Although somewhat distracted by ladybirds and copious amounts of baking last week, I have made some progress on the national blog meet-up.

Once I started talking to hotels and venues, I had to come up with a name for the event, and with a great lack of imagination, I have called it…

Sew It Together

It has a date – 14/15 May, 2010.

And it now has it’s very own blog, which you can see here.

Before you hop over there and add it to your blog reader, just bear with me for a minute. The most important part that has to be sorted out sooner rather than later, is the Saturday Crafting Session. I have to book and pay a 50% deposit for that before Christmas to lock in the venue. Everything else can be sorted a little closer to the time.

So I know it is a stretch at this time of year, but I will be collecting some money from those who want to secure a place at the crafting session, in the next couple of weeks.

Numbers will be limited, and preference will be first given to those staying at the hotel, and then to other visitors to Melbourne. However, I also want a great showing of Melbourne bloggers since the whole point of us coming to Melbourne is to meet you. And to see some of your great city while we are there.

So I urge you, especially the Melbourne girls, to register your interest sooner rather than later. I hate the thought of anyone missing out who really wanted to be there. Don’t make me sad, okay?

Head over to the new blog, and have a read of all the options, and please, please, please take the time to leave a comment with your interest on each relevant page. I will be using that as a planning guide.

And please spread the word! Send your readers directly to the Sew It Together blog so they can find out all the details .

Okay! Off you go! Over here!

This was a better party than this one.

Emmeline had her first birthday party yesterday and had a delightful day. The theme was ladybirds, which was a lot of fun to plan.

We played some fun games, including “Pin The Spot On The Ladybird”…..

(Don’t you love the ladybird table?)

Musical Leaves (like Musical Chairs)…..

And a chocolate ladybird hunt…..

where Emme and I were swamped by the boys and only found one!

There were the ugliest ladybird cupcakes ever seen at a party…..

And other treats for the kids………

There were wonderful presents from her guests……….

And, finally, a ladybird cake…………

which she claimed as hers……

……..and then signed ‘hungry’…..

…..before chomping into her first piece of cake, ever.

All in all, it was a great party and I think she really enjoyed it. She always loves being surrounded by people, and older kids.

I hope she loves to look back on the pictures when she is older, like Henry does.

Here she is at the very end of the party. Tired. Content. Stuffed with cake. Ready for bed.

Happy Birthday, darling girl. We hope you had a most wonderful day!

I finally finished the Prints Charming Pink Paisley Rainbow Garden quilt this week, so it seemed a perfect birthday present for the baby girl. Here it is in it’s entirety, but the light is awful in this photo, I am sorry.

I had it professionally machine quilted with a continuous butterfly pattern. Then, in the two white panels, I have stitched just the top layer with perle cotton, following the quilting pattern.

Gosh these photos are awful, I’m sorry!

It’s backed in plain white quilter’s muslin, which may have been a big mistake if it is to be used by a child, but I do like the butterfly quilting on the white:

The binding is the pink and orange paisley print.

And here you can see the stitching a little better:

I haven’t made a label yet, but it’s not like she can read, so I’ll take my time.

—–

This project I actually did set out to make for her birthday, and her future birthdays, and it is very obviously home made with it’s crooked E and dodgy flower.

But I love it.

It’s her birthday crown.

Here’s the non-dodgy flower with it’s vintage button centre:

A huge thank you to Jessica at Juicy Bits for her excellent tutorial on how to make a birthday crown.

—-

And her last present is not handmade, but for a little girl having a ladybird party on Saturday, can you think of anything cuter?

Of course, she’s a few months off being able to ride it, but it’s a long stretch between birthdays and Christmas for our little miss. I am sure her brother will love to test it out for her.

Happy Birthday, baby one!

Dear Emmeline,

Happy Birthday, my darling girl!

This time last year, I wasn’t even in labour, and you were born before lunch time. You’re still very quick off the mark. Henry says you are “so fast, Mama, so fast!”.

I’ll start with an update for the month, and then I want to tell you about your first year.

Firstly, you have some new teeth! Three new ones! Two on the top either side of your front middle teeth, and one on the bottom, to the left of your middle two. That’s 7 all up now.

