Love Me Do

Once upon a time, a full seventeen years ago when Mr Pickle and I first met, he or I declared that Valentine's Day was such a farce and we thought that every other day of the year was a better day to express your love than on one contrived, everyone else is doing it day.

Fast forward all these years and somehow in the lead up to Valentine's day Big Pickle heard about the occasion and wanted to know what it was all about. When I told him it's a day when people tell the people they care about how much they love them he declared "we should do that for  Daddy cause we really love him!!"
So, inspired by one of the very many generous patterns found here I started a secret knitting project. In parks, at playgroup and right under his nose on the couch at night (he didn't ask once what I was doing) and each day Big Pickle would ask "how many do we have now mummy?"
Meanwhile on every outing we searched for and collected good sticks and branches for our 'tree' and Mr Pickle repeatedly asked "what's with the vase of sticks?" and "I think this wood collecting thing of yours is getting a bit out of hand" (I do have a bit of a fetish for collecting logs, tree stumps, mossy twigs, interesting branches and basically any bit of wood that takes my fancy and carting them hoe for future 'projects'!)

 On Valentine's Day afternoon we adorned the tree and it was there to welcome Mr Pickle when he got home that night. In a hilarious coincidence he had for some, totally unprecedented, reason decided to buy a 'beautiful' chocolate rose on his way home. The boys thought it all marvellous and in the end we both decided maybe St Valentine had the right idea after all.
To see the latest creative project from Linda and more of her other wonderful patterns head over to Creative Friday.
I'm turning my eye to her wonderful autumn leaf patterns right now in the hopes I can be ready to redecorate the tree before the season changes.

The Gift of Giving

 

The truth is I love sewing of any kind.  The only downside of sewing as far as I'm concerned is that there simply isn't enough time to do it. The best sewing though is definitely sewing for people you care about.

My aim for this year we are now in is to make rather than buy as many gifts as possible and to try and use materials already in my rather extensive stash of craft supplies.

Sometimes though you see a little piece of something that just makes you think of a particular person and its impossible to resist acquiring it.

The beautiful chicken fabric above was the perfect thing for a very special little girl who had just moved to a new home complete with her very own chickens to tend.

The fabric I found on my first but certainly not last to an amazing fabric store and the pattern was based on something from one of my Enid Gilchrist books and adapted to fit its egg collecting purpose and the amount of fabric I had.

To think of this beautiful girl gathering her eggs in the aprons pocket "makes my heart sing" as Big Pickle would say. And for a mama with two boys the chance to work with red spotted binding and red ric rac trims was even more cause to sing.

Her mother is a remarkable, beautiful, kindred spirit in the true Anne Shirley sense of the expression.
With an inspiring ability to always see the hidden beauty in anything, she had admired a vintage sheet in her stash and remarked that it would make a great skirt. Thanks to Weekend Sewing and me boldly stealing it from her shelves for a bit it is now the perfect thing for her to wear to swan on down to the vegetable patch at the bottom of her wonderful garden.

Why should boys have all the fun in Huck Finn pants when they can look this gorgeous on a little girl who needs some comfy duds for her outdoor adventures.

Her younger brother has a passion for owls and when I saw this beautiful Cloud 9 Organics print it could have no other intention than a pair of Treasure Pocket Pants from this marvellous book. Teemed with a cotton canvas from here and a piece of an older Cloud 9 print it was a fun project to work on and its lovely to see the result being enjoyed.

Longing for languid.....

As we settle into the rhythm of the year I find myself looking back on those months just past and indeed the year before as well. Early morning kinder runs and nearly all days with a concrete activity to define them are becoming a comfortable part of a very new rhythm but there is a little part (or even a big part) of me that misses the way things were for us....dreamy....undefined....open to any opportunity and with no need for haste.
I'm thankful for the day, captured in the picture above, when we just stopped and enjoyed an Eastern suburbs park because we could and because that tree needed to be appreciated.

Thankful also that we not only found time for walks along the river right on our doorstop while Mr Pickle was holidaying with us but also that we stopped on that walk and just looked at the water and listened to the plop of the stones as they landed.

How I hope and promise that we will still find ways for the Pickles to just sit in or under trees sometimes, to explore, climb or just watch ducks swim by.