Update

I am of course busy with a chair, a sixties version of the fifties one I did recently. I think it may become a wedding present for Husband’s friend and godfather to Youngest. (A happy second marriage for both parties.) And today I was asked by an acquaintance to look at a chair with the prospect of my reupholstering it – though she’s only after a quote having already had one which she presumably considers too much!

I have put an advertisement in the parish mag offering two sewing workshops at the end of June with the view to starting classes in September. No idea if anyone will bite.

Eldest, a clever girl, has had two parcels delivered home this week that she needed in college. She promises to look at delivery addresses more carefully next time.

Youngest starts her GCSEs tomorrow with Religious Studies. I have no idea whether she’s done enough revision, questions from her parents result in much eye-rolling but little information.

Our hall is looking terrific but there is still decorating to do and the sewing room and girls’ room are overflowing with extraneous furniture, papers and donations to the church fête – which is still a month away!

AWOL

I’m sorry I’ve not been to visit here, and failed to visit everybody else, but I have been busy ‘doing’.

Father’s chair is complete and will be delivered this weekend. Friendwithmatchinggirls’ curtains are all altered for her new house and will be delivered tomorrow. I have been out lifting and dividing perennials in my garden where spring has finally sprung: there is frogspawn in the pond and daffodils, pulmonaria and primroses flowering in every direction. The washing's gone out on the line at last. The hall and landings are being decorated so we're living in a certain amount of chaos, but it will be lighter and brighter - and cleaner!

Now, have you been watching The Great British Sewing Bee? (And yes, I thought they were spelling bees, I’m not sure about sewing ones.) It’s Bake Off with sewing. Thing is, I’m definitely part of the target audience as both a seamstress and a keen viewer of many cooking programmes, and I know it’s early days, but it’s not right yet… I want more information about the tasks and how they should look, I want closer detail of the stitching they’ve done so that I can better understand what’s right/wrong about it, and I want a better rapport between the three presenters. Did Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood get it right at the start? I don’t know as I didn’t watch the first series, but they give down to earth feedback without it seeming as though they are trying not to be scathing – I feel the nice lady from the WI and the smart tailor don’t even have a passion for sewing in common. Claudia’s cute but a bit too random in her comments, without the humour that is Mel and Sue. Episode three of four is tonight on BBC2; I hope it gets another series, but with amendments. Watching Paul Hollywood making bread last night affirmed how beautifully food is now photographed at all stages; it would make all the difference if they could do the same for stitching.

Revamp

Eldest and I painted her room in July. When we moved in she was 10 and I did a jolly yellow with patchwork curtains. As she’s grown her room has needed more and different furniture (extra bookshelves, not a high bed with a desk under it, and so on) and it was time to update the look. We’ve ordered a tiny sofa from Laura Ashley (her birthday present) to replace the single bed ‘sofa’ that was taking up too much floor space. She bought herself a blanket box which she has painted and I am now to recover the top. And make new curtains of course. Fabric is purchased: the pile awaits.

I have a blanket box of my own waiting to be recovered. And our kitchen chairs have been stripped of aged varnish after 35 years in my ownership (ex-Army quarter furniture bought for my student flat). They need oiling and the seats covering with newly purchased PVC. I’m a bit busy!

Happy Christmas!

Don't seem to have photographed this year's Christmas card designs so this is one of last year's... never mind, the sentiment is the same!
No doubt you too are not lurking on the interweb but doing useful organising, planning, cherishing, catering and caring or possibly icing, decorating, wrapping and panicking, depending how your arrangements for the festive season are going.
We are largely sorted. Sufficiently so that we are off to the pictures tonight. If the lovely weather continues we will be mulling wine on our patio tomorrow night as proposed, and attending an 11pm 'midnight' Mass on Saturday evening. Just us on the day itself: lovely!
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Just idle

It is my last day at home alone until September and I have failed to decide what to do with it.
There are, of course, many useful chores I could do around the house and garden but that seems rather a waste of the day. I could tidy up, but since they'll all be on holiday from the end of today the house will no doubt be a mess again by bedtime. I could do the laundry, but that multiplies daily, so tomorrow would do. The front patio needs weeding, it's pots dead-heading and the pyracantha pruning, but I could do that over the weekend when I need to escape the house. There's work to do in the back garden too, but I probably won't get to it today. My list of rooms that need decorating hasn't got shorter this (academic) year, so there's no point starting that now. And my re-upholstering of the dining-room chairs has come to a halt for no reason other than that I'm being lazy. A nice man cleaned my windows yesterday (at vast expense) so it would be sensible to do the insides, but I'm rubbish at windows... The trouble with hausfrau tasks is that they rarely have a permanent solution: they always need doing again!
Husband still has a piece of written work to complete before Bath University can sign him off as a newly qualified teacher, and Eldest is helping run a summer school at her ballet school all next week, so Youngest and I will be able to have some time together shopping for the other twos' birthdays. So no need to shop today.
I may just idle around the blogosphere, listening to Radio 4... I'll need another coffee, and I expect there's a chocolate chip muffin somewhere.

Spring

I am ridiculously excited watching little flower heads popping up all over the garden, buds budding on the trees and birds house hunting, but please could it stay warmer and stop raining? I can’t make a plan from one day to the next and, ‘though Youngest needs some room decoration (if only she could keep it tidy), the house always needs more tlc than I can be bothered with and I’m supposed to be making a prom dress, I’d rather be gardening.