More memories

Here they are from the front. So pretty.

Memories

I've been quiet for a while!! That doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I have!! Just no finished projects to report on.

A friend in Amsterdam asked for photos of her friend's families for Christmas this year. I had a couple of small kits by Kay & Co that I bought a couple of years ago and hadn't had an opportunity to use and thought they would make the presentation of the photos so much nicer. So I spent a very happy 3 hours yesterday afternoon putting together a photo frame and a memory book.

I am really pleased with the finished results. And the small memory book did just as it says...made me remember some very happy times.

Baby Koala

I finished knitting baby koala yesterday. He's incredibly cute and should be attached to Mummy Koala's back. However, a few of us decided we prefer him as he is!!

I used the pattern from World of Knitted Toys by Kath Dalmeny for Baby Koala and Knitted Wild Animals by Sarah Keen for Mum.

Notelets Version 2

I worked very hard yesterday, into very late evening, producing, what I think, is a workable version of a gift set of notelets.

I printed both sides of card with different views of Gloucester to make a box and wallet. This saved a lot of time, which I need to do if this is going to sell.

The notelets were made by mounting an image of the postcard onto black card and then onto a card. I think they look very effective and would also sell singularly.

The final job was to print up some posters for my husband's shop.

And finally...

After a couple of months, I have finished knitting the cow which is a Christmas present for my daughter-in-law.

She was a great deal of work, but once I started to put her together I was thrilled.

She is from a book called Knitted Farm Animals by Sarah Keen. I've knitted her in a standard double knitting wool. She has horns and even a tail!!

My next project is smaller. I am going to knit a baby koala to go with the big one I made a few weeks ago. The I want to make 2 small teddies.

Verbs

I am feeling a tad distressed after spending the past 2 days studying verbs.

Yesterday, I tackled a very big unit of work, which might have been a mistake. It covered the infinitive form, the verb "to be", conjugation and past tense regular and irregular. Fine so far!!

Present participles and past participles seemed to be okay at the time. Auxiliary verbs and modal verb...again okay at the time but I will need to learn the 11 modal verbs. Then transitive and intransitive verbs. Which is where I began to struggle a bit (understatement).

I was quite apprehensive today. The topic was "Verbs that are not verbs" and was divided up into gerunds, participles and infinitives.

Okay so far. I passed all of the quizzes and I think my lowest grade was 95%.

Then I got to the final review. I was given 4 long sentences that made up a passage. I was then given a series of things to identify in the passage in the order they appeared in like gerunds, auxiliary verbs, present participles, past participles, intransitive verbs and transitive verbs.

I really, really struggled to the point of a big worry that I just won't be able to do this. The sentences bore no resemblance at all to the practice sentences we had been shown before. There was just too big a leap from simple to "well, this is what it's really like folks". Okay, I got 80% (pass grade 75%), but I was not happy with that and redid the test twice more to get it up to a respectable 95%. It was ridiculously hard and I felt ridiculously stupid and wondering if I am just too old to be taking something like this on.

I went onto the student forum afterwards and read that a lot of the other students had struggled on this section to. One of the girls, who had obviously studied English, said that the rules we had been given for transitive and intransitive verbs were far too simple. She gave some extra rules and hints for being able to recognise them which I will write down in my notebook when I feel less frustrated.

So, in the next few days I will be buying a grammar book which I will have by my side.

Rant over!

(By the way, my average grades so far are Nouns - 100% and Verbs - 98%)

Notelet Holder

I mentioned before that I had an idea for using the postcard images that we have, and that is making notelets to sell alongside the calendar that my husband wants to produce.

Making the notelets will be easy (if a little time consuming to start with) once I know which images of Gloucester have been chosen. I was thinking along the lines of a box or gift bag for putting the notelets in. Then a chance 5 minute glance at the TV yesterday gave me a eureka moment. I would make a display book that opens up to the notelets stored on the left, and the envelopes stored on the right. A photo will explain this better than I ever can verbally.

I made the book out of 2 pieces of white A4 card overlapped in the centre. I then created a backing paper using one of the images and tiling it. This was then layered onto cream card and stuck on the front and the 2 inside pages. The card and envelope holders were then made from further pieces of card and needed scoring, cutting and sticking.

It took about 90 minutes to design and make this first holder, which will just not be feasible if I want to make money from these. So, in the 2nd attempt, I will print the images straight on to the card on both sides, and that will just leave the wallets to construct.

Watch this space.