Humpty Dumpty

Some time ago I said that my daughter would be making costumes for this years pantomime.  As they are doing a nursery rhyme theme panto, they are mostly using from the stash of costumes from previous years.
The one she has had to make from scratch is Humpty Dumpty.
Now this did include my help to some degree, but a very small degree consisting of 1 phone call and a number of texts.  So here I go with the details.
Phone call #1
DD "Hi mum, I have to make some shorts for Humpty Dumpty, I have a hula hoop, how do I go about it?"
Me "You need to measure the circumference of the hula hoop, divide by four and draw the waistline of your pattern to that measurement."
DD "What about the rest of it?"
Me "I'll draw a pic and send it to you...."
Still on the phone to her, drawing, taking pic and sending.

DD "So if I draw this pattern and send it to you, where do I sew?"

Me "I'll need a different colour pen, hang on, got the pen!  Ok sending to you."

Me "You sew down the purple bit, then have to sew together the 'J' bit for the crotch."

DD "Ok, will text when I have done the pattern."

The rest is by text.

Pic sent by DD.

Me "Make the legs longer, the 'J' rounder, remember it has to go round the crotch too."

DD "Ran out of paper when realised how long the 'J' would be lol what do you mean by rounder? Also remember the top will be stuck to the hula hoop."

I send back this pic.

Me "Remember I did that with my finger on my  mobile so it's not very accurate!"

DD "Ha ha, ok."

DD "...ish, will cut it rounder!  So is that ok?"

Me "Yeah, looks good, cut legs longer just in case you  need longer crotch than pattern, better to cut some leg off after than have to start from scratch."

DD "Yup was gonna, that way I can cut the length to fit as well.  Will probably cut tonight and make 2 separate legs as well but wait to sew them together tomorrow."

Me "Ok, good luck."

DD "Ok, ended up just keeping on going til I finished lol"

Me "Well done, looks like shorts :)"

The following day this pic arrived. Modelled on 4 year old, being made for older person so obviously too big for the model!

DD "Will have some padding on the shoulders as well."

Me "Excellent job Grasshopper!"

So concludes my tale of how to make a Humpty Dumpty costume.  All I can say is that if she did it from those instructions and sew it all by hand, so can you!

If you were wondering...

If I am just being a really awful daughter, and my mother is not really that bad.  Poor old dear is 82, give her some slack, she was probably frightened when she got ill.
I now recount a tale of when I was younger, a lot younger.  It would be when I was 20 and living with my then boyfriend who eventually become husband #1.
My eldest brother was living on his own and my younger brother (older than me) was married and living with his wife.
Mother demanded we attended on Christmas day, and we went (that was the mistake I now realise,  but we were young and immature lol)
When we arrived we discovered that not only were the five of us in attendance, but she had also invited a number of friends for the event.  We were placed down one end of the table while she and her friends sat together, laughing and having a lovely time.
After the meal she retired to the lounge.  I say 'she' because she told us (her family) she was going into the lounge with her friends, we could clear away and stay in the 'other room'.
After a while we attempted to  enter the 'friend zone' but were denied entry.  If we wanted a drink, we were told, we could supply our own (on Christmas day!).  Luckily we all knew our mother so had turned up with our own supply.
We sat in the 'other room' socialised, chatted, generally had a nice time.  While she sat in the lounge with her friends and chatted and socialised and had nothing to do with us.  If we attempted to talk to her she ignored us and told us to go in the 'other room'.
After a while we grew tired of being sent out of the room and decided we were all going home.  Said we were going and left.
She did not speak to any of us for months, probably getting very close to the next Christmas before there was any contact.  She still speaks of that Christmas when we all 'broke her heart'.  (Yes really she has said that).  Just the other day she mentioned the time 'the 3 of you just walked out down the road together without a word' (yes there was actually five of us and we all went to our respective homes after saying goodbye).
She basically treated us as young children, seen but not heard.  I was the youngest, my eldest brother would therefore be 26 and the other 23.  We were paraded in front of her friends and then expected to keep out of the way after we had done all the washing up for her.
I eventually did contact her, mainly because my wedding was the following May and I did actually want my mother to be there!
So no, I am not just a really awful daughter and she is not just a frightened 82 year old that was ill.

