Exciting Times!!

Woohoo!!  Today marks the end of the school term, a glorious 2 weeks stretching before us.  As I sit here typing this, when I should really be wrapping the last of the presents, my girls are off on a jolly jaunt with their grandma for a trip into the town and a hot lunch somewhere.  C has dressed up for the occasion, with dress, petticoat, and cardigan; oh how I love her dress sense.

Can’t quite believe it’s the 19^th already?!  I promised myself last year that this year would be different, that there would be no mad last minute rushing and that I would have every card written and parcel wrapped before the middle of the month.  I haven’t!!  There are cakes to marzipan and ice, presents to wrap, a couple still to buy (hoping for divine inspiration!!) and a few handmade gifts to finish making. 

It’s not that I’ve been lazy; we’ve actually had a pretty busy month so far, with lots of festive fun, indulging in the magic of Christmas and making things special for my growing girls.  I've done a lot of shopping, most is for other people, but I couldn't resist a couple of knitting patterns for myself :o)

One of my favourite knitting models in colour!

There was a trip to a chocolate shop where tasty treats were bought, (the snowman is no more!!) and a visit to family for festive fun.

The girls and I made a gingerbread house where little fingers got a little trigger happy with the piping bag!

Each year we let the girls choose a new decoration for the tree.  This year C went for a sparkly glass polar bear, and M picked a mahoosive Santa! 

They have joined our ever increasing collection of decorations, some more special to the girls than others.

We bought the tree, a scrumptious smelling 7 foot pine.  It took me a while to choose “the” tree, it always does.

The girls thought their luck was in this year, as we got to decorate it twice!  Yes, twice!  Three days after the tree had been decorated, both sets of blasted lights burned out!  I was so disappointed and more than a little cross.  The air was blue!  So,  decorations off, lights off, new lights on and then decorations back on, and the tree was restored to full twinkling glory!

This lovely man of mine turned another year older; 43 this year.  Such a cute picture of him at a family wedding the in 1970’s with his velvet shorts and white shirt!

Yours truly baked two dozen cupcakes for him to take into school for the other science teachers to enjoy. 

The very next day this lovely little lady turned 7!

I can’t quite believe she’s 7.  Every girl deserves to look the best for their birthday, so I finally cut into this gorgeous Poppy and Fred fabric, and with the help of my mum, made dresses for both girls.

And as you can’t have a birthday without a cake, I made her a baby Toothless dragon cake.

The girls’ came down with a rotten cough and cold last week, which was rubbish for them but quite fortuitous for me!  It was a week of Calpol and Christmas films, their fuzzy little heads being up for little else, and lots of knitting time, and now I just have the one sleeve to finish on my mum’s jumper.  Will it be done in time for the big day?  I hope so! 

I better crack on with the wrapping before my pair of little peepers come home!!

xx

A Bit of This and That.

Well, I was looking back through my blog and it would appear that it has been a while since I’ve done a catch up post, so I’m here to try to rectify that!

So what have we been occupying ourselves with lately?  Well, let’s go back quite a few weeks, back into October, to be precise, when the weather was unseasonably warm, and the evenings weren’t as dark and chilly as they have been of late.

October started out pretty poorly really, when we had a decidedly scary few days when some planned building work went awry.  The back of our Victorian house is rendered.  It wasn’t something we had done, it was done many years before we bought the property, but we had always wanted to have it refreshed as there were some cracks in it, as happens in old properties.  Anyhoo, the builders turned up with cement, sand, mixer, all that gubbins, and the craziness and mess began. 

Argh, the dust!  I’ve never seen so much dust.  It was literally everywhere; in the cupboards, over all my precious things, at the front of the house, the back of the house, up my nose!  I’m sure you get the picture. 

I won’t bore you with the finer details, but the long and the short of it was that on the second day, they discovered that the moron of a builder who had done some previous work on my beloved home had basically rendered the property to cover a multitude of his sins and shoddy work!!  Cue tears, fretful phone calls to parents and chocolate consuming!

Thankfully, the builders were incredible, (I think my tears had a hand in that) and when plied with bacon and egg sandwiches, with added dust!, they worked tirelessly to put right what had been done oh so wrongly, and made everything good once more, with not a shoddy bit of brickwork in sight!  They were even kind enough to let my curly haired girl have a go at rendering!

Understandably, our daily routine was up in the air, and it took me a couple of weeks to get things straight again, hence my sporadic Facebook and Blog updates!  

However, the half term brought with it a week off together, so we made the most of it.

