Excuse the less than fantastic photo but I had to take it rather quickly as Bean was so keen to be playing with all the lovely things I couldn’t even get a picture without her in it!

There are some truely lovely things that participants have made, some complicated, some wonderfully simple – all beautiful. We were very pleased to have been a part of the swap.

For reasons later explained, we were sadly unable to take part in the winter swap - I’m really looking forward to seeing the items created when they are revealed over at One Hook Wonder. I’m already planning my contribution for the spring swap which I hope Nicole will be hosting. I’m thinking chick finger puppets or felt eggs, something along those lines…

Anyway, the reason (okay, who am I kidding…) one of the reasons for my lack of postings has been due to a delivery of another kind. In mid November we were thrilled to become a family of four, thanks to the addition of little Logan…

He’s not exactly what you would call a good sleeper…but I guess that can be said about most newborns, I spend my days in a constant state of exhaustion and happiness, frequently reminding myself that these sleepless nights will not last forever, even if it feels like it right now! Bean is, thankfully, a born mother and is nothing but wonderful with him, adoring him from the start, which only makes me love her more, which I hadn’t thought was possible.

Something else, which helps during the night feeds is this lovely poem…sadly I can’t recall where I read it…

“Cooking and cleaning can wait ’till tomorrow,

for babies grow up, we’ve learned to our sorrow,

so quiet down cobwebs and dust go to sleep,

I’m hugging my baby and babies don’t keep”

Too true.

So, in the midst of summer, I was to be found knitting nativity characters* (well, naturally). The idea being that if I started that early in the year they were bound to be finished by Christmas, right? Er…wrong. I got so far as a Jesus, Mary and a bald Joseph before being distracted by a post at the brilliant One Hook Wonder about a Waldorf inspired craft swap. I was too late to join in the summer one as items had to be posted to the USA but I figured that if I started on items for an Autumn/Fall swap then and there I would have them finished in plenty of time – not only that but it meant I wouldn’t have to carry on sewing up the ridiculously fiddly nativity characters – hurrah!!

For those of you who, like me, hadn’t taken part in a craft swap before, the idea is this…sign ups are capped at a set number. You make that many identical items, of a certain value and theme and post them all to the swap organiser by a certain date. Once all the items are received they are repackaged and postal prices calculated. Postage was handled (in this swap) through paypal and the package is then dispatched!!

Since this swap was for items for an Autumn themed nature table I turned to my old favourite of incredibly cute and fiddly-footed hedgehogs from a pattern by the ever-talented Julie at Little Cotton Rabbits. I made ten of these for party bags for the Bean’s second birthday, last year, so what was another 15 between friends?

In case hedgehogs weren’t common in the recipients country, I made a little fact sheet to go with each hedgie.

So off they went…as it turned out it takes less than a week for the package to get to America (not the 3-4 weeks I was expecting…apparently they travel on some sort of new-fangled winged contraption, rather than having to swim there themselves).

So, then the wait began for the return package…but that’s another story… :)

*I had left a couple of figures on the top of my knitting bag and the Bean brought them out to me, saying, very matter of factly, “You very good at making these. Now, I must put them away as there is a spider attack coming” before walking off purposefully…you’ll be relieved to know we all survived.

I find it all too easy in the busy rush at the end of the day to turn down offers of ‘help’ when I am making tea. Thankfully, last week I accepted and the perfect tea-time helping job was born…

The oh-so-simple task of cleaning potatoes. Yep, that’s it. The new potatoes, just the right size for little hands were dipped, then scrubbed and put in the sieve. Simple it may be but the look of concentration on Bean’s face as she carried out her task in just the right order, checking each potato to make sure it was just clean enough was worth the extra time (and the mopping up afterwards).

As the Bean continues to grow from a toddler into a little girl at an alarming rate, I think this is a good reminder to me to make time for the Bean’s special brand of helping and one day, one wonderful day, it might even save me some time too!

Very sneakily, the Bean has turned from a toddler into a little girl – very talkative, very inquisitive and very much fun.

Thanks to some unseasonally good weather, the outdoors has been a source of great entertainment and discovery…

Discovering poppies almost the size of your head…

Taming the wilderness in your very own backgarden…(wearing very pretty pink gardening gloves, of course)…

and planting potatoes with Daddy (using the Bean method of planting i.e. stand where you are and hurl the potatoes as far as you can)…

Looking back over the photos I have taken, it was these three of Bean that made me realise how much she has grown up in recent months. Tired after “a very busy morning Mummy” ’reading’ the menu in a cafe…(i.e. choosing from the options I gave her – but making the decision all by herself after much serious consideration and brow furrowing)

and ordering from the waitress all by herself (“‘scuse me lady…”)

and best of all, loving not only what she had ordered but that she had done it all by herself.