You’re crawling like a crazy girl, all over the house, and you will chase your brother from one end of the house to the other. At the end of the day your little knees are so red that I have thought about getting you knee pads. You love to pull yourself up onto your knees so you can reach things higher up, and I can see you trying to get a foot underneath you, to start trying to stand. You are getting better at taking your weight on your feet when I hold you, and you seem very delighted with yourself to discover how tall you really are.

Your new skill this month might be my favourite ever – blowing kisses. It goes with the goodbye wave so beautifully. It makes my hardened old heart melt when you tilt your little head, smack your palm to your mouth and throw out your hand like your kisses are pure liquid gold. You even know from Daddy’s tone of voice and body language when he is about to leave, and you start waving and blowing kisses as he collects his car keys and phone.

You are pure delight, Emmeline.

Your baby signing is coming along beautifully. You definitely tell us when you are ‘finished’ eating. You tell us when you are ‘thirsty’. You have picked up ‘tired’ and ‘milk’ but you haven’t quite got them in context yet.

But the big breakthrough is that you have mastered the ‘hungry’ sign perfectly. I was shocked and awed the other day when you crawled up to me, got up on your knees, pulled on my leg, shouted ‘MUM” and furiously did the sign for ‘hungry’. I have to say, Emmeline, that I think you are wonderful.

In terms of your words, there are lots of ‘dada’ and ‘mama’, sometimes ‘DAD’ and ‘MUM” when you mean business, but I’m not quite yet convinced that you can accurately put those words to the right person. Your most popular word is ‘bubba’ which means Henry, any child between the age of o and about 7, anything cute and cuddly, and the Christmas Tree.

You are very ticklish. And you love to try and put hats on your head.

I love you way you will crawl up to someone or something and you nuzzle the crown of your head into them. It’s your version of cuddling. I love the way you drop your head into my shoulder when you are being shy with a stranger, or just want to feel a little closer to me.

I love the way you dance. If you are in your high chair, your legs swing furiously back and forth and your whole body rocks back and forth as well. Your favourite is the MASH theme at 5pm when you are about to eat your dinner. I once spotted you doing your MASH dance, even when the TV was muted. You could see the picture and that was enough to start you dancing. If you are on the floor, you get on your hands and knees, duck your head down, and rock back and forth in time to the music. You like The Wiggles and even do ‘reindeer ears’ when anyone even says “Here Come The Reindeers”.

Your favourite thing to do at the moment is to find a cupboard, a shelf or a tub where you can pull everything out one by one, analysing it and then flinging it away. At the end of the day, there are usually about 6 little piles around the house where you have gone through the contents. You are VERY curious.

You’ve put on a bit of weight lately, as I weighed you recently at just over 9 kilos. I’m nursing you 3 times a day, and you have three meals a day with very small snacks for morning and afternoon tea. You usually sleep all night, about 11.5 hours. You are still having a very short morning nap at about 9am, and I wake you after 17 minutes. After lunch, you usually have a good sleep of 1.5 hours. Sometimes it’s as short as 45 minutes and sometimes it’s as long as 2.5 hours.

In terms of your intolerances, I am still challenging you via the elimination diet. I think that you reacted to benzoates, a preservative, but nothing else. I am currently challenging you with dairy, and although you have woken at 5am a couple of mornings crying, I am not 100% convinced it’s the dairy. I am waiting to see if the green poo returns and then I’ll know.

So that is your 12th month, baby girl. In a nutshell.

In terms of your first year, I can say that it has been a hard year. It has been harder than I had expected. Food intolerances and the effect that it has had on you have made for a difficult time. I feel like I have spent the first year of your life analysing everything that goes into my mouth and what it is or might be doing to you. I have had to play around with finding the right sleep solution for you, making many mistakes along the way, but perserverance has paid off, and I think that now you are sleeping well, and you are getting enough to ensure your continued growth and development.

But those difficulties fade away when I see your beautiful, happy, smiling face and the love that you generate in our family. You give out a lot and it comes back to you hundred-fold from everyone around you. The way your face lights up when you see someone you love is so precious. You play so well with your brother, even if you are a little more violent with him than I would like. Perhaps I should say, your brother plays so well with you!

I can’t imagine our family without you and sometimes wonder where you were a few years ago. It feels like you have always been here and yet I can’t remember you being here, for, say, Henry’s 3rd birthday, or our holiday 2 years ago.

I hope that the hard parts, for you, of your first year are long forgotten, and the only thing you will take into your second year is the security and warmth of knowing just how much you are loved.

