Incredible Stupidity...

We went out for the day yesterday - it was lovely, walking round a park, looking at the aninals in a little zoo, drinking in the sunshine.  However, we came home to find - yet again - our house in disarray.  The pavement was dug up, my car had a large piece of wood propped up against it and was covered in filth, and we were unable to access our front door.  We do understand that this work has to be done, but no-one had had the courtesy to advise us that it was happening that day.  So I moved my car, dusted it off and checked for damage and went inside for a cup of tea.

An hour later, after the builders had left, we went outside only to find ourselves barricaded in.  Yes, they had erected a fence and jammed it in so tightly we were in effect prisoners in our own home.  Not only that, our hedge - which my partner had spent a long time on Tuesday clipping and making perfectly straight - now had a huge hole in it where a lump of fencing had been rammed in hard.

I don't know if they think because we live on a council estate we don't matter, or if they just don't think at all.
We had to break our way out in order for a repair man to come,and to be able to take our bins out.  I dread to think what would have happened if this had happened on a day when my daughter arrives home by taxi and makes her own way to the front door.  Needless to say, words have and will be spoken to the offending parties....

Don't Give Me That Look!

Do you ever see a toy in a shop and although you know you have plenty of toys at home cluttering up the place, you still have to have this one?  This bear fell into that category although I think he might be trouble - look at that expression!

Sunny Saturday Morning...

For the past week I have been without a car (curse you Japanese manufacturers, why are spare parts so difficult to source - and five times more expensive?) which has meant I have had to walk everywhere.  Not so much fun when you have to carry a ton of shopping a mile home, but you do get to see some pretty scenery.  This is Basingstoke canal this morning.

We found a couple of ducks to throw bread at, and admired all the gardens on the opposite bank.  We walked home a quicker way though - bags of vegetables from the market to carry!

Hopefully with the better weather, my tomatoes might improve.  Despite their weedy appearance, I discovered we have some flowers on one of the plants.  I do know that down in Devon at Soggibottom cottage there is a tiny tomato however  - I may have already been defeated in our competition this year!

Tempting though it was to go outside and potter in the garden, I chose to get on with this repair that has been hanging over me since last week.  The bracelet belongs to a colleague of mine at the day job.  I have never re-strung pearls before but figured it would be quite simple.....  Actually, once I worked out that I needed two needles and thread in order to tie the little knots between pearls it went quite smoothly.  Very fiddly however and not something I would want to do on a regular basis.

But it is almost as good as new - I hope she is pleased with it.  I'm getting paid in red wine for this - no complaints from me about that!

I saw this pattern in a magazine last month and really wanted to try it out. It's a Waspinator - the theory being that if you hang up a fake wasp nest in your garden, the wasps will think they have a rival colony to contend with and go elsewhere.  I do hope it works as I hate seeing wasps dead and dying in the glass wasp trap we have used for the past few years, plus other bugs and even butterflies get stuck in there as well.

This had been crocheted in a combination of yarns to get the stripy effect - I stuffed it with plastic bags as per the instructions so that if it gets rained upon nothing dire will happen to it. These can be removed from the opening underneath which ties up with a drawstring.  I shall keep you posted as to whether or not it works!

"Could Do Better..."

Back in school, I was one of those annoying students who got top marks in everything with very little effort - you know the type!  However, there were two things I was definitely bottom of the class at, sports and handwriting.  I went to a tiny little school in Alderney, one of the Channel Islands.  So tiny, there were 7 children in my year group - when the flu virus went round, at one point there was just me and I had to be put with another year group just to make up numbers.

But I digress.  Once a week on a Monday morning, the whole of the upper school had to do a handwriting test.  If our efforts did not measure up, we were sent to a remedial group for practice. Can I just say, I was in that remedial group for years.....I can paint with precision, I can knit and sew tiny things, I can make jewellery using the smallest of beads, but I still cannot tame my handwriting into legibility.  Yesterday it came back to bite me in the behind.  I spent three hours (three hours) trying to find out why a knitting pattern I had written and sold was proving to be inexplicable to my customer.  After two trial knits and going over the pattern and my handwritten notes, I finally identified the problem - I hadn't been able to decipher my own writing when transcribing my notes and had typed a couple of silly errors, thus throwing the whole thing into disarray. Sigh....Oh well, I'm glad someone had the sense to query it which gave me the opportunity to correct the pattern. 

