Monday 30 March 2020

So how's it going in your neck of the woods?
I was three or four days ahead of UK lockdown but already some pals of mine are struggling with being confined to home.
So I'm wondering if there's something wrong with me - as I'm not! 
It is early days of course and I may well be ooby-loop crazy by the end of our new 'normal', best let me know please, if I start showing signs of losing the plot on here!

I made the fastening cushion below, last week for a child with physical difficulties. I can't recall if I told you how much I dislike doing button holes but I have gotten round making the smaller ones by using the buttons and holes on charity shop shirts - yeah! 
Ideally shirts have the small buttons that so often PD children need most help with.

I had picked up A LOT of shirts with the intention of making ever so many quilts out of them or batching some together to make natty shirts for myself in the style of 

https://paganoonoo.com/      in fact I even bought a pattern from her!

Well you know how it is, I have still not gotten round to doing either of those things!
So I started cutting off cuffs and button plackets to put to good use on the many fastening cushions I make for the kids that need them at work.



Now the one below I made whilst in work, for a child who loves fire engines and needed more practise with some larger buttons too.
A pain but I do still have to do button holes lol



 A while back, work asked me to make a Storysack for 'Jack wants a Pet', an Aussie tale written by Marion Osbourne, by all accounts for her grandchildren who live over there.

So I chose the velcro accepting fabric back board idea again with an assortment of made, adapted and acquired creatures that feature in the story. Some of them can be attached onto the board so allows for differing forms of activity. 




I made a simple braille version of the book itself to go along with these 2d and 3d items.

And they call this work : )
So its easy to see why I can work from home  isn't it!

Tomorrow I must venture out to collect my prescription and meds but I will be wearing a Gangster Grannie facemask in the Drs and pharmacy if others are in there!

I made afew for my daughter to wear since she works in a building society but no, they are not cool enough for her …… my common sense
has she none....
Mind you wearing a facemask makes my breath steam up my glasses, so I might yet end up walking into a wall and becoming hospitalised yet!

Take care all x

Take care all


Thursday 26 March 2020

Carry On Corona ... sounds like an old film doesn't it!

Well, doesn't life throw us curve balls lol and here we all are, much in the same boat I imagine.
Locked down, in  isolation or working from home and in my case both isolation and working from home.

Hope you are keeping well - all and any of you and not driving yourself and others daft whilst together ..... you have to wonder how many children will be born hereafter after this or divorces petitioned for!

I wonder what psychological effects growing up with the label Corona Baby will bring!
Baby Boomers and Millenials ... Corona Babies .... hmm there's a thought.

And likewise, records will show in years to come for genealogists and statiticians, the deaths that occured world wide because of this virus, although I imagine death certificates will show heart failures or resiritory failures maybe not specifically - as a result of Corona Virus, who knows. And what about deaths in far flung places where they aren't registered for whatever reason? Scary.

So so sad and I truly hope none of you/us lose anyone to this ( man made? I still wonder..) darned contaminate.

But for those of us who have accumulated too large a stash we now have no excuse not to use it or complete UFOs do we ... cough, splutter ..!

I'm able to work my 3 days a week at home though being now 70 with heart issues I was obliged to stay away anyway from there anyway. They have since closed down our Service and our fantastic VI  TAs are supplying work online to our Visually Impaired kids, parents linked in to monitor what the children are and can do, and have access to.

Anyway, this is the ideal time for me to pull my finger out and write often again, I am paying a small amount monthly to keep the blog afloat anyway! 
Though unsure if I stop paying if that means the blog wafts away and is no more or I simply will not be able to witter on here as and when. I am SO untechy me.





Anyway, here are some pics of the Dangerous Pockets I made for the Dangerous Pockets Project. 
The one above commemorates the strike of the Black Country, Cradely Heath women Chain Makers in 1910 who worked in appalling conditions in their backyards for miniscule pay. 
They struck for higher pay and won!
Well worth reading up on their fight on the link above and includes easy to watch videos.

http://www.paulamacgregor.com/dangerous-pockets-project.html

Do look it up, its been remarkable how many pockets were sent to Paula for this community project and there are images online you can look at too.

Below  was my first and I think woman's most hidden pocket, her womb. I wrote a resume of why I had chosen this ....


This is surely woman’s most hidden pocket, her womb.

Women throughout history have generally been considered to be frivolous, emotional creatures whose purpose was to adorn a man’s arm, with or without a wedding band. Who were prone to ‘hysteria’ and were strictly limited in what was considered to be their social station in society. They were restricted by cultural and social expectations, by family ties and men’s need to be the controlling factor in his individual and socially male dominated life. In all levels of society women were inferior beings.

Women brought up in this manner for generations, passed this repression on to their own daughters, as if they had no prospect of being anything important in their own right and should not aspire to anything more.

It was as if they weren’t entitled to anything more and that home making, keeping and mothering were menial tasks anyway. Their life was primarily to minister to man’s sexual whims, run his household and/or provide him with children but thankfully most of us now have the opportunity to select which of those things we want to do.

Medicine provided us with a freedom of choice and with means of contraception so we no longer have to rely on men themselves taking the initiative and using a sheath, or the withdrawal method alone.

The ‘Keep your hand on your halfpenny’ advice for young women, to avoid their too early deflowering and the social shame of pregnancy, might no longer be so often used in earnest or jest.

Mostly we make no secret that we take precautions, so we avoid bringing children into the world for the wrong reasons, yet some may feel unable to admit to using these forms of contraception, so for them, it is truly ‘hidden’.

Some are unable to use them even if they would want to, think poverty and the need to buy food rather than contraception. Think religious doctrine that prevents its use and the emotional guilt burdened on those who consider or use it.

There are ‘hidden pocket’ wombs worldwide that hold untold secrets, some that make hearts ache whilst others hold or held joyful blessed gifts and memories.

Oh and I had to reach out to some FB group folks for the various empty contraception packages, being far past that need myself : ) 
And that's an old British halfpenny on the front, paying homage to the saying
'keep yer hand on yer ha'fpenny' ..




Then I made this to commemorate the women of the SOE whose wartimes roles deserve our respect 






For the life of me I cant find a picture of the Amy Johnson pocket I made up!
I managed to find a charirty shop jacket in near enough a flying suit fabric and khaki from which I used a pocket.
Most annoying if I didn't take a picture before I sent that in too : (



Check out Paula's current project below too, you won't be disapointed.
She is now doing a fabulous facebook group project called Ellen's Legacy where you can make exquisite little books, embroidered, stitched and with time on your hands the perfect little calming stitchy things to make curled up on the settee or sat outside in the sun.
Do check that out too : )
http://www.paulamacgregor.com/ellens-legacy.html

Anyway .... back to work things!