Alice Update

This month's character in the Alice SAL was the Mad Hatter.

I also made this mixed media picture of a sardine tin this week, following a tutorial on the Seasalt website.

In un-related news I planted a Kiwi plant in the garden when Naomi was very small (they were her favourite fruit). It has grown like a triffid ever since without so much as hinting at a kiwi, but today, after 18 years it has flowered!

And in case you were wondering, here is this months not-so-uplifting sentiment from the calendar the girls made me

Gifted Gorgeousness - May

It's time for Gifted Gorgeousness, the monthly Blog Hop organised by Jo where we show the things we've made as, received as, or can otherwise shoehorn into the category of gifts.
Quite a few sewing projects for my GG post this month. Lets see...
I made the girls a top each from some funky tattoo print jersey

I made this top for Eloise for her Birthday

and also this dress

Loki approves

The sharp eyed among will notice that all the pictures are of Naomi, this is because Eloise lives some distance away, so her makes have had to be posted to her.
This was a cover kit with Mollie Makes magazine, so that counts as a gift right?

And I finished off the blackbird applique I showed a couple of posts back. The design/kit was from last year's Spring Craftpod, which was a gift from me to me :)

Signs of Spring

After last weeks snow we are starting to see some small signs of spring:-

Crocuses in the garden

Playing with my new toy at the beach

Some "green" days on the Temperature SAL

Snow and Stitching

Yes, we had snow. Not too exciting for some people, but it's quite unusual around here.

You can see the small patch of blue stitching showing the colder few days in my Temperature SAL

and if you look carefully you'll see that I indicated the snow by filling in the background of the relevant squares with white.

I've also stitched a Valentine's Exchange piece, which I can't show yet as it's a secret, and this little Year of the Pig ornament to add to Naomi's Chinese Zodiac collection.

He's stitched in GAST Schoolhouse Red on Crafty Kitten Just Peachy. I couldn't find a chart I liked so I charted him myself. I drew the Chinese character by looking at various New Year greetings online, I hope it does indeed say "Pig", and not one of the more colourful Chinese expressions from Firefly.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

At least around the front door.
I've decorated my wreath and hung it - white hydrangeas and silvered cones this year

And we've put out the pallet tree David made a couple of years ago, together with a new addition - a 3' willow Angel.

The tree is up in the house, but not decorated as the girls like to do that when they come home

August's Gifted Gorgeousness - Warning: Picture Heavy

It's time for Gifted Gorgeousness again - when we show our gift related crafting - for a full explanation see Jo's blog here.
This month I'm showing the gifts  sent and received in the VSCyberstitchers July exchange.
Here is the gorgeous sheep design pincushion I received from Margaret.

Isn't it beautiful? I just love everything about it - the design, the ruffly ribbon edging, that sweet little button...
And here is the little pillow I made for Linda.

I didn't have a pattern for this one, I saw a photograph of a similar design on Pinterest and sort of made my own version up.
Also in gift related stitching, a little something I made for Eloise's new kitchen.

And not gift-related at all, it was the Village Show yesterday, so here are a few pictures for you to enjoy.

Some of the flowers

 and pot plants.

Look at these stunning fuchsias.

Cookery Section: "Picnic for Two" and cakes,

jams, bread and children's cookery section

and some of the floral art,

and children's floral displays.

We did quite well, with quite a few individual class wins.

I got a 2nd prize with the little basket of peppers and aubergines front left in the picture, and a first with my cherry tomatoes, which you can see in the background.

Naomi got a first place with this flower arrangement. The theme was "Good Enough to Eat",  and lots of prizes for her baking, and art.

 Naomi's decorated cupcakes

One of her drawings

The overall prizes were a close run thing this year; Naomi was one point off winning the Most Points in Cookery Trophy, whilst luck swung the other way for me and I took the Most Points in Handicraft Trophy by a single point. I also won the trophy for Best in Show Art with this pastel picture

.
Bonus blog points if you can tell who it is.

A Little Alchemy Going On In The Alchymyst's Study

A few weeks ago I was working in the local Secondary School, invigilating exams, and the exam they'd done was Chemistry. Afterwards there was a heaping great pile of periodic tables left over and the school were going to bin them, so I offered to "re-home them"

After distressing a handful of them with cold tea and ink, I combined them with a few vintage book pages, some mediaeval alchemical illustrations I found online, and a couple of used envelopes and made this little junk journal.

It was a steep learning curve, and I'll be doing one or two stages differently with the next one, but for a first attempt I'm quite pleased with it.

In other news, we've been busy in the garden constructing a second patio, as the main one loses the sun mid-afternoon. Naomi decided "second patio" wasn't a very good name for it, and has re-christened it and wood-burned us a sign for it.

Presenting the "Gin Patio"

Every garden should have one

Block-Printing and Bluebells

Penguins are not just for winter so I printed myself a silk penguin scarf for spring.

