Making Good Use

Kitten

My oldest and dearest possession is a soft toy, bought for my first Christmas, and called Kitten. 

Although I had many, many toys as a child for some unknown reason Kitten always held a very special place in my heart.  He usually sits on the beside table (well, actually a small chest of drawers) but I moved him to the dining room window to have his photo taken.  Kitten has sat next to my bed for as long as I can ever remember.  I certainly had him with me when I was at college as a friend of mine there commented that he couldn't be a cat as he had no tail.  This is true, and has been commented on a few times since.  But he is, most definitely, a cat as he's got whiskers.  The same friend also said that perhaps it was being given Kitten at such a young age that gave me my life-long fondness for cats - and maybe she was right.

Kitten is only six months younger than me and, like me, is now showing his age.  His feet are getting rather worn, his fur has rubbed off in patches, he's lost his embroidered nose and mouth, and his pink top and blue trousers are very faded.  He was once washed but the sight of him hanging on the washing line by his ears was just too tragic - never again.

I've no idea who he was manufactured by, I do seem to have vague memories of there being a label attached to him somewhere but it's long gone, whoever it was they certainly made toys to last.  I think the reason I always have Kitten next to the bed is so that should there be a fire in the night he's the first thing I could grab.

I know he looks pretty ragged and 'well-loved' in the photo, and I'm sure he is totally worthless, but to me Kitten is priceless, and the best Christmas present I was ever given.

Tying Up a Few Loose Ends

I've managed to finish off most of the items I wanted to make for people for Christmas.  P's scarf is finally finished.

It's wonderfully soft being an alpaca and silk mix, but could have done to be just a teensy bit longer I feel.  I did use 200g of yarn, which I thought would be plenty, but 250g might have been better.  It should keep P nice and warm though, and will go very nicely with his Barbour which is pretty much the same shade of blue.

I've also finished DN's alien facecloth.

This knitted up incredibly quickly and I had just enough pale green organic cotton to make it.  Somehow an alien just has to be green.  P says this would have frightened him when he was four, but I have no such fears about DN - he's got an incredible appetite for all things scary and / or alien.

I've also embroidered an orange cat.

This is to make a Christmas card for my lovely next-door neighbours and is in honour of their cat Jester who is orange and white.  I think the whole neighbourhood has to be very grateful that Jester is such a good mouser (32 'kills' at the last count), otherwise we would probably all be over-run with the little blighters by now.

Stormy Weather

On the positive - I quickly finished DN's sailboat face cloth for his Christmas stocking.

It turned out quite well, and is a good size.  The pattern was from my favourite knitting pattern site here, and is knitted in Blue Sky Alpaca pure organic cotton.  I'm now knitting him a second face cloth - this time an 'Alien'.  Alien's are pretty big with DN so I hope he'll like it.

On the not so positive side - poor P got caught in the terrible commuter chaos which occured because of the high winds in Essex this morning.  He should have been on the train which got hit by a tree but, luckily, was running a bit behind hand and so went for the later train.  What should have been a 55 minute commute door-to-door turned into a 3 hour and 20 minute marathon involving waiting an hour before being told there would be no more trains from our station, very kindly being give a lift to Basildon station by a fellow commuter, an hour's wait there while no trains appeared, then a bus to the next station down the line where, finally, a train arrived that would get him to London.  Understandably he is not a happy bunny.  Thankfully, they seem to have restored some semblance of a train service again and, finger's crossed, his commute home will be less eventful.  With damaging winds being forecast for the south of England on Sunday I've suggested it might be just as well if he brings his laptop home with him so that should problems occur on Monday morning he can work from home.

Little Labels

I've been on the look out for something to make labels with for a while now and whilst I was in Billericay the other day I was going to go to the excellent stationery shop they have there to check out what was on offer.  I never got that far, as I found just what I was looking for in the newsagents.  A pack of 10 multi-coloured luggage style labels.  The added addition of a few cut-out fabric flowers and I've got something I can attach to any of my handmade items that I sell.

