This is how I feel these days. I think they call it "baby brain". There's a lot of not-sleeping, bottle-washing, baby-feeding, baby-bathing, washing and overall frazzledness. I get to knit a few rows every now and then, and I am oh-so-slowly rearranging my office/craft room to make it baby friendly so we can spend a few afternoons there. Progress is slow. Sewing and quilting are distant but happy memories.

I am very grateful that my phone has internet for late-night craft inspiration and of course, much pinning on Pinterest. Time for crafting is a distant memory ... for now, I have to craft (pin) vicariously). Is anyone else mad about pom poms? I want a pom pom rug, and pom pom bunting, and pom pom bunnies. Oh, Pinterest. I salute you.

Follow Stacey Siddons's board Crafts on Pinterest.

I may have just ordered some pom pom makers in a fit of 4am online shopping and craftlessness while baby was awake and coo-ing. Thank goodness for Amazon. I justified it thus: I shall get through my enormous yarn stash AND feel creative at the same time. It's a win-win situation, really.

Happy Mother's Day! We're very lucky, our family gets to celebrate two different "Mother's Days" each year. One for the UK tradition (today) and one for the South African tradition (in May). Because really, there should be a mother's day every month shouldn't there?

To celebrate, we made pom pom flowers. You know, as you do. Especially when your house is more-or-less overrun by pom poms aplenty. Ooh, poofy.


Once your pom pom is ready,  you'll need to thread a piece of wire through the middle of the pom pom and bring both ends down, ready to wrap around the stick as well.


Push one end of the stick into the middle of the pom pom and secure in place by wrapping the wire down the top bit of the stick. This doesn't have to be neat because you'll cover it up later. Position the leaf about a third of the way down the stick and secure in place by wrapping the wire around again.


Then wrap wrap wrap with florist tape, starting at the top and making your way down to the bottom. Adding this kind of leaf is easy: you'll need to bend the leaf back to get right down to where the wire joins the felt, and then bend it back up and fold it around the stem and start wrapping again.

That's all. Easy peasy. Now, go make some more.


Warning: you may be tempted to use up ALL of your other scraps of yarn and create a huge bunch of long-lasting oofy-poofy flowers.

I have this rule. It's a silly little rule, but here it is anyway:

I'm not allowed to buy a craft magazine unless I make something from it 

I think it's partially because I don't want to end up with a pile of magazines I've never read, and partially because craft magazines are really quite expensive and I feel that I must justify it to myself when I want to buy one.

Anyway.

So every now and then I see something in a magazine that I love, and I get to make a no-pressure project that has no deadlines and no real purpose other than sheer loveliness. It's a bit like old William Morris. What did he say?

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." William Morris

And so this is my latest make: a crochet summer dress that's decidedly watermelon-esque. It's from Simply Crochet, issue 46. Raveled here.


I made it in age 3-4 for little Isla (hoping it would last until Summer because it is definitely not dress weather at the moment!). It has a really charming little yoke construction with a swing skirt and added black watermelon pips/seeds for detailing. It closes at the back with a button or a ribbon.

Hello, January. You came along really quickly. We've had a magical journey on the way here - markets, soap, essential oils wafting through the hallways, unexpected marquees, craft events, last-minute flyer design and printing, business networking, thermals, cold wintery market days, packaging packaging packaging packaging packaging packaging, and then suddenly : Christmas.

We were lucky. A very large family group descended upon us in Southend-on-Sea for roasted dinner and a few overnight stays. They swept through our home with joyous festivities and enthusiasm, we had a brief visit to the beach to pick up seashells, and we saved our found treasures in pockets stuffed with tissues and handwarmers. It's freezing cold here, with ice covering the roads and a frost in the air. It's not quite snowing, but we had a chilly festive season nonetheless.

