I'm Inspired!

I have so many friends who tell me I'm so artistic and creative - I'd like to agree, but usually I'm stuck with making the same things that everyone else makes - well, with the difference that I can't actually follow patterns - I'm much better with pictures. So everything I make is, generally speaking, marginally different to what was intended - ah but hey ho, life would be boring if everything looked the same, so what if mine's a bit crooked and wonky, it all adds spice to life.
This morning, as I was doing my usual heavy duty peruse through Pintrest,  I was inspired by these little cat book marks, they're so cute, and perfect for me to make and build up supplies for my car-boot table (ANYTHING to build up funds until I find a job)

Aren't they just SOO cute? I'd love to receive one as a gift, however, usual problem - I can't, for the life of me, follow the darn pattern, so (as usual) I've done my own thing.

I don't quite know what went wrong, but it's still kinda cute. I'll have to figure out a longer tail, I thought 50 stitches would be long enough, but then I decided to be clever and ended up with a curly tail. It still looks FELINE which is the main idea, so I'm quite happy with it :) Ah well, onwards and upwards as they say <3 

A Change of Name

I fancied a change of name this morning. My old name was far too long. I LOVE my crafts, and I think I'm quite an amenable character (in the main) so I thought it was quite fitting. Besides, I opened up an online shop in Etsy last week, in a mad dash hope to set myself up as a crafter, my shop name is AmenableCrafts so I've linked the two together (mainly because I prefer Amenably Crafty as a name, but thought about it a bit too late :p ) I also have my items on my Facebook selling page - Amenable Crafts.

I have decided I'm too old and decrepit to continue with Maternity Nursing, I've been so poorly recently on jobs, I did take myself to the GP (practically unheard of) and had an all singing all dancing blood test - turns out my Vit D is absolutely rock bottom and I'm possibly on the cusp of Diabetes 2 - certainly it would explain why I was always so poorly after a few weeks in the job - I'd just work myself into a frazzle and my body would react by forcing me to stop.

So the decision has kind of been forced on me as well, certainly, I can't take it up again until I'm back to full health, so in the meantime, I'm looking for some work that will give me some pennies, that will still enable me to pick myself up as a serious crafter. 

Now, typically for me (being Dipsy and all that) I cannot possibly stick to just one craft, that would be just too darn easy!!!! No! I have to try all and sundry, my craft room (was playroom, and previous bedroom) is stocked up to the hilt with beads, wool, material, sewing machines, embroidery machines, glue, wire, pliers, scissors - you name it - I've probably got it stashed somewhere! 

I hope to start blogging about my crafting experiences, some will be successful, and probably several won't, but that isn't going to stop me - at least you'll know where I went wrong and you won't be making the same mistake as me! 

Rambling to Rawdom

Recently I've become interested in eating more of a raw diet - no I'm not talking salad, although technically it's all more or less salad, I'm talking the REAL raw foods, nut butters, seeds etc. I have a variety of books on the subject of raw foods and juices. I've always had a bit of an interest in this kind of thing despite being hugely overweight, I know what I want to do - I just haven't quite got the impetus of my mind behind me. Anyway - I've started experimenting with raw foods and have been leaning quite heavily on this book.

It's lovely, has many beautiful recipes - backed up with gorgeous pictures - I would love to just dive into some of them and have a taste - but no - I have to prepare them and being on an extremely tight budget, I have to take it slowly and surely.
Two weeks ago I made the Warming Green Porridge, For a first taste, it was a good choice, colour was fantastic but not quite what I was expecting first thing in the morning.

Eating the porridge with Raspberries was really something beautiful - I tried the following day with banana and for me, it tasted like banana on sludge - but with Raspberries it works.
Having gained a bit of courage, I tallied forth and tried Banana and maple "bacon" . I needed to finely slice my Aubergine on a mandolin - unfortunately, mine broke, so I had to guess at half cm slices and gave up halfway through and went for rounds.

 Having sliced, dunked and dried the aubergine I placed it strategically on the plate with sliced banana and poured maple syrup over the top - it wasn't bad, not as nice as the porridge with raspberries but MUCH nicer than the porridge with banana - all I can say for it was it's VERY chewy, now that could have been down to my inability to cut 1/2cm slices - I don't know, it's not necessarily something I'd go to the effort of making again, but certainly, it wasn't too bad.

Third attempt was at the Muesli Bread, well, things went pretty pear-shaped with this one, mainly down to human error I guess - but it's all a learning curve - someone's gotta make the mistakes I guess.

 The bowl of soaked seeds and nuts is on the bottom left - the dates and seeds on the upper left are for tomorrow's efforts.

