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!

Fed up with eggs? Hope not...

Because here's how to make Scotch eggs

Sausage meat (we made our own). Enough to coat the number of eggs you need - about 1 cm thick)

Hard-boiled eggs (boil for 8 mins should be about right)

One raw beaten egg

Flour

Breadcrumbs (some big and some smaller)

Grated onion

Milk (four tablespoons)

Thyme (sprinkling)

Here is Jake grating breadcrumbs. We used half a loaf altogether)

Mix the minced pork with some largish breadcrumbs,
grated onion and a sprinkling of thyme. Roll the hard-boiled eggs in flour.
Now take two lumps of the sausagemeat mixture and
mould it evenly round each hard-boiled egg. If you only use one lump and try and squash it round a whole egg, you may find the coat kind of explodes and the egg starts popping out.

Coat al the eggs.

Turn your computer sideways ;o). Mix four tablesppons
of milk with a raw beaten egg.


Dip the Scotch eggs in the egg and milk mixture.

Roll them in the small breadcrumbs.

Jake got quite fast at it. Make them nice and even.

So they look something like this.

Get an adult to heat the oil. Fry the Scotch eggs.

Then when they are nice and golden brown, take them out and
slice them in half with a knife dipped in hot water.
We missed the yolk with this one but Jake doesn't like yolks
so that was perfect!

This one...

...worked better.

When they are all done, garnish with tomatoes and serve hot or cold.

Watson loved them.
Here he is in his Easter bonnet.
Very chic!

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!