Need tips.

Thinking I may try a quilt type thing for Sylv's big birthday. Any clues?

I blame Moogsmum. And RicRac. And possibly Lucy Locket.

I can't remember exactly when it happened but in the last few weeks I have had an urge to make a bag.

Ric Rac's world famous 'one hour bag' tutorial has been sending out its siren call for some time now but I have resisted as I am not a natural sew-er. However after the purchase of the £1.50 bag (or as we call it - 1.5 kilos of fabulous and posh scraps) it all became clear. There is over 3/4 metre of enormous dark brown, very heavy, chenille fabric (which can I say is an absolute bugger to sew b/c it frays like there is no tomorrow) which was just crying out to be partnered by the fabulous aqua and brown spotty poplin.

Poplin. Isn't that a great word? Just roll it around your tongue a little bit. Pop-lin. poplin

So I drew the pattern as directed and after some little swearing and fiddling I came up with this.

I can't begin to say how much I am chuffed with myself. I had planned to give it to a friend for her birthday but noticed in the morning that the fabric had been clipped a little too vigorously and was fraying along the bottom. Nothing that two clothes pegs and few drops of Tacky Glue can't fix!

Sadly however this meant that I have had to keep it for myself - aaaah shame! But no one can tell unless I showed them - which of course I have done every time someone says how lovely it is hee hee ;-)

So then I thought I would try something smaller. Enter emergency email to Mrs Moogsmum asking for zip assistance (would love to know I was getting hits b/c of that phrase!) and she sent me a fabulous tutorial. Sadly I am unable to link b/c I'm crubbbish but tonight I have made the little bag thingie in the collage.

Pr. C-Dub had a friend around today and Babyman was feeling a bit left out so we followed Julie's lead and rounded up all the scrappy crayons, dug out the silicone cake moulds (Julie's right - the cakes come out in pieces rather than pretty) . We sat for over an hour stripping, snapping and placing crayons into the moulds. He was desperate for the girls to ask what we were doing. They didn't, much to his chagrin.

Another collage - moving from L to R we have - the outside of the first attempt at purse/baglet making, madeline shaped crayons, crayons awaiting melting

Row Two Crayons pre-stripping and post Picasa!, unintentional t-shirt batiking, lego block shaped crayons.

Row Three Pr C-Dub and her friend being all craaaazy, Babyman working his fingers to the bone, the inside of the first attempt - ooer, real silk that is!!

The bag thingie is okay for a first attempt but I think with a bit more practice they may actually get better. We shall see........

A modern day fairy tale

Once upon a time there was a snail. His name was Soucho. He was a very happy snail, filled with the joys of the ever approaching Spring. With the sun shining so brightly in the sky Soucho thought it was the perfect day for a walk.




There are so many interesting things to see - Oo! Hello there!! Would you like to join me?

{{quiver, quiver}} What's that hiding in the shadows? I don't think I like it. I've read Hairy McClary.... {{quiver, shake}}



EEEEEEEEEEEEEYOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWFITZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



No matter which way I turn, there it is! Aaaaaargh!!!!



Run away! Run away!

So Soucho raced at top speed (about 0.62 kilometres per hour) to a lovely dark spot under a rock until Scarface Claw went home to have a sparrow for tea.

Everybody lived happily ever after. Except the sparrow.

THE END

Many thanks to the fabulous Missus Moogsmum for her lovely craft ability in creating Babyman's friend, Soucho.

Things.....

...... I have made recently.



and



photos I have taken that I love.

Easter weekend with my family

Good Friday was with chosen family. Do you have one of those? We are all from faraway and have married English boys and have been with one another through hatches, matches, dispatches and our mothers (in-law) coming to stay for six weeks at a time. You know what they say about bonding under fire!!!!!

The Kiwi now lives in a very pretty cottage on the edge of a village so we assembled there for lunch at 1(ish); however lunch was always going to be late as all three boys spotted one another in the local supermarket at 1:15!!!!!

Taking advantage of the sun we bundled up and meandered along the farm track to create space for pudding. Princess C-Dub, the Kiwi and myself had a Spring photo competition -

While we still await the judges' decision the winner is clear and obvious................

YAY ME!

Babyman wondered what was the point to an Easter Egg Hunt if the clues were going to be so obvious! He was greatly disappointed.


The Egg Hunt proper took place back in the garden. Lots of squealing, laughing and good-natured jostling for position occurred. The childer just stood back and watched as the grown-ups with cameras vied to get the best vantage point! Eventually things got underway and I noticed how my girl has suddenly grown-up.


