TACK Challenge ...

What started out as a bit of fun, rapidly developed into one giant pain in the butt for me. It was like a mill stone around my neck. I had better things to do than sew something with bad quality, tasteless fabric.

Hang on, maybe I could really challenge myself and try and make something that was vaguely attractive? Hmmm, no, that was never going to work.

Perhaps I could make something hilariously funny, like my fellow TACK challengees, Nicole and Alison . No, I had no time for humour.

So this morning I sat down and made this. No fan fare. Just here it is. And I've kept my end of the bargain. A giant weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Now, back to sewing something that I may actually enjoy.

The grown-up's version ...

I've always had a thing for stationery. I was the kind of child who would just sit and go through my school bag the week before we went back to school. I would fondle and caress and smell the new books and love the newness of my pencils. I loved covering my books and sticking on the book labels from the "Woman's Weekly". And first week back at school, my favourite thing for the year was to make the cover page on the front page of my exercise books. I think that is why I loved making the pencil rolls so much. It was that thing of unrolling the roll and seeing all the pencil's laid out and in order and none missing.

I went into Kikki-K on the weekend. I love all the note books and pens and pencils and other paraphanalia in there. I think this may be what inspired me. What about a pencil roll for grown up's? Stylish, with a compartment for a note pad or diary and then a couple of compartments for pens. Perfect for someone like myself who has pens and note pads and diary floating all around my hand bag. So I made this one. For me! I think I may make some more.

Thank you to everyone for their input on what I should call my little fledgling business. I was purposely vague in my thoughts to see if I could get an unbiased result. Like on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" when the contestant says something like, "Well, I'm thinking it might be A, but I'll ask the audience." Guaranteed, the audience will come back and A will win. Catch my drift?

Anyway, "Pink Milk Designs" has out polled "violet and rose" 57% to 41%.

To answer some questions. Yes, I prefer just plain old pink milk, but when I checked, it is already registered as a business name. And then some very kind people let me know that there is an Etsy shop called pink milk and there is indeed a pink milk website where you can buy "Charlie and Lola" merchandise. And for those who missed the link, yes, I took the name from "Charlie and Lola".

So, now, my dilemma. Has pink milk been milked dry?

I know that my tag line is going to be "Funky Old Fashioned Favourites". The idea behind the things I make is that they are a new take on old ideas. I toyed with the idea of just calling it FOFF. But no.

Maybe I'll go against the grain and use "violet and rose". I like this because it can be interpreted in so many ways. Flowers, colours, names. Not quite so restrictive.

Decisions, decisions.

I'm off to do some sewing now. If you're wondering what, check here or here and stay tuned.

The weekend and other assorted goodies ...

Hmmm, where to begin, where to begin? We had a lovely weekend staying in the centre of Melbourne at The Westin. If you are ever looking to spoil yourself in Melbourne, The Westin is the place! Almost felt a little European, with our beautiful hotel room with little balcony that opened up to a view of this. This is the spire of St. Paul's Cathedral. It has recently had a lot of restoration work carried out on it and only last week did all the scaffolding come down. I believe they timed it especially for our visit. Well, maybe not. But I'm glad we got to look at this and not scaffolding. Now this photo below was also taken from our balcony window. It is of the Nicholas Building on Swanston Street. The significance being that it is home to BUTTONMANIA. See how close we were? How could we not visit?
Hamish came along with me, which quite frankly, stunned me. And even more astonishingly, he actually enjoyed it. He helped me to go through the boxes and find these buttons. I got a couple of each. They are going to go on another lot of the little girl's bracelets that I am going to make. Kate, the lady who owns "Buttonmania" was lovely and chatty and was telling us about the hundred year old button presses that she uses to make covered buttons. She told Hamish to go out and have a look at them, which he did. Boys and machines. Even button machines! Then it was off to Clegg's for some trim shopping. His eyes did start to glaze over a bit by then. So we just strolled the arcades and lanes, bought presents for the girl's at Haigh's chocolates, Suga and Jasper Junior, which is a fantastic toy shop. We had dinner at Feddish, which was good. Not all time memorable great, but still good. Strolled back to the hotel for my double Bailey's. Next day, more food, more shopping. Worth ten year's of marriage, I tell you.

Speaking of the good life, I have received some lovely mail in the past few days. Last week, I did a swap with Suse and received one of her lovely hand knitted face washer's. It is so soft and gorgeous. Thanks Suse.
And then, just because I told Lesley a really bad joke, I won a set of her beautiful note cards. And I can't wait to use them. Thank you Lesley. As if by some kind of madness, she must have known the current obsession shared by girls old and young in our house for glitter gel pens, and she popped one in with the cards. It is a cherry red colour, which we don't have. I'm off to hide it away before small six year old girl comes home from school and find's it and claims it for her own. Bye.

What were you doing ten years ago today?

I was getting married.

Ten years. Best ten years of my life. Which doesn't necessarily mean the best "bed of roses" years of my life, but often, the things that you have to work hardest at are the things you appreciate the most.

