Monday, 2nd January: Day 2

Lots going on with the home front today.

Mondays are always special on the FLYlady programme, it's the "big" focus day on the home that sets the week going on the right foot.
For those not familiar with the FLYlady programme, I'm going to say, here and now - if you're a B.O. (Born Organised) person - someone whose ducks fly in a row without any, or with only minimal help, it probably won't make any sense to you, but for perfectionist S.H.E.s (Sidetracked Home Executives) such as me, it can be a life-changing Godsend!

If you haven't already and you think in any small measure the FLY (Finally Love Yourself) programme would be helpful to you, then you can jump right in over at www.FLYlady.net

Actually, now is a very exciting time over there - this month's habits and everything just happen to be natural pause and restart points (though as FLYlady herself always says, just jump in right now, exactly where you are) and the page has recently had a facelift, so if you have been there before, pop back and have an explore of all the new stuff!

So yes, a large part of today has been a FLYlady "reboot" of upstairs. After all the madness of the festive season etc we're starting over again - see, even after nine-and-a-half years (in two weeks time) of following this excellent programme, life still sometimes requires a pause and reboot moment.
The one thing that I have learnt in all this time is, to accept and TRULY understand that sometimes a job doesn't get done all in one go and that is alright. - So while upstairs is not, this evening, completely perfect, I'm happy with the progress made.

Still, it was a very good opportunity to catch up on some music!

Personally, I love classical while I'm doing domestic stuff and this morning was no exception.

While my absolute favourite in these situations is Delius (particularly Songs From the Paradise Gardens) I try not too put Christophe through the same stuff all the time, so this morning I went rooting about for Mozart's Cello Concerto.
Isn't the new layout of YouTube difficult? Though I daresay we'll all get used to it in time.

Anyhow, having unfortunately found THE worst recording in the world of Elgar's Cello Concerto (I have to be in just the right mood for Elgar myself, otherwise his stuff can have me jumping right out of my skin if I'm not ready for it) I finally found a little gem in this recording of Jing Zhao playing the first movement of the Mozart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCh8fTtc_J4 - it was positively fantastic!

To complement that, we also played some Rondo Veneziano (Christophe's go-to favourite for such settings), of which, the "Aria di Festa" is particularly good.

So that takes care of the 'music' portion of the day, onward to the creativity. (Incidentally, I got up this morning to find my watch EXACTLY where I'd left it - score one to Mammy:Kitten Nil!)

So this is this afternoon's offering (fore-shortened session due to a rather prolonged, but wonderful catching-up natter with my wicked, amazing friend Kim)
I'm afraid that the photo isn't brilliant today - I've just, this evening (after I could've done anything about it) discovered that it's right what they say about regular batteries and digital cameras - DEFINITELY a false economy!) so this picture will just have to hold it until I can take a better one.

As you can see, I've added the first border to yesterday's piece. I opted for a soft lilac in a "baby" type DK yarn on size 4mm needles. (Incidentally, if anyone has a reliable link for translating European and American sizes, please go ahead and pop it up - it's always coming up and I'm never quite sure).

In this instance, I've opted for adding the border straight to the previous block, rather than stitching them together - it's just a personal preference thing really, I'm not convinced to date that there's a huge amount between the two techniques as far as strength.

The one thing I did slip up on and had to remind myself of, so it may be useful to mention here was, if you're going to use this technique, where you're essentially picking up and knitting the cast-off (bound-off in American parlance) stitches, it's important to either leave a longer end on the cast-off, or start in the other corner of the cast-off row to prevent the cast-off stitches coming undone.
However, if like me, you slip-up and they do begin to come loose, the first rule of knitting comes into play: DON'T PANIC!

simply catch the loose stitches on the non-working needle and continue knitting along and nobody will ever know (unless you tell them). - Seriously, see if you can detect which corner it happened on with mine.

