Pass The Book: My Last (But Not The End)

Just sneaking in before the very end of the month, today I'd like to bring you my last Pass The Book. I'm going to be quick, because you have heard quite enough from me lately, but, please, do join in this one last time. July's book is:

the brand new, just published Art Saves by Jenny Doh. Stories, inspiration and prompts sharing the power of art is how it's subtitled; and that works for me. It's a beautiful book, just full of gorgeous pictures and nuggets to dip into. Perfect for coffee time, or five minutes before you fall asleep.

I bet I don't need to tell you the rules by now (but you can always check the page here). Leave a comment if you'd like to be in the draw. I'll post the winner next Saturday.  But I do need to tell you that, from next month, super book-fan Melissa from Daily Life Bits and Pieces will be taking over. And I'm delighted! Do look out for her first selection in August. I'm looking forward to it already.

One last peek at Art Saves :

"Combine your efforts with the efforts of other like minded people, and you'll be able to achieve things that are greater than what any one person could accomplish alone"

- which reminds me to note: it's Storytelling Sunday next week! I know some of you are already thinking about your post. I am too. A holiday themed one, I reckon. Just need some photos...

Five Things I've Noticed..

...about my boy being away (and a completely unrelated layout)

It is travelled themed though. My first Norway page, which appeared on the Gotta Craft blog last week

1. The dishwasher is only half full every evening.

2. I don't seem to be running out of milk. Or bread.

3. Watching the Formula One without him isn't the same.

4. No one pats me on the head. No, wait. That one isn't true. Everyone pats me on the head. And I mean everyone.

5. You bring a child into the world, you look at him and you think I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you always have everything you need. And then he grows up a bit and tells you his plane gets in at 5.30am, which means getting up at 3.00am to drive to the airport. And you think Mmmm..

My Crafty Life Part Five

Ah. The Scrapbooking Years. Still in them. Still loving them. And it all started, as it usually does, with a trip to the newsagents.

A layout about a layout? Probably overkill. But for the sake of completeness, here it is

I'd taken the morning off from fixing the hem on my sister's wedding dress; and I was browsing around, thinking about what I could make for her as a souvenir of her big day. As I was paying for something else, I caught sight of a scrapbooking magazine. I'd never seen anything like it. All the things I'd been playing about with for years - cutting, collecting, keeping- were right there, together. It was irresistable. I brought the magazine home. I stayed up late into the night looking at the pictures. Then I got back out of bed so that I could read some more (really). I sat at midnight, wondering at such perfection.

Of course I had to have a go. I looked around, I bought a few things and I made this (ready? remember, it's my first page)

That's my very first page. Never seen in public before. We can all see what isn't so great about it. But, know what? I like it a lot. It has pictures (I even took a detail shot); it has a story (on the tag); it has ephemera (that receipt envelope from the shop in the story) and it has my set-the-mood patterned paper background I still use today. It was  a scrapbook page. and it was a start.

I joined UK Scrappers, I took some classes. I met some nice people and I kept on cutting and sticking. One of my pages was spotted in the UKS Gallery and in Spring 2009 it was published in Scrapbook Inspirations. Then I had another one picked up, so I submitted a couple more and they were published too. I took part in their Ready Steady Scrap challenge later that year and it was a lot of fun. I was so sad to see Scrapbook Inspirations go. A lot of us were.

Then I started to blog and I met even more lovely scrapbookers. I took other classes and I joined the Gotta Craft team; and all the time I'm still working on my pages, pushing myself to learn new things. I'm not a technique-y scrapper (I don't think). I'm more about the story and a piece of pretty paper and a sharp pair of scissors. But I'm always finding new ways to lay down what I want to say and I don't think I'll be retiring from this part of my crafty life any time soon. Oh, and that souvenir for my sister? I made her a scrapbook, of course, with some cross stitched decoration and a box to keep it in covered with some left over curtain silk. I never throw anything out, and I never, ever forget.

