Busy Day

It was my birthday on Friday, so today I made cakes to take in to work tomorrow:

53 cupcakes and 24 cookies

Mocha, orange, lemon and vanilla

Here's the orange cupcakes ready to go in, and Piggy Wiggy, the spatula my colleagues bought me, which has worked hard today!

Also, mum & dad gave me these lovely flowers. I don't have a vase at the moment, so I arranged them in a set of jam jars:

Tired and accomplished!

For David...

My friend David celebrated his birthday recently, so I made him this little guy:



The pattern is Grumpasaurus from Kat Knits, though he rapidly got renamed 'Davidasaurus'

I love this picture of Davidasaurus roaming across Blanketscape:



Last week, David had to go into hospital overnight, so to keep him company I made him Little Nurse:



I based her on the pattern for the Black Apple Doll, at the size as printed (not enlarged) with a few additions, namely her belt, collar, nurse's hat and shoes.

I made the shoes by cutting two pairs of foot shapes out of red felt (slightly larger than the doll's feet), folding one from each pair in half and cutting the dip out of the top. I blanket stitched them round the edges and joined them to the feet by threading a needle with six strands of embroidery thread, making a tiny stitch on the back of the shoe, through the leg and back out through the shoe again, then drawing the thread through till the tails were of equal length. I knotted this, rethreaded my needle and made one stitch on each side through the foot with the tails, coming out at the front level with where I wanted the ties to start. I tied these off in a bow and trimmed the tails to a nice length.

I'd not had a chance to take photos of either of these two before I gave them to David, but he & Anna visited this weekend, so I took these then. While they were both in the same place, Davidasaurus and the Little Nurse got quite friendly!



I had a great time making both of these, and I'm very proud of how Little Nurse turned out. I'm planning on making a couple of these for the girls for their birthdays, so it's nice to know that the pattern does what I want it to do!

On My Desk This Week...

I've been working on the activities for module 2 of my Creative Sketchbooks course, which has involved playing with watercolour paints and salt:

I've also been working on a birthday quilt for my soon-to-be-4 year old niece, Chloe. It is in lots of bright colours, and tonight I've been appliquéing the flowers on to it. Soon they'll be joined by happy singing birds and butterflies:
I thought I'd also share my work desk with you, so here's a photo of it at lunchtime today, hence the knitting - sadly I don't get to knit during working hours.My knitting bag is the owl one made for me by my friend Daina, and it always makes me smile.

So, that's 2 of my 3 desks! My 3rd one is the PC desk, next to the craft desk, and it's enough of a mess that it is a good thing I have a keyboard shelf, as that means I can write this post!

Go check out Kirsty's post to see more desks!