Lofty Thoughts

To paraphrase a Randy Newman song*

It's a jungle up there!
Disorder and confusion everywhere

No one seems to care

Well Bob does

Hey, who's in charge here?
- He could be wrong now
    [but I don't think so]

Over the winter it has been too cold to spend very long up in the loft. I scuttle up the ladder, snatch what I want and come down again. Bob thoughtfully fitted an extra grab handle for me 3 years ago. I occasionally return items by putting them in boxes, climbing to the hatch, and shoving them hard across the floor without even going right up inside. This does make for disorder and confusion. The main loft contains my sewing and craft materials, out of season clothing, and other random stuff [two guitar stands belonging to Bob - who rarely sets foot up there] The loft above the Futility is much tidier. All the Christmas stuff, and those empty boxes from important items [to be kept until the guarantee runs out, just in case]
I set aside time this week to work on tidying the loft. This happens every couple of years.  I have rules for myself during this activity

1. Go to the loo before climbing the loft ladder [for what Ro and Jess call a "Safety Wee"]
2. Take mobile phone [if I don't, its sure to ring - and if something goes wrong, I need to be able to call for help!]
3. Take a sharpie, a pair of scissors, a tape measure and a trash bag, for efficient labelling and sorting
4. Organise 'stuff to get rid of' into three boxes/ bags while still up there. Donate, recycle, and general bin. It is much easier that way.
5. Be firm and realistic. I am retired now. I don't need half a set of class worksheets about algebra anymore. Yes, the children can do drawing on the other side of the sheet - but be honest, just how many pictures is Jess going to do when she visits? I have been filling a plastic box with random craft materials to take to our local Scrap Scheme. Somebody else will use them.
6. Pieces of ribbon less than 10cm long are no use to me. Particularly if they are grubby from being on the floor up there. Ditto tiny scraps of felt. And elastic that lost its stretch back in 1998. Bin them!
7. Sort things sensibly. Label the drawers so you can find things quickly. Next time, put things away carefully in the right place, however cold it is up there
8. Nobody needs to keep every envelope, jiffy bag, and cardboard box that the postman brings. Recycle!
9. If an item has not been used for a very long time, why am I keeping it? Rehome it or ditch it. Now!
10. If it is properly tidied now, I can keep it tidier in future. My word of the year is restoration. I need to restore order and sanity...

I last tidied the loft in autumn 2023 [see picture]. But that space in front of the drawers is full of more stacked boxes now. So I cannot get to my Velcro stash, or felt pieces, without a lot of shuffling. A tidy up is long overdue

The current disordered state! I need to do the winter/summer wardrobe swap in the next couple of weeks. Back to work...

*It was used for the theme tune of that great detective series "Monk". Adrian Monk was OCD, he would have a complete melt-down if he saw my loft.

NB that empty HiViz jacket is strapped to the roof truss, It is not a desperate kidnap victim.
Also, I found my little wooden eggs, just in time for Easter Decorating.🥚🥚🥚

Hen Party!

I was really tired on Saturday afternoon, after a busy week. "I just want to sit and sew this afternoon" I said at lunchtime, so Bob suggested I did just that. Then on the Sunday, after a busy morning at church, Bob was going out to the Hospice. I sat and sewed again. And I finished my hen! 

Here it is hanging from the doorknob. Approximately 12cm high, 12 cm wide. I would give this kit a 5* rating

• There's more than enough felt and thread to complete the project, plus stuffing, and ribbon for hanging loop
• There were very clear coloured instructions with helpful diagrams of the stitches
• The embroidery is quite complex in parts but OK if you practice first on a spare bit of felt.
• I found it helpful to draw the main lines with a Frixion pen [see here] to guide my stitching on the neck, body and tail and also position the eyes and the stars. The ink disappears under a warm iron!

I have loved making this French Hen, and I am glad I now have a paper pattern in case I feel like making more! Though whether I will make another before Easter is unlikely. I reckon it took six hours start to finish. In the absence of my little wooden eggs, I balanced her on some conkers!

A Lidl Of What You Fancy...

A new Lidl opened in Dereham last month. Excited shoppers queued in the rain [not me, I was in Manchester that week] It's a lovely big store, with good car parking, an instore bakery and lots of extra features [like a self scan checkout area]

I've been in there two or three times, and I like it. There's more space in the aisles, and a wider variety of products. Early on Monday I was in there getting eggs and milk, and also picked up one of the Too Good To Waste boxes. It cost me £2 and I am really pleased with what I got for my money.  I do not often post 'shopping basket' pictures on the blog, but decided this was worth sharing. I separated out the items and priced them up

These are the contents - 2kg potatoes, 500g leeks, 1kg carrots, 9 bananas, 6 easy peelers, 1 grapefruit and an apple. Bought individually in store, I would have paid nearly £5 more.

The bananas will need to be eaten up fairly promptly [or used in banana bread, smoothies or a pudding] but everything else will keep OK in the fridge for a few days,
🍌🍊🥔🥕🍎🍌🍊🥔🥕🍎🍌🍊
This strikes me as very good value.
The boxes are kept on the far side of the tills - so you inform the assistant that you would like one, she adds £2 to your bill, then you collect it as you leave the store. This is a good system. It stops people handling the produce or swapping out the contents of their boxes, exchanging leeks for more easy peelers!

