Busy & Full Days

Greetings dear friends & readers
The days & months go by so quickly & seem to be busy & fuller than ever
I try to keep some sort of a balance & squeeze in some creative time whenever I can


Another friends birthday came around so I wanted to send a home made gift

This is a photo of my kitchen bench & just shows how many activities go on here .... cats get fed, paint brushes washed & candles made ... as well as meals cooked too !!!

As she is a very dear friend I thought a home made candle might be rather nice as I had an idea of 
how I wanted to decorate it.
This is a new fragrance - Black Raspberry & Vanilla - rather gorgeous I must say.

Once the soy had hardened, I decorated the simple black container with some paper doilies & then found these letters in my craft stash 
 As she just happens to be a quilter extrordinaire I thought these were perfect - I tied them on with thin black 
leather thonging

I knew she loves tea drinking, english paper piecing & touches of red 💗 so chose to make up the cute little mug rug from Amy Sinibaldi's book Sweetly Stitched Handmades

In hindsight I wish I had used a thicker wadding in it   ...  but I found some lovely teas to tuck in the 3 pockets
This gift has been posted off & received with delight I am happy to say.

I used the last of the seasons feijoas to make  my favourite Feijoa & Coconut Cake recipe
I like to sprinkle the icing sugar over a paper doiley, but I can see I was rather too heavy handed this time round 😉

I have wanted to make up the Playful Kitten Pattern for quite some time now  .... this is a
free pattern download on the Tilda website

I spent all week on & off working on this kitten & finally put the finishing touches to "her" on Saturday morning.

You can imagine my dismay when The Mr promptly announced "it looks just like one of those small yappy dogs" 

You can see the contrast gusset fabric in the left hand photo

I managed to keep her well out of sight of the two furry ones that reside here - in case they thought there was 
any competition 😉

I spent over an hour lightly starching & ironing some vintage linens that I had carefully soaked & washed.

I spread the aprons out carefully on the spare bed & was none too delighted to see Miss Pippi thought they were there especially for her to take up residence on

Yesterday - Monday was our little craft group meeting for June.
We have a new lady in our small group (Sally) & the meeting was held at Sally's home

The girls decided last month that I would teach them to make a pincushion in a teacup or a small container.
Upon investigation in my Cottage I found 3 teacup pincushions left over from my closure, so I took them along & decided to just instruct & not create

You can see the girls efforts above - some used wooden containers, some used decorated tins & silver ware - quite a variety - Maureen used the appliqued clown face onto a small pottery bowl & planned to decorate around the bowl with red pom pom trim

And at nights, when my eyes are tired, I find knitting up the cotton scrubby pan cloths is about all I can cope with.
This is a free pattern download from Here


Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead dear friends
(though I began this post on Sunday - it is now Tuesday!!)

Thanks so much for your visits here today,
With much Love & friendship to you all,
Julie & the furry ones x0x0x