A Little Birdie Told Me

It's sort of like Tree Lightning, don't ya think?

 So - I'm working on another nourishing post right now but while we're waiting (cue elevator music), here's something we made earlier...

The lovely (and enormously creative) Margaret over at We Bloom Here hosted a wonderful little 'Birdie' swap recently and I was excited to take part. (I know, I'm turning into some sort of swap slut now too). And so I whipped up these little critters for my two swap partners.

Inspired by the beautiful Fairytale of The Wild Swans

 They are made of wool roving following a lovely, easy tutorial from the Living Crafts magazine. I have linked up to the page with the free patterns but you will need to buy the magazine to get the tutorial for these babies.

Birdie Num Num

 I should have made them in black as we have black swans over here in Australia, rather than the more traditional white. But I'm from Britain and they don't make black wool roving around these 'ere parts, so white they is.

Showing off now...sparkly white winter tree..yum

I enjoyed making these birds so much that I made too many (even after the one I made for my beanie girl) and so I thought it would be nice for Margaret to have her own. After all, she created the swap and organised it all. So my little swan flew half way around the world to land on the cutest little heart doormat outside the gorgeous red door of the Blooms. It was serendipity I think.

Swan Lake

Would rainbow coloured swans be weird do you think? I've gotten quite the passion for them now.

Oh and I had the delightful news that something created by those wonderful crafty hands is winging it's way to me! I shall have to prepare a comfortable nest for it to rest in - it's a long way to fly after all. So excited.

So now, go check out her wonderful blog, be inspired by her thoroughly original creations, take a gander (gander, get it?) at all the fabulous birdies people have made here,  and keep an eye out for her next swap. I'm sure it will be wonderful.

Oh and here's a little Gnome, Toadstool and Fairy love to show y'all what else I have been making.

Rainbow Fairies

A wheel of fairies (as opposed to cheese)

These delightful little flutterers were created for the One Hook Wonder craft swap. We had to make 16 items! 16! Naturally, as I had access to her at the time, I took sore advantage of the lovely Docwitchy in order to complete mine in time for the deadline. I swapped her skills for dinner and red wine, heh, heh, heh. It was good fun and the two little witchlings got to take home/keep some of the loot too, some of which they they made themselves. Awwww.

Lovely to look at, lovely to make, but if you eat one, consider yourself dead. 

A gnome away from home

The toadstools were made for the Mushrooms, Hedgehogs and Gnomes swap with Bits of Goodness. Can't wait to see what I get back, there are some seriously talented crafters on that site!

Anyhoo, I'll be off now. It's late and I have more swap items to make. Well, I what can I say except..."Lookin' for a littull company, Sir? I can show you a real good time wiv wool rovin..."

Snotterbox and the Villainous Lurgy

Yes indeed. It seems that it's not only DocWitch that has been afflicted with the evil lurgy. Alas the House of AH has been visited by the Pox Fairy also and we are currently snoring, snorting, snotting and overheating in equal measure. Poor Beanie has been worst afflicted. She had a temperature of 40.6 last night and a nose that dripped into her mouth almost all the time that she was upright. She also has the hacking phlegmy cough of a $2 hooker. When my beanie is sick she will not let me leave her side and last night this meant that she was sandwiched inbetween my hubble and me in our big bed trying not to spontaneously combust with the reflected heat of our two bodies plus our 13.5 tog winter duvet from the UK (where they know about cold). We did not sleep. We tossed, turned, snotted, coughed, neurofenned, cried, snored and demanded water at regular intervals all night. At 6am my poor knackered hubble carried our sweaty little bundle of bung into the kitchen for a spot of sultana bran and let me disappear into the delicious oblivion of sleep for a couple of hours. He is SuperDad, and I love him.

This morning, with a surprisingly chipper little snotterbox, we crafted and painted the morning away. She then demanded some biccies and 'Ya Ya' whilst brandishing a homemovie of herself from aged 9 to 18months. She proceeded to eat said biccie whilst intermittently shouting 'mamma' 'daddn' and 'yaya' at the TV. Here are a couple of her recent accomplishments.

Horsey Horsey

Why did the Chicken?

Now if I could just convince her that the paints are not, in fact, made by Max Factor, we'd be getting somewhere.

