It seems like forever and a day since I originally thought about giving my bonnie birds wings, indeed, it seems like forever and a day since I actually started making this one!  Based around the same principles as it’s forebears I had to add some additional armature to build the wings both from a practical point of view but also to ensure that they would be strong enough to stand-up to life’s little knocks.  This is the end result

I’m reasonably pleased with the finished product although, contrary to what it looks like, I had an abstraction of a Green Finch in mind when I painted it!

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You would think that given, aside from chaffinches, that this is the only bird that visits our garden with any regularity that I’d be able to summon up an image in my minds eye and work it up on one of my bonnie birds; it seems my mind is prone to wandering when I pick up a paintbrush and the notion that I might paint anything in the fashion that I originally intended is completely lost!!

Available to buy from the shop

I think I may be becoming a fanatic, well, maybe not quite; although I did find myself outside in the rain this morning pulling weeds and re-arranging pots!?  The garden really has quite a lure to me, being confined to quarters over the winter and suffering a wee bit with cabin fever really makes you appreciate being able to get outside … of course, being fortunate enough to live in a beautiful part of the country helps too!

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been making the most of the good weather doing some chores in the garden, like installing an outside tap (I hate plumbing with a passion) and building a retaining wall – amongst other odds and ends.

Click to enlarge

I don’t have a good history with plumbing projects going back to a project when we first moved into our current house when a plan to replace the element in the immersion tank took around 4-5 days and ended up with me having to remove and replace the entire tank, then there’s been the radiators and pipes that have burst and the cursing that occurs whenever a newly jointed pipe turns out to not be water tight … seriously, you have no idea!

Fortunately I had no such problems with the plumbing this time around … maybe I’m getting better at it.  The wall took a little longer than I had anticipated and massively more mortar than I’d have imagined was possible, it looks like it’s about to fall over in the picture but that’s as a result of some, er, clever photography.  Maybe I should find a clever photographer to explain it!

As luck would have it though the garden has some wee gems in it at the moment, and as I mentioned earlier the area we live in is beautiful.  It all helps to lower my blood pressure.  Here are a few samples of what’s going on in the garden just now:

Strawberries are beginning to flower, yum!

Black Currant blooms. Plain flowers, yummy berries!

Some pretty lilac flowers - does anyone know what they're called?

Blue Bells, except they're white ...

Pretty blue 'weed'

Black Currant (or possibly red) berries coming along nicely

You may notice that the currants feature twice, we’re fortunate enough to have quite a few and I’ve discovered this year that they’re easily propagated, something I’m hoping to do more of once the polytunnel has arrived and been assembled.  I’m not sure if it’s something we’ve mentioned on here previously but we decided to invest in large (14′ x 30′) poly-tunnel as our site is extremely exposed which can make growing much of anything extremely difficult.  More on that at a later date though.

Hitchcock’s, The Birds, was one of my favourite films as I grew up, the eerie notion that birds of all shapes and sizes should be overcome with an insatiable lust for human flesh, attacking young and old alike without provocation and otherwise simply sitting and waiting on some playground climbing frame for their next unsuspecting victim …

… actually, no, it’s nothing like that around here … although we do seem to have an increasing number of slightly suspicious looking birds sitting in the windowsill!  And so it was that I finished my latest papier mache birds.  My latest obsession.

In terms of scale the one in the middle is a tad over 6″ tall at it’s tallest point.  I decided to render these ones in shades of green with the now familiar pattern of white dots, I’ve got a couple more under-way as I type this, although I imagine it’ll be a good few days before I finish them – other commitments such as life tends to throw at you … like blocked drains … ugh!

As ever, these are available to buy from our shop.

I had promised to have this finished by April 2009, so obviously I’m delighted to have finished it before it goes a full year past my own self-imposed ‘due date’!

Like most of his erstwhile and largely forgotten friends Gruber is keen on world domination, although it’s perhaps telling that he and his cohorts are largely forgotten given their compete ineptitude when it comes to matters of actually achieving world domination.  Indeed his most well known cousin, Gravalash, was defeated by his inability to get off a high shelf and whilst such trifling difficulties are unlikely to be of much difficulty to this fellow the complexities of reaching the door handle have limited the range of Gruber and the fulfilment of his innocuous plans.

