Thistle do Nicely

A backwards post today. My aunts dress, which I've been stringing this out since February. So at long last, the full story. My aunt has not had much luck with her health. My mother says her sister was a sickly child and, certainly, my experience growing up was that she was always down with something when we visited. So, several years ago now, whilst it came as no surprise to be told she had cancer, we were shocked to discover she had three individual cancers. The doctors said she was lucky, but as you can imagine, my aunt never felt that was the case. 

So there's been multiple surgeries to remove it. Reconstruction surgery which then failed and had to be removed again. The chemo. The steroids. Everything in between. 

So despite the joyous news that her son was going to get married, she was absolutely distraught, saying that she was going to look like "a sausage in a bin bag" on the day. 

I went through this with my mother when I was married (hell, even my MIL who doesn't give two figs what people think about what she wears had it). They want to put on a show for what is thier child's happiest day. My mother tried on more dresses for my wedding than I did! So when I got a mercy call from my mother asking if I would be willing to do a commission, of course I said yes. My poor aunt really does deserve to feel nice for a special day. 

So I agreed. I got some suggestions, gave a few of my own and saw my aunt once for the initial measure up. I had my sewing books, pins and measuring tape and (with the help of hubby who knows how to flatter someone into agreeing with him) came up with a battle plan. A smock, using a belt as a waistband (she can change size overnight) and a couple of thistles. Some thistles. Oh, they're your special symbolic flower from your late husband? Lots of thistles. 

And that was it. Fabric was ordered, the dress was made and... She was too poorly to make it for a fitting. Well, having to guess the length of a dress which I would be unable to alter again, was a bit nerve wracking to say the least. And then there was the thistles. So many thistles. 

After much anxiety, this weekend was the moment. I kicked mum into the other room, gave my best and most flattering pep talk (always use compassionate language) as I helped adjust the "waistband" into an empire line and fluffed the petticoats and....

She was absolutely delighted. Its the right side of dark for her comfort zone. Brings the eye away from the features she's worried about and matches with the coat she had picked out. So she was a happy bunny. She did try to pay me, but I insisted it was a wedding gift for her son - that his mother is happy. 

After that, I caught up with my oldest nephew to check out the pokemon event in town. It was a community day and, to be honest, was expecting more than a marquee that was handing out stickers. Thankfully my nephew is easily pleased, I showed him the best baked potato shop in Edinburgh and then we chilled out in the Gardens taking turns to catch stuffuls. 

There was ice creams too to enjoy in the spring sunshine and it was a pretty good way to end the end the day. My neice caught up with us and I saw them off on the train before heading to a friends for dinner. Poor Missy was absolutely beat from the day, so a quiet Sunday was definitely in order. 

Well. Quiet in a get on with the garden and get engrossed in a new sewing project kind of way! 

A Chilly Start

Well, hopefully we wont continue the year as we've started! Everyone, Missy included, has the cold and generally suffering from January Blues, so I'll focus on the more upbeat moments of the week.

We saw in the New Year with friends and it was a real struggle to get to the bells. Missy gave up and was happily asleep for most of the night and we grown ups all decided to meet up again when the fatigue of Christmas had worn off for a take two of the evening.

Walk wise its been rather chilly and staying to the usual dog walks - we're hoping to get properly adventuring next weekend. We weren't stealthy enough with Christmas so Missy overly worried her paw and got an ear infection - thankfully that's mostly cleared up now so I managed to get Missy out for a photo shoot to model her Christmas gift from her aunty:

Every dog needs a Biggles inspired hat! Perfect for the cold weather adventurer! And if the doom and gloom brigade are right, we're going to have lots of snow again this year, so we may well need it.

The first week in January marks my eldest nieces birthday - shes (shock horror) now 14 and wanted a Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch which is officially her favourite Disney film) birthday cake. Knowing that she is truly of the Instagram generation, and that she had been up-selling her cake to all her friends, I knew my work was cut out for me:

I'm rather pleased with it! In addition to baking, I also decided that this was the week to blitz through my sewing "ignored-for-eternity" pile - we all have one, you know, that bundle of items where someones asked you to adjust something they could easily have done themselves, or you've bought something cheap and it needs tweaked a bit or previous projects that you hate the result of and need to just get away from it for a bit, that pile. Well, mines had gotten out of hand, so I decided that this was the week to get a dent in it.

Two dresses adjusted, a complete refit on a hi-vis coat for Missy (it was on sale for £5, it looked big enough for a pony but it was only a thirty minute job to fix!) and a reworking on a completely failed project. Background; I'd gotten excited about pinny dresses, I had a super cute fabric and was overconfident in my ability to self draft a pattern. The result was horrendous, it was like wearing a potato sack and was about as flattering as one. So I shoved it aside and vowed to get back to it.

