All Fingers and Thumbs

Today is a classic wet winter Sunday, grey grey with just the slight twist of snowflakes in amongst the rain drops. It's the kind of day that reminds me of teenage doldrums, school tomorrow and cooped up inside. Our house used to have downstairs rooms that all flowed one to another and I'd get trapped either in my bedroom, or out of it, with an armchair full of snoozing Papa between me and wherever I wanted to go. He has always had a lot of back problems and was in such constant pain that waking him from a snooze was a little like waking a bear from hibernation. I guess I have much more empathy for him as I get older and creakier! I'm not having the most fun with some of my body at the moment, I injured my knee in November and rehab is slow, and has felt a bit backwards the last couple of weeks, as I just try and take a short walk on top of the essential steps to get through a day. Still, these days grey out and being sofa bound says craft, craft, craft rather loud

Not so much progress with the stitching this week. A little more filling in of the bark, a lot of not actually stitching. I've been so tired that making space for even ten minutes of daily craft time has been a stretch. Inspiration required, luckily it's literally on my doorstep! I took a few moments out there with the source today. Through the rain and cold spring is coming. The branches are full of pointy blossom buds, progress with the start of building work is slower than expected so I may yet see this beauty bloom again. I won't be hustling this project along. This makes me notice that though I often bemoan the pace of life I then also often drive things along. I can't bear inefficiency, maybe my definition of efficient just needs a little tweaking.

My beautiful tree has had her branches tossed around by storm Doris this week but is soaking up the sunshine out there today. Such a joyful "after the storm, spring is coming, soon, promise" kind of a day. All of my daily ten minutes craft prescription time plus a fair bit more has been dedicated to tree stitching. On Sunday I just parked my tired, achey little body by the door and stitched until I felt a whole lot better. That restful absorption is the craft therapy magic I think. I love that the trunk is emerging, and is feeling really true to life. She's looking a little more silver birch than plum right now, but the choice of the sideways stitch to reflect the striations of the bark makes me happy.

I have embarked on an epic project. I want to caption this photo "can you tell what it is yet?" with Aussie inflection but that phrase from my childhood is out of bounds these days. Anyway it's a trunk. Of a tree. I'm stitching a portrait of my most beloved plum tree . Everyday companion for the last twelve or so years, we haven't got long left together. I don't think I will see her blossom again. Sob. We're most likely having an extension built. It will be amazing to have more space but I wish, I wish, I WISH I could keep my plum tree too. It won't work. If anything it's too close to the house already and should long ago have been dispatched to the great orchard in the sky. I feel like a sentimental ole fool, what a palaver over a tree. Then I think about how many memories are wrapped around that trunk and nestled in the crook of her branches and it makes a little more sense. I love that tree and enjoy it every single day. I am lucky to have s

Oh how I yearned for a long, languid summer. Dreamt of sinking in to a deep ease in my body and the days. We bookended the months with an early June and a late August holiday. Quiet, beautiful country times to enrich the experience. Lovely as those weeks have been (are being) this has not been the summer of my dreams and desires and therein as ever lies the crux of the hurt. Wanting my experience to be other than it is. I feel like I've written so many versions of this post over the past few years, there's frustration with that of course but also some understanding that this is the way it will be until I find a rhythm of acceptance and surrender. Underneath knowing that perhaps it will even always be this way, perhaps this is always going to be my brick wall, thumped into periodically as I spiral around my days and that is okay. It's not about how you fall, it's about how you pick yourself up. I have been surrounded by love and beaut

This embroidery is growing like weeds! I have found so much inspiration from the wonderful Embroidery Workshops book . Along with the book my Ma had gifted me this flowery fat quarter, three exquisite skeins of thread and notions. When I opened it on Christmas Day I had everything to hand but I wasn't quite sure what to start as I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. So when I read the advice from the final chapter to "..please remember: Along the road of making things, it can be freeing not to worry too much about the end result." it was exactly the permission I needed. It freed my simple brain from the old trap of trying to get to the end before I've even started.  I'm still not sure how I'll use or display this work but it has given me such enormous pleasure this month to just doodle on these flowers, simply stitching what I feel like stitching. With the gentle pull of the thread, I can get in to that peacefully present place, beyond

These holidays with their sparkle and bustle are quite the distraction. In years past I used to associate this time with the pinnacle of winter, as if  I were saying "shortest day done, mince pies eaten, new year rung in, righty ho lets have at this spring business then". January and February dragging on drearily with the dark and cold were quite the anticlimax and time for restless blues. Then we had a proper snowfall one January and I had to actually slow down to something like the right pace for me, it was a revelation, January and I could actually be friends. Now these approaching quiet months seem like so much more the point to me and my traditional mid-December funk at being caught up in doing too much makes perfect sense. This is my big rest time, a natural lull in the cycle of the year. I think I must have been a hedgehog in a former life. The idea of lining my house with leaves in autumn, battening down the hatches,  emerging blinking somewhere towards the end o

I am in the clutches of obsession over a new project and it feels delicious. Inspiration hit yesterday and only the possibility of making my fingertips bleed shoving the needle through the firm fabric stopped me stitching! I've been weighing up how to remodel a rather grubby and too sugar pink laptop case that was rescued from someone's rubbish months ago. On Monday I suddenly knew it had have trees embroidered on it. The catalyst responsible for this happy creative action was a tour of some North Oxfordshire Artweeks open studios  on Saturday afternoon. Fabulous company , wonderful things to look at and scenery to tour through. We finished in the cosiest, arty cottage - think log fire, flagstone floors and a tumbling cat and and dog - relaxed, colourful and layered with life and lovely things. It illustrated exactly what home means to me and gave me a new appreciation for my attempts at curating chaos and feathering my nest. I thought that was my big gift from th