Of Crafts, Creativity and Jumping from Frying Pan to Fire

Lately I have been suffering greatly from craft envy. I have found myself bemoaning my complete lack of talent in the crafty sewing stakes and have decided that instead of being such a wussy when it comes to making things from scratch, I will throw myself in at the deep end and have a bloody go. Now the problem with this enthusiastic (if terribly naive) approach to the whole business is that I am a horrible, horrible perfectionist. I have been blessed with one main talent in my life and that is that I have always been able to do pretty much anything I put my mind to without too much effort. I remember it began with ice-skating back when I was a tweenie. My mum had a friend whose daughter had had lessons and we all went to the ice rink. I sailed (literally) through my first ever experience on the ice including learning how to skate backwards, while said friends daughter clung to the side like a limpet. Same with horseriding, same with dance (for which I had a gift when I was much younger and less portly). However, this gift is not all its cracked up to be. Firstly it meant that my mum always had me (unconsciously) in competition with everyone else and that's a kind of pressure that no kid needs and secondly, it meant that I became very impatient with any personal failure. This all translates to, if I can't do it perfectly straight off, I am liable to set fire to it and myself.

Soooo, it is with cautious enthusiasm that I have set myself this project to be completed within the next 4-months in time for my daughters second birthday. Yes, its a sock monkey. I know it probably doesn't seem like much but its a huge step for me. Y'see I love crafts. I have folders at home filled with pages torn from magazines and downloaded from the internet showing me how to do everything from producing the perfect Macaroni Cheeeeze to knitting myself a Bible. I positively salivate over the perfect images with a maniacal grin on my face. I dream of curling up on my newly upholstered sofa, eating the perfect macaroni cheese, striving not to get any on my newly knitted bible with a sock monkey sitting next to me.

I truly envy these amazing creative women whose blogs I have been pouring over. DocWitch is one such being for whom I have such admiration. Anyone who can do crafty things, raise a child, hold down a full time job AND have any time at all for other things is to be worshipped for the Godess/God that they truly are. Me? I'm lucky if I can get through an average day and cook dinner. I long to be more crafty. I love the idea of handmade things, of giving thoughtful, beautiful gifts to people I love that I have taken the time and energy to create myself. There is something so special about it. (BTW thank you for my Beanie's gorgeous Crayon roll-up - she adores it and the crayons within. Many a wall in our house has been visited by her early impressionistic endeavours!). I've always had this thing, this quiet passion, for crafts and now I've discovered Family Circle magazine and completely fallen in love with it. I know. I'm so middle-aged it ain't funny. It's just that its chock full of great recipes and fantastic crafty ideas with ALL the instructions. And some of them I think I could actually do! So - having written in (blog)stone that I am going to make a sock monkey for my little monkey's birthday, I will have to go ahead and do it. Lest the shame of this post hang over my head like those dreams where you find yourself in school naked and without your homework.



As if this wasn't enough, I have also made another commitment (actually two)that started today. (I am nothing if not insanely optimistic when it comes to starting new things), I have commited to 30-days of Japa meditation. I'm not trying to manifest anything in particular, I just would like to revisit the stillness and peace I once experienced during an impromptu fire meditation and which I have written about in this blog (see post The Stillness We Seek). I need to quieten down my head for it is always so very busy in there. The third commitment I have made is to The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. So this morning, after my Japa meditation, I did my morning pages and this week I will go out with myself on my very first Artists Date. I'm very excited. I hope I bring myself flowers.

And so, it is with a burning hot bum (a result of leaping from Creative Frying Pan to Meditative Fire rather than because someone is sitting under my chair with an open flame) that I leave this post. I will be recording the effects of my 30-day meditation experiment AND I will be recording how I'm going with my sock monkey. I may also mention how things are going with The Artists Way. We'll just have to see if I am still able to move under the weight of all these self-imposed obligations by next week.

PS. This post was rudely interrupted by Mother Nature plunging us into sudden darkness at around 10.30pm last night. We stumbled about in total blackness, walking into doors, tipping things over and knocking things off other things until I found a box of matches and began lighting the candles. Thank goodness for what DocWitch calls Witchypooness - my house is stuffed to the gills with candles and soon the house was lit up like Christmas. It was actually very romantic - I actually look good in candlelight. I retired to bed to read and felt very Jane Austin. Reading by candlelight, indeed brushing my teeth and washing my face by candlelight did have a very Pride and Prejudice feel to it. I almost expected a very arsy Darcy to come bursting into the room to tell me how 'ardently I admire and love you...' Well, a girl can dream can't she? Yummmm. Sadly, he wouldn't have had the time to step out of his britches as the lights suddenly came on again and life was back to its unromantic normality in seconds - though I noticed my hubby had grown a beard.