hop skip jump

I am yellow, hear me roar (ahem)

I'm in the middle of a sewing frenzy, crazily trying to get everything together for Morphe next week. The idea for my submission to the exhibition was to make several toys focussing on a single colour each. I was heavily inspired by Eric Carle's beautiful book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? where each animal is mosly drawn in one gorgeous shade (a red bird, a purple cat, a blue horse, etc). Anyhow, so this above is the first one completed: Mimi the yellow lion. She's made from yellow wool blanketing and her dress is from a '70s pillowcase. I backed out of my original plan to make them all totally monotone in favour of using shades of the one colour (with a healthy splash of white!) I'm pretty happy with little Mimi, and am really looking forward to getting stuck into the rest of them. In a fit of enthusiasm a couple of months ago I promised 5 toys for this exhibition. So I probably won't be getting much sleep over the next couple of nights while I sew up the orange monkey, brown bear (of course), blue cat and green monkey currently sitting in neat cup-up piles on my desk. Must remember to buy coffee.

Christmas won't come early

Thankyou so much for your well-wishes. I'm hesitant to jinx the household by saying that we're all better now, but things do appear to be heading toward the healthier end of the spectrum. Fingers crossed, and all that. Keen to put illness behind us and move toward happier things, Audrey & I made a big batch of these gingerbread stars on Friday for the Christmas tree. However, as it turns out not one freshly cut christmas tree could be found in anywhere in Adelaide this weekend. I know, it's still November, but I thought there might be one or two out there for earlybirds like us. So, if there are any of these stars left by next weekend, they will be gracing our tree. I'm going to dust off the Bing Crosby in anticipation.

I used the gingerbread recipe from the new Donna Hay magazine. They turned out quite well, but since I like my gingerbread very gingery, next time I might try replacing the brown sugar with dark brown sugar and adding a lot more ground ginger (there can never be enough ginger, can there?)

GINGERBREAD
125g butter, softened
.5 cup brown sugar
.5 cup golden syrup
2.5 cups plain flour, sifted
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, sifted
Preheat oven to 190/375. Place butter and sugar in electric mixer and beat for 8 minutes or until light & creamy. Add golden syrup, flour, ginger and bicarb. & beat until a smooth dough forms. Lightly knead dough & wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes or until firm. Roll out dough to 5mm thickness & cut shapes. Place on trays lined with baking paper & bake for 10 minutes or until golden. Store in airtight container for up to 2 weeks (er - or on Christmas tree until they've all been eaten!) Makes 24.

Supersized

Please excuse the gap between posts. Both Audrey & I have been fighting off a stomach 'flu for the past week. Just as she was recovering, I came down with it. So, not much crafty action around here.

I did finish Ernest the supersized monkey. Big Ern will join Carly's big-kitty in the front window of the Morphe exhibition. When I was thinking about how I wanted Ernest to look, I was aiming for slightly bookish and a vaguely intellectual. Unfortunately, with the white specs, all that seems to have been achieved here is mild eccentrism. In any case, it was fun making something much bigger than usual (almost 30 inches tall - generally my monkeys are around 15 inches tall), I highly recommend it!

A new obsession

I've been working away on my submissions for Morphe, but hit a snag today when I ran out of stuffing. Some good friends of ours had a baby boy recently and I still hadn't made him a gift. Today was the day to get my act together, so I made him this little quilt to sit on. This is my first attempt at quilting, so I kept it really basic, with just straight lines, and no patchwork. After thinking about trying quilting for a long time, it was great to finally have a go. And fun. Not only have I discovered a new craft to obsess over, but I've also developed a newfound appreciation for the patience of seasoned quilters.

OK, so the quilting isn't exactly straight. I'm pretending to myself that it's not supposed to be.

And this is a close-up of the applique. Hope it's not too girly. Just have to bind it now (any hints on binding would be very welcome!), pack it up and send it over to Melbourne.