So that's my crafty life. By the time I'd finished all of my pages, this is what I thought:

- My Reading Life might just be next.
- I used the same basic design all week, and I'd do this again, even though I was aching to try something new by the end.
- I used two kits from Midnight Rooster throughout. This was the easiest way to keep it all coordinated.
- Other ideas did come to me as I worked. All the fancy dress costumes I made; and the soft toys I sold at a Craft Fair. But I'm happy enough to add pages in at some point in the future. That's what ring bound albums are made for.

Now over to you. If you were to tell your story in stages like this, what subject would you choose?

My Crafty Life Part Four

Just before I slipped into my thirties we moved house. We had one baby, and plans for another one, so we looked for more space and found it in a pretty red brick semi with lots of little rooms and quirky touches. We had enough for the house, but nothing left over, at the beginning, so of course we started making things again.

These are the soft furnishings years. What I can't believe now is that, when I started making curtains, I had no sewing machine. I did it all by hand. It sounds daft now; but then it was soothing, calming work after a day of toddler taming. And every time I got tired, I went out and looked at the price of the ready mades; and then I went home and sewed some more.

Blue stars for a "space" bedroom, pink flowers for a girlie haven. Then, at last with a sewing machine from a magazine special offer, factory shop creamy linen for the kitchen and sage silk for best.

I kept going when we moved here to High in the Sky. Brown gingham downstairs, more linens, more silks higher up the house. Never, ever at full price, mind. I'm a frugal, factory shop loving girl when it comes to fabric. I used a book by Katrin Cargill to learn how to make the pelmet in the photograph for a small Small One who wanted a country look. Then  I challenged myself to make matching slipcovers for a little sofa. (I did a fake animal fur rug too - when I say "country" I guess I really mean "Little House in the Prairie").

 She must have liked it just fine, because a bigger Small One still has no plans to turn teenager and paint her room black. If she did, I'd be ready. I have some bargain, roll-end, black factory shop linen just waiting to be used. And all curtains wear out eventually, don't they? Let's just call this phase "on hold" while we look at where I'm at right now. But that's for tomorrow...

My Crafty Life - all this week

My Crafty Life Part Three

I got married when I was twenty two (just). I think I probably spent the next few years caught between wanting to stay in and make things for our new home - and wanting to go out to prove that now I was married I wasn't going to spend all my time at home, making things.

We did a lot, though. Had to. Money was tight. We papered and painted (but it was my sister who sewed the curtains when we were on honeymonn. Thank you.). We built a kitchen from flat packs. Those were the years of "Prima" magazine with its pullout paper patterns. I stacked them up and thought I knew everything there was to know about domestic economy. Which simply goes to show how much I still had to learn.

And in the evenings, I cross stitched. I can't remember what started it (probably a magazine. It usually is.). I bought books 9all of the Jo Verso ones, so sad when she died). I stitched cards and pictures and in my lunchbreaks from the library I hunted the needlework shop for new threads I loved. A couple of hours on the information desk of an afternoon always went more quickly if I could dream about the new colours tucked away in my bag.

And then, all at once, everything changed. I wasn't so interested in work anymore. I wanted to stay at home and wait for my baby to arrive. I did a bit of knitting for him (sweaters and a hat) but I knew he had two grannies to help out there. So I started a cross stitched baby blanket, each soft square a different letter of the alphabet, with room for a name in the middle. I put in the final stitches sitting up on my hospital bed with my tiny son beside me.

And that was the beginning of the end. Funny, the final thing I stitched was a "Baby is Sleeping" door hanger. He did sleep sometimes; but the sewing stopped. Just for a little while. And there was something new round the corner.

My Crafty Life Part Two

By the time I was a teenager I was making a lot of my own clothes. Some by choice, but not all. Living with a Mum brought up on "Make Do and Mend" sometimes meant going without if you couldn't sew it yourself. Not that it was all bad, though. I was able to knit myself a "picture jumper" (pink clouds, purple mountains - hey, what can I say? it was in my black phase) when they were the right thing to have. And take my jeans in to make them tighter. Always had to have those inspected before I sewed,  just in case I was in danger of cutting off my circulation. But what I really remember is the designing and making of my "formal dress".

