New,

...a little embroidery idea I was trying out.

Wanna play a little game with me?

It's called 'Degrees of Separation', you may already know the rules.  Here we go...

Item 1, my very first Owl, originally posted June 2007 (both here on the blog and also in my original Flickr photostream)

Item 2, slight change to the design and we have the Owl egg cosy pattern, originally posted June 2008 (both here on the blog and also in my original Flickr photostream)

Item 3, Monsoon Accessorize ditzy Owl keyring.

 You decide!

Edited to add - I posted this, then deleted it while I contacted Monsoon, but have since decided to post it again as I've since purchased one of these keyrings and it's even more similar in real life than it looks in the picture.

Another 'Plush You' sneaky peek,

From this...

to this.

I have a whole heap of new softie patterns coming, watch this space...!

Barcelona,

Two weeks ago, we set off on our first family holiday abroad, to a villa just south of Barcelona.  Weather was good, pool was good, food was good, and it pretty much all went to plan.  Although, one day, sometime in the future, Luke will feel mighty embarrassed he missed so much of the sights through sulking.

Here he is in Park Guell,

and again in Montserrat.

There are more, but I'll spare him the shame of posting them all!

Sneaky peek,

I can't show it all just yet (the reason for that will be revealed soon, I promise!), but here's a quick peek at one of the pieces I've made to go all the way over to Seattle for the Plush You 2010 show,

this little critter has pinched the 'No Fishing' sign,

and is using it as his fishing rod!

...naughty boy!

Normal service resuming,

I have to admit to being a bad blogger lately, posts have been few and far between.  Normal service will start to resume now that the school holidays are over.  Lucy and Luke returned to school last Wednesday, although Luke was delayed until Thursday due to the building work on his classroom not quite being finished.  It is now, and the classroom looks great.  It's open plan, with all the year 1 and 2 children in one huge room together.

Now that school is back, we also return to the year long struggle I had with getting Luke dressed in his uniform every morning.  My son does not like doing anything he doesn't want to do, and he's very stubborn.  Every morning, he does his utmost best to avoid it and absolutely detests socks.  One thing he also doesn't like is the polo shirts he has to wear for school, those ones with short sleeves with a collar and buttons at the neck.  So there I was, all proud of myself after hunting, and finally finding some round neck, long sleeved t-shirts in red (their uniform is red and grey), until on Friday, day two of school, he comes home sporting this on one of the sleeves...

He has spent all day nibbling and chewing on the sleeve like a little hamster!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Subscriptions,

Every year I have a bit of an inner debate with myself over which magazines I subscribe to.  They are a luxury, rather than a necessity, so 1 is about all I can stretch too.  In 2009, it was Selvedge, this year I went for Marie Claire Idees.  I first came across this magazine many years ago while working for Coats.  We had got hold of the odd copy in the design studio, and eventually signed up for a subscription.  It always caused a bit of excitement when the new issue arrived, and I found it very amusing as each of the designers would immediately favour different pages, a good thing that we all liked different things design wise. 

The latest issue has just arrived this morning, and although I do have to admit that since my years subscription started, I haven't been as taken with the magazine as I thought I would be, this one is for me, a bit more back on form.

Lots of cute things here,

a beautiful quilt,

exquisite embroidery, hand stitched with a bit of ribbon applique by the looks of it,

an article about shopping in Paris, just to get you in the mood for European cities (ideal for me as I'm off to Barcelona soon!)

and then there's the homage to Autumn.  I do love Autumn, it's my favorite season of the year, we got married in the Autumn, just as the leaves were turning gold.

I'm just not quite ready for Summer to be over yet!!

(I got my Marie Claire Idees subscription from here)