My Weblog

Three things.

Last week's wip,

Fifi finally flew away - taking her nest with her.

Next week's wips,

putting together an Easter Mama and Baby bird tutorial, and sorting out that list of my favourite craft books.

But first I must finish this week's wip,

Triplets. Or ' Triblets' - as Molly calls them.

Hope you have a fun-filled weekend.

: )

Arthur and Finlay the fish.

One day, Arthur wants to be a Pirate.

Even though the other silly, nasty, Pirates laugh at him.

" You won't be tough enough to sail with us, if you likes a little cuddly fish - you daft bugger " said the nasty Pirates.

" You'll see " says Arthur " You just wait until I'm a big boy ".

First favourite book

This week's wips

Assembling Arthur's ensemble.

Finishing Fifi's feet.

Fifi was made from a pattern ( tweaked a bit - I made her body smaller, added a hat and tail and changed her feet/beak ) in my most favourite Japanese craft book ever.

It's such a brilliant book, with really easy to follow patterns of the most adorable softies. The bad news is that it's really hard to get hold of. The good news is I found it here. The bad news is, it looks like they only ship to the States and Cananda. : (

I'll carry on looking on-line later and will up-date if I find it elsewhere.

Have a sooper-dooper weekend everyone.

xxx

Things I like

My favourite thing I like listening to at the moment....

Ask Elvis

I love it, so funny and so interesting. I love the Stan Laurel/brown car/singing the ingredients of a bar chocolate episode.

: )

new mag

Cotton & paint

Available from kitty or here or here. Although I'm finding it hard to say go spend your hard earned dosh on this one.

There are some nice things in here..

shoes a plenty...

bags a plenty...

some lovely crochet...

and some cutie cuteness.

But really, as Hillary said a while ago ( sorry, to lazy to find the exact link), I'm starting to feel a little jaded with the newest mags. They are still lovely, but, if you have a stash of Japanese craft mags I'm not sure you'll find a lot for you here. On the other hand, if you are new to Japanese craft magazines/ books, I can't sing their praises highly enough.

I think maybe I'll post a list of my Japanese craft book favourites.., and why they are my favourites , what do you think ? I'd love to hear what other peoples favourite are too...

In between a Rocky and a hard place.

Well, we've been busy over here at Chez Roberts. We had a Hello Kitty party to celebrate Molly's 7th birthday

( cake mould bought from e-bay, re-usable if careful. The cake tasted like crap mind you )

Eight little girls came to play, and the Nail Fairy came too. The Nail Fairy cast a magic spell on the eight little girls, and they were all as good as gold . Sadly though,the Nail Fairy had to leave, and the magic spell wore off, and then they all went *BESERK*.

Eight little girls running around the house when your house STILL looks like this -

GRrrrrrrrrrrr.... there's a kitchen table under there somewhere, and can you see the thin layer of plaster dust on everything ? That's all I'm going to say on the matter, because you really don't want to hear the very bad language I am capable of.

Count to ten Lyn, count to ten......

Onto nicer matters, I managed to finish little Rocky

he was all snuggled up in his carrycot

and posted off to my dear friend.  ( Theresa sent some amazing birthday goodies for Molly, which I'll be posting pics of as soon as I'm allowed to touch-  I can't wait to get my sticky paws on it all ) heh heh.

Thank you for stopping by after my unintentional blog break, I'll be back tomorrow with piccies from the latest Cotton & Paint magazine, in the meantime, it's back that bloody kitchen.

This week's wip

Baby Rocky.

Too young to sit up

so I put him in a cup.

Square eyed

I seem to be into squares at the moment. I'm still slowly working on the granny squares, I've decided the best approach, for me, is to crochet 10, and then weave in the ends of ten. And actually, if I sit listening to the radio, I don't mind sewing in those ends, it's a bit like hand stitching the binding on Billy's quilt -sort of a brainless creativity. Which particularly suits me.

Speaking of Billy's quilt, it's all finished.

This one was inspired by Amy's quilt in the Crafter's companion. I like Amy's approach to quilting, a sort of ' make it up as you go along - let it all hang loose - free spirit ' approach.

It was very quick to do, i just cut and pieced 6" squares and strips of fabric into whatever width and length took my fancy, did a little hand stitching on the front,

pieced together the back in the same way,

and then machine quilted.

It's very snuggly, the white fabric is a super soft vintage cotton sheet, I pick up these lovely old linen sheets really cheaply from charity/thrift shops. They are sometimes a bit worn, but I don't mind that, I can darn any holes if and when they appear, the softness and age make up for it . And I often wonder what stories they could tell ?

Apart from the quilt, I'm getting very little crafting done, due to the fact that * we * are re-modelling the kitchen.

* We *- as in Phil and I.

> _ <

The less said about this, the better .

: 0

We are going for neutral scheme - pale wood units and calico walls, ( this is boring isn't it ? - I'm boring myself already) so I fancy injecting a bit of colour with a patchwork of tiles - varying the sizes and colours.  I love this effect, but I have neither the money, talent or time, I also like her other works, here , here and here  ( it's just like patchwork isn't it ? ) in fact I like everything on that site, but it'll have to be something much simpler for me to attempt .

When Billy was born, he was given a lovely mosaic piece by Elaine.

Elaine is a lovely, talented, friend of Phil's.

And because I'm sooo bored with diy, I snuck in another little bit of square crafting today

more about that on Friday.