It all seems so simple

So the plan is...
You move.
You are consequently in a position to sit down and relax for a while.  Ok so the curtains may not be what you want and the entire house needs decorating, but then that 'life' thing intervenes and you wonder how on earth you have lived somewhere for 4 months and done hardly any of the things you intended to do in that time.
I did manage to put a coat of paint on the hallway. But the only completed room is our bedroom and that is mainly because we had bought curtains, duvets, light shade etc as we planned to do it at the old place, so the only thing left was a coat of paint on the walls.
OH has nearly completed the kitchen, but he had an operation two weeks after we moved in, three weeks recuperating and then, finally, Christmas hit.  He has only just got back to work properly so I am not about to get all worked up about a towel rail!
Now panto season is upon us and, luckily, the group is using pretty much all old stuff.  Daughter is due round today to make one costume which is the coat using the simple pattern I put up a few years ago.
I see her about once a week.  I see the grandsons, we go out, I may babysit, I enjoy it.
Two days a week I see my mother.
I find it hard to talk about my mother.  She is 82 and I know you are all thinking 'aww bless'.
WELL DON'T.
She is basically somebody you have to tolerate and one of the reasons I do not work is that she needs me to go there at least twice a week.  She phones when she wakes up so that I can be reminded of her existence, and will also phone during the day if I don't see her.  If all else fails we have a 5 o'clock in the evening phone call.
STOP THE AWW BLESS!
This is a typically event in the life of me and my mother...
It was my birthday just after Christmas and my mother says she would like to spend the day with me (notice she says she would like to spend the day with me, if I had anything I was doing she would expect it all to be cancelled on her behalf), as it happens the only thing I was going to do was have a meal out at the local Chinese.  But my mother wants to come.  But my mother won't eat after half 5 and the restaurant isn't open until then.  So I tell my  mother that the restaurant isn't open and she complains about the restaurant.  So I say we can go on another day for my birthday, but she wants to go out on my birthday.  We hum and haw and eventually she decides that we can go out for the meal for my birthday on the Sunday before when the restaurant is open when she wants to eat.  Remember, the only thing I had decided I wanted to do on my birthday was go out for a Chinese meal.  I am now not going out for a Chinese meal on my birthday.
Don't be under the impression that my mother is one of those sweet little old ladies that does not really have control of her brain and how it works.  My mother is as sharp as a needle, but it is always all about her!  She is quite happy to completely change any of my birthday plans because of what she wants, that's what she does!
An example of this is mother's day.  I literally have never celebrated mother's day like most people do because my mother demanded I attend her on mothers day.  I now insist my daughter gets mothers day because I did not.
If you don't do what my mother wishes you regret it.
(Anyway, OH is used to mother and he comes to the rescue and books us the cinema to see Aquaman, which means I get to ogle Jason Mamoa on my birthday and I had a lovely day thank you all lol)
So, having completely changed plans for MY birthday, so that mother can have the Chinese meal, it is booked for the Sunday.
Then on the Saturday she phones up.
"I can't come tomorrow, I don't feel well, you may as well cancel it".
"Well why don't we wait until tomorrow and see how you feee....."
"I TOLD YOU I DON'T FEEL WELL".
Slams phone down on me.
I'm irritated.  I phone back.
"All I was going to say was...."
Slams phone down on me.
I phone back.
"Don't slam the phone down on me, just listen to what I am trying to say."
"I DON'T FEEL WELL."
Slams phone down.
I phone back.
"I'm not saying you feel well, I am saying that you may feel better by tomorrow and want to go for the meal, so if..."
"STOP RINGING ME, I DON'T FEEL WELL".
Slams phone down.
I cancel restaurant.
I leave her to it, if she was that ill she wouldn't be capable of shouting down the phone at me lol
I phone her the next morning.
"How are you feeling to day?"
"I am feeling fine thanks, I must have just overdone it when I took the dog for a walk over the fields"
"Yes you do often overdo it don't you!  Well I am glad  you feel better"
"So why did you ring?"
"To see if you were ok, you said you weren't well yesterday"
"Oh yes, I feel fine."
"That's all?"
"Yes"
Bit more chit chat about nothing, no mention of her shouting at me or slamming phone down on me.
It was only after the phone call that I realised that she was waiting for me to say about going for the Chinese lol
Tough luck mother, Chinese cancelled when you said to do it!
I went and visited as usual on Monday morning and she told me how she had not had a very nice meal the night before.  It was a ready meal and not the best one she had tried, it was lasagna.  I told her she should have kept to the tin of ravioli, we had that, it was nice.  She said nothing as she realised we had not gone out for the meal.  She has never apologised for shouting at me, never mentioned it.
In fact my birthday was not mentioned again.  I didn't get a card or a present.  She didn't wish me a happy birthday on my birthday because I was out having lunch with one of my daughters and then watching Jason Mamoa (ty OH).
The Friday after my birthday she said something but that was because my other daughter was there with my grandchildren and gave me my card there.  A week later she gave me an old bottle of wine she had in a cupboard.  But basically she did not mention my birthday again!
And I had a Chinese takeaway on the Monday evening lol