Thankfully, this was a pattern from a couple of years ago when I was first writing them down - since getting two jobs involving keeping meticulous notes on my designs, I make sure to write clearly these days.  Well, as clear as is humanly possible for me at least!

I'm better at using a paintbrush - this is a tiny section of a commission I am working on at the moment.  The brief is to combine precise drawing with lots of dribbles and splashes.  It's proving to be a lot of fun, although I'm having to make sure I cover myself up before throwing paint around as Inktense does not come out of clothing once it is on there!

Ticking Off The 'To Do' List

My 'to do' list has been rather long of late - no spare time really when I am at the day job.  So with this week being half term, I have been methodically getting those little jobs done.  This cat has had the wire taken out of his tail and his head sewn on securely so that he will be a safe item to go in my Etsy shop later on.  I also gave him a leather collar rather than the knitted one, as there is no need for everything about him to be knitted now that he is not going to be in the film.  I have sewn him a comfy felt bed lined with cute fabric - that just needs a few decorative buttons I think.  When he has his food bowl and toy, he will be ready for adoption!

My porch now has just about everything squared away - all that is left to do is to build some shoe racks that I bought in Ikea a while back.  We put up the curtain rod at the weekend and yesterday I taught myself how to put metal eyelets in fabric (that's not easy!!) and sewed up a curtain to hide the shelf units when they are not in use.  Love this fabric from Ikea - it's covered in big birds with attitude!

For a couple of months now there has been a selection of battered old silver cutlery knocking around on my kitchen table, waiting to be turned into coat hooks.  I drilled the holes last week finally, but had to ask my partner to do the bending into shape as I was just not strong enough.  This one is in the porch especially to hang Clovis's lead on.

The others need a little tittivating to make sure they lie flat against the wall when screwed into place, then will be available for sale.

We've also built a table for our bonsaii trees this weekend (I say 'we', that's not true at all, I just watched!), put down a thingy to hold the new carpet in place, tidied the patio, planted out some pot-bound buddleia, and I have had a chance to tidy up around here after weeks of chaos.

So the list is back down to manageable proportions once more - for a while at least!

Looking For A Good Home!

This little chap is ready to go out into the world - he will be in my Etsy shop shortly.  He has been knitted in a fabulous thick boucle yarn - I bought it at a little shop in Boston as the hurricane was brewing last year, so maybe this dog should have a name like Storm!

He's a bit bigger than usual due to the thick yarn, so I had to knit the bed from chunky yarn too.  He has a little red bandana (because he's a cool dog...) a blankie (because he's not that cool) and a felt food bowl.

He's very cuddly and would love to have a home soon!

Day Off? What Day Off!

It always makes me laugh as I walk out of the door from the day job on a Tuesday when everyone wishes me a nice day off for Wednesday.  I probably work harder on Wednesdays than any other week day!

Firstly, I have received this lovely pile of goodies from Derwent in order for me to start the latest commission for them.  I love using Inktense pencils - I remember when I first bought some and they were terrifyingly bright so I ended up hiding them under my desk and never using them.  It wasn't until Derwent asked me to illustrate the tin for a set of Inktense pencils and pigment blocks that I had to use them and discovered they were some of the best colours I have ever used.  So I am looking forward very much to putting pencil to paper later on today.

This little chap has come back to me - he's too big to be used in the animation.  Curse that beautiful chenille yarn, it just knits up twice the size of other yarns!  So with a bit of adaptation (mainly removing any wires and sewing his head on securely) he will shortly be up for sale in my Etsy shop.

I think we might run to making him a bed as well, just so he doesn't go off to any new home under-privileged!

I've also been able to use my Dremel today (it was buried in a heap for the past 5 weeks while our porch was being re-built) and have drilled holes in lots of sea shells as well as through some silver spoons.  Why spoons?  Ah, you'll have to wait and see....

Stacie came home with five or six new paintings, all framed.  So I have had to remove frames from four of them as we just don't have the room to display all her lovely work (it's bad enough finding homes for mine!)  However, I do love this one and have hung it in our hallway for the time being until I decide where it can be shown to it's best advantage.

This one is also rather cool, but she has nabbed it to go into her bedroom.
Still to do today? Sew a curtain for the new porch in order to hide the shelves and their contents; mend a pearl bracelet for a colleague at work; re-pot some plants in the garden; make some mouths for puppets; and of course, start that painting.

Day off? Yeah right!