Category: Chatting

An oeuf is enoeuf

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting, Crafting, Illustrator, Papercutting, Uncategorized

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.

Ms Lemons

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

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.

Into January Like I Mean It

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting, Papercutting

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!

Christmas Eve 2024

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

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

Hare brained

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting, Crochet, Sewing

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.

Thank Crunchie It’s Friday

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting, Sewing

Repurposed a wooden frame by painting it with gold acrylic. Looks very honeycomb toned. Lustrous and warm. The cross-stitched ‘K’ is complemented very nicely. Ooh, you’re nice! Wrong spelling but fun to play with words. Came across a new word today. As Deprecate is to depreciate, so appreciate is to apprecate. Apprecate! Saw it in the Blossom word list. Chambers dictionary doesn’t recognise it. But neither does it accept reposelessnesses… If you play, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Just waiting for Amazon to deliver some picture framing tape to finish it off.

Anyway, fingers crossed K likes it.

Well, it’s Friday and the weekend is nearly here so can start to chill now that this little project is out of the way. Few things on the go to finish before Christmas but no urgency. Easy Osey, God-send-Sunday.

Life goes on

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting, Crochet, Sewing

And all is good.

Christmas is looming and still gives me thrills. So, am loving all things Christmas related. There are two Christmas cakes (fruity fruity!) being given a weekly dose of brandy feed in the traditional poke-it-with-a-knitting-needle-and-pour-a-good-capful-of-brandy-all-over-the-top kind of way. The plan is to keep one for Easter but we’ll see how that goes.

Also making a Tilda hare Christmas angel. Tilda hares are my favourite Tilda make. Made a few some year’s back so am giving one a makeover and making a new one.

Gathering shiny trimmings is glorious. Amazon delivered a spool of white Tulle; plan is to make a tutu gathered around the tulle rose trim in the pic. Amazon also delivered a spool of really shiny gold metallic twine. Thinking about potential with the sewing machine cording foot on the wings.

Stuffed and ready for stitching together.

Using haemostats to grip and push the stuffing into the little spaces makes the tedious job of stuffing a little less laborious and boring.

Last Christmas I got a box of wool felt pieces, perfect to cut some wings from. Tried out a few ideas… metallic thread with inbuilt decorative stitches (hard to follow a path as the stitches are somewhat unpredictable (as in the needle moves forward, forward, back, side, middle, other side, middle, forward, forward or some other variation). Tried the cording foot with some gold thread. Tried Angelina Fibre. Not hugely happy with the results:

Have some other ideas to have a go at… and more felt… so will maybe have a play later today.

Have been busy with other things that have gone much better. Made this little fella for the local Shoebox Appeal:

Sweet little fella! Hope some little one somewhere loves him to bits when he gets shipped off for Christmas.

A lady at the Wild and Woolies crochet group is organising the appeal locally. Not that Wild and Woolies is our crochet group’s official name – It’s what I call it.

Another lady there makes hats and blankets for the neonatal unit in Crumlin hospital. I’m just working on a baby blanket to donate. The hat is already finished:

The blanket is about three-quarters done.

Delighted with myself for spotting what I think is a beeaauuttiful pottery teapot in a charity shop. It was twenty euro so not a cheapy-cheap find but worth every cent.

I did a Google Reverse Image on it; apparently it’s a Mucros pottery from Killarney. Why would anybody give this away??!! Am now looking at a Honey and Blue teaset from the pottery shop… The shipping would be expensive but so would the cost of fuel, tolls and, no doubt, parking if I went there by car … hmmm

Beautiful but a bit bonkers is the new lightbulb in the lounge lamp:

It’s Colour-Me-Happy and I love it.

Finally, must finish a vintage cross-stitch embroidery initial:

It’s to be framed and is a present for somebody I’m visiting next weekend. Nearly done.

It is done. Unpicked yhe blue flower and the scrappy leafy things and restitched them.

It needs a press, I didn’t hoop, you see. I didn’t want to. Then sort a frame out. I have a wooden one that is perfect. Needs a colour wash and maybe a dry brush of gold acrylic to lightly szuzh it up.

That’s a job for later on.

Love my life! Me and my fab shoes are off out later, DMs if it’s wet, (new and gorgeous) shoes if it manages to stay dry!

Be happy and smile from the heart.

Queen Gracie

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

Cat lovers are called “Ailurophiles”, derived from the Greek word ailouros, meaning “cat,” and ‘phile’, meaning “lover”.

I have three. Love the bones off them but they can be right nobbers!

My little princess Gracie, though technically a queen as she is 10 now, still acts like a kitten:

Here’s Charlie Chops, or The Chopster, as we like to call him.

DH stretched out to have a nap. Charlie decided he was the perfect slave bed. He eventually settled down and did the full Chopster sprawl and went to sleep. I walked in at one point to find both gently snoring.

I didn’t disturb them. Cats have to have several naps a day to give them the energy for a proper good sleep later on.

Charlie demonstrating his petrol head knowledge. He found the secret sunroof I didn’t know I had.

Terry Pratchett famously said that thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as Gods.

Cats have never forgotten it.

I’ll try and get some pics of Jess. She likes her sleep more than most. She’s about 16, we think. She was believed to be 5 or 6 when we got her 10 years ago. A very sweet and beautiful lady. Why the vet should have the label ‘aggressive’ on her file its anybody’s guess! Joking, of course.

We KNOW why.

She obviously had some early trauma and still has triggers. We know the signs and keep clear of the shooters! Aggressive is an understatement.

So, lovely Monday cat cuteness and love.

Notes to self : Part 2

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

This one is to make a note of lessons learned recently.

Always believe and trust in magic. It’s true and comes from within. We all have magic; we are all magic in every way.

Lesson 2

This one is more about protecting the self. Never make a priority of somebody who only sees you as an option. Learned the hard way very recently.

Thought about lesson two while painting this rabbit over Easter. Symbol of rebirth and new beginnings. Apropos.