STOP PRESS!! BADGERZILLA UPDATE!!

The national press may have gone quiet on the Badgerocalypse front but they have missed out on today's important development - we now have an artists impression of the attack of the 50ft badgerzilla from hell which may or may not also be a zombie:

THE HORROR!!!!
 

Thanks to our artist-on-the-scene Little Black Heart for this hard-hitting reportage. We can only imagine the atrocities she must have witnessed in the pursuit of the truth.

You can see more of Little Black Heart's awesome work here and follow her on Facebook here

Don't have nightmares, now.

SAVE YOURSELVES! IT'S THE BADGEROCALYPSE!

I'm not going to beat around the bush. Yesterday, the best headline in the history of the printed word burst forth onto the world. I give you:

BADGERGATE!!! (click for original - hilarious - article)

Now, already this is the most brilliant thing I've read in ages. But what makes it even more fantastic is that this is happening AT MY OLD SCHOOL.

Fame at last! I'm a bit jealous, if I'm honest; in my time there we had absolutely no giant wildlife scares. This is literally the most exciting thing to happen at that school since the whole Sixth Form got suspended in leavers week 1997 for drawing massive cocks on the school field with bleach.

Terrified schoolgirls are apparently being held hostage by this Godzilla of the badger world:

"On one occasion it was spotted underneath one of the mobile classrooms and the pupils were told to close the window and not to leave until it was safe."

 If they are the same mobiles that were there when I was, their flimsy walls will provide little protection against an attack-badger, especially this one who, we must presume, shares the size and bloodlust of a rabid grizzly bear on acid.

Angry badger. He will CUT you, yo.

This morning, it's gone viral. Even the Daily Mail is covering the story. I haven't actually read their take, for fear of catching Nazi, but I assume they are going with the angle that this is an immigrant gay badger intent on stealing our jobs and giving us all cancer. Who also killed Princess Di.

Sadly, I have it on good authority that this is not actually a hitherto undiscovered Giant Badger species, nor a mutant badger that has grown to the size of a small car after ingesting radioactive fish washed down the coast from Dungeness B power station. My sister is a pupil at the school (yes, I do feel old), and she reported first hand, with the practiced pragmatism of the 16 year old proto-goth:

We'd never need a DNA test to prove we were related...

 So it seems that it is, in fact, just a normal sized badger, but the average teenaged girl thinks that badgers should be the size of hamsters. I sympathise with the confusion, really, as for years I was convinced that puffins were at least as big as emperor penguins. I'm still slightly disappointed at how small they actually are.

This is clearly an ENORMOUS GIANT MAN. (photo from bbc.co.uk)

The final line of the original article gives me hope, however, that Badgergate may yet take a dramatic turn. Check out how curt the school have been with their official statement.

"A spokesman for the Folkestone School for Girls said there was no problem with badgers at the school and that they had no comment to make."

Methinks they protest too much. It's a badger CONSPIRACY, people!

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I don't have any badgers in my shop. But I do have foxes. See what I did there, woodland animal fans?

Click the picture to visit www.lemurlady.co.uk and buy my stuff. No angry badgers.

The further adventures of Flat Stanley and his tragic almost-demise.

Those who have been following this blog for a while, or who have maybe just been putting very odd search terms into Google, may be familiar with Flat Stanley, the result of my first (and so far only), foray into the art of taxidermy. Stanley was an ex-guinea pig, who had been humanely sourced and who I raised from the choir invisible under the expert tuition of Amanda from www.amandasautopsies.com/.

Flat Stanley, as his name suggests, did not turn out to be the most handsome of specimens, but a little Phantom of the Opera costume both hid his disfigurements and gave him a jaunty air. (Original blog post here....)

Since then, Flat Stanley has been happily housed in a glass case (um, ok, it's actually a giant sweetie jar. But we took the labels off and washed out all traces of sherbert lemons), on the mantelpiece. His fame has been such he and his jar have even been on stage:

He was such a diva.

Then, last night, something TERRIBLE happened.