*sigh* I fear teenageyness is not faraway now.

However my boy was all joyous and excited about bunnies and chocolate.



Easter Sunday was just us at home in the dry and the warm. Well... some of us stayed in the dry and the warm. Others(who shall remain nameless)


played in the snow ending up with frozen toes, red noses and sodden fingers. But first there were Easter Eggs as big as your head.


Before another round of snow football - the dogs won again.


They always cheat!

With just a few final tweaks and touches



we had a jolly snowy Easter.



Hope yours was fab too.

Thank you all for your help.

You will be pleased to hear I took absolutely no notice of the advice I sought. I didn't draw names out of a hat, or pin the tail on the donkey or computer or child as V.C. suggested or actually go with any of the suggestions any of you kind and lovely people provided.

Instead Princess C-Dub and myself have been sitting here mooching through mochimochiland and have decided that we quite like the UhOhs. CK has walked past shaking his head b/c he knows that he will bear the brunt of my flung needles as I spend evenings trying to work these blurry things around on DPNs. Not that he will end up looking like a hedgesnog or anything but I may curse a little and swear a lot as the little ring things are knitted up.

I shall keep you upated on the progress but first I must go and finish my crocogator from the bible of little animal knitting patterns. Just got to stuff and stitch him up! (not in an East End/criminal kind of way - that would be bad obviously)

Oh! My! Stars!

Has anyone ever thought that the gods have a sense of humour? Just yesterday I was bemoaning on (I think it was) Little Cotton Rabbits that quite obviously the blogger pantheon had it in for me as I NEVER win in any of the 'celebrate with me ' competitions that go on.

Checked out my emails tonight and there was an invite to go here - mochimochiland -and choose one of those fabulous patterns.Trouble is - I don't know which one. Please help me!

Mother's Pride (no, not the bread).

I don't know if any of you remember this at all but it is due in tomorrow. Yes, 11 weeks of school work has to be handed over tomorrow for lots of non-assessment and marking by the teachers (they have two in Pr.C-Dub's class)over the Easter break. And I am absolutely chuffed to bits with the effort she has put in to getting this work done.

I have helped her find information and organise it but she has had to understand it. At every point she has had to explain to me the words on the page. And now at the very final hour we are left with one finished river project of 14 pages long with an appendix and a cd of her fictional trip along the river.

This is suprememly exciting b/c her first project this year consisted of three pictures and four facts about endangered monkeys pulled off the internet the morning of handing in! You see, she forgot to share with us for SEVEN weeks that she had homework!!

I know they won't actually grade this mammoth effort and perhaps that is right but I also know she gets A* for effort and possibly a jolly well placed B+/A- for her work.

You see - Mother's Pride (beam, beam)

A week of busyness and lovely things.

CK was very intrigued to see that I had been sent a giant humbug all the way from the other side of the world!


The ever delightful and fragrant WMK sent me this fabulous creation from the otherside of the pond.




You see how it is all curled up like some lilac-y gorgeous corsage just ready to pin on my coat? No. It is in fact a gorgeous, giant, curly chippie scarf that is quite possibly longer than my whole back & front yard combined. I have worn it with great delight not just b/c of all the yarny goodness but b/c I know it was knitted in friendship (*sigh* I love the bloggy world.)

Speaking of the bloggy world I sent off my Easter parcel yesterday - yes I know it is a day late but as Lucy Locket pointed out the blurry organiser set a harsh deadline ;-) !! I feel happy posting this next picture without any prior warning as it is not, let me repeat that NOT, the bunny for my swap partner, Tilly Boo.

It is the first thing I have knitted from this book and I must confess I love them - book and bunny. Am now consecutively working on numbers 2 &3 - a crocogator and possibly something simian - I wouldn't like to say.

Speaking of all things ape like and monkey led I thought you may like to see the horrible monkey/ape thing that has given me so much trouble in the last four months.

He wasn't meant to be quite that big but there was a lot of covering up to be done, not least b/c some rotten little kid scratched a penis shape into the base paint! The redeeming feature is the headteacher caught him and, I should imagine, gave him such a rollicking he will have been put off graffiti for life!

This is the rest of the cupboard. There is still quite a bit of work to do around the edges, literally and metaphorically, but I am happy with its progress in the last month or so. I cannot tell you how many times I have lain on the floor there right in a throughway trying to paint those elephants. Note to self: remember painting uphill is hard!



But with a tail wind and my fingers crossed it may well be finished by the Summer holidays. (What? I only paint it for a few hours one day a week. If I'm lucky!! No. It has nothing to do with repainting again and again or earwigging into my children's school lives....).

