It's beginning to feel a bit like autumn.

Driving home through the park the other day I saw the leaves on the horse chestnuts were beginning to colour and fall, but then they are always early turners.  Then some adverts came through the door featuring new pens, tracksuits, books and schoolbags.  Ah well, I thought, they are getting a bit ahead of themselves it's still midsummer really.  And then I woke up to lashing rain, a gale blowing, the beginning of the last week of the holidays and the realisation  that autumn is barging its way into the end of summer.

When the storm abated and we were left with a quickly chagable sky and that swirly wind that has just a hint of an autumn sting we donned raincaots and gumboots and ventured off down a track that we had never tested before.  There was a reason for this, firstly we had been told "it just goes to the fields" secondly it is not adapted for pushchair wheels  - and thirdly I needed to wait until all the family's little legs had grown into bigger legs to go adventuring down strange tracks! This has all meant 10 years of driving past the track never knowing that although it does just go to the fields it also goes there for a long way through beautiful coutryside.  We cycled through puddles, past boulders, through ferns, over a stone bridge and through  a wood.  It also had the biggest juiciest blackberries that we have found.  We ate many and collected more and then thoroughly mud-stained and hands and faces smeared a deep purple we returned just before the storm attacked again.  

The afternoon was spent making pear and blackberry jam (from this marvellous recipe here. )  then ordering in the wood for the fire and the hay for the donkpon.  I have decided to embrace my favourite season even though it appears to be muscelling in on my summer a little early this year.

Little Drummer Bag

A bit of a niche post this one but never mind.  Today was a sorting, mending, making day.  And having sorted the kids clothes, mended the favourites that still fit, I decided that the making part could now be done with a pair of holed jeans.  I shall explain myself I little better.  M is an aspiring drummer, no sorry, percussionist.  As such she has weekly lessons and my study has now become a percussion room.  Her drumsticks are "tidied" on top of her drum (from where they roll off onto the floor) and carried to music poking out of her bag.  So I decided to make her a proper bag for them.  This is a project that I have had in mind for a while now but hey, I only just made the time.  So here, without further ado, is the little drummer's bag.  Tah dah!!


It is obviously super easy to make.  I cut the leg off the pair of jeans just under the pocket - the pocket which I carefully unpicked and put aside to make the flap.  Then I sewed up across the bottom of the leg and voila a basic bag.  The top of the bag was rolled over on itself as a hem and a long strap added before I stitched it down.The jeans had originally been fastened with a popper button which made things easy as I chopped both parts off the waistband, the bottom popper was sewn under the hem and the top popper just under the pointy end of the pocket that I had so carefully unpicked.  I poppered the poppers together and folded the pocket over the opening of the bag and marked then sewed where it came to - which made the opening flap!  Very good but very blue - so I addd a pink ribbon trim round the pocket and a little butterfly to girl it up.



 Honestly it's so fab I want to play the drums!  The sticks hang from the music stand in this bag and the bag slings over the girl as she heads out to her bashing lesson.  Apparently sized 5 years old jeans are long enough for drumsticks!   Longer jeans might have been better as you could cut them off further down and avoid the leg tapering outwards but we've not reached that age yet in holey jeans.   These pictures probably explain it better that I have but ask me any questions if you don't understand anything! Like I said it's niche - probably wouldn't appeal much to an aspiriing heavy metal boy drummer, or leave off the butterfly ;-)