We came home to a scene of devastation. Flat Stanley's sweetie jar, with Flat Stanley helpless within it, had fallen off the mantelpiece. Glass was everywhere. As for Stanley...well. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. Doug the cat (for we know it must have been him, his sister is far too thick to work out how to extricate a stuffed rodent from a jar), had no intentions of letting Stanley rest in peace. This conversation occured:

LL: What is that? Is that, like, a dead bird or somethingOHMYGODITSFLATSTANLEY!!!
SO: Don't look. Oh God. Don't look.
LL: He...he....he has no hands!
SO: Nope. Or feet.
LL: And his FACE! Doug has eaten HIS FACE!!! What is WRONG with that cat? He's a psychopath!
SO: At least Doug didn't hurt himself on the glass or anything while he was carrying out his abominations.
LL: Yeah. I wouldn't have wanted to explain that to the vet.

SO thought that the cats had knocked the jar off the mantelpiece. I maintained that Stanley had been up there since last September and they'd never knocked it down before. BUT I don't think it is any coincidence that this happened very shortly after the arrival of Super Rat (who I think might have evil kinetic powers. SO says I have been watching too many films). Our mantelpiece became a lineup of suspects:

The skull is plaster of paris. I promise.

Whether he fell or was pushed, Flat Stanley had gone from being a slightly odd but kind of adorable ornament to a TERRIFYING FACELESS ZOMBIE RODENT that I couldn't have in the house any longer. I wanted to throw it out, but SO was all "no, I can save him and make him less like the stuff of nightmares". I was off out for the evening, so I gave SO an ultimatum - by the time I got back, the Thing that used to be Flat Stanley either had to be buried at a crossroads or somehow made into something that I could bear having under my roof and that wouldn't rise in the night and kill us all.

While I was out, this text conversation occured:

SO: Flat Stanley looks like a burns victim. in his bandages.
LL: Are you trying to make him into a mummy?
SO: i might have to age his wrappings with tea bags.
LL: I'm not sure if you are a genius. I think you might be. i also think Flat Stanley might be haunted.


So. Long story short. When I got back, this had happened...

IT LIVES!!!!

 If you read this, Significant Otter, thank you. Thank you for fixing my faceless, limbless, possibly haunted dead guinea pig. It's these little things that make a marriage.


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Epilogue: I almost wasn't going to share this last bit, for the sake of everyone. But a problem shared is a problem spread around, so I don't see why I should be the only one holding this hideous information in my head. Shortly after this picture was taken, this occurred:

LL: Where did you get all the cotton wool to reconstruct his feets? We don't have any cotton wool.
SO: Um. I owe you two tampons.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

You're all welcome.

Stuff I did when I wasn't here (with apologies for title nicked from The Bloggess)

While I've been cracking on with keeping the shelves filled at the Emporium, you may have noticed I've been a bit quiet recently (damn, I hear you cry, she's back). This is because I've been beavering away with various other creations in the meantime. So to prove I'm not lazy, here's what I've been up to...

This spring has been frock-coat-ageddon as I've been helping with costumes for various plays at my local haunt the South London Theatre. April saw my most ambitious task yet as I made a tail coat for the character of Branwell Brontë in Polly Teale's Brontë. It helped that a) the director of the play is an all-round sewing ninja herself and chose and cut the pattern, so all I had to do was fit it and sew it together, and b) the character in question was being played by Significant Otter himself, so I had a live-in model to stick with pins.

Still, it was pretty tricky considering I very rarely dabble in clothesmaking. Significant Otter is, basically, shaped like Johnny Bravo, which resulted in lots of extra fitting around the waist and some serious shoulderpad action up top. And I have resolved never to work with velvet again, mostly because of the quite ridonkulous amount of fluff and fuzz it created in my sewing machine, on the floor, in my hair and all over my pyjamas (yes, I sew in my jammies, what?). Turned out rather dashing in the end though, I think:

Picture by Philip Gammon. (NB this was part of the play, not an emergency onstage hem repair. Honest)

Buoyed by this, and while waiting for some fabric to arrive for some custom orders, I decided to have another crack at making something for myself. My sartorial leanings are eclectic but generally err towards the vintage. The problem with genuine vintage patterns, however, is that they can be fiendishly difficult to make and fit - something I don't have the time, patience, or dressmaking experience to be doing with. The joy of bags and purses, you see, is that they don't have to fit actual humans. Give me a complicated buckle fastening or a folded strap and I'm all over it, but ask me to grade a dress pattern and it's tantrums and tears before bedtime.

Enter my saviour: Eliza M (www.elizamvintagesewing.co.uk). The UK-based Eliza M creates patterns based on staple vintage styles that do away with all the complicated stuff and are simple enough for beginners and intermediate sewers to approach without fear.

