Little Cotton Rabbits

Can you tell what it is yet?

I've been meaning to start on one of these for a long time now and then all of a sudden last week I was seized by a badgery moment! I still have to work out the ears and how to integrate a grey body but at least I have the head shaping done!

In other news, we had a great time at the special needs club. Toby settled very well and made a beeline for a big crate of duplo lego. I managed to get him to explore a little too and he coped ok with quite high noise levels. I feel fairly confident that he'll be ok there and the staff are great so I've booked him in from September to go regularly. It will be great as this will give H and I a few precious hours to spend with just Amy. Thanks for all of your good wishes - they obviously worked!

In hedgehoggy news things aren't so great although there is a happy ending! The babies came out again in the hot sun of saturday afternoon (obviously very hungry) and so I scooped them up and popped them in the cool garage with lots of mashed up food and water. After the children were in bed I checked on them with the plan of releasing them again but unfortunately while looking them over to check there were no fly eggs (maggots will eat a hedgehog alive!) I found that they were absolutely covered in ticks. The smallest one in particular had over 40 of them all around her eyes, ears and bottom. This amount of ticks would probably cause death in such a small hedgehog and certain would cause infection, anaemia and severe fatigue so I knew I couldn't cope with them and they needed help. Luckily Epping Forest Hedgehog rescue is only a 40 minute drive and they agreed to take them in. Amy and I set off very slowly in the car on Sunday morning and delivered the hoglets. They were immediately de-ticked, fed, housed and dosed up with antibiotics so hopefully they will all survive. They were 2 girls and a boy of 4-5 weeks old and we are looking forward to a phone call in 5 weeks or so to let us know that we can collect them and release them back into the garden - so I'll keep you posted! Having chatted to the experts there it seems unlikely that Herbert Hogwart would have been the parent (being him/herself only a late baby from last year) so he/she may still be around - there are certainly quite a few hedgehogs that visit our garden each night but it's hard to tell them apart. Maybe I should have knitted Herbert some socks or a scarf to help him stand out from the crowd?!

breaking news from the garden!

Today Toby had an inset day from school and so I spent most of the day in the garden with him. Just before lunchtime as I was pegging out some washing a movement on the lawn caught my eye and sauntering towards me was a very small baby hedgehog. Of course being a seasoned blogger I dropped the pegs and ran for my camera but when I dashed back outside I couldn't see him. Hedgehogs are quite noisy creatures though, so it wasn't hard to track him down

Now I know from all of my research when we rescued Herbert Hogwart last year that hedgehogs only come out in the day under extreme circumstances (illness, hunger etc) so I knew something was wrong. I grabbed my gardening gloves and an old crate and got him settled in the garage with some water and mashed kitten food. The plan was to keep him safe until dark and let him go again.

But an hour or so later there was more rustling from the flowerbed and I discovered he wasn't an only hoglet - there were another 2 emerging from the hedgehog house. So are these the offspring of Herbert Hogwart? Well, your guess is as good as mine but they certainly could be. And is this proof that Herbert was in fact Sherbert? Well, the evidence looks that way!

I fed them all and watched them snuffle around in the undergrowth.

Then, one by one they made their way back to bed. A couple of hours later I gently lifted the lid on the house and they were curled up together fast asleep.

There may not be a happy ending though. They shouldn't have been out in the day and there was no sign of a mummy hedgehog (what has happened to Herbert/Sherbert?) . I phoned the Hedgehog Preservation Society who are so helpful with advice and the plan of action is to leave the babies, put down food after dark tonight, watch them tomorrow and if they come out in the day time I'll be taking on surrogate mum duties again - housing them in the garage in an old rabbit run and fattening them them up to around 400gms before setting them free again!

There are a few more photos over on flickr.

Pink buttercream roses

Amy has been a bit deflated this week (probably after all the excitment of last weekend's ballet show) and so yesterday I thought I'd make her something nice to cheer her up.

The trouble is that of the nine I made only these two ended up looking like roses. Still, maybe that means that I get to eat the rest!

Hope you have a good weekend. I'm being brave and taking Toby to visit a special needs club. If it goes well it could become a permanent fixture of our weekend - though I am having butterflies at the thought of leaving him, so then again maybe not!

visiting rights only!

