second post in the same month! I must be ill!!

I think I am having a fit of blogitus. This will be the second post within the same month. Someone take my temperature please! And pick those stunned people up off the floor.

Anyway, among other things, I am blogging about the cat I made, here she is (shh, she is asleep):

To give you an idea of size, she is lying on an A4 sized box.

and here is a close up of her face and front paws, hand embroidered by me none the less!!!

She is only my second machine sewn project and I can tell you that her tail was a pain to turn the right way and just as bad to stuff, thank God for rubber tipped pencils is all I can say!!

I did enjoy making her though and my daughter; who has adopted her, loves her. She is made from an old pair of my trousers and I used a torn piece of floral fabric to make her collar and tied it into a bow.

I ventured into town yesterday, telling Tony that I wanted to have a scout around the charity shops, I was on the lookout for a sewing box. Well, after looking in 3 charity shops and finding nothing I popped into our local British Heart Foundation furniture shop and found this lovely old looking sewing box. It is high enough to use as a small table to put bits on when I am sewing. The inside of the lid has a huge pin cushion attached to it. The actual storage part is 7 1/2" high and 12 1/2" square. The whole thing is only slightly lower than my craft desk, so no bending down. The best bit was it only cost me a tenner :) It needs tarting up, so when I get a spare half hour I will probably paint it cream and do something crafty with the sides and top. Any ideas gladly welcome!

I also found this moose? in another charity shop. She looked so sad sitting all alone on the shelf there that I just had to buy her. She is wearing a green gingham dress with a matching bow in her hair and a green cardigan over the top of her dress. How cute is she! When stood up she is about 12" tall, but she prefers to sit! I have called her myrtle (hoping she is a moose).

I have had the day from hell today, probably to make up for the fun times I have had over Christmas. I woke up this morning and realised that I only have 2 weeks left in order to get my university assignment done. This is the assignment from hell and I have had doubts about my ability to get it done today, but I have finished for the night now and feel a bit better about it. I have managed to get loads done for it, including sorting out all the rough data into some sort of order and have made rough drafts of the graphs and tables needed. Thats the worst bit done. I just need to get it all down on paper now in an even better order. I will have a go at starting that task tomorrow, but I know it won't get me a good mark this time! Oh well, anything over 40% is a pass, so I am hoping for 41%.

Well, it's now 20 past midnight and my craft room is a complete mess, but I will blissfully ignore it all until tomorrow, I will just step over it all and go to bed now, safe in the knowledge that I have broken the back of that bloody assignment.

Goodnight all. x

Belated Christmas wishes!

OK, so I didnt get to blog before Christmas, but in my defense I was rather busy, much like the rest of the country, ney the world really!!

Anyway, things have been good here in tinsel-less town. I am calling my home town by that name as the Christmas decorations that the council have decided to bestow upon us this year are in a word - Pathetic. Some hastily thrown up real trees with a few equally hastily thrown together decorations hanging from them, Lovely (not). That's enough about my lovely home town, now lets get onto the 'me' part of this blog entry.

Craig is home from University and will be here until the 10th Jan when he goes back for his second term. He is doing really well and loves it, even learning to fend for himself!

As it is Christmas I thought I would blog about my presents that I received from Santa.

To start with I got this:

It is my new sewing machine; a Janome. Nice eh! Notice that I even managed to thread it correctly and what's more I even made something with it! Scary that!

This is what I made, his name is Marvin and he is the cutest little monster and not bad for my first attempt at machine sewing in absolute years.

I also got some sewing books for Christmas, the 'How to Sew' is a set of little books that cover everything from the basics to how to sew sashiko (whatever that is!)
The other book is a quilting book; which I am going to attempt, wish me luck, I think I will need it!

Tony bought me this Cath kidston sew! book, he bought it from WHS, but believe me it's a lot cheaper on Amazon, half the price in fact. It's a great book and includes not only all the full size patterns for everything in the book, but also the material to make the bag pictured on the front of the book.

Now, I love Rag dolls, always have and always will. I used to have the whole set of Holly Hobby rag dolls, years ago, but stupidly got rid of them during a tidying up frenzy (also years ago, have learnt my lesson since then, never throw anything away!) Anyway, I have tried and failed to buy myself at least one Holly Hobby doll on Ebay, but have always been outbid at the last minute :(. I was moaning to Tony just before Christmas about the HH dolls during our last minute Christmas shopping dash in town. He was nodding and making the usual 'I'm not listening, but will make out I am' noises when we popped into BHS. Well, my heart skipped a beat when I saw these lovely rag dolls and Tony's heart skipped a beat when he saw they were knocked down to half price. He bought me all three of them and now they sit in various areas in my craft room.

How sweet is she!

I have tried uploading pics of the other two, but blogger is being a pain at the moment! The other two have different coloured hair, one being black, the other being ginger, they all have the same style of dress, but in different colours, the one pictured has cherries sewn at the bottom of the dress, the other two have a strawberry and a daisy sewn to the bottom of their dresses.

I also got crafty stuff from the kids, the Just dance Wii game, Ministry of sound 'One' album, a huge bundle of material to make things with, bath smellies, slipper sox, scrapbooking kit, a lovely purple winter hat and various other stuff that escapes my memory at the moment.

Speaking of memory, or the lack of it, I must tell you what happened the other day. It started with Tony coming home from getting the weekly shopping, while he was trying to calm our stupid dog down I put the shopping away. Well, Tony comes into the kitchen and starts to tell me that he bought my favourite washing machine liqitabs and opens the cupboard where they are kept, thinking I had put them away already. Not there! He asks me where I had put them, my answer "no idea, haven't seen them". After he stopped swearing about losing them he opened the fridge to get the milk out to make a coffee and guess what was sitting on the shelf? Yep, the liqitabs!! I swear I didn't put them there, I am sure I didn't put them there. Oh I must be over tired! It can't be my age, I'm not old enough to be forgetting things yet!!!

Anyway I must go and check where I put the mince pies!!!!

Happy New Year to you all. x x x