You think you know about the world as an adult...until your children ask you questions!

 When does Spring start is simple enough because son number1 accepted that seasons slide into each other rather than being on or off! 


It was the "How do plants know when to grow again in Spring ?" that threw me.
Do they feel it is warm or have a really good alarm clock?
No, I don't know either, but I do love to see signs of flower bulbs growing through the recent snow. I expect I will rave more about the joys of daffodils soon!

You might have noticed I have not been about...well not here anyway! So as making things seems a little more sporadic recently, I have decided to expand this blog to include some non craftiness!

Lesson of the week: typing something when feeling over passionate about a sports team, or if under the influence is  generally a bad idea. I have been on the receiving end of such abuse this week; it wasn't intended to offend me but it did...to the core. Luckily you can defriend and block such abusers on social networking sites. If only it was as easy to rid real life of people who offend you!

Cake

This is my cake- vanilla sponge, then I whipped double cream and folded in cream cheese, some icing sugar and lemon zest, piled raspberries ,strawberries and blueberries in and filled the cake with that, then some of the plain cheesecake mix on the top and some raspberry decoration...except it is hard to get a shot before eatind half...and someone had been stealing raspberries!

 It was yummy and I have eaten far too much of it!

Metropolitan Cathedral Liverpool- house of colour!

 This is one of a number of panel's outside the Cathedral. Would you put those colours together? Not sure I would be as brave but they work don't they? I think there is something congruent about the shades.

 Just part of one of the stained glass windows, the colours in this building are amazing!

Aren't the colours just amazing?
I didn't realise til I just uploaded this ,that you can see the Cathedral through the panel! Ever take one of those reach your hand out and press the button shots that just captures the moment?

School holiday felty fun

 Making things seems to slide into making things with the kids on school holidays. So I drew some finger puppet template outlines and this is what the boys came up with.
I could tell the drawing on the left was a skeleton because his speech bubble says "I am dead"!!

 The rabbit was more obvious, we just added teeth and a little tail on the back.

I am pleased with how the "mad hair" came out- I got the idea from a book of 1950's cartoon strips of a mother instructing her daughter "Judy" on all the important things in a woman's life like how to make attractive party snacks from stale bread and a top from gentleman's handkerchiefs!
I wound yarn round some folded paper then crocheted the loops together along the bottom, then doubled it over and sewed to one side of the puppet, before sewing the 2 sides together( easier to position doing it this way)

Historical necklace?

I have a habit of making a necklace to match an outfit...on the morning of the outfit being worn! This took a bit longer but I still finished it off once already wearing the dress.

Not an easy dress to match jewellery with, so the old embroidery thread box came out. 

Why historical? Well, the circles themselves are the basis of  Dorset Buttons , the black cord is made on an ancient cord making tool- a  Lucet ( and if you fancy a go at Lucetting , then I can't recommend Ziggy enough- I happen to have met him too- fantastic man!), and the knots are Chinese Sliding Button Knots  ( again a recommendation - great book- especially if you want to make striking and unusual jewellery for people with metal allergies).

So a Victorian(?) Dorset, Mediaeval cord, Chinese knotted necklace...doesn't look old does it?? 

Oh and a bit of modern felt in between because a) it matched and b) I couldnt think how else to join the circles!

Zombies

I don't know what made me start drawing zombies

 Or why I thought it would make a good keyring- but here are the (pic heavy) results!

 Cut the bits out of your felt stash- I recent found a whole bag of felt I had ahem, "temporarily mislaid" including the hideous yellow with black on ( face colour) from a bargain bag.

 I embroidered the details and embroidered the face pieces on at the same time if that makes sense!

 As it is a keyring I added some cord and a split ring , then sewed most of the way round the front and back pieces of the head, then added a bit of stuffing.

If you want to do it exactly like me you should forget to add the cord and have to squeeze it in between the stitches- I wouldn't recommend this method!

 Then round the edges of the tunic/body and sewed the sleeves/arms leaving a gap/armhole- tell you why in the next pic! Oh I sewed some "rips" onto the tunic first!

 Stuffed the body, then got a bit of aluminium wire(which I had but I get it from wires.co.uk) folded over the ends and taped with electrical tape stolen from hubby- shh I used it all up, don't tell him!! 
I threaded the wire through the sleeves via the neck opening- just a bit less fiddly,then sewed up the arms.

 Then I sewed the head to the body- nothing neat but zombies aren't neat are they??

 TA DAAAArrrgghhh!

See why I wired the arms?? he he
I decided against having him eat brains( the red felt just visible at the bottom of the cut out pic!) I think it works without.