Knitting.....but not ear huggers this time!

First I must welcome the new folks that have visited via the Grow your Blog 'party', those that dropped in and chose to stay and follow along too!

I'm thrilled that you've chosen to stick around with us and I hope the new folks, will pop in and see the blogs of those that were here before.......
and that those of you who were here before...........
will nip over and see the new folks blogs too!
If that makes sense!!  lol

This above, was what greeted me as I opened the window blinds at work one morning this past week......a second later the suns ray broadened and we had a delightfully sunny spell that morning...........above all the snow!
Beautiful..........
The snow is all but melted here abouts now and that suits me just fine I admit.

Last week I looked out the window there and saw a woodpecker hammering away on the tree trunk, for the first time ever. 
I'd never seen one live before!

This week we had another strange bird... a water pipit!
Another one Id never seen before and wouldn't have known about,
had I not done a bit of RSPB research to identify her. 

Then blow me, today the sparrow hawk returned........we hadn't seen him since Jan 6th........... I fear I'm become a twitcher!!
I may have to buy some binoculars.........lol

My daughter Tylah is expecting and baby is due on April 29th.
And I have finally had the urge to knit for Evie-bump ~ yes its a girl, name chosen already and fingers-so-crossed, that all goes well.

Now given that I can never follow a pattern or recipe properly ........
I'm amazed that so far, the pattern seems to be similar to the printed leaflet I'm using! 
However, I've had to adapt as I knit, since either the pattern is wrong 
( yes!) or I'm doing things wrong ......... cough - cough -( possible).

I've had 1 too many, or 2 too few stitches at most stages LOL
It's a long time since I've knitted baby bits!
The yarn is ( not recycled on this occasion!) Peter Pan double knit, white with a pretty reflective marl in it.

Still no news about my job yet............but I'm working on making up tactile bits for a Solar System topic Box so the hell with them lol

I saw this online somewhere and darn it now cant find the link for it.
Am so annoyed with myself because its such a great looking graphic and I should credit who designed it.

Anyway, I decided to make it up in a tactile format and have collected spheres in all sorts of sizes, so I could replicate it.
I picked up a big bag of Christmas decorations at car boot for £2 and then halved some of them, before then painting them.

You should be able to see below the halved spheres...........though one was actually a pretend orange, but it was the right size compared to the others.
If you don't already know and most of you will I am sure, the old hand held electric meat slicers are brilliant for slicing through thick foam and also polystyrene balls....although the squeaky sound is torture!

Fiddly I grant you, holding a 6" polystyrene ball and electronically slicing it in half LOL but I still have all my fingers...yeahh!
I stuck the ball in the biggest ever lump of blu tak to try and stabilise it .....the best part of 2 packs might have been overkill............but I do value my fingers!

Below you can see the chalked in orbit paths and the planets laid in approximate positions on the black velcro accepting fabric I'm using.

I have since hand back stitched the orbits with white perle and begun to stitch down the planets.
I will complete this on monday and will show you the completed board resource then.
I will also show you how I stitched down the planets given they are 3D.

I love making models like these! 

I nipped into our Scrapstore this week and picked up just short of 2 metres of cotton fabric with large coloured circles on it for a £1...........

I was thinking the circles would make plain hexis perhaps.
Here it is on my ironing board lol...........hows that for an almost match!

And lastly here's a pic of grandson in his frog costume.......for which he still needs froggy hands and froggy feet......
two of the things on the verbal list he's left me with, 
of things to 'build'for him ............lol

Well to be fair, his slippers don't really 'go' !