Pancakes, Pomegranates and Puppets ...

We made some pancakes/crepes this morning. I didn't get round to taking a photo the last time we made them, so here's one now! We used a recipe from Delia Smith's book and they always turn out pretty good - very yummy with some sugar, lemon and maple syrup - mmmm!

This pomegranate on the kitchen table was just begging to be photographed too. I thought the colours of the lemon beside it looked really nice too (inspiration for something or just plain pretty!):

We woke up to a beautiful, sunny, wintry morning too, with that lovely light you get at this time of year so I rushed out and took a few pics, but I'll just post one or you'll get bored of my landscape photography! This is the view of the moor a few yards up from our home - beautiful in the right light, but pretty bleak in the wind and the rain!

The colours actually reminded me of some swatches of tweed I've had on my desk for the last couple of months. I've been meaning to get more of these shades but haven't got round to it yet. I love the way that Harris Tweed reflects the colours of the landscape.

Ah, yes - puppets. I mentioned in my last post that I had been making hand puppets. I had been asked if I would be interested in showing some schoolchildren how to make puppets. Initially I guessed this would be with young children so set to designing something a child could make easily with some minimal adult supervision. I'm not going to set this out as a tutorial but just a simple project idea to do with a young child.

I started out by drawing a simple teddy-bear shape on an A4 piece of paper. After the first attempt, I realised that the arms had to be oustretched to accommodate the shape of an outstretched hand - the pinky finger and thumb will go into each arm (pretty obvious probably, but it took my seven year old boy to demonstrate this to me as he modeled the first attempt!!). I made the puppet out of felt for ease of use.

I think the photo is pretty much the shape of the A4 sheet to give you an idea of the dimensions of the shape. Once you have this basic shape of pattern you can adapt it to different variations:

Once you've decided on your pattern, simply cut out the shape (Im sorry I don't have a PDF version or pattern for this but I think you can see the basic dimensions on the A4 sheet) and draw around it on a double thickness of felt fabric. You can then simply handstitch about 0.75 cm in from the edge all around the shape. This doesn't take long and you could do it on a sewing machine for even more speed. I used simple running stitch which a child could attempt if patient enough! (You don't have to turn it inside out or anything, just use matching thread).

There's lots of scope for creativity with this and lots of yummy surface decoration ideas you could use - felt, sequins, buttons, ribbon, just about anything - so go to town with it! As long as you use the basic outstretched arms pattern shape, there are countless possibilities with head shape, design - and it only took half an hour to get going with it. Voila!! One for a rainy day, I think!

Later ..... S. decorated a white felt glove puppet we'd made, adapted to a human shape. He was a bit lazy and simply drew his design with pen (I think that's tight underpants he's wearing!!). I loved they way he draw the mouth from one ear to the other! You can see how we stitiched around the shape. I wish I could draw in this fashion - I'll have to start paying him soon!

Hee Hee!