Patiently peeled and chopped the fruits and courgette and span it through my food processor - in two lots because I've only got a small processor and this is a lot of fruit and nut for my poor little processor to work through.

After mixing the two lots together I had the great task of mushing it all onto my dehydrator trays. The recipe says to put it on the Teflon sheets - well, I haven't got any so I put the mix on some parchment paper - BIG mistake, my mix stuck to the paper - so that was mistake 1. Note to self - INVEST IN SOME TEFLON SHEETS!

So, having spread the mixture out over two trays, and dehydrated it over night - I turn it over and discover mistake 1. I also realise that I should have perhaps left it in a thicker layer, perhaps only covering one tray. With the paper sticking to the mix and me struggling to turn it over, the mixture collapsed in several places.

I have an end product resembling more granola than bread - but I have managed to get some reasonably sized and shaped pieces - I don't think I'll spread almond butter on it - I haven't got as far as making any of that yet anyway - but I think I'll probably use it as a snack cracker and the little pieces I'll probably crumble over my greek yogurt in the morning with maybe some maple syrup.
It DOES taste delicious - it just looks a little disappointing - oh well, onward and upward. 

Please take pity on the fast food delivery drivers - they're only doing their job

Oh boy,
What can I say? About a month ago, I started working as a delivery driver for an Indian Takeaway. Well, I know it's a bit odd, I'm 50 (something) and racing around town with bags of curry in my car. I quite enjoy it - it's not a bad little job, and it pays just enough to get me enough petrol to give me the two trips into town that I need to keep my sanity.

HOWEVER.........

When it's good, it's quite a nice job, but when things don't go so smoothly!!! Oh my goodness!!! Well, I had a bit of a melt down last night, the job IS stressful, you are given a bag full of food, and a delivery note - sometimes the note is legible, other times - it's not. Sometimes the Sat nav. will give you a route and estimated arrival time, SOMETIMES, it doesn't recognise the place at all, and wants to send you via the moon! I know I certainly do my best to deliver my bags of food as quickly and efficiently as possible .....but I am human!!! And there are happenings out of my control like - TRAFFIC! ROAD WORKS! PEOPLE!!

Today was good, I managed to make most of my deliveries quickly, one was a bit of a disaster (and consequently the second afterwards) because I drove about three miles down a road to find it had been closed just at the point I had to turn off - I know it said road closed, but I didn't know where it was closed, so I had to turn round and find a different route, which I did, but it took me back to the other side of the road works - the road I wanted was slap bang in the middle of the works and completely inaccessible. I ended up driving miles out of my way to drive back and eventually deliver the goods. I then had to find a different way to my next drop off point - a road that the SATNAV refused to acknowledge! Fortunately, I had a suspicion of where it was, alhamduliah I was right! So all was good in the end, and nobody complained.

The reason for the melt down last night (outside factors aside) I went to deliver to a house outside of Lincoln, no, admittedly, my boss had said to do that delivery second, but I was so stuck on the notices that I didn't hear him say do this one second. So I did it first - which meant the second delivery (which should have been my first) was late, and boy did they let me know it, when I finally turned up. "WE'VE BEEN WAITING 2 HOURS FOR THIS!!!!!!" I felt a bit hurt, because I'd not been driving two hours, I'd not even been working two hours! However, I gave them the food, and the bloke flung his £20 note at me, I offered him the change (£1) but he just slammed the door in my face. I wasn't best amused!

I am 100% unconfrontational, and  get hugely stressed if I find myself in a confrontational situation. I drove back and was instantly met by my boss asking me what had gone wrong, and why had I not delivered the first delivery first? (the client had had a go at them too) I just lost it, I thought, I just don't get paid enough for this, I don't need to do this, I can find something else, I really didn't need the aggravation, I was absolutely devastated, and completely lost the plot - I think my boss was more than a bit shocked, he wasn't expecting the tirade of tears, and frustrated out burst from me. I was fully expecting to be sacked, it didn't happen, so I guess it's ok.

I was speaking to the other driver today - he said he'd had a bad shift, wasn't happy, a client had complained, and been very rude to him, he had to go back with a refreshed order and got them to apologise - after all, he's just doing his job - it's not our fault if there's something wrong with the meal, or if there's traffic - what else can we do?

So please, next time you order a meal, and it takes a bit longer than you want to arrive - please don't "shoot" the messenger - or in this case, the delivery driver - he's probably tried really hard to get your food to you safely, and quickly . 

