The bunnies get certified!!!

This came in the post just now...

I am totally chuffed! In case you can't see what it says:

"This is to certify that, in pursuance of and subject to the provisions of Registered Designs Act 1949, the design of which a prepresentation or specimen is attached, had been registered as of the date of registration shown above in the name of Anna Hull in respect of the application of such design to: Children's toy bunny made from a sock International Design Classification LOC (07) cl.21-01"

Which means that, in the UK, only I can make and retail a bunny in a sleeping bag made from a sock! YAYYYYYYYYYYYY! This does not, however, mean that all you lovely crafting people have to stop making bunnies from socks - it just means that it can't look like one of mine. I had to submit detailed photos showing the exact design on mine and it is that design that the certificate applies to. I'm tickled pink .........

Look what came in the post today!

This came ...
I am totally chuffed! In case you can't see what it says:

"This is to certify that, in pursuance of and subject to the provisions of Registered Designs Act 1949, the design of which a prepresentation or specimen is attached, had been registered as of the date of registration shown above in the name of Anna Hull in respect of the application of such design to: Children's toy bunny made from a sock International Design Classification LOC (07) cl.21-01"

Which means that, in the UK, only I can make and retail a bunny in a sleeping bag made from a sock! YAYYYYYYYYYYYY! This does not, however, mean that all you lovely crafting people have to stop making bunnies from socks - it just means that it can't look like one of mine. I had to submit detailed photos showing the exact design on mine and it is that design that the certificate applies to. I'm tickled pink .........

Who would have thought that parsley was so interesting.

It's been a long while since I've had that sunny day feeling but it happened this weekend and, as a result, I did what everyone else does on such days and went to the garden centre. There is something so uplifting about all those damp, buddy plants in peak condition all offering to be '3 for £5.00'! In the end I came home with two big terracotta pots for my blueberry bushes, some sweetpeas and three other little plants for the pots outside the front door. I planted, pruned and generally had a lovely time.

Then I watered. I watered the vegetables seedlings which are pushing through in the new patch and watered my very large parsley plant which is in a scrubby bed next to the house. There you are ...... see? a very big clump of parsley right under the boiler flue thingy. Lovely position. Ha Ha.
So I squirted the hose at it ..... and a blooming duck shot out!!
We gave each other such a fright! She scattered across the lawn and took off over the fence. Flap...flap...flap....
Bearing in mind that the boys had been playing football all afternoon and our garden is NOT big - three small kids playing ball takes up the whole lawn.
Behind the bush I found...

Twelve totally perfect new eggs! I would just like to stress that we have no pond. There is no pond. The nearest pond is about a mile away and we live surround by houses, fences, gates so why oh why she chose our garden is a matter for some confusion.
She flew off and didn't come back last night. I checked at about midnight but she hadn't come back. I really thought she might have abandoned them. Did they get too cold? Can the eggs survive without her on them? I felt awful because it was me who scared her so much. But, this morning she was sitting back on them and has been there all day - thank goodness. I'll be keeping you posted!

GLOBAL BUNNY IS BACK FROM SOUTH AFRICA!

The Warren is so glad to have Global SockBunny back - South Africa seemed very, very far away and she was gone for a whole two weeks - her longest trip to date.
Here she is with her South African Rand, boarding pass and immigration control stamp. She has also acquired an cute beaded brooch which she refuses to take off even at night!
So bunny, what did you get up to in those two weeks? Shall we see what you wrote in your diary?


"I'm waiting here at Heathrows new terminal Five.....waiting still, bags are packed just want to get onto the plane now!!"








WOW that's a big airport for such a little bunny to be all alone in! Oh? You weren't alone? Ahh, I see, you were travelling with Ruth, Ian, Tom and Phoebe. Phew! Thats okay then.


Great view!













"......Arrived in a very sunny Cape Town 35 degrees, phew a bit hot for a northern hemisphere rabbit.
So this is 'Table Mountain', very flat with a wonderful view of the city........"






"Here I am sunning myself on Boulder's beach, the locals seem friendly enough, even if they are penguins..... they can swim much faster than I can. Off to a cheetah farm tomorrow, I hope that they are just as friendly....don't want to be their dinner eek!"









That is the best transport for a bunny EVER!














SO where to next? America!

Geocache Bunny on the Isle of Wight!