Despite the title, there has only been a little bit of sewing going on here, not for lack of wanting (my sewing machine is too noisy to use whilst Bean is asleep, which leaves me sewing most times with a very enthusiastic little helper. This is sometimes wonderful, sometimes not – depending on how much I want to concentrate). Thankfully my current project is a very simple one – a quilt for the Bean, simply 8.5 inch squares sewn together. The Bean’s contribution to my sewing could be anyone of the following: silly shrieking at the ‘scary noise’ my machine is making; constant enquiries of “can I touch the pins Mummy?” ‘um, no darling, that’s propably not a good idea’; to close observation and then sincere comments of “ooh, you very brave Mummy” ‘am I?’ “yes, to put your hands in there”; but the most common is sitting on my lap or standing, being ‘in charge’ of the reverse button. This apparently ‘has’ to be pressed every time I pause sewing, accompanied in most cases by enthusiastic shouts of “go!” and “stop!”. I hadn’t realised how much Bean considered this to be her job – until I set the machine up the other day. I was sternly informed “that my button Mummy. If you press it, I be very angry”…hmm…a conversation about sharing soon followed…

Here is the ‘in progress’ shot – more photos soon. Well, I say soon…

Good luck (but hopefully to me…) ;-)

In the meantime here’s a little bit of crafting I did recently for the Bean’s second birthday!

A birthday crown, following the excellent tutorial over at Frontier Dreams!

Proper wool felt is really expensive, so for the actual crown I used the best cheap felt I could find in my local craft store. I had to join two pieces, hence adding the purple strips between each of the motifs. For the designs I used felt I had purchased a while ago from Paper and String – I urge you all to buy from Sarah, the service is excellent and my gorgeous felt rainbow (45 different shades of wool mix felt) was beautifully wrapped with a hand written note and best of all, very reasonable.

The Bean is very fond of ladybirds, hence…

I was really pleased how this turned out but my favourite was ‘Gerald’, a character from one of Bean’s favourite books, ‘Giraffe’s can’t dance’ (spoiler alert – it turns out they actually can, I was as surprised as anyone…)

I’m never sure how much to ‘add’ to a project – I wasn’t sure about the leaves at the time but now I love them.

I also traced and messed about with illustrations from another of Bean’s favourites ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’, to make a special birthday card…here’s an ‘in progress’ picture…

I’ve not yet taken a picture of the finished card – but it looks great (if I do say so myself).

The simplest but most time consuming part of the Bean’s birthday preparations was making the party bags for her little friends. For some reason I decided to make party bags for the littles. The bags were simple rectangles, machine sewn then cut with pinking shears. Inside were stickers, colouring sheets printed from the ‘net and for some reason, which made perfect sense at the time, each bag contained a knitted hedgehog.

This little fellow wasn’t to0 pleased about having to share his cake.

(Shh! They’re coming!)

The pattern is by Julie from Little Cotton Rabbits. Julie stuffs her hedgies a little more but I think mine look pretty cute! I love visiting Little Cotton Rabbits as Julie knits the most wonderful toys – I am just hoping for the day that she releases a knitting pattern book as currently she only sells the finished toys. The pattern is very simple (sensing a theme here?), each one probably only takes 20 minutes max and the reaction from the littles was absolutely worth it!

Right, blog semi-updated. Now, off to check out what everyone else has been up to!

I hope you all have wonderful weekends!

I know that some people have strong views about the use of reins but I think they can be brilliant when used correctly. I use them with the Bean when we are out and about in a new or dangerous location, or when she was learning to walk (saved many a scraped knee!). They are never used as a substitute for supervision, I simply wrap them around my hand whilst also holding the Bean’s hand. The Bean isn’t bothered by them at all and they are simply used as a backup for if she decides to wriggle her hand out of mine and dart off. She doesn’t reliably stop when I ask her (we are working on it!) and although rarely needed, I value the extra safety measure. The area we had visited in these photos was full of rocks, uneven ground and steep drops so they allowed the Bean and I (and ‘Grampa’, who is trying to hide in this photo) to run, explore and enjoy this new landscape with confidence.

The Bean is a real nature girl and loves spending time outdoors which I am having to readjust to. I used to spend a lot of my time outside when I was a Scout leader – since I gave that up I sort of lost the reason for spending so much time outdoors (I love the outdoors – it just dislikes me…). I’m allergic to quite a lot of it, through hayfever, hives and am found constantly squinting in the sunlight (which is why, in most photographs I look like an angry, confused owl). Watching the Bean discover nature and study leaves, mushrooms, lichen and all sorts of commonplace things, with such wonder and excitement and ‘oooh’s’ is worth any amount of sneezing, itching and ever present squint furrows.

We also attended a ‘Teh-Bear’s Picnic’ with some of the Bean’s friends. We had a brilliant time and second only to splashing in the river, the Bean’s favourite activity was (very gentle) hair twiddling of the little babies! She spends a lot of time twiddling her own hair or the hair of the person she’s currently cuddling…I often tell her that when she was little she had the world’s softest hair…I guess she’s trying out the next best thing!

Also, due to a horrid cold, I forgot to share pics of the Bean’s first canoe trip – so here are some of the latest trip!

Hope you all had great weekends too!