Of Mice and Monsters

Pretty flowers in the garden.



This is the new view from the upstairs hall window. Certain views make the reno look enormous, others make it look too small. Perhaps that means that it's JUUUUST right.



Walls being assembled on the second story.



Work is beginning on the rooftop. This is very tricky. The house has sunk a bit on one side (very common around here - did you know Winnipeg was built over underground rivers and an awful lot of swamp land?), every measurement has to be spot on if the reno is going to be level. All day yesterday and today there has been the sound of mad hammering and sawing and then silence as they get out their pencils and papers to calculate the next series of cuts.



Let's all give a round of cheers for professional carpenters who know what they're doing. Hoorah! Worth every penny.

I finished four characters from the Alan Dart Medieval series.



Three knights and the nursemaid.

Here's the nursemaid before:



and after:



Mum fell in love with these little mice and wanted to make them all for Thea and Aaron when they came to visit, but knowing that she couldn't finish them all before yesterday (when they arrived), she instructed me to make a few. Mum made eight, I made just the four. They were tons of work - sewing all those tiny pieces together! Quite sweet though. I've been instructed to send them on to Toronto for their return.

I also finished my creature I had mentioned in this post.



He's made with a wire armature and then a skin is knitted on to his frame (Gads! THAT was fiddly work!). I had had a vision of him in my head for a long time, and as he got closer and closer to being completed I liked him less and less.



Does that make me a terrible mother? If I think my little monster is ugly?

I keep putting him away, then looking at him again a couple of days later to see if I've fallen in like with him. It hasn't happened yet. He's still ugly.

Perhaps he needs bigger buttons for his eyes...I shall think on it...

So as not to dwell on this, I started a new Clapotis. This one is being done in Handmaiden Sea Silk in a colour called Stardust. It's a beautiful, deep, shimmering charcoal-petrol colour. I had ordered the yarn from Wolseley Wardrobe and it took weeks to arrive. They tell me it was specially dyed just for me.



This I know I like.