now Arthur Ransome was a man who enjoyed a tale or two, so I've been thinking of him as I crafted a few answers to this:

which comes to me courtesy of Carmen and Glen. It's very good of you both - thank you - if a little worrying. I'm not making this stuff up you know! Nearly everything I blog has actually happened. Almost. Most of the time. Anyway, I've shortened the rules of the award slightly so that I'm offering you five facts which might be true. Maybe they are outrageous whoppers. Completely untrue. Some are one, some are the other and I'll leave you to decide.

• When I was little my biggest ambition was to sail singlehanded round the world. I still think this might be a plan
• When I visited Downing Street the policeman on the door greeted me with "What's the weather like down there?"
• I spent two years of my childhood eating nothing much apart from salad cream sandwiches
• I once tried to push a boy out of a third floor window, but he held on with one hand and we hauled him back in again. Now he is a fireman and credits me with his lack of fear of heights
• I used to be really into abseiling but gave it up when the children were born

And of course I'd love to test out the straight faces of some other bloggers who might be up for giving this a go, so I'm passing it on to: Alana, Amanda, Jennifer (who actually does run creative writing courses), Curlywiggles and Jo. While you get inventive, I'll get back to knitting.

The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow

We're stll looking for a bit of warmth wherever we can find it here. So today that means making layouts about holidays long past:
I've got some journalling to add along the brown machined stitched lines but it's finished apart from that.

And it means sewing another ragdoll to send to Haiti. I was so glad I'd made a start on him when I saw this Dolly Donations post and spotted that there is a photo of a little girl holding one of my dolls (it's the ninth photo down, she has turned him over and is looking at his back).

And it means a really big thank you to the Paper Turtle herself. Deb for her surprise parcel straight from the sunshine of Arizona. Thanks, Deb! Much appreciated. Your notebooks are beautiful.

Today I'm Loving...Trimming The Sails. My friend Alexa has just started blogging, but you can tell she's got style..

Knitting For Scrapbookers

It's so wet and dark here today I feel I should be writing my Christmas List. And the boiler is broken again. I've been out and about all morning; but now that I'm home, it's a toss up between a few star-jumps and some very fast knitting to keep me warm:

Of course the knitting was going to win. Especially as I've taken a real fancy to this book since I opened it up and saw this:

Now that's come from the kind of knitter a scrapbooker would like to meet.

Today I'm Loving...the fact that I've got another week to get ready for Fathers Day. Is this right? The Tall One and The Small One are all primed and ready, their presents picked, their cards chosen for this weekend. Seems I might have misled them. I suppose I'm the one who has to break it to their Dad too. Hmm.

It's Shoes Again

What is it with shoes in this house? We're either hoping certain feet don't grow any more (The Tall One at Size 11) or wishing for a miracle (and it happened: last week, finally, The Small One reached a 3. A whole vista of adult sized, illegal, high heeled school pumps has opened up before her).

But the shoes I like best just at the moment belong to their little blonde rascal of a cousin. His first pair. And a page to celebrate:

Today I'm Loving...Green Gal's Anne Of Green Gables poster. A nice quote ready to print out on A4 card.

Tumblr Tactics

I've been paging through my Mum's scrapbook again, and reading your stories of your own cuttings albums, and musing about the way everything moves on. There's a new way, now, to put a collection together and in between making more of my doilies

I've been taking a look. I've been visiting Tumblr. It's kind of hard to explain, you really need to check it out. You sign up for an account - quick, easy - and then there right in front of you, you have a virtual cuttings book. A noticeboard. An album ready to be filled with online inspiration. You can add photos, links, quotes, all the bits you scribble down or add to your desktop: it can become what many years ago would have been called a Commonplace Book.

But this is a computer Commonplace Book you can share. It's microblogging. Finding something you like and pinning it up where others can see. To get started I read the Studio Calico blog post "Where Shall We Store Inspiration" and then I found other tips here:

• Tumblring (All things tumblr)
• Devsnippets Spicing Up Your Tumblr Experience
• The Blog Doctor

I haven't done any customise-ing or favourite-ing or following yet. I'm just noting a few things down and seeing how I like it. Because you don't know til you try. It's Still High In The Sky.

Back to the doilies, then..

Sewing Sophie

So Sandra from Gotta Craft kept to her word and sent me some truly lovely paper to cut and stick with this week. I think some of the first paper I ever bought came from My Minds Eye , and I loved it then as I love it now for its sturdiness and its colour. Cutting into this stuff just feels like a treat!

I used a selection from the new So Sophie range and today I have two of my layouts to show you:

The first one is simply an excuse to use that blue ledger paper (anything school themed draws me in. Maybe because both my parents were teachers?)

and the second one :

I had my sewing machine serviced and wanted to try it out, so I decided to make a border of roughed up blue to match Thing One's hair. I sewed several lines of stitching one over the other and then took a stitch ripper to them for a distressed kind of look. I think I'm going to try it again on a tone on tone page, maybe for a wedding or a baby layout? The little photos were printed with my Pogo printer and I rescued the Cat In The Hat Stickers from an old activity book.

And that's me for today. Now the sewing machine is back I'm going to make a start on some new rag dolls for the latest drive at Dolly Donations. I think it's a great cause to check out. And if you are a knitter, not a sewer, they have a few patterns for you too. Easy.