Ugh

The weather last Sunday was absolutely GORGEOUS. It was perfect weather in fact for a nice country walk, but thanks to a gone-wrong pedicure last summer and a toe-stubbing incident a couple of weeks ago I wasn’t exactly in the greatest of physical shape for one. In fact right now I’m *desperately* in seek of an emergency podiatrist appointment as I have a horseriding riding lesson on Friday and would really rather ride in comfort, but so far the earliest I can get an appointment is a week from today….a whole week? Can I last that long?? I fear I will have Ugh.

Anyway continuing the theme of the weekend that had been set the day before, Mutti and I decided to have a Mother And Daughter Outing, not that we aren’t already bonded of course, but it’s been a long time when we’ve been out as just the two of us. Given that the weather was at last sunshiney enough to get the camera out, we decided to cease the opportunity and go out for a little photoshoot with one thing in mind: RAVELRY. Mutti finally got her invitation through a couple of weeks ago, but because she hasn’t yet got around to uploading any of her projects, she keeps getting little emails reminding her of this fact and she’s so worried about getting booted off that she wanted to do something about it, and fast. She’s such a fan of Ravelry now that a crafting life without it really wouldn’t be worth living, hehe.

A little over three and a half hours, 30 changes of knitwear, a lot of silly giggling and 609 photos later, we finally reached the end and celebrated with a flask of hot apple tea and some ginger biscuits. It was the perfect end to a perfect afternoon spent playing with my mummy. Now all that’s left to do is for me to get her onto Flickr so that she can upload them all link them all into Ravelry and save her knitting future

Here are some of my favourites that we took that afternoon. I’ll hopefully get around to uploading the others over the course of the next week or so, but as you can imagine, it’s going to be quite a big task

I love my mummy

PS I hope my toe is better by the weekend as apparently Colin Firth is filming in a village just down the road…

I have a confession to make. It involves guilt. For the past couple of weeks I have been struggling to bond with Eliza. No matter how hard I tried, I felt we just couldn’t connect. With Paige, we bonded straight away and there was no going back, she settled right in and became a permanent fixture and I can’t now imagine a life without her sitting nearby. Scarlett also seemed to fit in quite naturally too immediately adjusting to life over here, and she was brimming with confidence when she met Paige. But with Eliza it’s not been so easy. Compared with the other two, she just felt very different from the start. It was almost like she was behind a barrier. And for that I felt guilty.

After a little bit of discussion over on the TIB forum, I was much relieved to hear that other people had had similar issues with their V-Smash Blythes, and a lot of it tended to revolve around the same thing……we felt overwhelmed by their hair. Compared to Paige and Scarlett, Eliza has about twice the amount of follicles as her sisters, combined. She was less of a little Blythe, but more of a little Cousin It. See what I mean? Beautiful colour, but MUCH OF IT.

So I made a rather drastic decision on Friday night to CUT IT, but I thought if we all did it together, it would help us all bond. The others were highly alarmed when they heard that the scissors were coming out, but we (even Eliza) were all in agreeance, she had too much hair, and some of it simply had to go.

Actually, when it came to it, I was too scared to cut off any of Eliza’s beautiful hair, but Paige was feeling braver than me. What a nice sister she is!

Poor Scarlett could barely watch as Paige started lunging at Eliza’s hair with the scissors. Paige actually got rather into it in the end, and bits of red hair went flying to the sound of *snip, snip, snip*.

Poor Eliza got more nervous by the minute as Paige wouldn’t let her look in the mirror until it was finished. Luckily Scarlett was there to give her some support and help her through it.

I’m not surprised she was feeling a bit worried, just look at the amount of hair that tumbled to her feet. Let’s just say that Paige was doing a very thorough job with those scissors.

But Paige was feeling highly confident about it, and was altogether very pleased with herself.

Eventually Paige announced that she was finsihed. This was when Scarlett was almost sick with anxiety- what if her sister didn’t like her makeover?

But we all agreed that Paige had done an excellent job. I was so pleased! At last I was finally able to see the little Blythe behind all that red hair not just a walking hairball, and what a pretty little Blythe she is too!

WELL DONE PAIGE!! And more importantly, HELLO ELIZA!!!

Quite a lot came off in the end- about 1.5 inches or so. This was quite a major haircut, but it made such a world of difference

Friends over on the TIB forum had also suggested that a very good way to bond was to go out for a little daytrip and photoshoot, so I decided to turn the whole of Saturday into Eliza Day, and she came with me to the big charity sale that’s held in a nearby big old stately home every three weeks. This is one of my very favourite events around here and there would have to be an extremely large and fabulously important something else going on that would make me miss it. It’s all subdivided into categories like you’d find in a department store including a wonderful crafts section that turns into a humungous scrummage as soon as they let you through the gate. As usual I came away with armfuls of bounty- trimmings and lace, an assortment of knitting needles and double pointers (I’ve discovered knitting in the round), a couple of skeins of mohair, and some cones of 1 ply that I can use for knitting in miniature, plus a couple of other things. But by far the greatest find of all was this……

An entire set of crochet hooks, all for just £2.50! I need never buy another crochet hook again! Unless of course I happen upon any antique ivory ones which are by far the loveliest to craft with.

But anyway, after raiding the haberdashery section, and the dolls clothes bit (hooray, I found some little Blythe-sized boots!), Eliza and I slipped out into the grounds and did a bit of tree climbing…

And took some photos in the morning sun…

She really is a pretty little thing.

*puffy heart Blythe love*

And I think this did the trick! After this, I really felt as if I had got to know her and I felt so much relief! And now that I could see her personality coming through, it was an excellent time to visit the patchwork shop to choose some fabric to make an outfit for her. We actually picked up quite a few choices in the end, all with tiny little prints on them so I’m sure I’ll be making for her sisters too

Unfortunately my nice sewing machine is over in California right now, but tonight I won a wheelie carry case on ebay that should work out for it, and so DrMrNin can now bring it over with him when he comes in about six weeks.

All in all hooray for a rather lovely weekend, bonding with my Blyhe. And finally no more guilt about not being able to cope with all that hair

And hooray too for playing with my camera again as *finally* the light was strong enough to be able to take some non-grainy pics

I hope everyone else also had lovely weekends too

It was so nice to be able to get my camera out again. Unfortunately I’m a little rusty with it, but hopefully I’ll get back up to speed before too long.