Snow!

Ok, even by the UK’s standards today’s little sprinkling of snow is poor, but it’s enough to send our two youngest daughters into a state of excitement inappropriate for the unearthly hour of the day- the older of the two as a consequence forgets to take her clarinet fees which are already overdue, so we’ll probably be in trouble with her school for that, and the youngest has breakfast and is dressed and wanting to step outside and into the millimetre of the stuff when its barely past eight o’clock! Amazing what difference a little bit of frozen rain can make! The house we are living in overlooks the Moors and the hills have obviously taken a bit more of a snow hit, and once it ventures to get light outside they do look very pretty with their white tops- almost like mountain peaks as I was informed this morning.

As the morning wears on the sun is shining brightly, but it must be cold out today as our little dusting of snow in the garden is stubbornly refusing to melt. At least the road down to school wasn’t too bad this morning- there were plenty of areas at the side with mini snow drifts, but the actual road itself was only wet. I love our village, but it’s all built around a valley where there was once a mine works, so whichever way you walk to the school there are steep hills to climb up or down… beautiful normally, but not quite such fun in frozen weather!

Having actually managed to publish a second blog post last night, I’ve now caught up a bit, and don’t want to fall behind so I put the next day’s post on at lunchtime again. This seems to be a good time of day to get this task done- I’ve always used lunchtime to catch up on tasks such as putting my computer documents into files, unread emails into folders or deleted etc. so it’s not a problem to make this my lunchtime job instead.

After lunch, with daughter number two watching telly in the living room, and daughter number one on her way home after the early shift at the nursery again, I sit down to my sewing again. I love this time of day, generally the washing is happily getting on by itself and this ends up as my time for sewing. I’ve got a good couple of hours until I have to go back down to the school to collect our youngest, although today her older sister is taking on that job for me, and I can lose myself in whatever items I’ve got on the go at the time, without worrying too much about the time for  a while.

The rest of the little pair of pyjamas is next on the list for completing, so I get on with making the trousers to match the top. Trousers, shorts and pants are all pretty straight forward and I can make them up fairly quickly these days. When thinking about starting the business I realised I needed more than just a doll’s dress to have a decent range of items to sell, and pyjamas were only about the second item I developed. The top was easy to work out, but I then took a pair of one of my daughter’s little shorts and turned them inside out to work out how such things were made- my pattern developed from there, and I made it to fit the size of dolls I was making the dresses for.

The fabric pattern is now on its third or fourth generation- as the pyjamas are so popular I only change the fabric I use for them when I can no longer find the previous one either online or in the shops. I’m unfortunately at that stage again now- the current design has been on the site for about four years, but suddenly I cannot find the same fabric anywhere.  I’ve found something similar, which I’ll probably settle on, but that’s something else I need to get sorted on my next ‘lazy’ admin day.

Pyjamas completed, I’ve only got the finishing touches to complete on that particular order now- the popper fastenings and the buttons for the front of the pyjama top, which are a job I do in the evenings in front of the telly. Now that I’ve got another order almost ready to go, I turn my attention to the next job that needs doing- getting a Valentine’s print dress made up, so that I can photograph it and update the website with an actual picture of it, not just the fabric. I’ve sold one already, so really want to have it showing at its best on the site as I think it may sell quite well. Having managed to get the fabric for it cut out a couple of days ago, I get on with zig zagging around the edges in preparation for sewing.

By now Mike is home as he has a governor’s meeting after school, and our eldest daughter arrives back at the same time. As she sets off to pick her sister up from school for me, Mike volunteers to bring something quick home for dinner after his meeting, as he can see I could really do with finishing making this dress up and not worrying about having to stop and get cooking. Gratefully I accept his offer, and he sets off down to school just as our daughters get back.

With a longer evening ahead of me now, and the girls amusing each other, I carry on sewing the new dress and am pleased with how it looks when completed. The bright red looks so lovely and pretty that it almost seems a shame to only offer it on the website for such a short time. However, for limited special limited edition outfits to work, they have to be on for only a short time so they can keep attracting new customers. I think though, that when I get a chance maybe I’ll look at getting another fabric in a bright red or pink to keep on the site year round.

Sewing done for the day and with tea imminent, I turn my attention to drafting yesterday’s blog post, and finish the day by installing a second browser on the computer as, rather like my family will before too long, my current one doesn’t seem to agree with all this blogging!!