Chickens In Cowboy Boots....

...oh yes, you read that right! Acrylic on board - this one is proving to be fun!

Stacie's Chicken & A Clanger

I don't often get to see my daughter's work that she does at the art studio, but yesterday she brought home this lovely silk painting of a chicken.  I'm planning on making it into a cushion for her so that we can see it rather than have it hidden away.  Not bad for someone who has problems with fine motor skills!

Another Clanger completed and ready to go to his new home.  These are fun to make but so fiddly.

The knitting is easy enough, it;s the final assembly that's the tricky bit.

This one is going to Texas - funny how all my Clangers emigrate to the USA!

Farmyard Friends

Since having a bit of spare time in the evenings, I've had the chance to go through a few of my old designs in my notebooks. I've been wanting to knit another chicken for months now, and it was good to find that my handwriting was still legible and the instructions still made sense - in fact, on knitting this after so long, I can hardly believe that I came up with such canny shaping!

This hen has the secret hatch in her bottom, revealing...

...an egg waiting to be laid.

I've knitted this is some rather coarse yarn that I got at the Unravelled knitting show earlier this year - it's made the chicken slightly larger than usual but given it a nice texture.  Instead of the wire legs used for the animation, this chicken has simple crochet feet - just as effective. I quite fancy making a small flock of them...

However, there are other things to be done first.  I designed this cow pattern over two years ago for a friend to give to a baby, so it is soft and very child friendly.  I had an enquiry about the pattern for it recently (OK, months ago now...) and have been meaning to transcribe my scrawl into a workable pattern for sale in my Etsy shop.  I actually began it this week - it might take a few more days to complete, but the pattern will be for sale soon.

We visited the Festival of Crafts at Farnham Maltings over the weekend.  Sometimes craft fairs can be a little disappointing, with the same old items being sold from table to table, nothing new or exciting.  However, we were pleasantly surprised this time - there was a lot of very original jewellery, some beautiful ceramics, interesting knitting and needlefelting work, lots of lovely cards and prints, and some things that defy description!  I bought this pair of gorgeous screen prints for the ridiculous price of £3 as I just love the scruffy crows.  I framed them straight away and now have to find a space on the walls to hang them.  The lady who made these, Jule Mallett, also had some very weird but truly captivating soft sculptures - see her work here.

On the easel : that double dog portrait...sigh...
On the needles: some unexpected bits for the animation!

A Sneaky Peek...

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter (If not, why not?  The link is right there, look, up to the right...) here are some stills from the animated film I have been working on, Nudinits.

I knitted quite a few creatures, here  are a few.  The chickens have to be one of my favourites - still can't quite believe they came out of my head!

Here's mama pig, doing what pigs do best.

And looking quite proud about it too!

Of course, there's never poo without flies....I knitted them too!

Snails are always a problem in the garden - but I wouldn't mind a few of these, cuddly not slimy!

And finally, here's the cat in his litter box.  And yes, I had to knit the contents of the litter box too!

By the way, there are a couple more days left to enter my giveaway for the wave painting - just leave a comment and I'll do a draw on the 11th October.

Time Out...

A very small chicken...I bought the Mini Mochi book on Monday and this was my first project.  It took about half an hour. 

To escape the building noise, we've been out and about the past couple of days.  Yesterday was an impromptu visit to Bird World in Farnham. I always loved wandering around in there - I love to watch birds and possibly plan new paintings.

Plus there are lots of parrots to feed, stroke and generally annoy.  We fed these two plenty of meal worms - I guess they had to sleep it off!

On the needles....not a whole lot!

Boxing Day.....

Boxing Day is my favourite day of the holiday period - the pressure has gone, Christmas Day has passed successfully, we eat leftovers in Bubble & Squeak for dinner, we get to play with our new toys, and all is calm.

I managed to finish the chicken hat, after adding a couple of little extra touches that weren't in the pattern - the red embroidery around the eyes and beak.  It is also lined with black felt to prevent an itchy head.  The recipient is very pleased with his gift and threatens promises to wear it today. (What have I done?)  As said recipient is still asleep, the hat is modelled here by Rowdy, the stuffed dog that lives on the back of our sofa.

