Material inspiration

The day job and various social outings (including trying to learn to street dance with the WI!) have taken over this week so there hasn't been a lot of creating going on. My crafty mind has still been working away in the background plotting what to get up to next though so all is not lost. This has mainly consisted of me scouring the internet for more pretty material - even though I already have a massive stash of it taking up a large part of my spare room/office, for some reason I'm always able to justify buying something else for a new project. So this week's planning has resulted in this....

...arriving in my letter box the other day ready to be turned into a makeup bag when I have the time. It's Retro Rocket Rascals by Michael Miller and I love the bright colours and cute little characters, and in my book you can never go wrong with a star or two. It makes me smile whenever I look at it which can never be a bad thing! While I was buying that, I was also "forced" to treat myself to this...

...which is Home Sewing is Easy by Alexander Henry. To be honest, I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, partly because when it arrived the print was much bigger than what I had in my head, but I'm sure I'll think of something soon. Part of me is wondering whether I should even frame it and hang it on the wall - I think it could look good. We shall see....

Weekend baking

Today's project: homemade custard creams using some new smiley face cookie cutters. Verdict: a success, in terms of both taste of appearance, and they definitely beat the shop-bought variety...

Open sesame

One of the best things about working from home is having the time to make my own bread. All I need is a few minutes to put everything together, then I leave it to prove and let the the rising magic happen while I'm working away in the morning with the promise of fresh bread to look forward to, to say nothing of the amazing smell that fills my flat. Here's some sesame bread, still warm from the oven just in time for lunch...

Nice to meet you!

Welcome to my world! I’m Ruth, I’m 30 and I live in Bristol. Professionally speaking, I’m a freelance translator spending my days deciphering all manner of subjects in German and Russian and making sense of them in English, whilst trying to ensure that all the hours on my own in front of a computer don’t turn me into a hermit.

I like my job (most of the time at least) but what I really love, and the reason behind the blog, is being creative – sewing, knitting, embroidery, baking, cooking, making cards, lino printing, a bit of patchwork and quilting, and I think crochet is next on the list of things to learn.

I’ve always quite enjoyed making things, but I’ve really got into it in the past couple of years after my Mum persuaded me into buying a sewing machine and since then I’ve always got at least one project on the go. There’s only so many handmade items you can fit into one flat though, and if I ate all the things I baked on my own I’d be the size of a house, so my friends and family are the main beneficiaries of my creativity. They tell me I’m quite good at what I do, but I suspect they’re biased so I decided to share my creations, musings and inspirations with the rest of the world.

With that in mind, I’ll leave you with a couple of photos of recent projects – cushions for two new babies. The main base material is fleece so they’re lovely and soft, and it’s always nice to have something personalised I think. They went down well with the parents (I don’t think the babies are old enough to appreciate them yet!), hope you like them too!