A sunny day in Rothesay town

Welcoming arms

A vase full of potential puppet arms

Waiter!

Lousy service in this restaurant. Even the plates are getting crabby

Red and yellow and pink and blue....

Homework!

Two for the price of one

A double photo delight for you today, but I'm cheating. I was going to work while my dearly beloved was off down the marina so he took on the roll of photographer for the day. I'm off for a weekend yoga seminar where obviously no photos will be taken. Catch up with you Monday.

Stash Enhancement

Major stash enhancement! Found a local wool shop closing down and offering 60% discount. Excellent value because I will of course knit every inch of it.......maybe take me this lifetime and they next but, hey, what else am I doing?

All the details of my stash on Ravelry if you want go see. Check out tinyshinythings. That's my alter ego.

You'll be pleased to hear I've turned the corner

My current knitting is proving to be a real trial of patience and fortitude but with the help of my new friends in Ravelry, I'm getting there. It curves very cleverly all by itself thanks to the short rows but keeping the cables going during this process has proved almost impossible....for me. Bring the pattern up in Ravelry (Concentric Vest) and you have two pages of people saying 'fast and easy!' and other equally frustrating comment. Enough to make me grit my teeth and frog it for the tenth time. This is the furthest I've come so far. If you think my cabling intervals look a bit wonky, you could well be right.

Durassic what now?

Working in the shop this afternoon. I sell a lot of amber. Don't you just love it.

Hunterston

Flushed with yesterday's success I stopped the car on my way to the next village to snap the sun on the ........iron ore terminal. I live in a beautiful part of the world. Where else would you build an ore terminal?

I was on my way to sign up for a beginner's yoga class in the next village. I'm a trainee yoga teacher about to start my own beginner's class. I'm hoping I'll be able to learn on the job.

Yoga plagiarism. Is that naughty?

It's for yoohoo!

We took a trip to Balloch on Loch Lomond side today and I forgot my camera - so no change there then. I had a half hearted go with my phone in a very cavalier point and squirt fashion because I had no confidence I would be able to download it. But it's easy when you can get your hands on the cable that connects it to your PC. I'm most impressed. Might even try and unload some of video of my feet with a soundtrack that says thing like ' Give me the phone.....I know how to work it.....no, you're doing it wrong!' It's called happy schlepping.

Inner warmth

Cold a wet outside today. Just the weather for an apply, blueberry and raspberry crumble shown here with it's secret ingredient!

According to that link it's supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Hot, hot, hot!

It's only just begun...

I've invested in my first paid or rosewood knitting needles. The woman in the shop actually tried to put me off, saying some yarns caught on them but I like them so far. I find plastic needles slip out of the stitches sometimes. These are less slidey and I just love the way they look. The pattern is challenging, a combination of short rows and cables, but there is plenty of advice on Ravelry. I'm still at the frog it and do it again...and again stage until I get it into my head. Then I'll want to knit several. It's certainly fun and fast. The yarn I'm using is Patons Inca, made in China, finished and packed in Oz. *Sign* ....and here I am surrounded by fields of Scottish sheep.

Maybe....

Many of my internet chums are committing to blogging a daily photo. I'm filled with admiration and would love to follow their good example but I know that my particular road to hell is defiantly paved with good intentions. The holidays are over and my wardrobe remains full of summer clothes, the shower stall still sports it's mouldy corners and piles of filing remains just that, piles of filing. So perhaps I will and then again......

In the meantime, puppet preparation remains top of the to do list.

Work in progress

The horrendous jacket nears it's conclusion. Decided to reverse the stripe colours on the second side, just for the hell of it. Not entirely convinced but reckoned it couldn't make it any worse. I was terrified to block it, mainly due to the instructions on the ball band which said DO NOT IRON in frighteningly large letters. Have pinned out bits of it and sprayed them with water which seemed to calm it down slightly. Going to force myself to sew it up before casting on the next one otherwise it will be forever in bits.

Groundhog Day

Here we have Moses caught in a bizarre time warp, carrying himself as a baby, albeit rather precariously. I think this will work as carrying mechanism once I've made a proper Moses' mother puppet, who by the way seems not to be named in Exodus.

Passover puppets

Here we have Moses and a frog before and after. I'm pretty ignorant on the religious front so I've had to research the relevant bible stories. Google image search is great for visual ideals and from the various bits and pieces I found I've cobbled these two together so far. I've done lots of experiments with paper plate locust but none of them is believable. Moses beard is Merino tops and it did occurs to be lightly felted rolls of tops on garden canes might make passable bull rushes. Off to crochet a basket of bull rushes (garden twine) for baby Moses to float away in.

