Bought a pure cotton throw in the sales; plain off-white. Crocheted and stitched on a few flowers and gave it a bit of a lift. It will be a Christmas present, along with some soft cotton socks with crochet flowers up the side.
I suppose this is a variation of ‘when life gives you lemons make lemonade’… we leave the garden lawns alone in May to make sure the bees have food, (dandelion abundance) until more flowers come out next month.
But, the gardens are full of them, including their beautiful seed heads, or ‘clocks’ as we used to call them as kids (pick them and blow on them, each blow starts ‘one o’ clock’ etc until all the seeds were blown away and the time is the count of the last blow. Always wrong!).
So seeing their glorious gossamer-like clocks, I made up a sugar/water solution in a fine misting spray bottle and gave several a spritz. I was very mindful to select isolated patches of them away from active bees or reclusive spiders or any insects to protect them. They breathe through spiracles in their exoskeletons and I wouldn’t want them to suffocate.
They last for ages, though the stems will shrivel. So, when life gives you dandelions, make a dandelion bouquet.
Easter’s been and gone now. Only had the one egg but, as they say, an oeuf is enoeuf… .
A Ferraro Rocher. Seven euros, I think.. or was it eight? But… Urfff it wasn’t nice. Between us, we ate half and chucked the rest away. And it was an empty shell. No sweeties inside. Bleh. So, with a face like a dropped pie, tried to appreciate the pretty foil packaging. It IS pretty.
Husband got his absolute favourite. A kilo bag of mini eggs. Sounds like gluttony and death by chocolate but they’ll actually last us him weeks.
Anyway, had a passion to fulfil. A project that jumped into my head a couple of weeks ago.
Since starting art classes, have been looking for a nice folder to carry artwork in. Keep paintings separate from other art supplies in bag. Nothing on Amazon or proper shops (do leave the house occasionally) had anything to inspire me. Those black polyvinyl carry cases look nasty.
Lessons learned and all that. Took measurements and documented the process. All good. Still very functional but lacking finesse.
Second go. Got out the operating table for the tools and equipment.
It has fold over flaps in the back, decorative metal corner protectors and cotton-twill ties (for when it goes to dinner or attends interviews, etc, ha ha).
Designed the labels in Illustrator. It accommodates A3 so large enough for my art work.
I made the flaps wider than those in the original (above) so they overlapped better.
The metal corners are bigger than the original as well. Secured with a spot of glue and a crimp.
Still a few tweaks to make but not in a hurry to make another just yet because I love it.
Talking of leaving the house, the sun is bloody shining today so can wear new DMs – Clarissa leopardskin sandals – and show off newly-painted Plum Pudding purple toenails. High gloss. Brill.
That’s it, really. The sun is out and the sky is blue. Spring is here and all is lovely.
Tubby Tubchops is out of hibernation and investigating the foliage for slugs and snails in his snuffly hedgehoggy way. Glad he’s still with us.
Seem to be a good few bees around. Hopefully, this will be a good year for them, and all insects, actually. Their decline is worrying.
I’ve started on a monthly phenology wheel. All throughout March, I took photos of leaves, flowers, bees, etc, and intend to ‘document’ their sightings on my wheel. I got the idea from Marion’s World on You Tube. Her artworks are just lovely.
Life is wonderful and Marion’s capture of the seasons in her wheel and shows her mindful appreciation of nature and the whole wonder of nature with its cycles of renewals and rebirths.
From rebirths to rebrands. Couldn’t help but notice the massive reaction to Madame M’s depiction of the Queen (allegedly!) in the form of a green waffle on St Patrick’s Day. I thought it looked more like the face of a blow up sex doll. It’s bizarre how much of a storm gets brewed up over silly trivia!
My life lacks such wild drama. This afternoon will be spent watercolour painting. Just recently got a glorious set of paints from Amazon: Kuretake Zig Gansai Tambi.
Just finished an exercise from Creative Abstract Watercolors (beautiful book by Kate Rebecca Leach):
The media is Cotton Rag Paper made in India.
She is inspired by a postcard I got many years ago. I’ve painted her many times, usually against a dark, atmospheric background but chose a lighter one this time.
Also working in After Effects adding some inertial bounce to a space scene for (hopefully) Earth Day. I get distracted so easily so no guarantees.
So, Easy Osey at the mo.
Life is so good.
Popping off to get some quinoa for a recipe I’m trying out for tea. Sounds delish.
When I was at uni, there was a librarian who had a very sour expression and always looked as though students presenting books for check-in and outs were a tremendous imposition. Her mouth was tight contraction; a moue, like that of a cat’s bum. We called her Ms Lemons.