This was my first experience with an Eliza M pattern but I will be buying many more - I really can't recommend her enough if you have vintage tastes but modern skills (i.e. you are not an actual sewing wizard like Anne on the Great British Sewing Bee. Incidentally, does anyone else think that 75 years of experience is basically cheating? She was like a sewing Yoda).

I chose the 'Pussy Galore Blouse' (stop sniggering at the back), and a cheap, £6.99 a metre cotton lawn from my local haberdashers in a cornflower blue with white swallows (or possibly ducks. or geese? pigeons, maybe).

The pattern itself comes in a clever A4 slip folder which means no more stuffing bits of tissue back into suddenly-too-small envelopes. I was immediately heartened by the final instruction:

Clearly, these are my kind of peoples.

The instructions are for the most part simple and clear, although I had a bit of an argument with the facing on the inside of the neck, which at one point turned into an Escher-like puzzle and I was in danger of creating the worlds first Mobius-blouse. However it resolved itself eventually and I came out the other end with an Actual Thing:

It's got arms and buttons and everything!

The fit is a tiny bit off, but that's more my own inexperience than anything, and I did mess up the collar a bit, but it doesn't show because of the whacking great bow at the front covering a multitude of sins.

All in all it took me a couple of evenings and not all that much swearing at all. I'm now mulling over which of the Eliza M trouser patterns to attempt to complete the outfit.

So if you've been scared off vintage dressmaking because you wouldn't know a princess seam or a pintuck if it smacked you in the face, fear not! Eliza M is there for you. Go for it, my sewing paduans!

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In other news.....this is the fabric I was waiting for. Yup, they now make Star Trek fabric. Bow down in awe.

The middle one is currently available as a made-to-order phone cover , but if you have a burning desire for a Star Trek/Star Wars purse, Kindle cover, bag, teacosy (maybe not the teacosy), then head on over to  https://www.facebook.com/lemurlady and get in touch.

The Massive Patriotic Stripey Crafting Insect

Not a sewing bee.

Hands up who watched the first episode of 'The Great British Sewing Bee' last night?

Keep your hands up if you started watching with the intention of going "pffft, I could do that". Quite a few of you? Yeah, me too.

Now keep your hands up if you still thought that after the first round of judging? Yeah. Not so tough now, are we?

The challenges sounded pretty simple - make an A-line skirt from a pattern, alter a neckline, fit a dress. But that was before the scariest HE teacher in the world (who looks like she might have swallowed a bee herself), and her sharp suited friend stepped in with their eyes for microscopic detail. Those poor contestants are going to be having nightmares about slightly puckered zips and unbalanced hems for years. I'd have run away, crying, trailing bias tape in my wake within the first half hour.

Also not a sewing bee.

But let's not be downhearted, fellow sewists. Because we all know that what the GBSB contestants face is not a patch on the challenges we face every day of our crafting lives. In order to really give them a fair test of what the real-life home sewist has to cope with, I think they should add the following tasks:

The All-Nighter
Contestants must create a school nativity costume/theatrical prop/fancy dress outfit/party dress from only items they can find in their own house. The challenge will be presented to them at 8.45pm the night before the item is due to be needed. Extra points awarded for sewing quietly and not waking up the house.

Speed Unpicking
Contestants must race to unpick a sleeve from a garment which has been put in upside down. Extra points given for creativity of swearing.

Pin Management
Contestants must tip a box of pins on the floor and attempt to collect every single one within a two minute time limit (the maximum amount of time one realistically has before a barefoot child/spouse/family pet comes in and treads on them all).

Bumblebee does not sew.

Additional Rules

• For maximum realism, contestants are allowed a constant supply of tea (however, any contestant seen finishing a cup, rather than letting half of it go cold, will be disqualified). For the All Nighter challenge, wine may be substituted for tea.

• At irregular intervals, several cats will be released into the studio to walk all over the tables and sit on the ironing boards. 

• And, most importantly, no matter how tight the deadline, contestants must spend at least twenty minutes of every hour procrastinating on Facebook and/or making toast.

 Yeah. That's more like it.

Bear with...

It's been a bit slow going today at Lemur Towers, on account of how earlier this week, this occured:

See how brave zombie lemur tried to call for help by waving his little arms...

This is right above my sewing desk, and luckily didn't happen while I was in there as I would have been buried to death under All The Boardgames in The World. Which would have been humiliating to put on my tombstone.

