Winnie the Pooh

I love Winnie the Pooh. I grew up a stones throw (or a pooh stick!) away from the Ashdown Forrest - where Winnie the Pooh was set. My childhood was spent on the forest looking for heffalump and woozle tracks, playing Pooh sticks and having picnics near the enchanted place.Anyway, I have decided to create lots of Winnie the Pooh embroidery so I can decorate one wall in my apartment with them. Here is my latest, I especially love it as it also reflects my dyslexia!

Stitching along...

So my dress making course is coming along really well. I have cut out the pattern, stitched the main elements together, made darts, learnt how to make french seams and put my sleeves in. All I have to do now is put in the consealed zip, make the alterations and hem it. So I thought I would put up a picture of my progress up on my blog. It was especially exciting this week (as it was my birthday) I received in the post a dress makers manakin. Here is my dress (pinned into place as the back is still not sewn together).

And here are some pictures of the details:

Only a few more weeks and it will be finished! Now I have a manikin I am onto thinking about what I will make next...

Raspberry Marshmallows

Today I decided to play with my KitchenAid, one of the reasons I brought it was so I could make things like Italian meringues and Marshmallows. Today I made raspberry marshmallows. The only alteration I made to the recipe was to swirl in a bit of red food colouring just before they are put in to the fridge to rest.

I must say that I am really chuffed with the outcome and will be making hot chocolate tonight to pop a few in. I might even make them for my kids as an end of term treat!

Time to stitch!

So it is now spring (supposedly) and we are rushing into the summer term at school, this one is going to be a busy one! Not only am I going out every Thursday (like I usually do) but I am running a school cookery club and now decided to go to a dress making course on a Tuesday night! No, I am not jumping on the trend of The Great British Sewing Bee, it just occurred to me that I now have some income I can have fun with and I have a beautiful Singer Sewing Machine just waiting to be used. So I am going on a 6 week evening course to make a dress and even though I will miss dinner (or at least eat much later than normal) I am very excited! So check back for updates, hopefully I will soon be in the procession of a beautiful dress and some very handy sewing skills.

Wibbly, Wobbly, Timey, Wimey… stuff

Well it is that wonderful time of year again when Doctor Who is back on our screens, yes I am a little bit geekish about it. Doctor Who is a British institution like tea and bunting, I grew up listening to my dads stories of The Doctor. He didn't retell stories from the show, his memory will never be good enough for that but he did tell the same story, of how he met The Doctor over and over again. My nan used to work on the rehearsal set serving tea (see how important tea is to our family!) and as a result she not only met the cast, including yeti's, cybermen and the odd daleck, but she was allowed to take home the used scripts as scrap paper. Actually I'm not sure if she was allowed to take them home, or she just decided to. Anyway, my dad being knee-high to a grasshopper at the time was taken along to my nans work every now and then and as a result met the main characters and went inside a daleck and the TARDIS.

Doctor Who is truly in my family, whenever we went on the Underground, my dad would tell the other Doctor Who story he knew, one from the show about Yetis. As I am quite mischievous when I was 16, I actually convinced a friend that Yetis were real and living in the underground, a cruel prank, but funny nevertheless.

So here it is, my Doctor Who geek craft... a stitched picture of the Cybermen in front of St Paul's Cathedral.

Montacute House

I love Jane Austen, which is good as I live near Bath. I also love Jane Austen film adaptations which is why I often go to Stourhead, but recently I went to Montacute House where Sense and Sensibility was filmed. Here are some of my pictures from the day.

There was a very nice cat which was walking around the house, we made friends. 

It's been a while...

So I have been really bad at keeping up with this blog since working 5 days a week. Yet this week I had half term, so I spent half of it entertaining my family and the other half trying to relax and the best way to do this is by doing a spot of embroidery. So here are my pictures of what I got up to this week...