Another thing we do on Boxing Day which has become a bit of a tradition in our house is to go and have a look at the sales in a neighbouring town.  We never buy anything in particular, but I always like to visit Paperchase and pick up my cards and tree crackers at half price in readiness for next year.  It's the only pre-Christmas shopping I am ever organised enough to do....

I generally find some other glittery tat that tickles my fancy - this year it's a silver sparkly plastic flamingo.  She already looks very at home on the little table under a pot plant.

It's also the day to make a start on the Christmas cake...........yum!

Chick-Chick-Chicken?

We went to Birdworld in Farnham at the weekend - lots of lovely tropical birds to see and photograph.  This wasn't one of them - it was in the petting zoo. I think it's some sort of chicken but wouldn't swear to it...it did make me laugh though.

Stacie enjoyed hand-feeding the hornbill - he was a terrific catcher!

I'm knitting a table at the moment...as you do...

Back to the Drawing Board....

I knew this one would be tricky - this one is just too darn friendly.  Let's try again......

I Don't Want To Talk About It......

As I blundered towards the end of last week, counting the hours until school broke up for Easter and I could have an opportunity to do some Spring Cleaning and get some extra sleep, little did I know that instead I would be working every spare minute on two projects with deadlines that fall within the next ten days!

The first is a tin illustration for Derwent involving the above.  What I love about working for them is the free tin of pencils you get in order to demonstrate the product.  I'll never have to buy a water-soluble coloured pencil again!  No animals to paint this time, something a little different for me....I'm ashamed to admit that I am a mature woman of a certain age who had to look up a tutorial in order to find out how to make a paper boat. Origami is not my strong point...

I also have to design and make an accessory based round poultry - yup, you read that right.

As well as a scarf involving this combination of colours - urk, that wakes you up a bit, doesn't it!

As you can see, we're not snowed in although it is a bit chilly and damp.  We planted a damson tree this week to replace the poor diseased pear that we cut down a while ago.  My banana plant survived the winter and is putting out new leaves already - hooray!  Don't look at the bald spots on the grass - cold weather and dog wee will do that!  It's been re-seeded and hopefully will green up very soon.

Not Enough Hours in the Day......

I thought this would be a quick and loose painting, taking no more than a couple of days.  As usual, the  painting had other ideas and turned into what it wanted to be, which this time was obviously a highly detailed and laborious view of summer wild flowers.  I am using the Inktense pigment blocks as paints because I thought they would give a bright and vibrant result which was what I had in mind for the poppies.  However, for some reason, they have ended up strangely muted with a kind of 'old' look to them....which luckily I quite like!  There is still a great deal of work to go into this, but for the next couple of days I have not time - it's the Tavistock Summer Fair tomorrow and I will have a stall there and of course, am totally unprepared.

I have taken a short break from commissioned work and tried to knit up a few farmyard friends for sale on my stall.  Despite knitting until midnight most nights, I have only managed to produce the above.

There may or may not be a fourth piglet when the set is completed - depends on how long I can stay awake this evening!

Beryl and Martha are ready to go though.  I have adapted the animation design to be more child-friendly, not a wire in sight.  The feet have been crocheted and stiffened with fabric stiffener - not the greatest of results, they need a bit of balancing to stay upright, but at least no-one can hurt themselves.  These two still have the egg-laying feature.

If these knitted creatures do not sell tomorrow, they will then be available on my Etsy shop over the weekend.  Should you ever wish to commission one of these items, do get in touch, I can always stay up a bit later.......

Hen Party......

Three chickens completed, all with egg-laying abilities.  I still don't like the way they are looking at me.....

My favourite is the reddish one on the left - which one would you choose?

For once I remembered to take my camera with me for the early morning dog walk today and caught the poppies before they fell apart in the heat of the day.  I think you'll agree they were worth it...

I feel a wild flower painting coming on...

Don't Look Now.....

...but I think the chickens are up to something.  I don't like the look of that one on the right, I think she's hatching a plot........

Which Came First?