Luckily, Significant Otter was there to tidy up the immediate aftermath of Shelfgeddon, which involved picking up, among other things: 5,634,579 playing tokens from various games, all the Trivial Pursuit cards, several chess pieces and a 'Make Your Own Morph Out Of Plasticine' kit. Even more luckily, Banana the Bernina was unscathed as the shelf itself created a ski ramp for all the Cluedo counters to whizz over the top of the desk and straight into the cats' bowls on the other side of the room, with spectacular results.

On closer inspection this morning, though, it appeared that the the shelf contents had brought with them a Sahara's worth of accumulated dust, which took an AGE to wipe up, and something surprisingly heavy (possibly a Monopoly Iron, travelling at critical velocity?), has gouged a sizeable dent right in the middle of my cutting table. Which is highly annoying.

Still. I think I'm back in the game now (pun unintended - too soon), and ready to start stitching again. Might just take all the stuff off that shelf underneath first, to be on the safe side....

Where the magic happens

My little sister Ellie is embarrassingly, horribly talented. She's only sixteen and the artwork she creates is already enough to send grown artists slashing their canvases and cutting off their ears in despair. Her Facebook page, where she posts under the moniker 'Paint Dipped Pixie', showcases her emerging talent.

The only consolation I have is that she still has to go to school and do exams. With this is mind she posted the following plea a couple of days ago:

Now, I often see fellow crafters posting pictures of their studios online and they are generally airy, beautiful, co-ordinated spaces, with complex and attractive fabric storage systems, inspirational art on the walls and handmade angora throws on the ergonomic furniture. The sort of place, in short, where a creative soul might waft about, creatively, sipping herbal tea while gazing at the moors out of the window waiting for inspiration to strike.

So I originally wasn't going to make my space public AT ALL. But in the end I felt I owed it to all those crafters - I know you're out there - who divide their working time between Facebooking, searching for your pincushion for the seventeenth time that morning, shooing the cat off the ironing board, desperately trying to find a single clean cup that you haven't already used to put tea in then left somewhere and forgotten about, and occasional short bouts of feverish creativity. We don't normally show off our 'creative spaces'. Often because we can't find them under all the mess. But I'm going to let you peek in to mine, right now. (Not a euphemism).

All of my sewing room can be photographed from the doorway. Thusly:

Note inspirational view of brick wall.

At my feet, where you can't see them, are the cats' bowls. I have the luxury of a cutting table on the right, there, which only has one wobbly leg. Banana the Bernina sits faithfully on an old Ikea desk, while my laptop (for Facebooking and listening to audiobooks), is propped on boxes of fabric.

Come with me, if you will, all the way over to the Other Side of the Room. 

No. I don't know why the air compressor' is there either.
'

EVERYTHING lives on these shelves. Except for what is jammed into the drawers, which is mostly fabric:

My name is Lemur Lady and I have a hoarding problem.

The Fabric Drawers of Joy are my second favourite bit of the room. My favourite is the Accidental Shrine of Inspiration:

OK. Now I realise it looks a bit obsessive and murdery. 

The mantelpiece and the wall above it have sort of acquired lots of handmade bitses and pieceses I have bought or been given from other crafters. The picture at the top is my all-time favourite quote from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, done as a letterpress print. Under that is my FionaT original 'Dawn of the Thread', which makes me smile every time I look at it. Then we have a drawing done by the aforementioned Ellie a few years ago - me as Wonder Woman getting a piggyback from the Wolverine (the Significant Otter's alter-ego). You may also spot another couple of FionaT's (I promise this isn't a stalkers shrine. Honest.), and a Little Black Heart ACEO along with a Quernus Crafts teacup mouse and my wonderful Prince Charming Adam Ant-Mouse.

Also, *cough*, my lanyards from the preview week of the Doctor Who Experience which S.O. took me to for my 30th birthday. It was brilliant. There were daleks and EVERYTHING.

Not pictured:

• Enormous poster of David Tennant looking all brooding in Hamlet, 
• Very precarious shelf barely supporting carrier-bags of half-finished and forgotten projects
• Slightly OCD arrangement of hooks above desk holding scissors and other Important Things so I don't spend hours looking for them every day
• Three half-drunk mugs of tea
• Cat litter tray
• Cat

So. I hope that wasn't too disappointing, Ellie. One day I will have a grown up studio with big sweeping tables and those slanty desks that you can stand up at and draw things, and not-dead pot plants. But it'll still be full of tea cups and the cats will want somewhere to sit, so don't expect too much.