A Handmade Life 3

The hand is mine, but the hand-making is Ben's!He makes all the jam in our house, although Son 1 enjoys getting in on the act when he can (usually Ben makes jam at night - strange...)Last summer Ben noticed that his Le Parfait jars were getting chipped - daily opening and closing isn't what they're designed for, and shortens their life. He asked me if I could find him any serving pots for jam. Just the kind of thing we used to laugh at when his mum used them - and finally we see the point! Don't you love the little Canadian maple leaf pot I found in an Edinburgh charity shop?The second two pots were Christmas presents from my dad. He and I found them on my mum's shelves, and he certainly won't use them, so they made a really wonderful gift for the Son in Law Who Has Everything. This one above, in Bloomsbury style, must have really pleased my mum when she found it. I think it's possible she actually bought it NEW! Rare event...The appropriately Scottish one is actually from Brixton Pottery.Together they make a cheery sight on our breakfast tray, and they are certainly prolonging the lives of our Le Parfait jars. As you can see, we could do with one more - what a nice challenge for a future charity shopping trip!

Celebrating a handmade life...

with Josie Crafter, all though March - see my sidebar for details!Son 2,... and Son 1.

Over the last two evenings...

Something old, something new, something borrowed and a search for blue...

No, no-one's getting married - the title just seems to sum up the varied things I have to post today!
When I was searching for a background to photo Juanita's lovely necklace, I turned up this charming little hand-embroidered bib.

Can you imagine any baby actually wearing it? Surely it was for a Christening day, or just a present, never to be worn?? Our boys' bibs were, of necessity, a whole lot larger and a whole lot plainer!

Somebody has enbroidered the word 'pet' on it, which I never really liked, personally. I know it's a human term of endearment too, but for me, this is what a pet looks like:

Note the half-tail! That's a tail for another post...

Here's the back of the bib, which I like best of all, because it's plain cotton rather than synthetic silk. And here is an adorable cloth button. I love the little details...

Here is something new from something old - Penny's cardigan, which I showed you last week. If you remember, it was all brown, with brown buttons and no colour. This looked great with Penny's sparkly silver hair, but does nothing for my paler colouring, so I changed the buttons for vintage Mother of Pearl ones...

and shortened the cuffs until they were the right length for me, trimming them with some lovely fabric from a much-loved T-shirt which recently gave up the ghost after over 10 years' active service... Here is me, wondering how on earth to get a good photo of the cardi when the mirror is screwed to the wall opposite the window...
You've had the old and the new, and here is something borrowed: I read Kari Meng's lovely blog The Warp and the Weft today and I think that, if you don't follow it anyway, you should read today's post. Once again, she's been given access to an old treasure-house with 'tons of old stock - ribbon, notions and millinery...' She has few photos on the post, but her descriptions of how she made the fascinating contacts which led to today's news are well worth reading.

And here is something blue! You'll note from my blog that I rather like blue, but I now have a problem. The upstairs bathroom is blue and the kitchen is blue. The spare bedroom is blue-ish. The living area's spring colours have often been green/blue/yellow, but this year they are more predominantly blue. Bit by bit, I am removing the orange and rainbow colours which have kept us warm this winter, and am replacing them with blue. And, before I get to the end of the orange, I have run out of blue!

Items from the kitchen and the spare room are creeping into the living area; these vintage-quilt cushions, for example. But I have now officially run out. Tragically, I now have a Mission - to scour Troc Shops, Vide Greniers, Charity Shops etc for Blue. Life is hard, sometimes...

A Golden Parcel has arrived!

Oh, I'm so glad I got to the post before the boys yesterday. They would never have been able to resist ripping open this GOLDEN parcel. But then I couldn't either, as you can see!

Inside were these lovely little bags made from the recylced pages of a fascinating programme of events from Switzerland.

And inside those were some sweet little packages I had ordered from Juanitatortilla, a blog friend!

I bought this necklace for myself:

Lovely, lovely blue!

Even the clasp is prettily hand made...Very unsusally, I hadn't worn a necklace yesterday. Some inner sense must have known this one was coming:

You can tell it was hot here yesterday! I am not always quite that pink!

There were some other packages with contents which will remain secret for now, but Juanita also sweetly added this blogging gift: Look at the little elephants!

I've hung it on the window handle, but here it is a bit lower, just to show you the blue, yellow and green company it is keeping.

Thanks so much, Juanita!

Don't forget to check out Juanita's giveaway, folks!

A bit of Make Do and Mend

I saw a wonderful denim/floral patchwork bag in Claire's Accessories the other day (of all places). Son number one, who was with me, said dubiously, 'It's very Mummy'. However, I wasn't going to pay the asking price, oh no! It was one of those 'I could do that myself' moments.

So far I have decided to use this little broken Roxy bag as a base. I looked at handbag patterns on the net but I'm not feeling like starting from scratch. I'm feeling exactly like 'make do and mend', so that is what I shall do.

I've drawn around the bag and cut out a pattern onto which I've pinned the pieces - it's a bit like crazy patchwork but with hems.



Now I have to start stitching, which shouldn't take too long. The real challenge will be fitting it round the base-bag. I will let you know if it works...




I've been very inspired in this by Happy of the great blog http://happylovesrosie.blogspot.com/. This is the first time that I've posted a link, so I hope it works! You'll really like her wonderful ideas and creations.

The 2 Euro Challenge - how to play

You will need:

Two euros per child (or one euro, if feeling stingey).

Children as available:


One Troc Shop/Thrift Store or other bric-a-brac vendor:

How to play:

Give each child the agreed amount of money and an opaque carrier bag (to hide the purchased treasure).

Set the criteria for the challenge - this time it was 'handmade items', but in the past various judges have requested: 'something that makes me laugh' or 'something that would look good on the mantelpiece' etc.

Slope off to the rest of the shop and enjoy your free time browsing while the children do their own shopping at the front!

Return when summoned by children and judge the purchases:

Well, I thought they all did very well! Frankly, two euros was too much! Everything they chose was handmade, although they found it quite a hard category. They seemed able to judge handmade pottery, but found it harder to tell if other things were handmade.

In the end the prize (a bottle of bubble mix) went to son number two, who had chosen the really rather lovely brown flowered vase, and the kitch but rather wonderful souvenier pin cushion:

It comes from Alins, which turns out to be just over the Spanish border in the Catalan region.

The house has been full of bubbles today! Everyone's a winner...