Space septopus

Coloured pencil, biro.

It's not an octopus like I'd originally planned. If you look carefully... I forgot a tentacle 😩



I love listening to old recordings of the Ricky Gervais show on XFM with Stephen Merchant & Karl Pilkington. Last night I was in bed listening to the one where Karl is talking about how odd the octopus is. He was saying that if he was from another planet & had someone showing him all the creatures from Earth ("this is man, this is woman, this is dog, this is cat") if they then showed him an octopus he'd be like "hang on a minute, what's that?!"

It got me thinking about how bizarre the octopus is & how it wouldn't be hard to believe it's some alien from another planet.

Portable beehive

I had a dream that I was walking through a forest village, there were some cobblestone houses but a lot of the residents had made homes in hills & trees with a few tents dotted around. It was cute!

As I continued walking, a lady approached me. She was holding one of those little pet carriers designed for small rodents. She'd turned it into a portable beehive & asked if I wanted to try some of the honey her bees had made.

She then told me she had run out of teaspoons so I'd have to scoop the honey with my fingers... she was thorough at explaining how aswell.

"Only use 2 fingers to scoop!" she went. "I don't want you using your whole hand & taking ALL of the honey!"

I had a scoop of tasteless honey. I was disappointed but figured I'd just say thank you to her then carry on with my day. At that point one of my friends walked by & noticed a sign that was on the lid of the portable beehive. "OMG! £20 for 1 teaspoon of honey?! That's really expensive!"

I'd been shafted! Crazy bee lady hadn't pointed out I had to pay & I didn't get a full teaspoons worth of disappointing honey either! A busy market had appeared in the time it had taken for the crazy bee lady to con me, so as more people came over to complain of how expensive the honey was (like they were paying for me or something?!)... I snuck away into the market without paying.

Later on I was walking back & saw 2 more of my friends. The crazy bee lady was nowhere to be seen but they had her portable beehive which they had opened & were scooping handfuls of the honey into there mouths. The bees were stuck in the honey they were eating, with each scoop they were eating more & more bees. "Mmm, this honey is spicy" one of them said.

A big bear

In an effort to use up some materials I've had laying around for years, I made another big bear! I managed to use up a lot of scrap fabric for this one and finally get 2 more of those huge buttons out of my sewing box. I have just 4 left now so I'll probably only make 2 more big bears. 🐻

I truly love making these bears & seeing the end result but, it's a delicate balance in my house of having the materials available & my OCD brain wanting to have a ruthless clear out & banish anything it considers as clutter. 😅 I'll admit, some of my creative motivation comes from wanting to use up materials, just to get rid of them.

I'm aiming to get to a point where I no longer have a box of fabrics under my bed that I have the intention of using but end up ignoring for months on end & instead, get back to making bears as & when my old clothing / fabrics no longer serve their purposes. I'd love to get back to the days of having a wide variety of bears in all matter of interesting colours & patterns instead of what has been happening as of late. Tens of bears that all look the same because I've taken on the large fabric off-cuts from other people's discarded sewing projects.

I've got some out of shape Harry Potter pyjamas I want to turn into a bear next.

The cats kitchen

My dream started with me in an old fashioned kitchen with a fireplace. I was holding a tiny cat who wore 4 layers of leather coats to make himself appear bigger. I popped him down and he shot up the chimney. This seemed to be some sort of catflap because it wasn't long before tonnes of cats were entering and exiting the kitchen this way.

All of the cats were strange. They either had a bizarre but oddly human personality or just looked completely out of the ordinary. One of the cats that came in was dark green and had prominent golden claws, he was known as "the Christmas cat".

I looked around for a while and noticed some birds. Just normal, bog-standard birds. Since they were the only normal looking animals in the kitchen I turned to a lady (no idea who she was but it was her kitchen) and said "hey, I like your birds". She stood up and replied "oh... how did they get in here?". She then ushered them into a baking tray and flung them out of the window, baking tray and all.

I then spotted some more "birds". Well, actually little round cat heads with wings. They were hover-sleeping above a cat bed. "What's the point of the bed then?" I thought.

The hoop

I dreamt about a hula hoop that believed it was human. In order to convince people that it was one of them, it fashioned itself a body out of whatever it could find in amongst the rubbish. It had a creepy old dolls head, trolley wheels for feet and metal coat hanger arms.

It had even found a discarded trench coat so hung it up inside of itself in a desperate attempt to look like it was wearing clothing.

I couldn't understand why it was trying so hard to be human. It didn't behave like one or have much of a life. It enjoyed spending it's days hanging out in alleyways, rummaging through bins for treasures that humans considered trash. It would also do it's best to hide out of sight of people. I guess it just felt that it didn't look convincing enough to show itself to real people yet.

I'm unsure why the hula hoop was the bit that was alive and not one of the other components. I didn't see it piece itself together so I don't know how I knew which bit was alive. I was just unlucky enough to bump into it one evening when out for a walk.

That's the only time people were likely to see it. It would emerge from it's hiding place... when it was dark out.