Hope & Chances charity kit - June 2020

I loved June's 'Hope and Chances' charity kit on first sight - partly for the design, but also as it's sold for profits to go to Hedgehog Rescue! Sorry folks, it's sold out - but here's my very slightly tweaked version:

I followed the instructions almost to the letter. Although the 'window box' can be 3-D, I did chop the sides, which made it stand proud, right down - as a given option, to lie flat for posting. Perhaps it should have been left folded and the recipient could have opened it out - duh! My Ziggy green on the ivy die cut might be brighter than Christine's .......... and I also ended up with an additional flower in my kit (waste not, want not). Oh, and I 'Stella Winked' the ivy as well as the flowers. Apart from all that, it's the same - snigger.

Many thanks to all who left comments about the no-line 'fade out' ink. It's clear that I need to be patient, use softer watercolours (which I had sort of concluded) and also concentrate more on shading. Don't hold your breath though - it sometimes takes me a while to get over a disappointment and have another try!

This and that

Firstly - when I logged onto Blogger to do this posting, a little pop-up balloon appeared saying that 'the Blogger interface has been improved and I could try it out now'. Trust me, I clicked on the cross to say 'No thank you' faster than you could say knife! Any changes to Blogger worry me, given recent problems so many of us had. It'd a bit like volunteering to try out a parachute packers first attempt!

Secondly, Spike and friends are definitely fattening up for hibernation - they're getting through a lot of hedgie food. My OH found a big unopened bag of cashew nuts, bought in Thailand, in a cupboard recently. The nuts are unsalted and I buy supplies whenever we're over in 'The Land of Smiles' as they're huge nuts and so reasonably priced. Great idea I said, now the hedgies are woofing them down as a tasty addition to their normal food. Sheesh, I looked at the prices of unsalted and much smaller cashew nuts in our local supermarket the other day! That spikey group are going to have to form a Boy Band or something if I have to start buying more stocks.

Thirdly, after my miserable WOYWW kick-off yesterday morning, my OH arrived home after 'being out to play' for a lot of the day with another rescued poppy:

It's pure poppy red in real life and just gorgeous - what a lovely way to lift one's spirits :) I think this might be his last rescue mission as the earth clearing is going to happen very soon.

My friend Sarn made me laugh yesterday when I seemed to be in the doldrums by calling me Grumpy Knickers, another sweet blogger referred to my 'poopy day' Thank you all for your great comments, rude or not, my day was lightened immensely! (I think that 'immensely' is today's big word).


I plan to begin making a special birthday card before trotting off this afternoon to a friend's to do some crafting. Today I'll be taking my MS Punch Around The Page sets as I promised to show her how to punch some backgrounds for her stash. And I'll be showing her the trick posted about by Bernie on her blog, the video tutorial for which can be found here, by Becca of Amazing Paper Grace, showing that you can punch squares and rectangles using just straight fancy edges without needing a corner punch! I'm all in favour of linking back to an actual tutorial rather than just repeating the steps here so do go and see, it's really worth a look and is a very neat trick!

Have a great day, whatever you're doing  :)

Di
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Some of us are bristling with indignation - big time!

Me first - having spent ALL yesterday afternoon checking out our combined house and travel insurance policy out and doing comparisons with other providers, we're leaking money here! Our insurers are about to have a severe talking to today (once I put my big girl's pants on) and we'll be taking our business elsewhere. We seem to be paying enough to cover the gold bullion in Fort Knox and white water rafting holidays at the very least! Humpfffff, not funny - especially as I had no time at all to work on a get well card I'm making......to be honest that irks me more than the ridiculous insurance rip-off!!

But worse than that, on Sunday evening we forgot to take off the upturned pot that we cover Spike's dinner with in the daytime . Well, I remembered it at about 11pm and the cameras showed him pacing round it, also truly bristling with indignation at 10pm - it's a shame the images are a bit grainy else I could show you! If only he'd come in on stilts at 'burglar's face level' than we'd get some really good 'mug shots' for your entertainment. Thankfully he realised that 'you just can't get the staff' and returned along with a pal later on, so we're forgiven.

Why do we cover his dinner pot during the day? Well, the food is dry food and one Walter Pigeon (a semi-tame wood pigeon) has discovered it as a great source of sustenance (today's big word). My first job of the day is to nip out as early as possible once it's daylight to cover the pot otherwise he's like a pig in a trough gobbling it down like a bird possessed. Even when I cover the wretched bowl he then sits and sulks on a nearby roof!

