Ernie the Book Cat

Ernie the Book Cat loves nothing more than curling up infront of the fire with a good book. He visits the library every Tuesday to pick up something new. His favourite kind of books are stories of far-away lands and people from different cultures. He has just been to the library and is now walking home with his latest book stuffed into his bag. The trouble is that he lives alone and he can get quite lonely. If you love books and cats maybe you could invite him to live with you. You can contact him via my etsy shop.

Animal - Mark II

You might remember back in October I made an amigurumi animal for a drummer friend of mine. Well last month, after seeing some pictures I'd put up on ravelry of animal, Isabella of MyNameisNotKing asked me to consider making her an animal. I thought about it and sent her a quote which she seemed happy with and we came up with a deal. He needs to be ready for the middle of February. I've been working on him today and he's coming to life! This post is especially for Isabella so she can see how he's coming on!

Exciting times...

Exciting times! On Saturday I made my first real etsy sale - until then all my sales had been to family members which kinda doesn't count. And more exciting news - I joined the etsy plush team.

Today's excitment was going to the sewing shop and stocking up on wool. As you can see by the labels on these balls of wool there isn't much choice when it comes to different brands of wool here in Mostar - pretty much there is just the one brand! Nakolen. The shop I go to is called Vez. It's a good little shop - but there just isn't the stuff available here that you can get in the UK or USA. I get my safety eyes from Enamieyes on etsy. The eyelash yarn that I use for fluffy jumpers and hair gets sent to me from the UK by my Mum.

Polyfibre stuffing seems to be impossible to get hold of here so I have to get people to send it to me from UK. When I first started to make amigurumis I realised that I needed to buy some stuffing. Not being fluent in the language yet, I didn't know the word for stuffing so I looked it up in the dictionary, walked up the road to Vez and asked the shop keeper 'Imate li nadjev?' He looked at me very strangely so I started to explain it was white stuff to make dolls. He laughed and said 'ok so do you mean this?' and showed me a bag of chopped up bits of foam. I explained that I really wanted white fluffy stuff but he said that was the only stuffing they sold. Anyway, turns out I had asked him for the kind of stuffing you put inside a chicken and not the kind you put inside dolls!

Sunshine at Christmas

It's pouring with rain today and I would really love to see a bit of sunshine! A few years ago we spent Christmas in Cape Town with Matt's brother and family. It was sooo nice to go from rainy cold England to the sunshine of Cape Town - and even nicer to see our family who we hadn't seen for a long time.

Tomorrow they are coming from Cape Town (via visiting family in UK) to visit us here in Mostar and this time we haven't seen them for an even longer time - nearly 2 1/2 years! I can't believe we're actually going to see them :) so exciting - and now there's 4 of them - last time we saw them there was only 3. So they are swapping the chance of sunshine at Christmas to come and visit family on the other side of the globe.

And while they are here, my sister has gone with her husband to visit friends in Cape Town and is sending me texts like 'sunbathing, just been swimming in the pool...' so someone in our family is enjoying sunshine at Christmas. What a well travelled family we are!


This is Lulu. She also loves sunshine at Christmas and sea and sand. She's been surfing since she could stand and has won lots of competitions. She loves it when she beats the guys. She's just picked herself some hibisucs flowers and made herself a lei to welcome the new year in. She is available in my etsy shop.