Gorgeous grow-house

To be honest, I really don't have a lot to say this week. The only sewing I have done is to mend things, which doesn't make for very interesting photos. Until today the weather's been a bit iffy so, even though I did have a nice visit to the the American Museum at Claverton yesterday, it was too wet to walk around the arboretum, and photography is not allowed in the house or exhibition (some great American photography on show there at the moment).

Even the cats seem to be bored by the constant rain:

Max the cat shelters from the rain

Quite a few years ago Mark promised me a greenhouse. I still do not have a greenhouse, but Mark did buy me a grow-house (cross between a mini greenhouse and a cold-frame). As it was dry - and even sunny - today, we put it together:

Before

After

I am very pleased with it, and am looking forward to planning some changes to the garden and the seeds I will grow in the Spring. Mind you, it looks as though I may have to fight Mark's dad for space in the grow-house, as he seems very keen to use it for his beans and lettuce...the cheek of it!

I am still enjoying trying out the Hairy Dieters' low-calorie recipes; lamb kebabs this evening...and yesterday's quiche was far nicer than the usual heavy quiche. What's more, in just a week I have lost 4.1 kg (about 9 pounds - I prefer to weigh myself in kg, as the numbers seem less real!). Mark has lost about the same. Our goal is to lose 1 kg a week, but it is nice to have a good start. Tomorrow though, we have booked to have dinner at The Circus Restaurant in Bath, and I suspect the meal may not be terribly low-calorie...! It's ok for Mark, as he doesn't have a sweet tooth, but I can't stop thinking about the "Whim Wham" on the Circus' menus - 18th century recipe for trifle: ratafia biscuits soaked in Muscatel wine, fresh apricot purée, orange flower custard and lemon syllabub! Oh my!

Frankenstein's monster...when sewing turns bad!

Turning the mouse in to a rabbit

I am going to talk about white rabbits, which is rather appropriate as I am later than usual writing this post. I like to kid myself that across the globe people are wringing their hands anxiously wondering what can be amiss for Sunday to be almost over (UK time) without a blog update on Deerey Me. However, I do know better - writing a blog is basically being able to talk to myself without people looking in to psychiatric help for me.

Anyway, busy week - my elderly godmother hasn't been very well, so we have had lots of phone calls, and dithering about whether we drive down to Winchester to see her in hospital, then she was discharged after a day so I made up some batches of stew and the like for her, and Mark and I drove down with them. Actually, I suspect the cooking was a waste of time as, when I put them in the freezer, I found a shepherd's pie I made for her in June 2011. She clearly has a high regard for my cooking!

Talking of cooking (it's ok, not white rabbits - I will get to the rabbits soon), I treated myself to the Hairy Bikers new diet cookbook...and it's fab! Delicious food and in the three days since Mark and I started following it, we have each lost 3 kg...not hungry and great food. It's early days and all diets slow down after the first week, but I am chuffed all the same. We had jambalaya this evening and tomorrow we've got tuna nicoise wraps for lunch and paprika chicken in the evening...mmmmmm!

Ok then, rabbits. I had it in mind that I could change the ears and tail on my Ellen Mouse pattern and produce a Bryony Bunny as easy as winking. I was wrong. So very wrong. My first attempt at a head had the ears in the wrong place:

de-capitated, failed bunny head

Ever tenacious, I tried again. The result was quite frankly scary!!! If an evil scientist took a poor innocent mouse and replaced her ears with over-sized rabbit ears, she might look like this...although nothing can explain that freaky smile. Those of a nervous disposition should close their eyes and scroll to the end of the page (it is possible, I just tried).

Seriously, the next photo could put you off your dinner/breakfast/lunch - whatever meal you are on in your time zone...

If you really want to see, best to wait until there is someone with you to make you a nice cup of tea to help with the shock!

freaky, evil scientist's lab rabbit

I did warn you!

Mind you, I do rather like her tail. The only fur I had in my stash was dalmation (fake, I hasten to add) so it was tricky avoiding the black splodges, but I think it turned out rather well. I will seek out white fake fur this week.

nice tail!

