Beaker Button Blog

This is a quick post to say that I'm putting the blog on hold for a couple of weeks while I work on the new website. It's going to be all singing and dancing, the new site, so it'll be worth the effort.  I've posted I below for those of you following the Alphabet blanket pattern and will continue with J very shortly.  Thanks for your patience. this weeks chart My unblocked I

This week has been a challenging, although interesting week.  I was pondering what to write today and it suddenly hit me the one of the nicer things about this week has been the singing.  I sing all the time, usually to myself or inadvertently to others if I happen to have an ear worm (for those of you who don't know there is a great description of ear worms here , although there are a lot of adverts on the page).   This week however I was reminded of the power of group singing.  On Tuesday night I had to go to a Wake, for a folky friend.  We spent the evening singing, with some hurried catching up with other friends in between songs.  Although the occasion was sad the hall was filled with the sound of our voices, all singing harmonies.  The sheer noise level was incredible, but with everyone singing together it was also beautiful and joyous and uplifting.  Pearl, who's wake it was, would have loved it. The whole evening felt like a fitting t...

 Yesterday we took Short Round to Milestones Museum in Basingstoke.  If you haven't been I'd highly recommend it.  It's full of very well presented stuff, from old tools to childhood toys to pristine vehicles.  The history is brilliantly presented, with boards and audio tours.  They run a lot of events as well, which is why we were there yesterday.  The Legomania event has been running for a few years now.  Last year Short Round had one of his models on display (so proud!).  This year we got to make one of the panels in a giant picture of Lightening McQueen, and had a fascinating look around the hundreds of Lego models.  Short Round got to make a mini figure.  We got to spend time with my Mum, brother, sister in law and their kids too, which was lovely. The higlight of my day though had to be the Womble puppets and the knitted jumpers on the footballers in the penny arcade! I've added some photos to give you a flavour of our day. ...

It was my Mum's birthday today, so yesterday Short Round, Mum and I headed to Baiter Point in Poole for a picnic and a wander on the beach.  We're borrowing a friend's dog at the moment so she came too.  The sea and sky were very stormy so I managed to take some nice shots of the sea, and birds and shells.  I'd like to turn the shell photo into a felt picture. This is also the last post for our mini KAL, with instructions on how to put it together.  You've probably guessed from the post title that it's a mobile.   You will need two metal hangers, 75cm ribbon and duct tape .  The pattern and instructions are below.  If you'd like a PDF of the whole pattern including instructions for the mobile it's on Ravelry here Sleepy Sheep www.beakerbutton.co.uk   ©Jen Best 2015        I used Petlake Alpaca double knit for sleepy’s body and 3.5mm straight needles.  I used blac...

We went to my brothers for dinner on Saturday, which was lovely.  I was tasked with bringing a pudding, so while Short Round and I were shopping in Waitrose Saturday morning I spent a goodly amount of time searching through their delicious looking puddings for something without milk in (Short Round can't do cows milk, it makes him incredibly snotty).  Of course, everything, absolutely everything, has milk in so I resorted to an old favourite that my Mum makes.  She calls it Zebra Pudding.  I substituted normal natural yogurt for Goats milk yogurt (2 large tubs) and muscovado sugar for plain soft brown sugar (2 tablespoons full).  I like runny honey in mine as well (about 3 tablespoons). To make it you pour the yogurt into a shallow dish or tray, swirl in the honey and sprinkle the sugar over the top.  Leave it in the fridge for about half an hour (it will keep longer if you want it to) and all the sugar sort of dissolves leaving stripes and swirls, hence th...

This week my boys and I went on a little adventure.  It started when I was checking my Twitter feed as I was lying in the bath (like you do) and I spotted a post about the Lovejoy comet that's passing Earth at the moment.  Being a bit of a night sky freak (bet you didn't know that about me did you?) I sloshed out of the bath, threw on some clothes, rounded up the boys and headed out to Vernham Dean with my camera and tripod.  Vernham is the nearest place I could think of with dark enough skies.  We didn't manage to see the comet but I did get a nice shot of the Plough.  On the way home to hot chocolate I was thinking about my blog and what I wanted to do this week and I came up with the idea of making a night time mobile with stars, a moon and sheep (to help you sleep obviously).  This weeks free pattern is for a star.  He's called Twinkle (I wanted to call him Burt but I was told it wasn't appropriate) and he's waiting for you below.  Once all th...