Do you ever buy these bargain boxes?
What is the best thing you ever discovered in one?

🥔🥕🍎🍌🍊🥔🥕🍎🍌🍊🥔🥕

New Life, Fresh Joy

I love the signs of spring everywhere - the 'volunteer plant' primula which has randomly popped up in the back garden, the buds on the trees, the sense of new life, and hope. I love the fact that Easter happens in Springtime.
We are certainly celebrating new life in our family - my niece had a baby last week, her second little boy. I have a new great-nibling!*

A good excuse to knit a hat and bootees, and make a Spring-like card. Primrose yellow seemed an appropriate colour, the bootee pattern from my favourite Zoe Mellor book. 

God bless this little bundle of new life, may he bring great joy to the family, and be always surrounded by love

[*if sisters and brothers are siblings, nieces and nephews are niblings]

Pause In Lent #5

 

One For Sorrow, Two For Joy...

This is the logo of The Magpies, aka Dereham Town Football Club. Norfolk boasts a number of FCs with bird nicknames [Norwich Canaries, Kings Lynn Linnets, Reepham Robins...] Founded in 1884 as Dereham FC, merging in 1986 with a Sunday league team, to become Hobbies United - in 1991 named Dereham Town FC.

This year, 2026, marks 60 years since the first name change, and our local museum is making this a year of sport [we just had the Winter Olympics] So Katie asked how we could bring the Museum Mice up to speed on this.
I said that creating sports gear for the mice was a bit of a challenge - why not dress them as footie fans, and give them all hats and scarves? And I'd got black and white wool in my stash...
Oh no I hadn't! Lots of white dk, but somehow almost all my black wool got used up when I donated it to some poppy-knitters. I bought a cheap ball of black dk and set to, producing first scarves and then hats. And the hats needed pompoms. 
"Why is there a small fork on the coffee table?" asked Bob. "It's mine, I said defensively, "my first ever fork, it used to have a little spoon with is but that got lost decades ago"
"Buy why is it on the coffee table?"  "It is perfect for making Mini PomPoms"

That really is black wool, it just looks navy in the picture! Here's a diagram.   Choose a fork the width of your finished pompom.

 Thread the ends round between central tines a few times [use a darning needle] and tie tight. Cut and trim.

The project is going very speedily, I'm making hats with both white and black pompoms. The mice should look splendid! I decided to polish up my little fork, so got out the giant tin of Brasso. Don't forget, if you polish a piece of cutlery with Brasso or Duraglit, you should wash it in regular w/u liquid afterwards before using it for food.

Have you ever made mini pompoms?

Do you support a football team? [I don't] 

Do you still use metal polish? [The National Trust polish their copper and silverware just once a year before the start of the season]

⚽⚽⚽⚽⚽⚽

Magpie began on ITV in 1958, it was intended as a rival to BBC's Blue Peter which began ten years earlier. Magpie ran for just 12 years. BP is still going, approaching its 70th birthday, it's the longest running children's TV show in the world

Fourth Project Finally Finished

Kirsten and I began this collaboration at Lammas and we have managed to finish during Lent in the run up to Easter. Each month we each made two patches [hence 'two by two'] and kept one, swapped one, until we had twelve each. These were 7.5cm square. What a diversity of pieces

1. A printed Noah's Ark scrap, cut in half [she got the ark, I got the rainbow] over stitched with running, back, and chain stitches, plus French knots
2. An autumnal piece on rich brown fabric, with tumbling leaves
3. A darned patch done on evenweave fabric using the speedweve darner
4. A sparkly snowflake with silver threads, beads and sequins on midnight blue satin
5. A nine-patch created from different fabrics used in previous collaborations
6. A red and black poppy for remembrance
7. A representation of the ironwork on the great door of Norwich Castle Keep
8. A landscape of sea and sky in shades of blue 
9. A crochet Granny Square 
10. A Manchester bee, on a honeycomb of Manchester spun cotton
11. A sampler on the fabric from the Shed aprons, with a coded message
12. A Christmas fabric overstitched with running, back and satin stich to give texture

What to do with them? K suggested making a pouch. I had some soft grey woollen cloth, and some cheerful red viscose in my stash so sent her some. I opted for a largish rectangular pouch with 8 patches on the back, 4 on the front. I mounted them on the grey wool, and put a layer of curtain interlining next to give some strength. Then the red viscose, having first pleated a pocket to go inside. I cut a very long strip of spare viscose and made binding to hold all three layers together and added magnetic catches.

We each stitched a rubric on cotton tape, with our names and dates. It is so important to do this, so that in the future we can work our when we did it! And now my pouch is finished and already being used to keep my next little project tidy [no more bits and pieces scattered all over the coffee table!]

A huge Thank You to all of you who have encouraged us with this one [special shout to Annie, for suggesting that there should be some clear division between the patches. I added a row of dense blue chain, which made all the difference!]

So that's it for now, Kirsten will post pictures of her piece too. A very different interpretation! 
We have decided on a hiatus for a while, we both want to pursue some different sewing techniques. We are still very good friends and I am sure that before long we will come up with another idea we can collaborate on. I would really recommend working together like this it has so many benefits!