A few weeks ago we had a lovely weeks holiday in Anglesey. Unfortunatly (or fortunatly) someone put their small and greasy finger on the camera lense so I'm unable to bore you with too many pictures. I love Anglesey and would happily move there. The minute I drive across one of those bridges I feel more relaxed. It could be that I remember all my wonderful childhood holidays in Llanfairynghornwy, it could be being close to the sea, it could be that so long as I don't cross a big bridge again it's nigh on impossible to get lost, or it could just be something in the air.

So anyway, we had a lovely week staying here, I highly recommend it if there are just a couple of you, or if you have children who stay asleep once it gets light. We had to put towels up against windows to get Bryher to sleep past 5am. But we'd still go back, it was fantastic. I saw a young hare (very rare nowadays), and a stoat both just feet away from the cabin window.



Bryher had her first paddle in the sea. It was a bit chilly some days so we'll reserve judgement on how much she liked it. I built some sandcastles, Bryher ran round them (they're now called "round & rounds" apparently), and Porl and I did some excellent diverting of streams as the photo above just shows. Bryher showed absolutely no interest at this masterpiece of engineering.
One day she'll appreciate our skill.

The weather was glorious, (until the last day) so good in fact that we were trying to find things to do to keep us out of the sun. As usual when we go anywhere we visited lots of farm shops for Porl and lots of craft places for me. Luckily these things tend to be together, so the flour mill was also home to the craft guild shop.

My big purchase though was from a charity shop in Cemaes. We went in to look at books but there was a spinning wheel in the middle of the shop and several peg looms and drop spindles, all new. Apparently a lady went in a couple of times a week to give lessons. I've wanted to try weaving for ages, but I'd never seen a peg loom. It was a good price and they had samples made on it so I decided to buy myself an early birthday present.



Here's my first play at making "something" I'm not sure what it is, possibly a place mat, I didn't want to be too ambitious to start with. Now I'm hoping to get some raw fleece from somewhere so I can make a fake sheepskin rug. I'm tempted to go walking over the moors collecting bits off barbed wire.

My other new creative venture has been needle felting. Again something I've wanted to try for ages but I've resisted the lures of ebay. I could resist no longer though when I went to the gala in the village where I grew up and found a needle felting kit for £2.50. A night of vicious stabbing and I had created this.



Ebay was inevitable then. My kit only had 1 needle, so I bought some more of various sizes and a nice big bag of bright coloured fibre and a few days later was able to create this.



I'm addicted. I even took them into work so I could keep stabbing during my half hour lunch break.
3D is my next challenge. I think a fairy toadstool is in order.

No doubt this will be another sporadic post, but I've got pretty things to show off.

A few weeks ago I discovered Twiggypeasticks blog. Then not long after Twiggy had a giveaway and I was one of the lucky winners!

So last weekend a pretty little parcel landed on the doormat.



Luckily I got to it before the usual resident letter opener or the pretty things would have been dispersed never to bee seen again.



Yummy chocolates, pretty buttons and a lovely felt and button brooch which is now living on my work bag.



If you like the look of this and fancy one of your own then you can visit Twiggy's Emporium

Hi!

Yep, I'm still here, trying to get my act together to start posting again. I've been slowly building up the urge for a redesign, maybe even finding my own web hosting rather than blogger, then I may actually start posting again.

Quick update on life here. I have a new job as a Speech Therapy Technical Instructor. Only part time unfortunately so I'm still doing 1 shift a week on my old job. I love the new job though, really good fun, it's a great team and I feel like I'm really helping people. There's also a lot of cutting and sticking, playing on the computer and making pretty things involved so it's right up my street.

B is a star, she's nearly 21 months now, she really knows her own mind and she's got a very stubborn streak so we have quite a lot of tantrums. She's not very good at talking, in fact you could say she's rubbish, she has a few words which we understand, but we have to translate a lot. For example, "ot" (hot) could mean hot, or oven, or cup, or drink, or food depending on the situation. She certainly keeps us guessing. We're hoping when she gets better at speaking the tantrum will subside a little. I was rubbish at speaking till I was quite old so we aren't too worried. Her favourite word at the moment is "ditzth" which she uses to refer to anything she doesn't have a word for (so that's almost everything then). We constantly hear "Oooh ditzth" her tone of voice is brilliant, she sounds constantly amazed by everything.

On the crafting front I'm certainly getting my mojo back. Helped greatly by the fact that someone goes to bed without any arguments at night now. I got really into my cross-stitch again for a while (the Indian I've been doing for years has had a lot of attention, still not done though). I've also been busy knitting a cardigan, my first knitted item of clothing since I was about 7. I'm crocheting a gorgeous ripple afghan, which is about 3/4 done and I've just started some cushions to match it as the afghan has got a bit too big to cart around now.

I haven't got photos of any of these crafty endeavours, so I'll have to leave you with a picture of the gorgeous girl instead.



Hopefully I'll be back again soon.

I'm a bad blogger. 2 months without an update!

