Ellie, the elephant

Finally, after 5 days of on-and-off knitting and sewing up, Ellie is finished! She`s 28 cm (11") tall and I found the pattern among the free craft project ideas on the Woman`s Day website. I have to say, I only made it because I was curious to see if I could, but I don`t think I`ll make a lot more of these big cuddly toys: Pandy and Ellie gave me way too much sewing to do and - believe it or not - I HATE sewing: as opposed to cross stitching, where you create a picture with your sewing, the mere binding of two pieces of fabric together by hours of stitching seems such a waste of time to me; after all, that`s what a sewing machine is for, isn`t it? OK, philosophising is over, here`s the picture:

Ollie, the owl

Just a quick post for my boxes are waiting: last night I wound down in front of the telly (Shakespeare`s As You Like It from the Globe on SkyArts2 - if you haven`t seen it yet, watch it if you can!) and I knitted this little owl:

The design is from Issue 27 of Let`s Get Crafting, subtitled "Toddler Knits". I also got the patterns for the turtle and the rocket ship from here.

holiday snapshot...

I`m back! And so is the phone! Finally, after spending 5 days in the new house without any means of communicating with the world, we`ve got the phone line fixed and we have internet access once more... Bliss! I feel like I`m not only back to Scotland but in the 21st century as well! As you can imagine, after moving home, there are plenty boxes to empty and cupboards to clean - however, I`ve decided that they can wait another half an hour while I have a cuppa and quickly post this (rather reddish) photo of all the little cutesies I made in Hungary (of course, I couldn`t take any needles, embroidery or knitting, in my hand luggage but nothing can stop an obsessed crafter like me: I just raided my Granny`s stash). So here they are: a curly-haired teddy (sponsored by Dr. Oetker), a rather morose penguin, a bumble bee and a snowman (with no hands, as my eagle-eyed son had spotted who, by the way, was well-chuffed with his Mr. Bean Teddy), the latter inspired by a whimsical snow-flurry in the middle of our Easter celebrations... April weather, eh?