Ratbags

Once, the Husb, during a part of his childhood spent in Mexico, got stuck in a bathroom for 6 hours. There he perched atop the loo in terror, unable to reach and unlock the door, while a huge black rat lurked and prowled, presumably trying to figure out how to eat him. This memory, and I think in general the memory of whopping great enormous Mexican rats, has rendered him, how shall we say, somewhat unkeen on the creatures in question.
He was therefore not amused when I tried casually to break it to him that we had rats. I very nearly ended up with divorce papers on my doorstep, because it is of course, all my fault. You see, I have a compost heap. Two in fact; the Dalek kind (for those of you across the pond who are not familiar with the Dr Who television programme, this is those big black plastic ones - they look like the evil protagonists called Daleks who are the enemy of a time-travelling, um, time-lord type person, who whizzes round the universe, I think, in an old English police-box or... oh really, don't worry, it's not important). The Husb has never liked my compostification of things, especially peelings and eggshells and stuff, and shuddered visibly every time he saw me marching out there to compostify my old bits of potato. "We'll get rats!" he would shriek irrationally. Of course I pooh-poohed him and raised my eyes to the heavens, marching purposefully out there, compost bound, with my old bits of cauliflower.
However, as I stood at my kitchen window a month ago, who should I see but a jolly brown rat, milling casually around our fallen apples, scooting around under the shed, lurking suspiciously by the compost bins, and popping off to other gardens, dragging his apples with him. And then his pal too. Or most probably his good lady wife. Very attractive nice lady rat she was, and no doubt really pregnant with a litter of like, a million babies.
Ahem.
To cut a long story short, I dealt with the problem (lovely ratty multi-storey town-house dwelling in my compost bin = council rat man = what a lovely fellow = ah, yes, they're in yer compost bin = poison 'em = dead rats = possible daughter poisoning = better come clean to the Husb who is playing out in the garden...)
The husb was not amused. It was, he claimed all down to the two eggshells he had seen me put in the compost bin last August, which had apparently attracted and sustained an entire family of rats throughout the long, cold winter. I retorted that it was in fact the apples we had negligently failed to clean up for 6 months and which were giving the rats A Food Source. I had no idea. I honestly thought rats liked things like burgers. Not apples; I mean that's a bit wholesome isn't it? They did look quite wholesome actually; I think they were probably quite rustic, as rats go.
Anyway, the rats are no more, and the disposing of the compost and the dead rats brought about our garden makeover, a project hitherto only vaguely on the horizon, and precipitated by our ratty removal antics.
Which brings me at last to my point, which is - where on earth have I been?
What a lapse in blogging. I mean, how can I hope for a nice bunch of comments and new Followers (of whom I have a couple - hello you!) if I neglect my blog? Tsk.
Garden planning is where. Never mind drawing up plans for nice sewing projects, I've been printing out graph paper and drawing gazebos and leafing through 89 gardening books and 14 gardening magazines and comparing paving slabs and fences and borders and shrubs and and prancing about out there with tape measures, and liaising and negotiating and purchasing and price-checking and oh my goodness. And as you know from my pencil-roll boasts, I do like a bit of planning.
So that, and a 4th birthday party in less than 2 weeks (expect more desperate posts on that matter in the coming days) means my Makeys have been on the scant side.
Except for my tour de force that is - the lovely quilted bag o'pens at the top there - for 4 year old Isobel. It's got a little colouring book in it, and 12 pens, and I painstakingly designed the pattern myself whilst the Husb and his best pal painted the outside of the house and the daughters ran total riot around me upstairs.
And I am thinking - it's about time I started putting some of these things out there isn't it? So, to make up for my lazy blogging, I am gearing up for a nice series of How-To tutorials, one of which will be the quilted bag o'pens. Get yer needles poised ladies, collect up some pretty fabric, and prepare to become obsessed with Making Gifts for Kids, which will be the first series.
But I'll warn you now, I haven't tried any soft toy patterns yet.
But I could do.
I could start with a nice friendly giant rat...