As I mentioned, tenacity is my middle name (for which I have never forgiven my parents!). So I decided the thing to do was to look at photos of rabbits to see what they actually look like. To my amazement, rabbits really do not look like mice with long ears! Then I thought I might do best to look at how people portray rabbits - other soft toys, cartoons etc. Putting the term "rabbit toy" in google brought up some images that were not what I had in mind at all!! But moving quickly on... I realised I need to think Thumper from Bambi; Big legs, long feet, pouchy cheeks. I went back to the drawing board and my next effort was not quite so scary. She is too twee for my liking and her whiskers are not right and her feet are a little too long, but with a bit of tweaking and some Trinny-and-Susannah-ing of her wardrobe (the 1970s Laura Ashley look is just not worthy of the Bryony Bunny's real life namesake), I think there may be hope for her. She is quite a bit bigger than Ellen Mouse, as it just felt right that she should be.

bunny on a bookcase

the tail needs to be fluffy!

I have ordered some white fleece and some chocolate fleece (and fur for the tail) and will keep working on this bunny until I am happy with her, so watch this space.

Deerey Me!

19 August 2012

Quite quilty

New quilt square: self-portrait appliqué

You may need to sit down for this...I have finished another quilt square! At this rate I could have a whole quilt by Christmas (2014, that is). I had a go at quilting a self-portrait. I really did try to make her/me fatter and more wrinkly with a more bulbous nose, but my inner goddess (or perhaps inner seamstress) just fought her way out and the quilted me ended up with cheekbones...verging on glamorous!

She's a combination of applique and fabric paint. I really enjoyed making this square; it makes me want to appliqué Russell Crowe more people. I can envisage a family, each individually appliquéd and framed, and the frames hung in a group together. Or maybe as part of a family tree...or a whole quilt just of people!

Past quilts

While in a quilting mood, here are a couple of quilts I made in the past (to show that I do sometimes sew, honestly!)...sorry about the less than great photos.

Autumn leaves and their shadows

tea and cake

really soft backing (leaf quilt)

quilted book bag

quilted Alan Rickman bag (for a friend who's a fan)

Quilting wish list

My head is always buzzing with ideas for quirky quilts. One day I will make them all!

• patchwork of English country fields and hedgerow
• favourite buildings
• weather map quilt
• spaceships of fact and fiction (with a big Millennium Falcon in the middle)
• a map (geographical)
• Lord of the Rings quilt
• a different flower in every square
• a different tree in every square
• snowflakes
• Wizard of Oz
• gargoyles
• and now, of course, a gallery of faces

Cats, cake and butterflies

I confess, I did abscond again this Thursday. My sister rang to see if I fancied a visit to Yo Sushi with her and my utterly fabulous and wonderful nephew (I am not biased as a doting auntie, he really is!). It is my sister's birthday soon, but they will be in Florida, so it seemed only right to spend a day celebrating. The sushi was followed by Marshfield farm ice cream and iced coffee at the San Francisco Fudge Factory (it's in Bath, not San Francisco!) and the foodiness has just carried on. Today, my mate Gav is coming over so I have gammon hocks soaking in cold water and have made a Swedish sunshine cake...mmmm

Swedish sunshine cake (Annika's recipe)

When I visited friends in Lund, as well as teaching me to make yo-yos (Suffolk puffs), lovely Annika made this cake for me and it is delicious! It's all almonds and sunshine. It should have whole almonds on it, but I had some flaked almonds to use up.

Talking of sunshine, it was so lovely on Saturday we spent the afternoon lazing in the garden with the cats:

Max miaowing at the sparrows on the bird-feeder

Max

Rio

It was all so exciting that Max needed  bit of a snooze...

Those that have visited us know Mark is a bit cautious with our two cats. We keep them in at night and, so they won't get lost and we could find them if they got shut in somewhere, the cats have tiny transmitters on their collars and Mark can be seen wandering up and down the street with the receiver unit, listening for the beeps from the cats' collars. Well the system had been getting a bit rough and this week his new toy arrived...I thought the old one was embarrassing, but this one is ridiculous!!

come in number 10, your time is up!

Earth to Mars, Earth to Mars...are you receiving?

While in the garden on Saturday, I tried to catch photos of butterflies on the lavender to end this entry on a more artistic note, but with very little success...

The big problem with butterflies is that they...well...flutter by!

