Happy birthday (I hope)

I can't believe that the littlest one is having her first birthday. Where did this year go? She has brought so much joy into our life and enriched it in so many ways. So what do you give a little person who received a toy shop only a few days ago - something home-made seemed to be in order.

Mandy bought this wonderful Japanese craft book when we were in New York.




I thought she was going to create something herself, but somehow the book found its way to me. I do not usually enjoy making toys and have even been accused (by someone who shall remain nameless) of making animal toys look evil. The book suggests using cast-off socks, but any socks in this house which are ready to be cast-off are usually on their last legs (excuse the pun) and not fit to be recycled into anything. The pictures looked cute and the instructions appeared to be easy to follow so I took the plunge and bought myself a six pack of socks.



These were then cut up into the requisite pieces, at which time I began to worry about what I was going to produce - it could indeed be evil. Things were definitely looking weird.



While I was sewing I couldn't help thinking that what I was doing was faintly ridiculous. Surely throwing my efforts into solving world poverty or working towards world peace would be a much more worthwhile endeavour than creating cats and dogs from old (well new in this case) socks. Then I decided that I was more likely to have something to show for my efforts if I persevered with the socks.

So here they are.

I hope the littlest one doesn't burst into tears when she sees them.


I tried my best to make them look friendly.