Easter was quite eventful at The Warren this year. Widget invited Geocache Bunny on holiday to the Isle of Wight too. Geo Bun was pretty relieved to be out of the backpack where he had been forgotten for a while in between caches. Poor little bunny! To cheer him up he was taken on 10 caches and even sent off his own Travel Bug. Guess what the Travel Bug looked like! You guessed it ....... there's 'Travelling Bunny' in the picture. Everyone has waited a long time to find just the right one for the task. In the picture he's all attached to the metal dog tag with his code number on it. When people find him in a cache they log this number on the geocaching.com website and then we can all see how far he is travelling.
Here is Geo Bun tucking Travelling Bunny into the cache at 'Colonels Hard' on Bembridge beach. Everyone is a little concerned that we didn't put any airholes into that plastic bag! Hopefully he will be moved along soon so he will be able to get some air.
The weather was fantastic and we managed to find 10 Geocaches!!




Here's a Bunny hiding one he found all on his own. Some of them are too high up for him to reach but this one was all his.






If you have no idea what Geocaching is - and lets face it, you probably wont - then click on the links in the side bar here - there is a great talk through of it. Or check out the website:
ww.geocaching.com

OCH AYE THE BUN!

Bunny had a flying visit to Scotland in March with Alison from Alibali Jewellery.

A whistle stop tour of Edinburgh Castle with a dangerous balancing act on the wall!

Careful Bunny!!!
Bunny is now on her way back from Cape Town, South Africa so hopefully, if she hasn't been eaten by anything with big teeth, we will have some fantabulous pictures here soon!

WIDGET'S SUNFLOWER GERMINATES!

Widget got back from the Isle of Wight and rushed out to look at his sunflower and, guess what, it had just started to push up through the soil! Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!

A long way to go yet though!!!

Widget's Easter Break

Widget has been away!
A little sortie to the Isle of Wight.
The Bunny Maker and her family have been going for years and years and years but this time Widget and Geocache Bunny went along too. The weather wasn't too great to start with - this is Widget waiting for the car ferry wondering if he will get out to do any crabbing.




As you can see from the next picture things got ALOT better the next day! Widget got very excited and found an old toy boat in one of the cupboards and rushed out to sail it in the sunshine. Even though it was nice and hot we had to keep his scarf on due to the sock colouring/ pebble blending of bunny and beach. We tried without, as he was a little hot, but lost him for a full 20 minutes. So the scarf had to stay on!



He also had a go at crabbing but didn't catch much except for a weeny little one - even then he wasn't too sure about it!

Widget also did a bit of Geocaching with Geocache Bunny. Here they are looking a little chilly with some fairly attractive seaweed. The compostion was there idea - nothing to do with me. Never let bunnies have too much say in things because they have very firm opinions, I can tell you!




There are some more pictures from Widget's holiday over on his blog Widget's Year - Diary of a SockBunny. You can see the crab he caught!

I'm easily over-excited......

... especially by techy stuff that DOES things. I've just registered with byhand.me and made myself the subject of my own 'spotlight'. You can just drop the HTML into your blog post land 'whoomf' up comes your stuff! YAY! Its a 'Fabulous Fish' gallery.... I'm still tweaking it as it pulls images from my Half an Acre Etsy shop and that is a place I haven't been for ages and ages. I've been trying to come back to 'Old Blighty' and sell in pounds rather than dollars as it does work out much better for me. Etsy was my first landing place on the internet so I have a big soft spot for it hence I've been revamping my shop this morning.

Junk, spam and scam ... and I'm $7.7m richer!

BAH! I've been scammed! Damn and blast it! I've lauded the virtues of Vista Print for years and been happy with the quality and service. I've poohoo-ed people who have moaned about finding themselves being charged for things they didn't ask for. I've ignored the threads on Etsy.
Two days ago I noticed that my credit card statement had a payment for £9.95 taken by a company called CLUBPREM.COM.
Looking back over the last months they have been taking it since October. *@#$! My heart sank - and the first thing I thought was "Vista Print". So I Googled this Clubprem.com and WOAH! and whole page of google arrived peppered with "I ordered from Vista Print and now I'm sign up to ..".
Please don't start the 'should have read the small print' thing with me - I have and there is NOTHING about it. I ticked no boxes, didn't join the 'Passport to Fun', didn't sign up to the 'insider info' and didn't subscribe to their updates. So just keep that small print @$%* to yourselves!!! I'm an angry bunny today .....

Every piece of information you need is here in this blog post I Got Scammed By Vista Print..... I suggest that you read it as it makes interesting reading indeed.

