Violet's Vegan Comics

Category: Things to do and make

  • The Circle of Life

    Make your own compost 🙂 Save all your raw fruit and vegetable peelings, apple cores, tea bags, soapnut shells, etc etc and take them outside to your compost bin (any container will do but make sure it’s got drainage holes in the bottom) Toss your ‘green waste’ in there, (ie raw fruit & veg waste)…

  • And then there was Denzel

    The Anderson family are not complete without Denzel so here he is 😀 I followed this free pattern of a Scottie dog by Sue Stratford and made him look as much like Denzel as I could.  I knitted him in white and stitched on the orange colour after he was sewn and stuffed.  He’s a bit…

  • Meet the Family

    Old Red is fully furnished and ready to be enjoyed by the Andersons – so where are they?  Where are the Andersons?  Oh look, here they are: Miranda knitted Aiden and Cara and Casey and Brietta, and it didn’t take her long. She got the pattern from loveknitting.com where it is free to download.  It’s…

  • The Andersons’ Knitted bus: The End

    You may have noticed that in the end the bus isn’t furnished exactly as shown in the story.  That is due to the fact that it has the proportions of a camper van because of the pattern I used.  This Old Red is therefore not long enough to fit in all the furniture I’d planned to…

  • The Andersons’ knitted bus Part Six: Woodburning Stove

    ********* Click here for Part 7 ************** vegan, vegetarian, recycling, homemade, crafts, drawing, sticking, making toys, homemade toys

  • The Andersons’ Knitted Bus, Part 4: a bed for Mr and Mrs

    First you need a large, empty matchbox. Find some decorative paper that looks like it would make good-looking bedding … … and wrap up the matchbox like a birthday present.  Then find another matchbox. Measure it and mark the middle. Take out the drawer and cut the insides and outsides in half. Now you have…

  • The Andersons’ bus part three: some wheels, half a floor and a repetitive strain injury

    It’s perhaps not as cool as a sports injury but, when you’re too excited to pace yourself, a repetitive strain injury is just as inconvenient.  I have been knitting for several hours a day for about two weeks with no ill effects but after making the bus’s wheels I had such bad shoulder pain that…

  • Andersons’ Knitted Bus – Part 2

    For Part 1 click here 🙂 Ok, on Wednesday I got as far as sandwiching the stiff card between the inside and outside of the two long sides of the bus, so on Thursday I did the same with the front and back ends: As with the long sides of the bus yesterday, I drew…

  • Knit the Andersons’ bus!

    Click for Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Denzel the dog 🙂 I found this fantastic pattern online and decided to have a go at adapting it to make The English Family Andersons’ bus 😀 The beauty of this pattern is that the bus can be played with inside and…

  • Chocolate chip peanut butter oat cookies

    Peanut butter, chocolate chip, oat cookies – vegan, gluten-free, organic and fair trade: What more could you want? 😀 I just felt peckish so I raided the cupboard for ingredients and found what I needed: Organic rolled oats Organic Fair Trade sugar Organic Fair Trade chocolate Organic Fair Trade peanut butter Organic Fair Trade Sunflower…

  • Make your own Reflecto Girl doll

    Here’s how: First, find a pattern.  I used this one but there are plenty of others to choose from, including lots of free ones you can download.  So, I won’t give you pattern details, you can just download whichever pattern you fancy and then make her look like Reflecto Girl.  If you don’t know how to…

  • I wrote a book

    I wrote a book about some birds, With pictures in and also words. Brother birds who love each other, And want to be free together. The birds are turkeys, big and fat, The farmer makes them fat like that. He makes them fat to kill and eat, For those who think they are just meat.…

  • The End?

    ************************** Oh dear, it’s not looking good for planet Earth and all its inhabitants.  If you’d like to try to help the bewitched break the spell you could do as Maud suggests and share this story far and wide.  The children of non-vegan parents who are caught up in the spell could be helped to…

  • Recitation Location

    continues tomorrow, or find it on the fairy tales page now 😀 ******************************* vegan fairy tale, vegan story, vegan children’s story, vegan, vegetarian, environment, wicked witch, global warming, animals, animal rights

  • Then he took out the weighing scales …

    Then he took out the weighing scales, measured 12 ounces of flour and put it into the mixing bowl. To the flour he added 4 slightly heaped teaspoons of baking powder.  And he mixed it in well. Next he weighed 6 ounces of sugar and mixed it in with the flour.  He stirred it a…