Well, that was...two years ago? Must be. So I dug it out, popped it on my dress form and just took the time to see what was wrong and reworked the pattern. I added a waist, button side closures, tucked it in and shortened the hem and I'm pretty pleased with it (and totally regretting not taking a before photo! You'll just need to believe me about how awful it was).

Tada! And apparently they are coming back in fashion, so a double win!

Hopefully next week we'll have some adventures to share, so until next time!

Big Celebrations

Well, August is that month in my family, the one where everyone seems to have their birthday and every week has cake scheduled in it. With the hubby's birthday landing on the bank holiday Monday this year, my sister was able to manage a sneaky wee visit up with the promise of a big get together with the family, as well as tons of Aunty and Uncle time for us with her two.

Firstly, I was able to pass on the big sewing project I've been working on for my sisters birthday. I found this amazing print and just knew my sister needed a dress in it. With the whole family being cat daft (I'm working on my nephew to be in team dog), I couldn't resist the opportunity to make some matching pieces for the kids too. I have threatened a matching waistcoat for the brother in law (he did get a matching tie that I forgot to photograph!). Check out the AWESOME hat I got in return!

Saturday was a BBQ at my older sister's house as a small get together. We had originally intended on meeting for a dog walk at the kelpies first, but upon arrival discovered it completely full with no parking available. It didn't spoil the day as we had been running late to begin with, and afterwards, once the kids were safely in bed, we adults enjoyed a murder mystery party with friends. Alas, I was not the murderer, but with my false beard certainly got the kudos of the best costume! It's the first murder mystery we've had were people 'died' during the course of the meal! A good laugh!

Sunday was a packed itinerary! We started the day swimming and continued on the water theme with a very soggy doggy show as we attended the West Calder Dogs Trust fun day. After completely acing temptation alley and showing us all that old dogs can still learn new tricks at the agility, we all gave up during the egg and spoon race. Whilst we grown ups didn't mind the rain, it wasn't fair to keep the little ones put in it. So we decided to bring forward the family birthday bonanza.

A very soggy doggy - just imagine what the kids were like!

With four cakes on the table, there was certainly no shortage of treats! I tried to keep things varied with a nice marzipan sponge for my sister, the rocky road/white Christmas layer cake which was mine, the chocolate Dalek piñata cake (hubby's) and the sugar free monstrosity that was for my brother in law. The BIL was an honorary mention as his birthday had not been celebrated within the family and it was my first shot at making him a cake. Whilst making a fully sugar free dessert was a challenge, I was happy with the outcome - my niece enjoyed helping to decorate it and chose where to place the characters. I'll have a master baker out of her yet!

After the cake, we ushered the family out of the way and took the kids to the walking with dinosaurs arena show. I will be honest, I wasn't sure about taking a 15 month old to the show, but he was absolutely enthralled for the whole thing, and even cheered on the torosaurs during their battle!

We took hubby's birthday quiet. With such a late night the kids were understandably tired, so we gave the Kelpies another shot and this time were successful. It's the first time the play park has been quiet enough that I felt I could play in it myself, and I will say that it's a superb play park - even if most of us got stuck in the twisty slide! We followed that with soft play were we treated ourselves to hot chocolate and cake (yes, more cake) and watched my nephew figure out how to get onto a slide himself and go down.

Yesterday was home day for my sister. After a morning of reassembling the house (my niece was rubbing elbows with the boys in the man shed playing beetle drive - my sister did try to sneak in with the aforementioned false beard and was denied access!) we went trampolining. It was a good way to end the visit as the kids were tuckered out and there was no complaints about having to go home. my niece did try her hardest to convince her parents to stay longer, but with them both working the next day, there was little room for negotiation.

All in all a very good weekend! Missy is absolutely tuckered out from the affections of her cousins. She always impresses me no end with her absolute tolerance to the children. We are hoping to get visiting down to Manchester soon, so hopefully it won't be so long until we get together again!

A big readjustment

Just a short post today - its all been a bit manic this end, summer brings out weddings and gala days and I always somehow end up helping out with all of them!

Firstly (because I'm so eager to show it off!):

Wedding cake! My old high-school bestie got married at the weekend and asked if I would do the cake as a wedding gift. I'll confess that I got really stressed out about it as it all became rather last minute but I got there in the end so super happy!

My other big time consuming task was gala day dresses for my niece and her fellow Bauer girl. They started off like this:

I'm not sure who I blame most - my 12 year old niece and classmate for deciding that they were too old for kids clothes, or their parents who let them buy the dresses. Either way, as you can see my pre-pubescent niece suddenly (to her absolute horror) had a dress giving her gigantic boobs (and they really were gigantic on her). As usual, the buy was last minute so they had no other option other than to ask me if I could do something to fix it and make the girls presentable to the public.

