Make a cute mouse egg cosy

These are the cutest egg cosies I've ever seen and you can 
buy them at the Open Air Museum in Lyngby, which is well worth a visit.

If you live on another continent, or fancy a couple of hours sewing, you can follow
 in our footsteps and have a shot at sewing something similar. 

Cut out a shape roughly like this. Mice are all different sizes -
they just nibble their mouseholes a bit bigger to fit,
so exact measurements are not a problem ;o)
Just make sure that the lower edge of the fleece is long enough to go right
round the fattest part of the egg cup and leave a bit for a seam down the side.

This is what ours looked like. Fleece is great because you don't need to
hem edges, it's stretchy but firm to sew and you can trim ears as you go along. Eeek,

This is the point when Jake took the raw egg we were using as a pattern and
tried to demonstrate some law of physics he'd seen in a video.
That's why the table is shiny wet and I had to wipe down my machine.
In his defence, yes, I believe raw eggs are strong if you push top to bottom
but NOT if you squeeze them round the middle! Yuck! 

Now that's all cleared up, back to the mouse. Sew a seam
down one side and across the other shoulder.
Fold the nose back, as shown, and sew the two sides.
 Trim the ears rounder, see above. 

You can see the lines where the stitching are better in this photo.
One shoulder poked out more than the other, so we ended up running a
 seam of stiching down that side too at the end to even things out.

Now take a deep breath Mr Mouse as we turn the nose inside out
and then tuck it into the neck hole. 

Push it right down until the whole nose is inside the body
with the edges meeting at the top of the neckhole.
(Like you do when sewing a sleeve into a shirt).

There will be pleats/bunched up bits but that will all be under his chin, and most
 of us have a few spare chins tucked away under there. I stitched this by hand as it was a bit fiddly.

In the very foreground of the picture above, you can see what will
be the top of the head and the ears each side.
DON'T SEW THESE BITS TOGETHER YET! 

Now turn the mouse the right way out by pushing the nose right into the body
and pulling the body down until the seams are hidden inside.
Now push the ears through the holes and run a line of stitching around the base of one ear,
around the back of the neck and around the base of the other ear (see above).
When you gather this stitching slightly, it will shape the head and ears.  

Now we sewed on button eyes and a popper-stud nose.
Then Jake stuffed the head with offcuts of fleece
and other grey matter to pad out the head.
Brainy.

Jake thought this photo was really blurred...

So he took this much better one instead. Complete with whiskers and a smile.

The perfect dipper eggs take 5 minutes exactly from when the eggs are lowered gently
into the bubbly water - by a grown up.

HAVE FUN!

Make a cosy hedgehog house

You'll need
- a pallet
(we got ours for about £3 from a local plant nursery. Just plain wood, with no paint or surface treatment that might be poisonous for hedgehogs)
- a hammer
- nails
- cold water
- a plaster
- off-cuts of wood
(or use a big pallet and cut it in half and use the bits from the extra half)
- plastic sacks
- paving slabs (not too big)

About this size, in fact.

First they took two plastic sacks, wrap the ends on one side and nail them onto
 the pallet as a roof. That will stop rainwater dripping inside.

Now they found pieces of wood to fit three sides of
the pallet and nailed them on VERY carefully. 

This piece of wood was perfect for the base. You'll even see it has breakfast
in bed for its hoggy owner if you look closely enough

The last side was going on when...

OUCH! Poor Louis. Poor thumb. Put it in cold water.
The bit of a log beside his hand made a great way of blocking
half the entrance. You can see that in the finished house.

With Louis taking a break (not literally, thank goodness, it was only bruised)
it was Jake's chance to shine.
The base wasn't quite big enough so we added another strip of wood.

And when all the sides were done leaving an opening as a door,
and the top and base were fixed firmly in place...
the boys found a good spot away from the lawnmover and in
between our garden and Tina's so she can see hoggies too.

Actually her living room is closer than ours,
which is right around the other side of the gallery AND the cottage.
But the secret garden where we put it is far away from the road and that's
more important than anything.

We made a base of slabs to help stop the wooden base from rotting.

Six slabs fitted perfectly.

Jake lowered the house on top, plastic roof up, naturally.
Mind your fingers!

We put some slabs on top so Mr Fox can't flip it over.
And then covered it up with sticks and other stuff for extra insulation.
Last of all we put  old dry leaves, straw or strips of newspaper inside it as cosy bedding.

Do you think any hedgehogs will find it while we're away? Can you?
It's not in the woodpile because that's too close to a tree that's leaning a bit
close to the gallery and needs to be cut down. (We've planted four trees, so don't worry).

Thinking about it, that's rather an attractive pile og twigs and stuff. In fact, there could already be at least three families of hedgehogs already living in that pile, but we've never seen any.

Fingers crossed!

Make your own pom pom lamb lamb

You'll need:

• a ball of wool
• some of those stick-on chair leg/floor protectors 
• (from a discount Tiger shop etc.)
• cardboard
• scissors
• patience (a lot of winding is involved ;o)

Draw around something round the size of
the body you want.

And cut it out.

Now put that on the cardboard, draw around it and cut
it out so you have two identical circles.

Then using pointy scissors, poke a hole in the
middle and cut a circle out of the middle.

Put it on top of the other circle, draw around the
middle and cut it out too.

Now you have two cardboard doughnuts.
Ours could have been more symmetrical but who's looking.

Now wind some of your ball of wool into about
three smaller balls of wool. Make them
small enough to fit through the
hole in the middle of the circles. 

Now put the two cardboard doughnuts together,
hold the end of the first small ball of wool and
start winding it through the hole and out
and round and into the hole again.
And again, and again times lots and lots.

After three small balls of wool and a lot of
winding, it will look like this.

This next bit is slightly tricky. Mum or dad will
need to help. Poke the end of the scissors
into the edge of the wool, down in between
the two doughnuts and carefully
snip, snip, snip - BUT FIRST...

It turned out to be easier when I poked the rest
of the original ball of wool through the hole in
the doughnut to hold it all in place while I snipped.

Nearly done snipping all the way round.

Take out the original ball of wool and
carefully separate the two doughnuts a
little. Take a length of wool (half a metre)
and tie it right around in between the
cardboard doughnuts to hold all the wool
in place.

Knot it as tightly as possible,

Now trim off any bits that poke out.

The small round stick-on chair leg/floor
protectors made great eyes. 

And Jake cut out a head from the larger
sheet of stick-on protector felt. If you can't find
these, you can just cut a head out of black,
grey or white cardboard or felt and stick it on.  

Cut out two heads.

Stick on the eyes and fix the 'hair' between
the two heads.

Now tie two lengths of wool in, under and
out of the piece of wool holding it all together. 

Knot it tightly. These are the legs.

And stick pairs of medium stick-on
protectors on the end of each 'leg'.

A bundle of fun we had to hang up high so
Dr Watson didn't get hold of him.

HAPPY EASTER!