Photographic Toys

Nice! Some layout toys to play with. Here's a dragon collage - the dragon isn't finished yet. It's been unfinished for weeks, in fact. Hopefully the scales and ears will go on before the dragon gets totally cheesed off and torches the kitchen. But anyway, the collage option on Picasa is quite nifty, and with luck the dragon isn't so vain that it minds being displayed in this state. The one annoying thing with this new google blog configuration is that you may have to go back to the original blog page and click on the picture again before you can see it magnified. Uploading pictures seems to work slightly differently since Google took over, and so far, it's proving irritating.



Credit for the pattern goes to Angry Angel, and it can be found here on the Craftster site.

Sleeping Cats

 

This cat is supposed to look like one of my own cats. In terms of colour, it's fairly accurate. In terms of intelligence, the crochet version wins paws down. It was the last thing I managed to finish this week before falling prey to a stomach bug, passed on by the small one. And now the cat is leaving for a new home. He looks suitably concerned, as well he might, considering where he's going.



The pattern for the cat can be found here. It's the Amineko pattern, and is in both Japanese and English. The copyright of the translated pattern is reserved by Nekoyama.

Evil Farmer

You know who you are. You ploughed up two fields on the Test Way, and obscured the exit out of one particular field which caused a needless detour.

I hope you suffer from a surfeit of ear wax which causes bees to nest in your ears, causing much irritation and discomfiture. That'll teach you.

Despotic bears

The appearance of the creature on the right is slightly alarming. He looks like a well known Teutonic psycho and despot. This is what happens when you try to crochet without a pattern and rely on fortune and wool supplies to dictate the end result.

Which in this case is hideous.

Google ate my blog

The previous blog appears to have been eaten by administrative stinkies. So the reason the subject matter of the earlier posts bears no relation to the date, is because I got lazy and cut and pasted. Halloween and Christmas don't normally take place in May, not even in Hampshire.

Normal service resumes now.

Up the Hill Backwards

Well, this was a fun thing to do after a month of self indulgence. A vigorous climb up Beacon Hill, just outside Newbury. It's a hillfort, it's got nice views, and you can climb up it. Bingo!

Here are the boys on the way up

The smaller of the two isn't being dragged up, even though it looks that way. It's more the reassuring hand of guidance, there to prevent slippage (it was a bit muddy).

And here is the summit. Note that soft toys are also permitted to walk up Beacon Hill - indeed they are mandatory items. If you don't place soft toys on the summit marker, you are actually thrown off the hill by the (invisible, obviously) hilltop monitor. Consider them a kind of votive offering. It's a good job we had some handy.

And on an unrelated note, I would give my right arm for eyelashes like these..

Winchester Bollards

The weekend before Christmas is a good time to get toothache. Or not, as the case may be. It also happened to coincide with what felt like the coldest weekend of the year so far. The coldest weekend since the 1660's probably, so it increased the level of dental discomfiture. A pity, since the ice rink had returned to the Cathedral square, surrounded by a festive (albeit expensive and overly esoteric) fair. The small one enjoyed his French Raclette. Mr Horse shivered a lot. But the teeth weren't up to the fun although the dentist did an efficient job of annihilating the troublesome abscess 2 days later. Still, the Cathedral looked fabulous as always, and someone has painted the bollards in the market place. Which was nice.

A view I could never tire of - pound for pound, one of the best cathedrals in the business

After the Norman Conquest, most French bollards were destroyed by disgruntled Saxons. This one, in the Market Square in Winchester, is the last surviving example of it's kind.

Pumpkin Envy

This was our attempt to menace the neighbourhood with pumpkins on Halloween. It's not bad, but on our perambulations this afternoon, on a rather pleasant autumn day of textbook quality, we found this outside the manor house.


It is superior in every way and I am absolutely devastated.