Once upon a time, in the days before Proms had been heard of (here), our Upper Sixth decided to have what we called a "Formal". It was simply arranged, just a meal and a band; but we still spent many happy hours in the Study room planning our dresses.

Mine was to be grey (faux) silk, I decided (still in my black period, I wanted something like the one the girl from New Order wore on Tops of the Pops). With a dropped waist. Nothing like it in the shops, of course, and I probably wouldn't have had the money for it anyway. But we did find the fabric and my Mum helped me to put it together She sewed pintucks round the hem and found a length of black velvet ribbon for the shoulder. We took jet beads from an old evening bag and made a new one and she loaned me a silver bangle and a crystal necklace; and I put on the dress we had made and I had a wonderful night.

I wore it again a year later when, as new girlfriend of the previous year's Head Boy I had drinks in the Headmasters study. Different do, different school, same dress. I felt very grown up. That's us in the photo. We don't look like that today. But the dress hasn't changed. It still looks a bit like a sack. And that is just the way I like it.

My Crafty Life - every day this week.

My Crafty Life Part One

On and off now, for a few weeks whenever I get the chance, I've been working on a collection of pages about the things I have made over the years. When I realised I had five I thought - do something new for you Sian and blog them through the week. So, starting today, here they are.

My crafty life started, I think, as soon as I could hold a pair of scissors. Before I went to school my favourite thing to do was cut out Paper Dolls. Not the ones from my Twinkle comic, though; they were too nice to cut up. Funny, I say the same thing about paper now.

My Grandma taught me to knit when I was about five; I made a scarf for Ted Fred, then a little grey woollen satchel. It gave me a headstart when it came to school needlework lessons.

Oh, now there's a subject close to my heart. Why isn't it taught anymore? The Small One is the only girl in her class who can sew on a button. And that's not right. I know sewing isn't for everyone; but those lessons taught us more than practical skills. They taught us about sharing, about bonding, about girl power. For an hour a week the boys disappeared. The clever teachers knew how to gather us round and draw us out. How to get us to talk about school and friends and family while we sewed. Our P7 teacher told us lots of things girls our age needed to know. It's not done like that now; and I think we've lost something there.

We made things too, of course. A knitted "dorothy bag". whatever that was. A Liberty Print smock. (It was the seventies. Wish I had that fabric now.) A chunky ribbed hat and scarf. A needlecase. A rag doll. Some of it was unravelled, ripped out, crumpled up; but all of it was proudly displayed at the end of the year.

By the time I left Primary School I had a gypsy skirt I actually wore, a row of Girl Guide badges I had sewed on by myself; and a love of everything I could make by hand. I want that now for our girls today. Let's bring back sewing lessons! Let's do it all over again!

Tomorrow, my teenage years

Five Holiday Observations..

...with photos from Bergen's open air museum.

1. If you are the littlest (see how I slipped that in there?), you don't have to carry a suitcase. The big people do that.

2. Next time, don't visit the Titanic exhibition two weeks before sailing. That way you won't be left fighting the urge to shout "Stuff the drill, let's just get in the lifeboats," at the Emergency Procedure Lecture.

3. When your husband describes your outfit as "jaunty", you know you have overdone the nautical stripe cruisewear.

4.  Watching the Space Shuttle launch while in a hotel room miles from home with everything you own reduced to what is in your suitcase can be a strangely moving experience.

5. Something great about getting older: it seems no time since last summer. Holidays come round faster and that has to be a good thing, right?

Have a great weekend everyone. I'll have a new layout up on the Gotta Craft blog tomorrow and I have a special series I've been working on for you next week. It's "My Crafty Life" with a layout a day Monday to Friday. How's your crafty life this summer?