Now - Vista Print DO offer great products of good quality - that is not the scam - the scam is that they seem to be sharing credit card details with other dodgy companies (allegedly). I called my credit card company who gave me the phone number for the company (being saturday their fraud false whatnot department wasn't open) and I easily cancelled my 'membership' of Clubprem.com by calling them and entering my membership number (on the cc statement) into their highly annoying recorded message loop system. If you read the blog post link above you will see that it is not too hard to claim your money back either. But I am livid!! How can they still be doing this? Especially if you delve into the google search results and see that the scam is so well documented. What have Vista Print got to say about it? Well, there is no way of contacting them through their website but I do have a phone number given by the blog linked to here. I will be calling tomorrow (Monday) and I will have to cancel my credit card which is a pain.

So, to date, I've had my credit card cloned at the local petrol station and spent on in Sri Lanka, I've recieved tens of those emails asking me to update my details online for banks I don't even bank with, I joined StyleHive and within 20 mins was asked by the wife of some Nigerian official to house all her money in my bank account and now this came yesterday:

Dear Sir/madam

My name is Mrs. Grace Richards I am 63 years old, I am a dying woman who have decided to donate what I have to you/churches/ motherless babies/less privileged/widows.I was diagnosed for cancer for about 2 years ago. I have been touched by god to donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to you for good work of god. I have asked god to forgive me and believe he has because he is a merciful god. I will be going in for an operation Monday.I decided to WILL/donate the sum of 7.7 million dollars to you for the good work of god, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows. At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls right now due to the fact that my relatives (That have squandered the funds I gave them for this purpose before) are around me and my health status also.

I have adjusted my WILL and my lawyer is aware. I wish you all the best and may the good god bless you abundantly, and please use the Funds judiciously and always extend the good work to others. As soon you get back to me, I shall give you info on what I need from you then you will contact my bank and tell them I have willed (7.7 million dollars) to you by quoting my personal reference number: Jlk/Wds/95773/50015/GwrI/3196us/uk and I have also notified my bank that I am willing that amount to you for a good, effective and prudent work. I know I don't know you but I have been directed to do this by god.

Thanks and god bless.
Regards,
Mrs. Grace Richards.

They have even blocked the 'To' section of the email so I don't know which of my email addresses it came in to. I'm fed up with the world......

The Great Sunflower Race

Widget has been invited to join The Great Sunflower Race! He is thrilled so thank you to Veryan of Beady Pool for inviting him. She is organising this competition for all her friends and their children and the £2 entry fee money raised will go to Macmillan Cancer Support. There will be a prize for the tallest sunflower.


Widget planted his seeds the other day. He was very careful and planted 6 in total - the extras being for The Bunny Maker and her family. I have to stop him from sitting staring at the pot - he seems to think something will happen. I keep saying that a watched sunflower never germinates......

Read Veryan's blog post about the competition here

CELEBRATE WITH ME!

I am celebrating today! One short term ambition has been fulfilled and ticked off the list, being featured in a mainstream magazine - one you can pick up in WHSmiths. It has happened!! YAY! I'm in the May issue of Junior Magazine ...


It's there - up in the righthand corner - my little stencil kit!

I do two of them; the Mechanic one to the left and the little Tea Party one to the right. Each has five handmade wooden stencils, designed by Half an Acre, a bunch of coloured pencils in natural wood and a jute carrying bag. Cute - not plastic - and better than the TV!
Even if stencilling leaves them cold they can use them for pretend play - saw your furniture - or simply chew them. Alternatively, ditch the stencils and use the bag for something entirely different! They are made from birch ply and have no splinters and it pleases me greatly that when the kids tire of them you can re-cycle the wood instead of throwing it into a landfill like so many of its plastic counterparts.

Both available from Half an Acre on Folksy.

BUNNIES IN TROUBLE?

Widget has just received a message on his Facebook page from Skully Bunny and Bouncy Bun who travelled across the Atlantic to their new home in South Carolina.

"Shhhhh, I am sneaking a message but you have to keep it quiet. My name is Skullybunny, myself and BouncyBun were just dropped off,(yes the man in the funny little car dropped us into a box) this place is called South Carolina it is in the US. Guess what....they all drive on the 'wrong side' of the road. Tisk. Tisk. Our travels took us over a HUGE water puddle and through some scary, scary places. This super hyper woman is rattling out box. I can hear her talking on the phone telling people that we are here. We are so scared. We won't let her open our box....I mean bunnies can never be too safe right? Once we feel safe we will let you know what is going on. Until BouncyBun stops shaking we will stay in our box. I am sure getting hungry though."


Do you think everything is alright?

UK Handmade Spring Issue

The Spring issue is now out! I am very proud to have contributed to it by writing 'some stuff' - a two book reviews, a feature on Long Nose Puppets and a bit on the wonderful Green Tree Gallery who are exhibiting my fish. You can view it online in cool magazine format by clicking on the the homepage image on the

UK Handmade website