Something Els

Back to school, and the end of the summer holiday

The 7yo and 9yo went back to school last week, and I still feel bereft.  It's the time of year where almost every parent I know puts a happy picture of their smiling children in their school uniform in front of the front door on Facebook, often with a comment as to how relieved they are that the holidays are over. I can remember feeling relieved at the end of the summer holidays in years gone by, but this year I was dreading the day I had to take the kids back to school. I really enjoyed spending so much time with them over the six-week holiday.  

The kids were delighted not to have to go to any childcare over the summer, but I did have to manage their expectations somewhat.  Having a career break has been really good for me (as well as completely necessary), but it has meant that I have had to reduce my spending considerably, and that my disposable income is now negligible. So this year there was to be no foreign holiday, no trip to legoland, and very few fancy days out. 

With those points in mind, at the beginning of the summer we sat all the children down and asked them what activities they would like to do. I wrote them all down on a list, and then we each got some coloured card triangles to write down our items on. I stuck these triangles up on the stairs, to look like bunting: 

I also printed off some coloured ticks on some stickers, so that we could mark off the activities as we completed them.  We did not promise to do all of the activities, but we did say that we would try to do as many of them as we could.  Within the first week we had ticked off 'swimming', 'make homemade pizza' and 'watch a movie', and the kids loved putting the stickers on the triangles as we completed things.  

Two of the kids wanted to go to the Natural History Museum and the other wanted to go to the Science Museum, so we ended up visiting both in one day, which was brilliant, if exhausting.  Whenever I go to the Natural History Museum I can't resist taking a photo of Charles Darwin's statue:

All of the children wanted to do camping as one of their activities.  We weren't able to fit in a full camping holiday this year, but luckily they were happy to do this in someone's garden, and in the end we managed 4 nights in two separate gardens (grandparents and cousins).  The tiny tent in the photo was for the 9yo's benefit, so he could have his own space, and he loved it.

We also managed to fit in a trip to the beach (to the not terribly exotic Great Yarmouth), inviting friends over for sleepovers, making homemade ice-cream, baking chocolate chip cookies and chocolate muffins, completing the Summer Reading Challenge, countless trips to the park, and many happy hours playing with toys. There was some crafting too, with Hama Beads being a particular favourite:

Alongside all the toys and craft activities, the kids also did some rather lovely role play games together, including one evening where they decided that they would be our waiters for dinner.  We cooked the dinner as normal, and the kids laid the table, made place cards and menus, and served our food to us. Hopefully by next summer they can do the same, but make the dinner as well..

All in all, we had a fabulous summer, so  when it was time to take the traditional 'back to school' photo I was quite sad.  It's an important ritual though, so we took the obligatory photos of the 9yo and 7yo in front of the front door anyway.   The 5yo is home educated, so didn't need a 'going back to school' photo.  Instead we took a 'not going back to school' photo of her in front of the door.  I don't do kids' faces on social media (or on the blog), so I also took a picture of all our shoes on the first day of term.  The 9yo has shot up over the summer, and his feet are now bigger than my partner's feet, and nearly as big as mine, so it's not that easy to tell which shoes belong to who in this photo:

I budgeted to have a year off when I left my job, so I now have 3 months left.  That means that I am actively looking for work now, but I have resolved to only look for part-time work, so that I can spend as much time as possible with my lovely, funny, exasperating, fabulous, exhausting and brilliant children while they are still young. 

 

 

Knitting a Rainbow Bag for Charity

I haven't done any knitting for a while, so when my partner spotted a cheap kit to make a knitted bag at a charity stall I couldn't resist buying it (yes, even though I haven't yet got to the end of my unfinished projects - oops).

Once I had bought it I was worried that it would languish in the cupboard until I had finished my other projects, but as luck would have it I was invited to take part in a charity fundraising crafty auction for Sands.  The auction has a rainbow theme, and I thought the bag would be perfect for it.  

I duly started knitting it about a week ago.The pattern was a simple rectangle which need to be sewn together, but contained a couple of techniques I had not used before.  There were two types of yarn - a chunky rainbow wool one, and a double knit pink acrylic one.  The pattern calls for the two yarns to be knitted together, and then the whole bag to be felted.

As the knitting needles were a size 9 it knitted up really quickly. This is a picture from day 1, where you can see the two yarns really clearly. 

