Some of you may remember that back in January I started knitting a baby blanket...can you guess what? Yesterday I finally finished knitting it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh dear, don't go getting too excited! It's far from finished yet - but the largest task has been done. Now all I have to do is sew in all of the ends (I hate sewing in ends. If I suggest knitting another stripey blanket someone please give me a gentle slap) and I bought some lovely thick plum coloured satiny ribbon to sew over the edges to a) help keep its shape and b) hide my rubbish sewing in of the ends! ;)

The colours look so much better in real life (this photo is a bit wishy-washy) - I'll try and a take a daylight photo of it over the weekend. Awww, little Bunny is going to be so spoilt with her super soft blanket and her fancy bibs. You never know we may even buy her somewhere to sleep at some point! ;)

There is still plenty of time for you to sign up to my SECRET MONKEY SWAP. CLICK HERE for instructions.

Hurrah! I've been doing a bit of sewing this weekend, and getting a much needed hair cut! YAY! It was baby themed sewing! I've been reading up in the old baby books and they claim you need all sorts of nonsense. If we bought everything the books recommended you had we'd have to upgrade our 3 bed semi to a mansion or a small castle(!). With all this in mind one of the things on the list was 20 bibs....TWENTY(!?).....so I got cracking on a few more. I'd already made 5 bibs months ago but wasn't quite happy with them - I thought they might be a little big for a new born.

These new ones are a little smaller than my previous bibs and they have a press-stud fastening rather than Velcro. I'm quite pleased with them but had a bugger of a time working out how to set the press-studs! I got my press-stud setter for Christmas but hadn't got around to using it yet. The instructions were just pictures and I went to the Prym website to see if they had better instructions but they were in German - not sure my GCSE German (taken 14 years ago!) was up to the challenge. I gave it another crack today and realised I'd been trying to attach one of the pieces the wrong way round. In my defence both sides looked VERY similar! We now have 8 lovely new bibs to add to the growing pile of baby items! Next on the list: a pillow case for my giant maternity pillow!

Don't forget there is still plenty of time to sign up for the secret monkey swap! Just scroll down to the last post and find out how to join in?!

Sign-ups are now open for the SECRET MONKEY SWAP!!!

You can make whatever takes your fancy be it knitted, sewn, crocheted, painted, quilted, wooden, woolly, card, soft, etc...as long as it is monkey themed and handmade. You will need to keep your recipient a secret until you know that the parcel has been received - obviously pop a note in with your monkey to make sure they know who it is from!

Sign-up will be open until Monday the 4th May and I will assign your monkey recipient by the 7th May. Monkeys should be made and posted by the 7th June giving a whole month of monkey madness and plenty of time to get your thinking caps on!

 Here's what you need to do if you are interested in the fantastical secret monkey swap. Send me and email titled 'monkey swap' with your name, address, blog address (if you have one) and if you are happy to post internationally to: claire [at] paynedesign [dot] co [dot] uk

I'm not entirely sure how I'll participate in this swap as I'll know who I'm getting a monkey from.....hmmmm....I may have to think about that a little! ;)

The past few days seem to have run away with me. I've got lots of emails and things to catch up on still and just haven't had the energy to do any of it! I've also not got a lot of sewing done and had to take it easy yesterday as I was VERY tired and VERY queasy. It seems the 3rd trimester has started with a vengeance. I was just starting to enjoy having my energy back as well! So, what have I been up to? We had a lovely weekend and managed to get out to one of out local national trust houses for a nice walk around the gardens and an ice cream. We managed to enjoy our own garden a little too and popped the bench into it's summer spot on the lawn rather than tucked away on the patio (excuse the dandelions!).

All the miserable cold weather we had at the start of the year has done wonders for our tulips this year!

...and I have managed a little bit of sewing. On my quest to use-up/re-home some of the larger items for my craft room I managed to use up two big bags of stuffing and made myself a HUUUUUGE maternity pillow. It looks a little lumpy as I'm not used to stuffing things of this size and I'm sure with use it'll smooth out a little. I just need to make a nice cover for it and then I'm hoping it'll help me get comfy of a night and aid a good nights sleep!

Pop by tomorrow when I will be opening sign-ups for the secret monkey swap! See you then! *wave*

Bugger! Not a lot of crafting to report I'm afraid I've been busy doing other things this week. Entertaining my Dad while he fitted some new stuff in the utility room (still lots to do in there so no finished photo yet I'm afraid!). Picking up the new 'family car'. It's soooooo big and shiny and lovely! Trips to the tip with old cupboards in the nice big car. Hmmmm.....and generally not doing anything from my epic list. Whoooops! I did make us some new coasters. I found some lovely thick felt that I bought about a million years ago and completely forgot I had. Nothing fancy, I just cut out some nice big circles and let J choose which colours he wanted for the computer desk coaster (he picked the green!). The rest will be scattered around the living room to replace the ones that have gone all bubbley.