And so have named my latest doll ‘Ms Lemons’ in her memory. The resting B*tch face says it all. The fact that she has a weaponised pin cushion to give a quick jab, stab or poke just adds to the whole persona.
And here she is in her permanent setting. The sewing room where she will be put to service and justify her … being.
She’s modelled on a Tone Finnanger Tilda angel (her wings are pinned on and a bit askew at this stage and have slipped a bit. Apropos).
A lot of work went into making her clothes, including modesty undergarments (of course) and really like the choice of fabrics. But her face… I may paint it off with acrylics and give her a make over. Another doll is cut out, stitched just waiting to be stuffed. And some clothes ready-made and lovely. Maybe she presents a second-go to create a beautiful version. They could sit like book ends. Like Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid and Mrs Bedonedonebyasyouwould bedoneby (if memory recalls the Water Babies correctly).
Cats are Nobbers
This is Charlie in his usual state of distress. If only he would chill out, ha ha.
Honestly, he has so many comfy places to sleep including proper-nice cat beds but since an Amazon delivery a while back, this is his favourite place to catch forty winks and whiskers. Very inconvenient as it’s on top of a table-cum-chest that is my yarn repository.
Daft
A new box arrived and he considered moving. On this occasion, Daft.ie lived up to its name (in ROI Daft is a property rental/buyer site). The property is definitely subsiding and looking ready to slide off its footings. Charlie gave it a go and decided it’s not the bachelor apartment he thought it might be.
Ignore the mess creative ideas lying around.
Life has generally become much more full-on. I now go to a couple of keep-fit classes and regularly join in with some pole walking (not dancing!) and line dancing at the local Womens’ Shed.
Had a Sound Journey which was a nice experience held in our town hall; a building that used to be a church. We all lay on the floor covered in blankets with our eyes shut. Looking at the photos sent round afterwards it reminded me of a make-shift morgue following some major catastrophe… dark humour there…
Joined a sewing group. Love sewing but never made garments. Apart from an apron. No understanding of darts, interfacing, grown-up terminology like ‘on the grain’ ‘on the bias’, amending patterns to fit, etc. Progress! Have made a blouse – traced and cut out the pattern/fabric, stitched it altogether, inserted sleeves… Amazeballs. Actually believe everything imaginable is possible.
Also joined an art class. Some very artistic members and we’re planning a 2-day exhibition before Christmas! Amazeballs squared!
The Wild and Woolies are going strong and are a lively group. Off to the North for a meet-up with a crochet group there the beginning of April. Again, wonderfully talented and lovely ladies.
With everything going on, finally finished the Elena Essex Christmas Cornucopia Christmas jigsaw:
It is a thousand-piecer and tougher than it looks. Gorgeous! Sadly, lost a piece. It had been under the sofa on a cutting mat and regularly got knocked by the vacuum cleaner so guess it got sucked up.
Am still exasperated with Adobe suite. Illustrator crashed when tasked with a simple operation. Not Bézier curve adjustments. Nothing THAT complex (sardonic laugh). Holy shit balls… but it’s still the best of the bunch.
So, like a vacuum cleaner with a sour face I have to suck it up.
With a sour lemon face.
Finished the Little Granny Squares Baby Blanket. Ninety-nine squares, stitched together. Three border rows. Tails all woven in.
All done.
A quick snap of it. Will take a better pic of it when it’s brighter; very dark day, today.
Have got a guy in fixing a leaking pressure vessel in the boiler so am having to clear out shelves of the hot presses so he has access to various valves and drain the system.
Am on hyper alert. Stranger danger. Leaving husband to do all the interaction/communication otherwise I go straight into throw up walls of words gabbling OMG-sort of on my own with man (if husband in different room).
Hopefully, a quickish job so I can relax.
But, totally delighted with myself for finishing the blanket. It’s taken several months (on and off) and been on the floor, been slept on by Charlie and handled regularly so will give it a wash in a gentle laundry liquid and block it out to dry.
But, hey, girl, you bloody did it. Big pat on the back.
First things first. It’s cold. Last week was all crunchy grass and frosty leaves but Oh So Pretty.
Yesterday, it snowed, settled, got sprinkled with rain then froze overnight. It’s slips, trips and falls hazard-central so my Christmas fat arse and sofa are best friends and likely to stay that way all of today.
