Sunday sun.

Bil was very organised this morning and struck the tent before the preteens were awake. Well, the second bedroom and the outer anyway. When they woke up and stumbled out he asked them if anything was missing.

“Um, the washing line?”

“What, not the tent?”

doh. They breakfasted and putered, and Big taught Princess and Scott how to scoobi keyrings for themselves. In the meantime, Tim cooked up a proper breakfast for Bil and himself.

Small wanted to go on the puter again, so I told him to wait until our guests had gone. Which meant he spent the last quarter of an hour asking whether each stage of leaving (going out of the door, through the gate, getting into the car) qualified as them having gone. Sigh.

Once they had gone, he putered and they watched some TV. Then I told them that they’d had too much screen time for the time being and they reluctantly did some reading. Small is working his way very slowly through You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum! which is his overdue library book that I can’t renew as someone else has it reserved. He’s determined he wants to read it, but somehow this is supposed to happen without him actually opening it. Not sure which of her library books Big started on.

Tim went out for his usual Sunday outing, and was a little longer than usual. Apparently there was jazz on. Left him refereeing the screen time/ puter time debate and headed off down through town to pick up a toddler doll from freecycle for Big. Thought that it might be better for her to make clothes for that, so that she can do the Dolly and Me style creations from YouCanMakeThis.com

I’ve been thinking that the walk to the leisure centre was around a half mile, and worrying over how long it’s taking me these days. Today I checked it on google maps when looking up exactly where the road is that I was going to, and found that it’s actually just over a mile. That makes me feel a lot better. Took me absolutely ages today, but it was kind of hot and without swimming lessons to get to, I wasn’t in any rush.

Home about 4.30, and half an hour later Big and I were set up in the kitchen making dolls clothes. Took an awful lot longer than I’d anticipated – we did lose a little time with me working out how to do zigzag stitches on the fabric that we were using, but also a lot of it with Big just not paying any attention to what I was trying to demonstrate to her. So I’d carefully explain what I was doing and show her how to do it, then we’d swap places and the first thing she’d say would be “what do I do?”

Aargh. Still, we managed a simple shirt. Nearly a disaster when we discovered it wouldn’t go over the doll’s head, but it fits Holly the bear nicely and can be put on the (as yet unnamed) doll by going up over its feet. Think we might try making a slightly larger one in the next few days, although tomorrow she wants to try a wrap skirt.

Also think I might try scaling the pattern up and making her a similar top, I think we have enough fabric for that and it would be good practice on messing around with patterns.

Have to say, that compared to standard patterns, these downloads are way better. They aren’t just pattern pieces, they are pictorial instruction sets, with written instructions as well, so even for this simple shirt (basically a tube with arm holes and an elasticated neck) there are three pages of step by step instructions on how to do it.

And the first thing you do, I’ve told her, is read the instructions right the way through. She doesn’t know why, but she is going to learn that that is a rule.

Small drew for at least part of the time that we were sewing, he took a look at the Usborne Starting Drawing book I grabbed from the library. Hoped it might inspire him to try out a few more things with his art. Not sure whether it did tonight, but it might sink in over the next few days, and I’m hoping to do some work with him as well.

Tim finished off their day with some more Wayside School and I sat and felt hot and twitchy. And now I’m going to go lie down and hopefully not feel quite so hot and twitchy in bed.