Rain, bales, turns, nests or warrens.

We've had rain for days, or grey skies and on/off showers at the least.  The heavens open and it pours just as I decide I'll do some gardening, or walk Mirrhi.

 The skies looked like this a year ago today, the night the Big Flood took out a lot of our town.  There'll be no flood this year, but it's hard not to worry as we all remember the fear as it swept through, the mess and devastation it left behind and the generosity and support as the town pulled together afterwards.

So to keep busy and keep my mind off it, I've been making rabbits and turtles, hence the title of the post, as those are among the common names for groups of turtles and rabbits.

Not quite a nest or a warren

A mischief maybe?

              and one on his own  .....                              

 a singular of bunny - wool felt 2.5 " long

Not a bale of turtles, a huddle perhaps....or a conference 

 Wool felt, around 5-6 " long 

Definitely a huddle!

These are now heading to Queensland, for Knitting for Brisbane's Needy and will be going to children who'll be in the Sunshine Coast Hospital over Easter. The turtles are not a new Easter symbol, but were requested by the hospital, I'm not sure exactly why,  but something they do every year, and the request just happened to coincide with Karen's shout-out for bunnies.

Lastly, the rain has brought some interesting "visitors" to my yard ...... these quite large alien looking mushrooms. Some are 6" or more across. Not edible, unfortunately.

That's all for now, it's time to pull rain coats on and go dodge the showers. Till next time...........

RSC March - Green scraps

It's the second last week of March !.....and the colours for this month are light and yellowy greens. I've mixed it up a bit with some medium to darker greens to get some contrast on my churn dashes, but will still have plenty of darks to play with when that month rolls around.

This week I made 3 more churn dashes, these are 8" (20cm) finished.

Then there were 5. One more to make for my goal of 6 per colour/per month, should be doable. I still have purple from February to catch up on as well, so I'll try and get them out of the way before the new colour's announced next Sunday.

 I also started some crumb/slab blocks. I found a box of hst and partial flying geese that I'd made for F2F (Foot Square Freestyle block swap) that hadn't worked out, so I'm using them in my crumb blocks.  I have some other crumbs and strings somewhere in various colours, and I've seen some quilts lately where people have put all their orphan blocks together in rows, so I thought I might work toward that as well.  Maybe!

For more fresh green and scrappy inspiration, head over to the  weekly link-up

...till next time..........

Birthday gift

Our .....Mirrhi's and mine......favourite small neighbour is having a birthday....he'll be 3.  So I bought him this lovely simple picture book "The Tomten and the Fox" Here's a description of a tomten, if you've not heard of them..... In Swedish tales a tomten  belongs to the family of elves and other little “brownies” and is a good natured being who usually helps farm people . A friendly “tomte” meant a lot to the farmer and his family, he saw to it that the animals were well, he made sure the servants awakened in the early morning hours. These and many other good deeds and fortunes were the work of the “tomten and he was given a bowl of porridge every night”   

In this story, when a very hungry fox wanders into the farm looking for his dinner,  the Tomten finds a way to keep the farm animals safe and feed the fox at the same time.

So Parkes can play as he reads, I made a little felt fox......

Mr Fox has his eye on the hen house

And here's the Tomten who watches  over the farm animals .... he tells the fox 'no eating the chickens'

and generously shares his bowl of porridge with the fox.

Fox is about  (5") long and stands about 9cm (3.5") high, and the Tomten  is 13cm (5") tall, not counting his hat.  Both the fox and Tomten's clothes are made from lovely, buttery soft wool felt. 

They're all packed up in a cloth bag and we're ready for cake and fun later today. (No cake for Mirrhi, she'll just have fun running around and playing ball with Parkes!)

Scraps

I mentioned a couple of posts back that my Rainbow Scrap Challenge for this year was going to be churn dashes after I found the 5 blue ones I made back in 2016!  Angela chooses a colour for us to sew each month, and as January's was blue, I was already a little bit ahead of myself.

March's colour is light and bright greens, and I'd looked at my green scraps a few times, but felt very uninspired to do anything with them. I didn't like a lot of them, some were just plain ugly or didn't look right with the other greens, and others are  quite dark, and they'll be saved for another month.  I didn't have enough of the scraps I liked to do much with.  So they all went back in the green bin and I went and did more interesting....and easier ....things.....like clean the pantry!

But I got on with it yesterday and  managed to rustle up 2 green blocks.  They're not bad.  And shh! don't tell Angela, but I used some dark green as well!

These are what I have so far.......the colour for February was purple, and I prepped the pieces for one block, but that was as far as I got....that one's not sewn together.  I have quite a bit of limey-yellow greens, so I'll pull them next and see if they give me more inspiration. There's still a week or more left to make some, so perhaps I'll reach my goal of 6 blocks a month.  And I think the ugly greens will be turned into crumb blocks!

Linking
a little late....... with Kate for ScrapHappy Day

and Angela for Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

That's all for today, I'm off out to have lunch in a new cafe that's just opened out of town, I've heard they serve delicious home made cakes featuring dragon fruit and davidson plum, ......yum.

......till next time.