Sunday 8 November 2015

Life gets in the way and then your brain funks out : )

Hiya,
Its been a while - sorry, brain in funk which made it hard to blog but I havn't been idle!


A fabulous fun day with the grandkids, although blummin exhausting lol

Have been making some Dream Trees for the upcoming Green Fair this month, concentrating on smaller ones this year, all recycled materials but some of the threads used are modern.
Here's a few.




 
Also knitted up and felted some Head Huggers and made some fingerless gloves as well, but haven't taken pics I realise of them.
 
Quite a few of these in the mornings recently,
they look so magical with the dew on them don't they and are 
worth enlarging.  

 


 


Made a hickory dickory dock activity at work, where the mouse can be pulled up and down by a child.
The idea came to me as I used up the last of the Velcro on a large 20 mt roll, the centre of the roll had a plastic insert that the Velcro wrapped round.
So I was left with 2 large circles of card with the plastic 'hole' centre trapped between so I cut each card circle down to give me the shape below.
Then stuck mount board to it to stiffen up the structure but before closing it all in, I threaded some tape through so it would glide over the plastic insert and could be pulled up and down later.


 
I covered the whole thing in felt, but used a plastic lid for a clock face, which I stitched to the front felt piece before assembling the felt covering.
Added two felt mice at each end of the tape and Evie has flight tested it for me whilst singing hickory dickory dock lol


Also making fastenings waistcoats like there's going to be a shortage!

The managers asked me to cost them after the East Riding of Yorkshire Education Authority were interested in buying one or two of them off us.
We being Kingston Upon Hull Education authority.
So I gave them a figure of £40, which is not that bad for a special needs item that can be washed, looks good, proven practically as useful and will last through several children's use.
However once our Admin got a hold of the costing, they added all manner of other things, heating, lighting well okay yes but..............
apparently also % costings on my pension, national insurance and all manner of other bloody silly things which knocked up the cost to £78 a waistcoat!

Crazy and I told them so.
Not surprisingly, in this climate of Council cut backs our peri teachers thought that neither price would be accepted but they do want to be able to supply and sell the waistcoats.
Not that we are allowed to make any profit from them because 
That's not allowed .....
So now they are sourcing childrens waistcoats online, ready made up with button fronts and expect me to customise them lol
So an approximately £10 waistcoat, with a silk back panel, will need to have buttons taken off and an open ended zip inserted.
Then the shaped fronts will need to be levelled off with pockets in some way and they think this will cut down the cost..........I bet I spend more time refashioning them than making the bespoke ones up from scratch!

But I said - fine go ahead order some, but don't blame me if they aren't as good, as nice or as long lasting.
Watch this space lol

OH, couldn't resist this king sized bed quilt cover and pillow cases in a  charity shop last week, for £8.
Lots of possibilities for this lovely soft cotton fabric I think and
the backing is cream with 3" daisy like flower shapes, equally as nice as the front. A lot of fabric for the price of 1 mt!