My Creative Space - monkey business

Meet Bubbles. She's a cheeky lass. Loves a trip to the beach and a flirt at the icecream shop.

  And this is Rose. Bubbles is her best friend and she does worry about her sometimes. She likes to go to the beach too but she prefers to collect pretty seashells to add to her collection.

This is probably Ringo. I'm not sure until he's finished. You never know with sock monkeys, until you meet them properly, who they are.

Sometimes I don't find out who they are until they go to their new home.

Take Stripey for instance.

He didn't have a name or a personality until he went to his new home with M's friend last weekend. He was given both when he was unwrapped. I hear from M's friend's Mum that Stripey is spending an awful lot of time being cuddled in bed which I think he must be very fond of (all sock monkeys like a good cuddle).

I do love making these guys and I love seeing them go to a new home. Bubbles, Rose and Ringo (if he is indeed a Ringo) will be coming along with me to the Devonport Craft Market this Sunday, 6th March, 32 Clarence Street, Devonport, 10am-3pm. Come along and say hello if you can.

For more Creative Spaces, pop along to Kootoyoo.

My Creative Space

Eloise went back to kindy on Monday so afternoons are being spent at home, just pottering, playing and having fun.

 Crazy Maisy (our kitten) is providing endless entertainment. It's amazing how many hours you can while away playing with a cardboard box, a sister and a kitten. I remember doing the same when I was a child. I'd spend hours making elaborate cardboard box houses with shutters and tunnels for my cat Snoopy. Maddy asked if that was why I was so good at making stuff. Probably :o) .

 In spare moments at the playground, I've been knitting little brown kitties for a lovely lady in Australia.

And these faceless sock monkeys are due to get their individuality and character during Glee tonight.

How is your Creative Space going? Can I recommend you grab a cuppa and pop over to Kirsty's?

My Creative Space - Ready, Steady....

I love Christmas and the whole bit leading up to it.

 Did you know that there are only 5 and a bit weeks left until the big day?

 (Brief guest appearance from the the cat that likes to get in the way. Very helpful Kipper.

Can you move now please?)

Now where was I? Oh yes, 'The bit leading up to Christmas'. Five and a bit weeks. That's not long in Mummy and Daddy land is it? There's an awful lot to be done during that time. The gift buying, the food stocking, the light checking and the dusting off of the Christmas tree. Unfortunately, in small children land, five and a bit weeks is an eternity. I may well have let the cat out of the bag yesterday... by accident and the Overexcited Children in this house may have got a little preemptive. I will now have to deal with five and a bit weeks of hourly asking about when Santa is coming and when we are going to Aunty Gennys house for lunch.

 I've got two Christmas markets this week to help the people living in Mummy and Daddy Land out with the gift buying bit of the pre-Christmas preparations (five and a bit weeks isn't long you know!).

 One of those markets is tonight, at Gladstone School, 5-9pm (you can see all the details in the sidebar over to the right there.) Anyhoo... in the spirit of Christmas markets, I got the decorations down from the cupboard yesterday so I could make my stall look quite festive (think sock monkeys in a Christmas tree). I was unfortunately a little less than secretive about it and there was a great deal of ripping open of boxes and squeals by certain small people.

 So I have been sprung and will have to deal with the impatient wails of small people; but my stall is going to look very festive, so that's okay. I have another Christmas market on Sunday. Devonport Craft Market is going all festive on Sunday 21st Nov 10-3pm. We even have a festive eftpos machine which will be manned by the very helpful Mr Cotton Kiwi.

So if you have some Christmas shopping to do for small (and big people, I have goodies for them too!), why not come along tonight or on Sunday and get your shopping out of the way?

And if it's a little too far to come there is always Etsy and Felt. There are links to my shops in the sidebar there.

Now, enough of the shameless self promotion, I'm going to send you off to visit all the other Creative Spaces over at Kootoyoo now. Have a great day!

For the Boys

The boys are seriously outnumbered in our house. Our washing line is filled with a great deal of pink and Mr Cotton Kiwi insisted on a male kitten when we got Kipper to try and even things out a little. It comes as no surprise then, that I have to work extra hard to come up with ideas for t-shirts and toys for boys.