Oh I almost forgot - Ellen Mouse's blog also has an update!!





Deerey Me!

The good, the bad and the bugly!

The Good...

I had such a nice day on Thursday. Thursdays and Fridays are my non-work days (well actually they are supposed to be non-paid days rather than non-work days - there is plenty of work I should be doing!) and as I had a singing lesson on Thursday, I decided to have a potter around Bath before hand. I usually have a singing lesson every other week and often cut through from George Street to Bennett Street and always peer in to Bea's Vintage Tea Rooms on Saville Row (there's a bit about it on Coolplaces.co.uk). This week I gave myself enough time to go in and have a cup of tea before singing. It really is a very cool place - the decor, music and waitresses are all 1940s style, add to this the fab looking cakes, great breakfast menu and the fact their tea selection includes Oolong and I think it could become one of my new favourite places to go!

I spent a really nice half hour enjoying a pot of oolong and a toasted tea cake, chatting to the lovely waitresses and the owner/cook. I see from 'Coolplaces' they are also intending to run knitting classes, poetry readings and 1940s make-up lessons in the basement (and I could really do with knitting lessons!).


After tea, I went to my singing lesson. I have lessons with Kelly Sharp and she's brilliant. It's not just that she has a wonderful voice, she is a natural teacher and really wants her students to do well and to enjoy singing as much as she does. I have always enjoyed singing, but never realised what my voice - any voice I think - is capable of. Don't get me wrong, Dame Kiri doesn't need to be looking over her shoulder at me, I'm no competition, and 95% of the time my singing exercises don't sound great to me (and I do suspect Kelly is just being overly kind to encourage me...it works though), but every now and then my voice sounds like a proper singer and it feels a little bit like flying!


I may be a big kid, but I have always learnt best with pictures - either real or virtual. At university, an equation meant very little to me until I could turn it in to a graph and see how changing variables moved the lines on the graph, so when Kelly tells me to imagine the music stand is a birthday cake and send the air towards it, I get it. When I sing now I am visualising blowing out candles on a birthday cake, the note being a boat on the river of air, keeping the sound engaged with muscles in my back (yes, really) like holding on to a helium filled balloon, floating against the ceiling of a cathedral to sing on the top of the note, and much more besides. It may all sound a bit odd, but it works. For me singing lessons are like therapy. I come out feeling on top of the world...I just have to take care not to scare passers by by suddenly bursting into voice exercises.


I am quite a realist and fully accept that there is a lot of competition for handmade fabric things and I may be looking at only subsidising a 'year out', but I do have the added motivation to make working for myself enough of a success to, at the very least, continue to pay for singing lessons - I have a really long way to go yet and a lot more lessons ahead of me. I don't have any ambition to be a great diva; just to feel confident to sing in a choir and to make the most of my voice.

The Bad...

Distraction. I had a lovely day on Thursday, but in my mind it was a morning off, when actually I didn't get home until almost 2pm. If talking were an olympic sport, Kelly and I would be competing for the gold medal, so our lessons often over-run. Then there was all the housework sort of stuff to get done, some odds and ends of paperwork and a bit of food shopping and the day was gone. On Friday I did manage to finish the final mouse pinafore, but my focus wasn't there - so I messed up cutting out the pieces, and then the sewing machine swallowed a pinafore strap and had to take apart the well with the bobbin to clean it out and start again. I thought of a new design, that then needed some more tweaking, and it all took too much time (I started 5 pinafores to end up with 1 acceptable one). I did get the mice posted, but I have to build in to my plans for the Spring when I start the business fully that there will be days when I do not achieve much...and that will have a big impact on profit.

mice about to head to Sweden

...and the Bugly!

I'm sorry, I could not resist the temptation of this post title. I have a total love of bees. I have always loved the look of them and the sound they make (particularly when inside a foxglove trumpet) and this love affair only grew stronger a few years ago when Mark bought me a 70-300 zoom lens with a very cool macro. Those who know me have been bombarded ever since with images of bees, so it seems only fair to inflict them on my blog readers too! These were taken on the lavender we have growing in a stone trough on our patio:

bee in the lavender

detail of a bee's wings

the bee's 'fur' looks so...cuddly!

bee: can even feed upside down

bee's wings in a blur of movement

bee closeup