Ruffled Flower Pillow

Last month I made the prettiest pillow to sit on my bed. I found this tutorial on Pinterest and I desperately wanted to make one. I wasn't even put off when I realised that I would have to make ruffles without a ruffler attachment for my sewing machine. After all, the tutorial says that you need to end up with a strip of fabric at least 9 feet long, so I figured that wouldn't be too hard. Yeah, it turns out that it should have said that you need a strip of fabric at least 9 yards long. I ended up cutting many many strips of fabric that added up to about 28 feet long.

I didn't take any in progress shots because honestly it's pretty easy to ruffle fabric (just a little tedious if you're doing lots of it!) You just sew 2 parallel lines of basting stitches along the entire length of the fabric (but make sure you don't backstitch the ends!), gently pull on the top threads on each side and move the fabric towards the middle of the strip. If that sounds a bit confusing, there's a very good explanation here. The most important thing is to loosen the tension of your machine first. I did a test run with the top tension as loose as it would go, but it was still too tight to gather without snapping the thread, so I had to loosen the bottom tension too, and that worked perfectly.

I love the way this pillow turned out. It looks so impressive, but it was really quite easy to make.

I'm 29 and I still sleep with a teddy bear. Go ahead and judge me, I don't care.

BBC 500 Words Competition

(Note: This post is unashamed parental pride. I realise it may not be of any interest to anyone but myself, but I'm posting it anyway.)

This morning Adam decided that he wanted to enter the BBC's 500 words short story competition, so he sat down and wrote a short story. I asked if he minded if I posted it to my blog (because I think it would be a breach of his trust to post it without his permission), and he said he didn't, so here it is. It made me laugh, and I think it's pretty good for a seven year old (but I am slightly biased).

In Search Of The Magic Ring

 I was just about to find my boat when somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned round and saw who it was. It was the King! He told me I had to find the magic ring. “What is the magic ring.” I asked.

 “The magic ring has magical powers. We have been trying to find it for ages. I believe in you.” the King told me. “Okay I just have to find a few friends and a metal detector and I’ll be off.”

 I got Nathan, Caleb, Ellis, and a metal detector and we got in my boat to set off through the shark infested water. Nathan held the map, Ellis did the steering and Caleb was on the lookout for sharks. A shark came close to eating us but Caleb warned us and we went on full speed so the shark took a great big gulp of water and we kept on full speed because the shark might want to get revenge.

 When we got to the deep dark forest we were greeted by werewolves so we bopped them on the nose and ran to the red river. We swam through the red river when I got a nip on the toes and noticed there were Japanese spider crabs in the red river. A crab fisherman let us have a go on his speedboat so we clambered aboard.

 We jumped out of the speedboat and ran into the monster cave but the monster was at Sainsbury’s. I got the metal detector out and started to scan the ground. I didn’t hear a ring sound when suddenly I heard a thump and Ellis was lying down on the ground. We asked him “Are you alright, Ellis?” He said “Yes, just a little bump. I slipped on a slug.” He had his mouth open wide, and was pointing toward the ceiling. “The ring, we’ve found it!” Ellis said. We all looked at where Ellis was pointing. There was a ring of plasma floating just above our heads, and the magic ring was stuck inside it. “How do we get it out?” I asked. As soon the words left my mouth Nathan shouted out “I know! The magic word on the back of the map!” I held out my hands underneath the ring and exclaimed “Shambo-Chambo!” The ring fell into my hands, and we shouted altogether  “We’ve found the ring!” We ran to the safe harbour to tell the King and give him the ring. The King tells the town crier to announce that we have found the ring, and the town has a big party with lots of fireworks. Everyone is very happy that we found the ring.

 The End

A small change practically, a huge change emotionally

I've made a very small change to my About page today; I removed the word 'straight'. No, I'm not about to leave Andy for another woman, but I have accepted recently that I'm bisexual. It won't make a huge difference to my life because I'm happily married and I have no intention of changing that, but it's a relief to have finally figured it out.

It's something that I remember worrying about in my early teens. I definitely fancied boys but I started to worry that I also liked girls, and I was terrified about what my dad would say. I'd already heard him say on various occasions that if my sister or I 'decided' we were lesbian he'd disown us. So I buried it. Even when I found myself in bed with another woman in my late teens I still denied it, told myself we'd just been messing around. Even though I am an ardent supporter of gay rights I apparently had this enormous mental block when it came to my own feelings. I don't really know what caused that to change. I think I'd been mentally screaming it for years and I finally started listening. I told Andy around Christmas, and last week I told my mum. I was so scared; she's always been accepting of people being gay but sometimes people react differently when it's their own son or daughter. Thankfully she was fine with it. Whether that would have been the case if there was a chance of being in a relationship with a woman I don't know, but I hope not. We came to the mutual conclusion that we probably shouldn't tell my dad though, and I'm pretty okay with that. It won't make any difference to my life and it's stress that I don't need.

So it's taken me until the age of 29 to realise that I'm bisexual, but now I feel uncomfortable using the term to describe myself. Not because I think there's anything wrong with it, but because I feel like a bit of a fraud. I'm a cis-woman in a happy marriage to a cis-man, I have never and will never be in a relationship with a woman, and I have never and will never face any kind of discrimination based on my sexuality, so what right do I have to call myself anything other than straight? Can I identify as bisexual in spite of these things? I hope so because the fact remains that I am attracted to women. I am bisexual, and I am happy with that.

At least I didn't talk too much about sex, right?