Christmas was lovely. Chris Rea was still driving home for Christmas. It always takes him a devil of a time. I noted he’s from Middlesborough in the UK and checked the AA Traffic News: said he had clear roads ahead so hope it was an easy drive. I really think it’s about time his family visited him for a change.
Watched a YT video and laughed at a Nativity play where one of the sheep nicked baby Jesus to give him a big squeeze just as a little drummer boy turned up to bang his drum to honour the birth. Poor Mary.
Trundled about on a donkey for hours, laboured and delivered on some sheepy-fellows dungy straw then, while not looking her Instagram best, visited by kings and shepherds… only to have some little bo**ocks with a drum turn up and bang away when I bet all she wanted was a cup of tea and a lie down. Magic of Christmas, eh?!
My ‘best’ present was a bag of organic seaweed, hand-harvested from a beach in Connemara. All packaged nicely. Seaweed in a net bag. Apparently, you throw it in a bath and sit and soak in the seaweedy water that becomes infused with lots of rejuvenating and age-reversing minerals. More Christmas Magic!
So I tried it. Dear God. The smell. Fr Jessop in Fr Jack’s underpants hamper couldn’t have suffered as much as I did. Mysterious dark bits managed to escape the netty bag and float around looking suspiciously like dried insects or other organic matter. Had the Connemara beach been formally awarded Blue Flag status?
But, the smell was the worst of it. Like bathing in a mens’ public urinal. Mr Monday came to investigate the smell wondering if we had backed-up sewer problems. The atmospheric urea content made our hair curl. The packaging claimed the seaweed could be dried and used again, not something I would ever repeat so we decided to use it as fertiliser on the garden and get that s*it out of there. After a shower and me all freshened up, we had a good laugh – shits and giggles!
Changing the subject, I stumbled upon a pretty paper cutting project on YT:
I downloaded the template and hot-foiled it – along with a bird-spinner pattern that Maarit was giving away:
But back to goal-achieving and getting on with academic stuff. Tomorrow. Cats don’t do the ‘W’ word and nor do I, at least not on a Monday.
So, to all of you going back to work, hope it’s not too bad. It’s a new year. 2025 budgets have been approved and there’ll be loads of places hiring. Brush up your CV and shake your tail. Good luck and hope this year brings us all lots of happiness. Make something brilliant of yourself!
Here we are! Another exciting and magical Christmas. Everything Christmassy is done; presents are under the tree, cake is iced, house is cleaned from top to bottom and so are we.
Delighted with myself; made the ninety-ninth (and last) square of the baby blanket!
All blocked and ready to be stitched together and have a pretty border worked all round. That’ll be next Christmas, then.
The cake is very simply iced and decorated. Preppy Baker suggested adding a couple of drops of vanilla essence to the Royal Icing so I tried it. Nice.
I used the left-over icing to decorate some ginger bread. As Mary Berry would say, they are very ‘informal’. In their defence, glycerine had already been added (to prevent broken teeth, bones and huge emergency dental/ambulance call out charges). Nothing to do with my piping skills, heh, heh.
But, they were tasty. My super power flavouring hack was to chop some crystallised ginger up very finely and add it to the recipe. Pow!
Storing them in one of my favourite tins:
Just fab. Love it. The globe with the reindeers spins. Simple pleasures.
All in all, it’s been a good year, a lovely year. Finished a year-long diploma in art therapy so maybe get to use it in some capacity in 2025. Also, PhD is coming together well. Bit of a slog at times but satisfying. Having an academic medium to both express myself and learn is wonderful.
One more sleep before Santa. The Christmassy hare in a tutu has something for me in her gift bag! I know it’s jewellery… she’s under the tree… all I need to do is peep, but I won’t! Love surprises and just one day to go. But… eek! Waiting!
Finally, to anyone who reads this, I wish you all the excitement and magic of Christmas.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year x
Usual run up to Christmas busyness. Most of the decorations are up, except for those with battery lights. Remembered to get some yesterday so just need to go through them and replace the old ones now. Am thinking of the winter solstice and having a bit of a feast and lights to celebrate the beginning of the new cycle of rebirth, the coming of the longer days.
Cake is marzipanned. Have got most of the Christmas dinner pre-prepared ready to heat up on the day. Am making stuffing balls from scratch today – a Mary Berry Biker Boots recipe (so named after mis-reading something about her) and will freeze them.
Finished my winter hare with her gift bag. She’s in place of a stocking for me. Absolutely loved making her.
Have modded the template slightly and made a smaller version:
Her little wooly jumper is crocheted from sequinned yarn.
