Frantic.

That's how my weekend has been. Totally nutso busy. We picked up a new car yesterday (new to us, at least) and I spent the afternoon cleaning it. It was in fantastic nick inside, it just needed a bit of spit and polish and it looks brilliant now! It was hard going, though. This was after Chook's riding lesson, too. She was on a different pony this week - Flossie is her lesson parter's usual ride and they had a swap. I'm not sure either of them was overly impressed!

Flossie is tiny compared to Skye - and has a much shorter stride. Chook was bouncing about like mad when they were trotting!

Today was also spent in a cleaning frenzy. We go on holiday tomorrow so rats and fish had to be sorted for the week ahead (my Mum is feeding them) but the boys also needed their tails cleaned. Some rats - our fellas included - just don't clean their tails. Which is weird coz they are fastidious about keeping everything else clean! Up to and including inside their ears! Anyhoo, here's some drowned rats.

In the bath. Not impressed. Wilson in particular (on the left) was trying his hardest to scale the bath sides and resorted to jumping straight up in the air - he almost made it out on more than one occassion! But they are all lovely and clean now. If in the huff with us.

The house has also been cleaned, the Spouse's car (which we are taking) is empty and clean, the jeans and jumpers from yesterday are clean, ironed and packed. Although by 4pm today I still hadn't looked out the suitcase. Not like me at all! The bikes have been MOT-ed, groceries packed, entertainments for the 6 hour drive looked out or bought. My toenails are newly painted, I've checked us in online and am about to collapse. But we are a-go for the October hols! A woo and a hoo!!

September bee blocks

I never did post my Bee blocks of the past month. 'Kay.

2 very pretty chubby stars for Julie in the Quick Christmas Bee.

4 Ohio stars for Jo - also for the Quick Christmas Bee

and 4 wonky stars for Nichol in the Scraptastic Bee.

It's my month next in Scraptastic and I still haven't a clue what to go for? Any suggestions?

my mug rug swap has arrived!!

And it is amazing. Totally.

I would have been thrilled with just (just? not just - you know what I mean) this chap. I love his wonky stripey legs and the teeny ladybirds in the bottom corner. And peanut butter M&M's (ooh!!) and the birdie tape and bulldog. squee!

But lookie what ELSE there was! The rug is double sided and the Halloween House has a bunch of stuff to match, too!!! Including bat cake toppers, a fab rat (heh heh!!), bat fat quarters and the most MOST amazing Hello Kitty fabric.

Can you see? She's dressed up as a Mummy!!!! Some bits have flocks of wee purple bats and in amongst them are purple hair bows flying! squee! again!!

Looks good, eh? I'm a very happy girl tonight. Thank you so much, Sarah (Krommama) , you totally spoiled me!

fimo is fun!!

I bought some incredibly cute but extremely expensive pin toppers at the quilt show with Jo last weekend. I didn't care what they cost, they were just too cute and I wanted them. But then Jo received these guys in a swap and, blow me, they were handmade. So, natch, I wanted a go myself. And I bought Fimo (the first in years!) at the weekend and the Chook and I got the oven fired up yesterday. She's bloody good at it! Bear in mind she's eight, 'kay?

First we tried toadstools. There's a great tutorial here that makes them dead easy. Then we had a bash at birds and I attempted a (very difficult!) heart while the Chook went for a  flower that turned into a mouse that turned into a pig. Heh. Hers are on the left.

 Cool, eh? Well, we moved onto Halloween ones and while I was struggling over my very simple ghost, she was making this amazing bat. I am jealous.

And THEN she made Zero! Who, for those not in the know is Jack Skellington from the Nightmare before Christmas' ghost dog. This is him.



She did good, eh? You NEED to try this, though. It is the best fun!!

*edited to add* Oh, no!! Chook took her toppers to Cubs tonight (her Scout troop) and the leader saw them and pounced on me. So in a fortnight I'm teaching 12 little darlings (mostly boys) to make punkin lantern key chains. Doh! How did that happen?!

the halloween house

We got out our Halloween decorations today!! Hoo! This was after our return from the local(ish) Disney Store where, of course, some new fripperies just fell into our basket.

This is wizard Eeyore who keeps company witchie Pooh and bat-shit-crazy Tigger from last year.

My dresser, of course, needed it's own treatment! So, the bunting from yesterday went up, we had a wee re-arrangement and now have this.

 And pride of place goes to our new Jack and Sally characters and

 this most excellent Jack Skellington cookie jar that spouse bought me. It's going to be an all-year-round item coz it has a proper sealed lid (the handle is that wee orange punkin you can just see poking up) so he's proper useful. And we really need a decent biscuit tin!

 This is my new table runner I also played at yesterday. Again, thanks to Dee for the amazing fabrics!

 And the view from the living room into the kitchen. There's some other bits in the living room but they're the same as last years so I'll not bore you.

And the only orange flowers we could find were gladioli. So I keep thinking of Morrissey when I see the kitchen table! Hee!!

The Chook and I have been making Fimo pin toppers today!! They have worked beautifully and we've had an absolute ball but I need a couple of new pin cushions now!! I'll photograph them in the daylight tomorrow. Which I have off of work because of a local holiday but the Chook is at school and Spouse is working. A day to myself? Good grief!!

Halloween charm bunting tutorial

I made birthday bunting here for the Chook in the summer and I had a few requests for a tutorial. Well, I can't profess to be much cop at the teaching thing but I took photos today while making some Halloween things so here ya go.

You will need

5x5in square charms (I used a charm pack in the summer, these are from yardage since Halloween charm packs are non-existent in the UK! Thanks go to Dolores for the stash procurement!)

2in WOF in a co-ordinating solid.

For a rough estimate, my finished bunting is 90in long and I have 14 flags so have used 14 charms and 2 lengths of binding.

Take a charm and fold it corner to corner diagonally (right sides together) and stitch along one edge.

Snip the corner...

... turn it right side out and press open with the seam down the middle. Like this.

And then trim off the top of the kite shape.

Repeat until you have a pretty little pile of flags.

So on to the binding. I need twice the length of my fabric so we need to stitch them together and press the seam open.

Press the whole length in half lengthwise and open back up so you have a visible line down the middle. Then press the individual sides almost to the original pressed seam

and then press the whole length back in half along your original seam line.

Tuck your flags inside the binding and pin down. Mine are about half an inch apart.

Stitch along the entire length of binding remembering to backstitch at the beginning and end and removing your pins as you reach them!! Since my binding had a selvedge at both ends I didn't tuck the ends in. You may like to.

And ta-da!! Or voila if you're into your French.

I hope this is of some help to someone! I couldn't find this type of bunting anywhere - it was all raw edge stuff when I googled. The Halloween decs go up tomorrow. Yippee!!

OMG - patchwork shoes!!

Those of you with long memories may remember a gushing post here about a particular pair of shoes by Irregular Choice. I never did buy them but I periodically check up on their new releases to see what mad shoes I can drool over. I found these today.

Look closely. No, closer still. Do you see it? The overlapping fabrics? The stitching. Need a closer look?

Yup. They are in fact quilt stilettos!! SQUEEE!!! Santa? I hope you're listening, pal.  I need these. 'Kay? There's more information on them here and yes, they are called "patty patchwork"!!

In other unrelated news. My friend who was having breast cancer surgery? After a second operation has had some great news in her results and only needs 3 weeks radiotherapy and she should be tickity-boo. Thanks for all your well wishes the last few weeks!!!