And finally but by no means leastly, at the end of this very long and picture-y post I give you a dark and mysterious monkey bag which is about to be rewrapped and sent off to sunny (read hot and muggy) Townsville in the heart of Northern Queensland. What with Australian Customs being all fussy and everything we couldn't risk sending the sweets off so CK and I struggled through eating them for breakfast last Saturday after a friend collected our kids and took them away for the morning!

Tea? I may be converted yet.

If this is how tea-drinkers dress then I may just sign up.

Perhaps suicide professionally but so much fun!! ** edited

Blogger ate the html that gave me the graphic which outlined how many five year olds I could take in a fight. But believe me, it was 24!





** I found the html code hiding and whupped its skinny arse back here -

24


Shhhhhhh! Don't tell OfStEd.

I've been blog-hopping.

and after jumping off from WMK's page via somewhere else I found this great question. And thought it would be v. interesting to play. What are the things you haven't got on your resume?



* I've been bitten by a lion

Look! We had weather here last week!





.

wedding music

Missus Moogsmum is having a wedding anniversary today - nine not out - good job the Mooggrown-ups!

And she posted a link to the music they had at their wedding - lovely bit of Dancing Queen going on and who doesn't love Abba?

CK and I got married under a tree so all we had was birdsong and shouting tourists but what I had wanted to get married to was this.

Mind you, I also wanted to power tools on our wedding list!

Today* I have mostly been busy.

(strictly speaking it was yesterday but bear with me, it has been a long day at the coalface.)



Tomorrow (okay, today) is World Book Day and after many years of ignoring it this year our school has decided to do the dressing up thing. Not being good with decisions this has been a saga for Babyman - Capt. Jack/The Doctor. Capt. Jack/The Doctor. Oh! Who can choose?!


Princess C-Dub on the other hand had no hesitation and wanted to go as Ping from the Dragonkeeper books. You may remember this saga from a previous post.


Having an unanticipated morning off work I made a dash to our local (very old-fashioned) haberdashers because the night before I had remembered this.


So with my fanciful Hannah Montana dress pattern (nine pieces for a child's dress!! And I didn't even bother with the interfacings!!), a zip, some bias binding and two and a half (!) metres of posh, Chinoiserie-type fabric I headed home and nearly had panic attacks over how to lay the pattern, which part to cut first, why wouldn't my material look like the layout in the instructions and where the bloody hell where my material cutting scissors?!?!?!?



In the space of an hour and three quarters I managed to (finally) cut out all the pieces, completely trash the dining room and nearly cry at least once. Then I went back to my day job.

(Note the pieces of pattern paper and cloth scraps in the back corners of the room? Those were strewn from one end to the other and over every surface.)

I was even bad worker person today in that No. One borrowed child spent the day sitting at the dining room table playing with scraps of material while I did sewing. However the story she wove was very interesting and if you ever wish to know about dolphins, nets, fishermen, Bratz dolls or the perils of being a Bratz Doll and sharing your bed with a dolphin - I am the one to ask!

It is obviously something that has been on her mind as nearly the first words Pr.C-W said to me this afternoon were 'What am I going to wear tomorrow?' I told her that we would sort something out. (Nothing gives me that warm glow as much as tormenting a small child;-)) At this point I still had work to do on it.

During the dance hour I managed to finish setting the sleeves but had not yet attached the back panel so when they came home all tired and sweaty and REALLY hungry it looked a little bit like that crumpled heap lying there on the table. (BTW can you see my violet-hued slippers under the table? Cool, huh!)

Let me just tell you now that no matter what your children did for you last Sunday or may tell you tonight- I am officially the best mother in the whole wide world. Ever! Just imagine how pleased she is going to be when she wakes up and finds not only does it have a back panel but also some bias binding and a hem!

So nearly exactly 12 and 3/4 hours later I am finished, done and ready for it to come home tomorrow night (yes, alright fussy ones - tonight) trashed and mucky. I really don't know how you sewy real imaginary people do it. Kudos to you all for your ability with a motor and a needle.

Just before I go for some sleep let me show you my weekend's bargain.

Louis Moreau, the posh London quilt-y company, come here every six months or so and sells off lots of stuff. There isn't usually much there to catch my eye as it is either too big (end of bolts, etc) or far to small. It was obviously meant to be a Goldilocks afternoon as I found several bits that were just right and had to bring them home with me.


A mix of silk, texture, print and colour. Even the dark brown has a good feel to it for a solid bag.

Final word now, eyes starting to close of their own volition, must go to bed; the two legged bird has to be up in a just a few hours to catch the grumpy worms!!