Raw Baby Steps

I've recently been developing an interest in RAWFOODISM, three years ago, I had my very first raw meal, yes, I know salad is raw, and who hasn't had a taste of salad by the grand age of 52? However, I'm talking RAW, raw food, not just limp ice-burg lettuce, a couple of slices of tomato and some cucumber (although, in this house, we rarely have cucumber because my husband hates the stuff - I love it) No, I'm talking lettuce, tomato, cucumber, beetroot (not strictly raw, but still salady) nut butters, hand made tahini, seeded sprouts, and anything that is well, just not cooked!

The experience I had three years ago, has been holding me to my "one day I'm going to become a raw foodist" pledge, well, I'm nowhere near there yet, but I have had a bit of an escapade with a dehydrator that my husband very kindly bought for me as an Eid gift! (shocking, because he doesn't "do" Eid, or anything to that matter, infact, he doesn't really "do" gifts either, however, he does make cakes for Christmas and Easter - and his birthday lol) however, I tried dehydrating carrot, apple and tomato.........the only really successful thing was the apple, tomato was ok(ish) the carrot was given to, and rejected by  Montymoos - my giant lop eared rabbit, and eventually  got tossed out into the garden and disappeared somewhere, somehow.

Three years ago I was working for a family as a Maternity Nurse (an exhausting job, the only healthy maternity nurse you'll find is a retired one! We work THAT hard!) Anyway, I turned up at a friend's house for a weekend break, and she just so happened to have been tucking into a big raw meal by another friend of hers, having been handed a small plate of - well, just about everything, little piles of neatly grated carrot, (raw) beetroot, tomato, swirled somethings, sprinkled bits, a couple of balls of something and some kind of paste, that was, I was informed later, some kind of seed butter (although I can't remember what now) I ate it, because I DO rather enjoy my food, (rather too much, but there you go - we're all different) It was lovely, and I enjoyed it, but I was exhausted and really just wanted to sleep.

You may or may not believe this, but I had a bit of an epiphany moment 20 minutes later, I was BUZZING, absolutely full of energy (which was a tad annoying, because I was trying to sleep!) but I was high, and bouncing off the walls, that one, small plateful of raw food was enough to provide me with an Elephant load of energy! I was stunned, and stayed up all night talking! (haven't been offered a meal there since, I suspect that might be the reason why :p )

Dehydrator aside (I've only used it the once so far) I bought a box of mixed sprouting seeds last week, it's taken me several days to get around to it - but I have managed to sprout my first seedlings, and I'm very proud of myself.

Having done a bit of research, and asked a few friends on trusty old Facebook, I have been informed that these are ready to be eaten. I feel a bit guilty that these baby plants have, in their innocence, sprouted themselves for my pleasure, and I will be scoffing them post haste. After a moment's thought and sympathy for these poor little plantlets that had burst forth with high hopes of life, only to be scuppered by a monster of a human being wanting to scoff them, I tossed them all over my lunch. 

Now lunch was interesting - I DID say I'm only just embarking on this raw route. Having looked in the fridge all I saw was two minuscule cherry tomatoes, half a red pepper and beetroot. Some Salad eh?! Having not eaten all day, my stomach was beginning to rumble quite dramatically, so I popped  some potatoes and sweet potatoes into the oven and vowed to buy salad stuff tomorrow. 

Baked potatoes later, I roughly chopped up some cheese, lathered said potatoes with butter (it's getting worse!) I stared forlornly at my poor attempt at lunch whilst my son pulled out a half eaten kebab from last night's escapades (PAH!!!!)  he dunked the meat and bread on his butter and cheese laden potatoes, followed by a smidge of lettuce and tomato, I scraped the rest of the salad off the polystyrene container onto my plate, dunked on my tomatoes, pepper and beetroot, a hand full of my newly sprouted alfafa sprouts, tipped some lemon on (was going to be mayonnaise until I remembered I was supposed to be trying to be healthy) 

Three pickled green chillies, two baked potatoes and one green(ish) salad later, I was stuffed and feeling good - I haven't got the same buzz as I had when I went raw that meal several years ago - but then again, who would after a Donner laden salad ? Ah well - Onwards and Upwards eh?! :D 

My Adjustment skills put to the test

I have decided to improve on my Nappy cake business (not that it's actually a business yet) but I've been working on increasing and improving my Knitting, sewing, and crocheting skills. Today I'm going to be adjusting a dress that has been handed to me by a friend, she bought it from a charity shop the other day on our visit to Peterborough, but it's too small, and very tight across the bust - so she's handed it to me in the hope that I can either do a simple adjustment to make it wearable for her..............or turn it into a scarf and undercap.

