How to make a tea cosy

Brighten up the breakfast table with a handcrafted tea cosy. Top textile designer Lisa Stickley shows you how to make a tea cosy:

Tea, cake and .... the radio in the background are all particular favourites of mine. This is a nice easy project to ensure that your tea will be steamy hot even after the cake is gone!

Operation Christmas Child

Last year this blog ran a Countdown to Christmas series and the first post looked at Operation Christmas Child.

With less than 80 days until Christmas Day, maybe its time to preparing to send a message of hope to children in need around the world through gift-filled shoe boxes. You can drop off your filled shoeboxes between 1st - 18th November at a local Drop Off Point. If you would like to add a personal touch to your box, you could knit a scarf, hat or teddy. Its probably better not to knit a dalek!

Want to learn more about the impact of Operation Christmas Child? Then watch the video or read some stories.

Sandcastle engineering

If you are heading to the coast this summer you may be interested in the science of building sandcastles - there are several links here, including one to amazing sand sculptures from around the world.

[Image from FreeFoto.com]

Knit One, Save One

The Leicester Diocese website alerted me to an appeal from Save the Children UK for knitted hats for babies. They aim is to produce 10 million hats in 2008, which will be sent throughout the world to where they are needed to keep new born babies warm. There is a tag to fill in with each hat which will go to Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street to highlight the appalling death rate among new born babies in many parts of the world. Any baby hat pattern will do or you can get the ‘knit kit’ pattern.

The disappearing Doctor Who knitting patterns

I blogged on Dr Who Tardis and Dalek knitting patterns last month and today the Guardian - "Hands off the Doctor Who knitting circle" - has alerted me to the fact that a blogger (Mazzmatazz), who created knitting patterns for Doctor Who-related objects and published them under Creative Commons licenses, has been instructed to remove them from her website by the BBC.

On a mystery-related note, this Saturday's episode features the Agatha Christie storyline - don't forget to check out the book titles in the dialogue!

Dr Who Tardis and Dalek knitting patterns

Instructions for knitting your own Dr Who Tardis and/or Dalek

(courtesy of a tip in the weekly newsletter from www.moneysavingexpert.com).