In fact, put your guesses in the comment section, where corner 1 is top left of the picture, corner 2 is top right, corner 3 is bottom left and corner 4 is bottom right - and then the first one who gets it right will have a prize!

So there we have it. Short and sweet as days go and with the Knotty Knitters (Ballinamore's Knit Club) not back until next Tuesday, tomorrow's creativity will have to be a little more home grown.

Now that gives me an idea . . .

Sunday, 1st January: Day 1

So, to kick us off, here's a picture taken in the new reading room at Murray's (as is, it will have a new name really soon) - what do you think?

I've got a full panorama of the room going up on Facebook as soon as I finish this post. You'll be able to see it at:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150450958836752.354320.580876751&type=1

I'm including this shot because this is one of those spaces that just oozes creativity! - It's quite difficult to explain, but being in this space gives you tingles - almost crackles of some kind of creative static electricity. It would be hard not to be creative in this space. Which is extremely handy given that the various rooms are open for projects, as well as tea/coffee/cake from the vintage tearoom in front. There's also a flea market on every Saturday where crafters and artists can come to showcase (and hopefully sell) some of their wares.

We were up there this afternoon for a little drink to toast in the new calendar and the start of all the wonderful projects this space is affording for our town. It was a great afternoon with good company and great craic (fun, the Irish way). We even took some of the silver streamers from the party poppers and danced in the fizzy energy of the place. (That was wee Olivia's idea - it made me think at the time, while trying to work out how I would explain the whole feeling of the place to you, how interesting it is that children seem to have an instinctive 'feel' for these things and always seem to know the right way to respond to it.)

One of my aims for this year is to use my Teaching Certificate more. As soon as there are people interested, I'm going to be offering classes and one-on-one workshops in Textiles and related crafts from somewhere in here.

***

On the creativity front, I'm really chuffed to have managed to complete TWO small items today.

The first, was this adaption to my watch. (left)

Our littlest cat, Shadow, (below left) has had a thing for my watch for quite some time now and regularly steals it in the night. The upshot of which is, as of this morning, the strap was completely unusable through the sheer amount of being grabbed in kitty teeth and hauled about.

I removed the old yellow (my favourite) faux leather strap and upcycled the watch itself with this keyring fob to give (I hope) a slightly more durable piece that I can interchange between belt loops, or even attach to my bag strap or purse when I'm out and about.

Left is the man himself - our wee stowaway who we discovered had moved in when we got back from our summer trip.








We've established he's about the same age as our other kitten, Mogwai and was roaming ferrol having lost/left his Mum around 6wks. Now that he's been treated for the worst case of worms I've ever seen, he's healthy and happily become a part of the family and is now more at home in a cosy domestic setting than out roaming.

The second thing that I have made today doesn't look like anything very much does it? (above right)

It's actually the start of a much bigger piece I've been putting off for MONTHS now, on the grounds that I "can't justify time working on that because it's for me" (- a habit I plan to loose for good this year!)

We were given a new (to us)

three-piece-suite about four months ago. It's ridiculously comfortable, but as you can see in the background of the photo, it's a very, shall we say, 'particular' sort of colour scheme and pattern, as well as in some hidden away areas, really rather worn. (Not to mention we'd just finished redecorating the living room, with a predominant palette of plum and yellow-gold-ish) So the plan is, that I will gradually recover it.

Having played about with various ideas, we've settled on making large patchwork throws that will either remain loose, or may be fixed in place to cover the suite.
The reason we're opting for patchwork, is that we have large blocks of colour on each wall, so any more big blocky colours would start looking wrong in our small room, so the patchwork will be made of very small pieces, in varying shades of both purple and yellow, to complement the other decor.

This piece then, will become the core piece of the settee cover. I've incorporated some left over streamers from our trip out this afternoon. Not sure why I did that - it was a whim. Perhaps I'm trying to conserve some of that wonderful creative energy we danced in this afternoon.



I'll be putting the rest of the photos up on Facebook in the next few minutes.
Tune in again tomorrow to see how we can build on this flying start!