8+

The waiting game

So just over 8 weeks into the house purchase and we have reached that 'nearly there, but not quite' stage, that drags on, and on, and on!

I have moved a number of times before.  I was a single mother, two small children, privately renting and getting those letters that I had to move on a regular basis.  Twenty years ago privately rented houses were being sold regularly by landlords as the 'negative equity' problem arose.

I had it down to a fine art.

You start by packing everything that you don't use, but want to keep.  Things like pictures, books, irregularly used cooking items (like those you only use at Christmas) and anything else you know you can manage without.  You store these boxes out of the way (I used to use my bedroom), the best part of this being you sort through and throw away what you don't want or use (I adhere by the 6 month rule, if you haven't used it in 6 months and there is no emotional attachment, you don't need it).

Then, a couple of days before moving you sweep through the house packing what is left.  Last items to be packed are the first things you need when you arrive at the new house. Label boxes with the room they need to be in, and really, moving is pretty simple.

However, my previous experiences of moving did not have one thing I have now.  The husband!

The children are gone so you would expect this to be easier, but the children were as used to moving as I was, and pretty well trained in how to go about it.  The husband has never actually moved in his life!  When he moved in with me, he just moved odd bits over 6 months (including his children that moved in with me at the start of the school term 2 months ahead of when he officially moved).

So I cleared the spare room, cleared the sewing room, packed everything we didn't need and allocated the sewing room as the 'packed and ready to go' room.

My husband appears to have difficulty with this concept.  I keep finding 'things' have been put in the room.  I am unsure whether these 'things' are to be kept or not.  There is no sign of any of these 'things' being put in boxes ready to go to the new house.

'Things' are also appearing in the spare room! The spare room still has a travel cot and mattress in case the grandchildren need to sleep here, but I had emptied it, now there are 'things' in there.

I had also cleared out the downstairs toilet.  Then the husband 'packed his tools' (do you see how many times I am using quotes here?) and put the packed boxes of tools on empty shelves in the cleared out toilet.

The last time I went into the toilet there was a box on the floor, the lid was off the box, next to the box was a tesco carrier bag with a few screws and items from MY pink toolkit (it was bought so that when I wanted a tool I could go to the toolkit and get it out without having to rummage through all his stuff to find a screwdriver)!  Why things from MY pink toolkit are not in the toolkit but in a tesco carrier bag is beyond me but there is also an electric drill in front of the open box next to the tesco bag.  I expect there is a reason why the husband has not put the electric drill into either a) The bag, or b) the box, but I can't see that it will be a good one!