  • Amelia Meyer’s Take Care of the World Day

    Prepare to be inspired.  Prepare to be in awe.  Prepare to have your heart lifted and your eyes moistened 🙂 Eight year old Amelia Meyer, who was granted a wish by The Make-a-Wish Foundation because she suffers from brain cancer, wished that she could clean up all the litter in her local park. “She chose to…

  • PLANT FOOD Sudoku answers

    Here’s the answers to yesterday’s puzzle 😀

  • Food Wordsearch

    Search for the following food items and draw a line through them – they might be forwards, backwards, vertical, upside down or diagonal.  And you don’t have to print it out if you don’t want to – just click on the pic, then right click and save it to your computer, then open it in…

  • Keeping warm with odds and ends

    You may remember I have already knitted a hoodie like this out of leftover  and unravelled yarn but I gave that to Miranda so I needed another one.  And this one only took me 2 months to make, which is a record for me! Whilst this one is not made of unravelled yarn, I didn’t…

  • If you see a piece of litter pick it up

  • Fruit Sudoku

    I think sudokus are fun but someone I know hates maths so numbers make him panic and he just won’t try them.  I told him they have nothing to do with maths but he is adamant! So I’ve made a fruit sudoku for those who, like him, are panicked by numbers. For the uninitiated: the…

  • Make A Jigsaw

    Music:  Lost In Space theme by Apollo 440

  • Being Resourceful

    It got to that time of week again – the day before food shopping.  The cupboards were looking quite bare and Miranda and I were feeling very peckish.  We’d finished off the last flapjack the day before and there were no munchies left in the house.  There must be something I could make, I said…

  • Pendennis Castle

    I never got around to telling you about our visit to Pendennis Castle when we went to Cornwall last year.  I have mixed feelings about castles.  On the one hand I love the feeling of history, picturing how people used to live at the time the castle was built.  I feel amazed at the architecture…

  • Violet’s Anagram #3

    Can you get it before Miranda does? 😉

  • Violet’s Anagram #2

    This one’s trickier.  Can you unscramble it faster than Miranda? 😀

  • Babs on a bike

    The Sustrans website will tell you all about the National Cycle Network in the UK which “is a series of traffic-free paths and quiet, on-road cycling and walking routes, that connect to every major town and city.  The Network passes within a mile of half of all UK homes and stretches over 14,000 miles across the UK.” They also…

  • C is for Cake

    I’m working on the Cs now and was delighted to find that the first word which needed redefining was Cake: Oxford Dictionary definition:  Mixture of flour, butter, eggs, sugar etc. baked in the oven. Our definition:  There is absolutely no need of eggs and butter when making a cake.  There are so many delicious vegan, and…

  • Knit your own Father Christmas

    A bonus of Miranda working at Raystede animal sanctuary‘s charity shop is that she comes across lots of useful things like old knitting patterns and left over yarn that people have donated, which she can then buy and make use of.  And now you can make use of this one too 🙂 And I know you…

  • Yule Log mark 1

    I want to make a yule log for Christmas day so I thought I’d better practise.  I found a vegan recipe and really helpful instructions at Vegan Good Things but, being both lazy and impatient, I decided to try to make a simpler version.  I am very grateful to Leinana at Vegan Good Things for the how to…

  • A Good Book and some Upcycling

    When we began our home schooling adventure all those years ago we were very lucky to find this wonderful book.  Unqualified Education is full of inspiring ideas and information, advice and encouragement.  It is an absolute joy and still a great resource after the children have grown up. We decided to home school when my eldest…

  • Babs goes nuts!

    Here’s some we did yesterday: First preheat your oven to 200°C if it’s a fan oven (higher if not), or 400°F or gas mark 6. Then rinse the chestnuts, trim off the stem, and cut a cross in the outer skin.  If you don’t slit the skin they will explode in the oven. Get a…

  • Yummy Scrummy Crispy Cakes

    I used to make crispy cakes which were absolutely scrumptious but really not good for my health because of all the syrup in the recipe.  So I thought, I wonder if I can make these gorgeous treats healthier by leaving out the syrup and substituting dates.  Turns out – you can!  I am therefore very…

  • Wild and Fruity

    Remember the No Bake Blueberry Flapjacks?  Well, I didn’t have any blueberries so I decided to improvise with something wild – the blackberries are ready! So many blackberries and we only needed a few so we left plenty for others 🙂 And we saw plenty of others enjoying them. I did sustain a nasty bramble injury…

  • Free and Easy

    Going to the library is fun.  Browsing the books, choosing something you like and taking it home for weeks at a time.  For nothing.  This is something to be truly appreciated and not taken for granted. If we don’t use it, we might lose it 😮 If you live in the sticks like us, miles…

  • Keep it green!

