Happy Christmas and Archie in the snow

Those of you who have been following a little while may remember that I'm a great advocate of the 'buy yourself presents' way of doing things - that way you get things you are truly happy with.

I've been trying hard to support other craftspeople and artists by buying from Folksy this year, even though I still haven't quite managed to set up a shop of my own, so was delighted to find these beautiful Christmas Robins from the Linen Cat shop - and I ordered a set for a friend. Well, when they came I just hated to part with them, such lovely deep rich colours and so cheerful, so I sent them off and then promptly ordered some more just for me. They came so quickly and were beautifully wrapped with great details on the labels and packaging, and this morning I hung them up on my garland.

I finally got round to putting a few decorations on our tree too, but Archie was un-decorating it as fast as I was getting them on, thinking it was a great game. In the end I had to leave a lot of bare branches at the bottom of the tree with things hanging further up. We also had to move a couple of bags of presents which had been lovingly wrapped by my friends in lovely rustly tissue paper, There are few things more attractive to a cat than rustly paper AND a bag to stuff his head in, so my presents are now ontop of the wardrobe - in fact there's not very much we've left under the tree at all.

Archie is loving the snow - it seems to be making him a bit skippy and mad, and he's been staying out for ages despite cold toes! Here he is nearly up to his knees:
And here he is all black, skipping about in the white snow, just like a young cat should. He starts tentatively for a little while then pounces on it before trotting off!



I hope all of you have a very Happy Christmas and are able to enjoy some rest and time for yourselves. We are struggling as my mum is deteriorating drastically each day mentally, so it's very tough, but we will make the best of everything and spend some time with good friends and family, and I'm finding that being with my boys is so helpful as I can think about my life going forward despite all the difficulties.
Thank you for all your friendship and support this last year which has meant so much to me.

A friend for the robin.

Son no. 2 kept asking me to make a penguin friend for his robin. Here he is,

not very sophisticated compared with the many amazingly detailed needle-felted sculptures out there, but he is very pleased with himself as he can stand up properly, because he has feet. The robin has no feet and falls over a lot, on his beak. In fact my son made one of the penguin's feet almost all by himself without stabbing his fingers once!

Needle Felting a Robin

Here is my second attempt at needle felting, I'm not sure what the proper technique is but all I did was keep on stabbing the wool with a felting needle as I wrapped it round into a vaguely robin-like shape. Felting needles are so, so sharp with tiny barbs at the end which push the wool fibres through each other on the down-stroke, anchoring the fibres together. I have wet-felted balls before which have turned out very densely packed. For the robin though I didn't think he had to be so dense, so stopped stabbing him when he felt firm but still with a bit of give. I shaped the beak and wings by needle-felting tufts of wool, then firmly needled them onto his face and sides. I then just wetted and slightly felted his outside layer to smooth the surface a bit, and finished him with two beady black eyes. He is about 6cm tall and keeps falling onto his beak as I didn't shape his base quite flat enough, but I've already started to make some more. I only stabbed myself twice, which I was quite pleased with as I'm fairly clumsy.