She was supposed to have been mine.

I had a little spot picked out for her to sit where I could enjoy her prettiness and her wonderful smell of lavender. But sadly it was not to be. She was whisked away while I wasn't paying attention and now she belongs to someone else.

Though apparently I am allowed to cuddle her whenever I want though, so she is not lost to me forever!

Thanks so much to Nicky at The Vintage Magpie for making the beautiful Ava.

Ballet show

We had a wonderful time yesterday at Amy's ballet show and she really shone on stage. I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the performance but snapped away like mad backstage. She adored her romantic ballet dress and the sparkly make-up.

It was quite a job to convince her to take her costume off afterwards - I think she's have happily slept in it given the chance!

new shelves and book stuff

Well, I did do a little knitting in public on Saturday but most of last weekend was taken up with rehersals for Amy's upcoming ballet show. We also managed to get most things moved back into our conservatory. It's not the nicest of constructions (being an '80's concoction of plastic panels and double glazing) but it has a wonderful light and now we have more storage to help keep things tidy.

H has constructed a brilliant radiator cover and loads of shelves and we've had a new carpet laid to help keep it warmer in winter.

It's the perfect place for a spot of knitting while keeping and eye and ear on the children in the garden and all of my books are very happy in their new home.

Talking of books, Monica recently invited me to join Goodreads and I've already discovered a couple of other blogging friends there too. It's another wonderful place to get sucked into and spend hours browsing the book reviews.

A couple of you asked me previously about some of the titles in my book stack, so I thought I share a few of my all-time favourites (these are titles that have stood up to multiple readings and the most dog-eared copies on my shelves):

The Sea, The Sea and The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch; Ladder of Years, Anne Tyler; Nights at the circus, Angela Carter; Devils for a change, Wendy Periam; Love in the time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez; The War of Don Emanuel's Netherparts, Louis de Bernieres; The Shipping News, Annie Proulx; Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood; Sacred Country, Rose Tremain; The Travelling Hornplayer, Barbara Trapido; The Reader, Bernhard Schlink; Snowblind, Robert Sabbag; Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, Peter Hoeg; A prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving; Perfume, Patrick Suskind. I could go on but I better stop there!

Hope you have a good weekend. We'll be ballet-showing on Sunday - I'll be backstage up to my eyes in layers of netting, hairspray and shoe ribbons and Amy will hopefully be enjoying the attention of performing in front of 300 people!

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Footnote:

Thanks for all of the kind comments about the fluffy toys. Once they're dressed I will be putting them both into the shop (although probably not in the next sale). Will keep the shop blog up to date with details.

Almost finished fluffies

This week I've been having fun mixing mohair with wool and alpaca and I'm really pleased with the results (although I have to say that I admire Lisa even more because I found the mohair very fiddly to knit with and kept snagging it!). I'm also not as brave as her as the thought of popping them into the washing machine to felt them is too scary for me!

These two just need some clothes, which will keep me busy over the weekend. Incidentally Sunday (oops - it's Saturday, thanks Roo!) is world-wide knit in public day - you can check out events in your area or just go out and do it on your own!

Whatever you do this weekend, have fun!

tagged...

I'm not a well-behaved blogger when it comes to being tagged as it takes me much too long to rustle up my answers. So, I'll start by apologising to Flibbertygibbet, Linaloo and Dragonfly for the fact it's taken me ages! I'm also going to cheat and mash two of the tags together. Flib tagged me for 7 random/weird facts and Lina for 6 unspectacular quirks, so I give you 13 quirkily unspectacular and weirdly random facts:

I like waking up before anyone else in the house
I don't like wearing orange or yellow
I like the smell of farmyards
I don't like cleaning the oven
I like having my feet massaged
I don't like the fact that I seem to be growing a moustache (even Amy commented on it the other day - I must get it waxed!)
I like wide, open country spaces
I don’t like chewed lego that is difficult to snap together (courtesy of Toby)
I like driving on my own and singing along to loud music (Amy tells me off if I do this when she's in the car!)
I don’t like getting caught in the rain
I like wearing pyjamas (all day)
I don’t like bling
I like lying with Toby at bedtime and feeling the rhythm of his heart as he dozes off

Dragonfly tagged me with this:

I have to answer 6 questions about myself. At the end of the post I then tag 6 people and post their names, then go to their blogs and leave them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read my blog. Then, I must let the person who tagged me know when I’ve posted my answers.