I really like the bright primary colours of the labels, and it was lucky that I had just the thing in primary coloured flowers (and a little monkey on the top left label) to clash nicely with them.

Two of the labels have been tied on to a couple of bags which I've posted down to my sister so that DN can give them as Christmas presents to his class teacher and teaching assistant.  I've added the message 'Handmade in the UK' and my blog address on the back.  You never know, I may get a couple more readers for my blog that way.

It's been really nice this afternoon not to have my usual mad Thursday afternoon dash of listing things on ebay, instead I've been maxing out the plastic by doing some more Christmas shopping online - so much more civilised than fighting your way around busy shopping centres.  Whatever did we (well, me especially) do before the internet!!

A Mixed Lot

Another trip to the Post Office this morning (queues not quite out of the door this time), and a need to go to my bank at the far end of the High Street, meant that I had to pass the door of all three of the charity shops.  Well, I couldn't not go in as I was passing, and I came away with a very mixed lot of things indeed.

Some nice little vintage glass Christmas tree ornaments.

I've been checking all the charity shops lately for these glass baubles and no one had any.  Plenty of the rather nasty, cheap, plasticky types, but no old glass ones.  I was mighty pleased to find these, especially as they were only 10p each.

Staying with the festive theme was some unusual gold, glittery rick-rack.

Possibly a bit late for Christmas crafting this year, but it won't eat or drink anything until next Christmas.

And, for DN, a matching Spiderman figure to go with the Spiderman pyjamas I got him yesterday.

Somebody had scribbled on his tummy with a ball-point pen, but a quick wipe with surgical spirit soon restored him to his muscle-bound best.

For My Boy

A trip to Billericay this morning proved to be very frutiful for DN.  There was a rather nice Duffer of St George T-shirt with dinosaurs on the front for only 49p.

Which tied in very well with the T-Rex book bought for 10p.

DN is pretty keen on dinosaurs at the moment so, hopefully, these two will be well received. 

There was also another pair of Spiderman pyjamas (not quite such a bargain at £3.20 - but always useful and still a lot cheaper than buying new.)

Spiderman is a perennial hero of DN's - he'll even tell you himself that 'he's Spiderman crazy.'

Those were the bargains, I think we'll draw a discreet veil over the rather large amount I spent in the toy shop for DN's Christmas presents.  And that was after saying I'd got everything for him, but I just couldn't resist the lure of some very nice wooden toys.

Apparently DN is ultra excited this afternoon as he has his first school disco this evening - can you imagine a hall full of hyper four-year-olds and disco music!!  Rather the teachers than me!  No wonder children grow up so quickly these days - we didn't have school discos until we were 14!

Oh, Flippin' 'Eck!

Small twinges of panic are beginning to set in now - how can it possibly be only three weeks left until Christmas!  I'm still wrapping and packing like a dervish, and still queueing for A-G-E-S in the post office most days.  How they can blithely shut one of the four counters when the queue is out of the door I just don't know.  A lot of muttering and swearing goes on (and not just from me), and people's faces are a picture when they see how long they're going to have to wait. 

The knitting of P's scarf for Christmas continues v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y, and I need to start knitting a couple of organic cotton flannels for DN for his stocking.  One is going to be stripey, and the other will have a sailboat pattern on it.  It took me ages to decide what to knit from the selection here.  But, as they didn't have a pattern for Spiderman, Superman, Ben Ten or any other super hero, I thought the sailboat was probably the most suitable.

I did finish off a couple more little Matryoshka dolls over the weekend, fuelled by the fact that I sold one last week on ebay.

The last of the blue woollen ones as I've now used all I had of that fabric.

And a rather festive one in scarlet felt. 

I've listed these two on ebay as well and once their listings end that'll be it on ebay for this year.  I've got a ton of listings ending next Sunday and I won't add anything else now otherwise things can get a bit sticky with delivery before Christmas - and, by then, I shall have had more than enough of that bl**dy post office!