Within a few days I had finished the bag, and then had to make a handle, and a flap for the button to attach to.  I had to improvised and design them from crochet, as I had irretrievably lost one of the knitting needles - I made the mistake of leaving them in the same room as the kittens overnight and apparently it was the perfect teething toy.

I really like the bag in its un-felted state, but as the pattern called for it to be felted I did so.  Having never felted anything before I thought it would be complicated, but in fact all I had to do was wash it at 60C and then leave it to dry for a couple of days.  I'm really pleased with the finished result.

The auction is going to be conducted on Facebook, in a closed group - but if you'd like to make a donation to the charity in question, Shona (who is organising the auction) also has a JustGiving page for the marathon she is running. 

 

 

An Ode to Lego

One of the things that I love most about being a parent is the way it gives you permission to play with toys and games again. I've talked about board games before, but today I want to tell you about Lego. 

As a child Lego was probably my favourite toy, and I can remember many happy hours spent playing with it with my brother.  We had a lot of Classic Space Lego, which I loved, and my brother still owns. Because of course Lego is virtually indestructible, so that my nieces still play with all of the old Lego my brother and I had as a child.

When the now 9yo was born I was so excited about the idea of being able to legitimately play with Lego again that I bought him a Lego Advent Calendar for his first Christmas.  As he was barely 3 months old this was a present entirely for me. In my defence I kept all the pieces from each day, with the little cardboard instructions that went with them, and wrapped them up individually for his advent calendar when he was five.

Lego has been a theme in our house ever since, but it has only really been over the last couple of years that the kids have really got into it.  I have been right there with them, and am always happy to help them build any of their sets.  And I'm sure I can't be the only parent who has looked up from proudly finishing a Lego creation only to realise that the child in question wondered off ages ago to play with another toy entirely?

After going through some tough times last year I decided to buy myself something frivolous to cheer myself up and the obvious choice for me was Lego.  I knew what I wanted as well, the Disney Cinderella Castle. I made it over the course of a weekend (with some help from the then 8yo and 6yo) and then left it up for a while for all the kids to play with.  As you can see from the photo, I was very happy with the finished product. 

What I've been enjoying more recently though, is making custom sets for the kids. A couple of months ago I made them a Lego playground to play with.  This was inspired by the winning entry to a recent Lego competition, but based on some of the elements of our local playground. It also had several things in that the kids wanted: a pool (with adjacent toddler pool), a changing room and a merry-go-round.  The 5yo and the 7yo have spent hours playing with it, and even the 9yo spontaneously told me it was 'awesome', so I'm pretty proud of it.

While they were playing with it last week I asked them if there was anything else that it needed, and they decided between them that a cafe / takeaway restaurant to go next door was in order.  I therefore spent a very happy couple of days making a building with two floors, that has a table and chairs and kitchen downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs.

It is made in two halves so that it can hinge open for maximum playability.  This gave me the opportunity to make the two halves look very different.  One side is made from more traditional-looking bricks and has a roof with a uniform colour: 

The other side, however, is made from an eclectic mix of rainbow bricks with a multi-coloured roof.  It also has some flowers in front of one of the skylights, as I do love a window box. 

In a nod to the 'takeaway restaurant' brief, and at the 9yo's specific request, I included an oriental window pane. There are also some transparent bricks forming part of the roof.  This, along with the skylights in the roof allow as much light in as possible for playing purposes :

From the other side you can see the hinges that allow it to open up:

It stays open most of the time, revealing the two bedrooms, and bathroom at the top, and the kitchen and seating area at the bottom.  

This is being played with constantly at the moment and has also already been modified by the kids, such that the toilet has been removed because "there's no wall between it and the bed, and that is not ok" and the table and chairs are in completely different positions.  I can't tell you how much joy it has given me to make a toy for the kids that they now play with.  I'm now wondering what my next project could be - and if a model of the Natural History Museum is too ambitious....

 

 

 

A crochet bag just for me

 

After my success with the Crochet Chairs I wanted to do something with the yarn left from the pack that I had used. I managed to persuade myself that this fitted in with my plan for this year to complete or discard all my existing craft projects before starting new ones, and decided to make a bag for myself.  I have been an avid follower of the Attic24 blog for several years now, and really liked the look of Lucy's Weekend Bag, so embarked on one of those.

