Button Wednesday - A Box of Buttons

On Saturday we went to an Indoor Car Boot sale. How I love to walk about and browse through the stalls, hoping to find something to treasure.
Luckily enough I found a lady selling buttons. £1 for 5 packs. So I chose 8 and gave her £2.

That evening I enjoyed myself looking through the buttons. My lovely Dad had given me a box he recently bought in an Austrian flea market.   So into the box the buttons went.

The red ones are glass, the blue ones in the bottom left are wood. The ones in the top left and top right are some sort of metal.  Sorry about the photos but it was evening when I took them.

For more button love visit P8 Buttons & Fabrics blog.

Teeny Tiny Mouse

tiny mouse 004
Originally uploaded by bigbluebed
In my hunt to find small things that crochet in one piece..I do believe that I have struck gold.

Isn't this a cute mouse. Crocheted all in one piece from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail.

I found the pattern here.  It has been designed by Lucy Ravenscar and she has a great blog here.

A Little Amigurumi

You have probably seen amigurumi everywhere. The word means knitted stuff toy and it comes from Japan. Now of course there are little crochet toys as well as knitted and they are always cute.

I took up crochet this year and decided to try an make amigurumi toys.  Not only do I have a cute and cute-loving daughter but I work at a children's after school club and I wanted to make some little toys for the prize box.

If you look towards the top of this page you will see some tabs.  One new one is  Useful Links.  I am going to be adding links to sites and sellers where you can get patterns.  So if you know of any then please let me know.  I am particularly after very small toys.

Here are a few amigurumi that I have made recently.

This is the latest one. It is a tiny whale and the pattern is by June Gilbank of PlanetJune. I love this one as not only is it tiny but it is also made in one piece. (I hate sewing up!).

The next one is from  a pullout called 'Christmas Toys' in 'Let's Knit' magazine October 2010 edition.
Lots of parts to sew up (sniff!)

 And here is the finished penguin.  It is not perfect and the eyes are a bit too big and too high but he has been well-loved byt the child who received him.

And I think that is something lovely at making toys for children - how much they love them.

RIP Ultrasauros Luna Park

Loved by the people all Summer.
Destroyed by fire in a few short hours early Friday morning.

Treasure

As promised, ages ago, this post is to show some of the beautiful jewellery that is in the British Museum.

I do have to admit that I may not be able to remember what period it came from so I suggest the best thing is if you pop along to the museum yourself or if unable due to distance, then check out the website here.This is the collection database here.

So all I am going to show is the photos I took. Bear in mind that this is just a tiny tiny proportion of what there is in the museum.

My photographs are pretty bad but I did try to capture some of the amazing detail.  Alot of these photos are of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon jewellery and it amazes me that goldsmiths some 1500 years ago could create such beautiful pieces.  Truly inspiring.  Oh yes I think there is some photos of Roman and possible Egyptian pieces too (bad Alix! Take notes next time).

London for the Day

As promised in my last post I am doing a post about our day trip to London. However, I am going to do another post which will be dedicated to photos of some jewellery in the British Museum.

We caught the early train and woman, man and child went to the capital.



We were so lucky with the weather as it stayed fine but was not too hot. Paul had made Mary an I Spy London guide of her own and this included such things as the statue of Boudicca. She loves the tv programme Horrible Histories and now owns the books, and a couple of audio cds. It is quite remarkable how much she has learnt from them.


On previous visits we had a delicious ice-cream in an Italian cafe in Regent Street. Look at these cakes:


Small girl child was rather anxious to get to our next stop so we only had an ice cream to eat as we walked. I chose chocolate and it was a wonderful as it looks:


We popped in to Hamleys and Mary spent some of her money.
And we had a play.


And then we walked to the British Museum. I really recommend a visit here. I know that not everyone lives in easy reach to London, and that the cost of travel can prohibit a visit. For the 3 of us it cost £40 return and that was using my network card. We walked everywhere so did not have to pay for the underground.


The collection is amazing. Due to small child tiredness we could not see everything and a return visit sans child and with child is planned for the future. I also enjoyed a visit to the shops and the restaurant where we had a refreshing much-needed cup of tea.


I think if you do plan to go then it is worth having a look at the website and see what interests you, as in one visit there is so much to see that you do not really want to rush round.

And the verdict of the child? It was a wonderful day out and the British Museum is better than Hamleys.

She certainly enjoyed taking some photos of things that interested her!

Last Few Days of Summer

With the return to school and work near approaching, it feels like we must fill our remaining days together with lots of things.

And indeed we did go to London (which I will tell about in another post). But sometimes just being together at home or in a park is enough.

And for me it is lovely to picnic in the park and watch my girl play.