I will be taking a few more days to get back in to things before I start blogging again in earnest, but I have lots of things to share with you so hopefully the posts will come along regularly. In the meantime why don't you sit back and relax with me, maybe join me in a cocktail or two?
Cheers!! X
The ATC is from Kathy and the tissue holder and bookmark from Jane. What a lucky girl I am to receive such great trades :)
You know that spring is in there air when cute little lambs start to appear all over the countryside.
Cute no?
Seeing these little fellows has reminded me of the little sheep sampler I had in mind to make a couple of years ago. I made a few little sheep in different stitch techniques then it fell by the wayside, I really must dig them out and start working on that again.
'Ticker Tape'
'Dream'
'The Jungle King'
There is a long way to go and I know I started this too late on in the month to have it done by the end of the green round but hey we don't have to follow the colours strictly so it'll still count next month too.
I really haven't had time for much the last couple of days, the cold I thought I had shaken off is back with avengeance. Even when I'm ill though I find it hard to sit idle for too long so I decided to sit and do a bit of mindless stitching at the machine.
Do you remember that pile of postcards that I wanted to reuse? Well some of them were good to go as they were and just needed some new backing so that's what I did to keep me from going insane for an hour last night. Not very exciting I know but still every little helps, right? I just have 11 more cards to revamp and recycle and my swap is done :)
We've had a couple of fence panels come down in the winds over the last couple of weeks and I haven't had time to get them all cleared away. In the meantime the cats seem to be enjoying the mess as one giant scratching post.
Cute!
Well a mess is what I got, look at the state of my cutting table. But I do now also have some little green ATC's in progress. Hopefully they'll be done in time to share on Saturday.
I know you have seen some of these little guys before so I hope you're not going to be too bored seeing them again. Last time I think I had 11 made, now there are 21 and they are ready to march on Amsterdam at the end of the month.
Here they all are (sorry for the head tilting picture, I've tried a couple of times to upload this and no matter what I do it wants to stand on it's side!).
We went for a little wander which took us round the outskirts of a local village called Box. It's a walk that I've done before but last time it was a bit later in the year and there was plenty of lovely sunshine. This time it was fair but pretty chilly in the air.
Dave decided to try and warm up by letting his inner child out and climbing some trees....
... he also had to jump on this rope and have a swing. I had visions of having to drag a very wet and sorry for himself man out of the river, but thankfully he managed to hang on and keep dry!
We weren't the only ones messing around on the river that day. Mr and Mrs Duck came over to say hello but they didn't stay long the carried on splashing and quacking up river.
It wasn't all messing around by the river though, we had to put in some hard work with and uphill climb and we got charged down by one big and angry horse who didn't seem to like the fact that the public footpath went through his field. The climbing effort was worth though for the lovely views back down and over the village.
We were in fits of laughter trying to take a picture of us with the view in the background. We ended up with lots of shots of cropped heads and even some of the ground!! This was the best of a rather poor bunch. :-)
It was interesting sorting through all the scraps, as I was cutting the green squares I was thinking there are so many different greens here these blocks are going to look awful, but actually I was pleasantly surprised when they all got stitched up. Some how all these different tones and shades just work together - well I think anyway, I'm sure some of you may think different.
You might remember that last week I was struggling to find any inspiration from green, a lot of you left relly encoraging comments and some great suggestions so thank you. I've started on a couple of little things but also something a bit bigger - inspiration came through the letterbox the other day in the form of a pattern - one that I'd forgotten I had ordered so I now have lots of green options to work on this week. I'm going to keep you in suspense though and you'll have to tune back next week to find out what I'm doing......
In the sorting process I came across many spare cards that I made for swaps which for one reason or another didn't get used. I had a search round a couple of yahoo groups and have found a big 18 card swap to join, which will help me reuse and recycle most of this lot.
...... with fabric.
As you can see she has moved on and has a head and everything. I added some flowers to the bottom of her skirt and I'm a lot happier with the way it looks now.
These flowers match the one that I'd already added to her bodice. They come from a couple of bunches of artificial flowers that I picked apart.
I didn't finish her off exactly as the pattern in the book. I decided not to add netted ruffs to her sleeves, instead I just tied on some torn strips of left over sari silk.
I also didn't add ribbons to her legs as in the original pattern. I had to change out the fabric that I had first chosen for the legs as I didn't have quite enough. It got replace with a fabric that has a pretty dragonfly pattern so I thought the legs didn't really need anything extra.
I raided my yarn stash for her hair, and while I didn't have anything that stuck strickly to the colour pallette I'm happy with what I picked out.
So I have been making something for my friend, Claire. When I asked her if she had any requests she came back and said she was happy for me to make anything I liked but added that she particularly like purple, red and cats. As I've already made a red quilt and we had red month last month I decided to go with purple.
Can you tell what it is yet? .................
Aren't these guys just the cutest? I made a new pillow, using a pattern from 'Alley Cat Tales.
The pillow has been delivered and Claire loves it, I have to say I do too. I can see another one of these getting made just for me.
This is also going to be my entry for the Blogger's pillow party this month.
Here is what I have for the skirts so far. I'm not happy yet there is a huge amount of embellishing to go before I can fix the things that I see wrong here. I need to get my needle out though as the deadline for the challenge is fast approaching.
I love them! Beth was also kind enough to send me some wonderful fabrics too.
I'm so pleased that I took part in this wonderful swap. Thanks Beth!
I have a little confession... I'm sad to say so far green is not inspiring me. I have been sorting through the scraps and cutting out some squares for my chequerboard blocks. Usually at this stage I have plenty of ideas jumping out and screaming 'make me'. but so far I'm coming up blank.
Since taking this picture he has learnt to use the cat flap and is now regularly seen disappearing outside. He never stays out for long though he's just too scared of ... well pretty much everything. I'm really pleased that he is making this progress though and am hoping that he will start gaining extra confidence in his old age, and who knows maybe he'll even encourage Hector to go out with him.
Iris is starting to come to life. I'm sure you will have noticed that this girl has had some colour added to her face.
I'm really quite pleased with how she turned out. The faces have been really my biggest fear in the whole doll making process, but Jan's book gives some really clear instructions on how to construct and colour the face features.
She is by no means perfect and I had to improvise on some of the colours as I didn't have exact colour matches in my water colour pencils as given in the book but she's relatively realistic looking so I'm happy.
I'm not sure that it's picked up too well in the photo, but the fingers are made positionable by adding some chenille sticks (pipe cleaners to some of us!!) in to the hands. I wasn't able to find any white sticks and tried to take a short cut by adding some coloured ones that I managed to buy, but I'm really not happy. As the flesh fabric is so light the colour is showing through the fabric a lot.
A box of vintage linen handkerchiefs. They are a bit tired and in need of a clean but they were really cheap so I decided that they just had to come home with me.
Not sure what I'll do with them yet, maybe I'll just clean them up, maybe I'll have a play and dye some, maybe they'll just chopped up and incorporated in to projects down the line somewhere. Any suggestions?
