heading home for christmas

happy christmas everyone! here are o-o and wee baby j having a retro photo booth experience at snoopers' paradise. wee baby j was not at all sure, i love his imploring expression in the last photo! i've shut up my online shops over the festive season but would like to say a BIG thankyou to everyone for buying handmade and supporting my cottage industry, i really appreciate it.

we're heading up to manchester for the holidays. just found this amazing maker on etsy. the pickled onion monster munch piece is so appropriate as we face the epic journey north, my dad banned this flavour from the car when we were nippers - so stinky!

christmas

comedy. gold. more conversations with the kiddo here.

and here he is (with proud expression) displaying his drawing of many-antlered rudolph pulling father christmas' sleigh loaded with a sack full of presents. jingle bells are jingling and it is sunset, there is a christmas tree forest far below.

panicky christmas shoppers, the last posting date for christmas delivery (UK only) is thursday. don't leave it too late! my folksy shop.

on multi-tasking

trying to take some good photos of the new print and tinkering with online listings while being a gallant prince in o-o's game, making porridge, distributing advent chocolate, advising my dad on christmas present purchases over the phone and distracting wee baby j with assorted rattles. i love this painting by elizabeth nourse of another mama busily multi-tasking long-long-ago...

beverage of champions

we've been the house of illness for what seems like MONTHS. in between nursing duties and naps (wee baby j's, not mine) and neglecting this blog terribly, i've finally managed to get a new print finished, photographed and in my online shops. you might remember this obsessive teapot drawing... well, one of those lucky teapots got to be the star of my new 'tea, beverage of champions' screenprint!

 here are the prints drying on the floor of the front room (really must get a drying rack)

and here are some photographs of the print...

it fits in an ikea 'ribba' frame if you trim a little bit off the bottom of the paper.

i'm really pleased with how it turned out (self praise is no praise and all that!). if you'd like to buy one as a last minute christmas present (UK buyers, you have until thursday the 20th, international customers, you've missed the yuletide boat i'm afraid but prints shipped now will arrive soon after christmas) then you can find them for sale here and here.

two fat ladies

you, and your mam...

i've always enjoyed this manc scally version of the traditional bingo call. woke up to find i'd had my 88th sale on folksy, thanks everyone. i love palindromic numbers!

i just sustained a mum injury while putting on my slippers (actually a pair of ugg boots), spiked my toe on the herd of plastic farm animals which, unbeknownst to me, were secreted inside. ouch.

the folksy front page

really chuffed that the good folks at folksy have featured my shipping forecast and cuppa print on the front page of the folksy site. thanks lovelies!

mum tip #4

i love the idea of documenting the kiddos' growing up, weekly photos next to a metre rule, height charts, monthly foot prints etc but i never seem to be able to remember to do the necessary regular photographing/measuring/printing. another problem is what to do with and where to store the resulting items. so now, when i give a book to m or other family members i include o-o's (and now wee baby j's) prints next to my written dedication in the front.

happy belated birthday love to sweet m who's birthday falls on the same day as wee baby j's half year birthday. we gave him the history of the world in one hundred objects.

way-hey now available in grey!

i've managed to take a few photos of the new background colour option for the shipping forecast and cuppa screen print. it's a true grey, i'm calling it 'dark clouds grey'. available here and here. please specify your colour preference when ordering.

sinister thoughts

more conversations with the kiddo here.

shipping forecast and cuppa third edition

i've finally finished the third edition of the shipping forecast and cuppa print. the perfect christmas gift for a tea enthusiast or radio 4 aficionado. I've misplaced the camera, the listing photos are of the second edition. i have two background colour choices now. 'stormy seas' grey-blue (v. similar to the colour shown in the photos) or a true grey. available here and here.

the lollipop guild

the wizard of oz is o-o's new favourite film. the lollipop guild song is an earworm, that's for sure. i have to sing it for him before he goes to sleep.

0.5

 

wee baby j is six months old today, his half birthday. he's started eating solids and spends many happy minutes trying to wrestle rice cakes and such into his mouth. here he is enjoying some broccoli. we love him very much and are so happy he's ours to keep. 

sorry i've been away from the blog for ages. we went up to manchester for half term and while we were there wee j was admitted to hospital suffering from bronchiolitis, very scary and sad to see him so poorly. wee j seems to have inherited my grandpa's penchant for pretty lady nurses, we knew he was on the mend when he started charming them all with his gummy smiles. the staff at the royal manchester children's hospital did an amazing job of caring for wee j (and me and m!) and we are really grateful to them all. the NHS really is aces.

pumpkin carving fun

 'what a lovely idea' said o-o. me and my cold shoulder sat out the activity but i managed to snap these photos.

beauty and the beast

look what i made (and if i an ANYONE can). pinned here.