So this happened:

Missy found that the boob made a good skull cap. The dresses were basically demolished. The only seams not ripped open were those holding the loops for the ribbon back. My hubby did ask if I would have been quicker making the dresses from scratch, to which the sad answer was yes, it would have been quicker.

Anyway, the 12+ hours effort paid off:

I was at the above mentioned wedding, so missed the gala day, but I was reliably informed that the dresses held up well and that both girls were very happy with them!

Until next time.

Hello 2017

Well, that's Christmas firmly packed away and in the loft for another year! I had hoped to get some posts done in December but life, the earth and the universe did its best to stop me. 

Christmas itself is a mixed bag for me - my hubby works in retail so I never really see much of him in December (in his more humbug moments he complains that Christmas is merely a day off between the two busiest days of the year for him) so we've been ships passing in the night. Missy also hates all things to do with Christmas. We know she was originally abandoned at this time of year and the whole tree-going-up debacle triggers off her anxiety. This year was quite bad as she had a bit of a melt down over a paper snowflake decoration (I will not be buying those again!) which she barked at and then hid in the spare room from. Despite the temptation to just not bother with the tree etc, its something we hope she'll just get used to over time, so we do our best to make the whole thing fun and treat-filled for her.

Are you positive this Christmas malarkey is necessary?

On the plus side - my family managed to congregate together (I shall spare you all the family politics, but the fact that everyone (my siblings significant others included) was able to sit in the one room and play nice is a big deal) and the day itself went great. Typically we all overate and Missy was spoiled absolutely rotten as everyone insisted she get one of the treats they'd brought for her! All the bits I'd sewn went down very well (I'm happy to report my eldest niece adored the dresses for her and the doll) and I managed a few other crafty bits that went down well too:

An apron for my Brother-In-Law

And a matching mini-apron for my niece!

A kimono styled dressing gown for my sister

Family "sigils"

The little shields was a last minute addition to the Christmas pile - like a lot of families, we have a group chat that's usually pinging away with utter nonsense, but occasionally some fun useful bits pop up. I wont into details, but we decided to make up our own Games of Thrones-esque family crests and mottos. I used the ideas everyone came up with, made them a bit more interesting/practical and handed them out. With two of my three siblings buying houses this year, they went down much better than I had expected. For those interested, mine is the one with the three grey dogs - no surprises there!

New Year was spent at the in-laws (we try our best to rotate the two families) and we danced in the bells at the village ceilidh. They live in very-rural Aberdeenshire, so Missy enjoyed lots of walks in the woodland and fields, whilst I did my best at bird spotting (I had a few firsts - a partridge (aptly festive) and a handful of long tail tits).

Like many, I'm quite looking forward to 2017 and what it will bring. Last year was very much a mixed bag of a year. There were too many lows - I had to say the final goodbye to my grandfather, and my last surviving grandparent has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, so we have ticking away slowly in the back of our minds. There has been some great highs too - Japan (back in May before I picked this up again) was the holiday of a lifetime, bridges are finally being built and mended between family members I thought would never speak again, and I have the wonderful news that I have not one, but two new members of the family joining us in the big wide world at some point next year (one niece and one nephew respectively, providing the scans are right!)

So, to all those reading, I raise a mug of tea (well, I am terribly British after all) and wish you all the best for the year to come!

Blackness Castle

Its another one for the Scottish Heritage pass! Desperately trying to make sure we get our moneys worth out of these...

So, Blackness Castle - the boat that never floated....

Seriously, from the pier it looks like a ship - its the strangest little castle you can imagine! And of course its dog friendly, so Missy has been continuing with her history lessons. This one boasts a prison tower, a great hall, a large courtyard and even allows you to walk around most of the curtain wall. We bumped into lots of other pooches who were enjoying their lessons as well, so it seems a local favourite for a nice afternoon.

This was a good castle for the dog as, despite the winding staircases (she's just about mastered them now without towing one of us to out imminent deaths) it was really quite open, and the grounds included a nice stroll along the beach which had plenty of rabbits in the long grass for shaking off any history-induced-cobwebs.

Missy is admiring her kingdom

In addition to trawling the local area for castles and other unusual and fun places to take the dog, I've been getting on with a lot of sewing projects. Whilst I enjoy dressing Missy up in silly hats and coats, the hubby prefers a more practical look for the dog (Missy, her wagging tail reliably informs me that she really doesn't care, so long as there is treats at the end of it all!) And so I present to you all (courtesy of Simplicty Pattern 1578) a doggy bathrobe! Perfect for little doggies like mine who absolutely hate being dried down (really, the way she acts when you try to dry her paws would have you thinking you were wielding a rusty saw at the dog!)

I also do sewing for humans too - mostly little ones like my nieces and nephew, but sometimes I do manage to make something a bit more grown up sized. I might do a wee post sometime soon with a wee sewing round up, but until then, cheerio!