I hope you keep dancing, and smiling, and nuzzling, and exploring, and daring, and more, for the next 12 months, because I love watching you every single day.

Happy 1st Birthday, Emmeline Grace.

Love,

Mama.

My husband likes to pick Henry up from preschool on Fridays, and so it was that a Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, they arrived home, as usual, except with faces that look liked they’d both lost their favourite toys forever.

“Something serious happened at preschool today,” my husband said. Henry hanged his head and started to cry.

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what what was going on. Had Henry been violent towards another child? Had he hurt someone? It didn’t seem possible that my gentle, easygoing boy would have done that, but kids are prone to surprising you.

And he did, because this, this I had never expected.

“Henry swapped some of his morning tea with his friend E today. He gave him a grape, and E gave him some cheese. Which he ate.”

It took me a while to process this, because it didn’t seem possible. Here is a child who is as fanatical about what goes in his mouth as I ever imagined he could be. He always tells people, when offered food, “I am allergic to dairy, does that have dairy in it? My mummy needs to check if it has dairy in it before I can eat it.”

About a week before this incident, my mother took Henry and Emmeline to a lovely park for a few hours (and God bless my mother for those few divine hours of peace). We forgot to pack bread for the ducks, so my Mum bought a muffin and Henry fed the ducks. Afterwards, he reminded his Nanny that the muffin may have had dairy in it, and he really should wash his hands.

Are you getting the picture? He might only be 4, but he is very reponsible when it comes to his dairy allergy.

But we are all entitled to a brain explosion every now and then, and I really couldn’t be too hard on him. I think his biggest ‘punishment’ was his distress after the incident, and the fact that all the children at preschool had to be sat down and told again the rules about not sharing food. He’d been through enough.

The most interestingpart of it, though, was that there did not appear to be any side effects from his experiment. The staff did not administer any antihistamine, and they just observed him closely. We don’t know if he ate any, he said that he spat most of it out. There were no after effects at home, either.

———

Yesterday, we went back to The Waiting Place for the long awaited Cake Challenge. Back in May, his annual skin prick test showed a smaller reaction to dairy for the very first time. This was a result which qualified him for a cooked milk challenge, to see if his immune system could deal with dairy which has been broken down in form by cooking. The appointment was for yesterday.

As expected, we started with a skin prick test, just to confirm that, like last time, his reaction was smaller and that we could go ahead with the challenge.

Except it wasn’t. His reaction was bigger, much bigger. I looked at his arm, where the welt was growing bigger by the minute where they had pricked fresh milk (for the first time, usually they use some sort of essence) and my heart sank.

It was a big deal to organise yesterday. We had been warned that it could take 5-7 hours, with a lot of waiting. And there is no way that Emmeline could deal with not being at home in bed in the middle of the day. And if she can’t deal with it, then neither can Henry or I, quite frankly. My husband had taken the day off to sit out the waiting part with him, and I had prepared the recipe to their specifications, and packed the precious cake and a bag of books and toys and other snacks.

We had prepared Henry for what was to happen, knowing that he may come home terribly disappointed, but also allowing him a glimmer of hope that things may be changing.

“It’s too large a reaction,” said the nursing sister, “I’m not doing a cake challenge.”

My eyes unwillingly filled with tears. “But the cheese! Henry had an accident a few weeks ago, and he had some cheese and he had no reaction!”

The problem was, that we didn’t know what he had eaten, or how much. (I mean, those rubbery cheese things that kids eat; is there even dairy in there??)

This stumped her a little and she wandered off to find a doctor who might give her some guidance as Henry’s doctor wasn’t due in for another hour.

Eventually she came back and said she would go ahead with the challenge, but she wasn’t that happy about it. We bundled Henry in to the challenge room before she could change her mind.

She started with a few crumbs (I’m not exaggerating! Crumbs!) of the cupcake that I had prepared. Nothing.

Half an hour later, about half a teaspoon. This one was tricky because Henry has been so conditioned that eating dairy makes him sick, that he was frightened this was going to make him sick and he cried and refused to eat it. Eventually he took it. No reaction.

At this stage I had to leave to take Emmeline home to bed, so we left the boys there, blowing kisses at them (Emmeline) and crossing fingers (me) that everything would continue to go well.