Somewhere we’ve always fancied visiting was Crich Tramway Museum.  It’s quite a trek from home for us, some 160 miles, but we combined it with a little hotel stay so we could enjoy an entire day riding the trams without a tiring journey home. 

The girls loved it and my Mr was like a child in a sweetshop looking at all the trams in the shed!  The village had been lit for Halloween, so we waited until dark, when many people had gone home, and saw the woods in all their eerie glory!  M isn’t that keen on the dark, so stayed firmly at my side, her warm little hand held securely in mine.  C, dressed in her dark winter coat, found it hilarious to creep up on her dad in an attempt to frighten him!  It is on days like this that their personality differences really show.

The end of October meant it was time to pick the pumpkins which had been so lovingly grown by the girls.  The pumpkin plants ended up being gargantuous, creeping their way over an immense amount of the garden!  Who knew they could grow so big!?  Not us, that’s for sure.  The girls’ were rewarded for their green fingers, and the plants yielded these weighty beasts (and a tiddler to boot!)

A couple of weekends ago, we went to Cornwall for a real whistle stop tour!  We spent little more than 30 hours in my Mr’s beautiful home county, and we were asleep for 15 of those, but we had a good reason for going.  We did the annual family Christmas present drop off and we picked up our new car!  I’m not really that fussed about what car I travel in.  My only requirements are that it will get me from A to B safely, but I have to admit that I am a little bit enamoured with our new automobile, not least because it has heated seats and can keep my backside warm in the coming winter months! :o)   

On the way home from Cornwall, we stopped, as we always do, at Reading Services (oh how I dislike motorway driving!) and were persuaded by our two little monkeys that there was a “need” to bring some tasty delights back home to East Anglia.  Mmmm……..doughnuts!!!!!

On the 16^th, we celebrated 12 years of marriage.  I can’t believe I’ve been with this man of mine for over 13 years!  It’s been a fantastic journey.  We had a lovely family meal, and then just the two of us went to watch The Imitation Game at the cinema.  The film was brilliant, a worthy watch, so much so that I hope to go again.

When my fingers have needed a break from the knitting needles, I’ve picked up a spot of crafting of the felt kind and have made some more posies, and have finally added some more anemones to my Etsy shop.

A friend kindly informed me today that it is only 4 weeks until Christmas Eve!  Are you ready?  I’ve dipped my toe in the water, so to speak, and made a start, albeit a feeble one, on preparations for the big day!  Four cakes baked, I must add not all for us, and 3 puddings boiled.  The house smelt fabulously festive.  Ever since I was a child, the smell of the cake baking slowly in the oven has signified the countdown to Christmas.  I can’t deny it, I am more than a little bit excited about this festive season :o)                   

Talking of festive makes, I have decided, maybe foolishly, to once again make some handmade gifts.  I fear I’m being a little ambitious, as I have picked some not so small projects.  One is a jumper for my dad, quite a simple design, not Fair Isle like the last two!  The other is a jumper for my mum, a design she has wanted to have made for an age, but, as is so often the case, never got round to.

My girls are off swimming today, happy time spent with their Grandma, and I should be doing some of things that little eyes shouldn’t see this time of year!  Instead, I think I’d much rather curl up, knit, and watch a festive favourite.  My afternoon will more likely than not look like this.

I hope all is well with you, wherever you are xx 

We Will Remember Them

No remembrance service for us this year, as we will be on the motorway, travelling home from Cornwall.  It seems strange that we, as a family, aren't marking this day in the way we normally do, but we will be wearing our poppies, and we will be remembering.

xx

1940's Wedding Buttonholes

Almost a year ago, I was contact by a fellow blogger, Emily, who blogs over at Emily’s Vintage Visions. 

She asked me whether I would be able to make some of my felt corsages to be used as buttonholes for her wedding!  

I was honoured, and a little overwhelmed, as well as nervous, as I’d never done anything like it before, but I needn’t have been concerned, because Emily was an absolute pleasure to work for.  

The theme for the wedding was 1930’s/1940’s vintage.  Emily chose the colours she wanted, to match the wedding bouquets she was so cleverly making herself, and I set to work on some posy designs using original 1940’s patterns, the end result being these beautiful, bright posies.

For some reason, I didn’t get any proper photographs of the posies before they left England, bound for America, so please excuse the over bright photograph which was taken at night, using my phone!

I posted the package off in May, and was thankful that it arrived safely, but I thought nothing of my little creations until I received a happy email last month to tell me that the wedding had been a huge success, and that my corsages had gone down very well. 

Emily kindly sent me these photographs, taken by Kris Jarrett Phtography and Media Productions, so I could show how they looked on her special day.  You can read Emily’s blog post about her beautiful day by clicking here. 

