Murder Mystery

Knowlton 053
Originally uploaded by lizmuz

Me at the autioneer in the murder mystery. To my left my mum as inspector Clue d'eau.

Dower House

Dower House
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Ok, so I'm not keeping up with the blog entries very well. I'll try and catch up a couple in one go.

Weekend before last was my Auntie Sal's 50th birthday. She organised a big party weekend down in Kent. She rented the Dower House (see picture) and Home Farm on the grounds of Knowlton Court for everyone to stay in and we had a murder mystery party in the Dower House on the Saturday (real Agatha Christie type setting - an absoloute scream). Given that it was the beginning of February we had the most amazing weather with beautiful blue skies. I stayed in Home Farm with my family - just opposite the front door was a paddock with stables and 3 horses - my little boy was absoloutely mad about them wanting to go out and look at them every 5 minutes. I'd reccomend it to anyone looking for somewhere to stay in the Canterbury neck of the woods.

I've won, I've won, I've won!

Mouse with ear on back
Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

Found out this afternoon that my entry for the January UK Challenge has won wooohooo! The challenge for this month was Weird Science and my entry was a needle felted mouse with an ear on it's back. This is the first time I've managed to get round to entering the competition, so I'm well chuffed to have won it. The theme this month particularly appealed to me coming from a science background. I hummed and hawed a bit about what to do then just had one of those light bulb moments. Once I'd thought of the Vacanti mouse, I was desperate to get it finished and posted as soons as possible as I was sure someone else would have the same idea as it's such a well known photo. As it turned out, there were only two other entries this month so I needn't have worried.

Februarys theme is sweets from my childhood, so I'm going to have to get my thinking cap on for that one. Think January is going to be a hard one to follow up though!

Going down town

I'm off into London today for the first time in ages (first time since the London Etsy meet up I think) to meet my friend Jeanette who is over from Norway for the weekend. Really looking forwards to it as I haven't seen her in ages. Not one to miss up an opportuntity for a bit of habadashery shopping though I shall be calling in at VV Rouleaux http://www.vvrouleaux.com/ to augment my ribbon stash. Hopefully I'll manage to get out without spending too much money.

A long yarn

About a year and a half ago I was up in Orkney visiting the in laws familiy when I came across an ad for the workshops of Tait & Style (http://www.taitandstyle.co.uk/) in one of the tourist brochures. Not being one to miss an opportunity to do some crafty shopping I dragged everyone else and had a look round. Their workshop is in a converted old school house in Stromness - the view from the car park is stunning looking down to the harbour. As well as all the lovely knitted goods that they are known for, they also had a big basket full of scrummy yarns. I just had to buy a couple of them. Then me, being me they sat in my knitting box for another year and half! Anyway I've finally got around to knitting the green one up over christmas and it found a buyer as soon as I posted a picture on flickr, before it was even listed in Etsy! I've just finished the second one and listed it: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=9276724

Weight Watchers Again

Had my 2nd weight watchers meeting tonight and I've lost 2.5lb, so the truffles can't have done that much harm. A large part of the meeting is waiting for all the people to be weighed so they can start the meeting proper. I've decided to turn this waiting time to my advantage and took a little box of goodies to work on while I was sitting around waiting.

Back in November I took a course entitled 'Glamorous Corsages' run by the V&A museum. I thoroughly enjoyed it and came back full of ideas for things to make using the techniques, but what with christmas and Calum being sick it never really happend and all the material I bought got shoved to the back of the spare room where I keep most of my crafting stash. I decided to get it out again this week to make some floral bracelets. The fabric rolling technique is ideal for doing when you've got sitting around time, so I cut the pieces out the night before, put my little box of supplies together and took it along with me to the meeting. Managed to get 4 flowers made and didn't get too many weird stares.

Weight Watchers

Well I have taken the plunge and signed myself up to weight watchers properly now. As in properly going along to the meetings to get weighed and having someone tell you off if you've been naughty rather than the pretend weight watchers I've been paying for online and never actually recording my points or dieting in any way for the last goodness knows how long.

So in the spirit of my new diet, yesterday I decided to make chocolate truffles (ahem). Yes okay so not strictly diet food I agree, but I used the 'Eat Youself Thin' recepie so they come out kind of ok points wise as long as you stick to eating just one or two a day which mercifully I am doing at the moment. I used Grand Marnier for the flavouring so they're quite potent and you probably wouldn't want to scoff a whole load of them anyway. At least that's what I'm telling myself.