I couldn't follow any of the suggested colour combinations, as I was using leftover yarn, so instead I designed my own colour scheme.  This involved a lot more blue (Denim) than any other colours, as I had not used the blue for any of the chairs. 

I was really pleased with how flat the bottom of the bag turned out, as this was the first time I had tried to crochet something flat.

The body of the bag then progressed very quickly, so I had almost finished it within a week.  (And yes, I know the idea is to be able to make it in a weekend, but I think my crochet skills have a way to go before I am quite that speedy).

I finished the stripes a bit early, as I wanted to end on Denim, so this bag is just a shade less deep than the pattern calls for. I wanted the flap of the bag to be in a contrasting colour, just as the original pattern calls for, so I crocheted it in Lavender.  In this photo you can also see the beginnings of the strap, which ended up having 2 colours in it (Denim and Meadow), so that it would co-ordinate with the rest of the bag. 

I wanted to do something different for the embellishment though as I liked the idea of having a heart on the front of the bag. , and looked around for an easy heart pattern.  The one I found was from the Crochet Leaf website, and I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt at a heart.

 

To finish the heart off I crocheted round the edge in Fondant, and then attached it to the flap of the bag using Fondant too.  After attaching the strap to the bag I then edged the strap, the top of the bag and the flap using Camel.

I think my bag fastening is worth a mention too.  I didn't have any of the magnetic fasteners called for in the original pattern, but I did have a selection of pretty coloured buttons.  So, when I was doing the edging for the flap I crocheted a chain of 4 at the tip of it, and attached the button to the body of the bag.  As you can see, this allows me to close the bag securely.

 

So there you have it, my very own crochet bag.  Although I don't think it will remain mine for very long, as both the 7yo and 5yo have been eyeing it up suspiciously.  And I can already see myself having to crochet another one at some point so that they can have a bag each.  

For completeness, the colours I used (all Stylecraft Special Chunky): Denim, Raspberry, Meadow, Aspen, Fondant, Camel, Lavender.  



 

 

 

What we did on our Easter holidays

 

Over the last few weeks I have been asked by several of my friends if I am bored or if I am missing my job and the honest answer to both of those questions is no.  The general consensus seems to be that I will miss the job eventually, but it has been 4 months now and that hasn't happened yet.   For now I am really enjoying being a stay-at-home mum.  I love being able to drop the kids off at school and pick them up again on all the days they are with me, to volunteer to go on all of their school trips, and to attend all of their concerts and assemblies. It is only now that I have been off work for several months that I can see how very anxious and depressed I was, and how much of myself and my family life I had managed to lose to the NHS.  I'm still immensely proud to be a doctor, and I did enjoy many aspects of my job, but looking back I can see just how overwhelmed I was, and just how long I had been struggling for.  

And now that I am properly on the road to recovery, I am really enjoying spending more time with my children and partner, and having some time to myself.  I have rediscovered my creative side, and as well as making good progress with my list of outstanding knitting and crochet projects I have several more ideas for future makes on the back burner.  It is also wonderful to have the time to plan meals for the week and experiment with cooking different food.  Although with 3 children under the age of 10 I must confess that we are still firmly in the land of baked beans, chicken nuggets and frankfurters.  Not one of them would so much as taste the fabulous goulash I made a few weeks ago, much to my dismay.

And after years of working weekends and bank holidays and negotiating with colleagues over who got to be off for half terms and holidays, it was wonderful to just clear my diary for the whole of the Easter Holiday, and spend as much time doing lovely activities with the kids as possible. We didn't go anywhere exotic, but we managed to pack an awful lot of adventures into these last two weeks, helped considerably by the lovely weather on almost all of the days. 

Highlights included:

Taking the 7yo's Cinderella doll to the cinema to see Beauty and the Beast.  The 7yo has a Belle doll at home, but apparently it made more sense to bring Cinderella, and I certainly wasn't going to argue with that.  

Going to the funfair at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.  The kids had a fabulous time on the bouncy castle, trampoline, ferris wheel and haunted house, and also persuaded my partner and me to go on the rollercoasters. 

 

To make things even more exciting, it was also the now-5yo's birthday halfway through the holiday, so we spent a joyous couple of days celebrating with her. She has a tradition of going to a zoo or farm for her birthday, and this year was no exception.  We went to Deen City Farm this time, where the highlight of the day was feeding the goats. Here you can see my hand and the 7yo's hand, as she was too scared initially to feed the goat by herself. 