Got two more ready to sew plus new clothes. I was lucky with a couple of charity shop trawls that found me some lovely dresses with sparkly sequinned tulles over ‘satin’ linings. The lining is great for making pantaloons and knickerbockers. One had a feather trim used for the feather hat above. Loads left. Of everything.
Also working out a crochet pattern to make a ballet wrap cardi (sadly using the last of my souki gold dust yarn – discontinued and can’t get old stock for love nor money) and a big flouncy tutu to set it all off.
Something I’ve not been able to get hold of are the wooden and hardboard boxes of easy peelers… they lend themselves to becoming a beautiful beds for winter hares with space around for small pretty packages. It’s become a bit of a mission to find then transform one.
Managed to finish off the baby blanket and hat for the local animal shelter charity shop. The pattern was fab. It was full of bobbles, shells and Biba windows (that’s my name for them cos they very loosely remind me of the Biba logo:
(bloody Foxtrot Oscar autocorrect… Biba to Boba twice now!)
When you’re crocheting biggish projects, a little variety in the stitches keeps it interesting and this pattern had that. The shop wants it after Christmas to put on their FB auction.
Even bought a gorgeous gift bag to sell it in; sets it off beautifully:
Who wouldn’t want to welcome a new baby with a ‘Guess How Much I Love You’ gift bag? Perfect.
My biggest happy moment recently was finding the Dr Marten brogues that Amazon cancelled the night before they were due to be delivered. Not from Amazon, obviously, but the DM shop itself. Not only were they in stock but cheaper and arriving on Monday. Marvellous. Really made up about that.
Challenging myself to make gingerbread and decorate with royal icing in time for the last wild and wooly meeting of the year. It’s just making the time to get down to it. I have the ingredients and adore the spicy smells in the kitchen while it’s being cooked. Delicious, warm and aromatic.
So, apart from the gingerbread, the Mary Berry Biker Boots stuffing and wrapping Monday’s brogues (can hardly wait to do that) pretty much everything that can be prepared early is done.
Looking forward to the solstice then Christmas Day.
I did. Got a Black Friday deal on the Adobe suite and am back in the Adobe fold. Sadly, There were tools that Affinity just didn’t have that clinched the decision. It’s still a great app and still does some things that beats the pants off Illustrator but it’s just not there yet. One thing Affinity does (at least for now…) is sell full programmes rather than subscriptions so the Affinity suite is still installed and can be used for its strengths when needed.
Christmas Hare
My Christmas fairy Harey is finished and looking sparkly and glam.
She’s instead of a stocking – see the gift bag? Apparently, there is something small but lovely for me for Christmas…. oooh! Don’t you just love waiting for the big day??!
Amazon … bleh. Ordered a pair of Dr Marten brogues (weirdly described as trainers) for Himself a couple of months ago. Despite not being available until between Nov 22 to 29, Amazon took full payment. Queried this as it wasn’t their normal practice but apparently, IS their new normal now. Okey Dokey.
But, come the evening of the Nov 21st, Amazon say they shoes can’t be shipped and they’ve cancelled the order. Got a refund a day or so later so no money lost. Just not a great customer experience and pi**ed off cos the shoes are gorgeous and would have made a brilliant present.
Fairy
Back to fairyland. As always, having made one, better ways of doing some things became apparent so have modified the template and am making a smaller one as a tree dec to trial my ‘improvements’. Making the first one was actually a lot of fun and really enjoyed it.
Can’t believe Christmas is just a few weeks away. We’re putting the tree up on the first and looking forward to decorating with some gorgeous new decorations. The Animal Shelter bazaar is this Sunday, as well, so will be attending.
Baby Blanket and Hat
The crocheted baby blanket is some seven rows from the finish. Matching baby hat is ready, complete with pom-pom. This is for the animal shelter bazaar if I can just get on with it but am being pulled In a few different directions at the moment. Fingers crossed. If not, they’ll auction it on their Facebook page before Christmas.
TK Maxx had some adorable ‘Guess how much I love you’ gift bags and I already had matching tissue paper just perfect for the baby blanket. Will make a lovely present for a new mum and baby for Christmas.
The Moffymakes Etsy shop is not getting a tickle or a tit. Not an admirer, let alone a sale. The high prices might be off-putting but the yarn is very expensive. The baby blanket being donated to the shelter is much, much cheaper.
Do I care? Not really. Am as stressed as Charlie about it:
Gracie is nearly as upset:
Anyway, the time to marzipan the cake is near! The cake smells very heady and alcoholic…lush! Christmas is wonderful and am excited, as usual, for its coming.
No More Mondays 