Wish You Were Here

So here's the thing: the motto of the company we travelled with is "Escape Completely". And we did, oh we did. And yet as we travelled and looked and admired and wondered, I found myself spotting things you would have liked. And that was nice.

I saw a collection of trolls one of you would have loved. And a shop full of clean Scandi design another one of you would have wanted to bring home. And a decoupaged table which I just know would have had one of you reaching for the mod podge. And then I started looking for things from my list, my list for Rinda's Summertime Scavenger Photo Hunt, and I discovered a few:

Wall art in Stavanger

Decorated mail boxes in Olden

Rooster weather vane in Olden

Wooden bridge in Geiranger

I've been enjoying seeing who else has been joining in, as I sift slowly through the posts I've missed. I'm savouring them in between loads of laundry. Nearly there with that - I needed a fast turn around because on Sunday The Tall One flies to Pittsburgh to take part in the International Schools Language Olympiad. He's been doing a bit of training with Uncle Dave:

Dave: Forget cricket. That was your old life. The hard work starts here. I've marked a few passages..

The Tall One: Yeah. Right. I'm off out to play cricket.

Whatever you are up to this Thursday, I hope it's a good one!

When The Sun Shines..

"When the sun shines, angels are travelling," our Tour Guide in Bergen said. Now, we're no angels; but the sun certainly shone for us last week in Norway. It flashed off the waterfalls and made the green fjord water glisten as we sailed past.

One fjord, one pair of big sunglasses. And me.

We had a wonderful holiday and I have lots to tell. But most of those stories are still in my head for now, waiting for a chance to escape.

Phrase book borrowed from (who else but) Uncle Dave

I have been answering emails this morning, but I am also looking forward to looking at my Google Reader. It's full to bursting with enough excellent lunchtime reading to last me all week. And then there is the laundry pile, which will probably stretch into next week too. It's good to be back...

Oh, look. Family togetherness. In the coffee shop at Geiranger Fjord Centre

We're Going On Holiday

Summer is here and we are off on a break

We have left Uncle Dave in charge of the house and the hamster and we'll be back in about a week. Keep on blogging!

July at Gotta Craft

Today I get to show you what I made with the July kit from Gotta Craft. Odds & Ends from Cosmo Cricket? Gorgeous!

First I did a layout about a bit of kitchen accessory shopping:

Red letters and numbers and blue doily cut with Paper Reverie Slice card. Button and cream alphas included in the kit

then I kept on cutting out those paper dolls so that I could make some tags:

Ribbons from my stash

and then I made a card

Twine, papers and cardstock from the kit. "Cherish" cut with Paper Reverie Slice card

or two

Leaves from the kit

I have lots left and I'm hoping to get stuck in again soon. I might even be ordering seconds...

The Sew Sindy Page

Simply the page from the story:

using some Cosmo Cricket Girl Friday and a big October Afternoon Thrift Shop sticker

Oh, no, there is one other thing - I have been testing out the new mobile device version of From High In The Sky. So if you read on your phone, have a look and see what you think. Quicker? easier? What do you reckon?

From Pin to Pen

I'm talking Pinterest again today because I really want to show you my favourite find so far:

It's a ready-to-print-out-and-fill-in journaling sheet from the extremely clever Christie at Grace is Overrated. She has a whole collection of these  waiting for you to use (with the promise of a couple more over the Summer). If you enjoy using your markers, you'll like the plain ones to colour yourself, but you can also try out the completely ready to go kind like this one. And she's happy for you to blog the results. I asked. What's not to love?

I'm going to be filling out a few more of these (just dipping in and picking one I like, (you don't have to do them in order), I can tell. I might even be able to persuade The Small One to join me. What do you think?

Thank you to everyone who joined in Storytelling Sunday this month. If you haven't had a chance yet, do click through from your Reader here to enjoy. And don't forget, you may add your own story any day all week!

