I spent all weekend with wonderful friends and their toddlers on a farm in the southern highlands of NSW. Three times two year old terrors made for lots of laughs, lots of tears and an unforgettable few days. This is my favourite shot – all three of them playing in the bath. Three mums behind them nattering away. A floor covered in water, toys thrown out of the bath and the promise of plenty of wine once they’re in bed! Needless to say not much stitching got done so its going to be a big week getting ready for Allies Attic.

I mentioned on twitter (follow me here)  that I’ve been working on a design for owl angels. They’re basically a few tweaks to the sock owl pattern with a different type of wing and feet. After my first attempt with a baby sock (no I’m not going to show you, it was a bit of a disaster!) I discovered that you really need to use newborn size socks. This sent me raiding Oscars old baby clothes for teeny tiny newborn socks to play with. Needless to say not much sewing was done but lots of “ooohhh… ahhh… ooohhh he was so little…” swooning. So much swooning, in fact, that I couldn’t bring myself to cut up his old socks and had to go out and buy new newborn socks. Ridiculous.

The sock owl angels are going to be Christmas ornaments to hang from the tree. This will be our very first year buying an Xmas tree. It’s our first Christmas at home as a family and I’m planning on decorating the whole thing with a combination of hand made oranaments and few that I’ve picked up on my travels over the years.

I’ll keep posting the progress up here.

I had a moment the other morning. Sitting in the bat cave surrounded by the chaos of socks, fabrics, stuffing, boxes, embroidery thread, blown up sewing machines (oh yes, it blew up). In that moment I thought “oh dear god, I just gave up my day job and now I am seriously going to sit around making stuffed toys… why am I here…. what was I thinking?!!” Career woman threatened to clobber earth mother into submission for the sensible, guaranteed pay cheque … oh alright and the fancy lunches and adrenalin rush client presentations… day job.

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Slowly but surely over past few days earth mother has won again. Quietly. Using geurilla tactics.

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Love: Oscar and I spent 3 solid days together over the weekend. We went swimming, rode the banana bike, visited the fishies at the aquarium, did endless drawings, made muffins, made up silly games, fell asleep together watching Winnie the Pooh. He told me I needed a haircut (ummm….thanks!). It must be love.

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Loved: I had a few emails over the weekend from people who have enjoyed making owls and g-rafs in particular. It’s a little thing but I get a huge buzz out of helping people make things for their wee ones. The biggest buzz by far was Steph’s post on the tag monster toy that her little girl bubble sleeps with. Thank you gorgeous Steph!

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Loving: Making softies. For some reason I never get sick of it. I’ve said it before, I’m addicted. It’s like a drug.

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He’ll Be Apples.

Here’s another little owl I’ve nicknamed “he’ll be apples”.  There’s something about a retro combination of colours (red, blue, brown) that I can never resist. I’ve had a stack of the navy and red socks for a few months and hadn’t figured out what to do with them until I stumbled across the apple fabric in my stash. I bought it years ago for it’s cute retro-ness and had completely forgotten about it (bad stasher!). Kits for him are up in the store.

I’m behind. Behind on my blogging and even further behind on my blog reading. I’m sorry and I really do miss you all but it’s been a bit chaotic. I’ve been working on a project for a magazine that I’m not allowed to talk about… which is killing me (the not talking part, not the project itself).  It’s for a “green” issue of a crafty magazine coming out next year. I’ve also been sneaking in a little bit of time working on making owl angels for xmas decorations. It’s a slight variation on the owl pattern to turn them into angels but I think it might just work. I discovered on Friday that they really need to be teeny tiny newborn size socks so I raided Oscar’s old sock collection but then couldn’t bring myself to cut them up. Ridiculous really. I spent a good hour pouring over tiny little clothes and hats lost down memory lane. So the owl angels didn’t get finished in the end. Oh and Mr Schmaft has been away on an extended bucks weekend and I’ve been flying solo with Oscar. Fun but exhausting. Where do two year olds get their energy from?

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So all in all, I don’t have anything to show you today. Rubbish, innit?