What happened to April and May?!

Bunnies happened.  Lots of them.  They're only three inches tall, made with 4ply on needles that look like cocktail sticks, free pattern courtesy of the lovely Julie and used with her permission to raise funds for Church - we're buying a ring of bells and they cost a lot...

...these are officially the cutest brooches in the world.

Especially en masse, or in pretty glass dishes.  They were quite hard to give away.  I may have to make more so I can put lots in a glass dish and look at them.  Or not because, you know, I am a responsible grown up.

I made some felt brooches as well: dogs and birdies and one rather spectacular bee, because they were quicker than bunnies.

Then there were button brooches for special birthdays,

Stitch and Chat nights (this is March but they happened in April and May too, it's just that I wasn't so handy with my camera when it came to it...).  There was an Advent Calendar workshop sometime in May, you can see the sample hanging on the curtains at the back of the photo above.  I forgot to take photos then too, bad me.

 I made an owl doorstop for a retiring colleague,

a caravan cushion for someone's cousin,

and did more machine applique than I care to remember on...

 ...the banner for Oakwood Avenue Community Primary School (yes, you do have to say all the words because I had to sew around every one of those letters.  Lots of them are the naughty letters with holes in them, so that means you have to sew around the inside of the hole too. That's like two letters in one.  My machine played up like you wouldn't believe and I had to use the machine that's supposed to be the less-good machine instead.  Which also played up, but in a manner for which I could compensate.  I did not enjoy this part of the banner, can you tell?

Liked this bit though.  I also got to say quite often, "I'm just going home to make a child," which I found amusing.

The Oakwood banner is soon to be delivered to its new home, and once it's been safely received I'll do a full post about it.  Suffice to say, it's the first school or church banner I've made since I've been working full time and it's also going to be the last.  It completely took over my thoughts.  Even when I was knitting bunnies for church or doing prep for Stitch and Chat it was there at the back of my mind, reminding me I should probably be working on it.  I need to scale back and keep to achievable aims.  Like these:

...finally, vying with the bunnies for the title of 'cutest things I made since I blogged last', crocheted animals from the Toft Alpaca book.

This dude is my favourite, but he's gone off to make a little chap sleep better, so I think a replacement is in the offing...  I have lots of time now, right?