Congratulations Emily and Cori! x

Stitchcraft March 1941 - The Cover Jumper

It has been a while since I've done a woolly post.  To be fair, it has been a while since I've done a post of any kind, but we'll just gloss over that, shall we?!

The jumper that I have just finished has to be one of my all time favourites!  It was knitted from this pattern, an early wartime Stitchcraft magazine, from March 1941 to be precise, this was the cover jumper, a fantastic part cable design with the neatest little button and buckle detail.

It was knitted in Adriafil Azzurra, a beautiful 4 ply which is 70% wool, 30% acrylic.  This wool knits up just like an original 1940's wool, and the colour range they offer is comprehensive.  I love this wool so much, that I may have already stockpilled some of their scrumptious autumnal shades!!!

I used the Avio blue, the Bordeaux is what I'll be working with next.

Although it is hard to tell from the photographs, the buckle and buttons are actually a really dark blue.  They were made in the 1930's or 1940's and even though they aren't a matching set, they look pretty darn good together, even if I do say so myself. 

I love how this one turned out.  Although it has a couple of rows of cable per pattern repeat, it knitted up really rather quickly, and took just a little over 2 weeks to complete.  

This was a commission piece, and I have one more jumper to knit to go with it before it heads overseas :o)

If you fancy giving this one a go yourself, then the pattern is now available as a PDF in my new Etsy shop, 1940's Patterns, which you can find here.

xx

1940's Anne Adams Dress

Life isn't allowing for much blogging time at the moment.  All is well here, but September brought with it the start of a new school term, and we're all a little bit busy! 

I have lots of makes I want to get up on the blog, but I haven't the time for many words (that might be a good thing!!), so please forgive me for the photo overload!! xx

This dress was made from an original 1940's Anne Adams sewing pattern from America.  It was made using original 1940's rayon silk, which falls and drapes beautifully, but is a slippery blighter to work with!!  It is a generous size, and will fit a 46" bust, 38" waist and 48" hip.

xx

Vogue 5364 – 1940’s French Blouse

Ok, so the blouse I’m posting about today isn’t actually from France.  The title refers to the design of the fabric which, you’ve guessed it, has a French theme, Paris, none the less!

Trying to get on top of my, um, fabric hoard, I’m trying to adopt a kind of one in one out philosophy.  I keep amassing beautiful pieces of fabric, but don’t use it as quickly as I’m buying it, because knitting and felt work seem to take priority.  With the extended summer break, which is now almost at an end, I've been keeping my sewing machine busy, and am ever so slightly making a dent in the stash!

Whenever we go to events, one of the things we always hear people say is that they wish it the clothing was bigger.  There is no denying that your average wartime woman was smaller than the average woman of today.  So, with this in mind, I went about picking out one of my larger blouse patterns, and ended up going for this Vogue pattern from 1948.

The blouse is quite a simple design, just three buttons, no fancy gathering or puff sleeves, quite a sleek, somewhat sophisticated, design, which I felt called for a similarly themed fabric.

Cue this little piece of loveliness.

The fabric is a vintage, probably from the 1950's, and the photographs don't do it justice, because it is actually a really pale pink shade. 

From a distance, it just looks like a plain old piece of fabric, but when you take a closer look, the fabric is actually covered in a French themed design of poodles, the Eiffel Tower, jive dancers, the moon, and some other buildings that I can’t identify!

Because the fabric design ran in an up down direction, the main pattern pieces all had to be cut in the same way, i.e. top to bottom, all pointing the same way.  It was a tight squeeze, and there were only fragments of fabric to spare.

Matching buttons to the fabric was more of a challenge than I thought it would be.  Because the fabric has a sheen to it, plastic buttons would be too dull in comparison, and therefore glass was the only way to go.  Clear glass looked totally wrong, so in the end, 3 rather scrumptious vintage pink champagne coloured flower buttons were the best option. 

Regrettably, 2 out of the 3 buttons have a tiny nibble on the back, as is often the case with 50+ year old buttons.  Personally, I don’t think it matters.  They are vintage buttons, and it does happen, but I’m hoping the new owner won’t mind either.

The blouse has been photographed on a dummy which is far too small for it, hence the overly baggy look, and the fact that one sleeve looks longer than the other!  It is pictured with the skirt from an original 1940's pin stripe suit.

The pattern was a dream to work from.  I didn’t have to make any changes to it at all.  All the pieces fitted easily together, and the entire thing took less than a day to construct, although it took me weeks to actually do the final finishing!!