YES! A SOLUTION!

I think, after discussing it around with a few people and brainstorming ideas, that we may have come to a workable solution for my road play mat!  I am very excited to say the new solution ticks all the boxes- the squares can all turn any which way and the pieces snap onto a base mat easy peasy pie- yes- so a child can do it themselves even!  This is the cunning plan:

I will remove all the buttons, sigh, and stitch away all the loops (another sigh) and I will hand sew little zinc plated washers (big sigh) to the backs of every square- 4 each square, 1 in each corner.  Then I will buy two large pieces of green fabric (I’m thinking polar fleece- to match with the grass colour) and firstly sew straight lines down them together the size of the squares.  Then I will sew another line 2 cm away from each first stitch line (to make a channel) and insert magnets down the channels.  So basically to cut a long story short, there will be magnets sewn between 2 layers of fabric with a grid stitched onto it, and the crocheted squares will have metal washers to correspond with all the corners of the squares.  So all a child has to do is decide where to place each square on the grid and SNAP! presto!  It’s done.

Well it will be when I muster the energy to unpick buttons and sew on washers, anyway.

And Zoe’s aqua crochet top is coming along nicely.  It’s been a bit of a challenge- what with not being able to knit or follow the pattern once I’d finished following the pattern for the lacey yoke.  Which in itself was a bit of a challenge.

This is a photo I took of the gingerbread house my brother made for us, before any of the lollies were eaten!

I remember making gingerbread houses with my kids (and with the Family Day Care kids) every end of year- but ours were never quite so good looking as Sam’s.  There’s not a lot left of it now though, thanks Sam!

I filled the cookie tins again- where do all the cookies always go?!