So now, the toilet that was clear except for an empty set of shelves with one box on it, is now not empty, or tidy, or even completely packed ready to go.

I am going round and round in circles, repacking rooms that were empty a few days before, and feel like I am living in a nightmare instead of that lovely, getting ready to move organisational wonder, that I have previously experienced!

I wonder if I could just pack away the husband for a few weeks?

How long is a piece of string?

So after enthusiastically returning to my blog, things began to go horribly wrong!  We were informed by our landlord that, due to a very negative EPC viewing, we had to leave the house for repairs to be carried out.  Our first reaction was inevitable panic.  We have lived here for 17 years and originally told we would never have to leave, now we had no  choice.  Then we thought about it and wondered why we had to leave for work to be done, approached the landlord, who told us that we had to move out but as we were good tenants he would be happy for us to move back in again.  We had a look at other rentals in the area and realised that by the time we had paid out what had to paid out, we would be unable to move back in (probably also stuck in a lease for months when the house became available).  So we moved onto plan B, we have a caravan in the garden, why  not stay there while work is carried out?  

The letting agents thought it was a good idea and would approach the landlord on our behalf.  We set about doing up the caravan, painted the interior, new carpet, new curtains and were ready to live in it for a few months.  The landlord said no!

Let me give you some details here on why we didn't want to leave:

In the last 17 years our 4 daughters grew up here so there is the inevitable emotional attachment.

The landlord had done no internal decoration. Our own time, and money has gone into keeping it in decent order.  We recently spent a lot of money on new carpets, worktops in the kitchen and decorating throughout, on the understanding we would be staying here for many years to come.  

Three years ago the landlord told us we were responsible for an area of garden we had previously been told was not ours but belonged to next door (previously owned by the landlords brother).  We spent yet more time and money on bringing a field of weeds to a fully fledged garden.

We looked around us and saw all our efforts being taken away.

We appealed to housing associations in the area to no avail, unless we were homeless there  was nothing they could do.  I even wrote to my MP, who was about as much help as ... well I will let you answer that yourselves.

So we started looking for somewhere else to rent.  At the time we had just acquired two kittens, of course this was on the understanding we could stay where we were, then realised that the majority of private rentals don't allow pets!

Put into the equation the fact that I am the main carer for my 82 year old mother, and you can see that there were certain limitations on areas we could live.  Things were definitely not looking good.

Then I had the thought that maybe we could buy somewhere.  So a few months down the line (luckily we had the time to sort things out) and we are waiting to see if the purchase of a house nearby is going through.

Also down the line, we have got more eager to leave the house we thought we would stay in forever.  Three years ago landlords brother sold the house to landlords son.  They moved in with two children and three dogs.  There are now four children and four dogs.

Now the children I can live with, but four dogs that are not kept under control, bark incessantly, and run manically towards any car that comes up the drive, does not equal a peaceful life.  To be honest, I can't wait to leave!

If the house buying falls through then I will rent another place... away from any dogs!

Whatever happens in the next few weeks, I will be moving.  I will be making curtains for a new place.  I will be making panto costumes with my daughter.  I will be adding to this blog!

In the meantime I have to work out how to condense three bedrooms into two, and reduce my sewing stash to a manageable amount (at the moment it takes up a room on its own).  Find someone who would like my collection of antique sewing machines and pack up and sort through 17 years of living somewhere while waiting to hear from solicitors who seem to be the only people that know how long it takes to buy a house, and how your own purchase is going.  The only answer that seems to fit the situation is the same as you get from 'how long is a piece of string?'

I just hope our piece of string is not a huge ball of the stuff!

I'm back!

