Dressmaking

I started going to a dressmaking class a few weeks back.
And I love it.
The only clothes I've ever made are for my dollies
So it's a big exciting step into the world of selvages, nap, cut on the bias, wrong side, right side, interfacing and all of it new to me!
Oh ya and patterns.
Above is a picture of the pattern I'm trying to follow, dress A with the sleeves of dress C.
I'm a little concerned, when you look at what I've got so far you'll see why.


Hmmm..sort of a shapeless shift
So I decided to photoshop it to see how it might eventually roughly look like with a couple of sleeves and some major nipping and tucking

And I don't mean just the dress:)
Anyhow, I'm loving the whole process and am thrilled with myself, I've nearly made a dress yippee! (even if it is hideous I'll wear it with pride:)

Treecreeper, up close and personal

Today I was lucky enough to be up close and personal with a tiny bird called a Treecreeper.
Poor little thing flew into the window pane and stunned himself badly.
Maybe a hawk or something was chasing him.
I placed him on an outdoor potted plant to give him a chance to recover and then took advantage of his stupor to take these photos.
I'd never seen one before, they're so tiny and delicate and yet he did recover, took one look at me and flew off!

Panda playmate

Thanks to a post on
Ian's blog
I have found my dream job.
A panda bear cub's nanny.
Even if I do have to dress like a smurff!
More cuddly cuteness to be seen here

The one is definitely calling me.

Six Word Memoir Meme

"Thrills and spills over mountainous molehills"

I've been tagged by
bookbaby
with a very interesting idea inspired by the story that Hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in six words. His words were- For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

After much deliberation and soul searching I came up with ..
"Thrills and spills over mountainous molehills!"
It's not easy you know:)

So here's how to play

1. Write your own six word memoir

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and
to this original post
if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere

4 .Tag five more blogs with links

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I'm tagging these five
creative evolutions
dreams and ghosts
dew
cathy
ian

Competition to win a luxury weekend in west Cork

This is too good an opportunity to miss, a
Luxury Self Catering weekend in Glengarriff, one of the most beautiful places in west Cork.
Sounds heavenly and looks like a bird watcher's paradise.
There may even be squirrels around.
cathy might find some inspiration for her wonderful art there.
If I won the weekend at Glengarriff Lodge I'd be sure to visit Garnish Island
I've been once before and I loved it.
There's a warm gulf stream that passes by that way and so there are amazing plants there that blossom in the temperate climate.

Arthur Rackham

The fairies have their tiffs with the Birds


Two Crows

I came across these amazing illustrations by Arthur Rackhamthanks to Mike R. Baker's blog Illustration Inspiration. He has a link there that shows 200 illustrations by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939)
I vaguely recognized the style but wouldn't have known who the artist was.
Now I'm in love with Rackham, what a wealth of inspiration and aspiration:)

Happy Valentine's Day

She was amazed and thrilled,
She never thought he would choose her to be his valentine.
Illustration Friday's topic this week is Choose.

Decided to try it again, work in progress!

Spring has sprung the daffoldils

We've had three dry days in a row with a bit of sunshine thrown in, it must be Spring!
Well the daffodils seem to think it's time to show their faces and such welcome happy faces they are too.
Brave little trumpets playing the overture to the symphony of Spring.
They are the only splash of colour in my neglected garden and a few little primroses are hidden in the winter jungle of dead stalks and swampy grass.
Time for a bit of garden therapy and I could do with the exercise too:)

Yes we can, Obama and Will.I.Am

I'm not politically minded at all and any knowledge that I have is whatever I pick up from listening to the radio in the car, so it's not much.
But I really think this is great and what a brilliant way to get the message out to the people. I mean I'd never have heard Obama's speech except for the song. Obama couldn't have asked for a better campaign promotion.
I'm not American so this is not a political post.
I just love the positivity of this message.

Frogs, endangered species?

This is one of my favourite froggy images.
Courtesy of the may 1995 national geographic, photographed by Mark W.Moffett.
He looks like he's about give a speech or take questions!

I've always been fond of frogs.
As a kid I used to collect the frog spawn from the bog and take great delight in watching all the different transformations as they morphed from spawn to tiddly tadpoles, to bigger tadpoles, to tadpole with legs, to tichy frogs with tadpole tails and then..puff.. they'd vanish over night, into thin air.
I don't think I ever succeeded in having an actual frog.
I tried to console myself with talk of the little guys hopping all the way back to the bog to find their mums but with thirteen outdoor cats around I never really fancied their chances.

But now they are in terrible danger as they are being wiped out by chytrid fungus.
A BBC crew has managed to film the Panamanian golden frog in the wild, waving, wrestling and courting, shortly before it became extinct.



You can read all about the frogs and this horrible chytrid fungus here

And then cheer yourself up knowing that at least some of the frogs were saved by a couple of American Frogologists. See below.

The Missing Blanket

Illustration Fridays topic is Blanket.
I'm submitting this watercolour of a little girl who's not a happy camper.
Her mom had the audacity to put her comfort blanket in the washing machine.
Disaster, it's not dry yet!
I totally sympathise, how on earth is she expected to have a snooze now, don't they know that her blanket is an integral part of sleeping?!