To my own surprise I'm really rather enjoying this November and without too much conscious effort to embrace its awkward corners. Not a month that normally fills me with excitement, too many grey skies and dark evenings, too much autumn fatigue - a not quite winter but it might as well be sort of association. Happily it's got more of an October extension vibe going on this year, still very much autumn here which is suiting me down to the leaf carpeted ground. Every time I walk outside I come back in with yet another clutch of leaves which I strew artfully about the place - perhaps more aptly described as covering every available surface so it looks rather like a storm just blew right through the house!  At the weekend we had a little jaunt down to visit my parents in Cornwall and Mama and I started in on the Christmas craft-arama with a vengeance. Fabric leaves above were spares from a grea t wreath making day . The wreath itself is in hiding as it will be gifted

Oh the crispness in the air, the ripening of berries, the reddening of apples. Autumn is just around the corner and I am looking forward to the cooler days and cosy evenings. By the end of any season I am a little tired of the old one and ready to welcome all the special elements of the next. The transitional days between the seasons make me so particularly happy. The surprise of what you might get, the echoes of the season on the way out and the messengers of the one creeping in. The nostalgia, the gathering up of memories of what has passed and will never be again and then, ahead, excitement at what is around the next bend. The sense of here and now, balanced betwixt and between. Summer 2014 has been a a real summer and while I welcomed the blue skies, long days and being able to be outside so much I've also struggled health wise, and particularly with the energy to get things done, to get to work, to get home with any thought of doing anything and the heat has not made getti

Feeling so spoiled with my handmade Christmas gifts that I thought they deserved a little spotlight. Such cosiness. Mum made me a pair of socks. Love. I just adore everything about them. Special pattern: one she really enjoys knitting by Alice Yu, t his one I think , though we always refer to them as the honeycombs. Guess we see bees everywhere! Special yarn: we saw this Rico Tweed yarn as a sample knit up in a shop in Tavistock back last autumn and they told us it had been discontinued. I knew Mum had tracked down a ball online but didn't realise she'd bought one for each us. Special fit: custom heel and she knit them to the toes and then on Christmas morning I tried them on and then over the rest of the holidays she finished off the toes so they fit me exactly! Special love: we tell each other all the time, in oh so many ways, how much we love each other and whenever I have made  her a pair of socks I've always been so pleased to know her toes are being loved when I&#

Once upon a time there was a lady who remembered that Christmas for her is about sparkles of light in dark days. Slow, gentle, magical time with herself and a few of her loved ones enjoying and being thankful for all our blessings and she lived a very happy Christmas 2013 indeed. Sometimes I think crafty types turn into some kind of crazed fairy godmothers at Christmas, determined not just to have the 'perfect' Christmas as pumped in to our heads by the marketing machines of just about every company out there but to MAKE the whole damn schnazzle from scratch as well. Of course this year with less working hours to excuse me I wanted to make more gifts, more food and participate in the creation of more new traditions than ever whilst remaining serene and shiny throughout. I thought I'd refined the lists, sprinkled a little fairy dust and was going to shimmy on through. Then my back said no and I lay down for a week. Lists are shorter, there are small touches of handmade

Hello postie, no boring insurance renewal notices today. New crafty supplies yay! From the lovely U-Handbag site . I saw some sweet handmade purses on sale in Cambridge and thought I should act on the thought 'I could make something like that.' So much potential in these little pieces. Am now hoping that the ancient proverb: 'Give a girl purse and she has a purse for a day, teach a girl how to make purses and she has purses for her lifetime' will come to pass.

A stately old lady has come to stay with me. 120 years young if I read her number correctly (love that Singer list these on their site ). She was £3 in a local auction. £3! The first photo is how she came out of her original case, complete just a bit dirty. She's been waiting in the wings a month or so now so that I had time to read and watch some of the many resources generously shared online and learn a little of her mysteries. All I've had to do is a little cleaning and oiling this weekend, adjust the tension and now she's trundling away happily making stitches. Just forward, nothing fancy you understand but if I'm still here at 120 I doubt I'll still be making stitches! Somehow she's both baffling and simple. So many great resources online are helping me get her stitching like she should be - she's a long bobbin or vibrating shuttle or whatever the correct terminology is. The bobbin sits in a bullet shaped case. I'd never realise

  Oh many pricks have burst my bubble this week but memories made this weekend are keeping me going. There was so much time then! Time for lovely meals, to enjoy the garden, to watch the sunlight. Crafting done, including a poster made for a new craft circle I am trying to start up in our local community centre. A lesson learnt about the unsuitability of muslin for free motion embroidery on the sewing machine. Seems so obvious now! A start of a pair of slippers. New fabrics bought, silk checked pyjamas dreamt of.. Gentle, rhythmic tapestry and a flower more done than not. Just happy at home days, with little forays out in to the world for socialising and supplies. More of these to come and meanwhile trying to smile, breathe and go slowly through the week. When I harrumphed a rhetorical question from a very grumpy corner of the sofa on Monday evening - "Why is it so hard to be Zen at work?" I got a very wise answer back from the Mr - "Bec