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Monday 23 April 2012

A 4th Birthday Present


I mentioned on my Work In Progress Wednesday post that I was making a friends son a birthday present of a sock monkey pirate and Peso the Penguin from Octonauts.

Well I have already finished them!

As I don't have any spare money at the moment I am having to make presents from bits and pieces I already have. I made a sock monkey a while ago to give to Euan as it went with a bed set a brought for him which has a monkey on it. The bedding is for a single bed though so I had to wait until he had a proper sized bed before giving it to him. He is 4 on St George's Day (23rd April) so I thought a sock monkey might be a bit young for him.

Then one of my crafty friends @birksyf mentioned that she was going to a pirate birthday party which reminded me of all the pirate parties we went to as kids and how much fun they were. So I decided to turn the sock monkey into a pirate sock monkey using bits of felt. I googled pirate sock monkey and found some pictures to base my monkey on and I really like how he has turned out (I'm sure Euan won't mind if I keep him for myself).


He has a hook for a hand and a peg leg, a belt with a banana in and a loot bag full of coins.


I like his little grin, it makes him look like a friendly pirate and an eye patch and skull and cross bones on his bandana, which was quite fiddly to sew on.


How well he has turned out has made me think of other ways I could dress sock monkeys up as different characters so they have a bit more personality but the other socks I have are definitely girly ones so I'm struggling for good ideas. But I'll see how well this little guy is received before I spend too much time thinking about it! I need to think of a name for him too...

Euan also loves a tv programme called Octonauts and is receiving various Octonauts themed toys from his grandparents for his birthday including one of the submarines they have. So another little thing I made was a Peso the Penguin little toy which I think I'm going to put on his card (but so he can be taken off again) out of felt. He is very cute and I had to restrain myself from making the whole gang- the card would have to be pretty massive to fit them all on!


Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a really good week.

Xxx

Wednesday 18 April 2012

Octonauts birthday present

I recently spent an afternoon drinking hot chocolate in a coffee shop with friends and an almost 4 year old who is obsessed with a programme called Octonauts.

I had never heard of this programme but he absolutely loves it and is getting some Octonauts related toys for his birthday. I had already got him a present of a bed set with a monkey on (which I got in the sale a while ago!) and was planning on giving him a sock monkey dressed as a pirate to go with it. As what kid doesn't like pirates right?!

But I have now also decided to make a small Octonauts character to go on his card that he can then take off and play with if he wants. I asked his mum which was his favourite character and apparently it changes between two of them so I have decided to make Peso the Penguin as it looks a bit simpler and I have the right coloured felt already.

Here is Peso:



He is quite cute isn't he?

I have cut out templates from paper and am going to cut him out later and start stitching him together.

I am also turning this sock monkey into a pirate:


He has TONS of toys already so I don't tend to give him toys so hopefully these will go down well.

Xxx

Tiny Easter Bunny


I am still feeling in the Easter mood and have been knitting some tiny easter bunnies this week.

I found a really cute free pattern on Mochimochi Land website which can be found here

It was my first attempt at knitting in the round, which is something I have been meaning to do for a while now. My Grandma brought me some DPNs that she found in a charity shop and I decided I would use this project to try them out instead of a bigger project like socks.

The DPNs are quite long though which proved a bit tricky with only 6 stitches on each needle but I managed it in the end and here is a finished bunny:



Aren't they just soooo cute! On the website people have knitted them in all colours and I'm a bit obsessed with knitting them now. I had to knit a friend for this one straight away.



I love how tiny and cute they are! I have also brought patterns for tiny snowmen, santa and angel which I am going to be knitting in the run up to christmas either for decorations or as gifts to put on presents.

Xxx

A row of beach huts

I have been very busy stitching away for a craft stall my Auntie has offered to run a stall for. She rang me last week to say that her local village in Somerset was having a show and that she could have a stall of my craft stuff if I wanted her to. I said yes straight away and then realised I only had 2 weeks to get some stock together- aaaahhhh!

I had some bags, cushion covers, cards, bean bags and tea cosy's left over from last years craft fairs but I wanted to make some new stock too.

I gave my Auntie a beach hut door stop for Christmas and she has asked me to make some more of those for the craft fair so I set about stitching the fronts of those straight away. I decided I could probably make a maximum of 3 in the time I had. So far I have stitched the 3 fronts but not cut out any of the material to make up the doorstop- eek!

Here are the 3 fronts:

I think they look quite nice in a row and am thinking that I might stitch some more in different colours to make a picture- another project to add to my never-ending list!

I had better get back to stitching them as I am running out of time to get everything finished.

Xxx

An Easter Cake


Good Friday has started off well so far. I had hot cross buns for breakfast and fish for lunch. It is also the first day of 3 days I have off for Easter.

This week I have baked an Easter cake. It was a bag of dry ingredients that I got from Sainsburys after Christmas for about £2 including the marzipan and icing- AMAZING!

These are the bags of ingredients:



The bags have all the dry ingredients you need all measured out in little bags. It was very easy to make.
Here is the mix ready in the tin

And all wrapped up ready to go in the oven

It took 3 and a half hours to cook in the oven, the longest I have ever had to bake a cake for. And I was a bit worried it was being burnt to a crisp in there.

The top turned out fine but the edges were a bit darker than the rest. Which is where mum chipped in to say a should have put paper around the edge aswell to stop it cooking too quickly- which is great after it has been cooked!

After the burnt cake had cooled overnight it was time to decorate it. The decorating bag had everything in it including apricot jam to help the marzipan stick to the cake. It also had 3 different sized stars but I found an chick one in the drawer that I thought would be more Eastery. I rolled ou the icing and marzipan thinner that it said because mum doesn't like it that much. Unfortunately this meant that there was a leftover ball of marzipan and icing which I had to eat- such a tough life!

Here is the decorated cake:

I hope everyone had a good Easter. We are still eating the cake and I am informed that it doesn't taste burnt!
Xxx





Friday 6 April 2012

My Godmother's birthday present

Good afternoon everyone! I missed wednesday again- oops!

But here is my Work in Progress for the first week in April (time is going so fast)

I think I mentioned a bag my Godmother had asked me to make her for her birthday? Well I have started cutting out templates for it today.

She lives in near Cambridge and used to work as a nurse at one of the colleges there but also was born and grew up in London and about 8 years ago bought a little flat in the Farringdon area. So I thought I would do a plain linen bag with a black sillouette of the London skyline on one side and a Cambridge sillouette on the other. I googled for some images and found one for London no problem but Cambridge was much harder. In the end I just chose a few well know buildings and made my own skyline.

Here is the London template:


From left to right there is Tower of London, London Eye, Nelson's Column, St Paul's, The Gherkin and Big Ben (or Houses of Parliament to be precise!)

And here is the Cambridge skyline:


From left to right: The Catholic Church, Clare College, The Mathmatical Bridge, Kings College and Mullard Observatory.

The bridge in the middle will be embroidered onto the bag as it has lots of criss-cross bits that would be difficult to cut out of fabric and I'm going to embroider the spokes of the London Eye for the same reason.

I haven't decided what to do with the rest of the bag yet as these won't take up much of the space- it might look good just left plain- I'll have to wait until its all cut out to see I guess.

I hope you all have a good Easter!

Xxx