Making and Creating (by sarah)

So today has been a making things only day - when I got up I knew writing was going to be a no go as I am still recovering from the cognative tests at the hospital yesterday. This is what I made:

An upcycled book-wallet from graze boxes and colouring in books.

A little flip notelet holder also made from graze boxes and colouring in book (ie off cuts from the one upbove). Including a half pencil I have customised.

Origami boxes made from special card Al bought me yesterday, for the large illustrated scrolls both story and poetry. Decorated with patterned tissue paper and stickers of my art work.

These are all still in the concepts phase as I need to see how they hold together etc... Also I have seen the colouring I did after the head injury and it is not pretty but mostly salvagable by help of black marker round the edges.

Here is more of the same from different angles:

I ended up using a cheese knife to remove a section of the vanished wood so that I could ink onto the pencil. Very pleased with how they came out though.

The book-wallets are for blank poetry scrolls which can be used as note-lets. I am so so pleased with how this came out!

It is lit. some card cut out from a graze box with colouring in sheets stuck to it.

Using origami skills I then folded a double pouch which I stuck on the inside. I folded it out of an off cut from the uncoloured colouring in sheet I used from the inside.

I put the blank poetry scrolls which are little pieces of paper with my art work on that I have printed and cut to size. I hope they will help people get writing 🙂

These boxes came out lovely but the reason one has stickers on it is that it is actually very easy to buckle the cardboard, I ended up using a cheese knife to score lines where I wanted to fold and I added in a fold to make popping the boxes together nicer and avoid the ripping that occured with the first box. p.s. if anyone has seen my craft knives and metal ruler I would be most pleased to have them back but to be honest I don't think I've seen them since we moved from Essex!!!

An Origami Birthday (by sarah)

This is backblogged because I was kind of too frazzeled on the day to write as I had tests at the hospital but I still wanted the pictures and stuff on my birthday date on the blog 🙂

In the morning Mary gave me the screen play of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them - the latest Harry Potter-verse installement. Alaric gave me a book on Allotments broken down month by month 🙂 And an origami book.

So we went to get a brunch at Ed's Diner but it was closed down - really closed down as in all the kitchen stuff was out in the main restaurant and the website says it's perminately closed 🙁 But we went off and got a coffee instead or rather I did - still soya, decaf but this time with SYRUP!!! Alaric read his book whilst I sorted out a list of to-do's from my new allotment book 🙂 These things make me happy.

Then I folded some bits from my new origami book for Alaric including a jumping grasshopper that actually does flick into the air much to my surprise!

I improvised him a mouse and thought about how I could combine my drawing art with folding paper 🙂 True it is not a brilliant mouse but I still like it 🙂

We then went shopping and to Hobbycraft and TheWorks and bought me craft supplies including some lovely pastel cotton textured card from which to fold things from!

Then it was Pizza time!!! This had not been the original plan as I had frozen pizzas at home for my evening meal as Wednesdays are Scout days and quick dins were needed. But it was a bit tricky having found the diner closed as it is one of the few restaurants I know can cater for the gluten free and not accidently make me ill! I would have loved to have gone to the cinema but as I was having neurological tests done to see what whacks my brain out I didn't think I should go and do something I know will whack my brain out!

Pizza Express now have gluten free dough balls!!! I can not tell you how happy that makes me!

The meal was lovely and I did more folding, including this box which I am most proud of!

It is a nice box, easy to fold, easy to make a lid too and thanks to stickers larger versions will be perfect for some of my little publishing and craft projects!

Jean made me a card at school on lined paper and presented it too me with the words "see I didn't forget" her friend had made me one too though with a higher age than I am on it 😀 Jean's card had butterflies and shooting stars on in 🙂

Alaric insists he's organising something else for me too - no idea what.

Mary’s Hair :) (by sarah)

Mary's hair is now long enough to be plaited... if you french braid it! I am still not quiet up to scratch on these things but she was happy with the result 🙂

Yes it's not a full braid - she calls it her "Elsa Hair" as in the Frozen film. It is a special for when she goes swimming which the school are doing again 🙂 Here is the cheeky one more time 🙂

Food Frustrations (by sarah)

Mr Alaric made pasta bake for our dinner this morning, this is because I'm still burning stuff when I cook unsupervised and he now doesn't get in from his new job until Mary's bedtime - so we are trying him pre-cooking and me bunging it the oven for half an hr to feed the kids on time.

Also we are trying to do him packed lunches to save money as there are quiet a few DIY projects that need completing around the house.