But, things aren't all bad, today I'm ordering this stamp from Quixotic Paperie - as a follow on from yesterday's post about Misty the Curious Cat and our fence:

 The lovely Bernie sent me a link yesterday morning and I've tracked the stamp down on this side of the pond. So cute, thanks Bernie for the laugh!!!

Thanks so much for all your lovely comments - I appreciate them very much! With luck I should have a card of my own to post on here shortly :)

Di
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Hedgehog update and a hedgie card

Update first - we have two, if not three, hedgies visiting and having dinner almost every night.. After the sad fate of Harriet a couple of weeks ago this is such good news. From what the CCTV picks up we think it's a large adult and two smaller ones - the smaller ones sometimes feed together, jostling for space at the feeding bowl but the large hedgie tootles along for dinner alone (and in peace?). Occasionally they all stay cosied up and don't come out to play if it's raining during the night - perhaps I should run up some little plastic rain coats for them?

To celebrate I made this card yesterday - in between WOYWW blog hopping:

I'm not sure who the image is made by - I swopped some images with 'Karen from Kent' a while back and this was one of the ones she sent. On the subject of Karen, I emailed her a little while back and she hasn't replied - also her blog What's This Then?? hasn't been updated since 3rd May so I hope everything is OK, maybe some of you also know her? It's unusual for her to be so silent and the lack of activity on her blog is what's worrying.

Back to the image, I love the way it sort of tells a tale of a baby hedgie pondering, then having a Eureka moment, then giving his Mum a flower - and finally I like to think he's been popped into the plant pot along with the flower to keep him out of mischief! The image was coloured with Pro Markers of course.

The mauve card is from my snippets, backing paper is from a Pink Petticoat pack called Wild Blossoms Collection (free with Quick Cards Made Easy), the pink strip came from my snippets too. It's the plain reverse of a patterned piece of card which was just the right shade of pink, edged using a MS punch then embossed with a CB edge embossing folder. The ribbon is from my stash, along with the pearls and the Craftwork Cards sentiment.

I think this card might well be sent to the Wildlife Sanctuary where they tried to save Harriet - they deserve a little smile!

Almost forgot, I'm entering this into Jules' Crafty Snippet Challenge - Week 29 - but it's a very slow process getting those snippets to look any less in their folder :(

I'm off now to pack and post more of those Pro Marker nibs - and yippee, after a dull start the sun is shining!

Di
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A mission of mercy takes priority

Yesterday was WOYWW. Everything going well, I'd ducked out of going to archery, posted about my desk, done a lot of blog hopping and had just settled down to what I planned to be an afternoon of crafting interspersed with more visits to WOYWW crafters. All was well with the World and the dominoes were all nicely lined up for a restful afternoon.

And then, one little nudge from this cutie and all the dominoes toppled over:

I had spotted this hedgie on Tuesday as I came home from shopping but by the time I had a chance to park my car and go back to check again it had toddled off. Not so yesterday, it was wandering forlornly around a neighbours driveway looking like it had had a night out on the tiles. Auntie Di trotted over wearing gardening gloves and scooped the little critter up. Above it's curled up in my medical assistant's hand and below was an attempt to coax it to drink:

It did lap a bit of water but was plainly exhausted, visibly shaking like a leaf and looked in danger of collapsing into the dish of water. I phoned our nearest wildlife sanctuary and after some discussion it was a case of 'Here we go again'! In the past we've rescued two other hedgies plus a couple of birds and taken them to the sanctuary and this was another such case. Sometimes birds and animals (and even a field mouse which we nursed through one Winter and then released in the Spring) will recover without us needing to troll off to the sanctuary but this prickly friend was beyond just some food and water.

Then the adventure began - the sanctuary had moved so we let the sat. nav guide us. Muggins I was driving and we must have been down every narrow lane the sat. nav could find within a 20 mile radius and passed every chocolate box thatched cottage it could find. Just as well we took my little car as much of the journey was via single track lanes with barely room to pass other vehicles! At one point the lanes were like green tunnels, completely covered with leafy green trees joined at the top so my OH rightly suggested I put the car lights on, as much to be seen by the mad locals whizzing at us from the opposite direction. I did have a little giggle at that point as I half expected him to roll down the window, reach behind the seat and stick a flashing blue light on the car roof! Eventually we arrived in one piece and kind of tumbled out of the car in a state of shock after the harrowing route we'd followed.