And it did. Over the next 4 hours, he ate the whole cupcake and picked every crumb off his pants. Both he and Daddy agreed that mama makes great cupcakes with dairy!

No. Reaction. At. All.

What does this mean for Henry going forward?

It means that he needs to continue to challenge his immune system with cooked dairy, starting with a cupcake a week, and then building up to more. It means that he can eat other foods with cooked milk in them like pies, sausage rolls, biscuits and pastries. You know, all the foods that you really want your kid to eat.

From my perspective, with holidays imminent, I can see a much more relaxed situation at dinner time when we eat out. I talked a lot about that in this post. Now, meals like battered fish are okay because I don’t have to worry about what’s in the batter if it is cooked. A bolognaise sauce, as long as they don’t add cheese after it’s cooked, should be okay. Chicken nuggets. Although, really? Ugh! Anyway, I think he will be excited to at least try them.

Next up is a cheese challenge (oh, wait, he has already done that himself) in June next year.

—-

A long long time ago, when Henry was still a baby, they told me that he might grow out of this by the age of 3. Every year, they moved they goalposts. Maybe by age 4. Maybe 5. Could be 6. I can’t say that I was overly distressed by this, just having the hope that he might outgrow the allergy at some stage was enough. I would have loved it to be by the time he started school, but at the rate we are going with testing, I don’t think that is going to happen.

But we have come such a long way, and this is the first step. And it’s terribly exciting for all of us.

Almost as exciting as Henry’s preschool Christmas concert this morning. The child is jumping out of his skin! Do you remember this time last year?  We went to the Christmas concert, then out for lunch and that evening I went to hospital to be induced with Emmeline. Which means something big is coming…….a first birthday.

Smiles all round in our house today.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s cuter…..the kid or the creation.

Here you go!

Here’s a close up, and you can see the pretty pink starburst fabric on the back:

All credit to Prints Charming for an awesome panel and stitching ideas. You can see their bird here. And then you can see that I just followed their lead. With good reason. Why mess with something so gorgeous?

Happy

Patting

Cuddling

Wow! So many of you are as excited as I am! Pencil in May 15 if you are a Melburnian or May 14-16 if you aren’t. So many of you are keen to put in leave requests for work, and others are already looking at airfares, so I will lock that date in as soon as I possibly can. There is certainly enough interest for me to go ahead and start finding a suitable venue. Thank you all so much for being so enthusiastic about a national get-together!

—-

Yesterday, Emmeline and I went over to the Prints Charming shop/studio, ostensibly to pick up some fabric for Donna for her quilt dilemma, but really so I could have a peek at their lovely wares for myself.

While perusing some kits on a shelf, Emmeline grabbed hold of a sample embroidered bird softie. She proceeded to hug it, nuzzle her head into it, cuddle it, and then start patting it gently with much affection. I was gobsmacked. Is this a girl/maternal thing? Can it start this young? I don’t ever remember Henry treating anything with such care and compassion that Emmeline had for this stuffed bird. And if you know Henry, you know what a gentle and caring soul he is himself.

So of course I had to buy the kit and I am madly embroidering away on the bird panel, so Emmeline can have her own bird to cuddle. I bet you a tenner that she takes one look at this one and throws it over her shoulder, but at least I will have tried.

—–

I spent a lovely, if exceedingly hot, day on Sunday at the Craft Room with some delightful fellow crafters. I managed to get the Blueberry Lime Sorbet Picnic Quilt top finished – hurray!

Now to find some time and space to baste it and then quilt it.

If I can get it away from a certain someone.

After admiring Fiona’s lovely Advent Calendar kit from Kristen Doran, and putting it on my mental to-buy list, I was so lucky to pick up this gorgeous red panel in the Craft Room swap!

Lucky me! Thank you so much, Fiona!

And last, but not least, here is what I made to contribute to the swap.

Another Ticker Tape doll quilt. This one is little, only about 11″ square. Perfect for a little dolly!

Thanks Corrie for organising a great day!

I have been toying with this idea for a while, and after sharing it with some early arrivals at Corrie’s Craft Room on Sunday, who unanimously proclaimed it a fantastic idea, I’m going to run with this and see where it heads.

If you are already a member of the crafty blogging community in Australia, I don’t have to tell you what a warm, generous, kind, funny bunch of ladies they are. The success of local meetings of groups like The Craft Room, Brown Owls and Perle 8s is a testament to the fun that can be had when we all get together to craft. And talk. Often there is more of the latter than the former. But whether you like to craft or talk about craft, there is something special about being around like-minded people.

