tatting lessons

Had some tatting lessons from an expert tatter - Audrey Lappin, at the Folk Festival, and she liked the shuttle I made myself, so I've gone and made her one too! Hope she likes it.

Here is how I made it.

folk Fesival...here we come again!

Nearly forgot to do this.... Luarna will have left for the festival by now, so I can upload these now HEE HEE.... the van!!

here it is! A big peace sign like I dreamed about. Luarna said "it's not gonna look like the scoobie doo van is it?" HOW COOL... I'd LOVE to do that... "YOU CAN" she said....it doesn't say mystery machine, but it's pretty scoobie dooish if you ask me. I get a lot of funny looks, but I don't care. I actually enjoy it, and now I feel I'm not pretending to be something I'm not. I feel like ME.

And those are the presants I made for Joelle (Jeffery and Helens little girl) and Isaac (Luarna and Hadens baby). I made them at the bach and stitched them by hand. I am putting instructions for the flower on my other blog soon, and the dolly was a free pattern from Indietutes.

Here we come!!

I spent alot of my holidays up at the bach this summer, and because Mum decided she didn't want to come up a second time, and Teresa came up for the night then took Catherine with her... I spent 4 glorious days there all by myself. I'm totolly planning to make it a regular thing... every thursday infact, while Catherine is at school... I'm gonna get those windows painted by gum! (It's been a ten year process which slowed to a halt when C. came on the scene).

I visited my friend Luarna, and discovered that maybe I like being with people sometimes... I think its just Catherines incessant annoying questions that drive me to think I was born to be a hermit... "Do I look like a giraffe? what about now? now mummy? what about now? what if I do this? what? I can't hear you mummy! now?".... etc... etc... ad infinitum.

And I made a cool bracelet there while she feed bubs.

I also discovered at the bach feet pictures are pretty cool.

I also made some little gifts while I was on holiday that I will upload later on... and the van, oh the van... IT IS DONE...I've stripped it and re-signwritten it. I'm not showing it now because it's a suprise for the Folk Festival which is in 2 DAYS TIME YAAAAY! It's funny, but I feel way more comfortable driving around in my peaced-out van than I ever did in that wanna-be-corporate... SELLOUT before... but I spoil things already... it shall be revealed!

I'm gonna try and take more pics this time... why do I always only take pictures on the day we pack up??

portrait

Here's a drawing I did for a friend at church. It's of her sister and baby. I always get a bit iffy doing portraits coz they never look just like the photo... but then again, I'm usually the one who offers to do them, so can't really complain. Good practice. I didn't quite get the absolutely INCREDULOUS look of the baby, but it's ok I guess.

Also, even though it's summer, my contribution to the rising baby population (or so it seems right now!!) is booties!! A pair for a girl at church, and a pair for Catherine's Aunty (who I never see, but Catherine announced one day "I'm going to have another cousin!!" - so I thought I would be "big" and make her some booties).

can't waaaait.

Man, I just soooo can't wait to ditch my business. (Am I boring you yet?)

I havn't made the announcement yet, so I've already had one guy text me saying "Jump Ma'am" and my response was "Yes sir...how high?". So when I see him tomorrow to do his car (and I'm sposed to be on holiday dammit), I'm gonna let him know that on February the 1st, I'm waving a sad goodbye (haha) to my slavery, er, business.

And the start of it all, when I cleaned up my room on christmas day and thought, "right! I'm sick of ppl coming into my room and messing the whole thing up", so having the equiptment, I set about making me a sign... a "NO ENTRY" sign, the first little step to independence. The thing I've been craving for years, but try not to talk/blog toooo much about because there are people with bigger problems in the world than that. But then it was God himself who told me I was bitter. (through a series of events/coincidences), so its true. I was. And as I said, now to make 2011 a year not waisted.

new blog...