One husband, two children, many kilo's and grey hairs later, I wouldn't have it any other way.

We are celebrating this weekend, staying in the city at The Westin and just eating, shopping, strolling, hanging out. Just like we used to.

I'm a little bit excited.

Tipping the scales ...

I'm a Libran. Balance is very important to me.

At the moment, things are a little unbalanced around here.

So many things I want to do. So many things I need to do. Oh my gosh, is that the time already? You get the drift.

Therefore, my posts are not as frequent as I would like them to be as I search for that elusive equilibrium in my life. And also, as I like to post mainly about what I have made, I really haven't been making anything new of late. More pencil rolls and tissue holders, but how many of those can you see before you would be seriously bored with me?

So today, I will post about two things.

Two. See? Nice and even.

Firstly, I want to start my own business, selling all the little things I make. Scroll back, check my flick-r, you'll get the gist. My first venture is going to be a stall at Beth's school market night on December 1. That's achievable for me. I have a lot of stock to make. But I need a name! I saw this little poll gizmo on Nic's site last week and I was quite taken with it, so I have blatantly stolen the idea. (Still waiting to hear what you had for dinner, Nic?) Help me. Please vote. Or if you think both names are shocking, leave me a helpful, but nice, comment.

What would be the best name for my business?

violet and rose Pink Milk Design

Web Polls by Vizu

Secondly, just to let everyone know there are still lovely, kind people out there in the world. In one of my first ever posts, I mentioned a lovely lady by the name of Chitra who has a gorgeous shop in Brunswick, in Melbourne, called Chitra's Closet. Somehow, out in blogland, she found my post and e-mailed me. She asked if I would like her fabric off-cuts? I said no thank you, that I really wasn't interested in her gorgeous fabric that she was just going to give me out of the kindness of her heart. I'm joking! I jumped at it.

So off I went with Beth for the afternoon and we picked up a bag with some fantastic fabric and some rather lovely lace and trims. Chitra is moving to a bigger showroom soon and is going to have an area devoted to crafts where she can encourage woman to find the time to sit and "craft". When I hear more, I will let you know.

Thank you Chitra. And for those of you in Melbourne, if you are looking to expand your wardrobe, especially if you are after something special, it's well worth a visit. Details on the web site.

And in the interests of balancing out my day, that's all folks. That, and I've got school pick-up to do.

When good sewing turns bad...

You know when you see something and you think, "Hey, that looks great!" And then comes the famous line, "I COULD MAKE ONE OF THOSE MYSELF".

And that is what I thought when I had seen a few different pencil rolls posted in peoples blogs. Especially the one that Pink Chalk Studio made. I fell in love. All those colours. If I was a little person, I would love to be taking out and putting back my pencils into something so organized, yet so pretty. Or if I was a boy, so cool.

So it was decided. Beth loves to draw. Always has and I hope, always will. What a perfect birthday gift for her. But I will make my pencil roll very functional. It will have an oilcloth outer, so as it is easy to keep clean and durable. And that, dear friends, was my first fatal mistake.

I am a compulsive iron-as-you-sew person. Each time I do a seam, an important one, I have to iron it. And why tack or use pins to hold things in place when you can just iron them? Ironing has magical holding properties. So, when I was putting together the front panel to the back oilcloth panel, I thought it couldn't hurt just to press this in place so the edges sit flat? The iron was on low, there was no where the iron could directly touch the oilcloth. Wrong. Those little pieces around the edges, just overlapping a little. One touch of the iron and hey presto! You have holes in your pencil roll. When I did this, the really sad thing was that I thought to myself, "no, this is OK, I can fix this". But then reality set in and I knew that holes in oilcloth are really not fixable. End of pencil roll number one.

The pencil roll is quilted. Here is a question for anyone who has ever machine quilted a quilt. Could you imagine trying to sew a quilt with a plastic back? No, I didn't think so. SO WHAT ON EARTH WAS I THINKING? Pencil roll number two was then thrown with a good deal of force into the rubbish bin. I should have kept it to show you, because it is really amazing how un-square you can get a piece of fabric quilted to a piece of plastic. Oilcloth doesn't have much give when it comes to being manipulated around a machine.

So, onwards and upwards to pencil roll number three. No more oilcloth. Just all cotton with cotton quilt batting used inside. So that means that when the bottom pocket is folded up, I was sewing through 4 pieces of cotton and 2 pieces of quilt batting. Can you see where this is headed? The walking foot and the size 16 needle did a valiant job, and pencil roll number three was actually completed. But with a lovely wave in the middle. Not sure how this happened. I guess a combination of extra bulk and very tight tensioning. But I finished it. Because it was taunting me. "Come on! I dare you to stick with this. You think you can sew this easy-peasy pencil roll, but really, you can't". I could hear it saying to me. Or was that just me being delirious because now it was really, really late at night.