I've been doing a little cross-stitching. A robot rainbow which will have Bunny's real name across them. I'm going to wait until it's finished before I show you those! OOOO! speaking of things for the baby's room....I have totally forgotten to show you the gorgeous print I bought. Bunny has no chance really - she's going to be a nerd! I found it on etsy after I saw it on a blog somewhere (I forget which one) and knew I had to get it! It's from Strawberryluna - Allison does all her own designing and screen printing and I found it very hard just to buy the one print!

Now, I've been thinking....(don't all faint!).....I've been thinking about organising another swap. A monkey themed swap.....who doesn't like monkeys? What do you reckon? Think you'll be interested in making something monkey themed? I thought it could be a secret swap to add the element of surprise.....?! I'll leave that thought with you and if enough people show interest then I'll do an official sign up at the start of next week.

If you can't wait till then for a little excitement in your life you can always pop over to Emma's blog, leave her a lovely comment and be in with a chance of winning her gorgeous bag giveaway. She's celebrating her 1st year Blog anniversary! Congratulations Emma! PS. please can I win?? ;)

Blimey! This week seems to be flying by in a flash (quite fitting really as first thing there was a big thunder storm!). I've not had much time to sew things between tidying, sorting, jam making, tip trips, etc. Still have plenty of things to clear out of the utility room before my dad arrives tomorrow so I should really crack on with that. Oh! I do have one small piece of news.....you can now follow my ramblings of twitter! TWEET TWEET!

I gave in and signed up today. I'll investigate it more over the weekend and work out how to get my twitterings on the blog! AND I promise I'll get some crafting done soon!

Hello everyone! Today has been full of excitement....well, okay, it hasn't but it might of! We had planned a nice shopping and lunch date in Bham today but when the boiler didn't fire so we could have nice warm showers this morning I had to phone the gas people to come and sort it out for the third time this week. They said they'd have an engineer here between 12 and 6pm.....He came at 2pm and seemed a bit more competent than the last one, but after 45 minutes he couldn't really find anything wrong with it so replaced some switch checked the gas flow and left us to it. Somehow it always behaves when an engineer comes out. Pesky boiler! While we were waiting I managed to patch up our big blue duvet cover (forgot to take photos!) that the cats had put a few holes in while pouncing on our feet. Also took a few photos of new stuff I've made over the past few weeks.

I made a pincushion version of the smiley sunflower and I think it turned out really well! 

Our lovely cactus is flowering and looking very pretty at the minute - it may have to have a pincushion made in its honor! The flowers are a nice bright yellow but you can't really see that in this photo.

We did manage a little trip into Bham so I could get a couple more maternity tops as I'm expanding beyond all my normal clothes now. I also made the mistake of going into the big bookshop and couldn't resist these two books.....The cute knits book has some fantastic sock recipes that Bunny is just going to have to have made! They may also be appearing as Christmas presents for various little people we know!

Tomorrow I'll not get any sewing time as we're off to J's parents for a nice Easter lunch. I still have another week off so will hopefully get lots more completed from my epic list before my Dad arrives Thursday to re-fit the utility room! It's going to be our utility/laundry/craft storage area!

These ones are European hazard symbols for chemicals. Two can definitely be found on items around the home! Harmful and Flammable, I doubt many people will have anything labelled with a radioactive symbol....at least I hope you won't! Go have a route around your cupboards today and see how many different warnings you can find.

New hazard symbol brooches!

Hazard symbols are easily recognizable symbols designed to warn about hazardous materials or locations. The use of hazard symbols is often regulated by law and directed by standards organizations. Hazard symbols may appear with different colors, backgrounds, borders and supplemental information in order to signify the type of hazard.

Here we go! A flower brooch which is much more to my taste/style! I think I really only enjoy making brooches if I can sew a cute little face on them! This is a prototype Smiley Sunflower and I think he's turned out just fine! Watch out next week for him appearing in my shop! He might even have to top off a new pincushion.

Today the postman knocked on the door at 7:45am! Our first lie-in of our few days off together. I was all ready to huff and puff until I saw what he had in his hand and who it was from! It was a square box that had travelled all the way across the big pond....... and in it was a giveaway prize from the lovely Pang!

Mr Pickles and me (looking a bit tired!)

I was secretly hoping it was going to be one of Pang's giant pickles. They are just so cute. Pang has her own blog where you can see what other lovely cuteness she's been making and an etsy shop too! Why not pay her a visit and say hi!

FINAL DAY OF MY ETSY BIRTHDAY SALE - 25% OFF EVERYTHING IN MY SHOP!!!!!!