  • A Walk With Alfred

    **** If you’d like to go for walks in your area, the following are some sites that could point you in the right direction: Walk Unlimited The Ramblers Association and here you’ll find more information about why walking is good for your health: The Benefits of Walking pdf and here is detailed information about getting enough…

  • Wild Flower Appreciation with Babs

    Why don’t you see what types of wild flowers are in your area? **** Pictures by Miranda, Words by Violet 🙂

  • Join the club!

    Want to join Violet’s Vegan Comics Club? Just make one of these cards and then send us a photo of it with your name – or your secret alias 😉 – and get a free vegan comic (while stocks last!) Check it out! 😀

  • The Andersons’ Bus Part Two

    For those who don’t know who the Andersons are, they are characters in one of our stories – a vegan family who live in an old bus. Look here Anyway, I had such fun building a model of their bus last week that I didn’t want to stop there – I had to furnish it!  Now, before…

  • Make a bus like the Andersons’ Old Red

    Take a look at Old Red in The English Family Anderson and have a go at making a model bus just like it 🙂 You’ll need: First measure out the shape of the bus.  Using a cereal box made it easy because I could use the side as the roof (so it already had neat folds).  The front…

  • Lunch like Edmund’s

    Remember Edmund’s Lunch?

  • Remember I wanted a new hat?

    Remember I wanted to make a new hat With the yarn from old hats I’d unravelled? Remember I said Random Rose made a hat, A beret with ridges she cabled? **** Well I followed the pattern that Rose kindly shared, Though the yarn had lost elasticity. The needles I used were not quite the right size, But I wasn’t going to…

  • Fancy a choc-ice?

    Many years ago I used to love these – choc-ices and Wall’s Feasts – but I hadn’t given them a thought for ages until my friend passed on a brilliant idea she got from The Raw Chocolate Company.  I realise now that this is not a new idea, but it’s a good one so here it…

  • Raw Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Indulge yourself Believe it or not – this is a health food!  Here’s how: You’ll need 1 cup of organic raw Brazil nuts, soaked overnight, drained and rinsed: 200g or so of pitted organic fresh dates: 3 tablespoons of organic raw cacao nibs: 1 tablespoon of organic raw carob powder (or cacao): 2 teaspoons of…

  • Raw Chocolate Nut Truffles

    You’ll need: 1 cup of organic raw almonds (soaked over night; thoroughly rinsed, then spread on a clean tea towel to dry for a couple of hours) 200g pitted fresh dates (soaked for 2 to 3 hours) 1 tablespoon of raw cacao or carob powder 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence Some sultanas 60g of raw…

  • No-Bake Blueberry Chocolate Flapjacks

    These are absolutely as good as they look!  I think they’re my best invention yet! Want some?  This is what you’ll need:   1.  Drain and rinse your soaked dates and chop them in your food processor, or by hand, until they’re well mushed up and combined.  Transfer them into a large mixing bowl. 2.…

  • I want a new hat!

    I want a new hat, It’s as simple as that! But I’ve got no money to buy one. I know what I’ll do, I’ve got old hats – two, I’ll unravel to make a new one. Rose shared a pattern, A cool beret pattern, Which I’ll use to make my new hat. The purple from my…

  • Recycle an old shirt or two

    Here’s an idea I got from this book:   Click on the pic find it on Amazon At least, I think I got it from this one but I gave it away a while ago so I’m not 100% sure.  Anyway, if you’ve got a couple of old shirts – preferably big men’s ones – lying…

  • Crafty Vegan

    Veganism should be happy and it should be everywhere. You can say it loud and proud without ever having to open your mouth! Show the world your happy veganism by writing it on your stuff! No pattern needed for these make-it-up-as-you-go bags and pencil cases made from upcycled old jeans and shirts.  Just put your…