Luckily, I have two young nephews who are willing recepients of my t-shirts and friends with boys to try ideas out on.

This apron is for sale in the Felt Like Helping Out shop which is closing this weekend.

It contains loads of crafty goodies which have been donated to raise money for Canterbury

 to help them rebuild after the devastating earthquake and aftershocks.

It was such a thrill at the last market I went to, to have a repeat customer for one of my robot t-shirts. I found out that the t-shirt had been a young man's favourite, but he had grown out of it. I was really happy to make him one in a bigger size.

He had a big brother too, who wasn't particularly sure if an appliqued t-shirt would be his thing (who can blame an 8 year old for that?). I mentioned a skateboarder and he quickly changed his mind. The skateboarder isn't part of my regular line as they are really tricky to do, but I'm definately happy to do one offs.

Finally, here's another gorgeous young man wearing one of my neck tie t-shirts. This is the nephew of Aimee from Lilypad Designs. She very kindly sent me this photo of him wearing it. I love to see Cotton Kiwi t-shirts in action!

On a completely different note, I am very very close to reaching the 200 'liker' mark on my Facebook page. Once I reach 200, I will be announcing a giveaway so if you haven't already, pop along and join me to be in to win!

My Creative Space

After my parents left to go back home to Australia on Monday,  I was in some desperate need of cheering up. Given how much eating I've done whilst they've been here (and how much weight I've been piling on recently!), chocolate wasn't really an option. Filling the couch with smiley creatures is definately an option and always cheers me up.

These guys will be on my stall at this Saturday's Crafternoon Tea.

I missed last week's Creative Space as I was on holiday with my family but this is what I would have shown you if I'd been here. I spotted the Olearia that Kate knitted a while back had to have a go myself. My oldest daughter, Maddy, loves blue and hates sleeves so it seemed like the perfect pattern.

The wool is Patons Jet.

I found these stunning Italian floral buttons in our local wool shop (Wild and Wooly, Devonport) and knew Maddy would love them.

Can you guess why she's not modelling it for the photos? Yup. She hates it. I cannot get her to put it on even for a photograph. ARGGH! Luckily, I have a younger daughter who will grow into it (and there's always the chance that Maddy will change her mind. Keep your fingers crossed!)

For more Creative Spaces, pop over to Kootoyoo.

My Creative Space - Fairy rant

Spring has finally sprung (well, we've had 3 days of sun anyway) and the beansprout aka Madeleine, has shot up again. Honestly, this child sprouts everytime I turn my back. Whilst we can get away with flanellette pyjamas that finish above her belly button for the last few weeks of cold nights, I can't really let her go out with her midriff showing in her day to day clothes. Honestly, what would the neighbours think?

  

Appliqued pineapple t-shirt, pineapple print skirt and matching headband



Not only does she keep me busy at the sewing machine by growing too quickly, she keeps losing teeth as well. And that means a visit from the tooth fairy.  Those bloomin' fairies are the bane of my life.

See the wobbly one? Top row, next to that big gap. She keeps wobbling it. Makes me squirm!

Everytime she looses a tooth and the tooth fairy visits, Maddy develops an unhealthy fascination with small winged creatures. Unhealthy for me that is. The tooth fairy always writes a little letter when a tooth is lost in this house (hot tip: type your note up in Word and then make the font really tiny and then print it out. Anything to do with fairy queens, castles,wishes and possibly even unicorns are a sure winner for note content. And remember fairies always have flowery names like Rosabelle or Buttercup).



Appliqued Babushka t-shirt

Unfortunately, after the last tooth fairy visit, Maddy thought she was on to a good thing and decided to start leaving notes for the fairies under bushes in the garden. Oh how sweet, I hear you all say. Let me tell you, scrabbling about in the bushes at midnight with nothing but a light-up Dora watch to show me the way, is not my idea of cute. In fact, when the cat decided this was a really good game and jumped out from said bushes, making me leap several feet in the air, narrowly holding on to my pyjamas, I gave up on the note hunt and wrote a generic fairy reply in the hope that Maddy wouldn't guess.