and o-o made this lego beast.

in another beastly development, i have done my shoulder a major mischief. a combination of screen-printing in the teeny tiny home studio and wonky lying down breast feeding positions seems to have resulted in a frozen frickin' shoulder. ouch. hoping a good pinning (actual not virtual) tomorrow might fix me.

making and breaking

and so it's autumn, all my photos are a tad dark and grainy. i've been making wee baby j a pixie hat using a vintage knitting pattern (it's from the same booklet as the zigzag helmet). i bought some lovely and unbelievably affordable wool from tiger, (the brighton store opened not long ago and everyone i speak to is beside themselves with joy to find a new source of scandi loveliness). i'm a very slow knitter and, unlike grannies everywhere, am unable to do anything else at the same time so progress is slow. even slower in fact as o-o naughtily grabbed the knitting while my back was turn and unravelled two hour's worth of work. sigh. it was a day of destruction. in the afternoon he ran past a display of elmer mugs in the jubilee library shop, knocking two off the shelf and cracking them. i paid for the damage of course, whilst cursing patchwork elephants, low grade plastic crockery and ill thought out shop displays through gritted teeth.

when not destroying, o-o's been constructing mc escher style castles from our geriatric lego.

 and sailing away with little bro on safari boats.

fingers crossed for a win!

teething

wee baby j is getting a tooth. teething treasury.

london fieldworks

beautiful structures by london fieldworks.

spontaneous city, cremorne gardens

spontaneous city in the tree of lebanon

the post pregnancy fashion apocalypse...

...be gone. here be my dream autumn wardrobe.

the post pregnancy fashion apocalypse by sianuska 

sharpening

o-o has started at nursery. running there in the mornings, wearing his yellow coat and with his little arms pumping like pistons he looks like alfie dashing home first. while he is busy there i've been busy at home (while wee baby j naps). 

i've discovered that all our pencils have shattered leads, very frustrating...

finally, having achieved a reasonable point, i set about sharpening up my tea pot drawing skills...

...preparations for a new print. which of these pots do you like best? i went for a hybrid of two in the end.

i've been listening to desert island discs while i draw. did you know there are over 1500 episodes in the archive?

guilty!

ironically i happened upon this while "surfing from one bookmarked website to the next, vaguely aware that there were other things I wanted to do..."

hands

wee baby j has discovered his hands. here he is enjoying some beads.

rain

looks like it's gonna be another day trapped indoors. ug.

brighton art fair

on sunday i trundled down to the corn exchange with wee baby j and my pal emma bun to have a look at the brighton art fair. some of my highlights were...

art house meath i loved the colour palette used, almost neon oranges and pinks. i particularly coveted the tea party paintings. hardworking artists making art from the soul.

serena partridge delicate gloves and shoes made with teeny-tiny stitches (reminded me of the miniature shoes in my childhood copy of the elves and the shoe maker). 

box 2 it's always difficult to resist lovingly curated vintage ephemera.

alas wee baby j insisted on being carried around in my arms (not in the baby carrier, no siree), a full body work-out now that he's so big and wriggly, so i was not able to have a thorough peruse. glimpses of lots of inspiring work tho', made me want to make some art.

first fire

hello autumn.

patching

all of o-o's trousers have gone through on the knees, the result of many happy hours scuffing about whilst playing on the floor. i have been patching the holes, which is what grandma would have wanted. i used off cuts from an old shirt but have just discovered this stuff which you can use to make waterproof patches (shown in the lovely photo below). i'm deffo going to order some.

also, recently pinned, this tutorial 'how to make felted elbow patches'. the instructions are a thing of beauty in themselves!

the 75th percentile...

(not so) wee baby j has jumped from the 25th to the 75th percentile in four months. here he is, resplendent in chub. he loves chatting, having a massage, a good vantage point and being in close proximity to mama, da and o-o. i love looking into those old man eyes...

supermarket sarah

isn't this great?

GUM

alas, wee baby j's optimum performance period is between 5.30am and 6.30am. he goes back to bed for a nap at 7ish and i doodle around drinking tea and pinning until o-o awakes at (the much more civilised hour of) eight thirty. this morning this image caught my eye (via mockduck). lovely kitkat vending machine in jane foster's house (nice blog, art, style and life by the way!). 

obviously i immediately had a gander at ebay, there was a kitkiat one actually, but it was this GUM machine that really set my type geek heart aflutter... oh to have a spare grand to spend on such fabness.

from the shed of grampy b

we needed some storage to fit underneath the shelving in our downstairs room. i'd seen these and liked the colourful castors but baulked at the £55 price tag, they are only crates on wheels after all. handily, grampy b is a woodwork whizz and made these lovely sturdy boxes up for us. i painted them with blackboard paint so we can label scribble on them.