Hallo Heidelberg!

Guten Tag! It's been a while.

I arrived in Germany just over a week ago to embark on the second half of my year abroad and have only just got t'internet set up after filling in a lot of forms and trying to decipher the set-up instructions. At least this connection is lightning fast unlike the one in Spain so there's no excuse for me not to post photos!

Before coming out here I spent 2 1/2 weeks in England going to a 21st in Edinburgh, an 80th round the corner, going to York , Durham and finally Bristol to find somewhere to live next year and whenever I had a spare moment I was doing something pigeon-related.

This was the latest batch (there were 3 more who went to the Rugby Club and New York) and these little chaps (and one chapette) were sent off to various places in the UK.

I've already found the wool shop in Heidelberg and it's very good and very cheap. I've just crocheted a new hat for about 60pence (photos to follow). Most exciting of all however are the bakeries. On the pre-term German course I am taking we get breakfast every morning which consists of a choice of sandwiches, pretzels, jammy or chocolate doughnuts, croissants, pain au chocolat, cheese bread, chocolate muffins...the list goes on. Mmmmmmmmmmm. This makes up for the dreadful weather. As you can see, it's a wee bit grey and I was told today that snow was forecast...

Hopefully the sun will come out later and Mr.Pigeon (or Herr. Taube as he should be called here) and I will go out and take some more photos........probably of cakes.

Home Sweet Home

Hello! It's been a while but after paying for excess baggage, nearly missing my second flight and a very rough landing into Newcastle I'm back on British soil (which at the moment is covered in snow)

But never mind, I arrived home to this fab fishy fabric from Diane:


It's not a very clear photo but you can just about make out their names: Robert, Bjorn and Malcolm :) I'll have to think of something special to make from it.

Good news for those waiting for pigeons- they're just waiting to have beaks attached then will be ready for purchase. Below is a picture of some of the last batch with the original rugby pigeon. It was a special rugby club order and I've sworn never to make another pigeon rugby shirt ever again!
And finally thank you to Ruth for giving me an "Amazing Blogger" award, I'm very flattered...haven't quite worked out how to get the little picture up though.

Coming soon...

Once I've found the time to type up the pattern for these happy little toadstools I'll be putting it up in the Etsy shop. They're very easy to make and only take around an hour and a half to complete. They might make a nice beginners' crochet kit.

More Mr. Pigeons and Miss. Hennypennys will be added in early February once they all have eyes, pouches and passports. I'm quickly running out of eyes and haven't been able to find decent replacements yet so if anybody knows where to find 4 or 5mm acrylic round black eyes online then I'd love to know!

That's all for now except to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH for all your lovely comments and e-mails- they're very much appreciated :)

Treeling

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I'm back in Spain and rationing the photos I took over Christmas!


One of my Christmas presents was the Softies book and I couldn't resist making the happy treeling for a friend's birthday (don't worry, there is a reason why I'm giving her a cuddly tree for her 21st)

I forgot about the seam allowance on the trunk so when I turned it right side out his eyes looked a bit scary and far apart. Oops.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

My first attempt at Gocco printing didn't go as well as I had planned. I tried to save supplies by using the same screen for the black and white AND colour prints, making positioning the card very difficult as you can see below (L-R: good to bad to worse)...

The black and white only prints were much more successful.

I also tried black and white and red and white sheep note cards. Unfortunately the far left sheep lost part of his nose in the printing process.

In other news...

Mr. Pigeon 015 is now for sale on Etsy.

Mr. Pigeon 016 arrived safely in London, is now called Bubble and aspires to become a tank top model!

Mr. Pigeon's Present

Not even woolly pigeons can escape the dodgy Christmas jumper...

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

That was how Salamanca looked just before I left it. I trained to Madrid (nice place to visit), stayed the night in Alcalá and flew to Edinburgh on Saturday. Can you guess from the photo below who was with me on the plane?

We attracted some strange looks from other passengers!

I came home to a lovely parcel containing the "Linus" pincushion I ordered from (the softie award-winning!) squirrelmomma. I can't believe how perfect the stitching is and it even came in a little pink bag.

That's all for now but check back soon for pictures of Mr.Pigeon's Christmas present :)

2 more sleeps :)

Two more nights and I'll be back on British soil and will hopefully have lots of exciting things to show you. Tonight after I have done a bit of packing I have the exciting job of attaching wings and feet to 7 pigeons so that when I get home all I have to do is sew on the eyes and make their little bags and passports. 5 of the 7 pigeons already have homes to go to so there will be two appearing on Etsy very shortly.

This also means that for the next two weeks I will have a good internet connection and don't have to post at 8am to be able to include photos :D

Order:

It's cold and grey outside so instead of more grey pigeons have some colour...

Jake the Woollysaurus

Coco the Clownfish

Tortoise

This was part of an order for somebody at 'work' (I say 'work' as I don't do much besides drink tea and eat cake and don't get paid either) who is going to give them to the children she looks after as presents. The fish and dinosaur are my own patterns but I can't take credit for the tortoise. I bought his pattern from Etsy a while ago. I also made another hen but ufortunately the photos of her are blurry. Never mind, I'm sure you've had enough bird-related posts :D

Pigeons in waiting

Here they are 007 - 016 sitting on my shelf with their numbers tied around their necks so I know which is which. Most of them are still waiting for eyes, beaks, wings and feet.

I should point out that 009 is a knitted pigeon. I tried to adapt the crochet pattern for knitting and the result is an even more skittle-like bird.

011 is "una paloma blanca" and those of you who have bothered to count may have realised that one is missing. "Where is 012?" I hear you cry.

He's at the rugby club bar...

PS: apologies for the dull photos- I blame winter.

Pigeons of the World...

As the third little hen flapped her woolly wings and flew the nest yesterday (i.e. was handed over to her new Spanish owner) a strange thought occurred to me as strange thoughts often do. Do all pigeons (or all hens/ flamingos) speak the same pigeon (or hen or flamingo) language? For example would a German town pigeon be able to understand a British one?

Here is my conclusion...
Click here or on the picture itself for a better look :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

This is his present - his pigeon counterpart. Mr.Pigeon 012 is wearing a blue striped Rugby Shirt (with the number 50 on the back), holding a little rugby ball and comes with a little crocheted pint. As I lost my small hook he came out chunkier than the others but that's quite appropriate for a rugby pidge. The only thing I couldn't do was crochet bruises or a black eye on.


I strongly discourage anybody from attempting to handsew small garments for spherical objects- not easy!



The card follows a very similar theme :) There are 50 birds for 50 years. The one I posted was coloured in but the photos weren't great so here it is in black and white...




A larger image can be found on Flickr here if you want to count them all.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOKE and HAPPY ADVENT too!