Accomplishments... my Happy

I have to show you my happy!



Well this morning it got transformed into this:

better yes?! Yes.

It wasn't pretty. There were corpses and moulds and all sorts of nasties, but i braved it and now, I feel all accomplished, if somewhat dirty.

First off I had to pull everything out and fill my tiny kitchen floor with all the piles of rubbish.
Then I cleaned the base of the cupboard and the walls with a solution of vinegar and water, rinsed with hot soapy water and dried with a dish towel.
I then put in my shiny new organisational tools:
I bought these forever ago from www.24studio.co.uk they've sat around since then until this morning!
Any how, I went through most of my chemical collection and got rid of what I don't use any more. Like oven cleaner. I just don't use it any more since I discovered a super easy way to clean the oven using bicarb and water. I read about it here: http://www.websiterepairguy.com/articles/h

ousehold_tips/clean_oven.html eliminates all those fumes and nasty chemicals and it really does work!
So, I kept the super strength bleach and most of the laundry products. I kept de- icer for the car because yes, I am trying to cut down on the noxious gases I contribute to the environment but, when you've been frozen out of the car so you can't retrieve your scraper, you have to use *something*. I use this only on the locks of my Vincent.
I kept the Cillit Bang just because it's so expensive and I kept the carpet treatment stuff - A likes to spill red wine occasionally. Oh yes, I kept the furniture polish too. I hardly use it, and when I do I'm very sparing but those two bottles have lasted me nearly 2 years and they're both still nearly full.

On the door I nailed the best of the duster collection. Nowadays I use handmade cotton dusters anyway, but these were in too good a condition to throw away. I also nailed my toothbrushes. No! I don't clean my teeth in the kitchen, they're for tile grouting, silly!

I gathered all the scrubby sponges together and put them on another nail, and another bag holds all the cleaning cloths. Again, we use handmade cotton ones now but I felt wasteful thinking about throwing these away so I kept them.

I found we had tons of black bin bags strewn all over the cupboard so I put them all together.

The bucket holds the latest concoction of 'gloop' - home made washing... stuff.. that we use for laundry now.

Turns out, with all the flinging I did, the other side only ended up with the shoe cleaning brushes and some polish!

It's been forever!

I know I'm a terrible blogger and I haven't been keeping you all up to date at all! I'm so sorry but life ran away with all of my play time and I've not been on the internet much at all! Add to this the fact that my laptop committed Hari Kari on me and it adds up to less online time all over.
Anyway. I have a few photos for you and a bit of updating to get on with!
Since the weather has finally made a change for the better (fingers crossed it stays like this) we've had a change of decoration in the front room. We had snow flakes adorning the doorway over Christmas and during the cold months. We've changed to:


Love hearts! They're strung underneath a shelf in the living room, and the snow flakes have been put into hibernation, hopefully not to return for quite some time!

I've been making gifts for folks, and I made a pair of wrist warmers for some ones lucky mothers day. No, not my mother, I think I've knitted and crocheted her out already! The wrist warmers were based on a pattern I found on www.ravelry.com and they're so pretty. I even dug out my extra nice Rowan cotton to do them with. I've got a photo of the test run one I did, modeled here by Jude:


She's posing on a gigantic spool of acrylic yarn that has a ric - rak like effect - fun to work with.
The pair I gave away didn't have the white on the end and were finished off, as per request, with the dark blue rather than the white. I am really quite pleased with them. if I were as tiny as Jude or the recipient, I would make some for myself but unfortunately, the pattern turns out a pair much too delicate for my sausage fingers!

I have also been working on a monster project. One which I'll describe now but I can't show you yet. It's not finished. Mind you, if anyone would really like to see it, I could take some progress pics...
Well, Hannah is looking for her own place right now, hoping to move away from her parents for the first time. At night, I've often known her to wake with panic attacks and when she's here, I talk her down. When she's at home, her mom cares for her, but it occurred to me that when she moves out, no one will be there in the night to calm her. So, I started a 'Don't Panic Panda Blanket' (Panda is her nick name). The idea is that when she wakes in the middle of the night all panicky, she can cuddle into this blanket and calm herself with it. I want it finished soon, so that she can take it home and have it smell like home when she's feeling bad. I'll never forget when I went to uni and lived away from home for the first time alone, having my bedding and clothes smell of home was precious to me. I hope to make sure that Hannah has the same reassurance I had.

I still have a million and one things I want to make and craft, knit, scrap and crochet, and I promise I'll try and update more often in the future!