Storytelling Sunday - Sew Sindy

Welcome to Storytelling Sunday! Come on in, did you bring a story with you?

This is the story of a girl, a book and a doll called Sindy.

Once upon a time, when men walked on the moon and everything we ate was plastic, I asked for a Sindy doll for my birthday. I loved my Sindy; and I longed for the days when I too would own yellow boots zipped to my knee and a micro skirt which barely covered my behind. She had a small wardrobe to choose from, my doll. My Mum didn't believe in shop bought clothes. They were a waste of money. So Sindy stuck to her check mini until the glorious day I went to the library and found this:

Top Outfits for Teenage Dolls by Nesta Hollis

For the next year it was my favourite book in the whole wide world. I thought it had been written just for me. As soon as I handed it back into the library I put my name down to take it out again. On a loop.

The ones I made then

And then I sewed. Oh, I sewed. Any scrap I could save, any ribbon I could gather. Annette-next-door joined in; and we had grand plans for a Sindy Boutique, lovingly crafted from old cereal packets. We worked through the eight weeks of our Summer holiday, piling up lots of skirts (easy); dresses (a bit harder); to tailored jackets (pretty darn tricky, since you ask). I have them still though we never did finish up that shop. Teenage life got in the way eventually. All that work? No, I'd never let them go.

The ones I make now. Felt coat and a dress from a sock

And that might have been the end of the story, if I hadn't got chatting to a scrapbooking friend one day. (Julie, thank you - this one's for you!). I described my book. She said, quick as you like, "Here's an Amazon link for a second hand copy. Buy it. You know you want to." Or something like that. So I did. I ordered it and it arrived and I opened it and I gasped. Because inside that pink cover I knew so well were some tracing paper patterns, lovingly folded into the right pages, all marked with the details in a pencil hand I had seen somewhere before. Were these the very patterns I had traced all those years before? The paper was the same, the writing very very similar..I can't say for sure because I couldn't find any library marks on my book (and you know that's the first thing I'd look for). So let's just dream; and believe that my book came back to me and that my patterns were waiting.

So that's my story for today. If you have one of your own to share you are very welcome to add a link and we'll come round for a read. Don't forget to tell your readers it's a Storytelling Sunday post so that they can join in too. The more the merrier!

Sindy in the nurses uniform I finally sewed thirty years after she first asked for it

It's All About You

I love a bit of blog reading of a lunchtime. I really do. (It's most often lunchtime, even if the bread crumbs get everywhere.) Don't think I'll ever be a "blopper", though. That has to be one of my least favourite words ever. Along with "outsourced" and "instore".

Anyway, what I want to say today is - look at you all!

Making and sending beautiful things round the world:

With delighted and grateful thanks to (l to r) Amanda for her card, Mel for her little diorama and card, and Jacky for her memory-keeper card

Organising exciting giveaways:

The gorgeous collection of bits I was lucky enough to receive in a generous giveaway posted by Annie the Felt Fairy. Thank you!. You chose perfectly!

Planning and creating and blogging challenges and tips and Things We All Need To Know. My current favourites:

• Amy and friends at their new blog Simple Aussie Girls. Their emphasis on journaling is right up my street.
• Rinda's Summertime Scavenger Hunt (details in her sidebar). I'm sure she wouldn't mind a few more photographers joining in.
• Alexa's feast of free digital templates and tips AND Fabric printing fun (also at It's A Creative World here
• Cate's planning ahead for a series of Christmas posts and she's looking for some guests here
• Jemma and S will be looking out for the new Counterfeit Kit Challenge very soon
• Louise has taken up the Captured In a Card idea and is working it here

because I thought a Show of appreciation on a Saturday might be a plan. Come on, it's Saturday, show someone you are there enjoying what they are doing! Subscribe to someone new, follow someone for the first time (me, maybe?), leave a comment for somebody you enjoy...

...but, please, do come back tomorrow for Storytelling Sunday. And have a nice weekend, whatever you are up to.