It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life...

Happy new year folks!

So new year's day has been and gone and my baby girl still isn't here. My patience is being tested like never before and baby and I are at loggerheads as to when would be an appropriate time for her to make her grand entrance. So in the meantime, I try and keep busy and resurrecting the old blog seems like a good idea.

A new year is always a good time to reflect on the one just gone. You may remember my new year's resolution back then was all about conquering my fears, great and small. On the balance of things, I have done pretty well, tried lots of new things, tried new crafting techniques... But the highlights for me will no doubt have been:
- to learn to drive on the left, with a right hand drive. This summer, I even drove all the way to Windsor all by myself, that was definitely a proud moment.
- to conquer my fear of the dentist... well almost. I've had some really bad experiences with British dental care while living in London which had turned my pre-existing fear of dentists into a proper phobia. When I needed dental treatment, I'd go back to Belgium, a highly impractical solution, but at least I knew the woman there and I trusted her. In April this year I found myself in a proper emergency situation and I just had to take it on the chin and try a local dentist. I am very lucky to have found someone great, who does a good job and who shows amazing patience in the face of my extreme anxiety. I've still managed to faint in his chair on a regular basis but I'm working on that!
- to conquer my fear of needles (the medical kind, I have no problem with knitting or sewing needles!). I hadn't really planned on tackling this phobia of mine but as anyone who's been pregnant will tell you, you're turned into a pin cushion during pregnancy so this particular phobia had to go. I did really well with my first blood tests but at my 12 week scan, things turned sour when the nurse couldn't find my veins and had to try multiple times in different places. After that, the needle phobia was well and truly back on. But isn't it amazing what despair will make you do? As my due date was fast approaching and I really wanted to try every possible method to tease the baby out, I decided to try acupuncture. I had done an attempt a few years back but it hadn't ended well. Yet this time, I managed to sit through the entire session without even feeling faint and I even put myself through a second session. Needless to say, it didn't bring baby out but hey, I've conquered another fear, that's one bonus point!

So what of this year? What will be my new year's resolution? Well, I've decided it's time for me to let go of guilt. I'm so good at guilt-tripping myself and that simply has to stop. Not an easy resolution as I'm about to become a mom and moms always seem to crumble under the weight of guilt - Am I doing this right? Should I let the baby cry? Should I go back to work?... We've all heard it before. So I am setting myself quite a big task... the good thing is if I fail, well, I won't feel guilty about it!

I also really want to get back to more making, I've really missed it these last few months and I'm hoping there will be some time for it in the crazy months that loom ahead. And I'd like to go back to my more regular blogging. I'd set myself a goal of one post a week when I started but I've barely managed half of that in 2012. However, if I don't succeed, I won't make myself feel guilty about it :-)

I'm not planning much else at the moment. My life is about to be turned upside down in a way that I can't quite imagine. This year is definitely a new dawn for me, the start of a new life and it's both exciting and terrifying. So my usual uber organised self is having to step back in favour of a more "wait and see" attitude.

Now to get this baby out...

Essential nursery makes

In October and November, most of my creative time and energy has been spent getting the nursery ready. I've finally taken a few pictures of the now finished room so I can tell you all about it. You'll have to excuse my really poor photographic skills though!

We rent our house so we couldn't do too much to the room or its structure. That's when wall stickers come in really handy, they jazz up a room in no time and leave virtually no damage when you have to remove them. I'd fallen in love quite early on with the Jomoval Scroll Tree range so we bought that and on the back of it, agreed on an owl theme for the nursery. The wall sticker comes in 80 or so individual bits so putting it up, while simple, does require a little bit of patience!

To my delight, we've inherited our crib. It actually is the crib my sister and I slept in when we were born and the same crib all my nephews slept in more recently. Of course with the crib being nearly 35 years old, the original lining and draping hasn't survived so I had to make a new one. Without a pattern.  And using elastic, something I haven't done in my sewing adventures so far! 

This is where all my lovely fabrics came in handy though! After a lot of thinking, and calculating, and checking with my other half that I was doing it right (baby brain is a real blight and I can't trust my own judgement at the moment), I've managed to produce something pretty decent. Well I think so anyway! 

Overtime, the crib will get replaced by a cot bed (another inherited item) and I'll have to make a bumper for it but we've got a few months ahead of us for that.

The next step was replacing the curtains and I wanted them lined, to keep most of the light out and most of the heat in. We debated buying another owlie fabric for the curtains but were worried that it might be overkill. With this in mind and in an attempt to limit costs, we eventually decided to use a perfectly good fabric, cream with dark pink polka dots, that was lurking in my stash. I'd originally bought it with the idea of re-upholstering a chair but that same chair has since become the cat's near permanent residence and as her fur is grey and she moults quite badly in the summer, a cream fabric didn't seem like a good plan anymore. 

I had to do a bit of online research to find out which was the best way to make lined curtains but luckily, you can find tutorials for pretty much anything these days. We had a near disaster when baby brain struck and I seamed the wrong end of the lining. I am very grateful for my darling husband who patiently unpicked my mistake stitch by stitch!

The chest of drawers/changing station was also a hand-me down, from hubby's side. We've jazzed it up with more Jomoval wall stickers. 

