Santa or Carrot?

Are you old enough to remember a TV show called That's Life on the BBC many moons ago? Amongst many other consumer items. people used to send in weird looking vegetables that looked like something else. Now we have the internet and our mutant veg can go global.

and a close up...

and in his Santa costume with sack of toys!

Save Me From Bees!

There are many things in life our boy is not frightened of (some that he maybe should have a healthy wariness about and doesn't) but one of the things he has an over the top in fear of is bees and now, by association, any small flying buzzing or non-buzzing thing.

Consequently any attempt to open a window in the house to let in the fresh air, any opening of car windows to let out excessive heat, is a cause of major tantrum and meltdown in case insects of any type get in!

Solution? Make netting shields for the windows thus...

They are made from very fine netting like the stuff tutu skirts are made from. It looks quite large here but it isn't. The window covered just looks very slightly cloudier than its counterparts but I had to take the picture like this otherwise you might not have seen there was netting there at all!

Firstly I measured the windows and cut the fabric to fit with an extra 2 centimetres round all the edges.

Then I cut small squares of sticky-backed Velcro and stuck them to the window frames on each corner and at intervals in between.

Next I sewed the corresponding furry Velcro stuff to the  netting in the same places. Who knew you could buy Velcro where one side is sticky and its corresponding partner is sew-able? Not me but its very clever!

Hey the Velcro squares look like Tardis windows! (Oh, no, she's off again on her Tardis fixation)







The result is tightly fitting shields that stop any creature coming in but still let the air through.

I thought that was problem solved but no. Apparently they still let the buzz noise through and that is unacceptable. There's no winning with Autism. We will persevere and I intend to gradually cover the rest of the house and maybe the car too if I have to.

Aliens in a Matchbox!

If you are a crafter... you'll know how you keep things for years because one day they will be useful for something?

Well I had the broken sparkly pom-poms from my little daughter's deely boppers (she's now 19!!!) so I thought I'd do SOMETHING with them, ANYTHING has to be better than nothing, surely!?

This is them (purple ones with their wire springs pulled firmly out), plus a few smaller random pom-poms I found in a packet left over from being ammunition for spoon catapults. http://socklet-world.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/miniature-catapult.html

Next thought... do I have any sticky-backed wiggly eyes? Well yes I do!

Then the logical step is to combine the two to make ALIENS!

And their babies!!

And then to find an extra large matchbox for them to live in...

Cover it in clean white paper...

 and let them move in!

Spring Springing!

Here's a bit of Spring springing from my garden. The conditions are right... ie I don't do much to the garden which makes it think it has the liberty to take over and revert to the wild... so a shady area under a tree has decided to go all woodland and plant itself with primroses.

About 3 years ago they first appeared from nowhere, last year they multiplied like mad and spread under the tree, and this year they're all over the lawn too!

As you can see from the bottom right hand corner, there are violets popping their seeds as well so the patio is peppered like this...

I think they're lovely but, as they cause bees to appear in the garden, my son is very concerned and it has added to his reasons NOT to go in the garden at all until winter "When it is safe".

More of that anon.

Mario Hats in a Range of Colours!

The range of colours means that technically they are not just Mario hats. They are in fact Luigi, Waluigi, Wario and Shadow Mario hats.

For full run down, here goes...

 
The green one is Luigi.

The yellow one is Wario.

The blue one, shadow Mario (very popular with our boy, who is mostly a very well behaved creature but LONGS to have an alter ego that can break the rules and behave just as he likes!)

And the purple one Waluigi.

The red Mario one  you saw in the previous blog, which had the tutorial on how to make them using fabric and two plates!

Actually, when I say this is the full range, it was at the time but that is no longer the case. The addiction went rampant and I will show you the carnage on another blog. It's still playing out!!!

How to make Mario Hats

It suddenly became imperative in our household that I learn to make Mario hats so I looked up tutorials online and then set to work on an amalgamation of ideas to suit what my little Tyrant-obsessive wanted and what fitted within our budget (ie as cheap as possible as he needed them in a range of colours.

So here are the stages we went through to get to this...

1. Get a dinner plate and a tea plate out of the cupboard.

2. Draw round the dinner plate once for the top of the hat and two more times for the rim that touches the head underneath, then cut them all out.

3. Put the tea plate on the two under circles and draw round it then cut that circle out so you have two identical rings ( that look a bit like loo seats)

 

4. You can use part of the middle circle you have cut out to make the peak at the front of the hat.

5. Sew the 2 peak pieces together then turn right side out.

6. Place the peak in-between the 2 rim pieces, pointing back out to the outside edge, easing it round the inner curve and pinning it in place bit by bit.

7. Sew the whole of the inner rim together.
8. Turn the rim right way out bit by bit and pin it to the large whole circle of the top as you go along. The peak should be sticking out in the middle like a large tongue (see pic)

Sew all around the outside edge and then turn the whole hat right way out. Ta Dah!!

Tomorrow you can see the whole range and hear the saga of what happened next!!

Magic Beans

My son, who has Autism, stopped listening to anything that mentioned magic when he asked if we had real magic beans on our planet and I said no it is pretend, just a story. From then on he felt betrayed by our planet, which could not produce everything he wanted by wishing, climbing a beanstalk and running off with whatever you fancied or even rocket boots!

However, when I went to the end of our garden, to what I laughingly call the allotment patch, I found these...

 

They had planted themselves from the left over, unattended plot from the year before and used the same sticks, still standing resolutely in the same spot. They had cropped unnoticed (it's a very long garden and I never really got down to doing anything about that bit last year, including re-roofing the collapsing shed) and held on to their little prizes all winter for me to find this spring.

 

And here they are...

 

 

 They look like magic beans to me. I didn't even plant them, they just dropped off the year before's crop and looked after themselves. That's magic! So by way of recognition for their efforts, I have dug the plot and planted them properly this year (in a new spot...  I remember lessons on crop rotation when I was at school... that shows my age) !!  Pictures will follow at intervals when there is anything to see.

Also coming up in this blog will be... Doctor Who Airfix kits, making Mario hats, weird creepy scenes of Brighton at night and much, much more. Stay tuned  = )

Long Time No See

Hello and, having checked the last time I posted a new blog page, Happy New Year. I have been very remiss. The causes are manifold and computery.

First I am not at all tech so when my email kept getting hacked  and spamming friends and family, my lovely tech-savvy husband took everything off the computer and reinstalled the basics... meaning I had no photos on there and was not sure how to use the new stuff and settings.

Secondly I was persuaded to go all new-fangled onto an old i-phone of my husband's to take photos (not phone calls or internet... I'm not THAT fast!) so then had no idea how to upload them to anything.

Lastly I got  lap top (ooh, get me!) and still have very little idea how to use it but am now keeping a notebook on how to do stuff with it when tech-hubby shows me (painstakingly and patiently) how to do it!!

So this is my first, ALL BRAND NEW, blog page done on a laptop using photos from the i-phone.

Here's a photo to check it works and then we'll soon get back to proper crafty makes and fun stuff!

Oh poop! I have tried twice and it only gets as far as choosing the picture and not uploading it to the page.

Never mind! Have a texty letter and I'll get back to you when I've had my next lesson on how to use this pesky new technology!

 

Wait a flipping doggone minute! I've only gone and done it this this time. Yay me!

This is picture of Brighton pavilion taken during the Easter holidays on a beautiful blu sky day.

 

I'm back in business!!