Makes

Hello, I've mostly been busy with these......

Christmas cake. I hope that the 4 1/2 hours of baking at warp factor 1 and leaving overnight in the oven did actually cook this bugger, cause I'm going to be upset if there's goo in the middle of this. I ask you, a kilo of fruit!!!!!!












Elizabeth, the birthday doll. Complete with pink frock and green knickers (underpants for you lot over in the USA). She was made following the kinda-pattern in one of my birthday books, I was quite pleased with the finished result. The idea of this particular type of doll is that you leave the features very generalised, in the Steiner manner, to help the child develop their own imaginative play. She took about 5 hours to cut, sew, hairdress and clothe. And of course I did leave it until 2 days before the actual birthday to make her! She also got a little mattress, sheet and quilt to go in her beautiful red pram - the other part of No 2's birthday gift.

















More 5 minute bread.













Advent stuff - Santa Christmas (as my little dears insist on calling him) and Christmas placemats. The little printouts were downloaded from fellow blogger aprintaday who very generously provides her stunning artwork as free files for plebs like me to use. Have a look, the art is fantastic. (Hers, not mine!) And the twiddly tree - just for the children to do really. They found this stick in the local park gardens, and we decided to decorate it. Fortunately one of our local garden centres has a great Christmas decorations department where we found the tiny decorations - just perfect for this sort of thing - even the fairy is the right size.




















Birthday presents for various bodies large and small.



















I know this looks like a pile of nonsense, but eventually, it turns into a lovely tinkly ball!

Happy Christmas everybody, and a peaceful New Year.

Marble Bag

Marble Bag
Originally uploaded by rowsew

And the finished item .... This is a marble bag for one of my son's friends. The pattern design is from the Omiyage book by Kumiko Sudo that I received for my birthday. I was looking for a design on the internet and couldn't find anything, then I picked up the book - just to look at the lovely pictures really - and this was the first pattern! Hooray. The instructions are very clear, and it was easy to make. I got to do a bit of hand sewing, which is quite rare these days, and I'm quite pleased with it. Click through to my Flikr to see more pics.

My Birthday!

Well, I mentioned last week somewhere here that it was my birthday (and no, I'm not telling), and I wanted to show you the lovely goodies from family and friends:



A great pile of reading material for crafting, (with or without the children); a lovely story about Matryoshka dolls; a beautiful hand made mousey pin-cushion complete with new pins - what luxury - I've been too mean to go out and buy my own!; 2 pictures from Charlie, signed; a georgeous bunch of dahlias from one of my Mum's dearest friends; a crochet magazine, and unseen, a fantastic new bell for my bicycle - it goes trling, trling - perfect! And of course, an IOU, for 2 chickens, from my husband - you've seen their pics already!

The day itself was not too bad - the sun actually came out for the first time in about 3 weeks, and was pleasantly warm, Mum and Dad popped in, and a friend came round to drop off a gift, and ended staying for lunch. All good.

However, first thing, before these nice things, me and the little burdens had to walk to the store for food items, which is fine, but burden No 1 decided to take his bike along. Which he has had for 8 months. He managed to park it, and both his sandals in an enormous pile of the most revolting, sticky, icky dog poo about 100 yards from the store! I said to him, 'well done, so you choose to make this humungous error on my birthday - thank you so much' (in an ironic manner, I hope you realise, through gritted teeth). Whereupon, we had to return home, to relieve ourselves of the aforesaid s****y shoes and bike, replace shoes, wash hands, turn around, and go straight back out so we could get the damn shopping. As I am sure you are aware, walking around with toddlers is a painful process at the best of times, so a trip that at best should have taken about 40 minutes, took an hour and 40 minutes. And involved dog mess. I know, it's the fault of the dog owner that left the stuff lying around, but dang it I was MAD! And I might have done a bit of shouting, I mean, it was my birthday for goodness sake.

Now, I'm glad I got that off my chest again. The rest of the day was OK for a birthday. Thanks to everyone who sent cards, or messages!