Book number 3 - a children's book this time

 I decided when my grandson Toby was born, nearly two years ago, that I'd write a book for him. Several people have suggested I do this, using my clay animals as the illustrations and story, so that's what I've done. I don't think Julia Donaldson will have any sleepless nights over it, but hopefully Toby will like it, and I've had a lot of fun making it.
Because the book is in rhyme, I had to make more animals. Gheko is not an easy animal to rhyme with, nor is rabbit, so a pig, sheep, squirrel and mice were made to order, just for the book. Here's the cover and back.

Of course I had to make my dog, Basil. Every book should have a Basil in it.

One of the projects I finally finished recently was crewel embroidery in clay. My grandmother used to make wonderful crewel embroidery items, and I remember her showing me once, saying that she never followed a pattern, just used to make it up as she went along. She also cooked like that and was a wonderful cook. 
Anyway, I digress (spot the person on a diet, always thinking of food), I found an old crewel embroidery book, made a clay palette of colours, and then started making wool. Now I've worked out how to do it, it's easy, but boy did it take a while to sort out. This is why artists get so cross when someone uses their ideas and doesn't credit them. The wool may be simple to do, but the hours of work behind it to get it right, wasn't so simple. 
The British Polymer Clay Guild are very kindly going to run the workshop - I couldn't do it without the wonderful Cara Jane and Debby Wakely sorting out my technical issues! It's going to be on October 9th, by zoom, and hopefully a few people will attend. Here are some of the things I've made with it.

As you can see, it can be used on many things, I particularly enjoyed making the light switch surround, but it really bugs me that it doesn't fit properly! Problem is, it wasn't quick making it, so I'm not going to make another one. I'll just have to live with the imperfections, and try not to twitch every time I look at it!

I've been quite busy making things for the cat charity, Colchester Caring for our Cats, before long I'll have enough projects to make into a tutorial book, which I can sell for them. Cat pendants and earrings were my latest makes. and this tea-light holder.

The problem with being creative, but not technically minded, is that I have lots of ideas, I then think I'll make them into a book, then I get stuck as I can't remember how to do this, or that, and of course I never wrote it down two years ago when I last did something similar. This time I'm going to be more sensible. I have a lot of pieces of paper with scribbles of passwords, apps, websites, how to do things etc, which I'm going to put in some sort of order and keep safe. I'd bought 10 barcodes last year  - obviously thinking I was going to write lots of books! - but it took me two hours to find them. 
It took me a further five and a half hours to find out how to access the email associated with my website, and just now when I tried to update some photos on the home page here, I had to give up as they all appeared the size of a postage stamp.
All I can say is that I make very good tea, and am not bad at clay. 
No-one can be great at everything!
The children's book will be out hopefully on 13th August, on Amazon, so I hope you like it if you buy it.