Doily Beloved

This month's issue of Mollie Makes dropped through my letterbox on Tuesday and I was doing my usual OCD thing of flicking through the magazine with my page marker Post Its at the ready so that I don't forget to add the makes I want to attempt to my MASSIVE craft to do list (I know it's anal but I thought we knew each other by now?!).


Anyway one of the makes hopped straight to the top of the list, LOOK!!!

Who knew you could actually write stuff in doily form?!  This was a revelation to me, oh the possibilities!  I really wanted to try an edgier word but thought that as this was my first attempt and as I didn't have the proper fine crochet cotton that I really could do without a giant expletive doily hanging around so I chose to make love (ahem).


It's basically the cross stitch of the crochet world.  You make your plan on graph paper in the same way and it's just a case of filling in boxes with crochet stitches to form the individual letters adding a fancy schmancy boarder to pretty the whole thing up.


I LOVE it!  It's my new favourite form of crochet and I'm even more chuffed as yet again it's something that I've taught myself (what on earth did we do before Google and YouTube?!).


Linking up with #HandmadeThursday over on White Lily Green

May The Fourth Be With You

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was four years old and in love with all things Star Wars.   I think it was the first film I ever saw at the cinema and I also remember having a poster on my bedroom wall at the time featuring Chewbacca and giving him a kiss goodnight.


My obsession obviously didn't wane as at the age of nine I went to a fancy dress party as Princess Leia, wearing one of my Mum's white jumpers belted with a bit of dressing gown chord and (as my own hair was of the elfin cut variety at the time) my Mum fashioned me an ingenious trademark Leia hairpiece from a stretchy Alice band and a couple of pairs of tights stitched to either side.


Anyway, fast forward almost 30 years and I still love a bit of Star Wars and it's something I've obviously passed on to Buster (with Mr Right's help) as he discovered the movies a few years back buying into the franchise with a love of the Clone Wars (CGI stories based on the characters aimed at kids, I'm a purist and won't even watch the remastered versions of the originals or the three prequels) and the various Lego incarnations of the genre.


I was doing my usual trawl through the crochet pages of Etsy trying to get some inspiration for my next project when I discovered a whole raft of Star Wars items created in wool  including, to my amazement and delight, hats in the form of Princess Leia hair!!!  I researched further on Google Images and came up with some right corkers (there's a LOT of bad crochet out there) although no pattern that I liked was forthcoming so I decided to have a bash at making my own.  This was a bit of a watershed moment for me as far as crochet goes as I've never made up my own pattern before and thankfully I came up with something I was quite pleased with first time round how apt that tomorrow is May the fourth!!!


Now I can finally pass the Star Wars baton on to Missy too...

"Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope"

Cinnamon Whirl anyone?

Linking up with #HandmadeThursday over on White Lily Green

Fat Sam's Grand Slam Speakeasy

A couple of weeks back Liz (Me And My Shadow) tweeted the following YouTube clip understandably excited that she had tickets to attend, it's an interactive cinema experience based on Bugsy Malone


I was green with envy, I fell in love with the movie as a child and revisit it whenever I spy it's getting an airing on TV and tweeted her expressing as much.  In a wonderful twist of fate she drew my attention to a competition to win family tickets to a matinee performance on another blog (Childcare Is Fun) and as luck would have it yours truly was the eventual winner!


Well Sunday was the big day and Mr Right, Buster and I got our best 1920s bib and tucker on and headed down to the big smoke (despite the odd looks we were drawing from Tube passengers and London Marathon spectators alike), we'd been told to meet the boss under the bridge, Caroline Street, E1 (the East End home of the beautiful art deco Troxy Theatre) where a back street had been transported almost a century into the past and there were characters from that era milling about interacting with the queuing punters.

There's one on the roof!

Buster was press-ganged (quite literally!) into helping the news stand boy sell his papers

Read all about it!

And a fight broke out among the members of rival hoodlum gangs

Put 'em up!

After all this excitement we still had the performance inside to enjoy and we were ushered into the building via a network of corridors which lead to a bookcase behind which soft music was emanating.  We each handed over a book (your ticket into the speakeasy) and made our way through the now open bookcase...

Buster going through the bookcase

...into the massive auditorium beyond.


There was a band playing on stage and tables with lamps aglow just like the movie, you could order food from Mama Liguini's, have a shake and some popcorn from the Milk Bar, try your luck with the roulette wheel, visit Slugger's Gym or audition for Fat Sam, we chose to grab a cocktail from the bar 

Me enjoying my Tallulah Twist

meanwhile the actors and dancers were mingling with everyone at their tables, Bugsy came and sat at ours and was chatting away to Buster about the caper they'd arranged for later, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Bugsy

There were energetic reenactments of some of the scenes and songs from the film, Mr Right had to perform the 'kiss' of life on one of the characters during one such skit 

Mr Right, the hero

Then it came time for a viewing of a Harold Lloyd black and white silent short (with real piano accompaniment like in the good old days) and the actual movie, which was magical as a couple of times I really felt like I was part of the film and as if I wasn't immersed into it enough by then I was certainly about to be with what happened next...

Splurge gun fight!

I can't recommend this event enough, although we won tickets the cover prices represent amazing value for money for the four hours plus of entertainment we enjoyed, the actors were in character the whole time and were wonderfully accommodating, patient posing for pictures and great at getting the kids involved.

Buster and I post Splurge gun fight, I think Buster's sad
that he has to give up a life of crime now he's taken a direct hit

Sadly the show (presented by Future Cinema) is in the last week of its run but there may still be tickets available and if there are I urge you to get yourself down to Fat Sam's Grand Slam Speakeasy before they all go straight!

This Week's Junk Shop Jewels

Holy other people's crap Batman, it's Monday again, which means it must be time to trawl through my latest junk shop jewels.


Firstly this bunch of pretty pastel vintage knitting needles (50p per pair).  I don't knit but I have plans afoot for these little babies in another crafty capacity, will keep you posted.

This LARGE black leather belt (£1), I'm going to butcher it and use it for the handles of a bag that I'm making

A brand new roll of wood effect Fablon for card making purposes (99p)

An old cross stitch pattern book, I love a bit of cross stitch but I didn't purchase it for that, I thought that some of the motifs would be nice on greetings cards

More old spoons for plant markers (I will get round to posting about this at some point) (10p each)

Two cute little triangular Pyrex casserole dishes, I thought they were really unusual so they had to come home with me (£1 each)

I loved Meg and Mog books as a kid and spotted these for Missy (50p each)

Linking up with Liz's #MagpieMonday over on Me And My Shadow

Hair's One I Made Earlier

Missy is growing her fringe out, which is taking forever and as a consequence we are drowning in a sea of hair clips.  I keep the plain ones in a little box but the nicer ones I wanted to hand so they'd actually get worn once in a while so I used some of the vintage Strawberry Shortcake fabric I won on an eBay auction last year 

and these iron on Strawberry Shortcake patches from H and M that I put in Missy's Christmas stocking last year

and with an off-cut of ribbon and some iron on interfacing I bashed this out on my sewing machine

Now all the fancy Nancy clips we have are at my fingertips, which is super helpful when you're wrestling with a struggling 2 year old sporting hair that's like a bird's nest, plus it can be hung up away from prying little fingers

Linking up with #HandmadeThursday over on White Lily Green