And then, on the 5yo's actual birthday there was a trip to the nail bar. The 7yo and 5yo also absolutely loved having their nails done, and there was much excitement over which colour to choose, and whether to have their toes or fingers painted - it was both in the end, of course. 

It wasn't just the children who had their nails done - both myself and my mother-in-law had a manicure too.  In the picture below you can see what happened when I tried to take a picture of my own nails - the 7yo decided her nails should be in the photo too.

A child's birthday wouldn't be complete without cake, so cake there was.  My brief from the 5yo was: "chocolate cake with chocolate icing and princesses and Shopkins". I could only fit one princess on the cake with all the boxes of shopkins, but happily this was good enough for the 5yo.  

 We also had our annual Easter Egg hunt.  This is one of the activities that I look forward to every year - and always spend a lot of time writing clues for the children to decipher and collect, with some eggs to find along the way.  The clues get harder as you get older, so that younger children have a photo of the next clue's hiding place and older children get a somewhat cryptic message to read which should lead them to the right place. I use plastic eggs to hide treats in along with the clues, and getting the brightly coloured eggs out of the Easter Box in the loft makes me very happy every year.

The other thing that lives in the Easter Box is my mini easter bunting that I made a couple of years ago.  This year I hung it on the front gate, which the children were delighted with. 

This holiday was also be the one I remember as the time that the 7yo properly became a bookworm, to the extent that at one long wait for a bus she read a story to the 9yo and the 5yo and kept them all entertained.

The 9yo also played with his Lego for hours in his room, coming down at regular intervals to show us his latest creations, such as this Vending Machine:

Now that the new school term has started I have started allowing my diary to fill up again, and to gently explore ways I might be able to start earning money once my career break is over.  I haven't ruled out returning to medicine, but I still have some way to go before I am ready to go back to work. 

 

How to solve chair squabbles using crochet

 

When we moved to our new home a couple of months ago, one of the most exciting things about it was that we finally had space for a dining room table and enough chairs for everyone to sit on.  I was hoping that this would put an end to teatime chair squabbles but sadly we then just had chair-hopping and a chorus of "he/she is sitting in my chair" or "I was on that chair first" at most mealtimes. My initial solution to this was going to be to paint everyone's chair in a different colour, but of course that would entail going to the shop to buy the paint, choosing the colour, and then finding the time to actually paint them.  While I was trying to work out when on earth I was going to find the time to do this I had the idea of making some crochet covers for the rails on the backs of the chair instead.  

Our chairs are the plain Ivar chairs from IKEA, so I felt they would benefit from some sort of decoration anyway

I didn't even need to buy any yarn for this project, as I still had an unused yarn pack in my wardrobe (the Attic24 Special Chunky Rainbow pack) that I was given for Christmas a few years ago, but had never got around to using.  I was intending to to make the Attic24 Rainbow Raindrops Cushion, but what with one thing and another that never happened, and the intended recipient now has plenty of alternative cushions.  The chunky yarn in the pack was perfect for my plan, and having 8 colours to choose from meant that everyone could choose their own colour combination for their very own chair. 

I clearly couldn't find a pattern for this project, so I just dived in and started crocheting in a striped treble stitch to see if I could make it work.  My plan was to crochet a rectangle, and then join it together to fit around the rails on the back of the chair.  My first attempt was a little too wide, but my second attempt was just right. And then I just carried on crocheting in even stripes until it was long enough, which just so happened to be after 7 of my stripes. 

As ever, most of my crochet happens when I am in pyjamas, on a lazy weekend morning, although this project also came to the pub with me (as seen on instagram)

I left quite long ends when changing colours, so that I could sew up the stripes using their own colour.  This made for a lovely neat join when they were put on the chair rails. The rectangles were very quick and easy to crochet, and I was able to make one in about an hour.  As you can see, the edges of my rectangles were were a bit wonky, but when I sewed them up around the chair rail they evened out.  

Sewing them up around the chair rails was a bit fiddly, but only took about 10 minutes per rail.  I sewed them from the top, then twisted the crochet round afterwards so that the edge is on the bottom of the rail and therefore not visible when looking at the chair. 

