Category Archives: Life in General

Ocean Blue and Buttons…

Hello again…don’t the weeks come round quickly! It’s been very busy on Planet Penny over the last few days as we’re in the process of turning a storage area into an office, so having moved everything out for Tim to work on it my studio is CHAOS! It’ll be so good when it’s finished, I might be able to find things more easily (pause for hollow laughter!) but the main perk will be having the printer/scanner in the same room that I’m working in, instead of several rooms and a fight of stairs away. I suppose the exercise is good for me, but it makes things take twice as long! In the meantime I’ve been needlefelting and playing with Ocean Blue dye, and little flowery buttons…

Remember the little robins of last week? I had a cunning plan for their use, and it worked out very well. I found some pretty natural and red woven ribbon, just enough to make five of these…

…and put them on the Planet Penny Facebook page to see what the reaction would be. Despite several of you telling me off for mentioning the dreaded ‘C’ word (!!) I sold three before I even put them on Etsy, where there is now just one left! Don’t despair however, there will be more, but they’ll be just a little different. I don’t do mass production I’m afraid!

I have also completed a variation on the the Love Birds as I couldn’t source the straw wreath straight away, the latest ones have natural colour lambswool hearts…

…and three of these have made it as far as the Etsy shop!

And my other creative project the week has involved a spot of dyeing! I have such problems finding clothes I like, that fit, that are long enough, and I rarely find all that and in a colour I like. So when I found a tunic top in Cotton Trader’s sale which ticked all the boxes bar the colour one I snapped it up and went off to the local supermarket for a packet of dye…

Take one shirt like this…

…in a cotton linen mix, and add a packet of this…

and a few pretty buttons..and you end up with this…

I’ve ordered two more!

(This might amuse you: Having decided to change the basic white buttons to something more original I carefully sorted an interesting selection of colours snipped off the white ones and replaced them with the pretty flower ones – I hate sewing on buttons, don’t you? I had just finished ironing it and had hung it on a hanger to admire when my beloved OH came in. “Yes,” he said, “That looks really good. Now all you have to do is change the buttons…”

I say nothing!)

There was lots of interest last week about Higgins’ ‘Thundershirt’. He’s actually wearing it at the moment as a storm has just passed by and it does seem to calm him down a lot. He usually goes and sits on the back doormat and trembles but this time I wrapped him in the shirt and popped him into bed where he snuggled down and look reasonable relaxed. It was only a small storm so more testing will need to be done, but so far the signs are good.

I must finish this and go and administer tea to the worker in my little ‘soon-to-be’ office, it’s not the weather to be sawing wood! I’ll leave you with the usual link to ‘Handmade Monday’ over on Handmade Harbour.

Have a lovely week and I’ll be back soon…x

A Brief Pause…

I hope everyone has been able to enjoy the belated summer sunshine over the last week. It’s been lovely in Norfolk which has been quite a relief with two little boys to entertain! As you can imagine, not a lot of Planet Penny business has been undertaken over the past few days, we’ve had a brief pause for some fun and picnics on the beach…

…with sausages on the menu of course! And eating in the garden late in the evening has been lovely.

So with no real brain power free to think about crochet and patterns, I’ve been needlefelting some bases to be worked on when it all goes quiet in a couple of days, with no little boys to entertain. I’m very aware my new Etsy shop hasn’t yet featured any needlefelted pieces, and I have had several requests for my little lovebirds…

…so these are next on the agenda.

So I hope you’ll understand why this post is just a short one, as I’m snatching a few minutes on the last day of the visit to link up with Handmade Monday over on Handmade Harbour.

I’ll be back soon though!

Silent Sunday

Life is What Happens To You…

…while you’re busy making other plans, as John Lennon famously said. This week life has not turned out as planned.

If you’ve been visiting Planet Penny for a while you’ll know about Clovis, the French Cat. He belongs to my son Thomas, and has staying with my mum while his own family have been settling after transferring from France.

Clovis is quite a character, and has led an eventful life. As a tiny kitten he chose his family by climbing into the car in a remote place where no unattended kitten should have been, and after unsuccessful attempts to locate the owner, he was welcomed into the family. I’ve always been a bit of favourite of his, as the only person mad enough to arrive to stay with a large and exciting bag, full of balls of wool and knitting. On one visit it took less than 10 minutes with an unattended knitting bag for him to create a wonderful art installation. Yarn was wrapped round the legs of every chair in the room and up a flight of stairs where there were more chairs, and out of the cat flap and all around the garden furniture!

He’s madly affectionate, but won’t be held or picked up, just trampling madly over your lap purring furiously. He’s frightened of everything in the garden, hurling himself through the catflap to avoid marauding butterflies and vicious baby rabbits.

He lived for a while in Rouen, France, pretty near the city centre and close to one of the main arterial route through the city and came though unscathed. So why was it that now, living in a sleepy little cul-de-sac in rural Norfolk, he gets hit by a car? Well, not hit exactly, one back leg run over, and horribly broken.

So the last few days have been all about visiting the vet, and xrays and a big operation.

He is now back with my mum, in a large crate…

and wearing a fetching blue bandage.

I’ve been my mother’s carer for a while, but now I’m Clovis’s too, spending a lot of time sitting on the floor with my arm through the door of the crate tickling his ears and making soothing noises. Fortunately so far he hasn’t been too frustrated by his incarceration, but he must be very bored. I’ve suggested a film this afternoon. He does watch television a lot when it’s something he’s interested in, ‘Kung-Fu Panda’ being a particular favourite! (I just hope he’s not taking notes!)

So that’s why this hasn’t been the week I’d planned, or the blog post I’d intended, but I hope you’ll bear with me.

I’ll be back soon x