Phew, it feels forever since I last entered a challenge. Of course I had more pressing priorities, but it is good to find a few minutes to do something unabashedly fun. And the 4×4 Friday theme—florals—could not have been better for me. I love using flower images in collages, and they make the perfect backdrop to show off a rosy-cheeked Caterina.

Five-day-old Caterina

The poor thing doesn’t look too great in this picture, but I love that she is smiling, so I used it anyway. No doubt she will never forgive me when she grows up!

Nicco is managing to cope with his baby sister much better than I expected. I was really worried that he would feel ‘dethroned’ in becoming one of two siblings and therefore have a major crisis . To be honest, I am still expecting one any time. But so far, so good, so I have decided to take every day as it comes.

Family portrait


Siblings


Brotherly love

I am no longer a knight. After fighting some serious battles, taking injuries from sword and lance and even falling off my imaginary horse, I have been mercilessly demoted to armourer once again. That’s because Niccolo decided he needed a helm and I had to make one pronto.

The world’s greatest knight…and his mum

It is when faced with this kind of challenge that I am grateful for the Internet. I mean, I have no idea how to make a helm. Or rather I hadn’t, until a few hours ago. Then I hit Google, and found helm patterns and instructions on the Cleveland Museum of Art website. A couple of scissor cuts and a few staples later, we had a helm (sans visor because Nicco could not wait to wear it).

Knight in shining armour

Whey hey! I dared harbour hopes of returning to knighthood. Alas, my son can’t decide whether he’d rather be a knight or an archer. So I was moved to bow making duties—and now that the bow is ready and strung, it is time to look up how to fletch an arrow…Meanwhile Caterina laughed it all off.

OK, got all the tests done and both Caterina and I have been declared fit to go home. So we are packing up and waiting for someone to pick us up from the hospital.

Meanwhile, here are a few more pictures…

Brother and sister…

Yawning…

Sleeping tight

Sister? What sister? A motorbike is a lot more interesting…

So, Caterina didn’t sleep much last night, and neither did I. Not too sure why, but my guess is that she was probably very hungry. I am hoping for a catch-up nap at some stage today…

Meanwhile, here is a picture, as promised….

Caterina when she was 12 hours old

Phew. It wasn’t a walk in the park but not too bad either. Caterina was born yesterday at 7.10pm. She is fine and rather big (7lbs 13oz, or 3.5 kilos). 

Like many newborn babies, she bears a close resemblance to a hairy monkey, but I have hopes that—like Pu-erh tea, claret and her brother before her—she will improve with time. Pictures to follow soon. 

Time for stealth. Nicco and I have embarked on a secret project. Manfredi’s birthday is coming up in a month and we are making a little memory booklet for him.

We began it yesterday. I cut the base pages, folded them and glued them into a booklet, while Nicco made a wax crayon and a pencil drawing. The idea now is to paint each base page, then add the collages, photographs, drawings, perhaps even poetry. Whatever takes our fancy, really.

The biggest challenge for me is to keep it suitably masculine in both imagery and colours. I realised just how much I use pretty ‘girly’ flowers and butterflies when I worked on a patterned paper for the book today and found myself somewhat short of collage elements.

The first steps of the booklet: Nicco’s drawing and mypatterned paper

I ended up using mostly old letters, stamps and newspaper cuttings, and I am not sure I like the end result. Still, it is a beginning, and I have a full month ahead of me to perfect it. This is going to be both stretching and fun. Let’s just hope Manfredi likes it!

Ohh, I am so happy. I have handed in all my articles and now I can rest and play while I wait for the baby to be born. Over the last few days, I honestly thought I’d never be able to relax like this. I didn’t even get (too) angry at the news that my long-awaited parcel with a bunch of Stampington magazine is delayed at customs (whyever for?) and won’t be delivered until tomorrow.

And look! I even managed to sneak in a collage. The prompt was 4×4 Friday’s families theme. It was the perfect opportunity to do something with one of the many lovely pictures of my grandmother with her sisters and their mother. I love those photos because they are a snapshot of everyday life—reading the papers, chatting, studying, sewing—and yet everyone looks so incredibly happy. You really get the feeling it was a loving, contented family.

My grandmother Nina, her sister Pia and their mother Chiarina reading the newspaper

It didn’t last of course. My great-grandmother passed away not too long after the pictures were taken, one of the sisters moved away to follow her husband, another bore a tragic loss. Which makes it all the more important for me to capture that moment of pure joy and shared love.

Whey-hey! The articles I had to do by Thursday (or before the baby’s birth, whichever comes first) are ready. OK, I still have to tweak a couple of things on one of them but that shouldn’t take too long, so I am a free woman.

I know this sounds rather ridiculous, but I did sleep very little in the last few nights because I was terrified I wouldn’t make it on time. Instead, thanks in good part to Manfredi, who took care of Niccolo for the whole weekend, and to my good writer friend Leslie, who made sure I wasn’t writing utter balderdash, I made it! Now I can stop worrying and resume crafting.

Talking of which, the only thing I produced in the last few days was a little cone inspired by a much more sophisticated one I saw on Linda Albrecht’s blog (via Artsymama).

Yum, yum, a spring cone full of sweets

It was a fun project because it was quick and simple enough to make together with Niccolo. He loved it—especially stuffing the cone with sweets and chocolate eggs, which he then proceeded to eat at record speed.

But now that the pieces are done I can look forward to starting on some other idea, and perhaps take up a challenge or two. And of course the baby has my permission to be born any time she likes.

It is that stage of a boy’s life. You know, when they gallop around the house shouting ‘en garde’ and pretending to be Sir Silver Knight who engages and invariably beats the villainous Black Knight. Niccolo is now well and truly hooked on knights’ play and of course he wants the props to go with it.

So yesterday he brandished his small plastic dagger (which he calls a sword) and asked me to make him a shield “like the one in London” —he has a full knight’s costume in London but none in Milan, where we are staying until the baby is born so my husband can actually see his newborn daughter in between one long stint at work and the next.

I cut a shield shape from cardboard, covered it with aluminium foil, taped on two foil handles—et voila his shield was ready. And pretty much the minute I had finished doing this, my husband arrived home with two foam broadswords, a fake armour and a foam shield he had bought from a toy shop (repeat with me: our son is not a spoiled brat, our son is not a spoiled brat).

Who needs a cardboard shield when you can have a real one?

It immediately transpired that mummy’s cardboard shield—no matter how lovingly crafted—cannot possibly compete with a realistic toy-shop-bought one complete with roaring lion. Clearly, my skills as an armourer leave a lot to be desired.

The ‘good news’ in all this, however, is that Nicco decreed I can have the cardboard shield and his old ’sword’ to fight against him in our homely jousts. So it looks like I have moved up in life—from shield-maker to knight. En garde!