Pyjama set for Maddy's friend Kate. No my iron isn't broken. I'm just waiting for the fairies to do
 the ironing and they never turn up.

My deceit when it comes to teeth-loosing doesn't stop there either. The same tooth that caused all the fairy trouble, also caused a great deal more trouble when I very stupidly asked Maddy if the tooth was nice and clean for the tooth fairy. She of course took it off to the bathroom and tried to clean it with a tooth brush. It disappeared down the sink within seconds and my poor Madeleine was distraut. My plumbing skills are a darn sight less handy than my skills in pulling the wool over the eyes of my children, so I disappeared into the bathroom with a large number of impressive tools, made a great deal of banging and then re-appeared bearing  the tooth that she lost a month before (now I know why I kept it). I held the tooth firmly in a tissue so that she couldn't get too close a look at it and twig (never underestimate a child's ability to spot a fake). She was extremely happy and sure enough, the tooth fairy came that night with a note about how clever her Mummy was to get her tooth out of the sink like that (the one great benefit of writing fairy notes it the ability to remind your children how wonderful you are). What acts of deceit have you performed in order to keep your kids happy? Go on. Spill. I know you've done it.

The pyjama top.

Now, I'm not sure if she is still on holiday or not but it's worth popping in just in case... For more Creative Spaces, pop over to Kirsty's. 



My Creative Space - Legless

My kids have had three school/kindy trips between them this week and I've been parent help on two of them. With that and a sicky for one of those days (oh, and a flooded sewing room), my creativity hasn't exactly been flowing this week. I've been working on some knitting (which I've only pulled out once so far. Yay!)



And a sock monkey for a soon to be 10 year old boy. He still needs some eyes (the sock monkey, not the boy) but I'm loving the look of the checks.

And then there's the legless kitten. No comments on life imitating art please. :o)

It's a very soggy day today, I hope you manage to keep dry and warm!
For more Creative Spaces, pop over to Kootoyoo.

Little Monkey

I just finished a monkey that was commissioned by a lovely friend of mine for her soon-to-be-one neice.

The baby's uncle has some amazing tattoos so I made a special little addition to the monkey.

A little heart tattoo with the birthday girl's initials.

For Dad and some visitors

It's Devonport Craft Market day tomorrow (Sunday 5th September) and I have a few goodies for Dad's available if you need a last minute gift. These heat packs (pop them in the microwave for 2 minutes and soothe away Dad's aches and pains) are now $10. And instead of giving Dad a pair of socks, why not give him a sock monkey? I have this chap and a few others who will be ready and waiting tomorrow.

I also have some rather lovely visitors to my stall tomorrow. These four gorgeous ladies are on loan from Jennie at A Little Vintage as she is unable to attend the market tomorrow. They'll be available for purchase tomorrow on my stall.

If you are planning a visit to the market tomorrow and live the other side of the bridge, don't forget that the on ramp is closed. Trains are free and you can hop on a ferry for a bit of an adventure! There are some great cafes in Devonport so if you are making the effort to come, why not make a day of it?

The Devonport Craft Market, First Sunday of every month, 10am-2pm, 32 Clarence Street, Devonport.

Map here.

My Creative Space - Buttons and things

My Creative Space is sewing buttons on Robot T-shirts

Sewing flowers on fairy skirts

and button eyes on sock monkeys

And sometime today, I'm hoping to talk the small person into modelling some flower filled fairy skirts ready for my Felt shop.

For more Creative Spaces, pop over to Kootoyoo

Super Model

My Felt shop is running low on stock at the moment so I thought I had better do something about it.

I wanted to list some kids' clothes so I asked Eloise if she would mind doing some modelling for me yesterday. Ever the helpful child, she said "Sure Mum."

A few seconds passed and she said "What's modelling?"

You have know idea how much I love that my nearly 4 year old has no idea what modelling is! She was still in agreement when I told her what it was so we got set up and started snapping away.

She was absolutely amazing and let me take loads of photos.

She was even happy modelling the boys t-shirts. I was gobsmacked at that one. Normally you can't get anything boy related anywhere near my daughter.

She is firmly a girly girl. I think you will agree she did an amazing job and I didn't have to bribe her once!