P.S.Babyman decided in the end (there may have been some slight nudging going on, I wouldn't care to say) to go as Arthur Dent from Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy - jammies, slippers, a dressing gown and a towel - how straightforward is that?!

P.P.S. Received something today to put in Bunny Hop Swap pal's parcel - very pleased with myself.

*ACK!!* Emergency, emergency!!

Despite having known about it for some weeks I have not yet prepared Princess C-Dub's costume for World Book Day on Thursday. Any hints on whipping up an outfit for a 1st century B.C. Chinese girl with an affinity for dragons and a place at the Emperor's court?

need real life, not imaginary one!

Last night I had a dream which involved Philip from Afterburn and Kitty from Kitty's Bloggy Bits. As is the way of dreams I now cannot remember much but I know that a nice visit was had by all and we went home happy.

Which makes a nice change as I usually do my worrying in my dreams.

So thanks for a lovely time you two.




Random objects you don't expect to see in the English countryside #1.

Any Australians reading? Picture help required.

If you feel this post will not apply to you feel free to jump straight to the bottom for a quilt update.

Princess Curly-Wurly is doing a school project on rivers and for some reason has chosen to focus her project on the Murray River specifically. We are heading into the homestraight of putting it all together and she has done a terrific job of researching and understanding the material. I am really quite proud of her, focus is not her forte so this has been a hard slog.


My query comes now. Does anyone reading this in Australia have any recent-ish pictures of the Murray and its surrounds? We have garnered some from the world wide innernets but would love ones that can be pinpointed to a specific place on the map.


Can you help?

From the bottom of her pencilcase Princess C-Dub thanks you for your time.

For your delight and to reward the non-Australians reading through I include a gratuitous picture of lovely craft.




Our apple quilt is in its final stages and would probably have been finished by now except Sylv was sick last week and also decided she didn't like there being a seam up the middle on the back. I did suggest it would be okay (plus that she was crazy) as only CK and I would see it. She protested saying it would make her happy and it wouldn't take much to UNDO the whole thing!!!! At this point I told her she was completely crazy and we wouldn't even know.

But it made no difference and she has stripped the whole thing back to its individual pieces b/c she didn't like the batting! Seriously she is crazy!!

Lent. Faith. Guilt. And hand-made rabbits.

My lovely Bunny Hop Swap pal, TillyBoo has been sending me delicious emails which play right into both the swap & the religious theme of this month. Now hands up here b/c God and I have had serious political differences for many years but agreed some time ago to agree to disagree. But those many years of Catholicism do not fade quickly.


The other day the fresh and fantastic TillyBoo dropped me a line to say she was near enough to posting off her parcel except for the whole HAND-MADE card thing (Oh wail! Lament! How could I have forgotten that when signing up to this? There is a torment to a girl's soul right there.) How organised is my partner? How lucky am I to be the recipient of someone sooo organised? Very, let me tell you. Plus she is a little bit funny y'know (in a ha-ha kind of way).

So then I get an email asking if I would like my bunny to be a surprise b/c she can restrain herself no longer and is itching to post about it. I am a kind and generous sort of soul and replied 'surprise me'. Which she did by writing asking for clarification. (And I am looking for benediction here..) My reply was '..post and I shall not look. '

How noble am I? So noble that when I went collect the link for above Princess Curly-Wurly held sheets of paper over the screen so I wouldn't see! (I giggled a little b/c my kids didn't even bat an eyelid at such a request - does this mean they are used to living with lunacy?) Yesterday rec'd notification that le lapin had hit the Royal Mail and I should expect soonest but was I sure I didn't want to go and have a little look-see? Just a peek?

Oh! The temptation that was laid before me! Now I am not lost nor am I in a desert and anyone who actually gives stuff up for Lent - good on 'em but oh! Get thee behind me Satan!! I was sitting there with a metaphorical, metaphysical construct on each shoulder whispering in each ear. So being a good recovering Catholic I sent them all packing and denied myself the sneak preview.

Now off to a choir competition with Princess C-Dub and 30 of her closest friends.

Back now.

There were three choirs in our group and one sang sea shanties! The other lot went for the cute factor and fronted their choir with a really sweet little tiny girl complete with pigtails and long socks pulled up to her knees. And being a new millenium there were no winners but everyone came home with a very pretty certificate and some pleasant words ringing in their ears from the nice adjudicator man.

CK was out when I got home but knowing it would be my first port of call he placed a rather lovely parcel on top of the laptop. How exciting!




And then more inside!



*sigh* I am so lucky. Must go now and finish my return offering!