Apart from potatoes, I have never painted a subject so often as these blue jellyfish!  And not one remains here for long, so I thought I had better paint another which will now go into my Etsy shop.  I wonder how long this one will stick around for!

If I had known how popular they were going to be, I would have taken far more reference photographs at Boston Aquarium when we were there.  However, I will have the chance to take as many as I like later in the year as we have booked a return trip and plan to not only see what we missed the last time, but also re-visit some of the places we fell in love with two years ago.  So if you see some strange English lady snapping away furiously at the jellyfish, you'll know who it is....

 
By last weekend I could procrastinate no longer over designing and knitting a very small chicken who had to be completely poseable and also be able to lay an egg.  I sort of had an idea in my head as to how to go about it, but knew it would take a great deal of trial and error, maths and illegible scribbling before it was complete.  Sure enough, I think this took a total of nine or ten hours to create, with not too many mistakes on the way.  The head swivels round, with the joint hidden by the ruff of feathers, and the wings are not only button jointed but wired for movement outwards as well.

This is her party trick - I'm keeping the internal workings to myself for now as they took a long time to design and besides, do you really need to see up a chicken's bum?

Even the chicken looks bemused by it all!  She is about 3 inches tall and now needs a couple of friends to keep her company - at least they should not take so long, depending on whether I can decipher the five pages of scrawl in my design notebook!

Cute Chicks

I was going to entitle this post as 'Hot Chicks' but thought that might bring in entirely the wrong kind of visitor...

I've knitted four of these little chicks as Easter gifts, the first has already gone to it's recipient. It's a lovely quick pattern and I did like the addition of a knitted egg to put one in - that wasn't such a quick knit, so only one of those!


The egg has a different coloured lining - you kind of knit a bi-coloured egg and fold one half into the other, making two of these pieces. I then stitched them together at the seam to make a hinge and added a button to keep the egg closed. I followed the instructions to coat it with hairspray in order to stiffen it into shape - so it's fragrant as well....

April 1st today - the day of silly pranks and tricks and spoof news stories on television and in the papers. I wonder how many 'jokes' will be played on me at work today by the children - I don't care, as long as we still break up for the Easter break today! I'm looking forward to a fortnight of catching up with various chores, some intensive crafting, a couple of days out and some extra sleep.
I am also planning to have a clear out of my portfolio and will be putting some artwork up for sale in my Etsy shop - no point it hoarding the stuff where it never gets seen.

500th Post!!!

I can't believe this is my 500th post - I feel it should be marked in some way, but really can't think of anything! Let's just settle for a virtual toast to 500 more.


The nest I posted a picture of earlier in the month has some residents! While tidying up the bottom of the garden, I had a peek and came face to face with Mrs. Blackbird hunkered down as small as she could make herself. We had a lot of gardening work to do just outside the nest yesterday and I was a bit worried that after us crashing around uprooting a large dead palm tree from it's huge pot and planting it's successor which took us most of the afternoon we might have scared her off. However, she was back there today and whilst she was on a tea break, I snuck down and took a very quick picture of the inside of the nest. Four shiny bespeckled blue eggs - wow! I can't wait to see them hatch and hopefully be able to get some more close-up photographs.



Our garden is quite a little bird sanctuary - it's a bit overgrown with lots of hidey-holes, as well as having the advantage of a large dog on patrol to keep away any cats or magpies. We already have robin chicks in the ivy, about ten feet along from the blackbird's nest, and blue-tits are nesting in eaves of the house just above Stacie's bedroom as they do every year. One year the blue-tit chicks were so tame I was able to get within a couple of feet of them and take photos which I used for a painting. It was amazing - when I wanted to check their colours or plumage while I was working on the painting, all I had to do was step out of the door and stand still by the bird feeder for a few minutes and they'd pose for me as much as I needed.






I've just finished knitting a chick of the woollen Easter kind - this is from an Alan Dart free pattern (check out his website for some incredible knitted toys and their downloadable patterns.) It was a lot more successful than the failed knitted egg, so I think I will dash off a few of these rather than labour over lumpy eggs!