I really admire all the Mums who manage to write blogs, make stuff, and bring up small children. I can't ever imagine it happening here. If we could persuade her to nap, then I might be able to blog, but she gets by on 2 x 45 minute power naps per day, and that's on a good day.

I am managing to keep up with other blogs, and I'm trying to comment more often too... when Bryher isn't trying to eat the keyboard anyway.
I must have made the comment karma fairy happy too because I was lucky enough to win a blog giveaway celebrating Sew-Eco's 200th post. The lovely Ruby has come to live with us.

At the moment she is making friends with Looby, the doll I knitted for Bryher. Ruby's label says that she likes to sit with other toys and watch the world go by, which is good as they will be kept out of chewing distance for a while. Bryher does play with other toys I've made her, other more chewable toys, but Ruby & Looby are a bit special, and not suitable for small mouths. They are spending their days in the living room, sitting on the little rocking chair which my Grandad made for me. The rocking chair which makes Bryher squeal with laughter whenever we let her play on it.

I tried to get a nice picture of Bryher with her "off-limits" toys, but the only time she's still is when she's about to drop with exhaustion.

Bryher turned 8 months old on Thursday.
I can't get over how quickly she is learning and changing. In this past week she has learnt to clap, sit herself up, and crawl, although to be fair it's a bit of a commando crawl/drag at the moment, even so it's still forwards and purposeful, it's just a bit slower... thankfully! She's also started grunting at us in reply to things, so we have conversations in "Cave-Girl". She still hasn't mastered rolling from front to back though which is supposed to be the first movement milestone.

Unfortunately 8 months means it's also time for me to go back to work. My first shift is on Thursday. It'll be the first time I'll have left her for more than a couple of hours.
I'm going to miss my little Goblin Goon more than I care to think about.

We decided to try Bryher in the cot tonight instead of her carrycot. We've been meaning to do it for a while, the carrycot is fine in length, but getting a bit too narrow.

She seems to appreciate the extra space.
Sorry for the terrible picture quality but I didn't want to wake her by turning on the lights.

Today has been a day of sitting around lazing. Bryher's cold has developed, we went to the doctors this morning and she has a slight chest infection. She was still smiley and chatting this morning but then spent most of the afternoon either sleeping on me or crying.

In other news, my Dad has been given a date today for his heart operation. Next Tuesday is his birthday, but he has to go into the hospital for pre-op tests. What a great birthday present! As long as everything is okay he will have the operation on the 19th.

My parents have been coming up to visit us every week but I've told them they shouldn't see us until we're 100% better. It's not worth the risk.

I'd love to be able to post about all the exciting things I've done all day, but I can't as I've spent almost all day in bed trying to fight off this cold. I'd call it flu, except I had flu a few years ago. It floored me for weeks.
This is bad, I ache, my temperature is going haywire, and breathing is causing problems. But I'm still capable of rational thought, I'm able to get out of bed with less that 30 minutes notice and I'm not thinking of calling an ambulance. So it's not flu.

I'm also still posting. If I can post today they may be hope that I will see the month out. I haven't done any crafting yet, but when I've done here I'll do a row of knitting... maybe 2, then go to bed.
I'm knitting a sock for my ipod using this pattern. I've got about another inch to go before I can cast off. I've never knitted a sock of any type before so while the casting off sounds easy on paper it may all go horribly wrong when I get down to the knitty gritty.

I'm ill.
But I'm still posting.

I started with the beginnings of a cold yesterday and during the night it developed. It didn't help that when Bryher woke for a feed at 5am she decided she didn't want to sleep in her carrycot anymore and laid there jabbering to herself loudly. She does this occasionally and I usually just get her in bed with me where she falls asleep without any problem, but I didn't want her getting too close to my germs so I persevered with getting her in the carrycot. She wasn't having any of it though. At one point I got her to sleep in my bed, but she woke up again when I tried to put her back in the carrycot so eventually I gave up and she stayed in bed with me.
I'm hoping I recover from my cold before she starts with hers.
We woke up at 9am, at 10am Porl sent me back to bed for a few more hours sleep. Except for feeds (obviously) Porl has been on full time baby duty today. I've laid around convalescing and trying to keep my germs to myself.

I have still managed to do some crafts. I only made 2 cards, but it's something. Here are all the cards I'd made before today.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to have some energy, so I can rearrange the living room. We need more space for Bryhers playmat etc, and we'll certainly need more space when she becomes mobile, which at the rate she's going will be sooner rather than later, she's already an ace at wiggling off her playmat. I've pushed the settee up against the wall of books rather than it being in the centre of the room and I want to swap a couple of other things around too. The big job though will be to re-arrange the bookshelves so that one is level with the back of the settee. It'll look neater and can be used as a table, but I also want to put all the childrens' books one there too. There's about 800 books on those shelves so re-arranging them will be a bit of an epic task.

Then next week when I'm feeling up to it I'll take a trip to Ikea and buy a huge rug. We went yesterday with my parents but silly me didn't have the measurements. I should just measure everything in the house so I don't have to do these things twice.