I dont know if anyone has attempted to have a national meet-up before, but I really love the idea of meeting other bloggers that I feel like I know so well, but have never met.

I am proposing that the first get together be planned for Melbourne.

Why? Because there is a very strong crafting contingent already in Melbourne. And because I like the idea of getting away to Melbourne myself for a weekend because it is such a great city. Does anyone need any further reasons??

I am proposing to organise, what I call, a Saturday Session. An all-inclusive day and evening which will be open to both locals and visitors to Melbourne.

The day part will be based at a hotel. The same hotel that I will try and make a group booking for acommodation for visitors. With the excellent rates on websites like www.wotif.com.au, I need to be conscious of finding room rates that are reasonable. I would need to do lots of research on hotels.

The Saturday Session would include the following:

• Crafting session from, say, 9:30am to 4:30pm in a meeting room
• Morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea catered for in the hotel
• Dinner at one of Melbourne’s fantastic restaurants, preferably in a private room where we can shriek about crochet and fabric to our heart’s content.

In addition, I am also thinking of hiring a minibus on the Friday afternoon (for those that can get to Melbourne early enough) to take visitors to Amitie and Patchwork On Central Park – my two favourite Melbourne fabric shops.

Sunday would be free time to do whatever you like – shop, sightsee, catch up with other people you may know in Melbourne or just sleep-in and relax – before departing on your journey home.

I would probably be looking at keeping numbers limited, thanks to the sheer scale of the organisation required. I am thinking 2010, and I am thinking late May. Plenty of time to organise it and lock in your husbands for some childminding duties. Although I don’t see why the whole family can’t make a weekend of it if you wish.

Payment for the Saturday Session would need to be paid in advance to secure a spot. I’m not planning on making a profit out of this, for the record. If it works and it’s great and you love it and it becomes an annual thing, then by all means, I’ll set up a business and run it properly, but for now, it’ll just be little old me who loves to organise stuff and always wanted to be a travel agent or a wedding planner.

I have thought long and hard about whether you should have to have a blog to be able to attend, and I think that the answer is yes. Blogging involves putting a lot of yourself ‘out there’ and this is why we create these strong bonds between us without ever having met in person. I think having non-bloggers attend makes it very one-sided. You would know an awful lot about me and yet I would know nothing about you.

Anyway, I am very excited about this idea. Mostly because I want to meet lots of the participants in the swaps I have been organising. They are mostly in Melbourne, a few in Brisbane, and one lonely West Australian, and if I can coerce anybody to join me, I would be thrilled.

Please share with me any ideas, opinions, thoughts, both positive and negative, about the idea in the comments. Let me know if you are really keen, or not, and if not, why. If my idea sucks and you have a better one, share it. I am sure between us, we can come up with something that is so awesome there will no resistance possible.

PS Feel free to blog about this and spread the word a bit. Refer readers back here to let me know if they are interested. I’m keen to get as many non-Melbourne folk as possible; otherwise it will just be a Melbourne meet-up!

I’ve only done one other Creative Space post, back here, when I showed you my super messy sewing room with no shame.

I know a few weeks ago I promised a grand reveal of my newly organised room and stash, and I know I haven’t delivered, but it is coming. I’m only getting a little bit done at a time, as, not surprisingly, there is usually something else I should be doing instead of fiddling in the sewing room. Just a few more finishing touches, so it looks really lovely and then I will photograph and share.

In the meantime, here’s what I will be sewing up next.

It’s a paper-pieced star block for the Katie Jump Rope joint star quilt with Donna. When I finish this one, and make one the same for Donna, I’m done! Oh except for the ’spacing’ blocks, of which I still have to make about a dozen, but those should be much quicker. Which, by the way, aren’t the solid blocks shown in that photo in the link. We’ve decided to do smaller simple stars in a white background for the alternate blocks instead.

I was going to make one for Lara too, for her Around The Block star quilt, but I found that I wasted a lot of fabric while making this, and I don’t think it’s quite fair to do that with someone else’s lovely fabric. And she may have got it in March, since it’s a lot more time consuming than a regular block.

This is my first paper pieced star block, and although it was fiddly, I think the result is looking spectacular.

More Creative Spaces here.