He dreams of breaking loose and running free as he once did, although he is still haunted by the nightmare of attempting to cross a field of snow that proved to be too cold for his tippy-toes, alas what else is left for him other than to stand at the window and wave at the post lady …

Gruber stands at 18.5″ / 47cm tall, is 16.25″ / 41cm from the tip of one horn to the tip of the other, and is approx 11″ / 28cm deep.

He is available for sale, to a good (and secure) home in our Coriandr shop, here – additional images are also there.

Ages and ages ago I knitted this sheep from the pattern on the Flutterby Patch blog.  It’s taken me this long to get photos of it.  This is such an easy and quick pattern that anyone with half an idea about knitting can make one.

So, anyway, this particular sheep is called Mary.  One day Mary was out walking and came across the most beautiful felted rock and spiral basket.  Mary wished that the rock was in the basket and hey presto, her wish was granted (she’s a magic sheep don’t you know).

Mary climbed on top of the rock to get a better view of the valley below.  She smiled as she spotted some of her sheep friends frolicking through the fields.  Mary wanted to get down to join them but she worried that she might slip and fall.  Suddenly as if by magic (told you she’s a magic sheep) a pile of stones appeared.

Mary was overjoyed.  She climbed down the stones…very carefully…

… and toddled off to meet her friends and tell them all about her mini adventure.

Mary says while you’re having a look at the pattern, check out the rest of the Flutterby Patch blog…it’s very uplifting.

This tartan chap was created as a commission this weekend.  In keeping with our attempts to reduce waste, he’s made from a piece of tartan that would have otherwise been binned and some ecospun felt.  Stuffed, as usual, with reclaimed polyester stuffing.

He’s got a bit of a problem though.  Whilst out for his morning walk, he came across a very strange object.  It looked like a grassy mound but he couldn’t be sure.

At first he stood next to the mound, he thought it enhanced his green wings and the green stripes in his tartan, but after a while he became suspicious that the object wasn’t a grassy mound at all but an owl eating alien so he made a hasty retreat to his new home.

Jolene and I spent a couple of hours last night collaborating on this Christmas Wreath for the front door last night, we’re fairly pleased with the end result even if I did get pricked so many times by the pine needles that my hands broke out in a mild allergic reaction that made it look like had small pox or some such … oh, what fun!

We actually collected the pine cones for these a couple of months ago and they have been sat in a bag waiting for us to do something with them since then, they were actually intended for the local playgroup but there were far too many and so we resolved to use them ourselves.

The cones themselves were initially sprayed silver, before a quick dash with the gold spray.  The berries are beads cut from a beaded Christmas tree decoration and the pine branches and Sitka Spruce from the garden (I was out cutting these in sub-zero temps last night.

We mounted the whole lot on willow branch (also from the garden) that we bent into a circle and twisted around itself, we used wire to secure the first layer of pine branches before using thread to secure the last couple of layers.  The pine cones were then threaded on, as were the ‘berries’.

I think if we do this again I’m going to find myself a pair of light gardening gloves!

I’ve been meaning to make these for an age and whilst the inspiration is very much borne of the spring time the design is based on an earlier bowl I made way back when, here. 

I don’t know about you, but as we prepare to plunge into the depths of winter (haven’t we already plunged?) it seems like a remarkably good idea to do everything we can to remind ourselves that the long dark nights and the miserable weather only last until spring … actually the weather never really improves beyond getting a mite warmer, it does at least get lighter though!

Jolene has been experimenting with some different fabric for her felt finches and come up with these wee charmers.  On the one hand we have a wee tartan or light tweed fellow and on the other we have an adorable little fluff ball, incredibly soft to the touch made out of a deep polar fleece.

Very cute I’m sure you’ll agree!

This week I’ve been working on some commissioned felt birds.  These ones are a departure from the ones in the shop in that they are made from 100% wool felt and if these are typical of the results to be gained from spending a few extra pennies up front, I think I’ll be using 100% wool felt for all my future birdies.

These chaps are far sturdier and easier to work with than the ecospun felt birds that I had been making.  That’s not to say that the ecospun felt birds are poorer quality, they’re not…these ones just are easier to work with.

I’m extremely happy with these, I love the green felt, and I really wish I could afford one and find a place in the house to put one…maybe one day we’ll have finished renovations and there’ll be a special shelf just for me.