It feels as if just yesterday we were doing our first craft market, and - in this imaginary timeline - the week after that it was Christmas. Now, it's January and I'm still playing catch up. Somewhere along the way we lost four months. Still, I'd rather be here, taking a quiet moment out of a very busy day now that the kids have finally fallen asleep. I know I have a good half hour until Finnlay wakes up again - as he does every hour throughout the day and night - and breathe while Rick Stein, on the TV, dreaming up glorious foodie getaways to the cobbled roads of Bordeaux. It's busy, but it's marvelous.

All quite suddenly - and entirely without notice, overnight - my craft room / office has transformed into a veritable Aladdin's Cave of treasures. Everything is jewelled: the beautiful and unexpected gifts that arrived through the post, the knitting that is gathering on my craft tables, the shelves which are piling up with glittered objects.

The colours are all rather spontaneously and wonderfully coordinated. There are deep maroons and strawberry pinks, glittering midnight blue and amethyst purple. Silvered blues and Rothko greens. Colour, it seems, has taken over. It's a protest.

Only the "office" half the of the room remains untouched and somewhat organised.

Except, of course, for the tufts of mulberry fibre that seems to have taken over the pile of invoices.

Except the maroon and pearl EEWI brooch on display beneath my large monitor, reminding me to return it at tonight's meeting.

Except the jar of pastel-coloured buttons which seems to have replaced my sensible office pens.

Except the bright and glittering stitch markers which have been stored next to my keyboard for safe-keeping.

Except the string of mirrored elephants from Istanbul which dance next to my pile of notebooks.

Except those, of course.

Today, my heart is soaring with appreciation and thanks to Arden, who brought back the most exquisite silk embroidery threads from her holiday in Morocco ... and then shared them with me! Skeins of silk sea greens, sky blues, soft coffee creams and natural bark browns adorn my craft table.

They will likely be stitched into embroidered flowers - my favourite - but they have the potential to become anything. The silk stitching on mattresses for the Princess and the Pea. The tips of a butterfly's wings. The pollen-tipped stamens in the middle of a spring flower.

Another pinterest-inspired project: crocheted jellyfish. #love

I'm really happy with this one.

There are swirls and twirls and loop-de-loops of yarn loveliness.


The free crochet jellyfish pattern is from One Dog Woof, and is worked in amigurumi rounds quite quickly. The tentacles take longest of all but they're very portable and I was making them in the car, in the doctor's waiting room, while the kids were sleeping...


The original pattern was designed to be a bathroom accessory for kids, with the cotton tentacles making an  ideal hand-drying towel. I used the rest of my Drops Love You 5 cotton yarn for this project; it is ideal for facecloths, scrubbies, and just about anything that needs to withstand the rough handling of an enthusiastic two-year-old.

I made some small adjustments to the original pattern: I made 9 tentacles for each jellyfish, doing lots of twists and turns along a very long chain (70 stitches for most of them, with some 60 and some 80 and 90 for the longest ones), I changed the colours a little, and replaced the polyfill stuffing with a sponge that I cut down to the right size so that it can be used in the bath too.


I particularly love the jellyfish faces which make me chuckle every time I see them hanging up in our bathroom.

I'm enjoying all of these mini craft projects because they're so portable, and that means that even though the family and the house is whirlwinding around me, I'm able to do a tiny little bit of making time for me.

And making for me means making for us, which Isla adores because let's face it ... there's not much going on here that she doesn't lay claim to. Sweet girl.

New year, new skill! Soapmaking: tick.


I've been making melt-and-pour soap for a few years, but it was high time to find out how to do it properly ala cold process. And so, I enrolled for Melinda Coss's Cold Process Soap Making Course. She's a pretty well-established authority in craft circles (she actually wrote the book on some of my favourite crafts unrelated to soap) so I figured it'd be a safe bet to choose this one.

I think I'm more of a traditionalist when it comes to soap and soapmaking (is there such a thing as a soap traditionalist? purist?), and I like plain, simple soaps with no frills. The phrase no smell, no sell was repeatedly chanted around the course throughout the day so I suspect I'm alone on the simple soap boat.

It's very nearly the end of the school year here in the UK. I'm still trying to get my head around it; in South Africa, our school term was January - December. The end of the year meant the end of the school year, and you had a jolly long holiday over Christmas (and the summer holidays).  

