Spring has sprung….

Hello my wonderful bloglets, I hope you had a lovely Spring festival, whatever you celebrate. I have two, count ‘em, TWO whole weeks off to catch up with some much needed crafting therapy! And yes, I’ve been very productive! See, I’ve had an epiphany. A big one. And I’ve taken the pledge. Well, not THE pledge, but a pledge. No alcohol involved folks promise, couldn’t involve alcohol anyway since I’m not allowed to drink very much as it interferes with my meds. But I digress. After my Dad died I realised that I really don’t see that much of my family, except at family get-togethers. And the family members that usually host those get-togethers are aging. Y’see most of my family are spread all over the country. My mum and siblings are the only ones here in my town. And I do want to keep contact with my family. I don’t have any kids and are unlikely to have any and I don’t want to be alone in my dotage. So I succumbed to Facebook. Aaaahhh, does the penny start to drop?? Anyway, all my family are now now networked on Facebook, me, mum and my brother and sister, my uncle and aunt, all my cousins…some of the older generation don’t seem to have got the hang of it yet, but all my generations and younger are fully embracing the virtual family network. I like seeing what terrible things my second cousins have got up to at Friday nights parties, I’m amused at my cousins ramblings and I like seeing holiday photos ‘n stuff….you get the picture? So that bit is wonderful, I’m back in touch with friends and family that I’d kinda drifted away from. But then, I discovered the games on Facebook…Fairyland, Farm Town, Vampire Wars, School of Wizardry…so many fun games, so little time. And there-in dear readers, is the crux of the problem. My crafty life was beginning to suffer. My blog was suffering. I’m sure you guys have noticed?! So I have decided to drop the games, well, all except Fairyland which I’ve kept to have a little flutter when I have the time. I am still playing the Wii, and my NDS, but as for FB games, since the weekend I’ve only been on Fairyland and I’ve not gone on any of the other games. And look what I’ve been doing instead!

I’ve painted several new batches of bulbs for my eBay shop…

 

I call this colourway Mardi Gras because it’s so vibrant and fun…

I also completed this…

 

 

Isn’t it pretty? It’s reclaimed fulled sweater felt, space-dyed with Kool-Aid, and cut and serged to fit.

 

But to fit what? Hmmm. See the adorable felt flowers all lovingly hand sewn on.

Any ideas? Well, this is my very old laptop which had been languishing in the loft for years, since I got my fancy all singing, all dancing, widescreen laptop in fact. I needed one for work, to work on, to show students tutorial videos, resource pictures and stuff like that on. So I didn’t want to bring my good laptop, but I figured that this one would do fine. I slapped in a new cmos battery and Hey Presto, I had an up and running laptop again! Yeah so the students laugh and take the piss out of my ancient laptop, but I guess it’s never going to be nicked. It’s running XP on it, but it’s only got a CD drive, so I can’t load Windows 7 on it like I’ve got on my other laptop. Of course because my lil dinosaur gets carted around all over the place, he needed a lil jacket to protect his lil old arse. Admittedly his arse is rubber coated, but well, y’know how it is! I like pretty and functional, I’m Arts and Crafts through n through me!

 

 

What else have I been doing apart from dinosaur cosies? Well, I finally got around to finishing this apron top which I started last summer. It’s made from scraps and I literally used every scrap that I had of this fabric. Please excuse the leaning model, I think she cracked one of her legs in a Series of Unfortunate Events involving M and a Dyson.

There wasn’t even enough for ties at the back, so I did a cross-over popper fastened back, with decorative buttons. 

It actually fits me better than it does Chi’anna (my grey girl model) and was a fit n pin job. No patterns were used in the torturing of this fabric!

 

Saturday M’s mum lent us her car for a car shopping trip, so we had a little tour round the car showrooms and found a car that we liked and that amazingly enough was in our price range! Hurray! It’s a 2lt silver Skoda Octavia estate which is big enough to tow the caravan easily, I can fit Joe in the back and should be great for all our needs. Sadly because of the Bank holiday, the paperwork has taken a little longer to sort out, so we get to pick it up on Saturday!! Hurray hurray! I’ll have wheels again next week. Hmmm, where shall I go?? I can’t wait to get back on the road.

Sunday my Mum had us all around for an Easter Sunday lunch. My Mum loves to cook and boy is she good at it! She makes the most amazing cakes, she doesn’t tend to follow recipes, it’s all instinct! Thanks to Mum and her amazing culinary skills, we all love food and sadly,none of us can carry it easily. You know the old expression, ‘a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’? Well, they could have been describing our family *lol* So with my health problems, I’m maybe a little more aware of my weight and try to keep it under control than the others, so I watch what I eat and try to exercise regularly, my brother and sis haven’t quite got it under control yet, so they’re a bit heavier than me, but I tell you, dinner on Sunday was awesome. Vegetarian lasagne for the girls, surf n turf for the boys, garlic bread and salad, with cherry pie and/or chocolate cake for dessert. A heaven that I don’t often allow myself. So yes, I pigged out! Hee hee! 

I made up for it yesterday though, I walked Joe up to the post office and back, to post off all my eBay sales, and then in the afternoon I went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. No-one else was free, so I went on my own, which was cool, although the place was packed! I’d have struggled to find a couple of seats together. I just love Tim Burton, and Johnny Depp always puts the cherry on the cake! The weather was so nice yesterday, it was a nice stroll across the fields to the pictures, just me and my mp3 player.

And what have I been doing today? Well I finished on of Mosey. Looky here…

Such a pretty cabling pattern..

 

On Friday the girls and I are going out to celebrate Pippa’s birthday. We’re going to Red Hot, the local all-you-can-eat international cuisine place. We’ll do our usual party bags and it’ll be fun fun fun. Wonder what mayhem we’ll cause this time :) So this is what I’ve made for Pippa. It’s reclaimed fulled sweater, the same one that I used for my laptop bag actually. I’ve needle felted different coloured roving onto it, then embroidered and sewn beads and sequins onto it. I haven’t made anything for the party bags yet, that’ll be tomorrows projects.

 

Wow, look how much you can get done when you don’t allow yourself to be sucked in by online games! Catch you all later!