A Small Person Activity and A Big Person Knit

I love pot painting shops but at the end of a long summer hol, funds are dwindling for keeping small people occupied.  The Girl Genius was just as happy painting a jar at home, and so was I.  It's really easy, fun and cheap!  See below.  I know you clever crafters will have lots more ideas to embellish a jar once the contents have been scoffed.  I used to make very fancy art jars and loved doing them.

This is my completed effort from the Scarfathon (see last post).  There's an horrendous mistake in there but on this occasion I left it.  Yes, I know it's not good but I weighed up the desire for perfection next to the act of being arsed to do it, and I was found wanting...

 Mmmmm, my current favourite beverage.  I must admit I feel like dabbing a bit behind my ears before drinking!

Slurp! x

Pinky Pinkness

This weekend I attended a Strawberry Tea and Scarfathon.  It was very pink.

 It was organised by the lovely Kate at A Good Yarn to raise funds for Breast Cancer research and was a roaring success with around £500 collected.

For a mere £10 we had a wonderful tea involving scones, cream, jam, strawberries and a myriad of delicious home-made cakes as well as copious quantities of tea and coffee, PLUS the yarn to make a pink scarf!  There were ten choices of scarf and I thought I would take up the challenge of making something with a lacy-type pattern - after all it was a very small challenge compared to that of the women facing a battle with breast cancer.  This lovely coral above is the start of my work.  Hopefully I'll be able to show you the completed item one day!

I have also finished a new freeform bag...ta-da!

 And...two hats for Miss Peach Pudding.

Anyone would think I do nothing but knit.  Honest, the occasional duster is flicked round the house, and I did make cherry and apple jam the other day.  Some days I even go to work!

I bought two books last week... craft ones, naturally...

thebookpeople.co.uk

dailymail.co.uk

 They are both full of so many wonderful projects I hardly know where to start!

Have a great week, hope the sun shines for you xxx

UPDATE: Just had to add that the Strawberry Tea and Scarfathon didn't make the hoped-for £500 - it made £689!!!  Well done, everyone!

Fluffy Buns

Not this sort of fluffy buns

but this sort of fluffy buns

They don't look that spectacular in the photo, even though I've given them a bit of a patriotic Olympian feel, but they taste great and are really, really fluffy.  Here's the recipe if you're interested.

How has your garden grown this summer?  Our produce has been very poor - no redcurrants or blackcurrants at all and the birds ate the few whitecurrants that forced themselves to appear.  The raspberries and rhubarb were okay but nothing special.  Our neighbour's cherry tree pulled out all the stops and he generously said we could have as many as we liked.  Oh, and so far we have produced one oversized courgette and a few green beans.

I impressed myself with this make - a 20p car boot sale heart-shaped baking tin proved a failure for baking as everything stuck to it, so I painted the base with my Dulux match pots, hung it on the kitchen wall and added magnetic pegs.  It's now a very useful little noteboard!

 In my last post I mentioned my Alan Dart gnome - here now is his ladyfriend.  She should actually have her hands stitched together but when I took a photo I realised that the little round pink hands across her chest looked like big gnomey boobies!  (Oo-er, Mrs!)  I unpicked the stitches and added a Christmas pudding which looks much better and less suggestive...

Well, back to the Olympics and our fabulous Team GB!

xxx

Much to my surprise ...

... I am loving the Olympics!  

Not just the fact that Team GB are winning medals but the look of it and the general feel-goodness of it.  Yes, I was one of the grumpies who dismissed it as London-centric and an expense we will never recoup, but I'm happy to be wrong.  Hopefully this legacy will be wonderful for sport and exercise to make our children healthy, happy adults.

And now for a feast of Pinkness...

 Cardi finally finished, yay!  I must admit I was a bit bored doing this but as you see, The Girl Genius was very grateful for it!

 Here is the pinkiest of pink playhouses, put up for TGG by Daddy.  She adores it and has decided to live in it forever.  This will be fine as long as she doesn't grow any taller than 4 feet high.

TGG chose the material for the curtains on a trip to Boyes.  Yes it's pink!  Now "Nanny Yellow Hair" has to make them.  She invented the name for me - the other gran is "Nanny Long Hair".  Oh well, could have been worse ... I'm not sure that "Nanny Four Eyes" would sound good echoing across the park!

Finally, meet Buddy the teeny weeny elf.  He's actually a gnome made from one of Alan Dart's fabulous patterns. He's going to be part of the Christmas decorations for our super wool shop, A Good Yarn .  I'm now knitting his ladyfriend, in between all the other UFO's in my collection! 

Have a beautiful, gold-medal-filled week, lovelies! xxx