Bye Bye Octopi

On Friday a good friend, who also happens to be a talented artist and J4's kindy teacher (and previously L6's) had her last day of work - she's off to enter the land of parenthood herself.
The kindy had a lovely morning tea send-off for her, with pink balloons, all the kids together (of course, the only way all the staff could be there too), and a few parents, like myself, who could make it.
As she is such a special person I had wanted to make something special for her, and as her favourite animal is the Octopus, and her class are also called the Octopuses (all the rooms are named after sea creatures), I decided an Octopus for the baby would be appropriate.



Made with fabrics from my stash.  All the body fabrics have fish on them.



Continuing the sea theme, the body base is a pirate map.  But as it is a toy for a child, and the mother is an artist & early childhood educator, the legs are the colours of the rainbow, ROYGBIV, plus pink to make eight (and because Noodle is a girl).

I had really wanted to design one of my own - and had started, but realised that I didn't have enough time to test the design first.  So I looked for one online and was lucky enough to find this Oopsie the Octopus  on the Moda Bakeshop site and it is by Melanie Hurlston of Melly & Me, an Australian who designs with her sister.  Gorgeous stuffed toys and funky modern quilts.

I also made a 'make it up as you go along' nappy bag, using furnishing fabric samples and one leg of a pair of old jeans.  I quite like it, and it is different, so hopefully she'll enjoy using it too.

Actually Friday was quite an eventful day - the last two tanks (2kl each) went in behind the shed.  They finished all the work in one day - I was very impressed.  Now I have to wait for a bit of rain to fill them up, and work out how to get power to the pump......

The new tanks fit into such small spaces!

I also received another delivery from the Diggers Club.  This time all the fruit trees / plants I had ordered.  These consisted of two types of Dwarf Apple (Cox's Orang Pippin and Rome Beauty), a mandarin (Afourer Murcott), and orange (Cara Cara), a lemon (Meyer), a Tahitian Lime, a fig (Black Genoa), a raspberry cane (Autumn Bliss) and a thornless blackberry (Waldo).  Plus two free plants, a chilean guava and a pomegranate.
I would love to have started planting today, but I am not 100% so have been resting.

Live plants by mail order!

One last thing - I have been feeding Blacky, Elsa & Fasty Africa the organic yoghurt daily since last Sunday and really feel that they are picking up.  Blacky especially seems to look less scrawny than she did.  Of course that could partially be due to her having grown most of her feathers back now, but not entirely I think.  They haven't shown any signs of going downhill anyway - so I am going to continue with the 'treatment'.  If only it was always this easy to administer 'medicine'!

Fasty Africa, Elsa & Blacky - the remaining 3.  Thank goodness it wasn't Elsa who got sick, or Fasty would have pined away.