Kale maybe?

It is just conceivably possible my triffid plant is Kale!
Jean suggested it might be Kale and bells rang in my head.
I had thought I had planted something edible in that bed and I have an idea ( now) that there may have been a free pkt of seeds on a gardening magazine, so maybe, just maybe,
I did plant some free Kale seeds!
Then forgot about them!
I tasted the leaves and golly they are sharp and tangy so probably best not to let them grow so big!

My granddaughter has had Rotavirus, we now know, so that's almost certainly what we have all had, courtesy of her lol Bless her.

Despite that - I have made a skirt and knitted a little cardigan for a Cuddles Time rag doll, for Evie.  
I bought 2 similar ready made commercial dolls from someone off a Facebook group page who was offloading stash.
( Fabric and Craft items for sale, I think that's what it is, there's a few members in the US too)
Quite satisfied with the cardi, given I had no pattern and just knit to fit as it were. The wool was a car boot sale buy from last summer I think.

I matched her pig tail ties with the same wool too and if Evie takes to her, I may make some additional clothes.
I might as well dress the other doll up as well and put her on a stall come Christmas time.
I think they will both need small teddies to hug too don't you?

My sincere thanks to Christine ( http://patchworkallsorts.blogspot.co.uk/)
 who recognised the X stitch in my cushion front!!
I had wondered myself where the scene might have come from and it's
Le Chateau de Chillon in Switzerland!
I am so thrilled I am going to try and stitch the name somewhere on it
because by next week I shall forgotten the name completely! 
Age and general brainlessness : )

Well Christine, how about these next please? lol
The two on the right have been stitched with silk and are beautifully stitched with such tiny stitches.

Salad leaf I think and some

 

Well these triffids of mine now have flowers,
not unlike rape seed but it isn't that.
Who knew that on Facebook there's a What's this plant group!!
I did a Google search for plant identification sites and the FB one popped up!
The consensus on there is that it's a salad leaf gone crazy which I still find hard to believe, especially since I can't recall dropping salad leaf seeds in that raised bed.
Although I do seem to recall planting something edible in there but thought it was chard. There is no chard though lol

I suppose these leaves might still be edible but I daren't try them lol
I am content to see how beautiful they are for now.
It makes you wonder if you left all salad leaves to grow to such abundance if they'd all become such beautiful plants doesn't it!

I am starting to come together after a 48 hour bout of probably gastro something or other. Courtesy of my delightful granddaughter : )
Her Mum, Dad and Auntie have also been gifted with it and I had to stay off from work today because of it.

My creative gene had slowly begun to surface which is good.
I had bought some previously stitched cross stitch pictures from a charity shop with a view to making them into cushions.
I have made this version with one of them and its feather filled so lovely to lean on : )
The fabric was a charity shop find too, formerly a large sized ladies shirt and lovely soft fine needlecord.

 

Took this last week when Jack stayed over,

he clearly would prefer a circular bed.

 

 

Can't recall if I showed the additional Old Macdonald characters to Evie's activity board ~ Old MacD is a finger puppet, the others lift on and off. 

Stuart Hillard at Stitchy Club

Stitchy club today and we had as a guest speaker Stuart Hillard,
who was a semi finalist in the first Great British Sewing Bee. 
Sorry the pics are hazy, I must have had a thumb print on the lens I
think!

Well what a delightfully personable guy he is and his was a lively,
fun talk.
He was an accomplished designer and stitcher before the Bee but had little dressmaking skill and had in fact been told the show would cover patchwork, applique and other varied skill sets.
But at a final stage in the selection process the programme makers changed tack and it became dress making centred.
Who knew!
His quilts that he brought to show us were fabulous, some were designed especially for Popular Patchwork a magazine he writes regularly for.
He has a book out now too 'Sew Fabulous' worth seeking out!

But one of his WIPs, a log cabin with black squares in, was my personal favourite.
He used a black square at the centre of his blocks, as symbolism from the Underground Railroad quilts, although there now seems to be dissention as to whether this quilt symbolism is truth or myth.
I prefer to hope it is based around truth, that there were quilts hanging out to 'air' giving hope and solace to fleeing slaves.

Members who had been on Deb Ohare's workshop last month displayed their finished pieces - cough, cough, mines not included : (
(My creative gene is still buggaring about and my mood goes up and down like a fiddlers elbow, sorry Deb!)

Maggie Tomlinson one of our members had shown this unusual and lovely family tree hanging. It combines crazy patchwork and hexi's in a way I've not seen before with family faces printed on fabric.

Childrens fastening waistcoat - and garden help pse?

Okay first and foremost, can anyone recognise what I'm growing here please?
I was name tagging some of what I was planting, so I would know if it was edible or not. The obvious ones I didn't name tag of course.
But .... these  magnificent frilly leaved plants, which I have an idea might have been edibles .... well,
I can neither find the empty packet or now remember what the hell they were!
Architectural certainly and a delight to see in the raised bed but what the hell they are, well I have not a clue lol

 

My gooseberries are growing but turn a shade of red, so think I must have a variant, think I did plant a jostaberry, so maybe that's these!

 

 

see? lol  - pretty right!

 

Woad growing below. I have had the seeds 2 years and hadn't expected them to grow to be honest. I may get a trial dye out of them yet.

 

 

And another fastening jacket here

 

 

Yet another fastening waistcoat

My creative gene has abandoned me, and a low mood descended recently, so silly, and not helped by a funeral today!
But the service was really great, I'm book marking the vicar for mine ~
hopefully I won't need him just yet though.

I'm almost finished on my April Millefiori rosette, it seems to have taken me ages to do that one but that's because my mojo went walk about.
I have the May and June rosettes to catch up on, but there's no rush really.

I did complete another fastening waistcoat for work last week mind you.

I used real shirt buttons because the lad this is for struggles with shirt fastening. 

 

I also made some pair matching cards for a child whose spasticised hand and arm movements make it difficult for him to pick things up and placing things down again.
These have been used with him now and have been very successful so we are planning to use the enclosed and padded format again with him.
Sometimes a bright idea really works! lol

Again I have used a Velcro accepting fabric covered board so the cards can be stuck on it and that way he doesn't accidentally scuttle the other cards about.
Because the cards are lightly padded and fabric edged he's been able to pick them up more easily too, so win win so far.
But again, this idea would work well for any toddlers.

I picked up some perennial viola plants last week, this ones so pretty and much brighter, bolder blue than the pics suggest.

The cats and dog have been chivvying at the garage door the past 3 days and today I found out why. A dead rat was holed up behind a heavy old workbench that's in there.
By the looks of it its gotten in recently and been held there by the animals presence. It looks like its starved and had no water but considering there's a permanently running electric gadget in the garage to keep furries at bay, I wasn't expecting to see one of them!
I'd been hoping it would be a hedgehog lol