Amy Butler dress material problem

I bought a pattern for an Amy Butler dress about a year ago but have been finding it tricky to find a material to make it from.  We have a couple of material shops near by and I go in and see many things I like, but when I try to imagine them as a whole dress, rather than just a small flash of pattern I can’t do it.  Which is a shame because I think the dress pattern is really nice.

It reminds me of one of the Sweet Valley High books I read as a kid. (I preferred the Hardy Boys, but I guess the library must have been out that day) In the story the twins Elizabeth and Jessica are in a magical world where they can make whatever they want just by imagining.  This meant that Jessica who loved clothes had lovely soft beautiful things, while Elizabeth who was more practical was left with more cardboard cut out clothing.  I don’t remember much else about the story, just the knowledge that my clothing would be more like Elizabeth’s if I was ever in this situation.  I might not be imagining clothes out of nothing, but I think I’m in a similar situation.  I guess I will just have to keep looking.

Bread Making

After all the work I’ve put in to the last OU course I’ve been enjoying some time off.  I’ve had my car MOT, had the fridge break down and found a replacement, and caught up on my adult fiction, particularly Stephen Kings, Under the Dome, which I had been saving.  (definitely worth the wait!)

I’ve been finding it hard to get started on the creating again, so to kick start myself I thought I’d start with something fairly simple, bread making.

Making bread shouldn’t really be that hard should it?  All it is is flour, yeast and water.  But for my first attempt I think I used too much water and it was much much more sticky than I think it should have been.  But that didn’t stop me and I still stuck it in the oven even though it wasn’t a perfectly formed loaf but a big sticky mess. 

However, although what came out of the oven didn’t look much like a loaf of bread, it tasted like one and added to a bowl of homemade carrot soup (made from last years home grown carrots) it made the perfect lunch for a cold, wet and miserable Sunday.  Hopefully practice really does make perfect and the next one will be more traditionally shaped.

EA300 Children’s Literature - Finished

Last night I handed in my last assignment for EA300 Children’s Literature with the Open University.  After 9 months of hard work (the worst of it seems to have been over the last 3 weeks) I’m glad it’s over and my weekends and evenings become my own again.

But I have enjoyed the course, hard work though it was.  I was a little worried that studying some of my old favourite books like Swallows and Amazons or Tom’s Midnight Garden might spoil them for me but if anything they have been enhanced by the academic essays and course materials.  And I’ve met some new books which will become old favourite like Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines and Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry.  I also took the opportunity to read as many children’s books as possible over the last 9 months including some I read as a child and I think this added to my understanding of some of the issues we studied.

As someone who writes fiction I’ve also found the insight into why writers have done something and how the history of children’s literature has influenced their writing over the years fascinating and I hope useful to my writing not just my essays.

I may never trust Disney again, and I remembered my hate of writing essays very quickly but the course materials were so interesting I have no regrets.

So now I await my results which should arrive sometime in the summer and try and decide if I should do another one.  With only two more courses needed (or 120 credits, 60 each) to be awarded a degree it is quite tempting.  It helps that I’ve seen a couple of course that interest me.  I wonder what ‘im outdoors would say…

Running

I recently realised quite how much weight I’ve put on in the past few years, no doubt partly my own fault for making tasty cakes every week. It was a bit of a shock really, subconsciously I knew I’d been putting it on, but to see the numbers on the scales really bought it home to me.  I already attend the gym twice a week, but I decided it was time I raised my game, along with cutting down on the cake.  ‘im outdoors is happy with that – more for him. 

In February I started running as part of my gym routine.  To many people this won’t seem that big a deal but at that point even running for 1 minute on the treadmill had me feeling like I was going to die.  Over the past 4 months I’ve worked on this and can now run for 7 minutes, covering 1.14km.

This from the girl who HATED PE and running at school (probably partly because of how clumsy I was – you should see my knees, and partly due to the reluctance to shower in front of my school colleagues).

So as a reward for the last 9 months of studying and for (hopefully) hitting the 10 minute mark on the treadmill, I am going to buy myself a proper pair of running shoes.  I am going to walk into one of those scary specialist shops and ask them what they recommend.  Then feeling a bit more confident ‘cos I’ve already managed 10 minutes on the treadmill, and I’ve got some good comfy shoes, I’m going to venture outside.  Notice all the positive words I’ve used in this paragraph!

My new favourite website – Running4women

I know this isn’t about something I’ve created, but I’ve got a feeling that this is going to become a large part of my life, along with the writing, making, and studying.

Storycubes

We had a Creative Writers meeting today.  Even with all the stress of trying to write my final assignment for the Children’s Literature course (due in next week and still missing 850 words) I managed to write a short one page story.

It seemed to go down well.  It took its inspiration from an article on nature deficit disorder which I recently read.

Then as an activity and as homework I bought out my storycubes.  These were recently given to me as a late birthday present from a friend (thank you!), and I’ve been dying to give them a go.

The set contains 9 cubes with an image on each side of each cube.  The idea is to roll the cubes and then use the images to create a story.  (apparently you should start with ‘Once upon a time…’)

See the above image to see a selection of images to use for this weeks homework.  The aim is to use all nine images in your story.  Its up to you what the image should mean – there are many different levels.  For instance the sheep could be a simple farm yard animal, or a sheep skin rug, or a black sheep of the family etc.

Garden Escapes website

It’s taken a while but I’m very pleased to say that the Garden Escapes website is now live.  Jen and Nick who run Garden Escapes are old friends from when I was at landscaping college, where I also met ‘im outdoors.  When they saw the Thrive Landscapes website I created a few years back, they asked me to design them one.

The process could have been a lot quicker but we are all very busy people and there always seemed to be months between meetings.  But it is live now and I’m very pleased with the end result.  It has meant learning how to use dreamweaver, but I’m all for learning new things.

Now back to the essay…

Easter book

Easter seems so long ago now.  I was lucky enough to have 2 weeks away from work and spent the time enjoying the sunshine and working on a large ‘to do list’.  My Egyptian photos have now been printed off and put in an album, all the windows in the flat have been cleaned and my penultimate assignment has been written and set for marking, amongst other things.

I also finally had a chance to use the lovely wall paper what I found a while back.  Although I only made a small book I’m very happy with the outcome.  I just wish I could work out a way to photograph them that showed them at their best.

Star Stamp

Ever since I saw the stamp making tutorial on Geninne’s blog I’ve been wanting to have a go myself.  I bought all the stuff to do it then couldn’t think of a design to make.  But then we went to Egypt and I fell in love with their star designs.  Very simple but obviously stars.  So for my first stamp I’ve made a simple Egyptian style star.  I’d like to expand on this but that will take a little bit of practice, it’s not as easy as Geninne makes it look.