Let me sleep on it

Last night, at midnight, I staggered in through the front door and threw my luggage on the floor. I had a heavy overnight bag (I always overestimate how much I'll read on a train); a handbag; and two or three bags of swag from sponsors' stalls at the parent blogging conference Cybermummy, all of which I had dragged across London until my shoulders shrieked.

I'd had an exhausting day. A fun day - a day full of speeches and workshops and cupcakes and tight schedules and buzz and friendly faces. A day when I barely got chance to catch my breath. But also a very odd day, when I found myself right at the centre of something as well as right on the edge of it.

At one point all of the blogger delegates - 400 of us - sat in the main auditorium and were told to get our phones out, right now, and tweet about our day. Most already had their phones or iPads out anyway, and were beavering away. I don't have a smartphone. I was very aware that what I did have in my handbag were two battered paperbacks from a second-hand bookshop. The night before I had arrived late to my  hotel because I had stopped off at the BFI to watch a black and white film. It is a quite a strange experience, being told you are one of the driving forces of a cyber revolution when you're actually a bit of a Luddite.

This morning I got up and sat at the big old desktop computer and cranked up Twitter. Posts about Cybermummy were already popping up online, but I was in no way ready to write one. A couple of people said very nice things about me, and the post (I can show you which it is, now) I was chosen to read out during the crowdsourced keynote. On Twitter, people were having coffee, getting on trains, greeting each other. I realised that I could spend all morning there, and still be no further towards a coherent thought.

I turned the computer off. It was time to step back, and get swallowed up in something a bit more low-tech.

I bought this sarong from the Cancer Research shop a few weeks ago with the idea of turning it into something for the Lattes. The pattern was an easy choice - though I love sewing when I get started, my impetus to start usually comes from frugality rather than desire - so I went for the free oliver + s downloadable pattern for a popover sundress.

The fabric itself said 'there's no need to get too stressed about this'. Not only did it have that hippy-chic thing going on, it even got me out of making a hem.

The instructions suggested I dress the yoke with ribbon. I muttered about having no ribbon, and fruitlessly searched some boxes. Littlest turned up, and suggested that I use the ribbon she was wearing - ribbon from a giftbox that she inexplicably had tied around her waist. Well, it was her dress - who was I to decide what shade of ribbon?

This was the easiest dress in the world to make. Due to the casual weirdness of the original item, the bottom edge is a whole range of different lengths, and that makes it all the better. I even have half the sarong left to make a skirt for Eldest - with another obvious choice of pattern lined up.

And Twitter? No idea. I haven't even checked my emails for hours. Some days are better without constant updates - and it's strange that it should take a cyber conference to remind me of that.

With thanks to Kelloggs, for making my trip possible.

My new thing for today is... frugal ineptitude

I grew up in the 1970s, and my friend Joanne was a very cool friend to have. She had blue jeans with tartan bottoms like the Bay City Rollers.

We didn't have a lot of money, so one day my mother took a pair of my outgrown orange trousers (look, it was the 70s, remember?) and sewed some blue floral fabric on the bottom to lengthen them. She then presented me with this frightening item, saying: "Look! You'll be just like Joanne!"

I don't need to tell you I looked nothing like Joanne.

The reason I am dragging up this sorry story once again is that times are hard in the Coffee House at present, and making do and mending is back on the agenda. I've spent the morning turning the heating off, reading Misssy M's list of vests and browsing the net for January sales of thermal underwear.

If that weren't tragic in itself, I have also been making the poor Littlest Latte her first pair of Frankenstein pyjamas. The Eldest Latte, due to her disability, often crawls at home rather than looking around for her elusive crutches, so holey knees are an occupational hazard. Recently I trotted down to the market haberdashery to buy an iron-on patch for her jeans that said Girl Thing!. Oh, I thought I was so clever as I ironed it on! I was appalled to see it peeling itself obnoxiously off the first time I washed it.

Anyway, anything she passes down is similarly challenged in the knee area, which makes the Littlest Latte look like an urchin as she climbs the stairs to bed.

The thing is, I know that some of you sit around your house of an evening handsewing beautiful things. (Ali, I'm looking at you.) And I'm not going to post a picture of these pyjamas after their knee surgery with a worn-out pink top but let me tell you, even the four-year-old looked scared. I am out of my depth and this is one thing that I know I can't ask my mother about.

So please, if anyone knows how to mend my children's clothes without them looking even worse than I did in my orange trousers, let me know.