Able to cable

I'm knitting my first proper jacket in about a million years (approx). It's been ill fated from the start. I bought the wool in a hurry. Who can make a sensible choice in a hurry? I took the sales person's advice. Sales people are employed to sell things. I should know this, I am one! It drives me nuts when customers ask me which one they should choose but there I was, all simpery, asking my sales person which wool I should work with.

She recommended Sirdar Peru. No complaints there, wool and alpaca with a little bit of acrylic to make it manageable. And to go with that Madam, may I recommend.......Sirdar Click, 70% acrylic! (She didn't tell me that bit). It wasn't until I held it in my excited little hands, sticky with anticipation and instantly let it go again with that arghhhhhh, acrylic, get it away from me feeling that I realised the enormity of my purchase. In more ways than one. She sold me far too much, enough to knit jumpers for the whole of Peru probably.

This was to be a three colour jumper. I'm now trying to squeeze the whole thing out of the two Perus, giving the acrylic a body swerve. Let's hope she sold me too much to be enough for this adjustment, if you get my drift.

Next on my list of things to make and do is to learn to cable without that dratted, slippery little eel of a needle which disappears between every row.

Here's what it should look like.

And here is my attempt to make the pattern more legible. I was given the idea by man who suggested I might find tap dancing more accessible if I tried doing if on the head of a pin.

Still, good practice in pig headed determination. I'm thinking of taking that up an an Olympic sport.

The final curtain

'What is it?' the kids asked. 'Is it a blanket?' They have a point. I'm a big believer in form and function but in this instance our work of art was purely decorative. As a final flourish the kids couched down the black lines they had felted around pipe cleaners a la Kandinksy.

The end.

finished felting

Well I am, finished felting. The children have one more chance to embellish their hanging tomorrow morning. Today I've been doing the assembly work for them.

You'll see how extremely sculptural the felt became in the washing machine. All hills and valleys. I also machine felted all the scraps and decided to use them, just as they came out of the machine, to join the pieces together.
Buttons and button holes did the trick and here we have all these strange amorphous joining pieces looking like shrunken socks.
A few of the scraps assembled themselves together in the washing machine and became an impromptu sea creature. Must remember this for future projects!

Practicing scales

Here's the fish puppet resplendent with his paper scales. This worked well and I'm pleased with it although I think I might be making them and the kids might be decorating them. Still, good collaborative fishing.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

More puppets for the special needs kids who are having an under water theme. These are made from circles of foam I found in the scrap store. It's self adhesive on one side. The sticky side is on the outside of the fish making it very easy for the children to decorate. They can either stick on paper/fabric scales in a systematic fashion, throw scraps at it randomly or roll it in some glitter, depending on their abilities. The inside of the puppet's head is also sticky - in a good way. The lightest of touch with your finger tips and it adhere to your hand making it very simple to operate and impossible to drop. When you're finished playing with it, none of the stickiness transfers itself to your hand. Photos of possible decoration to follow.

Keep your sunny side up

I nearly made a dreadful whoopsie at felt school yesterday. Here is all the soft felt disappearing under the first layer of tops that will eventually become the background. We are making our wall hanging like an upside down pizza, to be flipped over when complete. These pictures were taken after the mistake had been rectified. Can you guess what it was? I was strolling round admiring all the lovely surface decoration on the soft felt pieces. Surface decoration that was rapidly being smothered by a snowdrift of background tops....

'Stop!' I hollered. 'Turn all your soft felt over so the best side is facing the table. The tops on top is going to become the tops on the bottom!'

And they wonder why kids today are confused.....


Having rectified my error the kids all achieved three clouds of fleecy tops lying over the offending pieces. We damped our clouds with warm water - and the bell rang. Timing couldn't have been worse.

From my dim and distant felt making past I can remember heating cold and wet pieces up in the microwave before I started felting them again but won't be an option for us. Guess we'll just have to add more hot water and hope for the best.

Meanwhile back at felt school.....

The kids have been cutting shapes from their soft felt ready to add a background of more carded fleece and re-felt. There is a great felt makers list hosted by Pat Spark and there I learned how to cover the original collage with a piece of acetate which enables you to reproduce your exact design in felt pieces. If you dampen the felt pieces with soapy water they 'stick' in place while you add your background layers and re-felt.

I was lucky enough to find an old glass washboard a few years ago. It's been in my cupboard ever since waiting for a jolly felt making outing and today's the day!

Introducing Mr Mophead

I have a puppet project starting after the holidays in a special needs school. They want to make rod puppet so here's my simplified version made with a dish mop and some clothes line. An elastic band round the mop part gives you instant delineation between face and hair. I painted this face which worked well enough. You could also paint the hair but I think I'd me more likely to add some kind of wig or other headgear.....and clothes of course. This will be happening in January after all!