It's only just gone June and I'm already thinking about teacher gifts and thank you cards. It's our very first proper school year as Isla moves up from little miss muffets class to humpty dumpty class. She'll say good bye to the saints who look after the "baby class" and will wave hello to her new teachers and a new toilet regime. Thank goodness for successful potty training these past few weeks.


And so, teacher cards. I'm by no means a card maker, but I thought I'd give these a bash as I couldn't find anything I liked all that much in the shops.

Because I tend to think in puns and silliness, I wanted something fun that Isla would appreciate too. We pootled through my stamp stash and each chose something we liked. Nee-norns ("unicorns" to you and I) are on the top of her love list so she chose those. And vegetables. Because you can never, ever have too many radishes and carrots with kawaii faces. 

Thank you for believing in me! A magical unicorn (colours chosen by Isla, of course) and all glittered up because nee-norns sparkle, mama. I used Avery Elle's Be a Unicorn and Tonic Nuvo Aqua Shimmer, with stamps I made myself for the punny wordage.


Thank you for helping me grow. Layered stamping with Lawn Fawn's Rooting for You, plenty of Tonic Nuvo Aqua Shimmer and wordage my own again. I love these banners. I cut up strips of kraft card, cut ribbon ends with a scissors, and folded them over for height. Double sided tape and foam squares are magic. MAGIC.

I use Papermania Kraftstax Brown Card for absolutely everything around here. It's recycled, and makes brilliant business cards, labels, tags, it prints surprisingly well given that it is super strong and stiff - and now, I've discovered that it makes good cards and silly banners too! Huzzah! Slowly slowly making my way through the ridiculously large pile of brown card that mysteriously piled up on my craft desk. All by itself. Honest.

In other news, we've just done our last big event for Bean & Boy Soap for a few weeks. It was Village Green (#VG17), an enormous music festival in Southend-on-Sea with about 4 music stages, comedy tents, farmer's market, handmade maker market (that's where we were exhibiting), a car boot rally, a million activities, and around 20,000 visitors.

Set up was at 8am, even though it only opened at 11am. It felt like one of the longest days of the year. Hot, hot, hot and lots of standing up and chatting to people about wonderful, wonderful soap. It was fantastic and exhausting. Fantastically exhausting, too. It was great, but I could do with a few weeks off. Which is handy as we have been invited to children's parties every weekend for the next four weeks, and school holidays means that I get both children all day every day for six glorious weeks. Six loooooooong weeks. I've already had to promise Isla that we'll be making slime (glitter slime mama, otherwise it is gross) and our own playdough (mama, we need more playdough for pizzas) and yes of course darling we will have the paddling pool out every single day. Phew.

This.

It has been one of those weeks - again.

I almost quit baking.

Yes, I know, gasp! But it's true. I've learnt a valuable lesson from this week: Don't attempt to bake anything if you've been working 16-hour days since last Monday. It's true. You'll forget to add the sugar to those exceptionally beautiful and pricey cupcakes you've been planning for the Mister's charity bakesale at work.

















So, even though they're perfectly iced, decorated and ready to go - they're not edible. Well, I guess they are: they just taste like chocolate ciabatta. And that's enough to put any baker off her craft.

But, okay. I threw a tantrum, and a cook book, and after gathering my wits and scattered ingredients, I put together a delicious hazelnut-and-coffee cake in the wee hours. It went down well, apparently, but that wasn't enough to boost my bruised ego. Oh no. I had sworn off fairy cakes and upside-down tarts. I had forgone three-tiered cakes and baked bread. It was the end of an era.

And then something lovely happened today. Actually, three lovely things happened.
1. FoodBuzz sent me a contract to be all food-bloggy.
2. The UK Food Bloggers Association accepted my application after many weeks of waiting patiently (and I must admit, forgetting about it altogether)
3. The lovely Andrea from Andrea's Apples and Pears gave me an award. A real, bonafide, honest-to-goodness blogger award. My very first. Lookee:


Right-o.