Why is it...

...that the best ideas come to you when you're a million miles (metaphorically speaking, anyhow) from a sketch book? Last night cost me over an hour's sleep with fabric patterns floating around my head - I would have got up, but one of the mogs was determined to come up and be a pain and I'd had quite enough of barricading the stairgate so she couldn't! And I've just had to practically run down the stairs after getting K off to sleep so I could scribble down the perfect doorstop idea for her bedroom. It will match her picture book shelves and I need to practice ribbon embroidery to do it - just a very simple set of daisies and some nice buttons for the centres and some butterflies, and it absolutely positively has to have a green handle with a pale yellow and white polka dot ribbon along the middle. I like these Injabulo Fair Trade buttons, for example.

I'm so glad I got a nice big sketchbook and had the courage to get scribbling. There's not much in there yet but when inspiration hits, it's brilliant. I must dig out my little sketch book to go in my bag...


I've been furtling through my fabric boxes recently. I seem to have the most amazing amount of voile/organza stuff - not a vast variety, it must be said, but yards and yards of the stuff. I haven't the faintest idea what to use it for. The plain blue is the remnants of a cloak lining, the pale blue starry fabric has a half-finished Egyptian dance coin belt made out of some of it, but the blue-green and the silver are completely uncut. What can I dooooooooo with it? I thought about bag linings but no way is it strong enough for that, and I don't have any need for lots and lots of favour bags. Our house also has a severe lack of natural light due to the way it faces, so even net curtains are out (not that I'd be able to persuade the cats not to climb them) What else is it good for? I'm almost tempted to paint on some of it, see what happens, but I am trying not to spend much atm and that would involve a fatal trip to Hobbycraft for paints. Even if I did come up with a good pattern on it, I still have no clue what to use it for. Damn my magpie instincts, and damn .Abakhan Fabrics for having too much nice stuff. Crumbs, I haven't actually been there in years, not since probably 2000 or so when we lived in Manchester. That's how long this stuff has been lurking for!


Woodwork is happening in the kitchen; the cat-sized Swahili bed begins to take shape. I want a Martini but I'm too scared to go in there!