This is brilliant and wonderful of him... but he did almost get himself skinned alive over the weekend when he suggested I have a snack because I was hungry and at 2:30 was saying I needed to eat and not wait for elaborate cooking. Issue, I normally have my lunch at 12 at the latest, I put on some weight over Christmas (I am now 10 and a 1/4 stone BOOOOOOOO and flapping when I run), this mucks up my sugar levels and my pelvis so there is no choice the weight is going. Meaning I am HUNGRY. I am always hungry unless I have 1600-1800 cals a day unfortunately I was quiet sedenatory over Nov with colds and chest infections and what not and then went straight into Christmas and somehow failed to do my walks and stuff.

Because I know I get hangry and fainty (blood sugar drops etc...) I'm not cutting straight down to 1400 cals but am taking Jan at 1400-1600 cals with the hope that I can actually just ramp up my physical stuff so I don't have to drop right down. I miss the nice dietician/diabetic/thyroid nurse at the surgery but her role was axed and that was that and I was left on my own and I think I am mostly managing it and hey she was there when I really really needed the help with this stuff.

Al has always verged on the underweight end of the spectrum and consumes so so so much food :/ so he just can't get his head around it sometimes.

And also we've had to shift my diet to be more protein, I now recognise when I am protein hungry. This was not compatible with his vegi cooking 🙁 We are sure there are ways of doing it but we can't seem to find it (bare in mind I can't have too much soya and no gluten and they were my main protein before).

If you have suggestions for high protein that's not fish then bung below 🙂 And yeah it is mainly fish I crave, I ate lots and lots of fish during my pregnacies as well - so I have a cupboard full of tuna to try and deal with this. But for joint meals it makes things a bit carni smelly for him which isn't really fair.

My birthday is on Wednesday - I'll spend it at the hospital having cognative stuff done and then it is Scouts night so half my family will disappear. I'm doing a krav one off workshop thing at the weekend which I'm kind of wondering why I agreed to it - I mean I'm just going to flab everywhere and trip over my own feet!

Planking... so I was letting Al do the timings and so I know I can go over a minute but I do not want to do that at the mo. Jan is about doing the minute planks due to c-section scar still complaining. Current pattern is 2 days of 1 min planks and then a couple of days off other wise the scar goes "oi!!!" and then I can't even do my kind of pull up things.

I trying to keep in my head how far I have come, how I origonally could not reach the pull up bar, how I can now wear heels instead of stooping over a walking stick....

Still no idea how I am actually going to celebrate my birthday, the kids are both adimant that I must but what with the krav thing and what not I'm kind of running out of dates to do stuff on!

And lastly - I miss cheap pizza and crusty white bread especially when the two collided. Sigh.

Colour, Design and Butterflying (by sarah)

It has been a long time i.e. the time of the head bang, that I have been unable to think of a zillion ideas all at once. Where I have been able to learn a skill and cross threaded it back on itself and mix and match it with my existing tool kit of skills.

But it is happening again 🙂

Very very much happening again though I am needed some help in my visulisations. This means that Alaric ended up spending two hours working on a template for me and we are not done with it yet. What we are working on is going to fit into the colourful pouches at the top. These I have folded by hand and the project is designed to nicely fit 🙂

No you can not yet know what it is.

I've also settled on a style of fancy box for the sweets and things at Mary's birthday party so will have to get folding them too 🙂

Now I don't mean that I have not been having ideas at all since the head injury or that I have not designed things because I have. I made a colouring book for adults for goodness sake and created a lots of colouring for kids and so on.

But that is not butterflying - yes I think I might have made this term up or maybe nicked it from the poly community where it refers to lots of partners or something?

Anyway butterflying is where I have a thought cascade, I get so many ideas and possibilities that I have to splurge them all out as little prototypes or write/sketch great big long brain dumps, just so that I can see clearly what all the ideas are!

In my mind they are all superimposed on one and other but once out I can see them and then the design process can really begin. I suppose it's design and development to nick jargon from the business world. I begin tweaking things and making them fit together, I have lots of bits, lots of building blocks and I know they will fit together but they can fit together in an almost endless mirade of things... not all of which are going to produce some thing I can use.

So I whittle and I add and I change things and sometimes things get bunged in a box for 3 yrs at this point, half formed and impotent and I worry that I wasted all that time and money. Then one day: BING! The idea flashes and pops and I scurry upstairs to find it all and hope it's not perished (fimo is really the only stuff I've had problems with storage but mainly because I had the problem with it so therefore now check shelf lives ie resin and mould stuff shelf life is small, felting materials need protection from moths... and so on).

And then we can begin and it all slots into place and BOOM I have five new things for workshops and sales and presents.

However this is often not the finishing line, no not at all. I often use junk, scrap or low grade materials to work out how something should go together... these are not mock ups as such but rather mk 1, 2, or 3 - I can't really make "practice" things, if I think of it as such then I can't actually get my head round making it. But if it is something made with the kids or an upcycling project then that is fine.

Once I've gotten all of this done then I can start thinking about colour and materials and embellishments. Sometimes this process takes years... sometimes it takes half an hour for the whole lot.