Light Work

Happy New Year to you all!  Happy Snow Year it is here, as in the rest of England, where we are all enjoying wondering whether our Las Vegas bound Husbs might be enjoying a night spent at Gatwick airport tonight.  On their own heads be it, we are all thinking, no?!
I have half a mind to be out there in this bright snowy light taking photos of things for the OriginalStitch website, which needs images for the products.  I have discovered that having previously thought my photography was quite good, it is in fact, how can I put it....
Um, not.
Not good.  I grabbed some sunshine to take pictures a while back, with young Hetty in tow, and now understand what a tricky devil light is.  There was too much of it, or too little, or it was making shadows.  Or not making shadows.  Or being in the wrong place entirely, the feckless little pixie of a substance.
What's that you say?  That's what photographers are for?!  Ah....!  Thanks for shedding light on that.

So I have engaged a photographer to do a product shoot for us, which we will also video, since it has children in it, and they are usually dreadful at doing as they are told, and should thus provide some fun footage for a video on the website.
Talking of children; as with all us folks here in Old Blighty, I have the children off school today because of the snow. Fancy making a mini tea set from salt dough?  Today salt-dough, tomorrow website applications and digital imaging work if I get my way - make them pay theirs.  They are 3 and 4, and I have come to realise that these youngsters know about technology innately, unlike us post-thirtyers, who are a bit stuck in the margins of Word documents.  So I'm assuming Isla and Hetty will shortly be in a position to undertake the website maintenance, and help me put nifty little gadgets and widgets and apps on this blog.  Which would leave me free to go and do some sorely desired sewing.  Now, I do love Christmas, and this year we descended, Volvo-bound, upon hoards of relatives and literally paid not a sausage in room and board for nearly two weeks.  It was quite fabulous - there is nothing quite like being able to say "Can I give you a hand?" and being given a job without having to make decisions.  Lovely.
Yes, said my hosts - just stir this a minute will you.  Yes, here - slit these and stuff cream cheese in.  Er, yes - you slice, I'll butter.  Yes, wrap smoked salmon round these.  Yes, make napkin fans.  Slice cucumber.  Set the table.  Mix this.  Stir.  Mix.  Stir.
Lovely.
However, I have not sewn for weeks and weeks and weeks, never mind our desperation to get cracking on the OriginalStitch Homewares Collection.  Desperate, I am.  I managed to grab a strip of pretty cotton and stitch it onto a handtowel, just to get a bit of a sewing fix.  I can at least look at it when I'm on the loo and feel I've done something.  And I managed to throw together some appliqued baby wipes from fleece and old terry towelling nappies for a friend with a little baby girl, her third of that variety, and practically brand new; although our attempt to reach them was entirely scuppered by a bonkers M25 motorway, and so we simply drove around our picturesque home county of Buckinghamshire for 2 hours, blindly following road diversion signs round labyrinthine roadwork avoidance routes and eating our packed lunches before arriving back home. Departure point - home.  Destination - home.  Hm.  Not such a successful journey.
But not as convoluted perhaps as The Husb who battles valiantly 'cross counties and 'twixt snow-bound highways to reach us....yes, his flight to Las Vegas has ceased to exist and they've sent him home.
"I'll be home in 2 hours I reckon" he said.  Hm.  Well.
I'll keep you posted shall I?!
I will leave you with a final look back at Christmas, before we launch headfirst into a cold and frugal January.  This is Hetty's take on the nativity, and we believe it to be a dress rehearsal for the real thing.  I had heard her chattering away while I devoured my latest issue of Sew Hip, and when I looked, here they were, the players in a tableau.  The shepherd on the right is saying "Are you sure we're meant to have them on our heads?  This one's coming off any minute, I'm telling you." and the Wise Man on the right is saying "What the...? Do I need to put an animal on my head?  Well, this is not expected.  Melchior my man, is that chap in the manger giving birth as well?" and Mary's saying "No, no, it's all in hand. Joseph's got baby Jesus over there on the blue dresser next to the Christmas tree.  They went to talk to the snowman tree decoration and Jesus wanted to see the fairy at the top of the tree."