New shoots

This is a funny little fascinator from a remarkable shop on Etsy.  Remarkable in that the seller really is following her artistic whim.  Every piece is an unselfconscious and purely original musing carried out with care and skill.  Very impressive!  The name of the shop is Kreuzzz on Etsy (even the name is quirky).  I think back to my years of crafting and I have often wanted to dabble in interesting forms of craft like felting but have been put off by the need to buy yet more tools and other items that I worry that will end up in the stash.  The sewing room these days is getting more and more packed out.  Hubby and I have been trying to get rid of a few things lately.  It is very cathartic but honestly I wonder if it will ever end.  There is just so much in this house that has to go.  I have been thinking about having a big stash sell-off on Teapot & Snail just to make way for some new things.  I recently found a Gocco printing set at a garage sale for a mere $5.  I'd love to get into papercraft, but I have GOT to get space to do it!  Time for some serious clutter attack!

Surprises

How awesome is this?!!!  This has to be the finest piece of yarn bombing I have ever seen.  Check out Sarah Rudder's blog for more fabulous yarn bombs.

Just as well there's a nice R2-D2 to cheer me up this morning.  Last night we had a massive storm and got something like 67mm of rain in less than an hour.  Sadly, the Teapot & Snail studio flooded and the whole family mucked in to pump water out.  Seriously, it was coming in faster than we could get rid of it.  It seems the storm drains just couldn't handle such a huge dump of water in one hit.  Luckily we were home for the long weekend as the weather put us off going to the beach.  If we hadn't been here, a lot of fabric, yarn, and the expensive stuff like the overlocker and cupboards would have gone.  Thankfully no current stock was damaged but my mum's antique Singer sewing table nearly copped it.  Today we are off to buy some sturdy shelving units to get more things up high and then it's back downstairs to dry things out some more.

Cheerio!

DIY Chewbacca!

I love this!  It's a whole bunch of Star Wars related craft including how to make your very own sock wookie.  My daughter is going to go nuts when she sees this.  Not only does she have the SW bug but also the craft bug - the perfect set of activities for the last week of holidays.

An afternoon sew

I whipped up this cute little bag today.  My little daughter is off to preschool in just a couple of weeks. She's very excited so I've made her a special library bag to bring her books home in.

I had to fiddle around with the size for a while so it would be big enough for picture books without dragging on the ground.  The answer - quite large in the body of the bag but teeny handles in comparison.

Just a simple little tote with a gusset but what I love (and she loves) is the layers of applique in the corner.  All it takes is a few scraps from the stash and a bit of extra stitching.  It's so easy and cheap to make something special.

Being a resourceful mama

There are times when a mama's gotta do what a mama's gotta do.  We make do with what we have, we fix what we can't afford to replace, and when little dramas pop up we cobble up some kind of creative solution to get us by.

Today in the Bush Capital it is 38 degrees Celsius   That's just over 100 Fahrenheit for you Imperial folk.  We have had a run of nasty temps like this for days and it's wearing us down.  With school holidays on, the focus has been on getting us out of the house and looking for things to do, but with the heat even the swimming pools are only a short trip as the UV levels are in the extreme.  Today in particular we have had all sorts of bushfire warnings - I think the warning rating has been downgraded from catastrophic to extreme but it still sets a person on edge.

So we've headed out to I think possibly the coldest place in Canberra barring the ice rink - a shopping centre near the industrial outskirts of town.  A bit of a drive out in the heat, and it seems, just enough of a drive to put Miss Three-Nearly-Four to sleep.  But what do you do with a sleeping preschooler in a roasting open air carpark when a pram hasn't been a regular part of your arsenal for several months?

Why, you just call Resourceful Mama of course!  And what would her solution be?  A supermarket shopping trolley and a pile of whatever blankets, shopping bags, and towels you could find in the car.  Voila, a teeny bed on wheels:

And now time for a coffee in the air con - phew.  To everyone who's in a bushfire area, I hope you and your family are all safe, together, and OK  Stay out of the heat guys.  Cheerio.

Spoonflower

I've had customers ask me recently about using Spoonflower fabric for their bag patterns.  If you haven't discovered Spoonflower yet, go have a look - it'll knock your sweet cotton socks off.  It's basically a website that will print off fabric in your own designs and sell it by the yard to the public.  More recently they have started printed your designs on wallpaper and wall decals too - it's just all kinds of awesome.

One thing though, when you are buying the fabric keep in mind that the width of a yard will vary depending on the type of fabric you choose in the drop-down menu.  For example, linen-cotton canvas is 54" wide but basic combed cotton is only 42" wide.  Cotton silk is 40" wide which might present a problem for some patterns - you might want to get a bit extra!  If you are buying Spoonflower fabric (or any fabric really) for a Teapot & Snail pattern, don't be afraid to email or convo me if you'd like help to calculate how much you need to buy.  There's nothing worse than finding you're just a bit short and having to re-buy.

Friends!

I've been putting together Friends Lego with my daughter recently.  I didn't get this range at first.  I thought it was another pathetic sexist marketing ploy - rather like the Bic for Women range of pens (thoroughly sad).  But now I see how they came up with it.  Because it taps into the kind of creative and role playing games that my daughter and her friends are so into.  They focus on relationships and interactions.  The characters they play with are representations of themselves and the social interactions they have with each other every day. For them, Lego is not about the wheels or the things you can make that will fly or do stuff (all the things that I see my husband enjoy).  It's about making things that the characters can use when they are hanging out together.  I guess our nature is there, no matter how we argue there is no difference between the sexes.  Women and girls building relationships, nurturing, communicating.  The lads focused on building, moving, tearing it up!  There aren't many toys in the "girl toys" aisle that don't make me cringe a little but I'm glad to say this is one I am happy to take home.