It’s beginning too-whoo feel a lot like Christmas…
Radio4 wheezes into life just after six this morning and as usual, I lie there and let the programme wash over me without fully listening or actually getting up. When ‘On Your Farm’ starts, half an hour later, with the opening line ‘“Wols” is an old english word for rolling hills, and it’s to Yorkshire’s Wols that we’re going to today 
to visit a 600-acre arable farm with 2,000 hens producing blah blah blah blah’, I spring into life. Wols! As well as being an old english word for ‘rolling hills’, it’s also an anagram of ‘owls’ and that’s what I’m crafting today! When the presenter continues, explaining he is setting off from his home in the Cotswols to visit this poultry farm, I realise my mistake. Cotswolds. WOLDS not wols. Clothears, as my mother used to say…
Anywhoo. It gets me up to finish project (from the pattern by the very talented moonstitches) that makes
- a colourful and pretty festive banner
- lovely ‘put it together yourself’ present kit wot can teach a bit of french too and
- a making good on a promise to make things for other people
- an owlendar of projects past and future
First three features were deliberate, the fourth comes to me as kitchen table turns into production line of owl bodies, breasts, beaks and somewhat tedious 20 owly button eyes.
This strigine [Stri”gine\, a. (Zo[“o]l.) Of or pertaining to owls; owl-like] string of scraps references crafting and thrifting projects of the last couple of years, including a fantastically random find by my husband. He was working in a studio where Sony was filming an advert for some new product or other, and the bin was overflowing with offcuts of this gold glitter fabric so he helped ‘take the rubbish out’. Hehe. Thanks. That’ll do for the star!
The black wool scraps come from a belted jacket (Vogue 8436) with HUGE puff sleeves – a shoplifter’s delight ←JOKE –
which is a piece of duff to construct and always gets comments when worn. From 2008.
The yellow canvas scraps are from the 2009 tulip skirt and another moonstitches pattern, the owl pincushion.
Green flowers – a boot fair find from August 2009, which I’m still puzzling over, as it’s heavy curtain fabric but quite summery in its exuberance, I think.
Red and white trees – a Brussels flea market find from September 2009. And finally, some scraps leftover from the recent culottes of brown lightweight denim.
The heavyweight denim scraps come from the sunray skirt – from pre-blogging sewing in 2008 – that I’ll be repeating this year. Actually an A-line skirt in disguise – therefore easy to construct – and another commenter. 
It was a lovely trip down Memory Lane and good to get to grips with some long term stash residents that I can’t work out what to do with. Why not make some owls yourself?
MHS – this one’s for u-whoo.
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