I think the dress is too pretty to be reduced to a scarf, so I'm going to attempt to put in a couple of gussets with a bit of lace, across the front to see if I can work it - of course, I haven't got the funds or capacity to buy matching material, so I'm having to do my usual and bodge it as much as I can. I've found a piece of light tan t'shirt material, and surprisingly, I have some elastic lace  that I bought a while back that matches the material. So I'm experimenting with this.

I don't have anything gold except for a small piece of gold ribbon, there's enough to work with if necessary, but I'm hoping to cope with what I've already got. Let's see how it goes - I'm inviting you to follow my adventure, I feel quite confident, I have in mind what I want to do - but of course, I AM a bodger, so it's anyone's guess how it's actually going to work out, it could be fantastic - or  I could be reduced to a jibbering wreck by the time I've finished.

Here's the dress in it's pure and unadulterated form! Here goes, wish me luck! :D  

Dress is now cut, I've just pinned the panels in to see what it looks like, it's sad I couldn't get the same colour or even a contrasting colour, but I think once it's finished, it might look ok, bearing in mind, most of it's going to be covered by a scarf anyway :p Ok, I'm going to push on and see if the next stage looks any better :)

The next logical stage was to sew the middle panel together, around the cut out section

Front of the panel - I've sewn twice down the lace, once in the middle, once on the edge where the gold piece is - however, I ended up sewing a third time along the outside edge of the lace because it kept on folding in on itself. 

This is the back side of the panel, just so you can see vaguely (very vaguely, sorry it's such a poor photo) what I've done.

Who'd have guessed a roll of Christmas wrapping paper would come in so handy, however, this enabled me to hold the dress at a tension so that I could then pin in the base of the central panel, different, but effective :)

Of course, I can't possible complete a task without some form of war wound, this was the result of me being a little over enthusiastic with the seam ripper!

Nearly there, the dress is wearable, but the neckline looks dreadful, I'm determined to do something about that! In the end I put in four small darts across the top, one either side of the ribbon. 

Tadaaaa! Finished, it may not be the most perfect match, but I think it looks ok, I'm actually really proud of myself seeing as I'm teaching myself techniques as I go along. The dress (so long as you don't look too closely and aren't too critical) is wearable now - which is more so than it was this morning.

I'm back!

It's been a wee while since I last wrote my blog, I've had a lot of technical problems recently, my notepad decided to die on me, taking with it all and sundry of important information such as my CV and references! (Arge!) I disappeared off to Qatar for a bit so that I could save enough pennies to buy the essentials of a new Grandma (like a car!) and I've managed to trade in my defunct notepad for a new table top computer, so now I'm slowly picking up the pieces of my shattered internet life and am back twittering and blogging away.
So much has happened, I don't know where to start, first and foremost, you might have picked up on the fact that I have become a Grandma.....yes, Logan was born in September last year and is now a bubbly rising 5 month old bundle of loveliness. I really can't get enough of him, although I only see him for a few hours a week at the moment.
As I said, I disappeared off to Qatar for a three month period in order to raise some cash to enable me to buy a car and (at the time) get my notepad fixed so I could update my records for the agents (that went kinda ape!) so I've invested in a lovely new, second hand, table top computer (that my phone is currently not talking to - so uploading photos is a nightmare) a new dishwasher, shiny new soffits for the house, a TEFL course, and a creative writing course, as well as masses of material, an embroidery machine ......and now, of course, I'm practically bankrupt, but hey ho, at least I can say I've achieved a fair bit, now I have to invest my last few pennies wisely, get myself CRB'd and back on the agent's books and back out there working, so I can save to embark on a much needed decorating spree of the house, starting with the kitchen I think!
Last night I was  a bit bored, we'd no internet so I couldn't surf the net or chat online as is my want, so I had a bit of a rummage through my ever increasing material supply, and made myself a lovely woollen bag, completely off pat, I had no pattern to follow, only the dark and distant memory of a fully reversable bag I made from instructions a while back. I must admit, I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it's turned out - I totally love it, and have already had offers from people wanting to buy it. InshAllah I'll make another one when I've got the pennies to buy the lining, which I will make without so much trouble inshAllah, and I will sell it. Maybe I'll buy some more material after I've been to Nottingham on Thursday! Who knows, but I have to be careful, my piggy bank is all but starved now, I can almost see it's ribs!
Anyway, I'm back and will hopefully keep my thoughts meandering throughout these pages, whether anyone reads them or not is a different matter, however, IF anyone is reading these pages, they may notice a difference in my writing style as the creative writing course kicks in. :p