What was I doing 10 years ago

10 years ago actually seems like a different lifetime (I’m amazed at how much having children has changed who I am and my values). H & I had just moved from a small flat in Ealing to this house and were in a frenzy of stripping dodgy 80’s wallpaper, sanding orange-varnished parquet floors and painting over violent turquoise paintwork. Every room needed re-decorating but then with no children around we had the time to tackle it. By day I was working in London (Camden) as the Marketing Manager for a photographic library and apart from the DIY our evenings were filled with eating out and enjoying each other’s company. We’d also just started pondering whether or not to start a family!

5 things on my to do list for today

Reply to emails
Make 28 ribbon bows for Amy's upcoming ballet show
Make bread
Write cheques for school meals that should have been sent in last week
Make a PECs card for wee wee

Snacks I enjoy

Cheese
Pistachios
Thorntons Viennese truffles
Nutella and peanut butter on a spoon (an instant pick-me-up! And it seems I‘m not the only one!)

Things I would do if I was a billionaire

It’s funny because I’ve always quite liked to play this game. When I was little one of my favourite rainy day games was to draw ‘Julie town’ which included  all the things I liked (it always had a paper mill so I‘d never run out of drawing paper).

Anyway, if I really came into a billion quid I’d build a special needs play complex with indoor and outdoor play areas, sensory rooms and swimming pools. The kind of place that families with special needs children could go in the school holidays when everywhere else is so busy that it’s not an option. There is a great place here that I’ve taken Toby to twice but it’s a bit far to go to regularly.

Places I have lived

Farnham
Hull
Reading
Ealing
Hertfordshire

6 people I'd like to know more about:

Lizzie Jane

Nutty Irishman knits

Kittens lost her mittens

Ninny Noodle Noo

Rachel Rabbit

and you too - if you fancy it?

warm and fluffy inspiration

Thanks for all of the good wishes, I am feeling a little better now although still have to shake this throat thing fully. Still, lolling about last week meant I had more time for browsing blogs and flicking through flickr. There are some wonderfully creative people out there doing all kinds of gorgeous things with fabric and yarn. Although there are plenty of fabric softies that I fall in love with, yarn is my first love so I suppose that's why I'm drawn to knitted and crocheted softies. I have a particular penchant for the work of Wholelottalisa who makes the most lovely fluffy creatures which I think are beautifully shaped and quite special.

Until seeing her toys it had never occurred to me that you could mix two strands of different yarn and create a new and wonderful hybrid.

So, when I saw this baby mohair boucle I knew I just had to make it mine, all mine and give her technique a go by marrying it up with a lone ball from my stash. It's horribly fiddly stuff to knit with but I'll let you know how I get on later in the week!

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Footnote:

I'm going to start answering questions at the bottom of each post - I'm woefully behind with emails and hopefully this will help!

A couple of people asked about the knitted heart in the last post. It's going to be a jumper for a big toy and the pattern for the heart lace panel came from an old Rowan book - Kim's White Book, published in 1989 (one of Kim Hargreaves first pattern books).

I suppose it's out of print now but I had a search on ravelry and you can find a very similar lace heart pattern here for free.

All done.

Well my finished memorial patch is far from perfect but I'm still rather pleased with it and it's pretty close to what I had in mind. I've added my initials and the date (thanks Jill and Caroline for the suggestion) and it might need a few more stitches to hold it in place but I'll take it for a test snuggle first.

Thanks for all the kind comments about it on the previous posts. And to those of you who asked, all I did was type up the text on the computer and fiddle about with placement and fonts. I printed it out (black text on white paper), pinned to an old linen dinner napkin, held it up to the window and traced the letters with a coloured pencil. Then I stitched (back stitch I think). Pretty low tech stuff!

Anyway, I've really enjoyed my small foray into stitching but I'll not be giving up my day job! Now, I'm off to resume my knitting and rest my poor throat before the children get home (I've got a nasty throat infection from the cold of last week) a nice cup of tea wouldn't go amiss either!