So pencil roll number three is finished when it started. Can I really give this to somebody? Even though it is only my own daughter? I don't mean "only" my own daughter, but what I mean is that can I give it even though it may never leave the house? I wasn't one bit happy with it. I kept unrolling it and looking. Did I have any pride at all? So, I did what you do when you reach rock bottom. You ask your husband. "Hamish, do you think this looks OK?" Quick glance from Hamish. "Um, yeah, is it supposed to have that wave thing in the middle?".

So pencil roll number four was born.

This time I went back and I did something I don't normally do. I read the instructions. Oh, you use flannel as the inner. Not quilt batting. Oh.

And something else I did that I have never done before. I pinned it before I sewed all those little pencil pockets. And do you know what? It held like a charm. Much better than the magical iron.

And since successful version number 4, I have also made successful versions number 5 and 6. Both for boys. As thank you's for the Mum's of the boys who let me go through their fabric scraps and steal some to make the backing strips for the pencils. I didn't get a chance to take a photo of number 5, but here is number 6. Quite GI Joe and man-ly I thought.

So now my grand thoughts (or should that be grandiose dreams?) turn back to my pie in the sky shop, where I am going to make these rolls for packs of 10-12 pencils, not 24. More economical. And 10-12 is a good size for littlies who are just starting to draw. Alice was loving colouring with Beth's pencil's on the weekend and was surprisingly good at putting the pencils back where they came from.

Moral of the story:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, swear, stay up really, really late, cry and then try again."

I enjoyed reading Alison's post today about unsuccessful sewing and I hope that this contributes to that general discussion. Perhaps for some people looking from the outside in, when all you see are pretty pictures about something that someone has just whipped up, it can appear to be fairly unreal. Please rest assured, there are no such fantasies being lived out at Mummy Jo's.

And how could I end today's post without showing you a shot of the glorious late Winter sunshine we are having here in Melbourne today. It will be freezing cold and raining again soon, but here, breathe it in and enjoy.

What's a girl to do?

First of all, before I forget, a big thank you to everyone for your kind comments on my last post. I would like to think that I could reply personally, but sometimes, something's gotta give, and I'm a little ashamed to say the first of those things is personal thank-you's. But thank-you all. Appreciated.

I posted this picture and some in more detail in Flick-r a while back, but didn't want to post about them until they had reached their intended destination.

I made these two tops for Julie's little girls as part of our recent swap. They have now arrived in Israel, so in accordance with blogging protocol, I can now post a picture and blab.

I was really pleased with how these turned out. I wanted to make something that was sweet and girly, but not sickly and pink. And made with fabric that reminded me of my childhood or happy things. With lots of ric-rac and ribbon and gorgeous trims. I have made so many skirts this year, and thought that I could make these based on the idea of the bottom being like a tier of a gathered skirt. Then I pulled out all the girls tops and dresses right from when they were babies and dissected how they were all made. Took the best (and easiest) parts and voila! They do up at the back with two buttons and the skirt is open. I like the idea of wearing them with cut-off jeans or long shorts.

If you are wondering why I take all my pictures of clothes hanging on the washing line, there are several reasons. Firstly, it's a natural light thing. And it was just too cold to have my girls wear them outside. I may be harsh, but I'm not cruel. Secondly, the washing line stays relatively still and does what I want it to do.

I showed my sewing to a few of my friends who all gave me great feedback. Except for my very dear friend (no, really, she is) - she of the "dishcloth purse" fame. She said that she loved them, but could I make one for her daughter in pink. I'm not anti-pink, I guess I just really need to find the right "pink".

So, now, to my next dilemma. One which it seems that a few of us are going through. To sell, or not to sell? How much? Etsy? A market? A web site? Good old fashioned word of mouth. Do you want to buy one? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

A few more of the goodies sent over to Julie.

And speaking of "to sell", met up yesterday with my first blogging, in-the-flesh friend. Alice and I met Justine and Molly and it was like we'd known each other for year's! Justine is every bit as lovely and funny as you would imagine from reading her blog. We met up to discuss some ideas about our respective crafting "stuff", but our girls had other idea's. Both were tired. Lovely, but tired. We had about three minutes of peace when Alice decided to lie down on a big kind of couchy, chair thing, with pristine cream cushions on it, that was displayed outside a Villa and Hut store. Molly played peek-a-boo with her and Justine and I pretended they weren't ours. Until the man from the shop tracked us down and asked me to remove my child from his $999 chair so as he had half a chance of selling it. I suggested to him that perhaps at that price, he could sell Alice with the chair as well. He didn't get it. He mustn't have kids.

The funniest part of this was that as we were sitting, sipping our hot chocolates, a friend (more a friend of a friend I guess) of mine came over. As I went to say "Hi", she went straight over me and reached over to Justine! Turns out that she takes her little girl to the same place for music as Justine takes Molly. How freaky is that! To have this blogging connection and then discover we know mutual people in the "real world". Blew me away really.

So a big hello to Justine and Molly and Alice promises she will not be bossy next time. Or else her mother really will sell her with the chair.