I'm the proverbial plumber with a leaky tap

  Except i'm a nappy maker whose son wears such rags as this. Unfortunately, this is not an oddity-most of his stash has been worn so much that it's looking worse for it. It's what happens when you're #5.

Frugality gone too far maybe? Or completely sensible given its purpose? I'll stick with the latter.

December

And what a hectic month it was-first up there was lots and lots of work to do, hence the totally shameful table.

But I managed to squeeze in finalising the OSFM swim nappy pattern, in amongst the market busyness and custom orders-now just to make some for the site!

 

We had our Land for Wildlife assessment and got our really cool sign, woohoo! Lots of lantana clearing and reading has been a result, with our planning visit due in a few days time.

A goat appeared one day, it's not every day i'm sitting there feeding Frosty and look out the window to see one of them ambling past. He was duly returned to his home a few properties down after overnighting here on a run, luckily before he reached the food forest. Or he would have been chevon.

 We had a broody chook comedy occur (more about that later) and have nine chicks as a result. So cute!

Which necessitated the building of a mini chook dome, much more successful result than the Linda Woodrow one (more about that later too).

 Bella and Daisy the geese joined the family.

The food forest area has been pimped and is loving the rain that finally arrived-the resident brush turkey is a fan of the renos too.

The fairy garden was also pimped after the chooks turned it into a wasteland-it is now fenced as we try to come up with the final housing solution for them. The solar lanterns automatically turn on at dusk, which has been taken as concrete proof that fairies are there.

Christmas crafts and baking, with much camera slackery.

 

 

And sewing presents-five stocking to replace their ratty old bought things they had.

 

A Chickummyjig for F, which he ignores and the other kids adore.

 

Plus aprons and a pair of shorts each for the older four, more camera slackery.

Lots of playing with presents, but I only do it because the kids love it. You wouldn't catch my by myself. Never. *snort*

 

My babe turned one, and i'm still thinking it's all up from here :P

 Plus a few trips to the beach, a pile of tie-dyeing, renovating the kids room and half the kitchen and lots more gardening and general tidying of the property, it's finally starting to look like a home.

And this is why the blogging is sloooow-looking at the above i'm surprised at how much we've managed to cram into one short month!

Now I get to REALLY go feral

The block we got knocked back on a month or so ago now has a completely unconditional contract on it and will settle in two weeks. After a saga stretching months it's a little hard to believe, I keep thinking something else will go wrong. It all turned into this really cool, old fashioned process in the end-the current owners came back, we went up to the block for a night and had a BBQ with the neighbours, we ditched the idiotic CWB and applied face-to-face with a local bank and got it with no issues-it was such a nice process compared to the usual faceless production line churning out of forms. So in two weeks we'll be out in the backblocks on solar power and tank water, with perfect peace and tranquility and masses of wildlife.



One little tiny corner in all it's awesomeness :D

Plus, not much creation has been wielded here lately-however, the new little button to your right will explain that. Lots of things have been done and are still being done to get that happening!

Fluffy mail time (oh how I hate that phrase!)

These started winging (trucking?) their way to Cairns today. They've been excruciatingly painful to make so you better all enjoy them!

Pockets

Covers

And here's one of our covers on Shorty at nearly three years (next week!) and around 13kgs, with a trim fitted under.
And Frosty, at 10 weeks and about 6kgs, with a big fat terry flat under.
Can't believe no-one chose the rainbow print, it's awesome!

Something more positive

Mostly anyway. I'd been brainstorming on how to fix a couple of things with my night nappies-not major issues, but the little niggly things. The best idea I had was to overlock them, rather than turn. Now, I was right-it means the front sits straight and flat, the sides have less bulk and the leg frills make the legs a little more secure in terms of containment. The problem? Well, I cut it and mostly made it yonks ago. But I didn't allow enough space around the snaps for the overlocker so just left it half-made. Plus my black wooly nylon was all odd and kept sticking for some reason-it was just one of those things that was a PITA from start to finish. So i'm almost offended that it worked so well when I finally got around to finishing it (overedging with the sewing machine-shamefully messy)-because it means I keep having to make them like this.

I'm sulking now-i've got six cut out and i'm deliberately ignoring them.

So here it is, pocket with 10 layers of heavyweight bamboo/cotton and 2 layers of 2.5mm needlefelt on my skinny little 13kg 3.5yo. My three still in night nappies have all had a shot at it and it fits them all beautifully-it's still the same pattern after all.

Thankfully, i'm done

These have been my background project for a few weeks now-when I haven't had anything much else to do, or when i've wanted something that doesn't require much brainpower i've continued on. However, I got a bit sick of the stack sitting there and hammered away at them last weekend so I could shove them in the stock box and stop looking at them!

RIP Basic Fitteds! They're up on the site in bulk packs, however I need more stock. D starts work this week so i'll have less time, but some money to buy more fabric will be fantastic!

Ugh, bureaucracy

Well, so much for the market idea. I'll still go, but it's definitely not worth the odd trip. The casual fees are astronomical, there's a novels worth of paperwork to fill out, you need ridiculous amounts of PLI and they don't supply shade or tables. So i'll wait until i'm not pregnant and slowly accumulate all I need by then-unless I hit the jackpot it'll take me weeks to recoup the setup costs.

So many ideas ditched simply because they're bad *sigh*

Scared, very scared.

People who know me will know i'm a hopeless perfectionist. Everything must be done just so. And when it comes to my business my perfectionist tendencies tend to go into overdrive. I had in my head that to start doing the 'serious' markets up here I needed to achieve about 1001 things first, and probably wouldn't go do my first until after the babe is born.

Well. D gave me a talking to tonight. Along the lines of 'you have stock, you know what you're doing, just bloody GO already!' And I had to admit he's right. I'm sure most people won't care that I don't have demos totally organised, or fancy advertising, or that there's still some things that irritate me about the site. Best just to go and wing it, especially after last weeks positive.

Last weeks positive-taking some nappies to show a stallholder at the market i'd been chatting to. She bought two and has requested at least two more. While going over it with her a random person stopped at her stall, saw the nappies and bought one. So three sold and two ordered in under five minutes.

After that, I think I just need to bite the bullet. But i'm still crapping myself-taking stuff you have spent endless hours designing and making is always nerve-wracking. Deep breaths...........argh!

Nappy for Shorty

Not that he needs more-but i've had this concept in my head for months. What with sickness and moving it took forever to try it out.


I'm impressed so far-nice and trim but very absorbent, OSFM, easy to use and easy to make (very important to me after making lots of complicated things!) Even the husband likes it, and he's a terrible critic. It's had a few weeks wear now with no issues-I was smart enough this time to make a few mock-ups first!