Penguin printing block and black and teal fabric paints from The Arty Crafty Place
And just because they are pretty, some bluebells in my garden.

Spring Has Sprung

I picked this posy of flowers in the garden this morning.

And made this little skirt for Naomi from a fun Japanese print cotton

I just hope it doesn't say anything vulgar!

Drought Resistant Gardening

Not really an issue around here at the moment but still...
Inspired by several Pinterest posts, I made a little succulent garden.

I mixed and matched a couple of projects I found on there. I made the green succulent  at the right from individual oval shaped leaves, roughly following this tutorial except that I hand cut the oval shapes, and stitched them together rather than hot gluing them..
Why on earth wouldn't you sew these together? By the time I've found the glue gun in the garage, remembered where the spare glue sticks are, left it to warm up and burned my fingers twice I could have sewn half a dozen of them.

As an aside, I don't understand the need to make everything "no-sew", especially with felt. Once many many many years ago I lovingly followed the instructions on Blue Peter to make a "lovely felt sunflower pincushion for Mother's Day". It involved gluing a stuffed felt centre and petals onto an old sticking plaster reel. It took me ages. And used a veritable lake of glue to get the felt to stick to the metal reel, or indeed itself.  
It did, in fairness, look lovely (or at least it did to my juvenile eye), but the glue had left the felt so stiff and hard that it was impossible to stick any pins in it, I was devastated.
I decided then and there that glue and felt do not mix, and I've never seen any reason to change that view

The bluish one at the back was made by rolling and pleating a long strip of  spiky leaf shapes in a similar manner to this tutorial. Again stitched not glued.

The glaucous looking one with the two little offshoots at the front left I kind of made up my own method for, and actually I think it's the one I like best.
The "pebbles" are just some wool felted balls I had lying around

Gifted Gorgeousness - May Edition

It's the 15th of the month, the day set aside for Gifted Gorgeousness, as organised by Jo of Serendipitous Stitching, where we show off our gift related makes.
Today I am showing this coaster (Celtic Bird by Textile Heritage) which I've made as part of my gift for an upcoming exchange. It's safe to show it now as it is a secret exchange so even if the intended recipient sees it here, they won't know it is headed their way.

And shoe horning it's way into the theme is another item I've made this week. As a wedding present a school friend gave us a little lidded glass bonbon dish, about 4" in diameter. At the time I filled it with a pot pourri made from dried petals from my bouquet.
Now we will have been married 30 years this August, and as I was moving the dish to dust the bedroom windowsill earlier this week I came to the conclusion that 30 year old pot pourri is basically not very nice. 
It was uniformly brown, drab, odourless and pretty much crumbled beyond recognition
and I decided it was time to accept the fact that it wasn't even fit for compost, get rid of it, and give the dish a makeover.
So I made this teeny-tiny terrarium instead. (I left the lid off for the photo so you could see it better)

Sad bonbon dish is happy

Fail!

I learned a lesson this week, and that lesson was:-
Check the colour fastness of your threads before you squeeze a cold tea bag over your finished piece to age it.
Feel my pain!

This is what Dexter Morgan's Father Christmas must look like
Oh well, back to the drawing board
This month's challenge reveal will be slightly delayed
On a brighter note, I found these teeny tiny daffodils in a hidden corner of the garden. To give you an idea of scale, my funky little mid-century jug is about 6 inches tall.

A Rose in Winter

Not, admittedly, the most spectacular rose I've ever seen, but flowering. In my garden. In January.

The frogs are spawning too, spring must be coming.

How to Recognise Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away

Number One. The Larch   The Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree. The Christmas tree.

David knocked this up for me from an old pallet we had in the garden (doesn't everyone have random old pallets lying around? No? Just us then?). 

Its just a 2:1 ratio triangle cut around the central strut thingy - I'm sure the central strut thingy has a proper name but I've no idea what - and then I stencilled a few simple snowflakes onto it. Ta Da! Almost instant Pinterest level Christmas loveliness. 

Gone to Pot

Not much crafting going on here lately so I thought I'd share a couple of garden pictures. I love heucheras, I've got several different coloured ones in pots around the garden so I couldn't resist buying this lovely dark one, "Liquorice" when I saw it at the Royal Cornwall Show last week. I've just finished planting it up into this display for by the front door alongside Cosmos "ChocaMocha", the chocolate cosmos, which is almost the same colour and has the added bonus of smelling exactly like chocolate.

I've seen a lot of pictures on Pinterest of "fairy gardens" made from broken terracotta pots, so I had a rummage and found a couple of old pots and some broken bits, and planted them up with some off shoots from my houseleeks, moss and a little bit of Corsican Mint

I'm not at all sure about this at the moment, it's nothing like the picture I had in my head, but I'm hoping it will look better when the little succulents establish themselves.