Having it all laid out and ready makes it all suddenly very real! Overall we're really pleased with the nursery and I really hope our little Goose likes it as much as we do. I'll leave you with a few more pics of the finished room. The gorgeous little cushion on the nursing chair was screen printed by the lovely Helen Rawlinson who teaches at the Make Lounge.

Dummy clips

With only a few weeks left before "B" day, it's fair to say hubby and I have gone a little baby mad lately.

We've spent a fair amount of time shopping for baby essentials and cute baby outfits. While the dad-to-be has been busy dismantling, painting and re-building the baby furniture we've inherited from our sisters (one of the perks of the being late starters of the family!), I've been washing and tidying away all the baby clothes, packing hospital bags and sewing curtains and crib linings. 

I'm pleased to say that, on target, the nursery was finished before I hit week 34. A post will follow soon once I've remembered to haul myself and the bump up those stairs to take pictures. 

There's been little time left for leisurely crafting. I'm putting the finishing touches to the knitted sleeping bag I started months ago, I still haven't printed all my baby grows and I'm still hoping I'll get to make and finish a bumper and a quilt for our playpen before the due date. 

I have been missing my crafting and my blogging more and more and was getting rather desperate for a quick and easy project. Then my friend Lorna posted a picture of homemade dummy clips on Facebook and I felt instantly inspired. There it was, my quick and easy project! 

I've been making a few of them in the past couple of weeks, improving my design with each one.

The first one was really simple, all that's required is a pretty ribbon, a dummy clip, a popper and basic sewing skills:

Inspired by Lorna's work, I took it a step further and started adding beads, held in place by knotting the ribbon at both ends:

But then I started thinking that it would be nice if the dummy clip had some elasticity to it. However, I didn't want to use an elastic that I would have to knot as I felt that would be too risky to a baby if it unravelled. After a bit of searching, I've found metal free hairbands that are thin enough for me to thread beads on but also sturdy enough to remove the risk of them snapping at the slightest tug. So here's what the design has evolved into:

I'll probably make a few more of those before Baby Goose arrives, one with her name would be nice but since we're keeping it secret, it won't appear on here for a little while ;-). Oh and should you wonder who Alana is, it's my neighbour's gorgeous baby girl and I still need to go and give her that clip! 

Peacock earrings

I've been feeling quite frustrated lately. I have a head full of plans and projects but rarely the energy to match it. I'm also itching to get started on a load of baby makes, especially the nursery, but I have to wait until we've picked up our furniture from my sister's later this month. And we've been told that we're most likely expecting a girl (we are delighted!) but I want to wait for a definite confirmation from a scan in Belgium before committing myself to some gender specific makes.

I've started other projects, a set of screen printed baby grows and a knitted sleeping bag among other things, but I haven't finished any of it yet, meaning I can't blog about it. And so the little blog looks neglected for a while longer.

During one of my many sleepless nights last week, I found myself thinking about one of the pins on my Pinterest jewellery board. Don't ask me why that pin suddenly came to mind, especially as I must have accumulated hundreds of pins on there by now, all I know is that I had to try and replicate it and have spent a few hours lying awake and debating how best to do it.

I have an insane stash of crafty stuff and amongst it, a pile of colour plated wires. I must have bought those with a specific project in mind but as often happens, other projects took precedence and the purpose of the coloured wires has been forgotten. But hey, they were just what I needed for this project, proof that a well stocked stash always comes in handy :-)

After two mornings of wrapping a series of coloured wires around a bead threaded on another piece of gold plated wire, voilà: a pair of peacock feather earrings!

I didn't have any gold plated fishhooks in my stash so I made these myself. I do think the wire I'm using is a bit too soft for fishhooks though so I'll have to buy some proper ones next time I place an order for jewellery supplies.

The earrings look stunning, if I may say so myself, proper showpieces. I'd love to show them off with a nice party frock. But probably not this year, I'm afraid by the time the party season starts, only a tent will fit me!

Gearing up for a lot of baby makes

As we get ever closer to our 20 weeks scan, and by that, the mid-point of my pregnancy, I am more and more itching to make stuff for the baby.

We have settled on a loose "owl" theme for the nursery and I've placed an order for a load of fabrics from Fabric Rehab. I'm hoping to turn those into a baby quilt, a cot bumper, some cushions and whatever else I can think of. Aren't they cute?

Inspired by the Make Lounge and their brilliant screenprinting workshop, I've also ordered a Permaset screen printing kit. Expect some pictures soon of printed baby grows and T-shirts!

I already own a couple of baby knitting and crochet books which I'm really fond of, namely
Crochet for babies and toddlers by Betty Barnden and Baby knits for beginners by Debbie Bliss. Both have great projects in them, really well explained and generally easy to make, I highly recommend them.

I've now ordered a few more books, The ultimate book of baby knits by Debbie Bliss, which I'd been eyeing for some time now as it's full of really beautiful and practical projects and I trust the author, and Cute and easy crocheted baby clothes by Nicky Trench, which I've only just discovered but like a lot already.

I'd also ordered the Big book of baby afghans but promptly decided to return it. I couldn't find one single project in the book that I liked. Every single afghan looked like something that would have been popular when I was born, in the late seventies. It's all a bit frilly and lacy and the stereotypical pastel palette made it even less palatable. It's the first time ever I have returned a book but I really couldn't see any point in keeping this one and couldn't think of anyone that might have liked it instead of me.

Now I just need to find the time to make all these lovely things!