Friday 26 December 2014

Rudolf the purple nosed reindeer....

This year the Quirky quilters group decided that we would make a "Secret Santa" gift for each of us, so names were drawn from a hat and I picked the purple fan!
Sometimes, you see something,in this case a pattern from the Quilters of Sutton Christmas project,  and just know, you just KNOW, it will be the funniest gift for someone.....so the idea of Rudolf the purple nosed reindeer was born...

I gave the pattern a thorough read....seemed straight forward enough....


Auditioned and pressed some purple fabrics...


Copied the pattern pieces onto steam-to-seam...


Ironed them onto the fabrics....


cut them out and re-assembled some to check they really did work together....


...had a minor panic, when I'd forgotten that the design would be reversed in the tracing process...

 

Re-positioned all the bits on the background fabric and ironed them into place...(with a purple iron!)

 

Then had a fabulous evening blanket quilting around all the shapes....


Starting to look good (if I do say so myself)....


Rudolf needs a little embellishing ....even with the purple stripy binding there isn't quite enough purple going on here, time to audition some buttons...


That's better.....


Now .....I just need to get the nose and eye right.....
Which proved to be rather easier said than done... the options were either too small, shiny & pink or too big or not really purple in the wrong light or just plain daft!

 

 

There......that's better....


Ta-dah!!  Merry Christmas 
Hope his new owner likes him!

Sunday 14 December 2014

Weather bombs and bees

Is there a weather bomb heading our way?
I wish the forecasters could make their minds up!!!

Its a bit of a worry.  The bees have been super active for a long time into November so its a bit of a guess to know how much honey is left in the hive, as they've probably been nibbling their way through loads of it to give them energy to fly.

So now that the winter really does seem to have arrived for real I was getting a bit worried that they might not have enough food to snuggle down into a cluster and huddle their way through the rest of the winter.  There was nothing else for it.  Today had to be the day to check the hives for stores.

As soon as the hives were open I remembered my school girl error from back in September...


In a moment of distraction I left the eke's on the hives.  The eke's were there to create a gap for the Varroa treatment, but when it was done I (stupidly) left them there, briefly thinking;
"That'll make feeding them easier come winter, I'll just be able to pop some fondant under the crown board".
Except of course the bees had other ideas, and thanks to the long warm autumn they have filled the gap with brace comb...



I have four hives...with lots and lots of wild brace comb.

It may look really pretty...


But it makes the hives next to impossible to go through is it would cause too much disturbance to the bees.  The good news is that it is mostly filled with honey so the bees do have plenty to eat!

So I just chipped away...


yes...chipped away -its amazing how fragile and brittle bees wax is in the cold....


Some of the excess comb where the bees either hadn't filled it of had eaten it already....


..and I snuggled some fondant into the gap...


So if they get peckish, or just fancy a sugar rush they can tuck in.
Bring on the bad weather - the bees are ready for it!!!

Thursday 11 December 2014

Crochet-a-long part 3

Its been a busy old couple of weeks at work.  I think it is some from of seasonal madness that takes over everyone with the desire to get everything done "before the Christmas break" despite the fact we have 8 whole working days will Christmas day, everything must be complete yesterday.

Ho hum..bah humbug.

So I've been a pushed for crochet time, and not got very much done.  I did however manage to take the blanket with me to show and tell with the Quirky quilters, where it was very much admired.

I even managed to get outside to try to get a photo of it in the sunshine...


It looked great on the garden bench but I still wanted to see how the colours would pop in a bit of sunshine....

Nothing else for it ....it will have to hang off the garden fence for a minute....


Anyway after all that, I got on with hooking quite a few rows so that by the end of the weekend there were quite a few more ends to sew in....


Can't shilly shally around here...gotta keep hooking!

Saturday 6 December 2014

First frost....

I really can't believe it!

We've made it all the way to December 6th and not really had a proper frost.
I do like frost.
It makes everything properly cold and crispy, and definitely NOT soggy.
I don't do soggy and cold.

So I popped down the garden to check the girls were all right...


Nothing to see here ...only a few crispy leaves on top of the hives...

 


I'm hoping the carrots and beetroot are safe below ground....

 

Unlike so many other leaves and buds....





I probably should have put the dragonflies away a while ago now...

 

 

and the wasp trap....fairly sure that any wasps in there that haven't drowned will have frozen solid by now...(shame!)

 





I'm just going to enjoy all these tiny ice crystals for a while, before the sun comes up and melts them all...






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