Camping out

The other day I was telling my Mum how much Audrey was getting into tents and cubby houses these days, when she casually mentioned that we still had my brother's old play tee-pee tucked away in the shed. I couldn't believe that we hadn't thought of it until now. We went over & picked it up on the weekend and it is still in remarkably good condition for its 25+ years, and much nicer than I remember. Very special that Audrey can have something of my brothers to play in too, it certainly warms the cockles of my very sentimental heart.

I had intended (one day!) to make this one. Love how it's constructed of old tea towels sewn together. It's from the December 2004 issue of Family Circle magazine. A similar pattern can be found here. Looks like my brother has ticked something off my to-do list for me. ;)

Toys, toys, toys. And mail.

My Mum's sewing machine is so much faster than mine. I'm a bit aprehensive about what it's going to be like to return to the 1960's once mine is fixed. Four new toys finished this week. The first couple, Maurice and Mabel are off to live in country New South Wales with a little boy and his new baby sister. The next two, Dotty and Walter, will be up for sale in my webshop. They should be up there sometime this evening. The little hearts on their clothes are cut from some felted wool that Lyn sent. They are in the most beautiful, vibrant colours - perfect for applique.

I also got some great mail this week from Nicole, part of the afternoon tea swap a few Australian bloggers are taking part in. She made two absolutely delicious types of biscotti - ginger and clove, and cranberry with white chocolate. Sorry about the photo, Nicole's parcel arrived this week during one of the terrible storms we've been having. I knew I had to rip into it & taste the contents immediately, so the photo quality suffered in the poor light. It was worth it, though. (For me, anyway!) Better photos and recipe here. Thanks Nicole!

A weekend in pictures

The weekend started on Friday with a trip to drop these little guys off to Closet.

Saturday I made these apple, oat and date muffins. We also went to a wonderful birthday picnic in the park for a good friend, but of course I forgot the camera. (I always forget the camera).

Sunday, Matt tried his hand at removing this hideous 'pergola' from the back of our house. We've been here for over 4 years and have lived with its sheer ugliness while we addressed the many other areas of our house that needed attending to. The bougainvillea was nice, but lately 'the structure', as we have been calling it, has been swaying in the wind in a scary & not safe around kids kind of way. It had to go!

Audrey watched the activity from the safety of her sandpit.

And I did what any self respecting crafter would do - I took off to the Craft and Quilt Fair with my Mum. Most of it was country-style crafts and scrapbooking, but a number of quilting stores had stands. I was on a strict budget, so these few fat quarters were what I came home with. The apple pattern (top RH corner) is my favourite, I think it's a reproduction print (?) Amazing how satisfying the purchase of a few little slices of fabric can be.

And now for something completely different...

I'm up to the gills in soft toys. Cats and monkeys everywhere. I'm loving it, but fear that things are becoming a bit monotone around here... how many ways can I say "hey, here's another soft toy"?

Er, so here's another 2 stuffed toys! These two: Betsy and Roma, are off to Closet with Gladys.

I'm itching to make something else: bags, a quilt, an advent calendar. But, for now I really need to make more soft toys. A friend is having a craft party next week (whereby about 15 of her nearest and dearest come along and buy handcrafted things for Christmas... cool, eh?) and has asked me to take along some toy samples. Then, at the top of my list for November is to make things for the wonderful Morphe exhibition which I am thrilled and honoured to be a part of. I can't wait.

Gladys

This is Gladys monkey. She appears to be wide awake, which is more that I can say for me right now. Now that daylight savings is upon us, the major focus of our home life has once again become sleep. The apparently small matter of turning the clocks forward an hour has really turned Audrey's already delicately balanced sleep rituals upside down. So now we're getting even less kip that we did before - a little disappointing given that I thought the time change might help! I pulled out my favourite toddler sleep book, the wonderful Elizabeth Pantley's No-Cry Sleep Solution, and her sensible perspective on the subject is to be patient for a couple of weeks until things return to normal: "you can't push a button to change your biological clock". It's obvious, I know, but sleep deprivation seems to leave me unable to see the big picture sometimes. And I'll take any reassurance I can get. So now, I'm off to bed.