I haven’t been doing a lot of making this past couple of weeks.

It’s always the same when the school summer holidays roll around. Lad isn’t small any more (in fact, at thirteen-next-month he is now taller than me) but still, there is precious little work gets done when he’s around.

This is no reflection on him – as an only child he is good at entertaining himself. Even if much of that so-called “entertainment” involves lying around on the sofa wearing pyjamas and headphones, staring at his phone.

No, the problem lies with me. As well as feeling guilt at ignoring him, I have never quite grown up enough to accept that the natural order of things is to work during the summer hols. I blame Enid Blyton.

Instead, I cook (sometimes with lad, sometimes without) temporarily going a bit domestic (which doesn’t seem like real work) or I garden, or we both succumb to the air of lethargy that pervades the house.

But I have been trying to work out a few things to make prior to the dreaded autumn rush, because I have already said that I will provide some of my wares to shops. And, let’s face it, it would be somewhat embarrassing to have nothing to sell when the time comes.

I picked up a piece of ginger-coloured velvet in my favourite charity shop the other day.

Initially I thought I would make some ginger cats… but when my first attempt had been stuffed, it suggested something altogether different.

Something more vulpine…

Hopefully he is foxy enough to be recognisable as such.

Although I’m not sure exactly how many more foxes I will be making, because he was a bit of a fiddle as he definitely required a tail, and I always have trouble with tails.

Whenever I try to add a tail to a creature, the result looks like a… well… lets just say it looks rude. And wrong.

Hopefully that is not what springs to mind with little foxy here.

He is definitely not meant to be rude. ♥