Well, I mentioned a while ago I wanted to start a wordpress blog because I can upload pdf sewing files to it.Well, I did it! It's called Little by Little and here it is. It's basically going to be patterns only, and it's called little by little, because I will add to it slowly. No whining on this blog. This is one I can put my name to. I think my friends from church read my old blog, they didn't say anything, but I'm pretty sure they looked at it when I was whining about my life having
no point apart from the one piece of joy in my life at the time, which was having a fridge in the garage. Slightly embarrassing to think of it now. But I will keep this blog going. This is like a dairy to me, where I air my naturally pessimistic outlook, or in other words, whinging (winjing? how do you spell that word?) and also rant on about spiritual issues in a way that would embarrass my christian friends... and myself if I hadn't already spent 7 years in society as a mad woman... but there I go again!! see... that's what your there for bloggy.

Barbie cake

Made a barbie cake for Catherines 6th birthday. As you can see the first cake was a complete disaster! Kinda funny though. Not only did it burn, it disintegrated into pieces! So I rang my trusty friend Charmaine for advice, and she told me I needed to leave it for 10 minutes before taking it out of the pan. I also lined this tin with baking paper first.
Second go turned out alright I think :)

folk you.

I just about stripped off the signwriting on my van today, with aspirations of adding a big PEACE sign. Why? because throughout the last few years while I've been thrashing away miserably at my business, I kept saying to myself "One day I'm going to ditch this stinkin work, dread my hair, rip all the signwriting off this van, spray paint a big peace sign on the side and cruise around New Zealand eating 2 minute noodles."

Well, my aspirations are almost taking place to a degree anyhow. Maybe someday is sooner than later. Ok, not exactly like that... I mean, I've contacted my Uncle to see what he thinks about me downsizing my business. Stage one: tick. And if this all goes ahead I won't be meeting clients anymore, so I may as well strip off all the signwriting. And you know what? One of the cool things about being a signwriter is that you can signwrite your car as many times as you want, all for the price of the vinyl....FUN. So what about a big peace sign, even if it's just for the coming folk festival? Just a thought. Mother would not approve.... (and all the more incentive to do it grrrr).

2011

Well, I have to say, 2010 was the biggest non-event ever~ I started our christmas newsletter with the words "As another christmas approaches we are amazed at he speed this year has gone by. It seems we were only just clelbrating Christmas 2009 and here we are again!"...and it's so true! Where did it go??

And more importantly, what was tho point of it? I just thought to myself.... 'what a waist'. So what needed to change? I asked myself. Well. I 'm really good at making life changing proclaimations on this blog, but this time I'm thinking it's for real.

For example, one of the reasons last year was a non-event was that I spent half of it staring at a screen. Honestly, I must have checked my email 40 times a day last year. So, for now, I am rationing myself to half an hour each day on the computer. ( I am currently sitting here writing this down on a piece of paper to type out later on). This may change a bit later, but while I'm on holdiay, that's the rule!

Also - I spent the whole year flogging that dead horse I call my business. I can't tell you how much stress and time goes int this thing that make me Z IPPO dollars. I basically work so I can afford to work! I've told my customers I'm on holiday until the 1st of Feb and I seriously considered chucking the whole thing in, stripping the signwriting off my van, closing my website and just tell people the truth "I'm a stay at home Mum". The only thing really stopping me, was telling my Uncle, who has really been helping me and encouraging me and giving me advice last year. How to tell him? I thought. I know... I'll say I'm downsizing to just selling my decals online. But wait a minute.... that's actually a great idea! Cancel my insurance and phone line and if I want a holiday just take my listings off the net. Brilliant!!

Another scary thing was telling my clients I was closing down. But are they really going to throw themselves off a bridge if I tell them that? Nope - they'll barely worry at all! I've just got to do it all official and set a date and let them all know at once and no turning back!

So as you can see, this life-changing proclaimation might be for real this time, and I feel alot happier right now. My new years resolution was to loose weight, (lol!) but subconciously I made the decision not to let 2011 slip by another waisted year.