Stomp through the holidays!

School holidays...something I don't have to worry about anymore with grown up children. But I do still embrace childhood myself in many of the things I do. At the moment I'm making cute furry puppets for stage events, so when I read Ruth Paul's marvellous picture book 'STOMP' I had an immediate desire to make a wee Baby Dino Puppet. The instructions are here on my Good Morning TV profile and the pictures and pattern are below. Click on the patterns to bring up the full sized image, print it out and join it- I did it as 2x A4's because not many of us have A3 printers. Have dinosaur roaring fun these school holidays!

The RWC and me

I've been slightly caught up in the RWC in a very peripheral way. I care about Dan Carter's groin (who doesn't?), I'll be gutted if the All Blacks don't win, I was amazed at Ireland beating Australia. I even made some rugby crafts for the Good Morning Show (pic below). But I think my general view of rugby as a whole is best summed up by this poem I wrote for Next Magazine some years ago...

Testing Times

When I was but a little lass,

And rugby ruled the nation,

I holidayed in Hastings

With a pen pal on her station.

One night we were awoken

With excited urgency,

And dragged into the living room,

Where sat a large T.V.

Around it men were crowded

With smokes and jars of beer,

All yelling 'Get the boot in'

To a fullback at the rear.

My eyelids drooped as I sat down,

But the women pulled me up

And showed me to the kitchen,

Where we did the washing up.

We also buttered forty scones,

And heated up steak pies,

Then made a batch of pikelets

Whilst the men scored armchair tries.

So I never really did become

A big fan of the game,

The sport itself is fine, I'm sure

...it's the cooking that I blame.