god daughters and easter

I have the wonder of being a god mother to two beautiful god daughters; here's one of them wearing some fairie wings I made for her, who doesn't want to be a fairie when they're seven!

I get slightly uncomfortable around this time of year, with Easter being such a celebrated time within the 'church'; as a god mother I feel I should somehow be contributing to my god daughters spiritual well being.  However, belief in anything at all should be their choice and not something I should discourage or equally foster upon them.  Last easter, after reading this article about the life and work of the Finnish artist and author Tove Jansson, I gave my god daughters Moomin Troll books.  

Tove Jansson image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tove_Jansson

In the world that Tove created in her books, the Moomin trolls live very closely to nature and embrace diversity; I think this quote from Frank Cottrell Boyce 'one of the things I really took from them was the importance of small pleasures, that life is really worth living if we're just nice to each other and make really good coffee, and the pancakes are just right - then nothing else really matters in any substantial way' perfectly sums up the Moomins and I hope my god daughters picked up on that.

This year, I decided to keep things simple and went for the standard easter imagery - bunnies!  I guess with a nod to the coming of spring, after the darkness of winter, that brings longer days and new life that reminds us of the miracle of nature.  I'm not sure if my god daughters will have picked up on that - but hopefully they got the bunny and spring connection!  

The pattern was from Mollie Makes issue 51; I added a scarf as it's still quite cold and frosty up here in the mornings!  I changed the pattern a bit for the second bunny and used a woven wool fabric instead of felt, both had Liberty Tana Lawn for their ears and tummies.

to do lists….

To do lists….for me can be both good (as a reminder of things I want to get done) and bad (as they remind me of the things I didn't get done)!  So this year over Christmas I decided to keep things simple, I put two things on my list; to sew something and to make some bread. The recipe for the bread, a Cardamon Wreath, was from SCB at 3191 Miles Apart; I never usually get round to making bread, it always feels like there isn't enough time, but this recipe was straight forward.  As suggested I made the sweet dough the night before, left it in the fridge and it was ready to go in the oven the next morning, so breakfast was warm sweet cardamon bread…yum.

And I managed to get my sewing machine out!

The pattern for the doll is by Emily Martin (the pattern can be found at this Martha Stewart link, which Leigh from Found, now home posted);  Emily's gorgeous dolls can be seen on her blog, Inside A Black Apple.

I also made a whale to go with this lovely book The Storm Whale by Benji Davies; I made the pattern up, hence the whale has a slightly large head, I'll shave a bit off next time. I was tempted to keep the book, it is such a lovely story!