The staff at the sanctuary are fantastic and quickly took the situation in hand. The hedgie is a female, which I immediately christened Harriet, she is badly underweight and very de-hydrated. Externally she looks OK although her teeth aren't good apparently which could be part of the problem. She was totally happy to be checked over before being 'admitted' and this is her in one of the lovely young volunteers hands:

After signing all the paperwork and leaving more than enough to cover her for board and lodgings as a donation we set off for home again. And blow me, despite every effort to thwart the sat. nav., we found another set of scary narrow lanes! I tell you, there was a much needed glass of wine while we sat in the garden to recover before dinner.

So that was the afternoon totally gone. Hopefully Harriet will recover well and despite the teeth problem should have a good life. A lot of hedgies in this state, limbs missing or other infirmities, are released into the gardens of people who live in a safe environment with totally enclosed gardens, such as walled gardens, for them to happily set up home, have hedgie houses for hibernation and of course to be given water and the right food. In Harriet's case it's likely to be meat-based cat food or soft hedgehog food - left in the wild alone she would not have survived.

Di
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A quick wildlife update

Right now, at Pixie Towers, Spike is coming to feed every night. Either it's a very pregnant Mrs Spike or we need to put him/her on a diet! I loaded us up with food for Spike and the birdies yesterday and my OH was so shocked at the bill he pinned it to the bird table! It fluttered there for half an hour before he relented and took it down as it was frightening the hungry little feathered friends away.

Then, yesterday afternoon, there was a flurry of activity and we seemed to be surrounded by house martins in the sky above. At least one pair have already begun building a nest under the eaves of a house nearby. They twitter away all the time and it's almost as if Mrs Martin is saying 'left a bit with that dear' as they both fly constantly to and fro building away. My beloved has now filled an old tray with wet mud at the top of our garden just in case they need their very own B & Q on the doorstep. What is he like?! :)

I'm off to the long awaited school reunion today, back later on Monday, normal service will resume ASAP. It's so hot here that I'll be transporting those 200 packets of chocolate mints in cool bags. Hmmmm, there could well be some 'wild life' at this reunion. Didn't tell you it was a co-ed boarding school...... and it can be amusing to see 'ladies of a certain age' fluttering their eyelashes at heart throbs from their teenage years.

Have a great weekend!

Di
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Hedgypogs update

Just a quick update to say that Spike, often with A.N. Other, calls by each night at round about midnight to 2am onwards......err, and leaving their little 'calling cards' of course. Last night I was putting something in the recycling bin - scraps of paper from my craft room needless to say :) at 10pm and there was a gorgeous little face peeking at me over the top of the bowl of hedgehog food. An early date!

I stood totally still but after a few moments he decided that he didn't like being watched while he ate (who does!!) and tootled off round the back of the garden shed. Then, I spotted what I like to think was his 'date', just by the rhubarb patch, hopefully keeping any slugs at bay. Of course, she could have been just powdering her nose nose before joining Spike at the dining table for a proper dinner :))

There was no time to go fetch my camera and I didn't want to scare them away but babies tend to be less shy, so perhaps if there are any youngsters later on I might hit lucky. Baby hedgehogs have absolutely no table manners and will happily paddle round in the feeding bowl oblivious of what's going on around them so I've been lucky in the past :)


Di
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Just wondering.........

.........will I be making a congratulations card sometime soon using this gorgeous Penny Black stamp?

My OH woke me at 2am this morning. The security light in the back garden had been triggered and there was a noisy little party in progress! Spike the hedgehog had brought his lady friend to dinner and......ahem, it seemed rude to peek out of the bedroom window! Our CCTV had picked up the party as well to prove we weren't just dreaming :) So, there just might be the patter of little feet attached to small prickly bundles of cuteness in about four weeks time. Fingers crossed here!

Di

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Guess who's coming out to play each night.....Spike!

This isn't my photo (I got it from the internet) but it's one of his rellies:


I love 'hedgy-pogs' and most years we have some in the garden, their courtship is VERY noisy....definitely where the hog bit of their name comes from :)  'Spike' returned about a week ago and each night he (or is it she?) comes to feed (special hedgehog food) and drink (water, not Chablis!) between about 10pm and the early hours.

We've rescued a couple over time - one was obviously unwell as it was wandering during daylight in a bad way (snuggled up on the coir front door mat!) and the other was a really under weight baby when Winter was setting in. We took them to a local wild life sanctuary and both did survive and were returned to the wild. They are just such lovely little creatures and very entertaining to watch - bless! No wonder I love Penny Black's hedgehog stamps so much :)

The Ribbon Girl have some yummy stash once again, the link is on my sidebar - go see! Red, white and blue - just in time for the Royal Wedding :))
Di
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