The Turtle Moves

Stars in the house

Hello everyone,

I've been crocheting stars in every spare moment over the last month (the Craft Fair on the evening of our town's  Christmas Lights switch-on is upon us this week).

I've been crocheting stars while travelling to and from Cheshire and Wales (mentioned a couple of blogs ago). The drive from Llandudno to Westmoreland Services is an 8 - star journey. (My Dear Husband was driving on that leg of the trip, and then I took over, so no stars between the Lake District and Fife.) I've crocheted on trains and buses, in the living-room and in the kitchen. I've got lots of stars now!

I do hope the Fair goes well. I think I have the absolute Acme of sales gimmicks this year - my lovely grandchildren are going to man my table for me. I will be free to run around making sure everything else is okay, and two gorgeous moppets are going to sell all of my Christmas crochet and needlefelt. How can this possibly fail?

Oh, I've been needlefelting Santas and snowmen and punk angels as well.

Chaps like this all sold well last year, so I must stab wool assiduously all day tomorrow and Build Up Stock.  Maybe.

Or maybe I'll go out into the garden if the sun is shining like it did today. We have to grab all the daylight we can up here in the Dark North you know. Otherwise we retire to the back of the cave and hunker down until Spring.

 

 

Little Easter Chickies

Hello!

I was getting totally carried away knitting ruffly scarves with the lovely CanCan tape yarn we got at the SECC "Creative Stitches" show, and messing about with the heat gun and friendly plastic we got at the same show, and trawling through various multi-media books and magazines getting all dizzy with lovely gorgeous pictures and possibilities - when I remembered! Eek! I've got a table at a Craft Fair this Sunday and Easter's just around the corner! So drop all that experimental fiddle faddle and create some characterful wee birds to decorate the Easter breakfast tables of the nation (oh, okay, Fife - I'm not really a megalomaniac).

It's seems like ages since I've done any needle-felting and it was great fun to get the wool tops out again. I made these five little fellas yesterday - it's hard to believe they all start out as a ball of wool approximately the same size and shape as each other and end up such different characters. But that's what I like about needle-felting, you never know exactly who is going to emerge! I was busy today, but I'll get a few more little chicks done tomorrow I'm sure.

Little Flower Boys and Girls

As a change from wrestling with yarn, I thought I'd get stitching and sticking with some felt. These little people are the first of this year's Easter Decorations. Well, the shops have got some Easter Eggs in already, so it can't be too soon to start amassing a stash for the Spring Craft Fair. These little chaps are very easy and quick to make. The body is a pipe cleaner, the hands, feet and head are different sizes of wooden beads and the felt coat is just folded over and blanket-stitched up the sides. The flower decorations on the coat and hat are "Fuzzy-Felt" shapes stitched on.

I like the sweetie colours, and I think they'll look quite good as decorations interspersed with felted Easter Bunnies and the like. Got to get that old needle and balls of unspun wool out and start stabbing again soon, although my sewing machine is also shooting dirty looks at me, so maybe I should get crafty with fabric and thread as well. Oh, choices, choices.

Lights! Action!

  The Craft Fair we've been organising finally happened yesterday evening. It was a success! All the stall-holders turned up on time and there were loads of people coming through the venue for the whole three hours that we were open.

 Outside in the streets the Christmas Lights got switched on successfully with no blow-outs. The DJ did his stuff and the kiddies' rides people didn't fight with the Glow-sticks sellers. Upstairs in the venue, the various school-kids sang their carols and danced their dances without falling off the stage. A total result.

Even better, I sold every single one of my daft needle-felt Christmas angels, santas, snowmen and penguins along with a good few crochet snowflakes. All those hours of various types of preparation were well worth it.

We might even do it all again next year.

Well, hello girls!

  Over the course of the year I've made several "seasonal" fairies as in the picture on the left - that's Fourth of July Fairy (WonderWoman goes woolly), Halloween Fairy (she of the Pumpkin skirt) and May Day Fairy (decked all out in Spring green), but I thought perhaps a slightly simplified shape might be needed for a whole "flock" of fairies/angels for the Christmas tree, so I experimented with a simple cone shape, and tried a different shape of wing, too - slimmer and more "feathery". They were reasonably swift to make, which is quite important if you need to do a few, and I think they look quite Christmassy. Maybe I should sprinkle them with glitter, what do you think?

Time and Penguins are marching on.

 

I hate to remind you of this, but Christmas is fast approaching. You should be making your Christmas Cake and Pudding around about now because it’s half-term holiday and you know what that means – only half a term left before you have to deck the halls, stuff the turkey and make sure Santa’s got something in his sack.

So I’ve started making some festive felt! First out of the wool store were this pair. I’ve never made a penguin before, so I experimented with the little one and he looked okay, so I thought I’d better give him a Big Daddy to look after him. Quite cute I think, do you?

The Next Generation

Well! Don't you just love this cheerful dog? He was created by my utterly wonderful gorgeous grand-daughter, who is only nine and three-quarters. She's been teaching herself to sew - following the instructions and using the resources in a big basket of craft stuff she got given one Christmas. She is certainly following in her Mum and Gran's footsteps as she loves making things, and I reckon she's surpassed herself here. She certainly has a lot more patience and attention to detail than I have, and she can paint and draw as well, so look out for a great artist in a few years' time - she'll be blonde, beautiful and astonishingly talented - you'll recognise her right away!

Spaniel Eyes

I was very pleased with this little spaniel - he looks the most life-like wee dog I have yet created.

Things have gone quiet on my Etsy shop though, and the sun has been shining, so we've been out and about taking long walks and looking at the flowers. Maybe I should get myself a real dog to take for walks? Though on second thoughts at least with felted doll's house dogs you don't have poop to scoop.

School's out for summer, so bring on those picnics on the beach!

Yorkie mark 2

 So - as to the challenge of making a 1/12th scale Yorkshire Terrier. My evenings are not going to be my own until I crack this one!  I tried again, this time I made circles of tan wool for the eyes and put the black eye in the middle and then attached it to the dog's head (rather than making the head and needling the eyes in afterwards) this meant I could trim the circle of tan wool with scissors to get the sort of petal effect that real Yorkies have around their eyes. It's not perfect, but it's getting better I think.

He looks more like Bambi than a dog, but there are worse things to look like!

Ah well, it keeps me off the streets.

Make mine a Yorkie

I've been asked to make a short-haired Yorkie. I assume that means the normal, slightly scruffy, adorable flower-faced wee dog that you or I would have as a pet as opposed to the long- haired coiffured item that competes in dog shows.

The difficult thing is getting the lovely little pansy flower face, and I haven't managed it here. I will try again. Small dogs are much more difficult to needle-felt than big dogs because wool is a certain size of fibre and so cannot readily be made to represent very fine features. Maybe the very little dogs need a combination of felting and something else? Embroidery? Anyway, I will keep you abreast of Diddy Little Dog Development.