I initially said that each person could have 2 colours, but the kids had other ideas, so that the 7yo and 5yo have three colours each on their chairs.  I have to admit though that I liked their colour schemes so much that I ended up having three colours on my chair as well.  I left my colour choice until the end and used the colours that were left.  Because I like things to fit together, colour-wise, I used one colour each from the 9yo and my partner's chair, and combined them with one of the as-yet unused colours from the pack.

Here, in no particular order, are the finished chairs:

Red and Gold (for the 9yo)

Green and Red (for my partner)

Pink, Green and Gold (for me)

Pink, Blue and Purple (for the 7yo)

 Blue, Purple and Pink (For the 5yo)

I really enjoyed making this project, and I just love the way that it turned out.  The chairs look even better than I thought they would, and I have already had a lot of compliments from people who have seen them in real life.  I also found it very relaxing to make the crochet rectangles.  There is something very satisfying about producing something tangible from a relaxing and calm activity. I have written the pattern up on Ravelry too, with details of the types and quantities of yarn etc, just in case anyone else has these chairs and wants to customise them with crochet themselves. 

And as for the teatime chair squabbling?  Problem solved. 

Crochet Ripple Scarf

 

Ever since I taught myself to crochet back in 2014, most of my crochet projects have been small items that are only really good for children to play with or as a means of decoration. I did always intend to make myself something that I could wear with my new found skill though, and when some of my friends clubbed together to buy me some vouchers from a knitting shop for my 40th birthday I knew exactly what I was going to use the money for.  When I next had some spare time I headed to the shop (I Knit London) and spent a happy hour or so choosing some lovely yarn to make myself a scarf with. I'm afraid I can't tell you what the yarn is called, as I lost the details long ago, but it is a cashmere blend, with some lovely subtle sparkly bits, and I had to wind it myself in the shop.  Look how beautiful it is:

I also had a master plan for the pattern I wanted to use for my scarf.  I have been following the Attic24 blog for several years now and love the neat ripple pattern that Lucy uses for blankets.  I had even started a ripple blanket, but as I am such a slow crocheter it was (and still is) languishing in my box of works in progress. After a couple of false starts, I managed to adapt the pattern to the right row length, and during the first couple of months after starting the scarf , I proudly took photos of myself making good progress on the rather lovely undulating rows. My best times to crochet or knit are on the sofa in front of the tv, or on kid-free train journeys.  Hence most pictures of my works in progress have either pyjamas or coffee in the background: 

Then life got in the way, and before I knew it two years had passed and I was still only halfway through the scarf.  One of the things that I vowed to do when I embarked on my career break was to finish the various knitting/crochet/crafting projects that I had on the go. The first thing I finished was a scarf for the 4 yo, and the next thing I finished was my ripple scarf.

It had been so long since I had worked on it that I had to relearn the pattern all over again.  I then spent quite a lot of time working out which colour combinations to do next, using my own "random within repeating" colour scheme.  My natural instinct would have been to pick an order of the 6 colours that I liked and then crochet them in a repeating pattern, but I wanted this scarf to look more random than that.  However, I didn't want to end up using one colour more than any other one, so I devised my own way of achieving this.  Each time I finish 6 rows I worked out what the next 6 colours will be, then photographed the balls of yarn in the order I had chosen, and followed that colour scheme until I had completed those rows.   Here is one of the reminder photos that I used:

It became harder to work out which order to put the colours in towards the end, and if I ever do another project like this I think I will take the time to figure out the colour order for the whole item before I start.  With the help of a few more train journeys I made good progress on the scarf this time around.  I must say though that the appearance of my beloved orange crochet hook is not brilliant after really not that much use.  Look how dirty it is in comparison to the earlier photo: 

Within a few weeks of restarting the scarf I had got to the dreaded "sewing in the ends" point:

I must confess that I have a secret weapon here though - my partner inexplicably likes sewing in ends, and will happily take any of my finished pieces of crochet and knitting and sew all the ends in for me  (and yes, I know how lucky I am!)

So now, more than 2 years after buying my yarn, I have a beautiful homemade scarf all of my own.  

Every time I have worn it I have received at least one comment as to how lovely it looks, and that alone makes all the time I spent making it worthwhile.  Even though Spring is just around the corner I am still wearing it on some days, although I'm not entirely sure that it doesn't clash with my current hair colour: