May Makes

This is a pic of the purple hot water bottle cover I mentioned in my last post


I love the colour, might even make another one. One for me and one for the cats! I’ve been doing a bit of catch up with my own sewing and have finally finished this summer dress made from Butterick 5317. It’s unusual for me to get something finished for the right season. I usually finish my summer sewing in time for Christmas and vice versa.




I think it does look vaguely like the one on the right on the pattern envelope, although I didn’t like the sleeves, so I left them out.

A bit of a mad fit overtook me when I decided to crochet the Octopus on the front cover of the current Craftseller magazine.



The word Octopussy kept floating around in my brain, probably because of the Bond film of the same name, so here she is, my very own Octopussy!



I did put this pic on Craftseller’s Facebook Page and they seemed to like it! Maybe I should go for Reservoir Dogs for my next project!

Slàinte Mhath xxx

Back in Harness

I didn’t realise I'd been away from my blog for so long. I did feel down after my Uncle's passing in January. He was the last member of the family on my dad's side, so I was also grieving for that as well.
Anyway on to better and happier things. I have been busy and these are a few of the things I’ve been making. I got this pattern from Heidi Bears.



It was so much fun to make that I crocheted another little friend for her. As you can see they have become the very best of friends!



Although the warmer days have finally arrived here I felt compelled to make myself a hot water bottle cover. So I made one knitted on 4 needles (pic to come later). I like knitting on 4 needles and really don’t do enough of it. Maybe I should start now and make some Christmas socks for pressies.
I've been trawling around the charity shops as usual an last week I found a brown and badly stained bamboo table. It had a lovely ornate base, so I took it home and sprayed it white. It now serves as an art table and holds all my brushes, paints and paper. I think it originally had 2 chairs to go with it, but they were nowhere to be seen in the shop, but my little white bamboo stool works well with it.



What about this for a bargain! I found this beautiful pristine book in Oxfam.



The illustrations are fabulous. So much colour and detail.





The foreword is written by Sir David Attenborough, one of my all time heroes. It's going to get a place of honour in my birdie library.
Getting back to makes, I made this tote bag for my friend`s birthday.




She's into Egyptology so I thought this design of Isis mother of Horus would look great embroidered on the bag. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, I hope she likes it.
I also embroidered the back of a denim waistcoat (for me) with a Surf Bird. Every time I look at this it just makes me smile!





A short post this time as I’m just getting back into blogging with baby steps at the moment!

Slàinte Mhath xxx

Watching the Detective

I never knew it was possible to hold my breath for an hour but that’s what it seems when I’m watching the new series of Line of Duty currently airing on BBC2. Keeley Hawes, Martin Compston, Vicky McClure and Adrian Dunbar are the main actors.
In short the plot involves the not very popular DI Lindsay Denton (Keeley Hawes) who is charged with murder following the murders of a protected witness and three police officers.

She tries to persuade her colleagues investigating the case that she has been set up by someone within the force and despite being badly beaten on remand by two prison warders who make Bond villains look like pussycats she persists and at the end of the last episode she appears to be getting through to one colleague DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston).

I love how the writer Jed Mercurio gives us glimpses of the characters’ personal lives. How even a police officer can be frustrated by noisy neighbours and who hasn’t wished they could go round and deal with them as DI Denton did. We also get to see a softer side of her with her love of playing the piano and her cat (I’m glad there is a cat!).
We also see Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) who only sees the world in black and white, utterly convinced at the beginning of DI Denton’s guilt, gradually and very subtly beginning to question her original decision.

When I watch her I have this insane wish that someone would just tickle her or tell a funny joke just to see if she’s physically capable of having a good laugh.
Jed Mercurio has put his characters through some very harrowing scenes – the boiling water on the hands, 2 of them set on fire, an officer’s head pushed down the toilet. Not a programme to watch if you are in to fluffy bunnies but definitely one to watch if you want to be thrilled, angry, frustrated at unfair treatment or you just want to watch a damned good story!
I sincerely hope that in the next round of TV Awards Joe Mercurio and Keeley Hawes are remembered for this wonderful series.

Slàinte Mhath xx

Puppets on a String

Any of you who read my Facebook Page will see how annoyed I am at Etsy’s recent “business tests”. Etsy is an online marketplace which consists of a large collection of artisan owned stores mainly selling unique handcrafted items. Etsy’s growth has been phenomenal over the last few years and a lot of their sellers have grown their businesses successfully under the Etsy umbrella.

I too have a tiny shop front on Etsy selling my little animal tea cosies and I’ve had quite a few sales there but I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that my sales are very much subject to the whims of the Etsy management. In one moment they could close down your shop  and wipe out any income stream. Indeed some shops have been closed down because their owners have been a bit too honest and vocal on the Etsy forums.

I think that having your own domain name and separate online shop would be a very good back up plan and if you can plug it as much as possible you could in the future move away from Etsy’s not terribly altruistic grasp. I’ve done this already with Crystalmooncat.com (this is my shameless plug!)

This got me thinking on other ways we relinquish control to others. At the moment the energy companies have us by the short and curlies here in the UK. Because we depend on them for our heating and power they can up the prices whenever they want, usually when there’s an R in the month.   Same with petrol companies. I can drive past my local petrol station and see unleaded petrol at 128p per litre and an hour later I can drive back again and see it’s gone up to 129p per litre. (This usually happens right before a Bank Holiday).




Supermarkets can increase the price of your weekly shop at the push of a button. I remember once after years of shopping for my cat food at Tesco, I switched supermarket and started to buy it from Asda. After just a few weeks of this I got a load of money off vouchers for cat food through the post from Tesco. Coincidence or what? Of course they were able to track my buying habits through my use of their Clubcard.


Litter piling up in your street? Council street cleaning services not as thorough or as regular as they used to be. Your local MP developing selective deafness and or spending all their time cosying up to local bigwigs? OK we voted them into power and a certain degree of government control is necessary to run our Health Service, Foreign Trade, Police Force etc. But I would like to see our MPs a bit more accountable, a little more fearful of their constituents and that maybe cozying up to and actually listening to a homeless person without a film crew present would go a long way to giving a bit more control back to the ordinary man or woman.

In the meantime I think we could all be a little more self-sufficient. Granted installing solar panels or a water filtration plant in your garden is not cheap. But learning a bit of basic plumbing, carpentry, cooking from scratch can all help. Also insulating your home as well as you can afford to and maybe start saving up for a couple of solar panels. Has to be better for you than the latest 100 inch wide, 3d time travel, olfactory sensory tv screen that serves 3 course meals during the ads. As for litter in your street just go grab it and bin it! My lovely Bloggy friend Ilona from Life After Money just rolls up her sleeves and gets picking up. She describes one of her litter picking events here. Maybe if more of us did that we could take control of our streets again and restore a bit of civic pride.

Financial Independence has to be the key. To have enough money to cushion you from redundancies, interest rate cuts, burgeoning transport costs has to be the Holy Grail in terms of cutting your puppet strings. I have to recommend Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez
Read this and you’ll be reaching for the scissors!

Slàinte Mhath xxx

A Thoroughly Modern Pharaoh

It was a comment on my previous post from Briony at Crafty Cats Corner that sparked my idea for this one. A blanket, a flask and googling cat paintings would be her idea of heaven (mine too). I started thinking about heaven and the afterlife and the Ancient Egyptians’ take on it.



All those Pharaohs building their tombs everywhere and deciding what they were going to take with them to the afterlife assuming they passed the ‘weighing of the heart’ test.  (This is where the deceased had to stand before Osiris and declare a list of Negative Confessions, for example -

• I have not caused anyone to weep
• I have not slain anyone
• I have not stolen food.

If you made enough of these confessions so that their total weight was heavier than the Feather of Ma'at or Truth then you got a pass through to the afterlife. I wonder if that’s where our saying “Weighing Heavy on My Heart” comes from?)



Anyway I digress. I started to wonder what we modern Pharaohs would each take with us to the Afterlife if we had our own personal pyramids or tombs to put everything in. So really, if you could take it with you when you go, what would you take?

Firstly I’d probably take my underwear drawer. I just could not bear the thought of someone going through my collection of grey and not so grey knickers after my demise. I’d have to leave orders for it to sealed immediately after my passing and taken straight away to my final resting place. And instead of holding a Crook & Flail I’d be holding the key to my knicker drawer in my hand.



Probably in my other had I’d have my lovely Waterman Fountain Pen. No way would I want to leave that behind.



Instead of a load of Papyrus I’d have a few reams of writing paper as well and sealed bottles of coloured ink. Fountain pen ink is more precious to me than perfume!



I definitely would make sure there was room for my camera and lenses and I’d have some sort of solar charger connected to the outside world so the minute I got to the Afterlife I would be up out of my Sarcophagus, hands on camera and ready to take heavenly snaps.

There’s not much else I would want to take – probably just my embroidered clothes, my copy of Bounce by Matthew Syed, and my big bumper Dictionary of the Unexplained as there would be quite a few entries I’d want to run past whoever was in charge up there. No cats or animals as I would have already left instructions for their future wellbeing in my will and knowing my present Tortie cat Daisy, she would probably be up there already playing her own version of “House of Cards”.

Oh and a boat. I’d take a large one. I just have a feeling that boats will be very useful things to have in the future.



That’s my Pharaonic List – what would you put in your Pyramid?????


Slàinte Mhath xxx

Pussycats in Art

What is it about cats that so many people down the ages have wanted to capture them on canvas or on film? I always remember my art tutor saying that in olden days if you were painted with a dog you were regarded as a good person but if you were depicted with a cat you were a bit of a wild woman!
If you Google “Cat paintings” you might as well lay in blankets and supplies as you will be looking on screen for a very long time.
One of my favourite cat illustrators is Louis Wain (1860-1939). I liked the fact that he didn’t do chocolate box kitties. I used to have these two large prints on my wall side by side. They were there for years and I swear that each time I looked at them I would find something new in them. I eventually donated them to a cat charity!


Louis Wain “The Good Puss” (note mouse skewered on fork!)


Louis Wain “The Naughty Puss”

Slight change of style here. This is "Kip the Enchanted Cat" by Adrienne Ségur (1901-1981).

Thinking about it she must have been a contemporary of Louis Wain. I love the idea of being cuddled by a giant pussycat even if it is an enchanted one! This beautiful illustration is from The Golden Book of Fairy Tales originally published in 1958 and eventually reprinted. This is Puss in Boots from the same book.


Isn’t he glorious? Adrienne also painted other animals, her attention to detail and the characters she created were just phenomenal.

The pen strokes here are sparse but I like the way Lynton Lamb (1907-1977) uses them to capture the cat’s character.

He’s also famous for producing this charming illustration of The Owl and The Pussycat


And now to bring this small collection of cat art up to date – the incredible work of Fiona Scott. This is her painting entitled “Black Cat”

I think this is the only cat painting she has exhibited publicly to date, but I’m going for quality here not quantity. I look at this painting and I swear if I offered it a saucer of milk the cat would come right off the screen towards me, it’s so lifelike! Check out her farm animal paintings – the sheep is adorable!
I wish I could capture my own cats as well as these amazing artists captured theirs. At the moment I’m just capturing my feline images via the camera but with enough practice maybe one day I’ll have a worthy painting to post here.

Slàinte Mhath xxx

Beaded Beauties

It occurred to me over the weekend when I was having yet another sort out and purge of my wardrobe that there are an awful lot of embroidered clothes in there. Most of them, actually I think all of them have come from charity shops and none have cost over a fiver as that is my top limit for buying clothes. I just love this kind of embellishment, I must have inherited the love of it from my granny who was a professional hand embroiderer and produced many exquisite works for church vestments in Ireland. I suppose church embroidery work is now done by machine as the amount of woman hours needed to make them would be cost prohibitive.
Now any excuse to get my camera out! Here are some photos of my favourite pieces.


Looks a bit navy in the photos but this is a lovely black embroidered and beaded cardi. The front is done up with hooks and eyes. It’s lovely and soft and heaven to wear.



Here are details from two grey beaded scarves. This scarf immediately above has this embroidery all over every square inch. I have about a dozen embroidered scarves.


The leg of a pair of jeans. I did this one myself on my embroidery machine. I just loved how it turned out. When I wear them it looks like my left leg is a walking pergola!



Stunning black bead embroidery on a lovely red cardi.




And last but not least. This is my all time favourite – a sequinned pussycat on a Butler & Wilson t shirt. I adore this one!
I think I might turn this yen for collecting beautiful embroideries into a proper hobby. Charity shop prices around my way are still relatively reasonable and a fiver per masterpiece is doable. It would be nice to be able to wear your hobby!

Slàinte Mhath xxx