Festival! Un-yipee and very much un-hurrah.

Tunbridge Wells Dance Festival starts tomorrow and while this, for the overwhelming majority of people is rightly insignificant, for me it's a week of fear and loathing. I have about 15 dances entered with children aged from about 6 to 15 years old, I've choreographed the dances, rehearsed them, designed and made the costumes, found and cut the music, made props, stuck sequins to tutus and agreed to do face painting and hair styling for a fair number of the competitors and still the parents are moaning to my boss that I haven't done enough for their daughter. I appreciate that we all think our child is the most talented, beautiful and wonderful since the dawn of creation but having worked seven days a week since October I'm on the verge of telling some of the Mothers exactly where they can stick their...well, you get my drift. I've been working so diligently on their kids that my OWN 6 year old doesn't yet have a costume for her performance on Tuesday. And I'm going to have to be VERY creative to think of a Valentines present for my long suffering and extremely patient husband.

On the upside I've discovered a few skills I didn't know I had (including making flat pack furniture with instructions in Polish. God bless Lidl.) I might post a great many pictures the week after next

No!! It can't be time!! Not yet surely?!

It's less than a week until the damn dance festival - I can't believe my stupidity at agreeing to enter so many kids. I feel faintly sick every time I think about the coming week but like fiddling with a sore tooth I keep sending my mind back to it just to check it still really bloody hurts.

On the upside though (and I'm trying very hard to concentrate on the positive) I've sold 4 versions of this monster in three days
It's the LUURVE monster, he's my favourite sock creature to date, I was intending to make more arsey types but as I stuffed the head the seam made such a sweet smile I had to turn away from my natural sulkiness and make something far more good natured than I'll ever be.

Sulking monsters

It's snowing. The boiler has decided it's not going to play anymore and packed up leaving us with no heating or hot water over the weekend. An engineer is booked for first thing tomorrow morning but I'm so worried the snow will mean terrible traffic and he won't get here...
It's not too bad for me as I work in a gym and can shower after work but my poor daughters are freezing and fed up at having to wash in a kettle of water.

These two new monsters just about sum up the expressions I was greeted with when I got back from work this afternoon.

They're both completely inspired by a brilliant book I treated myself to last week called
Stray Sock Sewing, the patterns aren't great but the photos are fantastic and it's given me a kick to start sewing again.