Beads

Inspiration comes from funny places. My kids have a huge pot of Hama beads, (well they are actually the cheaper version that IKEA offers in a huge pot) and they can spend hours working out little patterns on the spiky boards that come with them. When they are done, I cover them with baking parchment and go over it with the iron to melt the beads together. It's great fun, and also slightly frustrating, because sometimes after hours of fiddling with tiny beads, someone knocks them over by accident. I have been meaning to use the beads in a pattern collection. The patterns below are inspired by the beads after they have been ironed...

The little heart made out of beads is next to my bed. My little girl Olive made it for me...

Penguins are the new cute...

I have been working on a new pattern collection and I am embracing cute in all its adorable ways. Penguins are the new cute, that's what we decided (me and my tiny panel of experts: the 5 year old Olive who rocks this world and the 8 year old Jasper who is plain brilliant...) And the cutest of cute, we decided after that, is a baby penguin.

I'll be adding them all to Spoonflower when I am officially back to work, in a variety of colour ways. Now all I need to do is learn how to quilt so I can start making little baby blankets... How cute would that be!

Summer time and the living is easy...

We are back from a two week break in Holland and France. The picture of Olive and her bicycle kind of sums it up. She learned to cycle without her stabilisers and I just looked at her all day, feeling ridiculously proud of how she is growing and going off into the world. I also remembered the best thing about Holland. The skies! Oh the skies! We woke up to a double rainbow when we were sleeping in the tiniest little tent on a campsite near the sea. But every sky in my flat little country is worthy of a picture...

The last days of our holiday we met up with Adam in France where we visited friends and family. We could have easily stretched it out a few more weeks, but hey... there is work to be done.