I haven't written this blog for so long I had forgotten about it.  Then, while looking through Pinterest, I saw someone had pinned one of my pics on Professor McGonnagalls robes.  I took a look back over my own blog and felt sad that it had abruptly come to a halt.  The reasons were personal, ending in me suffering from severe depression.  I stopped making costumes, in fact I stopped sewing all together, and took time out to pull myself out of wherever it was I had descended.  At this point I need to apologise to anyone that asked me questions or made comments when I did not reply to them, it was not me being ignorant, just me being withdrawn.
However, things are much better in my own world now and I have ventured back into the sewing room, if only to make caravan curtains, or an occasional foray into something quick and easy.
The reason it seems that now is a good time to start again is that the making of pantomime costumes has returned to my family in the form of my eldest daughter.  After the initial year when the pantomime was cancelled at the last minute, it was resurrected!  My daughter has stuck with them, acting in every production (even the year she starred as Maleficent while 7 months pregnant!) and is now part of the pantomime committee.
This year she has volunteered to make the costumes! Neither of us are naive enough to assume she would just be making the costumes, she will need a guiding hand from me during the process and it seems that this guiding hand may as well be documented to help others at the same time.
She is not the most experienced with a sewing machine, in fact the last time she touched one was  over four years ago when she made the Victorian dress I wrote about in this blog.  Neither of us are expecting it to be easy and as it is possible I will have to move in the middle of it, the whole kit and caboodle may have to be uplifted to her house at some point to be continued!
While we wait for new season panto sewing to begin I will try and post a bit to keep you up to date on any other sewing I may attempt before then.
Thanks for reading this, I feel quite excited about the prospect of mother/daughter sewing time, even if we do need to negotiate through two pre-schoolers while doing it!

World book day 2015

There seems to be a lot more more media coverage of World book day this year than there has been previously.  I got ready for work while the tv was showing photo's of children dressed in their costumes as I shrugged on the Beast jacket that had been made, but not worn, for the (not happened) panto.

It seemed an obvious and no work involved choice, but ended up with me feeling uncomfortable (not made for me) and fed up with the dangly lacy sleeves on the shirt getting in the way with every piece of writing I had to do.  It didn't last long I can assure you!

The next day involved grumpiness from some of the staff as social media had continued with this startling 'new' topic.

The main issue is the fact that it is world BOOK day!  Children are supposed to dress as a children's BOOK character but end up in an assortment of costumes that have nothing to do with books.

One of the best costumes at our school was a little boy turning up in his normal clothes with a gold ticket hung round his neck...simple, yet effective.  But his efforts seemed to be pushed into the insignificent corner by his classmate in his 'Hulk' costume, complete with mask that had an incredible assortment of flashing lights and gizmo's that must have cost a fortune (and unfortunately got broken during the day which will not have impressed his parents).

For those of you that will argue that comic book characters are from books, graphic novels are designed for adults.  Frozen, although the little girls look adorable in their dresses, is a film not a book. You can get away with the majority of Disney princesses as they come from Grimms fairytales or similar children's books, but Frozen is not one of them.

So I have made a decision to make up three or four costumes that are completely related to a childs book and rotate them over a three or four year cycle.

My first two choices are Smaug, from The Hobbit;

Who is an obvious red and gold dragon.

Choice two is The White Witch from The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe;

I am now coming to a complete blank on what else to do.  The criteria is...

• Must be comfortable to wear all day (don't worry, I have sorted out how to do that with the dragon!)
• Must be obvious what it is!
• Must be from a famous children's book
• Must be something I want to wear (I really don't want to dress up in normal clothes)
• Must have close fitting arms so that I can write without getting extremely irritated by flapping sleeves.
• Must not get too hot (I was way too hot in the Beast costume)

But I have now come to a halt on what other characters to do.  There is no rush, if the first two are made then it means I have three years for the third!

Mary Poppins or Nanny McPhee (aka Nurse Matilda) are possibilities, do you have any other ideas to help me out?

As an aside, eldest daughter has decided to have a second dress for her wedding.  Similar in style to the bridesmaids but in a pretty, white broderie anglais.  Why do I mention this?  Because she also wants a petticoat in the same colours as her bridesmaids, which means I now have to get all that net out again and cut another load of it for petticoat #4.  Then I have to also cut out white net for the petticoat for her actual wedding dress and a smaller version for smaller bridesmaid in the coloured net.  

I dream of dress net!